When Life Gives You O.J. (8 page)

“WE HAVE COMPANY?” boomed Ace.

“Hi, I’m Jeremy Fagel,” said Jeremy, holding out his right hand to shake. Ace took it and shook it heartily.

“ABRAHAM DIAMOND, GOOD TO MEET YOU,” said Ace, acting like Jeremy was some kind of bank president or something. “CALL ME ACE.”

“Good to meet
you
, Judge Diamond. Zelda speaks very highly of you.”

“IZZAT SO?” Ace looked over at me and raised one shaggy eyebrow like he found this difficult to believe.

“She told me all about the psychology experiment the two of you are running.”

“THE WHA?”

“You know, the experiment. With O.J.?”

“You TOLD him?” yelled Sam, looking at Ace with panic and fear.

“It’s okay. Grandpa said it was okay,” I blurted, trying desperately to control the situation. “Right, Grandpa?”

“WHATEVER YOU SAY, KID,” said Ace, winking at me.

“You kids better hit the courts before it gets too hot out there,” said my mom, handing me the racket. I took it gratefully, happy to get out of talking about O.J. anymore.

“Can I leave O.J. here?” I asked.

“Has he been walked?” asked my dad, trying to keep a straight face. “We don’t want any orange juice puddles on the floor.”

“Dad,”
I said.

“Sure, go ahead, honey,” said my mom, giving my dad a
Behave!
look. “Have fun! Don’t be too late.”

Jeremy talked the whole way over to the courts. He did seem nervous, so maybe my mom was right about that. He told me about Boston, how he went to private school there and how he was thinking that public school here was probably going to be a lot different. Then he rattled off all of his favorite things. It turned out we both liked Greek myths and plain, not peanut, M&M’s.

“And my favorite movies are Matt Malone spy movies,” he told me.

“Yeah, a lot of the boys like those,” I said.

“Wait, you’ve
never
seen one?” he asked, incredulous.

I shook my head. “I usually go to the movies with my best friend, Allie,” I explained. “She’s not big on action movies.”

“Yeah, but these aren’t just action movies. I mean, things
blow up, definitely, but there’s a lot more to the story. He’s a secret agent, so at the end, there’s always a twist, you know? They’re not just total popcorn movies.”

I laughed. “As far as I’m concerned, popcorn is the best part of going to the movies.” I told him about how Allie’s mom actually buys us popcorn. My mom thinks movie popcorn is a rip-off. She always pops it on the stove at home, then brings it along in a greasy paper bag that she hides in her purse.

“No way! My mom too,” said Jeremy.

He went on to tell me about Matt Malone movies in great detail. He was a huge fan, he said, and had seen all the other ones the minute they came out.

“… and the new one comes out next month, and it’s going to be awesome. I saw the preview back in Boston,” he said.

“So, let me guess. You’re going to camp out in front of the theater the night before it opens?” I asked.

“Yeah, something like that,” he said. “But it won’t be the same as seeing it with all my friends back in Brookline.”

“Yeah,” I had to admit. “Sorry.”

Jeremy shrugged. “Whatever,” he said. But he didn’t look like
whatever
.

“I know how it feels,” I told him. “I totally miss my best friend, Allie.”

“I thought you said she lived here.”

“She does. But she’s at sleepaway camp.”

“Oh. You didn’t want to go with her?”

“Of course I did,” I said. “But my parents said no.”

“Bummer.”

I nodded, and we walked in silence for a moment.

“So, hey,” said Jeremy brightly, like he wanted to cheer me up, “how’s it going with the psychology experiment?”

“Oh—that,” I said, tempted to make something up. But Jeremy was being so friendly, it didn’t feel right to keep pretending. I took a deep breath. “The thing is … Okay, don’t get mad, but I’m not actually doing a psychology experiment.”

“You’re not?” Jeremy sounded disappointed.

“No.”

“Then what
are
you doing?”

I cringed. “It’s called a ‘practice dog.’ My grandfather came up with it. I really want a dog, but my parents said no. So my grandfather thinks if I take care of O.J., my parents will realize that I’m ready to get a real dog.”

