The band has their first practice after school today. Eduardo waves bye and heads down the hall and I forgot to ask what instrument he circled on the back of the form and I want to stand up and follow all the kids walking to band to find out who circled the trombone and gets to practice letting the slide rise and fall today.
At least today is Friday, a Parker day.
My last Parker day.
In the locker room, I pretend I’m washing my hands, but I rub a little soap in my eyes until they’re red so when I tell Coach Matthews that I think I have pink eye I have something to point to.
On the field I trot over to him and blink hard and say it burns and ask if I can go call my dad from the office. I’m expecting him to wave me off because usually when you say pink eye, people back up two steps. But Coach Matthews pulls me in by the face mask and looks right into my eyes.
“Nope,” he says. “I know pink eye, and that’s not it. You probably just have something stuck in there. Blink lots and try not to rub them.” Then he pats my shoulder and nudges me toward Assistant Coach Erikson at the far end of the field in a way that says Now get back out there. But I don’t want to get back out there.
Marcus and Shane have stopped tossing the ball and are watching me. I’m thinking maybe they feel sorry that they called me Sissy and they’re going to quit being mean and we can all just go back to being friends again and talk about the Vikings and toss footballs in our backyards and give Heywood Hurrahs and fist bumps all season. Because that would be easier than not sitting with them in class and wondering why they’re acting the way they’re acting, and if they’re laughing at me. And maybe if I just trot to Assistant Coach Erikson and work hard and catch balls I can move up to the A Team and we can have everything back to just how it was.
But there’s something louder in me. That big, huge NO that’s forcing its way up from my gut.
And I don’t care if Coach Matthews believes my pink eye or not because I don’t want to trot out there, not one tiny bit, and today is September sixth, and that means no more Tuesdays or Fridays before they take Parker away, so it’s today or never again.
And before I know it, I’m yelling it across the field.
“NO!”
A few players look over, their jaws hanging open with orange mouth guards floating above their tongues. Marcus holds his arms out like No what?
“Come on, Olson!” Assistant Coach Erikson calls from the far side of the field, where the B Team is lacing up their cleats.
But I can almost feel Parker’s nose on my left shoulder, and I blink a hundred times fast so my tears don’t slide out.
“NO!”
“Olson,” Coach Matthews says, then juts his chin toward the field. Both teams are coming together in a circle for stretches, and it’s a circle I know I don’t want to be in.
“No.”
I take off my helmet and the cool air on my head feels good and right and I know more than anything that I need to get off this field and to Parker fast before volunteer walking hours are over, but I don’t have another fake planned and all I can say is, “No.”
“No what, Olson?” Coach says.
He’s looking down at me and tapping his clipboard against his palm.
“No football.”
I walk toward the sideline bench to pick up my bag. “Sorry,” I say, and I hate that I say that because I’m not really sorry. I’m more sorry that I said sorry.
“Olson, you can’t just leave. If you walk off the field, you won’t sit with us tomorrow. You’ll be off the B Team and won’t get the training you need for next year.” He puts his whistle in his mouth. “And I don’t think that’s what you want,” he says. A little whistle escapes around his words.
He’s wrong. That’s exactly what I want. So before I can chicken out, I hand him my helmet, and my sticky wide receiver gloves, and pull my jersey eighty-eight over my head.
I unlace my pinchy cleats, and I don’t know what to do with them because if I take them with me there’s a chance they’ll end up back on my feet, so I leave them on the bench for some other kid who will fit in them perfectly. I slide on my Vans, wave to Marcus and Shane, who are shaking their heads in their big helmets, and run right off the field and down the sidewalk, away from Joseph Lee Heywood Middle School.
I don’t know what I’ll do when Coach Matthews calls my dad. All I know is that it’s Friday. It’s a Parker day.
When I get there I see Lou, Ruth, Elli, and DeeDee outside the humane society.
“Closed,” Lou says.
“What do you mean ‘closed’?” I ask. “It’s Friday.”
DeeDee looks at me with sad eyes. “The vet just got here for vaccines.”
But that NO is still rattling around in me, and I don’t even know how my hand gets balled into a fist and how it starts pounding on the door until Max from the front desk opens it up and I fall in and say, “It’s Friday.”
“I know, Cyrus, but—”
I don’t stay to hear the rest of what Max has to say. Instead I rush down the hall and knock on the doors that swing into the back, where I can hear the dogs yipping and panting.
