When Life Gives You O.J. (18 page)

The next morning, I walked over to Jeremy’s house. Seth answered the door, then yelled into the house, “Hey, Germ-y. It’s your GIRL-friend.”

Jeremy came to the doorway but didn’t open the screen.

“What do you want?” he said.

“Um, to say hi? Maybe to take a walk?”

“Oh, I don’t know. What if your friends see you with me? Won’t that keep you from running for Miss Popularity?”

“Jeremy, come on. I’m sorry, okay?”

“Hmph,” said Jeremy. He didn’t say anything else. And he still didn’t open the screen door.

“So? Will you take a walk with me? Please?”

Jeremy opened the screen door. “I’ll be back in a little bit,” he yelled over his shoulder.

We started down toward the dead end, just like I always used to do with O.J.

“Where’s O.J.?” asked Jeremy.

I sighed. “It’s a long story,” I told him.

I held my breath, waiting for Jeremy to say what he would have been perfectly entitled to say. Something like,
Let me guess. You gave O.J. up? You decided it was too hard, standing up to your friends, and you didn’t want a dog that bad after all?

But what Jeremy said was: “I’ve got time.”

So I told him the whole story. Arguing with Ace and throwing O.J. in the trash and Allie’s slumber party and getting the call about Ace’s heart attack and trying to get O.J. back and the garbage everywhere and what Ace said when I told him about O.J.

“Wow,” he said when I finished. “I had no idea your grandpa had heart problems. My grandpa had heart problems. He died when I was just a baby.”

“My grandpa doesn’t have heart problems,” I informed him. “And he’s a tough old bird. He’s not going to die.”

“No, I wasn’t saying that. I just—Wow.” Jeremy looked really overwhelmed by everything I had said.

“So, what do you think?”

“About what?”

“About what he said. About looking inside, and sticking with the plan even though O.J.’s gone, and ‘Tell it to him.’ Do you have any idea what he meant?”

“Not really. How would I know? He’s your grandpa.”

“Jeremy!” I was beginning to get frustrated. “Don’t you go to temple and Hebrew school and everything?”

“Yeah? So?”

“Well, I guess I just thought maybe there was some sort of, I don’t know, explanation for what he meant. You know, a Jewish explanation.”

Jeremy looked dubious. “A Jewish explanation? I thought your grandpa didn’t go to synagogue.”

“He didn’t. I mean, he hadn’t been in ages. But get this: on the day he had the heart attack, he had gone to temple that morning.”

“Weird.”

“Hey, you went to temple on Saturday morning, right? Did you see him there?”

Jeremy shook his head. “Maybe he was at the other temple,” he suggested. “The one my mom thinks we should check out next.”

“There’s another temple?”

“Yeah, there’s actually three. One Reform, which is where we went on Saturday, one Conservative, and one Orthodox. They’re not very big congregations, but my mom says some people drive in from way out in the country to attend services.”

This
is the country
, I thought to myself. But then I pictured the real country landscapes of places outside Burlington, like the farm where we went to pick cherries. What if that girl I saw playing with her dogs was actually Jewish? And what if
her family got up extra-early every Saturday morning to drive to Burlington to attend services? What if I had this little tiny piece of me in common with her, and with kids like her, kids I hadn’t even met?

“How was it?” I asked Jeremy.

“I liked it okay,” he said, “but my mom didn’t. There was this young rabbi who was in charge of the kids’ portion of the service. He actually had us sing the Shema to the tune of the theme from
Star Wars.
”

“He did what?”

“You know the Shema? It’s a really basic Hebrew prayer that you sing. Only not usually like this.” Jeremy launched into his imitation of the rabbi: “SHMA-ah yi-is-ra-EH-el …”

I chuckled. “Sam would like that.”

“Yeah, well, me too. My mom, not so much.”

“Big surprise.”

Jeremy smiled. I felt relieved that he wasn’t still mad at me. As we walked by the Brownells’ house, I saw Maddy and Luna watching us through the window.
Where’s that other dog?
Luna seemed to say.
You know, the funny-looking one?

