Consolation Prize

 

THE INSIDE OF the house looked a lot like the front lawn—decimated. That was a word Odette had learned recently too, in the same class that had introduced her to Julius Caesar. It meant “destroyed,” but the old meaning was cooler—it was related to the root word dec, meaning “ten,” and to decimate used to mean to randomly kill every tenth soldier. Or in this case, thought Odette as she scanned the bare walls, the empty outlets, the sad indented carpet squares where furniture had been, it was more like killing nine soldiers out of every ten. If she was lucky, maybe they’d leave this house with one-tenth of their possessions stashed in the Coach.

Odette went for a run around the block just to get away for a few minutes. She imagined her house behind her, the front lawn littered with dead soldiers and smashed cardboard boxes. She flat-out ran, not pacing herself or anything, but the problem with running around a block was that halfway around it she wasn’t running away from her house anymore . . . she was running toward it. When she realized this, her arms dropped like weights to her sides and her run fizzled out into a reluctant trudge.

Mom got a pizza for dinner, which they ate on paper plates, since all the real plates were gone and the plastic camping dishes she’d ordered online for the Coach hadn’t arrived yet. Dad was taking forever with the thrift store run, and Odette ate as much pizza as she could, trying to make sure that there wasn’t enough left for him.

But after the third slice, her stomach started hurting. There was still plenty left for Dad, unfortunately. Still he wasn’t home. Mom called him once and texted him a few times, but it was fully dark before Odette heard the rattle of his key unlocking the front door.

“Hello, hello,” he called in the way he did, and Odette couldn’t help but be relieved that he was there, even though she was angry at him for everything, even though she’d tried to eat all his pizza.

When Dad came into the kitchen, where Odette, Rex, and Mom were sitting at a folding card table (the kitchen table and benches had been among the first things to go), Odette was surprised to see that he held a box. A cardboard box, just like the ones Odette had grown so tired of seeing in the hallways of the house, on their front porch. But the look on Dad’s face . . . that was different.

“What’ve you got there, Simon?” asked Mom.

Dad smiled, but he looked guilty, the way his forehead wrinkled up. “Don’t be mad,” he said. “It’s something for Odette.”

And before Dad said another word, before her mom even answered, Odette knew with one hundred percent certainty what was in that box.

It was her puppy. Her dream puppy. The dog she’d wanted for as long as she had known about puppies. A sleek black seal of a dog, with floppy ears and a long pink tongue and a tail that wagged its whole butt. A Labrador retriever that she could train to run by her side even off-leash, who’d learn to sit and stay and would sleep heavy by her feet, a strong protector and warrior.

And then the box whined and moved—not the box, but what was inside—and Odette’s one hundred percent certainty doubled, and maybe this was all worth it, losing their house and leaving school and having to live in a dumb ugly Coach with no privacy and a bathroom smaller than a closet, if she would be doing it with a Labrador puppy named Francis.

“Simon,” said Mom, and her voice sounded surprised more than angry. Then Dad put the box on the table and motioned for Odette to open it. Rex, of course, lunged across the table to be the first to see inside the box, but Dad stopped him.

“This is for Odette,” he said. And then, “Go ahead, honey. Open the box.”

Her hands trembled. Her lips trembled. The box trembled. Odette pulled back on the cardboard flap. But before she got it all the way open, a wet black nose nudged against her hand, insisting on freedom, pushing the box open from the inside. And then—

Out poured the ugliest little runt of a dog Odette had ever seen.

It was an abomination. Black, yes, as she’d imagined, but not shiny. Dull wiry hair stuck out at every angle from its skinny little body—it couldn’t have weighed more than three or four pounds. Its snout pointed sharp and eager. It made a sound like Yap!—high and shrill.

“What is it?” asked Rex, amazed.

“It’s a dog, of course,” said Dad. “Odette’s dog.”

Burning tears blurred her vision. “I don’t want it,” she said, and shoved the box away. But the dog yapped again, closely followed by a string of yips, and it jumped out of the box and onto her lap. Its tiny paws were poky and terrible. Its foxlike face stared up at her. And then Odette’s lap began to feel moist and warm.

“It peed on me,” she screeched, and thrust the creature in her mom’s direction. And as she ran to her room—or what was left of it, after the morning’s yard sale decimation—Odette heard the cacophony of her family behind her, and yip upon yip from that terrible little dog.