A woman in green hospital scrubs comes out. “Can I help you?”
“I’m here to walk Parker.” I try to look past her into the back room.
She lifts the mask off her mouth and rests it on top of her head. “Are you his owner?”
I feel the NO that’s banging around inside me fall and curl up right there in my gut.
Max is coming down the hall quickly. “Cyrus,” she says. “Parker is getting his shots today while the veterinarian is here.” She looks at me and puts her hand on my shoulder, and it feels like I wait a hundred minutes until she says, “I’m sorry.”
“But this is a Parker day,” I say. “It’s the last Parker day.”
The rest of The 7 is here now, and June is asking what’s going on and Katherine and Alexis are peeking down the hallway trying to see the dogs.
Katherine steps in and asks, “Can’t he say goodbye at least?”
Max looks at the veterinarian and the veterinarian nods her head OK and turns back through the double doors.
As soon as I hear Parker’s nails clicking across the floor, I crouch down, and by the time he sees me and trots through the hall my tears are splashing big splats on the floor between my toe-dragged shoes, and even though my shoulders are shaking, Parker parks his nose right there under my ear and I hold on tight.
DeeDee rubs little circles on my back as I hug him, and it feels good but makes me cry harder and Alexis says she’s so sorry and that Parker deserves someone like me, and that makes me think about how when I’m with Parker I feel like I’m right where I belong. That he’s what my grandma calls a happy place.
I kiss Parker’s face and that NO wakes back up. “No,” I say. “He doesn’t deserve someone like me. He deserves me.” Because everyone should have a shoulder they can lay their head on.
I want to get to my dad before Coach Matthews does, so I run. And The 7 runs with me—even DeeDee, who’s wearing thin, flat shoes that flap against the pavement. And between panting breaths, I tell them everything about how my dad said no to Parker and no to walking him and no to even naming him. I tell them that I’ve been faking. Faking a lot. And I’m done with faking. I tell them how I quit football even though I’m an Olson and that I have to tell my dad that I’m not a wide receiver and that Parker needs us right now.
The smokestacks just outside of town pump out big clouds and the air smells like Cheerios baking, and it smells like home, and for some reason it’s making me feel like maybe everything is going to be OK.
When we reach the center of town, we slow down a little and dodge people walking on the sidewalk, but we don’t stop until we get to the firehouse parking lot.
When I put my hand on the knob, I wonder, like I always do, if I’m stepping right on the spot where I was left in my tight-swaddled baby blanket, crying into the night. The very spot where Parker whimpered for me.
The big door is heavy, and when I pull it open I can feel The 7 behind me and hear their breath, still quick and shallow from the run.
The door flies open fast, and I almost fall backward because my dad is pushing it out at the same time. He’s moving so quick that he runs straight into me and my face smushes right into his firefighter’s T-shirt and the rough canvas of his suspender strap. His hands grip my biceps, his fingers fitting all the way around, and it feels, at first, like he wants to squeeze my twiggy little arms and shake me hard because I lied and lied and lied, but then it feels more like a hug, an all-the-way-around hug like Grandma used to give, and I don’t even know what he knows yet, except I know that whatever it is, it’ll be OK.
Then he’s kneeling down and letting me rest my head right there on his big shoulder, the strap of his suspender beneath my cheek. “Cyrus,” he whispers. “Cyrus, Cyrus, Cyrus. You scared me again.”
He must see The 7 behind me because he asks, “Who are your friends?” And I’m glad that’s the first question he asks me, because I know all the others are going to be Why did you lie? and What happened at practice? and Where were you?
June steps forward and reaches out her hand. “We’re the Humane Society 7.” Then she looks at me. “But really I guess we’re more like The 8 now.” And my heart feels like it explodes with happy, foot-tapping jazz music because their circle feels like one of Grandma’s all-the-way-around hugs too.
Dad raises his eyebrows at me when June says Humane Society. He stands up and shakes her hand and then everyone else’s.
Then he looks down at me, and he’s not even asking any questions because he doesn’t have to. He’s waiting for me to do all the explaining. And even though I ran here to tell him about Parker and how he has to reconsider his no-pet policy and that we have to adopt him fast or I won’t get to see him anymore, not even on Tuesdays and Fridays, not ever, my throat is all scratchy and closing up and I just stare down at my unlaced Vans.