I wish I knew
, I told her.

“Jeremy?” I said suddenly. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure,” said Jeremy.

I hesitated. I had just finished apologizing to him, and now here I was wanting him to trust me all over again. But this was important. I really needed to know. Finally, I blurted out, “What did you do to get your bike?”

Jeremy eyed the ground. “Nothing,” he mumbled.

“Jeremy, please. I promise not to tell.”

“Yeah, I don’t know.” He looked at me suspiciously.

“I said I was sorry, didn’t I? And come on, it’s because of my grandpa. I know it might sound crazy but I feel like if I can get O.J. back and stick to our plan, it’ll help, maybe.”

Jeremy kept staring at me. Finally he said, “If you tell anyone, I will
never
speak to you again.”

“I promise! Not even Allie.”

“Okay,” he said. And then, “I gave up my thumb.”

“You did what?”

Jeremy didn’t answer. Instead, he held out his thumb for me to see. I had never noticed, but on the knuckle there was a hard, round bump.

“For real?” I almost laughed. “Like,
recently
?”

“Did you ever used to?”

“Suck my thumb? I mean, sure, I guess. When I was little.”

“Yeah, well, if you don’t stop then, it’s totally different. It kind of becomes part of you. And then it’s practically impossible to give up. My parents would’ve done anything to get me to quit.”

“Wow. You must have really wanted that bike.”

“Yeah,” said Jeremy simply. “I didn’t want to give up my thumb, but it was the only way I knew I could get my parents to take me seriously. They thought Seth’s old bike was fine for me, even though it got loaned to my cousin one summer. And she put these dumb stickers all over it.”

“Oof!” I said, making a face.

“Yeah, that’s why I think you have to really own the whole O.J. thing. Take him everywhere, walk every dog in town, let everyone know you mean business. That’s the only way it’s going to work.”

“Yeah, well, maybe,” I said.
Of course
, I thought,
it would be a lot easier if I hadn’t thrown him out
.

“Zell,” said Jeremy softly, “you know, right, that even if you do all that, your grandpa still might—”

“La la la, I can’t hear you,” I yelled, running ahead with my hands over my ears.

Before Jeremy could catch up with me, I reached the dead end, the spot where I had scooped O.J.’s pretend poop all those times. As I cleared the corner of the hedge, I half expected to find O.J. sitting there, like some real dog that had slipped under a fence and run off to its favorite spot.

When my dad took us to the hospital so he could trade places with mom that afternoon, we came out of the elevator and found her sitting all by herself in the hall.

“Lynn …?” said my dad carefully, and the way he said it made my stomach lurch: just like Bubbles all over again.

But my mom looked up and sort of smiled weakly.

“Still hanging in there,” she said. “He’s resting right now. And he complained about one of the nurses, which I’m taking as a good sign.”

“Attaboy, Ace,” said my dad.

Just then, my mom said, “I almost forgot. I have something for you, Zelly.” Out of her pocket, she took a small, folded-up piece of paper.

“Ace wrote this note after you left yesterday. He was very emphatic that I make sure you got it.”

My mom handed me the note.

I unfolded it and read what Ace had written. It said:

I started to laugh. I could tell that as he wrote it, Ace was smiling his satisfied smile, like when he’d tell that herring joke of his.

My mom peeked over my shoulder at the note. “What does it mean?” she asked me.

“I’ll tell you later,” I said, because I had an idea. As soon as I got home, I would find out for sure.

When we got home, I went straight to Ace’s room. Without stopping to knock at the
GONE FISHING
sign, I grabbed the rubber-band-covered doorknob and threw open the door. There was his bed, his nightstand, his dresser, his bookcase, the cane he was supposed to use but didn’t, his TV and TV chair, and … 
His closet.

When I looked inside, I saw wide-lapelled jackets and overcoats, dress shirts, and even a tuxedo. There were plastic garment bags where he kept his long black judge’s robes “for posterity.” On the ground were pairs and pairs of spikeless golf shoes and two pairs of bedroom slippers.

