Bad to the Bone Boxer

  I just wanted Rosie to see how she’d changed and to start treating me like her best friend again. In my head, when this was all fixed, Pippa could still hang out with us. It’s just that Rosie used to call me first and tell me everything. And now I felt like the elephant who was trying so hard to be friends with a pair of zebras, but who didn’t fit into their group anymore.

  I brushed away tears and blew on my hands to warm them up. Had Rosie really not noticed that things were different? Did she think we were all getting along perfectly?

  Was I the one causing problems?

  Maybe Dad was right. Maybe I should have spent more time thinking before I started yelling at her. How would we ever fix things now? What if I’d lost my best friend for real this time? Who would I sit with at lunch?

  But I couldn’t have done what she wanted me to do to Tombo anyway. And the way she’d acted toward my poor dog just made me so mad.

  As I had that thought, Tombo braked and twisted his head to look alertly off at the low hill on the left side of the path. His whole body was poised like he was ready for action. His face was clearly trying to say I’m on top of things! Nothing gets past me! but the funny wrinkles in his forehead and his drooping jowls made him look a bit too goofy to take seriously. I smiled, thinking At least I have one friend who’ll like me no matter what I say.

  Suddenly Tombo bolted. He took off so fast that the leash whipped out of my hand. I barely had time to shout, “Tombo, no! Come back!” before he’d disappeared up the hill and over the other side.

  I ran after him. My heart pounded in my chest. I couldn’t have lost my dog already! I had promised to be responsible and take care of him!

  A tree branch whacked me in the face, but I kept running. At the top of the hill, the trees stopped in a ragged line. The other side of the hill swooped down a long way to an open, grassy field, on the same level as the lake, which I could see not far off to my right, shielded by more trees.

  Tombo was galloping down the hill, bobbing through the grass like an overgrown brown jackrabbit. In the field I could see something long and gray racing back and forth. My first, panicked thought was that it might be a wolf, although I’d never heard of anyone seeing wolves around here. But it moved so gracefully and quickly, and I was already so afraid for Tombo, that “wolf” flashed through my head before I could think sensibly.

  I charged down the hill after Tombo, staggering on the uneven dirt and unexpected mounds under the grass. It was steeper than I’d realized, and soon I was going faster than I meant to, but I couldn’t stop myself.

  As we got closer, I realized that the gray running creature was a dog — but a huge dog, long-legged and sleek and silvery like someone had turned the moon into a dog. Under its short, silver-gray fur, I could see strong muscles rippling across its chest and back as it ran.

  Tombo barked once, a ringing, Hey, look out below, I’m coming to say hi! kind of bark.

  The other dog slowed to a lope and trotted in a big circle, watching Tombo approach. My dog looked like such a galumphing clown in comparison to this dog’s casual grace. I hoped it was friendly. I hoped it could tell that Tombo was not a threat.

  My sneaker caught on a hole in the ground and I went flying, tumbling head over heels the rest of the way down the hill. I landed with a thud in the long grass, sprawled out on my stomach. Tombo, my so-called loyal friend, didn’t even come over to check if I was OK. When I managed to catch my breath enough to sit up, he was bowing and dancing in front of the gray dog the way he had for Buttons.

  The gray dog looked intrigued and thoughtful, but not unfriendly. Its tail was longer than Tombo’s — maybe the length of my arm, wrist to elbow, and round at the tip — and it was wagging in a way that made me feel much better.

  I rubbed my head and retied my scarf around my hair. My left ankle felt a little sore. I was about to try standing on it when I heard footsteps running up to me.

  “It’s Michelle!” cried a familiar voice. I looked up and saw Satoshi and Midori skidding to a stop beside me. Today Satoshi was wearing green and black, while Midori had on a candy-cane-striped sweater with her jeans.

  “Are you OK?” Midori asked. She sounded out of breath and her two pigtails were coming loose.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” I said. “I think.” I started to climb to my feet, and to my surprise Satoshi took my hand and helped me up. Gingerly I tested putting some weight on my left ankle. It hurt a little, but I could stand on it, so it was probably just bruised.