“Oh. Cool!”

I shook my head. “It’s actually a really dumb idea. I have to walk O.J. two or three times a day and clean up after him.” Jeremy looked confused. “Don’t ask.” I continued, “Which means any day now some kid from school is going to see me and tell everyone and the whole world will make fun of me for all eternity.”

“Yeah, but, you know what? It sounds like it might actually work. And then you’ll get a dog, which is what you really want, right? So who cares what some dumb kid says?”

“I guess,” I said. But what I thought was:
I do
.

We arrived at the tennis courts. Three sides of the cage surrounding the courts were made of wire mesh with holes precisely the right size to catch and hold a tennis ball lobbed at them. The fourth side had a big green wooden wall with a white line drawn horizontally at about the level the net would be. Jeremy stood facing the wall with his feet apart and both hands on the racket, in what he called the “ready” position.

I tried to do the same. Then Jeremy moved over and bounced the ball, swinging his racket gently so the ball flew straight at the wall right above the line and bounced back toward me.
FWOK!
was the sound the ball made when it hit the racket.

My job was to let go of my racket with my left hand as the ball bounced once, then swing the racket back with my right hand and hit the ball toward the wall, aiming at a spot just above the line.

The first time, I closed my eyes as I swung, expecting to hear the
FWOK!
sound. When I opened my eyes, Jeremy was smiling, but he was nice enough not to laugh that I had missed the ball entirely. The next time, I kept my eyes open, but I missed again.

“Here, try this,” suggested Jeremy, putting down his racket and bouncing the ball in front of me. I swung fiercely, determined to hit—

“Whoa! Watch it,” yelled Jeremy, holding his upper arm. I had missed the ball and whacked him with my racket instead.

“Sorry!” I said, cringing with embarrassment.

“It’s okay. I’ll live. Try it again.” He bounced the ball in front of me, then took a giant leap backward to get out of my way. This time my racket hit the ball, but it startled me so much I dropped the racket.

“I’m sorry. I’m hopeless.”

“No, you’re not. You should have seen me when I was learning to play. It just takes a while to get the hang of it. Try it again.”

So I tried it again. And again, and again. Jeremy was really nice, even when I actually hit him with the racket for the second time. After a whole bunch of times, I finally heard
FWOK!
and I didn’t drop the racket. Then I did it again, swinging with all my might.
FWOK!
I opened my eyes just in time to see the ball go sailing up in the air, flying high overhead to where it landed on the other side of the fence. I cringed, but Jeremy didn’t say anything. He just bolted after it.

We played for a while longer, until I started to feel like I was going to melt. Even with all the trees, Vermont can still get pretty hot when you’re running around a tennis court. Then Jeremy fished a handful of quarters out of his shorts pocket and bought us two Sprites from an old soda machine next to the courts.

“I should probably get back,” I told him. Jeremy’s glasses were slipping and his hair was extra-curly around his forehead, but he didn’t seem anywhere near as exhausted as I was.

“Sure, you should probably check on your dog, right?”

“My dog?” I asked, before realizing. “Oh yeah, right. My ‘dog.’ ”

“Why do you say it like that?”

“Because the whole thing feels like kind of a joke. I mean, seriously, do you actually think it might work?”

“Yeah, I do. And I’ll tell you what. If it were me, I’d be thinking about upping the ante.”

“About whating the auntie?”

“Upping the ante,” Jeremy corrected me. “It means ‘taking your game to the next level.’ ”

“Yeah, I know,” I said quickly. I thought about how Sam always got things wrong, like thinking that the song lyric “The answer, my friends, is blowin’ in the wind” was actually “The ants are my friends.…”

“It’s sort of like developing a killer backhand in tennis so you can come out of nowhere and just annihilate the competition,” he added, swinging his soda can like a racket and sloshing a little in the process.

“Uh, sure. Maybe next lesson,” I said.

“Yeah, but I’m not talking about tennis. If I were you, instead of just walking O.J., I’d do other things to make my parents see that I was ready to have a real dog.”

