Bulldog Won't Budge

  But it was actually a good thing I didn’t ask her, because as it turned out, Meatball at the park was a complete disaster.

  First of all, it took us practically an hour just to get to the park. Meatball really, really wanted to sniff everything that he passed. If I tried to drag him forward, he planted his butt on the sidewalk and refused to move until I let him sniff his brains out. I kept saying, “Meatball, we’re going to the park! It’ll be more fun there, I swear! The guys are waiting for us! Come on!” But that didn’t make any difference. He would not be hurried.

  So Parker and Danny and Troy had been waiting for ages by the time we got there. I could hear them calling Merlin and Buttons as we came up to the gate into the dog run. Meatball heard it, too; his ears flipped forward and he even sped up a little bit.

  We went through the double gates and I unhooked his leash. He stood there for a moment, sniffing the gravel and casting suspicious looks sideways at the other two dogs, who were running around the other end of the dog run.

  “Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii Eric!” Rosie called, jumping up on a bench and waving at me.

  “It’s about time!” Danny shouted.

  Merlin and Buttons spotted Meatball and came charging over. Meatball kind of jumped back a step and braced his shoulders, watching them warily with his big brown eyes. Buttons started bouncing around his paws, trying to jump up and sniff his face. Merlin politely circled him for a minute, wagging his silky golden tail like he was saying Hey friend, nothing to worry about, chill out.

  “Whoa,” Danny said, jogging up to us with the others close behind him. “That is one fat dog.”

  “Danny, don’t be rude,” Rosie said bossily. She had her curly dark hair parted in two braids with little glittery pink clips at the ends and she was wearing a pink T-shirt that said: PRINCESSES RULE. On the back it said: LITERALLY. “That’s how bulldogs are supposed to look,” she added. “Right, Eric?”

  “As far as I know,” I said.

  “He’s no bloodhound,” Troy said to me, giving Meatball his detective face. “But he’s cool. Check out how flat his nose is. How does he even breathe?”

  “Loudly,” I said. Meatball was demonstrating his chug-a-chug-a SNARR SNARR breathing noises right that second. Buttons kept jumping back like she thought he was growling at her, but that was just how he sounded when he inhaled.

  “Hey Meatball,” Parker said, crouching and letting Meatball sniff his hand. Merlin immediately came over and tried to stuff his head under Parker’s arm.

  Rosie put her hands on her hips and studied Meatball from tip to tail. His brow was all furrowed and he kept twitching away from the other two dogs when they tried to sniff his butt. His eyes rolled sideways as he tried to watch them both at once.

  “Hmm,” Rosie said. “He’s not a very you kind of dog, Eric.”

  “What does that mean?” Parker asked.

  “He’s, like — drooling and stuff,” Rosie said. “And he’s so — loud.” Meatball gave a long snort, as if to prove her point. “Eric isn’t loud,” Rosie pointed out.

  “He does drool, though,” Danny joked.

  “Shut up,” I said, punching his shoulder. I didn’t say anything out loud, but I kind of agreed with Rosie. That was exactly what I’d been worrying about all week. Meatball didn’t seem like my kind of dog at all.

  “This dog is more like you than Eric,” Rosie said to Danny. “But no, you can’t have one,” she added quickly.

  “I’ll take him if you don’t want him,” Troy said to me.

  “Right. Your mom would be psyched about that,” Parker said, and Troy sighed. I like Troy’s mom, but she worries about a lot of things, so I’m guessing she wouldn’t be thrilled about all the drooling and snoring.

  Merlin got bored of trying to make friends with Meatball and trotted off to find the tennis ball. Buttons swiveled her fluffy little head back and forth between them, trying to decide whether the curiously wrinkled new guy was more interesting than her sleek, shiny best friend. Finally, she sprang to her paws and chased after Merlin.

  Meatball sat down with what sounded like a relieved sigh.

  “What’s the matter with you?” I said to him. “Don’t you want to play with them? You had no problem playing with —” I stopped myself just in time. Telling the guys about Rebekah and Noodles was the last thing I wanted to do.

  “Playing with who?” Rosie asked.

