Bad to the Bone Boxer

  I clutched my heart. “So sad!” I whispered to Mom and Dad. “Poor Tombo!”

  “He’ll settle down once we’re gone,” Dad whispered back, handing me my shoes.

  I hoped Dad was right. I could still hear Tombo making sad little whimpering noises as we went out the front door.

  * * *

  Grandpa’s dinner helped me forget about Rosie for a while. He made chicken piccata with mushrooms over spaghetti, plus homemade honey-wheat bread and grilled zucchini. We’d gotten him a bread machine for his last birthday, but it was more of a present for us because now he made fresh bread all the time, and their whole house smelled amazing.

  I told Grandma all about our “Make a Difference” project and buying a goat, which she thought was a wonderful idea. Except then she started asking me which charity we were using to get the goat, and I remembered that I was supposed to be figuring that out. All I could do was mumble, “We’re working on that part.” I hoped Ms. Applebaum wouldn’t ask me about it at school the next day.

  Still, I was in a much better mood when we got back home. Dad switched on the light in the living room, and immediately we heard frantic scrabbling noises coming from the kitchen door.

  “He’s happy to see us!” I said, smiling. “Isn’t it great to come home to that kind of excitement?”

  But what we found behind the door wasn’t great at all.

  Tombo threw himself at us the minute the door opened, so it wasn’t until we’d said hi to him and wrestled him back down to the floor that we saw what he’d done.

  Tombo’s food bowl was upside down and kibble was scattered from one end of the kitchen to the other, most of it soggy and gross from the puddle spreading out from the tipped-over water bowl. All the dish towels he could reach had been dragged off their hooks and shredded. Two of the wooden chairs around the table had deep tooth marks on their legs, as if Tombo had been gnawing on them.

  “Uh-oh,” Deandre said, jumping over the puddle and running into the den. Tombo bounded after him with a cheerful face like, Yay! What game is this?

  The destruction in here was even worse. The orange throw pillows were ripped open and all the feathers inside were drifting around the room. The remote control for the TV was on the floor, cracked and chewed into a black plastic mess. Tombo had even pulled one of the big glossy books off the low shelf under the coffee table and nibbled on all the corners. Worst of all, he’d left long gouges and big slobbery bites in the arm of the leather couch.

  “Oh. My. Gosh,” I said. I sat down on one of the armchairs, feeling faint. My mom looked as horrified as I felt. Dad went over to the couch and gingerly touched the leather like he couldn’t believe it was real. Deandre picked up the remote and pointed it at the TV, but of course it didn’t work.

  “This is bad,” Deandre said, and I knew he wasn’t just talking about how he’d miss The Amazing Race that night.

  “Tombo,” I said. The boxer looked at me, and then his head drooped and his shoulders slumped and he made the saddest face I’d ever seen. He knew we were very, very unhappy with him.

  “Oh, Tombo,” I said. “I thought you were a good dog.”

  He peered up at me with his big brown eyes. I am! they said. I mean, I try to be. What did I do wrong?

  I shook my head. Mom and Dad sighed and went to put their coats away. Deandre opened the broom closet to get a vacuum cleaner for the feathers.

  “This isn’t something a good dog would do,” I told Tombo. He ducked his head even more. He did look sorry. But would Mom and Dad ever forgive him? Or would they make us take him back to the shelter?

  What if he kept doing things like this? What if he destroyed our whole house?

  I thought of something I’d once heard my dad say about a serial killer he was studying. He said there was something so messed up in the guy’s brain that psychology couldn’t fix him. The phrase he’d used was “bad to the bone.”

  What if my new dog was too bad to be fixed? What if Tombo was “bad to the bone”?

  I didn’t dare argue when Mom put Tombo in his crate the next morning. It was a big crate with black metal bars and plenty of room for Tombo to stretch out. We put his fluffy dog bed and blue rope toy and water bowl in there with him. It wasn’t so terrible. It even looked kind of comfortable. Still, I didn’t think I’d want to spend the whole day in a crate.

