Smokey had been sitting against the other side of the door, probably laughing at my struggles with the knob. But when the door swung open, he definitely wasn’t laughing anymore! His pupils grew dark and he turned and fled. Of course, I followed, skittering around a corner and barking when he jumped up onto a counter.
It was much better in the house than in the garage. It was warmer, and it smelled nicer, and best of all, there was a long flat box lying on the counter. Last night’s pizza dinner had been delivered in that box, and Ethan had let me have his crust. Delicious! I jumped up to pat the box with my front paw, and it tumbled easily to the floor.
I ate it. Well, all of it that I could, and I shredded the parts that were too tough to chew. Smokey watched, looking disgusted, but I knew he was just jealous. Then I ate the cat food in his bowl, licking it shiny, just as I did when I played Clean the Plates with Ethan.
Normally I wasn’t allowed to get up on the couch, but I figured that the usual rules didn’t apply now, since I was here in the house by myself. So I hopped up and settled in for a nice nap in the sun, on warm cushions that smelled of Ethan and Mom and Dad. Unfortunately, they smelled of Smokey, too; I couldn’t do anything about that.
Sometime later, I realized that the sun had moved. What a nuisance. I stretched and wriggled into a new sunny spot.
Then a heard a faint creak. I knew that sound well. It meant that one of the kitchen cupboards was opening.
I jumped off the couch, shook myself, and hurried into the kitchen to see what was happening. Smokey was on the counter again, and he had carefully reached up with one paw and opened a cupboard. I didn’t know he could do that!
Then he did something even more interesting. He jumped right inside the cupboard! For the first time, I thought that there might be some good in being as small as a cat.
Smokey shifted inside the cupboard and looked down at me, as if he were thinking. I nibbled an itch at the base of my tail and then glanced up at him.
Smokey had been tugging at a plastic bag with one paw. Now he smacked it once, then twice. On the third smack, the bag tipped over, wobbled for a moment on the edge of the cupboard, and fell. It hit the counter and bounced onto the floor.
I pounced on it and bit it. The plastic split open, and wonderful, delicious, salty, crunchy things sprayed all over the kitchen floor. I got busy cleaning them up. Smokey watched me and then batted down another bag. I ripped this one open. It was full of sweet, doughy rolls.
I decided right there and then that I had been wrong about Smokey. I almost felt bad that I’d eaten his breakfast earlier. It was his own fault for letting it sit there in the bowl, of course, but even so … If I’d known he was going to be so nice to me, I would have left his food alone.
At least I would have tried to.
I nosed at a few of the lower cupboards, but I couldn’t get them open myself. How did Smokey do it? I did manage to get my front paws up on the counter and tug down a loaf of bread in another plastic bag. I ate the bread and left the plastic alone.
The kitchen trash can didn’t have a lid, so it was easy to get in there. A few of the things inside were not to my taste. There was some bitter black grit that coated my tongue when I gave it a lick, plus some eggshells and more bits of plastic. None of those were worth my time. But there was plenty that I liked—pizza crusts, leftover scrambled egg, a scrap of bacon fat. I chewed up the plastic afterward, just because.
I was outside waiting when the bus arrived. Chelsea and Todd both got off, but there was no sign of the boy. That meant he would be arriving later, with Mom. I went back into the house, wandered upstairs, and pulled a few shoes out of Mom’s closet. I didn’t chew on them too much, though. I was feeling full from all of my snacks, and kind of sleepy.
I carried the shoes down with me to the living room in case I wanted them later, and stood for a while, trying to decide if I wanted another nap on the couch (but the sun wasn’t shining on it anymore) or in a patch of sun on the carpet (but it wasn’t as soft as the couch). With a sigh, I chose the carpet and lay down restlessly. I wasn’t quite sure it had been the right choice.
When Mom’s car door slammed, I was awake in an instant. I tore through the house, into the garage, out the dog door, and into the backyard, so that nobody would know about my wonderful day inside the house. Ethan ran straight to the backyard to play with me. Mom went up the front walk, her shoes clicking.
“I missed you, Bailey! Did you have fun today?” the boy asked me, scratching under my chin.
“Ethan! Come and look at what Bailey did!”
At the sound of my name, said in such a stern voice, my ears fell.