  “Er … my sister’s cats,” I said lamely.

  “Really?” Parker said, raising his eyebrows in a surprised way. “But your cats hate everyone.”

  “Oh, they hate him, too,” I said. “It’s kind of one-sided playing.”

  “Maybe he just needs to warm up,” Parker said, digging a tennis ball out of his pocket. “Here, throw this for him.”

  I knelt down and let Meatball sniff the tennis ball all over. His eyes nearly crossed as he peered at the ball at the end of his flat snout. His squashed-up nose scrunched up and down as he inhaled its scent. He opened his mouth and smooshed his jowls around the ball, chewing it between his teeth.

  I wrestled it away from him and said, “OK, Meatball! Fetch!” And then I flung the tennis ball as far as I could down the dog run.

  Meatball didn’t even stand up. He just tipped back his head and gazed at me with his puzzled expression, like Well, that was weird. Where’d it go?

  “Go on!” I said, pointing after the ball. “Go get it!”

  Meatball stared blankly in the direction I was pointing, and then looked up at me again. He blinked a couple of times and then yawned hugely.

  Buttons came galloping over with the tennis ball wedged in her tiny mouth. She dropped it at my feet and made a play bow, wagging her tail.

  Rosie clapped her hands. “That’s my little genius!” she said happily.

  Danny grabbed the ball and threw it, and Buttons went racing after it.

  “See?” I said to Meatball. “Like that.”

  He stood up, shook himself (flap flap flap went his face), and came over to lean against my leg.

  Parker laughed. “I guess he’s not the fetching type.”

  “He’s as bad as a cat,” I said disgustedly. At least Merlin would chase the ball, even if he wasn’t great at bringing it back.

  And it didn’t get any better the rest of the time we were there. Merlin and Buttons ran and played and jumped in the water fountain and barked and chased each other in circles. They were having the best time ever. Meatball, on the other hand, fell asleep on my feet the minute I sat down on the bench. And, of course, he snored. And drooled on my sneakers.

  I was really glad Rebekah wasn’t there to see it.

  “This is going on the ‘con’ side of the list,” I said to him, leaning my elbows on my knees. “‘Doesn’t know how to play.’ That’s kind of a bad sign for a dog, man.”

  Troy sat down on the bench next to me. “Talking to yourself?” he said. He took off his baseball cap and tried to smooth down his red hair.

  “To this lumpy lump of fur,” I said, nudging Meatball’s chin with the sneaker he was drooling on.

  “Maybe he just plays differently than the other two,” Troy said. “Like Nikos doesn’t play baseball, but he’s a whiz at video games.”

  “Yeah, sure,” I said. “I just need to get Meatball a doggy Nintendo.”

  “Bulldog Kong,” Troy suggested. “Super Meatball Kart.”

  “Drool Kombat,” I said, and he laughed.

  But I worried about it all the way home. Especially when Meatball noticed how close we were to Rebekah’s house and tried to haul me over there, and we had this way embarrassing tug-of-war right there on the sidewalk, which I only won by wrapping my arms around a tree and holding my ground until he got bored.

  Was Meatball more trouble than he was worth? If he couldn’t even run around the dog run with me … was that the kind of dog I wanted?

  “Hey Eric!” Tony called from the living room when he heard us come in the back door. “You’re missin
g the game!”

  I hung Meatball’s leash on the door and left him with his face buried in his food bowl. Tony was in his easy chair watching the baseball game. I gotta say, this is the number one best thing about having a stepdad. I never, ever got to watch any sports when I was living with just Mom and Mercy and Faith, except maybe women’s basketball and, like, Olympic ice-skating. Seriously. I know way more about Kimmie Meisner and Sasha Cohen than any eleven-year-old guy is supposed to know.

  I wanted to sit down and join him, but Ariadne was lying across the top of the couch, and she started lashing her long gray tail angrily the minute I walked in.

  “It’s only the second inning,” Tony said with his eyes on the screen. “Your mom said we could order Chinese tonight.”

  “Great,” I said, eyeing the cat. “I’ll, uh — just go put my stuff down.”

  “Wait till the next commercial break,” Tony said, waving at the couch. “This is a good game.”