  Tombo tried to hide when he saw the crate and figured out what we were up to. We had to drag him out from behind the sofa and give him lots of treats to get him inside. He hunched his shoulders as we closed the door, then lay down with a sigh. He propped his head on his front paws so his jowls flopped over to either side, whimpered tragically, and gave me enormous puppy dog eyes of woe.

  “I’m sorry, Tombo,” I said. “But it’s for your own good. This way you’ll have to be a good dog, because you can’t be bad if you’re stuck in there.”

  He sighed again, long and dramatic. I had the uneasy feeling he was thinking, We’ll see about that.

  Mom draped an old towel over the top of the crate. “That should make it feel like more of a den,” she said. “What do you think, Tombo? Isn’t it nice and cozy in there?”

  Tombo practically rolled his eyes at her.

  Mom and Dad hadn’t said anything about taking him back to the shelter. Maybe they thought he deserved another chance. Or maybe they were looking for a way to break the news to us nicely. Or maybe they felt too guilty to abandon him like his other family had. I certainly wasn’t going to give them the idea if they hadn’t thought of it themselves! I still had some hope that we’d find a way to fix him.

  “I’ll stop by at lunchtime and let him out,” Mom reassured me as I put on my sunflower-yellow backpack. Deandre had already left to catch the school bus and Dad went to work early on the days when he came home early for us.

  “Thanks, Mom,” I said. I waved good-bye to Tombo, and he furrowed his brow at me sadly through the bars.

  Tombo wasn’t the only thing I had to worry about, of course. I didn’t know what would happen when Rosie and I saw each other. I was hoping she would say she was sorry and everything would be all right, but on the other hand, I knew Rosie. She was the most stubborn person I’d ever met. We’d had arguments before, and I couldn’t remember her ever being the one to apologize first. Well, I wasn’t going to crack this time. For once, she could come to me.

  There were a bunch of kids in the playground when Mom dropped me off. I saw a flash of pink ribbons and guessed that Rosie was one of them, so I went straight to our classroom instead. Ms. Applebaum was there, writing on the chalkboard. Her big scroll of “Make a Difference” ideas from us hung down on one side of the board, covered in gold star stickers and big smiley faces and pictures of the globe.

  Kerri and Emmy Drake were already at their desks, whispering to each other with scowls on their faces, so I guessed that they were fighting again, as usual. My desk was next to Rosie’s, with Pippa’s on the other side of her; both of them were still empty. Charlie Grayson was in his seat, in the desk in front of mine, drawing spaceships in his notebook. He looked up and smiled at me as I came in. Charlie is short and quiet and never argues with anyone. I’ve been to his birthday party every year and I still don’t know much about him except that he wants to be an astronaut one day.

  I took out my math homework and arranged my pencils on my desk. I had enormous butterflies flapping around in my stomach because I was so nervous about seeing Rosie. I jumped a little every time someone came in the door.

  But Midori and Satoshi got there before Rosie did. I smiled really big and waved at Midori. She looked a little surprised, but she waved back as she put her book bag down beside her desk in the front row. It wasn’t a backpack like most of us had; it was more like a messenger bag, dark gray with apple green accents and a cheerful-looking polar bear key ring hanging off the zipper.

  Midori hesitated for a second, glancing at Rosie’s empty desk, and then she came over to my desk. Charlie glanced up like he thought
she might be coming to talk to him.

  “Hey,” she said to me. “I love your scarf. I think I’ve noticed it before.”

  “Thanks!” I said. “It’s the one I always wear for luck.” The scarf is dark red with flecks of black and coppery gold, which, if you look at it closely, you can see are sketches of dolphins jumping through waves. I wore it last year when I won our class spelling bee (although Pradesh Mehta won the whole school spelling bee) and again when I was picked for a solo in our chorus recital, and also this year when my “Make a Difference” project was chosen by Ms. Applebaum. It makes me feel like I can do anything. So I was hoping it would help me be strong enough to not talk to Rosie until she talked to me.

  “It’s really cool,” Midori said. “Hey, it kind of matches my shirt.” She held out her arm and I realized that under her black sweater, she was wearing a dark red shirt with black vertical stripes.

  “It totally does!” I said. The classroom door swept open and I felt a wave of nerves as Rosie burst into the room. Pippa was right behind her, and Rosie, as usual, was talking a mile a minute.

