Zeus, Dog of Chaos Read online

  Madden goes to a locker at the back of the room—bam! Must lockers always be slammed?—and pulls out a huge, black suitcase. “C’mon, Z.”

  We then move toward Madden’s chair, but the band room is crowded, littered with cases (which I sniff: no candy. Just . . . human drool?), chairs, and these tall sticks with top hats that Madden calls music stands.

  Madden’s chair is one chair in from the right side of the room, and he and I try to squeeeeeeeeze in, but it is too tight and I spin and I pant and I spin and at last I sit and a small metal thing jabs me in the rear end, and I LEAP up with a squeal.

  “Ewwwwww,” the girl to the left of Madden says. “That dog sat on my mouthpiece!”

  The rest of the class laughs, and I wish for them to all go sit on a mouthpiece, thank you very much.

  I get up and spin again. I knock over a music stand. Some of the students around me huff and roll their eyes. Madden’s skin reddens like a sunburn again, but I must sit next to him. I know my duty.

  The student to the right of Madden shoots his hand in the air. “Mrs. Shadrick?” he shouts. “Um, we need to discuss this dog situation.”

  The tone of his voice makes me hang my head, tuck my tail. I’m just trying to do my job.

  Mrs. Shadrick looks over the edge of her glasses from the front of the room. “Oh! There’s a dog!”

  The students laugh again, and all eyes turn to me. Madden could power a small city with the heat coming off his skin. This is WAY ABOVE RADAR, as Madden would say.

  Mrs. Shadrick’s eyes dart between me and Madden and Mr. Dog Situation. “Jake, switch chairs with Madden.”

  The room gasps. It feels like a tiny tornado. I’m surprised the pieces of paper on the music stands aren’t swept up into it.

  I had no idea chairs were so meaningful.

  Mr. Dog Situation, whose name is apparently Jake, glares red laser eyes at me, at Madden, then turns them on Mrs. Shadrick. “But Madden didn’t earn this seat! This is first chair!”

  Madden shifts on his tailbone. “Mrs. Shadrick, it’s okay. I—”

  Mrs. Shadrick whips off her glasses and glares at Jake. She is not afraid of red laser eyes, and I like her because of this superpower. Her word is business.

  “Jake,” she says. “Switch chairs with Madden.”

  Jake stands. He kicks his instrument case toward the seat where Madden now sits. It slides across the dirty linoleum and hits me in the ribs. Madden’s eyes snap off the floor. He stands, too. He is a head shorter than Jake, but he locks eyes with him. It’s what dogs do when they’re ready to battle.

  “Don’t kick your case at my dog, dude,” Madden says. “Don’t ever do anything that will hurt Zeus.”

  This sudden display of pack loyalty from Madden surprises me. Loyalty is splendid, like a clean, new collar: always there, supporting you, tags announcing with a jangle whose pack is yours. I still don’t have a word for him yet. No label. Surprising, maybe?

  As we squeeze by Jake into what is apparently the first chair, Ashvi floats into the room on a ray of sunshine. My tongue lolls. I wag.

  Ashvi sits several rows ahead of us but turns and winks at me. “Hi, Zeus! Hi, Madden!”

  “Hi, Ashvi!” Madden and I sing in unison back. We are decidedly Not Subtle.

  Mrs. Shadrick taps a long stick on her music stand, and I sit at attention, because Stick! Surely she is going to throw it at any moment. I will show these students who rules at Stick!

  (Me. It’s me. I rule at Stick.)

  “Noah, will you write the counting in for ‘The Imperial March’ on the whiteboard, please?”

  A kid walks to the front of the room, a small piece of wood bobbing between his lips. He apparently likes Stick, too.

  “Without your reed, Noah. You can make out with your sax in a bit.” This sends the room into gales of laughter, even Noah, who returns to his seat and spits the slice of wood into an open suitcase. These kids love their teacher. They love her business.

  Squeak squeak, says the black marker on the white-board. Noah draws a series of blackbirds sitting on telephone wires:

  “Excellent! All right, everyone, instruments up!”