  Now finally Tombo came back to check on me, although mostly he wanted to say hi to the new people. He nosed Midori’s hand and she patted his head with a smile.

  The gray dog slipped quietly up between Midori and Satoshi and presented its head for petting as well. I caught myself wondering what Rosie would say if she saw me hanging out with the Takashi twins and two big dogs. Not that I cared anymore or anything.

  “I guess this is your dog?” I asked them.

  “Yeah,” Satoshi said. “She needs to run a lot, so we bring her here whenever we can.” He waved at the empty field around us.

  “There’s more space than the dog run, and usually we have it all to ourselves,” Midori explained. “Sorry we got your dog all excited, though!” She handed the end of Tombo’s leash back to me.

  I held out my other hand for the gray dog to sniff. She had a long nose and long flapping ears like a beagle’s, but more square. Her eyes were the weirdest color blue. I didn’t think I’d ever seen blue eyes on a dog before. “What’s her name?” I asked.

  “Chihiro,” Satoshi said.

  “It’s from my favorite movie,” Midori added quickly.

  I stared at her in surprise. “You don’t mean Spirited Away, do you?”

  Her eyebrows went up, and she smiled. “You know it?”

  “Know it? I love it!” I said. I’d had no idea there were other Miyazaki fans in my class. “My dog’s name is Tombo!”

  “From Kiki’s Delivery Service!” Midori exclaimed. Her smile went from ear to ear now. “That is so cool! Have you seen all his movies?”

  “Of course!” I said.

  “Uh-oh. This could go on all day,” Satoshi said, shaking his head and grinning. “I’m going to run Chihiro a bit more. Want me to take Tombo too?”

  “I’m not sure yet how good he is off-leash,” I said. “Like, if he’ll come back when I call and stuff. I’m guessing no.”

  “That’s OK, I’ll hang on to him,” Satoshi said. He took the leash from my hand and wrapped it firmly around his own. His hair was cut straight and even all around his head and he usually had a serious expression, but with a big dog on either side of him, he looked like a young warrior from an anime movie.

  The three of them ran off into the field and Midori and I sat down in the grass to watch and talk about our favorite movies. At first Chihiro stayed at Satoshi’s pace, but soon she put on a burst of speed and tore ahead. Tombo tried to lunge after her, but Satoshi kept him close to his side. A minute later, Chihiro came bounding back and started to tease Tombo, running at him and then darting back, making small playful barks and wagging her tail.

  “That’s so cute,” I said. “I think they like each other.”

  “Yeah, and Chihiro can be fussy, so Tombo should be flattered,” Midori said.

  “She has the coolest eyes,” I said. “What kind of dog is she? I feel like I’ve seen dogs like that in photos, like on calendars and stuff.”

  Midori nodded. “There’s a famous photographer named William Wegman who takes lots of pictures of these kinds of dogs. They’re called Weimaraners.”

  “She’s gorgeous,” I said.

  “So is yours!” Midori said. “I love boxers. They’re so full of energy.”

  I kind of wanted to hug Midori right then, although of course I didn’t. But that was exactly the reaction I had wanted from Rosie. Of course my dog was gorgeous! And lovable! Rosie was blind if she couldn’t see that.

  I looked sideways at Midori. Maybe Ro
sie had been all wrong about her, too. Maybe she wasn’t a tomboy or boy-crazy. Maybe she just didn’t have any girl friends because the girls in our class didn’t talk to her — not the other way around.

  Well, she seemed nice, and I didn’t care what Rosie thought. “Hey,” I said, “maybe sometime you could bring Chihiro over to my house to play with Tombo. We have a big, fenced backyard … I mean, if you want to … it could be fun.”

  “Sure!” Midori said. “I have swim practice after school tomorrow, and Tuesday I have to be home by five for my cello lesson, but maybe before five would work? Or Wednesday?”

  “I’ll check with my parents,” I said. “Uh-oh.” Talking about the time made me realize that Deandre might be looking for me. “What time is it?”