  Midori saw my eyes go to them, and she turned to see what I was looking at. When she saw Rosie, she gave me a nod and started to go back to her seat.

  “Wait!” I said, grabbing her wrist before she could leave. Charlie looked over his shoulder to give me a mildly puzzled look. Midori looked startled too. “Um,” I said. I was trying to think of how to keep her there until class started, but I couldn’t just hang on to her like that. “Oh, right,” I said, letting go of her. “I meant to tell you, I asked my mom, and she said you and Chihiro can come over tomorrow after school, if you want.”

  Midori’s smile was like one of those scenes in a movie where the pirates open the treasure chest and suddenly all the gold is sparkling and shining and filling the screen. “That would be great!” she said, just as Rosie flounced into her chair across the aisle from me. “Thanks for inviting me.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “It’ll be really fun to hang out together.” I smiled back at her. I could tell that Rosie was shooting us sideways looks but trying to act like she hadn’t noticed I was there.

  Luckily, right then the bell rang. Midori hurried back to her seat, and Ms. Applebaum stood up, and then we were handing in our homework and talking about long division and I breathed a sigh of relief. Now I didn’t have to worry about Rosie until lunch. She was definitely pretending to ignore me. Her nose was up in the air and she kept turning to whisper to Pippa in a really obvious way, until Ms. Applebaum scolded her for being distracting.

  The morning passed like that, kind of uncomfortably, as if a chilly wind were coming from the area to my right. When the bell rang for lunch, Rosie jumped to her feet, grabbed Pippa’s arm, and marched out of the classroom with her chin up like she was daring me to come sit with them.

  I got my little tiger-print wallet out of my backpack slowly and joined the end of the line going to the cafeteria. Rosie and Pippa went straight to our table like they always do. Pippa brings little Tupperware containers of leftovers from her mom and Rosie always makes her own sandwiches in this fussy, hyper-neat way with the crusts cut off and stuff. I tried to make mine to match hers for a while last year, but it took forever, and anyway, I kind of like the cafeteria food, although I know I might be the only person on the planet who feels that way.

  Once I had my flat hamburger and soggy green beans and oatmeal raisin cookie, I stood for a minute with my tray, looking at our table. Rosie’s back was to me, but I’m sure she knew I was standing there and I’m sure she was expecting me to come over and beg her forgiveness so I’d have somewhere to sit.

  I tossed my lucky scarf back over my shoulder. That wasn’t going to happen. I was my own person. I could find somewhere else to sit.

  I walked right past Rosie’s table and over to where Midori was sitting with Satoshi and Charlie and Arnold Scott. They all looked perfectly astonished when I stopped next to them, as if a giraffe had walked up to their table instead of one of their fellow classmates.

  “Hey Midori,” I said. “Is it OK if I sit with you guys today?”

  Midori blinked a few times, and then she said, “Yeah, of course, sure. Right, guys? That’s OK?”

  The three boys kind of nodded and shrugged, and Satoshi scooted over so I could sit next to him and across from Midori.

  “Thanks,” I said. I tried to look like this was totally normal, as if I changed tables every day, but they were all still kind of staring at me like I was nuts. I turned to Charlie, who was sitting next to Midori. “Hey, Charlie, isn’t your birthday this weekend?”

  “We were just talking about that,” Midori said, stealing a carrot from the little bag in front of Satoshi.

  Charlie nodded. “But I’m not having a party this year,” he said, sounding a bit embarrassed. “I asked my mom if I could have a dog for my birthday, and she said we could if we skipped the party. So we’re going to get him next Sunday.”

  “Um, awesome!” I said. “A dog is better than a party any day! Do you know what kind you’re getting?”

  “I want a dachshund,” he said. “You know, the funny little short dogs.”

  “They are so cute,” Midori said.

  “But not too cute,” Arnold jumped in, leaning over from the other side of Satoshi. “Not like the kind of dog that just sleeps on velvet pillows and eats caviar all day, right, Charlie?”

  “Dogs don’t eat caviar,” Satoshi said. “I bet it would be terrible for their stomachs.”

