Paws, page 5
“Please sit. And Mindy? Would you like to offer your friend a drink?”
As Mum takes a seat at the breakfast bar, my eyes move from her to Derek, who is filling a glass with water from a tap in the door of the silver fridge, and then to Mindy, who hops down from the stool silently and wanders over to Ned. Ned is so quiet I forgot he was here, and his cheeks are redder than normal but I don’t think he’s angry, which is normally when his cheeks go red.
Loud panting distracts me from my brother’s strange expression, and soft fur rubs against my leg. I look down and stare into Kevin’s eyes. His tail wags so fast it makes him all wiggly. I hold out my hand, which he nuzzles and licks, his eyes still looking up at me. I drop to my knees and kiss his head and close my eyes. “I love you,” I whisper, my lips and nose buried in his white curls.
Mum and Wilma’s voices mumble and there’s a shushing sound, which I think is a kettle. I open my eyes and straighten up.
Derek hands me the glass of water. He’s holding Vinnie now, who is tucked under his other arm. I can see Vinnie’s tail wagging and he’s panting just like Kevin.
“Want to come see my room?” Derek asks.
I look at Mum, not sure if Derek is still a stranger and if maybe I should say no, but she meets my eyes and nods, her eyebrows raised. “But not for long,” she says. “I’m halfway through cooking dinner.”
I turn back to Derek. “Okay,” I say, “but not for long as Mum is halfway through cooking dinner.”
Derek frowns a bit and then smiles, his lips more lopsided than normal. “Come on then,” he says and leads the way from the kitchen.
My heart beats a little faster as I leave Mum and Ned in the kitchen. I grip my glass of water tighter, the coldness cooling my hot palm, and I focus on Mum’s voice behind me, asking Wilma where she’s from and Wilma answering “Sweden”, which is a town I don’t think I’ve heard of. Then Derek and I are turning right and Mum’s voice disappears. I switch my focus to Kevin, who is trotting in front of me, his claws clipping the tiles gently, and he’s looking up and watching Vinnie’s tail wag. Derek opens a door with his free hand, then puts Vinnie down and enters the room.
“Come in,” Derek says, and so I do.
Derek’s room isn’t as big as mine but it’s much better. It’s the best room I have ever seen – I nearly drop my glass of water. I stand in the doorway, my eyes moving from wall to wall, from OrbsWorld posters to OrbsWorld drawings to a OrbsWorld clock to OrbsWorld pillows to a whole shelf above his bed filled with OrbsWorld toys. He has robots and ants and cars and dragons and I want to look at all of them. And then there’s another shelf, higher up, filled with trophies.
“Wow. You have so many trophies and you have so many OrbsWorld things,” I say, my tummy twisting and my breathing speeding up a bit.
“I love OrbsWorld,” he says, lying back on his red and white striped bedspread, “and my dad works for the company that owns OrbsWorld so he can get me all this cool stuff.”
“That is awesome,” I say. I glance at him on his bed where both Vinnie and Kevin lie next to him, Kevin watching me.
“Yeah, it’s kind of cool, I guess,” Derek answers, but he doesn’t smile when he says it, which I don’t understand. I wish Dad worked for the same company as Derek’s dad so he could get OrbsWorld toys and posters for me.
I sit on the edge of the bed, still admiring his OrbsWorld things. “Have you played Tunnels of Disaster and Doom?” I ask.
“Yeah, that used to be one of my favourites, but I prefer to play Skyscraper Escapades now.”
I turn back to Derek. Vinnie is now lying across his chest and trying to eat the label in the back of Derek’s T-shirt, tail still wagging. “Have you completed Map 5 and got the eighty million Orbsicles?”
“Yeah, that one’s pretty hard – it took me ages to get past the ant platform.”
“Yes!” I reply, spinning on my bottom, some water sloshing out of my glass and onto my leg. Kevin lifts his head and starts licking it off my skin. “I can’t get past that platform. I keep getting forty million Orbsicles but I want the jackpot so I can trade rations at the fair and then move on to Map 6 so I can play with my . . . Jared.” My chest flutters and I tap my teeth together.
“It’s not that difficult when you know how,” Derek answers.
I nod and chew the inside of my mouth, not sure if I should ask for his help.
