“Me too.” My dad tossed a little chunk of bacon to Aretha. “Too much TV rots your brain.”
“You love TV,” I said while I started loading the dishwasher.
“That’s because TV’s already rotted it. There’s still hope for you two.”
It didn’t take long for my breakfast to be ready. “Nice work on the pancakes,” I said.
“Thanks. I do have a certain flair.” My dad pointed his spatula at me. “I saw Marisol when Carlos and I were carrying in the TV. She said to remind you about the Gouchers’ dachshunds.”
“Yeah, we’re walking them tomorrow.”
“Are dachshunds wiener dogs?” Robin asked.
“Yes, ma’am.” My dad nodded. “You know, Jacks, I haven’t seen much of Dawan or Ryan or anybody else lately. What’s up with that?”
“I dunno. Dawan and Ryan are doing soccer camp. Everybody does different stuff in the summer.”
My dad put some dishes in the sink. His back was turned to me. “I’m really sorry about soccer camp, Jacks. Just couldn’t swing it.”
“No biggie,” I said quickly. “I’m kind of growing out of soccer.”
“Yeah,” my dad said softly. “That happens.”
I stared at the sweet steam spinning from my pancakes. I tried hard not to think about Marisol watching our TV, feeling sorry for us while we played Chutes and Ladders and ate bran cereal out of a T-ball cap.
Then I tried not to be annoyed at myself for worrying about something so unimportant.
I grabbed my fork and knife and sliced up my pancakes.
“Whoa,” said my dad. “Ease up, Zorro.”
I looked up, confused. “Who’s Zorro?”
“Masked guy. Good with swords.” My dad pointed to my plate. “You were getting a little carried away with the slice-and-dice action.”
I looked down at my pancakes. It was true. I’d destroyed them pretty well. But that wasn’t what got my attention.
In the middle of the plate, surrounded by maple-syrup mush, were slices of pancake, neatly forming eight letters: C - R - E - N - S - H - A - W.
Maybe it was my imagination. Maybe not. In any case, I scarfed them down before anyone could notice.
34
After my mom came home, my dad and I headed for Best Buy. We stopped at the bank, and while my dad stood in line, I grabbed two free suckers, one for me and one for Robin. I always pick purple. If there are no purples, reds are pretty good.
I am not a big fan of yellows.
We were lucky to live in Northern California, I figured. It’s really beautiful, except for when there are wildfires or mudslides or earthquakes. Even better, it’s a great place to find free food, if you know where to look. The farmers’ market at the Civic Center parking lot is a great spot because they give you samples, things like honey in a straw or peanut brittle. Grocery stores are good too, the ones where they have free cantaloupe pieces on a toothpick. Our local hardware store gives away little bags of popcorn on Saturdays, so that’s an option, if you get there early enough.
If you’re hungry, you wouldn’t want to live in Alaska, I’ll bet. They probably don’t have outdoor farmers’ markets very often. Although in Alaska they do have grizzly bears. I would very much enjoy meeting one of those guys.
From a nice, safe distance. A grizzly bear’s front claws can be four inches long.
Around here, it’s easier to be hungry in winter than in summer. Most people wouldn’t expect that, but during the school year you can get free breakfast and lunch and sometimes after-school snacks. Last year they stopped having summer school because there wasn’t enough money. So that means no breakfast or lunch when school’s out.
They do have free food at the community center food pantry, but that’s pretty far away. My dad doesn’t like to go there. He says he doesn’t want to take food from people who really need it. But I think maybe he doesn’t like to go because everyone in line looks so tired and sad.
After the bank, we went to Best Buy, which is this giant store filled with TVs and computers and cell phones and things.
There were two long rows of TVs. Some were huge, taller than Robin, and every one of them was set to the same channel. I guess there are a lot of Giants fans working at that store.
When Matt Cain pitched a curveball, twenty balls flew across twenty screens. One TV sky was a deeper blue. One TV field was a softer green. But the movements were all the same. It was like being in a house of mirrors at the county fair.