  The kids raise their instruments, some shiny and tangled and brassy, some twee and skinny and wooden, some sticklike with a puff of cotton on the end. Many kids play the same type of instrument; there are four kids who lift up the same shape of instrument as Madden’s. Madden winces when he raises his large cone—his tuba, he called it. And I can see why he cringes: the brass part that rests against his body dings the black box attached to his skin, the one that gives him medicine. Madden heaves it higher, and his heart kicks up the pace.

  Mrs. Shadrick flips a switch on a thing, and it ticks off time loudly and horribly, TICKTICKTICKTICK. Toes around the room begin to tap in the same rhythm.

  “One, two, onetwothreefour!”

  And then. And then!

  The shiny, twisted, brassy, wooden, twee, skinny, puffy instruments all begin playing. At once. Together. It is a wall of sound. It is powerful and mighty, this pack all howling together.

  The hair on my neck rises. My eyes water.

  This! This is music!

  And I know this music. It’s from one of Dave’s favorite movies, about stars and space and good and evil. They are making music! Here! Now!

  Madden’s cheeks puff and his lungs heave and his heart gallops. I smell the change in his blood all this exertion causes. It’s not dangerous—not yet. But it’s falling as fast as a raindrop from a storm cloud. This tuba obviously takes a lot of effort. How can something that takes this much effort make him happy?

  “Very good!” Mrs. Shadrick shouts as she nods along with the melody. “It builds here—keep it going!”

  The music turns, and the sound gets wilder, louder.

  “Let me FEEL the spit coming out of those trombones, guys!” Mrs. Shadrick shouts to a group of kids whose instruments slide back and forth.

  I prick my ears, try to pick out a single instrument like Mrs. Shadrick apparently can. It’s like trying to pick out a single puff of smoke from a plume.

  And it scares me, honestly—these emotions, this sound. I realize why: I can’t label it. There aren’t good enough words to describe the sound of music.

  How can I understand something if I can’t label it? It’s like trying to label Madden. Music and Madden are the same. Maddening.

  Underneath the music I hear Madden’s heartbeat: It is joyful. Clear. True.

  Underneath the music I hear the instrument Mrs. Shadrick called a flute, Ashvi’s flute, a bluebird like her voice.

  “Are you a baseball player, Eli? Because you’re swinging that mallet like a bat!” Eli, one of the drummers, swings more gently, and the drum mellows and blends more subtly.

  Drums boom and trumpets blare and flutes twee, and then Mrs. Shadrick shouts, “Madden, take the tuba lead on this part!”

  Madden shuffles, struggling under the weight of his instrument. The sound it makes is low, sad—like the sound of his heart when he looked at the photo of the hikers last night. But then his heartbeat blends with the music. Becomes the music. He smiles behind his mouthpiece, and his tuba smiles with him. He is all smiles and music and heartbeat at the moment. But his blood frowns, his sugar dropping with all this exertion.

  Jake frowns, too, his scowl masked by his mouthpiece. But I can smell his discontent—it is slick and wobbly like undercooked bacon. Jake leans too far right, and his elbow bumps Madden’s. Madden’s tuba hiccups. I suspect Jake’s word is villain.

  Madden’s part winds down, and the music swells, then silences. The last note of the song hangs in the air, humming like a nearby lightning strike.

  My heart feels suddenly empty without the booms and blares and twees.

  “Pretty good.” Mrs. Shadrick nods, and she turns off the terrible TICKTICKTICK that had disappeared under the cozy blanket of music. “And Madden. You’re really living up to that first chair. Outstanding.”

  Madden
blushes as hot as a metal bowl full of water in the summer sun. Jake, beside him, turns on his laser eyes again. Ashvi smiles.

  Outstanding?

  OUTSTANDING?

  Out: The opposite of in. Great stuff.

  Standing: The opposite of sitting. Also great stuff.

  Outstanding = great stuff. The opposite of invisible.

  We are supposed to stay under the radar, invisible, in middle school. If my dad was clear on anything, it was this: Stay as invisible as your tail, Zeus. And yet here Madden is, being outstanding.

  This will never do.

  Music did this.

  It is plain to see what I must do to keep my mission alive, to keep us invisible:

  Music must be destroyed.

  ★ 5 ★

  Eat the Birds

  I have my mission. My duty:

  Do. To take action.

  Tee. A precise fit, as in “to a tee.”

  I must take precise action to destroy music. But how?