“That Ryan kid is pretty mean,” Derek says and I nod again, but I don’t want to talk about Ryan.
“I wish I could get past the ant platform,” I say.
Derek narrows his eyes at me and shrugs. “I’ll show you how when I get my computer back.”
I don’t know where his computer has gone but a smile spreads across my face and then I gulp down all my water in one go and gasp when I’m finished.
Derek laughs as he twirls Vinnie’s little white triangle-shaped ears with his index fingers. “Everyone was talking about the dog show at school today. Are you going?” Derek asks.
I nod. “I’m entering Kevin into one of the contests, probably obedience or tricks because that’s what he’s best at. What are your trophies for?” I point to his shelf.
Derek glances up to the high shelf and shrugs, which he does quite a lot and I’m not sure why. “For fishing. I used to go with my dad a lot.”
I’ve never been fishing before but now Derek’s face looks like the sad emoji face on my chart so I don’t think I want to, even if you can win trophies for it.
Kevin’s looking up at me with his brown eyes, so I place my hand on his soft ear, the softest part of his whole body, and try to touch his nose with mine but he licks my face before I can. I think Kevin might be the fastest licker ever.
I wonder if that is a contest at PAWS because Kevin would definitely win.
“Are you going?” I ask.
“Where?”
“To the PAWS Dog Show?”
“I dunno. Maybe. Depends if we go to Dad’s or not.”
I chew the inside of my mouth a bit more, not really sure what Derek means because surely his dad lives at 9 Cantering Court too, but I don’t know what to say about that. I glance back at Vinnie’s cute face. “If you go, you should enter Vinnie into the contests as well because you could win a trophy, another one that makes you happy and makes you new friends at school.”
Derek studies me, the sun beaming through his window and making his blue eyes look even more blue. He has a small line between his eyebrows. I look away, down at Kevin who’s resting his chin on my lap, because I don’t recognise any visual clues in Derek’s expression that can help me understand him. I’m not sure if he heard what I said, and wonder if I should say it again, but as I open my mouth to speak, he starts talking.
“Want to look at my OrbsWorld figures?” Derek asks.
I nod, and while Vinnie and Kevin sleep on Derek’s bed, their heads dangling over the edge, side by side, Derek spends lots of minutes showing me each of his toys and models, letting me hold each one, until I hear Wilma calling us and we go back into the kitchen, which now smells of coffee.
“Did you boys have fun?” Wilma asks.
“Yeah. Alex says I should enter Vinnie into the dog show on Saturday. Can we go?” Derek asks his mum, who wraps one of her long, pale arms around his shoulder and pulls him into her side for a hug.
“Let’s hope so,” she says, her voice gentle.
Mum thanks Wilma for the coffee and tells her she’ll pop over tomorrow with “a bottle of cleaning product that should get the stain out of the shower no problem” and then they kiss each other on the cheek and we head towards the front door. I’m not sure why Mum kissed a stranger because she only normally kisses Dad, me, Ned, and her friend Mags, though Mags now lives in South Australia so Mum doesn’t see her much any more.
“And I will send Ned home soon, after they’ve finished the homework,” Wilma says, winking at me.
I have no idea what this wink means, just like I don’t when Ms Westing winks, and I wonder where Ned is but guess he’s with Mindy, maybe in her bedroom, as she isn’t in the kitchen either.
I wonder if Mindy likes Fight Forest and rap music.
We step outside, the aroma of seawater and the hot air instantly swarming me, along with the sounds of people talking across the road and birds in the palm trees and the buzzing of a lawnmower from somewhere nearby.
“Bye Alex,” Derek says, standing in the doorway with his mum.
“Bye Derek.”
Mum waves to Wilma as we walk away and I hear her sigh, and then she lightly strokes my head. Tomorrow I will have to spend more time training Kevin, but maybe in the hallway or kitchen at home. I wonder if I will see Derek at school tomorrow. Maybe he’ll tell me how to complete Tunnels of Disaster and Doom Map 5 at lunch.
I smile and look down at Kevin, who trots along by my feet. I can’t wait to go to school tomorrow because tomorrow also means PE and relays.