Lots of people paused to watch the game with us. The clerks watched too, when they could get away with it. When one of them asked my dad if he had any questions about the TVs, he said we were just looking.
During the fourth inning, something weird happened. Extremely weird. On everybody else’s TV, there were two announcers sitting in a booth. They were wearing black headphones, and they were pretty psyched about a triple play.
On my TV there were two announcers sitting in a booth. They had black headphones and they were excited too.
But on my TV, one of the announcers was a cat. A big cat.
“Crenshaw,” I said under my breath.
He was looking right at me. He waved his paw.
I looked at my dad’s TV. I looked at all the other TVs.
None of their announcers were giant cats.
“Dad.” I sort of whisper-gulped the word.
“Did you see that play?” he asked. “Amazing.”
“I saw.”
I saw something else, too. Crenshaw was holding up two fingers, making rabbit ears behind the other announcer’s head.
Weird, I thought, a cat having fingers. I’d forgotten Crenshaw had them.
Weird, I thought, me worrying about that.
“You didn’t happen to see a cat just now, did you?” I asked in a casual voice.
“Cat?” my dad repeated. “You mean on the field or something?”
“The cat standing on his head,” I said. Because that’s what Crenshaw was doing. A headstand on the desk. He was good at it too.
My dad grinned. “The cat standing on his head,” he repeated. He looked at my TV. “Right.”
“Just messing with you,” I said. My voice was trembling a little. “I, uh … I changed the channel. That new Friskies commercial was on.”
My dad ruffled my hair. He looked at me. Really looked, in that way only parents can do.
“You feeling okay, buddy?” he asked. “I know things have been a little crazy lately.”
You have no idea, I thought.
I smiled an extra-big fake smile that I use on my parents sometimes. “Totally,” I said.
The Giants won, 6 to 3.
35
When the game was over, we drove to Pet Food Express. All the way there I thought about Crenshaw.
There’s always a logical explanation, I told myself.
Always.
Maybe I’d dozed off for a minute and dreamed him up.
Or maybe—just maybe—I was going completely bonkers.
My dad was tired from standing so long at Best Buy, so I said I’d go get Aretha’s dog food. “Smallest, cheapest bag,” my dad reminded me.
“Smallest and cheapest.” I nodded.
It was cool and quiet inside. I walked past shelf after shelf of dog food. Some contained turkey and cranberries. Some had salmon or tuna or buffalo for dogs who were allergic to chicken. They even had dog food made with kangaroo meat.
Near the food, I saw a rack of dog sweaters. They said things like HOT DOG and I’M A GREAT CATCH. Next to them were sparkly pet collars and harnesses. Aretha would never be caught dead in one of those, I thought. Pets don’t care about sparkles. What a waste of money.
I passed a display of dog cookies shaped like bones and cats and squirrels. They looked better than some human cookies. And then, I don’t know why, my hand started moving. It grabbed one of those stupid cookies.
The cookie was shaped like a cat.
Next thing I knew, that cookie was in m
y pocket.
Down the aisle, a clerk in a red vest was on his hands and knees in front of the dog toys. He was wiping up dog pee while a customer’s poodle puppy licked his face.
“Collars are half off,” the clerk called to me.
I kind of froze. Then I said I was just looking. I wondered if he’d seen me take the cookie. It didn’t sound like it. But I couldn’t be sure.
“You know, scientists found that dogs maybe really do laugh,” I said. My words were spilling fast, like pennies from a holey pocket. “They make this noise when they’re playing. It’s not exactly panting. More like a puffing sound, sort of. But they think it could be dog laughter.”
“No kidding,” the clerk said. He sounded grumpy. Maybe because the puppy had just peed on his shoe.
The puppy scrambled over to nose me. He was dragging a boy who looked about four years old. The boy was wearing dinosaur slippers. His nose was running big-time.
“He’s wagging,” the boy said. “He likes you.”
“I read somewhere that when a dog’s tail wags to his right, it means he’s feeling happy about something,” I said. “Left, not so much.”