  “Tomorrow I’ll hand out more sheet music for the holiday concert,” Mrs. Shadrick says. She waves pieces of paper in her hand, flipflipflip, and they, too, are marked with blackbirds perched on telephone wires. “Be sure and add this to your notebook.”

  Then the air crackles.

  “MRS. SHADRICK?” a voice from nowhere says. It is loud and comes from overhead—Is this the Big Dog in the Sky?! Except the Big Dog sounds more nasally than I would’ve expected. And angry. And crackly. And human.

  Mrs. Shadrick turns to a box on her wall, looks up at it. “Yes?” MRS. SHADRICK CAN HEAR THE BIG DOG, TOO.

  “MADDEN MALONE IS IN THERE, YES?” This voice—it has to be the Big Dog. The alpha. She knows exactly where Madden is. Madden warms next to me at the mention of his name, spoken from above.

  “Yes.”

  The air sizzles. “HE NEEDS TO RIDE THE BUS HOME TODAY.” And then the air crackles silent, taking the Big Dog with it.

  Mrs. Shadrick peers over her glasses at Madden. “Got that?”

  Madden nods, heat waves rising off his skin. “Yeah.”

  The demon bell screeches, and kids stumble and shuffle to put their instruments back in their cases, back in their lockers. Blam! Squeak! Click click click!

  Madden waits, though, until most of them are gone. His eyes slide between me and the huge black case that holds his tuba. His sigh frowns.

  I know what those slidy eyes, those frowny sighs mean: he’s sizing up the situation. Madden can’t handle both his tuba and me on this bus. We’re both bulk.

  My eyes get slidy, too, and I stare down the tuba case. It’s you or me, tuba.

  The tuba makes music with Madden’s smile and heart.

  And me? So far, I haven’t even needed to alert Madden about his sugary blood. It’s swayed and swooned a bit, particularly when he played his tuba, but it hasn’t yet been dangerous.

  Madden can’t manage us both.

  Will he choose me?

  HE CHOSE ME!

  I look at that smug, shiny tuba one last time. Take THAT, tuba! The tuba isn’t petty, though; it remains silent. I whip my tail at it.

  The bus chugs in the parking lot, spewing black smoke from its tail end like a dragon with gas. The doors swing open—screeeee!—and I can’t help it: I pull backward a bit because of the green cloud of smell that wafts from inside. Salami and feet and body and soggy rubber.

  Madden pops my leash. “C’mon, Z!” he hisses through clenched teeth, his eyes flicking to the line of kids behind us, waiting to get on the bus.

  The steps are steep and slick. Madden and I climb them, and when I round the corner at the top of the stairs, the whole bus wails, “Awwwwwww!” It is a collective human exhale, full of heartbeats and smiling eyes. I lift my chin; I am aware that this human sound is made only around canines like me.

  “Wait, is that your dog, dude?”

  “He’s so cuuuuuute!”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Maaaaaad-deeeeeen! Did hims bring his pubby dog to school ’cause hims was lonely?”

  “Jake, shut up.”

  Madden ignores them, and he smiles oddly, like a plastic doll. Plastic blood, plastic smile. His label surely isn’t plastic, is it?

  I follow Madden down the narrow aisle. He slumps into a squishy-hard green bench, and I curl up under his feet, beneath the seat in front of him. There’s something black and sticky on the floor that pulls at my fur, and if they blame me for that puddle over there I will be upset.

  The bus doors heesh closed, and the machine leaps forward with a growl. It is hot in here, steamy, like I imagine an overly full belly, and it bakes all the smells together—body and feet and sweat—into one huge middle schooler pie. I pant, because breathing through my nose is out of the question right now. I pant harder.

  Riding a bus is nothing like the whowantstogoforaride experience of a car. Whowantstogoforaride is open and wild and ripe with eating wind and bugs. Riding the bus is sticky and cramped, and I wouldn’t want to eat ANYthing in here.

  Madden leans his head against the cool glass and zones out. The bus starts and stops and starts and stops, and I think about my mission to destroy music and how exactly I can do that. A piece of paper folded into a triangle sails through the air—whoosh!—and skids to a halt under a seat three benches away.

  Paper!

  Music somehow came from all those birds sitting on wires, all those marks printed on the sheets of paper Mrs. Shadrick held. If I destroy the paper, if I eat those birds, the students can’t play the songs.