  I carefully sat down, pressed into the corner as far away from Ariadne as I could get. She glowered at me for a minute, then got up and stretched slowly, extending her needle-sharp claws way out in front of her. She jumped down to the couch cushion and started pacing toward me with slow, deliberate steps, like she was stalking me but didn’t care that I could see her coming.

  I kind of wanted to get up and run out of the room, but I thought that would look really lame in front of Tony. Instead I took the side cushion and stuck it between me and Ariadne. She gave me a look like Really? You think that’ll stop me? and sat down just within clawing distance of me. Her yellow eyes stared and stared at me. It was pretty hard to focus on the game that way.

  “Meatball!” I called, and winced at the way my voice wobbled.

  From the kitchen, the only response was crunch crunch crunch snorft snorft crunch snooorrrrrft. So much for my fearless bodyguard.

  “Yes!” Tony shouted at the screen. “Run! Go! Home run! Come on!”

  I leaned forward, watching the ball fly into the outfield, and while we were both distracted, Ariadne struck. She leaped onto the cushion and lashed out at me.

  “Ow!” I yelped, jumping to my feet. A long thin scratch ran down my arm, already welling tiny spots of blood. Ariadne flew up the stairs and almost immediately I heard my sisters’ feet come running.

  “What did you do to Ariadne?” Mercy yelled from the top of the stairs.

  “What did I do?!”

  Meatball came galloping in from the kitchen, all What’d I miss? What’d I miss? Dopey useless furball.

  “Let me see,” Tony said, taking my arm. “Yikes. She really got you.”

  “It’s OK. I’m used to it,” I said. “It’s my fault for sitting so close to her.”

  My stepdad gave me a look like I was brain-dead. “You’re allowed to sit on your own couch,” he said.

  Meatball had already come to that conclusion. He sprawled happily across the cushions with his tongue flapping as he panted.

  “It’s no big deal,” I said, sitting down next to Meatball.

  “I’m getting the first aid kit,” Tony said, pressing his lips together. I said he didn’t have to, but he was already halfway to the kitchen.

  “Whiner,” Mercy said from the bottom of the stairs, glancing down the hall to make sure Tony couldn’t hear her.

  “I said it’s no big deal,” I said.

  “Aww, poor tiny Eric, scared of a fluffy little cat,” Faith said. She leaned over the stair rail and handed something to Mercy.

  “What —” I started to say, and then blinked as a flash went off in my face. When I could see again, Mercy was handing the camera back to Faith.

  “Why’d you do that?” I asked.

  “No reason,” she said with a sweet smile. Then my sisters both vanished up the stairs as quickly as Ariadne, escaping before Tony came back with Band-Aids and antibiotic ointment.

  Meatball snored on, unconcerned, with a corner of his tongue sticking out under his nose. But I knew enough to be worried. What had they taken a picture of? What were they planning to do with it?

  Whatever it was, knowing Mercy and Faith … I wasn’t going to like it.

  I found out what they were up to the very next day.

  On Fridays we had computer lab for an hour after lunch, which was my favorite part of the week. Usually there was an assignment like “find the answers to these ten questions on the Internet” or “make a pie chart using this data and Microsoft Excel,” but it was always really easy. And when I finished, Mr. Peary let me work on other things, like the website I was trying to build about Harry Houdini. The problem was finding a way to make the site interesting that hadn’t been done by all the other Houdini websites.

  I was working on the header graphic, trying to make it appear and disappear, when I heard a little gasp from Rebekah’s computer, three seats away. I glanced over at her, but she was frowning at her screen. Then suddenly she looked straight at me … and frowned even more!

  “What?” I whispered. Brett was on the computer next to me and he looked over with a confused expression like he thought I was talking to him.

  “I can’t believe you!” Rebekah whispered back.

  Uh-oh. She sounded really mad. “What?” I said again. “Why?” I knew right away my sisters must have done something. I remembered the photo and thought about all the terrible things they might have done with it. Had they posted me on, like, a dating site or something? But then how would Rebekah have found it? Our computers had all these blocks on them so we couldn’t get to those sites.