The clerk stood. He was holding the wad of paper towel in his outstretched hand like it was nuclear waste.
I made myself meet his eyes. I felt hot and shaky. “Where’s the dog chow? The stuff in the red bag with green stripes?” I asked.
“Aisle nine.”
“You know lots about dogs,” the little boy said to me.
“I’m going to be an animal scientist,” I told him. “I have to know lots.”
“I have a sore throat but it’s not strep,” the boy said, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. “My mom is buying food for King Kong. That’s our guinea pig.”
“Good name.”
“And this is Turbo.”
“Also a good name.”
I reached into my pocket and felt the cookie there.
My eyes burned and blurred. I sniffled.
“You have a cold too?” the boy asked.
“Something like that.” I let Turbo lick my hand and headed to the back.
“He’s wagging to the right, I think,” the boy called.
36
I’d never stolen anything before last spring. Except for the unfortunate incident with the yo-yo when I was five and used very bad judgment.
It was a surprise how good I was at it.
It’s like when you discover you have an unusual talent. Being able to lick your elbow, for instance. Or wiggle your ears.
I felt like a magician. Now you see it, now you don’t. Watch Magic Jackson make this quarter appear from behind your ear! Watch this bubble gum disappear before your eyes!
Gum is harder than you’d think. It’s the perfect size for slipping into your pocket. But it’s usually right next to the place where you pay. So it’s easier for a clerk to see you are up to no good.
I’d only shoplifted four times. Twice to get food for Robin, and once to get gum for me.
And now the dog cookie.
I got my start with jars of baby food. Even though she was five, Robin liked eating it sometimes. The stinky meat kind, not even the fruit goo.
Don’t ask me why. I will never understand that girl.
We’d stopped at a Safeway grocery store because Robin had to go to the bathroom. She wanted to get something to eat, but my mom said wait till later. While they went to find the restroom, I wandered down the aisles to kill time.
And then I saw the Gerber baby food. I slipped two jars of chicken and rice into my pockets. Smooth and easy as could be.
Nobody seemed to notice. Probably because who would think a kid my age would steal something that looks like brown snot?
In the next aisle, I passed a guy from my school with his dad. Paul something. He was pushing their shopping cart. They had a giant snack pack of barbecue potato chips and those lemonade drinks in little boxes and a giant bag of red apples.
I waved very casually. An it’s-not-like-I’m-showing-bad-judgment-or-anything kind of wave. Paul waved back.
I walked right out the door with Robin and my mom, no sweat. No lightning came down to zap me. No police cars zoomed in with sirens howling like coyotes.
Later at home, I pretended to find the jars in the back of a cupboard. My mom was really happy, and so was Robin.
I was amazed how easy the lying came. It was like turning on a faucet. The words just rushed right out.
I felt guilty for not feeling guilty. I mean, I’d shoplifted. I’d taken something that didn’t belong to me. I was a criminal.
But I told myself that in nature it’s survival of the fittest. Eat or be eaten. Kill or be killed.
They say those things a lot in nature films. Right after the lion eats the zebra.
Of course I wasn’t a lion. I was a person who knew right from wrong. And stealing was wrong.
But here’s the truth. I felt crummy about the stealing. But I felt even worse about the lying.
If you like facts the way I do, try lying sometime. It’ll surprise you how hard it is to do.
Still and all. Even though I felt lousy, I had fixed a problem.
Robin gobbled down the chicken-and-rice goo so fast that she threw up most of it on my book about cheetahs. I figured maybe that was my punishment.
37
When we got home from the pet store, I went to my room, half expecting to see Crenshaw lounging on my bed. Instead, I found Aretha. Her nose was buried in my keepsakes bag, and she had a guilty expression on her face. She for sure had something in her mouth, but I couldn’t see what it was.
“Show me,” I said. I pulled the stolen dog cookie from my pocket. It was a little mushed on one side. I held it out so that Aretha would drop whatever was in her mouth and snatch the cookie. But she wasn’t interested.
