Chapter Nine

Brenna and Sunita have to help Zoe groom a pair of poodles, and David is stuck with receptionist duty. I carry the box of little animals in to Gran for a checkup.

“Who do we have here?” Gran asks as she dries off her hands with a paper towel.

“These are some of Carlson’s Critters,” I explain. “I brought home the ones that looked like they needed a little vet care.”

“Hmm,” Gran says, putting on her glasses and peering into the box. She lifts out the gold-colored hamster.

“That’s Einstein,” I say.

Gran examines him, then chuckles. “Einstein is outrageously healthy,” she says. “He just needs his teeth trimmed a bit.”

Like many rodents and rabbits, hamsters’ teeth can get long if they don’t grind them down naturally on their food and playthings in their cages. Gran opens Einstein’s mouth, makes sure his tongue is out of the way, and trims his teeth with a small pair of clippers. I don’t mind clipping dogs’ toenails, but I hope she never asks me to do rodent teeth.

The trimming takes only a minute. Then Gran hands Einstein over to me.

“There are two more hamsters in the box,” I say. “Newton and Copernicus. They need manicures. Or pedicures. Whatever you call it when hamsters need their toenails trimmed.”

Gran quickly trims the tiny hamster toenails. “They are escape artists,” she warns as I put them in the cage with Einstein. “Make sure that top is secure. Who’s next?”

She reaches into the box and pulls out a fat yellow guinea pig with a band of white fur around its middle.

“Galileo,” I say.

“Ahh,” Gran says with a knowing look in her eyes. She cuddles Galileo and checks out his eyes and ears. “Galileo was an astronomer, among other things. He supported the theory that planets revolve around the sun, not the earth. That scared lots of people—they weren’t ready for the new idea. He was a brave man.”

She examines the guinea pig’s tiny limbs. “Galileo also became blind late in his life. I see... the foot,” she says.

I nod. Galileo’s front right foot looks infected and sore.

“That’s easy enough to treat,” Gran says as she pulls some antibiotic cream out of a drawer.

I take Galileo from Gran and hold him snugly against my chest so that she can spread the cream on his sore foot.

“Mr. Carlson must really care for these little guys,” she says.

“He’s used to tiny critters. He said something about growing up in an apartment. He was never allowed to have a dog, but he had lots of rodents. If you ask me, I think dogs make him nervous. Do you think he was afraid of Scout at first?”

Gran watches the way Galileo limps across his cage, unhappy with the goo on his foot.

“No, not afraid,” she says. “The trainers at the guide-dog school would have noticed. But he has had a lot of adjusting to do—first, to his blindness, and second, to relying on a dog, an animal he doesn’t have much experience with.”

Getting used to an awesome dog like Scout would take me about three seconds, but I’m not Mr. Carlson.

Gran cracks her knuckles and stretches her fingers. “You know, Scout has made a lot of adjustments, too. Even though he has been training his whole life to work with a blind human, every situation is different. He has to get used to the way Mr. Carlson gives commands, and also to his house and to the school.”

Scout has to get used to school? I hadn’t thought about that before. I’ve thought about it for me, maybe, but for Scout? Still, it’s a school with lots of kids, teachers, and funny smells from the caf eteria. Scout sees new kids every class period, I guess, kids who are big and loud. Lockers slam, the bell rings every forty-five minutes. That’s a big change from guide-dog school. I wonder if Scout feels as crowded as I do in the halls. I bet he worries about keeping Mr. Carlson safe.

“Let’s finish up here,” Gran says, peering at the last residents of the box. “Five mice?”

“One of them has a sore eye,” I say. “But I figured you should look at all of them in case it was an infection that could spread to the others.”

“That was smart,” Gran says.

An unexpectedly warm feeling passes over me. I haven’t been feeling very smart today. The comment seems extra nice coming from Gran.

She looks at each mouse, checking from nose to tail. The fifth one, a female, has a swollen eye, but it turns out to be a piece of a wood shaving, not an infection. Gran flushes it out easily and puts the mouse in a glass cage with the others.

“I don’t like the idea of you taking the animals on the bus again,” she says as she watches the mice run around the cage. “I can drive you on Wednesday morning if you want. Tomorrow I have my yoga class. Are you going to help Mr. Carlson map out the school again?”

“I think so,” I say. Unless I got a D or F on that quiz and he decides to get someone else to help him. I crouch down to watch the little mouse with the sore eye. She scurries to hide in a toilet-paper tube. I wish I could hide like that.

“So, how was school today?” Gran asks, looking at me with those laser-beam eyes.

“Lots of things happened at school,” I say as I watch the quivering mouse. I know I’m stalling, but it’s the truth. Lots of things did happen.

I’m saved from more questioning by a knock on the door.

“Come in,” Gran says.

It’s Zoe. “Dinner’s about ready. It’s going to be spectacular.”

“That meat loaf smells great,” Gran says.

I take a sniff. She’s right. All of a sudden, I’m starving.

Gran takes a pen out of her pocket. She has to write up the reports about Carlson’s Critters. “Maggie, run in and set the table,” she says. “I’ll be only a couple of minutes. We’ll have a nice dinner, and then you’ll have lots of time to work on your homework. I thought Mr. Carlson said something about a quiz coming up soon.”

Zoe pauses. “They had that quiz today,” she says innocently. “Maggie told us all about it. Sunita had two quizzes. I’ll probably have one tomorrow. My English teacher had that look on her face.”

Thanks a lot, Zoe!

“You didn’t mention the quiz to me, Maggie,” Gran says.

“I, uh, just forgot,” I say. “It’s so hard to keep everything straight, plus we had the great escape after school. We get our grades tomorrow. It’s not a big deal.”