Dog Daze (6 page)

“Yes, my conference finished early, and I ran for an earlier plane.” She raised the pile of clothes to her nose then made a face and held them away. “Why are these clothes on the washer? And why”—she stopped and sniffed—“do they smell like the lake”—another gingerly sniff at the wrinkled, stinky mess—“and vomit?” Alarm flashed in her eyes. “Are you sick, sweetie?”

“I—I—” Why hadn’t Aneta remembered the yucky clothes the day she took them off? Or when she and Gram came to the house yesterday? Mom looked so tired; she needed some good news. Aneta glanced again at the drawing in her hand and raised it to Mom’s eye level, drawing in a deep breath. “The Crocs Killer threw Wink in the lake. We saved him. He needs a forever home—” She stopped short. If Aneta had learned one thing about Mom, it was that “just the facts” worked better than a wandering explanation. “I—I—I won the contest. I made new friends.” That second statement was a bit of a stretch. She didn’t think she could call Sunny, Esther, and Vee
friends
exactly.

“You won the contest!” In an instant, Mom’s frown had cleared; her eyes brightened. She clutched the clothes to her chest. “Congratulations, sweetie. I knew your poster would touch people.” She gestured to the paper in her daughter’s hand. “But what is this? That’s not the orphanage drawing.”

Aneta removed the clothes from Mom’s grip, set them back on the washer, and drew her by the arm toward the kitchen and the fridge. Time for sparkling water and lemonade.
Note to self: from now on, watch out for the stupid laundry
. Mom worked hard. Aneta could do her part. This next conversation must go perfectly. While she took two tall turquoise plastic tumblers from the cupboard and filled one with lemonade and the other from a bottle of sparkling water, Aneta plunged in. “I would like to adopt Wink, a basset hound someone tried to murder the other day. He is an orphan, like me.”

The telephone rang, but they both ignored it.

Mom remained motionless, leaning against the island counter. Not even a twitch of her eyebrows. Her gaze had traveled up from the sweating glass Aneta had set in front of her to Aneta’s face. Long moments ticked past. At least it seemed that way to Aneta. She must have said too much too fast. Would she have another chance?

“You would love him,” she said, feeling desperate. Step One had been easy, even though it had been interrupted. Step Two wasn’t working. She hadn’t even gotten to how she had rescued Wink, how he’d winked at her, and how he wasn’t dead and needed a forever home.

“But, Annette, you’re not an orphan. You’re a Jasper.” Mom looked puzzled and, well, like Aneta had punched her.

Annette
. One of the other projects.
For pizza sake
, as Sunny would say.

“Um, Mom, about—about my name.” Now what should she say? She inspected her smudgy hands holding the sketch.

Mom’s face furrowed into worry lines so deep her entire face seemed scrunched. Had that not been the right thing to say either? This was hard. How to get back to talking about Wink?

The front doorbell chimed. Aneta’s mother hunched her shoulders, stretched her neck, and sighed. “If that’s my family, I’m telling them no Pool Plash tonight.” She stood slowly, as though she were pulling up through cement. Passing by Aneta, she squeezed her daughter’s shoulder. “It seems we need to talk.”

A Waddle Is a Winner

S
o she
had
gotten through! Good. Oh. Another flash of inspiration hit. The Fam. Wait. Sketch in hand, she followed Mom through the family room toward the front door. Telling The Fam to go away was not good.
I need them
. Of all nights, she needed them there—to argue, to yell, to laugh, and to help Mom know they needed to give Wink a forever home. To convince her to take Wink away from being scared and put him in a place where everywhere he turned, he kept running into a hug and a smile. Maybe one of them would even suggest
first
that Mom and Aneta be his forever home.

Mom opened the door. Aneta peeked over her shoulder. How many cousins had come with Gram tonight? The group of three on the front steps, who were
not
The Fam, waved at her.

Uh-oh
. Aneta had completely forgotten both the project
and
the group of Melissas.

“Oh hi, Aneta.” Esther’s louder-than-necessary voice. The girl waved at her.

Mom looked at Aneta. Aneta looked at the girls.

“Nobody answered the phone, so I thought I would just walk around and pick everyone up. We all live so close! I hope you don’t mind.” Esther’s eyes were now surveying the roomy family room with its fireplace that could be seen on both sides—both from the kitchen and the family room. Comfortable burgundy leather love seats and oversized footstools filled the room, with colored-glass lamp shades over wrought-iron lamps on the table. “We’re late turning in a fund-raiser idea for Oakton Founders’ Days.”

“And you’re so cool to let Aneta adopt Wink!” Sunny stepped forward, her voice bubbling like Mom’s sparkling water. “Can you believe that Crocs Killer tried to drown him?”

Oh, if only The Fam had descended instead. Aneta considered saying she was suddenly sick and running up to her room. No good. She was rarely sick. She eyed the phone on the long coffee table. Only a few steps away. A quick call to Gram… She began moving toward it.

“Crocs Killer? Aneta?” Mom repeated.

Oh dear, this was getting worse. Aneta took her hand off the phone, thinking fast.

“Hi!” she said, her voice sounding as loud as Esther’s. “Mom, these are my new friends from the community center. Now we are a team!” She searched Mom’s face for signs that she was shifting away from the shock toward the new
good
news.

It worked. Mom smiled. She shook her head the tiniest bit. “Oh, Annette! Teamwork is great.” She stepped forward and wrapped her arms around Aneta, her head only slightly taller than Aneta’s. “I knew it was a good opportunity.”

Vee spoke. “There’s a problem, though. We don’t have a fund-raiser to present to the city council yet.” She jerked her chin toward Esther, her eyes slitted. “Some of us are not team players.”

