Palmer caught the weightless, foamy basketball. He turned it in his hands to look at Nipper’s name in broad marker strokes. He tossed the ball back to Dorothy. Nipper chuckled down at them from a curtain rod.
“If it was only a sock,” said Dorothy, “why do you keep worrying about it?”
Palmer got up and paced back and forth. “I’m worrying because in thirteen days I’m going to be ten. And twenty-eight days after that is Family Fest. And then it won’t be a sock anymore.”
No one spoke for a while. Nipper flew to the basket rim. Palmer paced.
At last Dorothy said, “Tell them.”
Palmer looked at her. “Huh?”
“Tell them.”
“Tell them what?”
“You don’t want to be a wringer. You’re not going to be a wringer.”
Palmer stared. “Tell who?”
Dorothy stared back. Suddenly a huge grin broke across her face, she threw out her arms. “Everybody!”
Palmer glared at her. He sneered, “Yeah, right.”
Dorothy jumped down from her usual perch on Palmer’s desk. “Okay then,” she said, “how about if I tell them?” She bolted for the window. She threw up the screen, leaned out over the porch roof and yelled, “Hey, everybody, I have an announcement!”
Palmer yanked her back into the room and slammed down the screen. He stood redfaced, fuming. Dorothy wiggled and giggled out of his grasp and went to play with Nipper. Palmer shut the window and locked it. He pulled down the shade. But he could not shut out the cold, wet feeling that he had just peeked into his future.
When he turned back to Dorothy, he found her wearing an impish grin. “So,” she said, “are you going to invite me to your birthday party this year?”
Palmer sagged. He had been dreading this. So far his social life had been neatly divided into two separate relationships: one with Dorothy, one with the guys. Dorothy herself helped keep it that way by avoiding him whenever the guys were around.
Last year, except for his mother’s complaint, it had been fairly easy not to invite Dorothy. This year was hugely different. Dorothy was now his best friend, the only person in the world with whom he shared Nipper. How could he not invite her?
And how could he not invite the guys?
“Well?” said Dorothy.
“Maybe I won’t even have a party,” he said.
But he knew he would. Because the guys were already talking about it. They were expecting it. And because his strategy for surviving the summer was simply this: stay on their good side.
It was becoming harder and harder to do, for in these recent weeks Palmer had come to realize that, with the possible exception of Henry, the guys whose company he had once craved he now feared. If they ever found out for sure that he was a traitor, Farquar’s Treatment would feel like baby’s play compared to what they could do. He imagined them torturing him until he led them to his forbidden pet. At that point Nipper was as good as dead.
So when his mother at dinner one day said, “Do you want a party this year?” Palmer’s answer was yes.
After a long pause, his mother said, “Okay, but you have to invite Dorothy too.”
Palmer just shrugged and nodded. Sometimes the effort of getting through each day left him feeling heavy and dopey by dinnertime. He wished he could just go to bed and not wake up until September.
And then his mother, sprinkling salt on a baked potato, said ever so casually, “You don’t happen to know anyone looking for a lost cat, do you?”
Instantly Palmer was alert. “No, why?”
“Oh,” she said, “I’ve noticed one around the last few days.”
Did a spider just walk across his shoulders?
“Around where?”
“Backyard. Around the side. That was yesterday. Today I found it inside, on the stairway.”
Palmer’s heart pounded in his chest. “What color?”
“Yellow,” she said, reaching for the pepper.
She said more but he was not hearing. He was racing upstairs, bursting into his room, finding Nipper healthy and plump and waddling across the floor to meet him. He fell to his knees and pounded his fist again and again into his thigh.