Ethan and I went into the house, and I came up to Mom, wagging my tail as hard as I could so that she would be happy again. She was holding something in her hand—one of the shredded plastic bags I had left on the kitchen floor.
“The door to the garage was open. Look at this!” Mom said. “The cinnamon rolls, the potato chips, a loaf of bread, everything in the garbage … Bailey, you are a bad, bad dog.”
I hung my head. I hadn’t done anything wrong, surely, but I could tell that Mom was mad at me. Ethan was, too, especially after Mom told him to pick up all the bits of plastic off the floor.
“How in the world did he even get up on the counter? He must have jumped,” Mom said.
“You are a bad dog, a bad, bad, dog, Bailey,” Ethan told me again.
Smokey strolled into the kitchen, blinking his wide, dark eyes and leaping easily up onto the counter. And no one said a word to him! Mom even gave him a fresh bowl of cat food. Then she pushed a mop around on the floor, and the boy carried a bag of trash out to the garage.
“Bailey, that was bad,” the boy whispered to me again. Why was everybody still so upset? I looked up at Smokey, who was daintily picking at his dinner, away up on the counter where I couldn’t reach. He was a bad, bad cat, and nobody even seemed to know it.
“Bailey!” Mom shrieked from the living room.
I guessed she had found her shoes.
* * *
After that day, whenever I was left in the garage, I tried the doorknob again. But the door never opened a second time. I spent my days in the backyard, waiting for my boy. In the afternoons and on the days he didn’t have to go to school, we got to be together.
On many days, we also got to spend time with the other neighborhood kids. But I noticed that none of them ever went to knock on the door of Todd’s house. Sometimes I saw him walking down the street, but nobody called out to him. Most days he didn’t come up to the group of kids, either. He’d duck inside his house or head for the woods and the creek, alone.
Those times he did come over to the other kids, something strange would happen. The children grew quieter and more excited at the same time. There was a nervousness about them, and it made me nervous, too. Marshmallow seemed to feel the same way. She would stick close to Chelsea’s side whenever Todd was nearby.
Ethan didn’t go to Todd’s house anymore, but Todd still came to ours now and then, usually when Ethan and I were out in the yard together. One day he hurried up to the gate, calling Ethan’s name. “Come out! I got something,” he said.
Ethan went through the gate, and I went with him. Todd was carrying a bag, and he opened it up to let Ethan peek inside. “Eggs? What’s the big deal about a carton of eggs?” Ethan asked.
Todd grinned and nodded across the street, where a bunch of small girls were playing a hopping game, jumping over and around some chalked lines on the sidewalk.
“Let’s get them,” Todd said, grinning.
Ethan looked over at the girls and back at Todd. “What? You mean, like … throw the eggs?”
“Yeah! Of course!” Todd’s grin grew wider, and I could tell that his heart was beating faster.
“That’s…” Ethan hesitated. “No way, Todd. Geez. Linda’s over there!”
Linda’s dark pigtails flew as she jumped. She looked much happier than the last time I’d seen her, inside her house.
“So what?” Todd’s grin was fading. A sneer was taking his place. “She’s a little crybaby. Are you going to be a baby, too? What’s the big deal?”
Ethan shook his head. “I just don’t want to. You’re the one making a big deal.”
I didn’t like the surge of rage that came off Todd, the way a whoosh of steam and smell would come out of a pot in the kitchen when Mom lifted the lid. He snatched the carton of eggs out of the bag and took a step away from Ethan. Suddenly he threw the carton hard at Ethan’s feet.
Ethan jumped back, and I did, too, but I came forward again at once. Rich yellow yolks and slippery whites were oozing from the broken carton and sliding all over the driveway. Clearly, this was a job for me. I went to work.
“Crybaby,” I heard Todd mutter, but I was too busy licking to look up and watch him go.
Ethan rubbed my head for a minute and then went into our backyard. He came back with a hose and sprayed what was left of the broken eggs down the driveway and into the gutter. He picked up the remains of the carton and threw them in the garbage.
After that, Todd didn’t come over to our house anymore.
Not during the day, anyway. But once, after the snow and the cold weather came again, I was out in the backyard before bed, finding the right spot to use, when I smelled Todd on the other side of the fence. His smell was strong. He must have been there for quite a while. I let out a warning bark and was pretty pleased when I heard him turn around and run away.