“Yet,” Sunny said quickly, stepping forward with a smile. “Can we hang out for a while and come up with our project, Mrs. Jasper?”

“
Ms
. Jasper is great. And it’s great you girls are working together.” She backed toward the kitchen, waving toward the patio. “Go ahead to the patio and start brainstorming. I’ll bring the lemonade and thaw out some cookies.”

Aneta cast a longing look at the phone as she led the girls through the door and onto the cool stone patio. Esther, next to her, hissed in her ear, “Thaw out cookies?”

“Yes, my mom makes peanut-butter cookies when she is—well, a lot. Then she freezes them.” It had been a tough month for Mom. She’d lost two cases. Jaspers didn’t like to lose. The freezer was full of cookies. Mom called it her “therapy.”

Esther closed her eyes and smiled. “I love peanut-butter cookies.”

After the girls had dropped into chairs around the glass-topped table, Vee pulled out her notebook. Aneta shot a glance toward Esther. The girl was already frowning. Any time Vee whipped out the notebook, Esther’s face settled into grumpiness. Aneta sighed. Maybe it would have been easier to be in the real Melissa’s group. At least then there would only have been one of her.

“So, how come your mother calls you Annette, but when C.P. called you Annette, you said Aneta. What’s the story?” Sunny was consuming peanut-butter cookies rapidly, filling one hand as soon as it was empty and holding one in reserve. Vee daintily nibbled around the edges of her first, while Esther eyed the plate, hands folded in her lap.

“By the way, these cookies are killer.”

Pride rushed through Aneta. Even Gram said nobody could make a peanut-butter cookie like Mom.

“Yeah, and how come you always say ‘Mom’ instead of ‘my mom’ or ‘my mother’?” Esther’s right hand snaked along the table until it encountered the cookie plate. She snatched one off the plate and stuffed it in her mouth. Aneta remembered girls at the orphanage doing that with bread at dinner and felt sad. “Like she’s just
a
mom and not
your
mom.”

“I—I do not know.”

Sunny brushed a couple of crumbs off the front of her shirt. “I say it’s none of our business. Just tell us what you want us to call you.” She looked expectant.

“I want you to call me Aneta.” It was out. Again.

Half an hour later, they were no closer to agreeing on an idea. Sunny had deserted her chair soon after polishing off her lemonade and several cookies and was pacing around the pool, snapping her fingers as she thought out loud. Vee and Esther interrupted each other on every idea.

Aneta said nothing. She was thinking plenty, however, as she continued to draw Wink’s ears then move down his baggy throat. She did not care about Oakton Founders’ Day and the fund-raiser. She only cared about bringing Wink home and finding the Crocs Killer. While the voices swirled around her, she continued to plan. First, after the girls left, she and Mom would have their talk. That would take care of Wink’s forever home. Then she and Mom could “brainstorm,” as Mom liked to say, about how to bring the Crocs Killer to justice.

The clink of ice brought her back to the patio action. Mom had stepped through the french doors with the turquoise pitcher. “More lemonade? How are the cookies holding out? What ideas are you getting for your fund-raiser?”

Esther smiled at Mom. “The cookies are great. So’s the lemonade.” She straightened in her chair and glared over at Vee, who was draining the last of the lemonade from her icy glass. “Some of us can’t agree on anything.” Vee narrowed her eyes over the rim of the glass. The Vee Stare, Aneta had named it. Sunny groaned loudly. Aneta thought of Wink.

As Mom set down the pitcher and filled the plate from the plastic container, she glanced at Aneta’s sketch. “Oh, sweetie, you’ve gotten so much further on that. It’s—beautiful, yet so”—she hesitated, looking for the right word—“pathetic. That poor little puppy.”

Sunny, who had made a beeline for the cookie plate, leaned over Aneta’s shoulder. “You’re good,” she said, chewing. She looked at Aneta’s mother. “And so are these cookies.” In another second, the last bite of cookie was in her mouth and she was dusting off her hands. Her hands stilled. She dropped into the chair to the left of Aneta. Grabbing the sketch, she held it high above her head. “Guys! We have our fund-raiser!”

What was she talking about? Aneta watched Sunny prance around with the sketch.

While Mom stood holding the pitcher and smiling at Sunny’s enthusiasm, the other two stopped their most recent quarrel over whether the library or the senior center should be the focus of the fund-raiser.

“What?” Esther asked.

“Explain,” Vee said, her pen poised over the notebook. “I’ve got to be home in fifteen minutes.”

“Paws ‘N’ Claws Animal Buddies!” Sunny danced around the table, turning the sketch this way and that. “Wink will be the poster dog for our event!”

Her little Wink, a star? Aneta’s lips began to wobble into a smile. He was very cute. She would get him a new collar.
Red
, she thought.

“And what’s the event?” Vee was not convinced. Her head tipped to the side. She looked down her nose at Sunny.

This stopped Sunny. “Oh,” she said. “Event?”

This time it was Esther who leaped from her seat as though someone had pinched her hard. “A Basset Waddle!” she shouted. Mom started; the lemonade sloshed in the pitcher.
Esther would never need a microphone
, Aneta thought.

Aneta looked at the other faces. They showed the same lack of understanding that she knew must be on her face. She hadn’t seen Wink walk yet, but with that long body and short legs, he would definitely waddle. But an event?

Seeing her audience was lost, Esther launched into an explanation. “My aunt lives in Michigan. We visited her in May. She took us to the Basset Waddle. A bunch of bassets walk in the street to a park, and everyone comes to watch them.” She flopped back into her chair and began to laugh. “It was amazing! Some people dressed up their dogs in costumes….” She clapped her hands. “We will be the fund-raiser for Paws ‘N’ Claws Animal Buddies of Oakton. The one Nadine and Frank work with!”