  Midori looked at her watch, which had a grumpy-looking cartoon penguin on its round face. “Almost noon,” she said.

  “I’d better go find my brother,” I said, climbing to my feet. Satoshi saw me stand up and came running back with Tombo. The boxer’s long pink tongue was lolling out of the side of his mouth and his face was lit up with joy.

  “Thanks for playing with him,” I said to Satoshi.

  “No problem. He’s cool,” Satoshi said with a shrug.

  “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, OK?” I said to Midori.

  “Sure,” she said. “I mean, if you can. If you don’t, it’s all right.”

  I didn’t realize what an odd thing that was to say until I was halfway across the field to the lake. What did she mean by that? Like, if I decided I didn’t want to hang out with her, she’d understand? That wouldn’t be very nice of me. But she’d said it with a perfectly friendly smile on her face.

  Maybe Midori’s psychology was more complicated than I’d realized. I’d have to pay attention if we were going to be friends.

  Then again … were we going to be friends? I didn’t know her that well yet. What if she didn’t really want to be friends with me? Maybe we had nothing in common besides big dogs and Miyazaki movies. But on the plus side, being friends with someone new would certainly show Rosie I didn’t need her. Unless then Rosie decided she would never take me back because I’d spent too much time with weirdos.

  I glanced down at Tombo and he wagged his stumpy tail. “I bet I can guess who you’d vote for,” I said. “But you just want to spend more time with Chihiro.”

  His face said, So? She’s awesome! Let’s go back and play with her some more right now!

  I sighed. Friends were complicated. I wished I knew how to handle them as easily as Tombo handled his new dog friends.

  “Well, I’ll figure it out tomorrow,” I said to Tombo. “For the rest of today, it’s just you and me, partner.”

  He looked pleased, as if he’d understood me.

  Little did I know that my troubles with Tombo were far from over.

  I found Deandre skipping stones at the lake with Miguel. I think they might have been talking about girls, too, because they both shut up really fast when I showed up. My brother looked surprised to see me, but on the walk home I explained about the fight with Rosie.

  Deandre shook his head. “I’m not sure that was the way to handle it,” he said.

  “I know,” I said, kicking a pile of orange leaves into the gutter. “I didn’t think through what I was going to say. I didn’t go into the argument with my goals in mind. I did all the things Dad is always telling me not to.”

  Deandre squeezed my shoulder. “Still,” he said, “I think I probably would have done the same thing you did.”

  I looked up at him. “Really?”

  “Not that that makes it right,” he said. “But poor Tombo!”

  “Exactly!” I said. “Poor Tombo.”

  Poor Tombo looked like he was having the time of his life. He flung himself into every pile of leaves and lunged to the end of his leash whenever he saw someone on the other side of the street. He darted back and forth so much that he got me and Deandre tangled up in the leash and we had to keep stopping to unwrap ourselves.

  When we got home, Mom and Dad were making tuna melts and salad for lunch. My tuna melt had fake cheese on it, because I’m lactose-intolerant, which means too much of anything with milk makes me sick.

  Tombo flopped out on the kitchen floor and fell asleep right away.

  “That’s a sign of a happy dog,” Dad said, smiling. “Did he have fun with Buttons?”

  “He tried to,” I said. “Rosie wouldn’t let them play for long. But he met this other dog called Chihiro who’s really cool — she belongs to my friend Midori.” It sounded weird to say “my friend Midori,” even though I’d technically known her since we moved to town in second grade. “So I was wondering if they could maybe come over for the dogs to play together on Tuesday after school. Would that be OK?”

  Mom pulled her appointment book out of her purse and flipped through it. She comes home early on Tuesdays and Fridays to be here when we get out of school, and Dad does the same thing Mondays and Thursdays. On Wednesdays Deandre stays late at school, usually for sports stuff, and I almost always go to Rosie’s mom’s store with her and Pippa. I wondered what I would do this Wednesday if Rosie and I were still fighting.

  “Sounds like a good idea,” Mom said, making a note in her book in pencil. “How do you spell Midori?” I spelled it for her. Mom likes to write everything down. She’s a little more organized than my dad that way.

