How to Look for a Lost Dog (10 page)

“Yes,” I reply.

“She's been gone since the storm?” asks Josh.

I see Mrs Kushel and Mrs Leibler glance at each other. Mrs Kushel raises her eyebrows, and Mrs Leibler shrugs her shoulders. It is some kind of conversation.

“That is such a sad story!” Morgan exclaims.

“Yes, it is,” I say. Then I add, “I devised a search plan.” I tell my classmates about the map and the circles and the lists. “Also, my uncle put an ad in the paper.”

“I liked it when Rain came to school,” says Josh.

“She's the best dog ever,” adds Flo.

“Rose, I hope you find Rain,” says Parvani. Now her voice is trembling. She looks at me for so long that I have to turn my eyes away.

Mrs Kushel touches Parvani's shoulder. “What would you like to share?” she asks gently.

Parvani begins to cry. “My mom is an artist,” she tells us. “She stored her paintings in a warehouse and the warehouse flooded and she lost all her work. Everything she's painted for fifteen years.”

I stare (stair) at Parvani. I didn't know her mother was an artist. This is very sad.

Tears make wet tracks down Parvani's cheeks. The room grows quiet.

“Parvani?” says Mrs Kushel. She kneels beside her.

Parvani gulps air.

“Do you need to step into the hall?” I ask her.

“Rose—” Mrs Leibler starts to say.

But Parvani gets to her feet. “Yes,” she replies.

Gulping and sobbing and wiping her face with her sleeve, Parvani winds her way through the desks to the door.

“I'll go with her,” I tell Mrs Leibler, and I follow Parvani into the hall.

Parvani leans her forehead against the wall.

I realize I should say something that will comfort her. “Parvani, I thought of a new homonym this morning. A triple. ‘Praise', ‘prays' and ‘preys'. Isn't that good?”

Parvani sniffles and nods her head. “Thank you, Rose.”

On the Saturday after school starts again, Uncle Weldon parks his truck on the road in front of our house early in the morning, walks across the plank bridge, and knocks on our door.

“Uncle Weldon's here,” I say to my father. “Can I go?”

My uncle and I are ready for a day of searching for Rain. She's been missing for two weeks now, which is fourteen days, which is not a prime number.

“Let him in,” says my father. “I need to talk to him.”

I open the door and my uncle and I smile at each other.

“Ready?” Uncle Weldon asks me.

“Ready.”

“Just a sec.” My father is standing at the sink, drinking orange juice out of the carton. “She needs to be home by five,” he says, pointing his thumb at me. “And no spoiling her with treats and ice cream.”

“I packed baloney sandwiches,” my uncle replies. “They're out in the truck. That's what we're going to eat while Rose spends the day searching for her lost dog.”

My father narrows his eyes at his brother. “Is that sarcasm?”

“I'm just stating the facts.”

“Unh. All right.” My father pauses. “Well, sorry I can't come with you, but I'm going to start working on the permanent bridge today.”

I call goodbye to him, and Uncle Weldon and I hurry out to the truck.

“Do you have everything?” he asks me as I climb into my seat.

“Yes.” I'm carrying a folder and in it are my lists and the map. Today we're going to drive to the shelters that are closest to Hatford, the ones inside the smallest circle. I've already called all the shelters and been told that no small blonde dog with seven white toes has been brought in. But I want to see for myself. Besides, a new dog could come in at any time.

Uncle Weldon studies my list. He thinks for a moment, puts the truck in gear, and says, “Let's go to Rescue Me first, then Furry Friends.”

“Furry Friends is where someone called me ma'am,” I tell him.

Uncle Weldon laughs. Then he starts driving.

We spend the entire day in the truck or in shelters. Each time we arrive at a shelter we go inside and I step up to the reception desk and say, “Hello. My name is Rose Howard, and this is my uncle, Weldon Howard. We're searching for my dog. She got lost in the storm. I called you before, but I wanted to stop by and look at the dogs.”

I have memorized this speech. Uncle Weldon helped me write it last night. It's a lot to say to a stranger, but it's worth it if it will help me find Rain.

