heem treat, yes?” She asks me, probably because I’m wearing my uniform, complete with our Noble Dog Walking paw print logo across the shirt pocket.
“Um, sure.”
“I’m meesing my own Jack Russell from when I was leetle girl.” She gives him a small milk bone. “Cheese flavour,” she tells him and then holds a bigger one out for Pong. “Bacon.”
Ping flips to his back and she strokes his belly.
Meanwhile, I stuff all the fish back into the bag.
“Eez good you took down those ugly feesh. They block my view and I can’t see dee keedies when I’m doing crossing.”
Mistake number three of the day goes to Madame X for thinking these wooden blanks are actually the painted ones used to decorate the fence around our kindergarten play area. Yes, I think it’s fair to count adults’ mistakes, too. They’re always quick to point out kids’ mistakes, after all.
I open my mouth to tell her these are fish blanks, not the painted ones from our school fence. At that moment a few notes of Beethoven’s Fifth plays from Renée’s backpack.
She removes her cell from a side pocket and checks the screen. “It’s Attila.” She frowns as she reads. “He’s panicking. He borrowed one of the shop cars to deliver the fish, but when he came home, they were gone.”
Well, okay then, check Madame X’s whoopsie. We clearly made the bigger mistake; let’s call ours mistake number three of the day. Struggling to do moody Attila a favour ’cause we thought he forgot his community commitment, we underestimated him. Attila just figured out an easier way.
DAY ONE, MISTAKE FOUR
Madame X continues walking toward Brant Hills, while Renée and the dogs and I scuttle awkwardly in the other direction toward Bruce T. Lindley’s parking lot to meet Attila.
He’s waiting for us by the time we get there. Tall, with a black, pointy mohawk and heavy gorilla arms, he gives no wave or hello, just a grunt: “Give me those.” He grabs the handle and drags the wagon toward the front door.
“We need to return Reuven’s wagon,” Renée calls brightly as we follow behind. She’s one-third his size and acts three times as cheerful.
“Wait out here! They” — Attila points down at the dogs — “can’t come in.”
As he pulls the wagon up the front steps, bump, bump, bump, the duffle bag tips and spills again. Attila curses, and as he collects the fish, mutters something that sounds like, “Hate, hate, hate.”
We scramble to help him, I don’t know why. When we’re finished, he grumbles, “Stupid fish.”
Then he disappears into the school for what seems like hours.
“Hope they don’t notice the teeth marks on the shark,” Renée says.
“The kid that gets it will,” I answer. “But maybe they’ll like the teeth marks.”
Finally, Attila comes back outside, returning Reuven’s empty wagon to us. He grumbles again, nothing that sounds like a thank you, then drives off in the old, yellow Saturn they’ve been working on in shop class.
I can’t help shaking my head. “Well, that was pleasant.”
Renée frowns. “Attila’s got a lot on his mind.”
“What? Did he get a new video game?” I can never understand why Renée sticks up for Attila. He’s not very nice to her.
“No! He has a deadline to apply for Mohawk College. Or Dad says he’ll send him to military college. And he needs a portfolio.”
“Uh-huh.” We start back to Reuven’s house with the wagon and dogs. “You know, his art is brilliant. Too bad it’s always spray-painted on a wall.”
“Yeah, well so is Banksy’s.” Renée told me about Banksy before. He’s a British street artist famous for his graffiti and, yes, it’s very cool. But the art seems a bit angry, too. Just like Attila.
“Bet Banksy never got into a college with it.”
“So you get Attila’s problem. Having to jig saw those fish pieces for the Stream of Dreams projects took all of his spare time, too.”
Actually, I understand her family’s problem. Renée tells me her parents always fight about Attila. While their dad wants to send him away, his mom thinks he’s gifted and misunderstood.
Gifted and grumpy, I think.
As we get to Reuven’s house, I check the outside for surveillance cameras. None. Good. We park the wagon. Then we jog with the dogs down a paved shortcut. They gallop ahead, loving the extra action.
The shortcut continues through three streets and lands us across the road from our school, Brant Hills.
There, Madame X waves her stop sign at cars to help some little kids and their mom get to the other side. And that’s when I realize something’s wrong.
The mom takes the kids in through the kindergarten play area and I watch as they start playing on some trikes behind the wire fence.
“Hey,” I tell Renée, “I can see the kindergarteners.”
“You’re right. Oh my gosh. The fish are missing from the fence!”
“I em so happy you took dem down,” Madame X says as she walks us to the other side. She points to the play area. “Look at those cute keedies.” She smiles as a little boy waves a mini hockey stick at a girl on a trike.
“But the fish were colourful and happy looking,” Renée says. “Art-ee-fish-ful,” Madame X says. She blows into her whistle sharply. “Leetle boy, stop that! You don’t heet people with hockey stick.”
He doesn’t listen to Madame X, but the duty teacher hears her and breaks the two kids up.
Renée and I don’t have time to investigate the missing fish right now. We need to get Ping and Pong home, and I still want to change out of my Noble Dog Walking uniform before we go to school.
More recycling bins and a mattress and a sofa slow us down as the dogs continue to investigate everything on the way back toward the Bennetts’ house.
At one curbside, a plastic toy kitchen set with a stove and fridge and cupboards stops me. “Aww. I used to have one of these!” I turn the knobs on the stove just because, and the little round elements turn red. “No!” I push Pong away when he lifts up his long back leg.
We keep walking. The hundred-year-old jogger passes us, just barely. The dogs bark. Renée calls, “Good morning.”
He touches his cap. We hang back to give him time to clear some distance.
“I don’t get it,” Renée says. “Why does he wear that jacket with his jogging shorts?”
“To carry his pacemaker?” I suggest.
“Oh, he’s not that old. He’s