  “Grandpa called to invite us for dinner,” Dad said. “If you guys are done with your homework.”

  “Yup,” said Deandre, and I nodded too, although I hadn’t figured out the goat-giving part of our project yet. But that wasn’t really homework. That was just Ms. Applebaum asking me to find her some information about donating goats. She hadn’t given me a deadline for that or anything.

  Grandma and Grandpa (my mom’s parents) live fifteen minutes away, in the next town over, so we see them a lot. Definitely more than my other grandparents, who live in Kenya — we’ve only been to visit them three times, because it’s really expensive to fly there, but when we went we stayed for a month each time.

  I loved everything about Kenya; I loved the heat, and the monkeys in the trees around the farm, and the bright, colorful dresses my grandmother wears, and milking her goats and cows, and reading to each other by candlelight when the power went off in the middle of the night.

  But I love my American grandparents too. Their basement is one big library of old books, which my grandmother collects, and she lets me borrow the ones that aren’t too antique. Grandpa decided to learn to be a cook after he retired, so he took all these classes and now he’s really good and he won’t even let Grandma in the kitchen. It’s pretty funny. She keeps saying how much easier her life would have been if he’d done this years ago, and wondering if he decided to do this because she is such a terrible cook — which is true, actually. I didn’t know you could make beans and rice or pancakes completely wrong until I tasted Grandma’s.

  “Can we bring Tombo?” I asked. “I bet they’d love to meet him!”

  Mom and Dad exchanged looks. “I bet they would too,” Dad said, “but think about how small and cluttered their house is.”

  “I agree,” Mom said. “I’m afraid he’d break something or make a mess — it might be better if we wait to introduce them here or during the day, when we can leave him in their yard.”

  I was disappointed, but I couldn’t argue with that. Every surface in their house is covered in little knick-knacks and cute ornaments. It would be way too easy for a big, excitable dog to knock something over, and I wanted Grandma and Grandpa to meet Tombo in whatever way would make sure they liked him.

  We spent almost the whole rest of the afternoon trying to decide what to do with Tombo while we were gone. Dad suggested leaving him in the big crate we’d gotten for him, but I was afraid he’d be sad if we locked him up in there. I thought he’d be fine if we left him loose in the house. After all, we’d hidden all the shoes! Deandre laughed at that idea, and said we could do w
hat we liked, but he’d be leaving his door shut, just to make sure his stuff was safe.

  What finally convinced Mom and Dad was that Tombo was so good and quiet all afternoon. He was so tired from our walk and playing in the park that he slept for hours and didn’t act crazy at all. My mom said maybe chewing on Dad’s shoe was just first-day nerves, but now he’d settle down and be good.

  So we compromised. We left Tombo shut into the kitchen and den area. With the doors closed, he wouldn’t be able to get to the rest of the house. But he’d still be able to get to his food and water in the kitchen, or go sleep on the sofa in the den if he wanted to — I know that’s what I would do! And we wouldn’t be gone long. Dad said it would be a good test, since we had to leave him home alone the next day while we were all at school or work.

  “Be good, Tombo!” I said, patting his head. I’d changed into one of the scarves Grandma had given me, bright red with a swirling gold dragon and little dangling gold beads on the ends. Rosie’s pink scarf was stuffed into the back of my closet, under my pile of socks that don’t match and my soccer uniform from summer camp. Looking at those raspberries just made me mad at Rosie all over again.

  I guess part of me thought she might call and say she was sorry, but hours had passed and I hadn’t heard from her. Which was just fine. If Pippa was enough of a friend for Rosie, then she could have her and her dumb cat, who would never be as awesome as Tombo.

  Tombo sat up and looked confused as we all got ready to leave. He tried to follow me out of the kitchen, but I said, “No, Tombo. Stay! Be good!” and shut the door on him.

  “Rooooooooooorrrrrroooooooorrrrr,” he whimpered, scrabbling on the other side of the door. “Ooooorrrroooo? Aarrrrrroooooo!”