Some of the people at the shelters remember talking to me, but some do not, including the MPWWTTAK. I can tell it's the same mean person because I recognize his voice. This time he's nicer, though. Maybe because Uncle Weldon is standing next to me.

After I give my speech, someone at each shelter takes my uncle and me to check the cages of lost or homeless dogs. We look into every cage hoping to see Rain.

We go to four shelters that morning, then we eat baloney sandwiches in the truck, then we go to six more shelters.

We do not see Rain.

Ten shelters. No (know) Rain (Reign, Rein).

“Time to go home, Rose,” says Uncle Weldon as we're leaving the tenth shelter. “I promised your father you'd be back by five.”

I'm sitting in (inn) the truck with my chin in (inn) my hand, watching the road (rode, rowed) ahead. I decide not (knot) to (too, two) answer.

“Tired?” asks my uncle.

“Yes.”

“Let's get some ice cream.”

I slide my eyes to the left. “You promised my father you wouldn't buy me ice cream.”

“That was before I knew how hard today would be. Don't you think you deserve a treat?”

“I don't know.”

“Can you keep it a secret from your father?”

“Is that like lying?”

“Maybe a little. But sometimes it's all right to reverse our decisions. This morning your father and I decided on no ice cream. But now I think we deserve ice cream after looking at ten shelters and not finding Rain. Okay?”

“Okay.” Suddenly I jerk myself upright. “Uncle Weldon, Uncle Weldon! The lady who's driving that car is talking on her cell phone. That's against the law!”

“Think about ice cream, Rose. Decide what flavour you want.”

I close my eyes. “Strawberry,” I say.

I don't open my eyes until we reach the Dairy Queen.

On Monday the weather is grey and wet. I think that if Rain is still lost outside, she must be cold. Maybe she's shivering.

Mrs Kushel hands out review sheets for maths. One arithmetic problem after another: addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. I like these sheets. They are very organized. Three columns of ten problems on each sheet.

The problems look easy, so my mind wanders. I start thinking about Rain and then I can't stop thinking about her. This makes me feel sad so I decide to count all the prime numbers on the first page.

“Twenty-three!” I announce to Mrs Leibler. The room is silent except for my voice. “Twenty-three prime numbers just on this page, and guess what? Twenty-three is a prime number too.”

“Rose.” Mrs Leibler looks straight into my eyes and says quietly, “Are you having trouble concentrating? You haven't solved a single problem.”

“Yes. I am having trouble concentrating.”

“Then let's just take things one at a time. What do you do here?” She taps her fingernail on the first problem in the top row.

I look at it: 247 × 3

I know I'm supposed to multiply the 7 and the 3, but my brain isn't seeing 7 or 3, or 21 either. It's seeing Rain. Rain lost in the rain. Wet and cold and shivering and hungry.

“Rose?” says Mrs Leibler again. Now she taps my arm with her fingernail. Tap, tap, tap. Her red-painted nail tapping on my skin.

I jerk my arm away.

“Rose?”

“Stop! Stop it!”

I see Mrs Kushel and Mrs Leibler glance at each other. Then Mrs Leibler says, “Time for a break in the hall,” and she leads me through the door.

“‘Break' and ‘brake' are homonyms,” I announce as I slump to the floor.

“Take some time to collect your thoughts,” says Mrs Leibler. “You need a quiet moment.”

“‘Time' and ‘thyme'—”

Mrs Leibler puts her finger to her lips. “Shhhh.”

I try to control my thoughts. When I feel calmer I say to Mrs Leibler, “I feel calmer.”

“Okay then.”

She opens the door and I return to my desk.

Mrs Kushel leans towards me. “Are you feeling less tense, Rose?” she whispers.

I widen my eyes. “Oh! OH!” I cry. “‘Tense' and ‘tents'! That's a brand-new pair of homonyms! A really good one. Thank you, Mrs Kushel. I have to add those words to my list when I get home. I hope I have space in the
T
section.”