And peeking out from behind the shoes, in the very back, I saw:

O.J.

Looking a little dirty and a tiny bit dented, but always, always smiling.

“What took you so long?”
his smile seemed to say.

“I’m sorry,” I told him. “I won’t ever let you down again.”

And he smiled. Because he knew I wouldn’t.

And I smiled back because I knew I wouldn’t.

The next day, Allie stopped by. She wanted to see if I could walk with her to the Dairy Barn. Allie and I both loved the Dairy Barn, which was an ice cream stand you could get to by cutting through the University of Vermont campus.

“Can you do that?” she whispered at the door, looking nervous.

“Sure, why not?”

“My mom said your mom said something about how your family might be sitting and shivering for a few days.”

I smiled. “It’s called ‘sitting shiva,’ ” I corrected her, “but you only do it if the person dies.”

Ace hadn’t come home from the hospital yet. But he hadn’t died yet, either. Although you wouldn’t know it—with all his friends and our neighbors stopping by and bringing
us food, it was practically like a funeral. I remembered how, at Bubbles’ shiva, Ace had gone around yelling, “ENOUGH WITH THE DANISH, ALREADY! THERE’S ENOUGH CHAZERAI HERE TO FEED AN ARMY.”
Sorry, Ace
, I thought.
Looks like you’re going to have to put up with Danish a little while longer
.

“Lemme see if I can escape, okay?” I told Allie.

Allie waited on my front steps while I got permission to go out for a little while. However, when I came out of the house with O.J., she gave me a funny look.

“Um, Zell? What are you doing?”

“Bringing O.J.,” I said. “He needs a walk.”

“But I thought you were only doing that because your grandpa made you,” said Allie.

“I was, at first. But not anymore. Do you have a problem with that?”

“No.”

“Because I don’t care what people—You don’t?”

Allie’s eyes narrowed. “Of course not. Why would I?”

“Uh, I don’t know,” I said. “I thought you thought it was embarrassing.”

“Yeah, I did,” she admitted. “But so did you.”

“True,” I said.

“If you’re okay with it now, I guess I should be too. I mean, we’re best friends, right?”

It made my heart jump for joy to hear her say that. But I still wanted to make sure. “So, you’re not going to insist that I put him in a grocery bag or something?” I asked.

“Can you?” she asked hopefully.

I considered the idea, remembering how, in the City, some dogs got carried around in purses. But then I thought of what Ace had said about treating O.J. like a real dog. And in Vermont, dogs have to walk.

“I don’t think so,” I told her.

“Oh well,” she said. “It was worth a shot.”

So I hooked O.J.’s leash on him, and the three of us set off for the Dairy Barn. Since most of the route was on the university’s grassy campus, O.J. was quiet enough for us to almost forget he was along.

Until we were in line at the Dairy Barn.

I was pretty sure I was going to get black raspberry. Allie was staring at the board, fidgeting with her money.

“You know you want a creemee,” I told her. I used to say
soft serve
, which is what they call it in New York, but now it doesn’t even cross my mind.

“Yeah, but chocolate or twist?” said Allie.

Then all of a sudden we heard …

“Hey, do you SMELL something?”

I turned, and who was standing there grinning meanly at me but Nicky Benoit.

My heart started pounding, but I took a deep breath. In my head, I could hear Jeremy saying,
Don’t let him see that he bothers you
.

“Hi, Nicky,” I said as flatly as I could.

“Smelly Fried Egg, how’s it going? Where’s Pwince Charming, off fighting dragons or something?”

“Let’s go,” whispered Allie.

I ignored both of them and ordered my cone.

“Hey, what’s THAT?” I turned around to see Nicky pointing at O.J.

“That’s my practice dog,” I informed him.

“Your WHAT?” Nicky aimed a kick at O.J., who I yanked up by his leash just in time. “You think that’s a dog? You better get new glasses!”