A Cup of Normal (6 page)

Dickie shook his head. It made my hand sting so hard I felt tears in the corners of my eyes.

“Crap, Dickie, that hurt! Let go.”

Jugg jumped up and stood behind me. “Should I, you know, kill him again or something Boady?”

“No!” Okay, maybe that was a weird thing to say, but Dickie was the last gift my dad had ever given me. Dickie was my dog and the first undead I’d ever raised. I felt a weird love for him. “Just try to distract him.”

“With what?”

That was a good question. Dickie had only been undead for a few days, and since he didn’t seem interested in eating or drinking, or really doing much more than lying like an undead rug under my bed, I wasn’t sure what he’d be interested in. Dickie shook his head again and tugged — his sharp teeth tearing all the way through the sock.

I snatched my hand back and the sock came off. I thought Dickie would go for the sock, but he didn’t. Instead, he lunged at me — pretty good for a dog with only two legs.

Dickie got a hold of my hand and bit down hard. I screamed.

And then my hand didn’t hurt any more. As a matter of fact, I wasn’t tired any more, wasn’t sore any more, wasn’t worried any more. Yeah, really everything suddenly seemed super, super good. I sort of slipped back, laid on the floor and liked it.

I think Jugg screamed. I think he said something. But I just stayed were I was, feeling floaty and fine.

Until I saw my mother’s face.

She leaned over me, strands of dark hair like a funeral veil around her pale, pale face. Her eyes looked worried and maybe angry, but not crazy. I was surprised about that because I figured all the blood I was leaking would really make her crazier.

“Boady, what have you done?” she asked in her sad-mother voice.

I worked on thinking about what I could have done to make her sad. “Uh, Jugg saw me take his dad’s rock. He didn’t say I couldn’t.”

“Not the rock, Boady. The dog.”

Oh yeah. Dickie. Man, I should be seriously panicking about my mom finding out about that, but I was still feeling freakaliously fine.

“Well, I missed him and I wanted him back. So I used one of your books to, you know, do the undead thing, like how you get your boyfriends.”

Her eyebrow arched and there was a glimmer of angry-mom in her eyes. “They are not my boyfriends. Not all of them,” she said. “Did you read the entire book? Did you read the consequences of raising the dead?”

I blew my breath out between my lips in a big, frustrated sound. “No. I only had about an hour to read the good stuff. I had to put the book back because you woke up.” Okay, this is where my brain finally hit the danger button. I had just told my mom my secret. I was so screwed.

Instead of grounding me, or telling me what chore I’d be doing for the next six months, Mom tipped her head up so all I saw was her neck and chin. I knew her eyes were closed. I knew she was trying hard not to cry. I’d seen her just like that a lot of times. Every time, actually, after she “broke up” with her boyfriends and sent them back to the grave. But most of all, that first time she really went crazy when Dad died.

“Mom?” I said. I got my elbows under me and pushed up so I was kind of lying and kind of sitting. Jugg was gone, and the room was pretty dark. I had no idea how long I’d been on the floor, but my back was stiff and the room smelled of mint and lemon — things my mom always uses to clean up blood.

The rock head was right where Jugg and I had left it, its face turned upward, the long nose pointing to the ceiling, the eyes, I hoped, unmoving. A puddle of blood ringed the base of the rock. My blood. I had no idea what to do about that.

“Can I keep Dickie?” I asked Mom.

I heard the slow thump of his tail on the hard wood floor and Mom and I both looked over at him. He was sitting on his bad legs, and he looked different. I couldn’t quite figure it out, then I knew what it was — Dickie was breathing. Even his eyes looked more like eyes.

“Look! He’s better!” I sat up the rest of the way and put my hands together in front of me. My cut hand didn’t hurt so bad, and it was already scabbing. “Please, Mom, please can I keep him?”

Mom nodded slowly. “You have to keep him.”

My heart soared and I felt like cheering. Then the “have to” part sunk in.

“Why?”

“Because once an undead drinks your blood they are tied to you.” Mom put her cool soft fingers on the back of my hurt hand. “That is why we are always careful about blood in the house. Boady, Dickie is your keeper now too.”

Okay, so I wasn’t seeing a down side. I think Mom noticed that.

“Dickie is a part of you. He can make you do things if he wants to, things you might not want to do.” She looked over at Dickie who was still wagging his tail and staring at us.

“That’s okay, Mom. He’s a good dog. I love him, you know. He’s family. Even dead.”

Mom nodded. “I understand.” And I figured she really did. Then she put her arms around me and gave me a hug. I let her, because even though I wasn’t worried about Dickie, I was a little worried she would remember I had snuck into her room and gotten into her stuff. Plus, the rock was making slurping sounds over there in my blood, and I didn’t think that was a good thing.

“Come help me make dinner.” Mom stood up and walked over to my door. “After that, you can take Giorgio back where he belongs.”

“Who?”

“The head.”

“Oh.” Great. It had a name. Maybe I could trick Jugg into carrying it this time. Or maybe I’d find a wheelbarrow to put it in. I sure didn’t want to touch Giorgio barehanded again. He bit.

