growl, whimper, repeat. I think I can ignore it. I know I can. They’ll go to sleep eventually.
But then I can hear Pong hurling himself against the door. Whomp, whomp, whomp. It can’t hold up against him.
My three night lights help me navigate out of my bedroom to the bathroom, where I open the door. Hard to be annoyed when the dogs are so happy to see me, wagging themselves silly, leaping up on my pajama legs.
“Oh, come on, then.” I spread out the sleeping bag across my bedroom floor. Hopefully, the allergens will all be trapped in the bag. They seem to settle down nicely. I fall asleep quickly and deeply.
In the middle of the night, the dogs bark like the hounds of Hades, the mythical multi-headed dogs Renée presented on at school the other day. I get up. “Whatsa matter?” I can barely talk I’m so groggy. “Do ya need to go for tinkles?”
Pong leaps at the window. My room faces toward Brant Hills. Ping jumps on the bed to be able to look out. So much for allergens. I peer out to see what’s upsetting them.
The park lights make it bright enough to see a distinctly shaped little car drive across the school parking lot. That old Beetle keeps turning up everywhere. It stops and I pull the dogs away. Can’t be Mrs. Watier this time. Or can it? “Just somebody out driving,” I tell the dogs.
My explanation doesn’t soothe the team. Pong whimpers. Ping gives a few sharp barks. I’m not convinced, either.
Dad comes into my room, rubbing his eyes. “For Pete’s sake, what are they doing in here?”
“They were lonely.” I frown and point out the window. “There’s a car driving around in the school parking lot.”
“Big deal. Probably lots of cars drive there. We just don’t know it because nobody wakes us.” He scratches his stubble. “Look, if you can’t settle them down, we’ll have to take them back to their house. We need our sleep.”
“They’ll be okay, Dad. It’s just new to them. Shh, Ping, shh!”
Dad shakes his head and trudges back to his bedroom.
I pick the little one up and dump him onto the bed. Pong jumps up to join him. I’ll wash the sheets and vacuum my bed when they leave.
They curl up but still end up taking most of the room. An engine starts up in the distance, and Ping growls low and menacing.
I peek out the window again. The Beetle seems to be jerking back and forth across the lot now. It reminds me of the bomb-detonating robot.
Sighing, I settle myself back down into the space left for me on the bed. It’s 12:01 on my cell; technically, it could be called tomorrow already. Another low growl comes, this time from Pong. A chill runs up my spine. What bothers them so much about that car? The last mistake of the day, number ten, turns out to be not investigating more closely.
day two
day two, mistake one
I don’t sleep great, squished against the wall by Ping and Pong. Next morning the phone wakes me. Dad calls me downstairs and, standing at the kitchen counter, hands me the receiver. It’s Mom and she’s at the airport in Amsterdam just finishing her lunch. “Hi, Stephen, how are you?”
I tell her about the fire alarm and remote-control bomb-detonating robot. “Then, in the middle of the night, there was a Volkswagen Beetle driving in the school parking lot.”
“The new model or the classic?”
“The classic.”
“I love those. You don’t see them that often.”
“It was the middle of the night, Mom.”
“You’re reading too much into things again. The fire alarm and the car don’t have anything to do with each other. People go for drives. Teenagers like to park and kiss late at night, you know.” She sighs. “Listen, I heard a great story from one of the other flight attendants.”
“Nothing involving pilot errors, right?”
“No, of course not.” Over the thousands of miles between us, I can hear the smile in her voice.
I smile, too.
“Yesterday, at LaGuardia Airport, a mastiff escaped from the cargo hold.”
“Don’t dogs have to be in cages to fly?” Already, her story makes me uneasy. Where are Ping and Pong? Oh good, I can see them outside the patio door. Dad’s let them out. “How could a mastiff escape from a cage?”
“They figure he chewed open his carrier, and when the baggage handlers came to get the luggage, he just burst through the door.”
“It’s really not safe for animals to travel in cargo, is it?”
“Lots of passengers are allergic, not just me, Stephen. It wouldn’t be healthy for us to have them in the cabin.”
I twinge with guilt over keeping Ping and Pong at our house overnight. Will they make Mom wheeze?
She continues. “So the escape isn’t the worst of it. The dog gallops away from the baggage handlers. And, of course, Flushing Bay borders the runway.”
“He doesn’t drown, does he?”
“No, no, silly.” She chuckles. “But he does jump in and starts swimming as fast as he can to get away from them. Forty-five minutes later, the coast guard finally catches up to him. By this time, the mastiff is so exhausted he’s happy to get in the boat.”
“That’s a great story,” I tell her. Where are Ping and Pong, anyway? Next door the Lebels have an in-ground pool, and there’s a gap under our fence.
I slide the patio door open but don’t call out to the dogs. Mom can’t know we’re keeping them at our house.
“Listen, I’ve got to go,” Mom says. “They’ve just finished repairing the engine, so we’re ready for boarding.”
“Did you have engine trouble?” I step outside and walk toward the gap.
“Gotta go. Love you, Stephen. See you Friday.” Click.
“Love you, too, Mom,” I whisper to a dead phone. Then I look under the fence. “Ping! Pong!”
It’s a warm day for October, and I can feel the hair at the back of my neck getting moist. Suddenly, there’s a rattle in the bushes behind me. Ping leaps on my back; Pong noses at my knees. I slump under their attack. “Come on in, guys.” I sigh but can’t help smiling as they follow me.
Inside, Dad smiles back at me and passes a bowl of oatmeal across the counter.
“They fixed the engine on the