Kevin sits beside me, his nose resting on my right thigh as I eat my porridge. A lumpy splodge topples off my spoon and down my aqua pyjamas and I dab at it with the tissue Mum left me because she knows I will always spill my breakfast. That’s why I don’t put on my Jessops Lake uniform until after I’ve finished. Kevin’s front paws land on my lap as he stretches up to help me clean off the porridge with his tongue. I giggle and pat his head, and then go back to eating.
Mum is in her shower. If I concentrate I can hear the water rushing through the pipes above the ceiling. I swing my legs under the chair, my bare toes brushing the wooden floor, and look at the pictures on the “Teach Him to Speak” page in How to Look After Your Goldie, which is open on the table next to my bowl. There are step-by-step guides with short instructions beside each hand-drawn picture. I’ve now read through them five times – this is my sixth – skipping over the words I don’t know.
I glance down at Kevin, who’s still half-standing on my lap, watching my spoon move from the bowl to my mouth and back again.
If I can teach Kevin to bark on command, that means I’ve trained him to do seven tricks: sit, give paw, lie down, roll over, spin on his back legs, and stay – sometimes. It could be enough to win the trophy. He’s not good at catching his ball, though he does bring it back most of the time, so we could use fetch as one of our tricks, which makes eight.
I swallow my last mouthful and leave my spoon in the blue bowl, the handle on the right. “When I get home from school, we’ll do speak commands,” I tell Kevin. “And then we need to practise some more catching and fetching.” I scrunch my lips from the right to left side and run my hands up and down Kevin’s front legs, ruffling his fur up and then smoothing it back down, feeling his bones under the thick curls. He licks my cheek. “I don’t really know the difference between tricks and obedience,” I add, “but I think they’re the same, so we can do all the same things in both contests.”
Footsteps pad around the corner and Ned enters the kitchen, Dennis lolloping behind him. Ned’s hair is gelled perfectly to one side and his tie neatly tied, and he smells different, a smell I haven’t smelled before. It’s strong and travels up my nose too fast and I cough. “What’s that smell?” I say, covering my nose and coughing again. Kevin sneezes.
Ned doesn’t respond and I see he has his earbuds in, the wire attached to his mobile phone in his pocket. He’s stirring chocolate powder into a glass of milk, the spoon clinking lightly against the sides, and I wonder why he’s ready for school already. Normally Mum and I are waiting at the door for him, Mum’s voice getting louder and louder each time she calls until she ends up stomping up the hall to get him.
My brain tells me it’s because he’s looking forward to seeing Mindy at school. I wonder if Mindy is also the “new girl” Mum mentioned at dinner on Monday that made Ned growl and I think I might be right but I don’t say anything because I don’t want Ned to growl at me too.
He wanders over to the table and sits opposite me with his brown, frothy milkshake and a bar of chocolate and I wonder if Derek likes chocolate. Dennis disappears under the table.
There aren’t many blue foods.
“Mum says you can’t have chocolate for breakfast,” I say, pointing to the purple wrapper.
Ned looks up at me and takes out one of his earbuds. “All right, Alex,” he says. “Did you say something?”
My finger is still pointing at the chocolate bar in his hand and before I can repeat what I said, Ned unwraps it and takes a huge bite, almost half the bar, smiling at me as he chews. My eyes are wide and I glance at the corner of the room, listening carefully. The water isn’t shushing through the pipes any more, which means Mum is out of the shower and will come into the kitchen soon, and then she will tell Ned off and she might shout again, because she shouts so much more now that Dad is working away. My tummy twists and I clench my fists because I don’t want to hear any shouting. I stare at Ned and he shoves the second half of the chocolate bar in his mouth and screws the wrapper up, the plastic crinkling loudly, and jams it in his pocket.
I continue to stare at him until he swallows the chocolate and then gulps down his milkshake. He finishes it and then smiles at me and winks. Another wink.
“Why did you wink at me?” I ask. I know Ned will tell me why because he came to the Be Aware classes with me and Mum so he knows sometimes I need help understanding people’s expressions.
He shrugs. “I dunno,” he says. “I suppose because I thought it might make you laugh. And also to tell you not to tell Mum, okay?”
“Tell Mum what?” I ask, frowning, still not sure what the wink meant and wondering if Ms Westing and Wilma were trying to make me laugh as well.
“That’s the way,” he replies, winking again.