Still, what mattered was I wasn’t really in trouble. Even though I didn’t get to keep the head, I got to keep my dead dog. Things had worked out okay.

I stood up and walked over to Dickie, then bent down and scratched behind his ears.

“Who’s a good doggy?” I said.

Suddenly, I knew I should scratch a little more to the left and maybe a little harder, and then a little bit to the right, and then stroke under his chin. So I did, even though I was hungry, and even though my back started hurting, and even though I didn’t want to do it any more.

“Bad dog,” I said.

Dickie just thumped his tail and licked my cheek with his swollen, purple tongue.

Okay. Maybe this was a good thing for him, but so far it wasn’t so great for me. Back when he was alive and misbehaving, I would send him to his doghouse and shut the door. I wondered if I could make him go to his house now.

“Go to your house,” I said.

Dickie whimpered and I could feel how awful it was to be locked up in that dark little house. I knew how alone and sad it made him feel.

Wow. I always thought I’d been a really good friend to Dickie. But maybe I hadn’t understood what it was like for him to be my pet.

“I’m sorry, boy. I’ll try to be better this time, okay? No house.”

He wagged his tail some more and stood. His bad legs looked a lot better, even though he was still a little flat in the middle.

I patted his head one more time — because I wanted to, not because he wanted me to — and straightened up.

“So, what do you want for dinner? Oh, wait. Do you need to eat anymore?”

Dickie tipped his head to the side and his ears perked up. He yapped. Bones. I knew he didn’t need food, but he wanted to chew on a bone.

Awesome.

I found the box of raw hide chews in my closet and took Dickie out into the front yard to a patch of grass still warm from the setting sun. I gave him a raw hide and sat with him for a little while watching the daylight slowly fade into evening.

“Boady,” Mom called through the kitchen window. “Dinner.”

Great. I’d forgotten to help her make dinner. That meant I’d have to do the dishes by myself.

“Be right there,” I yelled over my shoulder. I patted Dickie’s head one last time. “Gotta go, Boy. You gonna be okay here?”

Dickie wasn’t chewing on the bone any more — wasn’t even moving any more. His ears stood straight up and his tail was stiff. He looked like an undead statue, staring across the street at Jugg’s yard. Then I saw his nose wiggle a tiny bit, like maybe he smelled something.

“What?” I said. “What’s wrong?” I looked at the street then over at Jugg’s yard full of heads. I had the weirdest idea that maybe one of the heads was going to do something, like pull itself out of the ground and roll across the street to take back what’s-his-name I’d left on my bedroom floor.

“What boy? The heads? Is it the heads?” Man, I hoped it wasn’t the heads.

Dickie’s ears flicked back, then up again. That’s when I heard it — the thrum of a car engine veering off the main road and heading our way. Our neighborhood was pretty quiet so it was easy to know when a car was coming.

And Dickie totally knew it. He shoved up onto his feet and torpedoed across the yard.

“Dickie — no!”

But he didn’t listen. He took off like an undead bullet, even his bad legs keeping up with the rest of him.

He reached the end of our yard at the exact time the car drove in front of our house. My stomach clenched with sick horror. Dickie had always wanted to chase cars when he was alive and I wouldn’t let him. Then the one time he’d gotten out and chased a car, it had killed him.

“No, Dickie. Stay!” I yelled.

But he did not stay. He went faster, legs pumping hard, body low to the ground, ears back, tail straight out.

If he got crushed to death again I didn’t think my mom would let me re-raise him no matter how much I begged. Stupid dog, chasing stupid cars. “Stop!” I ran after him, even though there was no way I’d catch up before he was deader than undead.

He lunged for the front tire. Missed.

Hope fluttered in my chest. Maybe he was too slow. Maybe the car would zoom past and he’d be smart enough to let it go.

Dickie wasn’t that smart.

He ran under the car, jaws snapping at the opposite back tire — the back tire that ran right over the top of him. I heard the ka-thump and squeak of the shocks. The car kept right on going like nothing had happened. Like it hadn’t just re-killed my best friend.

“Dickie!” I ran into the street.

Dickie was nothing but a flattened lump in the middle of the road. And even though I wanted to cry, I noticed he was not bleeding. Then I noticed he was still breathing.

“Dickie?” He wagged his tail and slowly peeled himself off the pavement. His legs were working pretty good, and so was the rest of him, I guess. Maybe he was a little flatter in the middle but it didn’t seem to bother him. He shook his head and sneezed. Then he wagged his tail harder and barked at the retreating car.

He was fine. More than that, he was happy and excited, like he’d just gotten off a roller coaster ride.

“You’re crazy. Do you think you’re indestructible?” I rubbed the sides of his face and didn’t feel anything more broken than usual. Maybe he was indestructible. Maybe I’d done a really good job when I brought him back to life.

“Promise me no more cars today, okay boy? I know you like it but it freaks me out.”

He barked and licked my hand, still excited about chasing the car. And I knew we had an agreement — no more cars today. But tomorrow was a whole new story.