  “You know what!” Rebekah said. “That poor dog! Do you know how sad they are in shelters?” In between us, Heidi and Brett looked back and forth like they were at a tennis match. Heidi’s ears had practically perked up when Rebekah said “dog.”

  I checked over my shoulder and saw that Mr. Peary was sitting next to Jonas, explaining something on the keyboard. He had his back to us. I got up and tiptoed over to Rebekah’s computer.

  Unfortunately, Tara and Natasha were sitting across from Rebekah. They saw me crouch down beside her and they started giggling.

  Rebekah ignored them and pointed to her screen. My first thought was that the photo was really bad. I was making this doofy face that made me look as dopey as Meatball. Most of the photo was of him. His fat white paws drooped off the side of the couch and his face was smushed up by the cushions under him.

  It took me a minute to figure out what I was looking at. At the top of the screen was a headline that said: Bulldog needs a new home!

  Then I realized. It was an ad on the school bulletin board!

  My sisters had posted Meatball’s photo online, trying to get someone to take him away. I read the whole ad, getting madder and madder. They’d written it pretending to be me! It was all about how hard it was to take care of such a big dog, and how I really wanted to find a good home for him, but if I didn’t he was going to a shelter on Sunday, so it was an emergency. It made me sound like kind of a jerk who didn’t care about my dog at all. Plus there were a ton of misspelled words that spell-check would definitely have caught. As if I would post something with that many mistakes on the Internet!

  “I didn’t post this,” I said to Rebekah. I was so mad, I forgot to be nervous around her. “I don’t want to get rid of Meatball.” At least … I don’t think I do. Definitely not like this, anyway! “My sisters must have done it.”

  “But why?” Rebekah said. “That’s so mean!”

  “They don’t like Meatball,” I said. “Or me, for that matter.”

  “What’s going on?” Heidi asked, leaning over to peek at Rebekah’s screen. “Is that a picture of your dog?”

  “Nothing,” I said, covering it with my hands. “Just my sisters being obnoxious.”

  “Oooooooooooooo,” Tara said, loud enough for everyone to hear. “Rebekah and Eric have secrets, oooooooooooooo.” Natasha started giggling again and glanced over at Parker.

  “Eric, please return to your own computer,” Mr. P
eary said. “And Tara, no talking.”

  I hurried back to my seat, my face on fire. I was embarrassed, but I was also mad. Mercy and Faith had no right to do that! Poor Meatball! What would they do next? Give him away while no one else was home?

  Not on my watch. This time their evil plans would not succeed.

  An e-mail from Rebekah popped up with the ad attached. The message said: Don’t let them get away with it!

  I won’t, I wrote back.

  I printed the ad and took it home with me. I didn’t say anything to Mercy and Faith when they got home. I stayed in my room, because I thought I might yell at them if I saw them, and I wanted to wait until I had backup.

  At dinner they were both smiling like Queen Yesinda, this evil character who always turns up right when I’m about to lose my favorite computer game. Mom didn’t notice, but Tony kept giving them thoughtful looks like he was wondering what they were up to.

  I waited until we were all sitting down with our tuna and broccoli casserole. I waited until both Mercy and Faith had their mouths full. And then I whipped the ad out of my back pocket, unfolded it, and slapped it on the table in front of Mom.

  Mercy’s eyebrows went up when she saw what it was.

  “Mom,” I said, and I was proud to hear that my voice wasn’t even shaking very much. “Look what Mercy and Faith did.”

  Faith rolled her eyes and sighed like I was so immature.

  Mom scanned the page, her forehead crinkling kind of like Meatball’s. “What is this?” she asked. “Eric, does this mean you don’t want Meatball after all?”

  “No!” I said. “No, no, no. That’s the point. Mercy and Faith wrote this and posted it online. They were trying to get rid of him! Without asking the rest of us!”

  “Let me see that,” Tony said, holding out his hand. I passed the printout to him and he frowned as he read it.

  “Tattletale,” Mercy said to me.

  “Brat,” Faith added.

  “Yeah, well, you guys are jerks,” I said.

  “That’s enough name-calling,” Mom said. “Girls, why did you do this?”