My heart beats a bit faster. I want to shout at Ned because he didn’t answer my question and for all the winking he keeps doing and because no one has ever told me about winking before, and my face is growing hot, but then Kevin is on my lap, all of him, and he has his front paws on my shoulders and he’s licking my face. I hold his sides, leaning my head back until it bumps into the wooden back of the chair, and I move it from side to side to escape his wet tongue lapping at my cheeks, but he doesn’t stop. “Kevin,” I say, moving my hands to his mouth. “Stop licking!” But he doesn’t. He just keeps on licking, now on the palms of my hands and my fingers.
I hear Ned laugh. “Good boy, Kevin,” he says. “Keep licking him.”
“No more, you can stop now, Kevin,” I say and he does stop, hopping off my lap and landing silently just as Mum flip-flops round the corner, bringing with her the smell of flowers, which I know is the shower gel Dad bought for her birthday last month, two days before he had to go to work in the mines.
“Morning, you two,” she says, pouring herself a glass of orange juice from the fridge.
I nod and Ned says hello and then he turns to me and pats the golden retriever book. “How’s the training going?” he asks.
I nod again. “I need to teach Kevin to speak on command and then we have seven tricks, or maybe eight tricks if he can catch and fetch a ball more often but I’m not sure about that one yet, and then we can show them all and I think that will be enough.”
“Enough for what?” Mum asks, putting fruit into our lunchboxes.
“To win the trophy,” I say. “How do you not remember that?”
“Okay, Alex, sorry, I don’t remember you telling me.” She shakes her head but I wasn’t rude to her so I don’t know why she’s cross with me. “You might not win the trophy, though – you have to prepare for that,” she adds, folding her arms across her pink top and leaning back against the wooden counter.
I frown. “Of course we will win the trophy,” I reply. “Kevin is the best dog and we’ve been practising all our tricks.” I give Kevin a pat.
“I know, sweetie,” she says, “but you have to remember that there will be other dogs there too, whose owners take this kind of thing very seriously.”
“Yeah, like that guy we saw at the dog park a few weeks ago with the Dalmatian. Remember?” Ned says.
I do remember. I sat on the bench next to Mum with Kevin by my feet, watching the man with the bald head teaching his dog to flip and walk backwards and jump into his arms and over the hurdles and up the ramp. Kevin only ever pees up those, even though I try to make him do all the things he should do.
I stare at my empty bowl, my breathing coming faster. I feel Kevin rest his chin on my leg and I clench my fists tighter and tighter until my knuckles hurt. I meet Kevin’s brown eyes and I want to cry because I love him but he can’t do any of those tricks and if the bald man and his Dalmatian turn up to the dog show we will never beat him and win the trophy.
“Come on, Alex,” Ned says. “You never actually thought you’d win a trophy at PAWS, did you?”
“Ned,” Mum says, her voice stern, and now a tear is falling down my cheek because I did think we could win a trophy but now I don’t know.
“What?” Ned answers.
“You know what – why did you have to say that?” Mum starts putting more things in our lunchboxes, the banging of cupboard doors and the rustling of tin foil and the snap of the lids sealing all making my tears fall faster.
“Sorry, Alex.” Ned stands, and I’m angry with him, and then I notice the purple wrapper poking out of his pocket.
“Ned ate a chocolate bar for breakfast and he’s gelled his hair and is ready early because he wants to see Mindy at school.” The words tumble out and are broken with sniffs and shudders as I catch my breath.
“Oh nice one, you idiot,” he says, banging his hand down on the table in front of me, which makes the spoon clink in my bowl.
“NED!”
I startle and scream, leaping up from the chair and running to my bedroom, my ears buzzing as the air whooshes past. I rush inside my room, Kevin right on my heels, and I close the bedroom door and climb under my blankets, clapping my hands over my ears. I cry and scream so I can’t hear Mum and Ned arguing, until I can’t breathe and then I poke my head out of the blanket and gasp in big gulps of air. Kevin’s right beside me but he doesn’t lick me, and after I’ve wiped the tears from my eyes I see that his ears are far back and his tail doesn’t wag and he’s whimpering. I throw my arms around his neck and hug him tight and he continues to whimper into my ear until I let him go and then he starts licking me. I lie back and rest my head on my pug pillow.