“Like what? Build him a doghouse?”

“No. Like
other
other things. For instance, do you know anyone who has a dog?”

I gave him a look of pure disbelief. On our block alone, there are six houses and seven dogs. “Jeremy, practically everyone in Vermont has a dog,” I told him.

“Perfect,” said Jeremy. “You can start a dog-walking service! I mean, you’re walking O.J. anyway, right? If you add a
bunch of other dogs, your parents are bound to notice how dedicated you are.”

“I guess,” I said, considering the idea. It did sound like fun, getting pulled down the street by a whole pack of dogs on rainbow leashes like a big bunch of balloons.

“Oh, and, hey, is there an animal shelter here?”

“A shelter? I don’t know. Why?”

“Well, if there is, maybe you could volunteer there. A friend of mine in Brookline had a birthday party where we all brought old towels and stuff to an animal shelter and they gave us a tour and said that kids could volunteer with their families. And if you got your parents to volunteer with you, they’d see all the dogs that need homes and, you know …”

“Right,” I said, “and we’d end up taking ten or twelve dogs home.”

Jeremy shrugged. “Just a thought. That is, if you actually want a dog.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I dunno. It’s just how I do things. If I really want something, I try to figure out everything I can do to make it happen.”

“Yeah? Well, does it work?”

Jeremy grinned knowingly.

“Have you seen my bike?” he asked.

“Hey, guess what?” asked my dad over dinner. “I hear they have a first-rate Fourth of July parade here. And apparently, kids can ride in it if they decorate their bikes. How does that sound?”

“Aw-right!” yelled Sam, practically falling off his chair.

“Yeah, I dunno,” I said. “I think I’ll pass.” If Allie had

been around, it would’ve been a different story. We would’ve been all over it. We would have decorated our bikes together and pooled our money to buy enough candy to fill up our bike baskets. I pictured the two of us, riding side by side, tossing Starbursts and Dubble Bubble to the crowd. But without Allie, it wouldn’t be the same. Especially since instead of candy in my bike basket, I’d have O.J. I remembered what Jeremy had said about his bike. Whatever he had done to
earn it couldn’t have been anywhere near as difficult as taking care of O.J.

The next day, my mom tried to get me interested in riding in the parade, but I said no to her too. So she and Sam went to Rite Aid, and my mom let him pick out all sorts of decorations. My dad even carried Sam’s bike into the house and up to his room so he could work on it there. Sam kept his door closed and draped a sheet over his bike at night so no one could see his project until it was completed.

On the morning of July Fourth, Sam called us to his room. He was wearing his Batman pajamas, and he looked tired.

“Sammy, how late were you up working on this?” asked my mom.

Sam ignored her. “Are you ready?” he asked. With a big yank, he pulled off the sheet. “Ta-da!” he yelled.

We all stared.

“Wow,” said my dad.

Sam’s bike, which had a black-and-yellow Batman decal on it to begin with, stood before us. It was decorated, all right. Decorated from handlebars to pedals to wheels in full-on Batman decor. We’re talking black crepe paper, a huge black-and-yellow Bat-Signal on the front, more Batman stickers, and bright yellow and black pipe cleaners woven through the spokes.

Not a speck of red, white, or blue was visible on the whole bike.

“Sam?” asked my mom. “It’s … beautiful. But what happened to the decorations we bought together?”

“They’re over there,” said Sam, gesturing toward his desk. Sure enough, on top of a pile of papers and a half-built LEGO Bat Cave was a large paper Rite Aid bag, the receipt still stapled to the folded-down top.

“Sam, it’s a Fourth of July parade, not a superhero parade,” I told him. “Batman doesn’t have anything to do with the Fourth of July. You can’t ride in the parade like that.”

“You shut up!” shouted Sam.

“Mom!” I said, knowing how she feels about “shut up.” But instead of telling Sam to apologize, my mom turned on me.

“Zelda! Don’t talk to your brother that way. He worked very hard on this.”