Probably she didn’t want to eat stolen goods.
Aretha slunk toward my bedroom door, tail dragging, and I saw what she was holding. It was the clay statue I’d made of Crenshaw, clutched between her teeth.
“You don’t want that old thing,” I said, but she seemed to disagree. As soon as she was out of my bedroom, she galloped down the hall and scratched urgently at the front door.
“Want me to open it, baby?” Robin asked. She turned the knob and Aretha rocketed outside.
“Aretha! Stop!” I yelled. Usually she waited by the door for me, flopping her tail hopefully. Not today.
I grabbed her leash. She was heading straight for Marisol’s house, which was about half a block down the street. Aretha loved Marisol. She also loved Marisol’s seven cats, who enjoyed sunbathing on the screened-in back porch.
I found Aretha in Marisol’s old sandbox. Marisol didn’t use it anymore, but Aretha loved it. She was already digging a hole. Sand fanned skyward like sprinkler spray.
Aretha was an expert digger. She’d buried two water bowls, a TV remote control, a pizza box, a ziplock bag of Legos, three Frisbees, and two of my homework folders there. Not that my teachers had believed me.
Marisol was wearing flip-flops and her pajamas, which had snoring sheep on them. She loved pajamas. In first grade, she wore them to school every day until the principal told her she was setting a bad example.
In her left hand, Marisol had a large saw. Her hair was covered with sawdust. She almost always smelled like fresh-cut wood.
Marisol loved to build things, especially things for animals and birds and reptiles. She made birdhouses and bat shelters. Dog carriers and cat trees. Hamster habitats and ferret houses.
At the end of her fenced yard were planks, a sawhorse, and a big circular saw. A small house-looking thing was on the ground, half built. It was for one of her cats.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey,” she said. “You ready for the yard sale?”
“I guess.”
“Aretha brought me that,” Marisol said. She pointed to my Crenshaw statue, which was sitting on the picnic table. “Dropped it right at my feet.”
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“I made it when I was little,” I said with a shrug. “It’s lame.”
“If you made it, it’s not lame,” Marisol said. She put down her saw and examined the statue.
Aretha stopped digging and looked up at us hopefully. Her face was covered in sand. Her tongue lolled sideways.
“It’s a cat,” Marisol said, brushing off a piece of grass stuck to the bottom. “A standing cat with a baseball cap. I like it. I like it very much.”
I shrugged, hands in my pockets.
“Was this for the yard sale?” Marisol asked. “How much is it?”
“It’s not for sale. Aretha got into a bag of my stuff is all.”
“I have three dollars.”
“For that?” I laughed. “It’s just, you know. A hunk of clay. Some school project.”
“I like it. It’s … intriguing.” Marisol reached into her pajama pocket. She handed me a wad of money that looked like it had been through the laundry.
“Keep it,” I said. “Think of it as a going-away present.”
Her eyes went wide. “What are you talking about, Jackson? You’re not—”
I waved a hand. “No. It’s probably nothing. My parents are just being their usual weird selves.”
It wasn’t the truth, not completely. But it wasn’t not the truth.
“You’d better not move. I’d miss you too much. Who would help me with See Spot Walk? And anyway, I love your weird parents.”
I didn’t respond.
“We’ve got the dachshunds tomorrow,” Marisol said.
“Yep.” I pointed to the miniature zigzag staircase she was building. “Where’s that going?”
“Antonio’s old room, when he heads off to college this fall. Or maybe Luis’s. His room is just full of boxes.”
“You’re like an only child,” I said.
“It’s kind of boring,” Marisol said, pushing a strand of hair behind her ear. “There’s no one to fight with. It’s too quiet.”
“Sounds nice.”
“I like your apartment. There’s always something going on. Sometimes it’s just me and Paula for days on end.” She rolled her eyes.
Marisol’s dad was a salesman and her mom was a pilot. They traveled a lot, so Paula, an older woman, often stayed with Marisol. Marisol refused to call her a “nanny” or “babysitter” or “caregiver.” She was just “Paula.”