I don't want to forget the homonyms, so I tear a sheet of paper from my notebook and carefully write:

tense

tents

I hear snickering. I see Josh Bartel looking at me, then looking at Parvani and rolling his eyes.

Parvani looks away from him, though. She shakes her head. I think that's her way of sticking up for me. I should thank her. I open my mouth, but instead of words what comes out is a wail.

Mrs Leibler leads me right back into the hall.

If only I knew that Rain would be waiting for me after school.

After school, Uncle Weldon drops me at home and goes back to his job.

Here are the things I do in the afternoons now while I wait for my father to come home:

• look through my mother's box

• start my homework

• start dinner

Here are the things I can't do in the afternoons any more:

• sit on the porch with Rain

• take a walk with Rain

• feed Rain

The afternoons are long. They seem to be full of empty space – space between looking through the box and starting my homework, space between finishing my homework and starting dinner. I don't know what to do with the space. Rain used to fill it.

How do you fill empty space?

On the Friday that is three weeks after Hurricane Susan, Uncle Weldon picks me up from school as usual. We are driving along Hud when I notice Sam Diamond's yellow car parked in the road, and then I see my father hauling tools to the bridge.

I wonder why my father is home so early. I thought he was going to be at the J & R Garage all day.

Uncle Weldon stops the truck by the bridge. We cross our fingers and touch our hearts, and then I jump out of the cab and close the door. I turn around and almost run into my father. His eyes are small and mean, and he leans through the window of the truck and says to Uncle Weldon, “That Jerry fired me today.” Only instead of the name
Jerry
he uses a word that I'm not allowed to say. “He frickin' fired me,” my father goes on. “No reason.” He bangs his hands on the side of the truck.

“Whoa,” says my uncle. “What are you going to do?”

“Finish the bridge.”

“And then what?”

“I don't know ‘and then what' right now, okay?”

“But shouldn't you think ahead a little? You can't just live day-to-day.” Uncle Weldon looks like he has something more to say, but my father interrupts him.

“I got plenty to do around here. The yard's still a mess. I'll keep busy.”

“That's not what I meant.”

I run around to Uncle Weldon's side of the truck, stand on my toes, and whisper to him, “What about money?”

“Rose, I can see you, you know,” says my father through the truck. “I can hear you too. You think I can't support us? I can support us. Now go on inside.”

I cross the bridge as fast as I can. Behind me I hear Uncle Weldon clear his throat and say, “Rose does have a point, Wesley. What
are
you going to do for money? Rose needs new clothes—”

My father bangs the truck with his fists again. “Don't tell me what Rose needs.” He's yelling with his hands instead of his voice.

That's the end of the conversation. I don't hear anything but the sound of the truck starting up as I dash onto the porch, pass the empty couch, and hurry into the house.

I take the telephone into my room and throw my school bag on the floor. Then I get out my lists of shelters. I have called every single shelter on all the lists, but I've only called the furthest shelters, the ones in the widest ring on the map, once. It's time to call them again. Just in case. Just in case Rain got washed very far away. Or in case her nose wasn't working well and she wandered in the wrong direction.

I call Boonton Animal Rescue Centre. Still no Rain.

I call Safe Haven Shelter. Still no Rain.

I call Olivebridge Animal Adoption Network. Still no Rain.

Then I call Happy Tails Animal Shelter. A voice answers the phone and when I determine that it's the voice of a real person, not a recorded voice, I say, “Hello, this is Rose again. I called last week. I'm still looking for my dog, Rain. She got lost during the storm. She has yellow fur and seven white toes. Has anyone brought her in?”

The person on the other end of the line, who is a man, says, “How big is she? Do you know how much she weighs?”

“She weighs twenty-three pounds,” I reply. I remind myself not to add that 23 is a prime number. That is not appropriate for this conversation.

“And she has white toes?”

“They're not all white,” I say. “Just seven are. Two on her right front paw, one on her left front paw, three on her right back paw, and one on her left back paw.”

“Hang on a sec.” I can hear the man talking to someone.

He's repeating the information about Rain's toes.

Then he says to me, “Hang on just a few more seconds, okay?”