  I smile. My tongue lolls out of the side of my mouth. I can practically taste the task now:

  Eat the birds.

  ★ 6 ★

  Anger Smells Like Buffalo Chicken Wings

  When we get to Madden’s house, the scene in the driveway terrifies me: the mouth of a truck is wide open, and the lieutenant is bent inside it, hanging over its metal teeth. I can only see her legs, her toes barely touching the ground. The truck is gobbling the lieutenant from the waist up! The truck clangs and clatters while chewing her. I stop short, feel the hackles of my fur stand along my spine. I low-growl.

  Madden seems unfazed that this truck is eating his mother alive.

  The lieutenant straightens. She has the car’s digestive juices on her face, and she swipes them, leaving a black smear across her cheek. “Sorry I couldn’t grab you from school. Stupid truck broke down again.”

  Madden pauses like he wants to say something, and I can practically taste his words hanging in the air like a hovering treat: It’s okay. But he doesn’t say it. I guess he doesn’t really feel like it is okay.

  The lieutenant lifts her chin at a metal box splayed open on the driveway. “Hand me a socket wrench?”

  Madden and I cross to the metal box. Inside are rows of shiny metal things, things that look a bit like band instruments and their buttons. Tools. Madden pauses again.

  The lieutenant smiles with half her face. “If I said hand me a bass sax, you’d know it.”

  Madden smiles with the other half of his face. If they’d put their faces together, they’d have a whole smile. “Well, yeah. They’re kinda hard to miss. It is one huge saxophone. Best for—”

  “How did Zeus do today?” The lieutenant lifts her chin at me next, just like she did at the tools in this box. She knows I’m a tool.

  A whiff of anger—a fiery scent, a blend of sweat and heat like the smell of buffalo chicken wings—rises in Madden at being interrupted. “Fine, I guess. He didn’t do anything except get in the way. Are we sure he knows what he’s supposed to be doing for me?”

  The lieutenant’s jaw tightens. “I’ve seen what dogs can do on the job, Madden.” Her scent, which is usually as neutral as paper, is suddenly as salty as the ocean. “I’ve seen dogs like Zeus save lives. I once saw a German shepherd like Z sniff out a C-4 explosive in a parked car in the middle of Ghazni. That dog probably saved a dozen lives that day.” She pauses there, and her scent is now a confusing mix of emotion
s: pain and happiness, like running too fast and suddenly finding yourself too far from home.

  It’s hard to believe her label is reassigned.

  “Dogs are better than tech because things with a heartbeat want to keep hearts beating.” She shrugs, turns back to the truck, and resumes banging it with her wrench.

  “Most things with a heartbeat,” Madden mutters. He studies the tips of his sneakers, which I understand, because they smell very interesting.

  “What’s that?” the lieutenant says, straightening.

  “I have a CGM,” he says, not repeating himself. “It does the same thing.”

  The lieutenant stoops next to me, and I can tell that while she is good at staring people down, she is less good at hugging people with her eyes. She scratches my neck, or, well, tries to. Her odd grooming habit of gnawing on her fingernails makes her ineffective in the scratching department.

  “This dog can detect a drop in your blood sugar twenty minutes faster than that glucose monitor can,” she says. “Give me a heartbeat any day over that tech of yours.”

  The way she says it—that tech of yours—makes the scent of buffalo chicken wings rise in Madden again. She’s odd, the lieutenant. She said herself that she was unsure about having a dog, that having a dog meant she was pinned to one place. Why is she arguing for me now? And why is she calling me “a heartbeat”? Perhaps these confusing things contributed to her being reassigned.

  “I’m going to get a snack,” Madden says, turning on the toe of his interesting-smelling sneaker.

  “What kind?” the lieutenant asks, straightening. “When did you last test? Low carb, okay? And remember to bolus. You’ve got to stay ahead of your blood sugar with your meds.”

  Now it is Madden’s turn to low-growl. I know that should put me on guard, my human grumbling like that, but it makes me grin instead, watching this young pup stand up to the pack leader. “I got it, Mom. Geez!”

  The lieutenant half sighs, half grumbles. “Don’t do that, Mad. I get to worry. I believe I’ve earned the right to worry.” I’m confused by that, because earn means get treats. Why would anyone want to earn worry?