  “Did you know that hot dogs are named after dachshunds — not the other way around?” Midori said.

  “My brother is going to call him ‘hot dog’ all the time,” Charlie said gloomily. “He’s going to hate him. Because he hates everything.”

  “Maybe not,” Satoshi said. “He likes his own dog. Maybe he’ll like yours too.”

  Charlie just shook his head.

  “Michelle has a great dog,” Midori told Charlie. “He’s a boxer.”

  “We just got him,” I said. “We’re, uh … still getting used to him.”

  “That sounds ominous,” said Satoshi. They all looked at me as if they knew there was a story there.

  “Well,” I said. “We’ve had a couple of … problems.” I didn’t mean to complain about Tombo. But before I knew it I was telling them the whole story, about him eating Dad’s shoe and then later all the destruction he’d caused when we left him home alone. They laughed a bit about the shoe, but by the end Midori had her hands over her mouth and Arnold was shaking his head in disbelief.

  “That is crazy,” Satoshi said. “Your couch? Seriously?”

  “Nobody tell my parents that story,” Arnold said. “Seriously, or else James and I will never be allowed to get a dog.”

  “I hope my new dog doesn’t do anything like that,” Charlie said with a nervous look. “Mom hates buying new furniture.”

  “I’m sure he won’t,” I said, resting my chin on my hand. “I’m sure my dog is the craziest one in town. It’s like he turns into Godzilla when we leave him alone. I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

  “Don’t worry.” Midori reached across the table and patted my hand. “Chihiro had some separation anxiety when we first got her too.”

  “Separation anxiety,” I echoed. That sounded very official and psychological. I liked the feeling of having a diagnosis for Tombo’s problems.

  “But now she’s used to not having us around,” Satoshi agreed, nodding. “Tombo will calm down eventually too.”

  I hoped they were right. I felt a lot better having them to talk to, especially when I realized that I’d managed to not look over at Rosie’s table or even think about Rosie for most of the lunch hour.

  But there was a big part of me still worried about Tombo. I had a sinking feeling that we had a lot more problems to deal with before he finally calmed down … if he ever did.

  Dad looked extra frazzled when he picked me up after school. He kept patting his handkerchief over his
bald head and tugging on his tie. It was weird enough that he was still in his suit; that meant he hadn’t had time to change at home before coming to get me, although he normally was there half an hour earlier. I got an uneasy feeling in my stomach when I saw his face.

  “So, Tombo didn’t have the greatest day,” Dad said as I shut the car door behind me.

  “Uh-oh,” I said. “But he was in the crate! How could he get in trouble from there?”

  “Well,” Dad said, “when your mom went home at lunch, she found that he’d clawed up his dog bed and tipped over his water bowl, so he was standing in a soggy mess of fluff and shredded sheepskin.”

  “Oh!” I said. “Poor Tombo!”

  “I know, it sounds miserable, but it gets worse,” Dad said. He turned out of the parking lot and I saw Parker Green and his friends walking along the sidewalk toward Parker’s house. Rosie’s brother Danny was with them, and so was the new guy. Behind us, Rosie and Pippa were getting into Rosie’s mom’s car, where I could see Buttons jumping at the windows with excitement. But I was not going to care. I was concentrating fiercely on not caring at all.

  “You know the towel we left over the crate?” Dad went on. “Well, Tombo managed to drag it through the bars and chew it to pieces. There was almost nothing left of it.”

  I stared at Dad. “He ate the towel?”

  “Pretty much,” Dad said.

  “That sounds really bad for him,” I said. “Couldn’t he make himself sick that way? What if bits of towel get stuck in his stomach?”

  “Your mom had the same thought. But she had to get back to the office for an appointment. So she let him out in the yard, dried off the cage, cleaned out the dog bed remains, and called me.”

  “What did you do?” I asked.

  He sighed. “I canceled my last appointment of the day and came home to take Tombo to the vet.”

  “Oh, no!” I said. I was terrified now. My first thought was that this was my fault. We shouldn’t have left him in the crate — I should have argued more. But the next minute I realized he could have eaten something that would make him sick anywhere in the house, no matter where we left him. “Is he OK?”