“Coach Matthews called,” he says.
I look up and right into Dad’s worried eyes and try to tell him that I had to leave football practice and that we have to save Parker from moving to another humane society, where no one will know him and no one will visit him, and even if his real owner couldn’t take care of him, I can and I want to.
I open my mouth, but then I hear Leo slide down the pole and land on his feet. Sam follows behind him.
“Cy!” he bellows. “What’s this I hear about you quitting football? Olsons aren’t quitters. Right, Brooks?” He claps my dad on the shoulder.
Dad pulls his shoulder away.
“I’m sorr—” I start, but then I hear Katherine’s voice, quiet but steady, behind me.
“You’re not a quitter, Cy.”
And I feel that NO rise up in me again. And I’m not sorry. I’m not sorry I quit football because I didn’t quit Parker.
I look at Sam, and she gives me a little nod like it’s time to use my big-boy voice and so I do. I clear my throat and say it right out loud.
“I’m not sorry.”
Dad just waits, like he always does, for the whole story. “Start at the beginning, Cy.”
And with The 7 behind me, and Sam nodding me on, I say, “I don’t like playing football.”
I almost tell him about how I think I might be mislabeled. That I don’t have that Olson gene. I’m not a wide receiver or a war hero and I don’t want to fight fires or ever do another touch-and-go in my whole life. That I like picture books and tapping my foot and I think the trombone might be the best sound in the whole world. And I want Parker to live with us because holding his head on my shoulder is right where I belong.
And for one second I think I might tell him about Mr. Hewett’s book Red, but it’s not as good without the pictures and I can’t remember the whole way it goes, so instead I say, “I didn’t want to make any team. I haven’t liked football since we stopped two-hand touch.”
His shoulders sink an inch, and I think mine do too because I hate upsetting him.
But I can’t stop now, not with Parker getting his shots and leaving the humane society.
So I keep telling and telling him the whole story with no fakes at all. “And I’m not sure Marcus and Shane are nice either. I know they’re really good at football and I’ve known them forever, but there’s a new kid in our class and they call him Edweirdo.”
Leo chuckles and I look up at him and raise my shoulders back up that inch, and I bark that NO right out. “That’s NOT funny!”
That makes Leo stop laughing fast. Sam smiles and gives me a little thumbs-up and nods for me to keep on, so I look back at Dad and say, “And I’ve been visiting Parker.”
Deep creases wrinkle across his forehead, and I know what he’s saying. He’s saying that seeing Parker will only make it harder.
“And on Monday they’re transferring him to another humane society an hour from here and . . .” I try to say and he won’t have my shoulder and I won’t have his and I know you said no but I think we should adopt him anyway, but I think if I keep talking I’ll start crying, so I stop.
Now it’s my turn to wait and watch as Dad rubs the folds on his forehead and sighs deep out of his nose.
“I wish you’d told me” is all he says. Then he takes a big breath and adds, “About all of it.”
And even if I could think of what to say next, and say it without crying, I would be cut off by the static blast on Dad’s radio. Long strings of numbers and letters and codes and things I don’t understand crackle through, and Dad holds up his finger—shhhh—and presses his ear toward his radio.
Sam moves fast, opening the big garage doors and calling out the engine numbers. Dad shoos The 7 out the door. They all move quick and shout, “Bye,” as the big door slams behind them. Then he sounds the alarm and I hear it scream through Northfield, sing down Division Street, and echo off the brick buildings.
I know the plan. The plan is that I throw my bag back over my shoulders, push open the big door, step over the spot where I was left eleven years ago, walk to Grandma’s apartment, and wait with her until we hear from Dad. But as soon as I step outside, I hear the static voice on the radio.
“212 Third Street.”
I know where that is because the humane society is 210 Third Street. And the voice crackles and spits and they sound the alarm again and I know this isn’t just a cat up a tree or a contained trash can flame from a scared kid. And I know what my dad says about fires. They spread fast.
The siren wails, warning the town and calling the EMTs and volunteers to help, and my dad calls out, “Go to Grandma’s!” and presses on the gas of the fire engine and whizzes past me, lights flashing.
I rub my great-grandpa Olson’s dog tags beneath my shirt and think about rubbing Parker’s fur behind his ears, and for the third time today, I run. I run right away from the plan and in the opposite direction of Grandma’s apartment, and I do what Dad told me never to do. I run right toward the fire.