Zeus, Dog of Chaos Read online

  “She told them to stay away, Zeus,” he whispers, more to the photograph than to me. His eyes are suddenly glassy. “Mom told Nana and PopPop that we needed ‘time to get to know each other again.’” The way he says this, I picture him doing that thing where he wiggles two fingers on each hand, but he doesn’t do it. He’s too tired, too recently washed ashore.

  “Man, they love music, Zeus. Nana and PopPop. Pops was in a band just for fun. Played all sorts of gigs, like weddings and bar mitzvahs. He used to take me along to help. And Nana played this silly green ukulele all the time.” He chuckles, but it’s a sad laugh. “She’s an awful musician, but she loves music more than anyone I know. Sings all the time. If you can call it singing. Their house was full of music, Z. Not quiet like here.”

  He’s silent a bit, then glances at me. “That could’ve been another coincidence, you know. Your nudging. That wasn’t necessarily an alert.” He tucks the photo under his pillow, pulls the blanket over his head, and immediately falls into a deep sleep.

  Coincidence? Hmph! I happen to know that coincidence is a fancy human word for lucky, and there’s nothing lucky about my training.

  I circle, I spin, I pace, until at last Madden smells right. He’s safely anchored ashore. And he has no idea how close he was to getting pulled out to sea.

  I hop back onto Madden’s bed.

  I take all the pillows and stretch out my legs fully, shoving Madden way over to one side, almost dropping him off the side of the bed. Almost, but not quite.

  Not quite. As maddening as he is, I won’t let him drop.

  ★ 9 ★

  Operation Destroy Music Is a Success

  A middle school cafeteria contains every human smell there is: Food, all kinds. Cleaning products. Bodies. Soap and deodorant. Burps and farts. Feet. And most important: Madden’s blood. Madden’s medicine.

  It is an assault on my nose, all these smells at once. I can only lie at Madden’s feet and pant, tasting all of it. Being able to taste smells is usually awesome, but not here. I smack my jaws and keep panting.

  Bits of food rain down around me, because middle schoolers apparently have bad aim and miss their mouths a lot. If they had a big jaw like me, that wouldn’t be a problem. I never miss a bite of kibble. Never.

  A sliver of fried potato falls directly on my paw. I am not supposed to eat in my vest, and the lieutenant said I couldn’t eat human food. It would be disobedient, but it is right there. I slide my eyes around: nothing but feet, feet, feet, noise, noise, noise. My tongue darts from my mouth and slurp! Bye, potato. Ah, human food.

  Disobedience tastes salty and greasy.

  Madden sneaks his hand to the black box under his shirt and gives himself two pumps of medicine. He doesn’t even look when he does it. He is not supposed to give himself his medicine this way. He is supposed to test the level of his blood sugar first with a finger staple, and then calculate a proper dosage of medicine from there. But that is obvious, and it takes a few minutes. I close my eyes and try to sort through the scents, try to focus on just those two smells: blood and medicine. He is in range. He is okay.

  We stand. “No shake, Zeus,” Madden commands. I know he tells me this so I won’t shimmy after a long time sitting and fling my fur all over this food cave.

  Dude, I say. These people eat ketchup on pizza. You really think they’ll notice a tiny bit of fur?

  In Language Arts, we study a poem written by a woman named Emily about her cat:

  She sights a Bird—she chuckles—

  She flattens—then she crawls—

  She runs without the look of feet—

  Her eyes increase to Balls—

  I huff-puff loudly. Runs without the look of feet? Who looks at their feet when they run? No one, that’s who, Emily. Hmmph. Cats. They get all the glory.

  And then: band!

  It is time to keep Madden from being outstanding.

  We walk into the room, and it smells like spit and oil and the musty curves of old brassy instruments. The ingredients for music.

  An eighth-grade trumpet player named Jesus points a mouthpiece at us and says, “Hi, Madden. Hey, Zeus!” Then he flips the mouthpiece between his fingers and points it at himself: “‘Hey, Zeus’ from Jesus—get it? Ha!”

  Oh, I understand. He says my name with a hey, so our names sound the same. Human humor. I love him—Jesus. I wag to let him know.

  The students get settled: Scrape! Bang! Blam! Tweet!

  I scan the busy room: music stands and black instrument suitcases and chairs and a large podium at the front and a desk off to the side and aha! There!

  I can smell it from here: a hot, inky stack of papers sitting on the corner of Mrs. Shadrick’s desk, all with birds on them. Target acquired.

  Mrs. S writes something on the whiteboard, squeak squeak, while the kids settle like leaves beneath a tree. The symbols she draws today aren’t birds. They’re fat circles, like lazy bumblebees humming over the wires:

  Music is all about the birds and the bees, I suppose.

  Mrs. S turns, rubs the palms of her hands together, and smirks.

  “Pop quiz! We’re playing F-minor scales today, kids.”

  “Nooooooo!”

  “Aw man!”

  “Crap. The one scale I didn’t practice.”

  Mrs. S cracks her knuckles and tries to look like a villain, but I can tell she’s not really one. “Who wants to begin? Ashvi?”

  My tail thumps at the mention of her name. Ashvi lifts her flute to her bottom lip. Her music flitters forth, and this thing that she plays, the F scale? It somehow reminds me of a skeleton. It is the bones of music. I picture the bones waking, stretching, and tiptoeing up a flight of stairs. The skeleton then pivots and skips lightly back down the steps to where it started.

  It is lovely, her Ashvi music. I wish it weren’t lovely, but it is: light and flittery and swoopy. It’s much easier to destroy something that’s dark and greasy and heavy instead of something as splendid as music.

  Ashvi finishes her scales. Her last note hovers above us like a hummingbird. Madden glows yellowy soft like a dandelion.

  Then a rumbling begins, and my first thought is, Earthquake! A green cloud of foot stink rises from the floor. I realize: the students are stomping their feet. And then I realize: this is like applause, like tail-wagging, only these humans can’t use their hands because they’re all holding instruments. They’re stomping their feet instead. And even though the stink of this stomping makes my eyes water, it’s ingenious, and I smile because sometimes humans are really smart, and my tail wags, and I tell them, I love you, humans!

  Mrs. S smiles. “That was excellent, Ashvi. Go grab a snack out of the treasure chest for that one.”

  Ashvi lowers her instrument into her case, hops up, and crosses to a box at the front of the room. “Twizzlers—YES!” she mutters.

  The students continue playing the F scales: a trumpet here (after emptying the spit valve—practical but gooey), a trombone there (like watching spit rain. I wonder if perhaps music comes from saliva).

  Jake plays his scales. Mrs. S says he “nailed it,” and Jake leans over and mutters to Madden, “Yeah, I did.”

  They’re all distracted with their bumblebee notes and their stomping feet and their revenge.

  Time for Operation Eat Sheet. (Sheet music, that is.)

  I drag my leash over to Mrs. S’s desk, scan the room. No one heard that. I’m sure of it.

  I paw the stack of paper to the floor. No one saw that. I’m sure of it.

  I chew.

  My heart races. I am saving Madden from certain destruction!

  Paper tastes like dry leaves, but my teeth sink into the stack, and I chew, chew, chew as fast as I can before anyone can spot me. My saliva is magic, too, it seems, because the stiff paper loosens and becomes a gooey, inky mush. Chewing is the most satisfying thing there is—jaw working, saliva flowing . . . I’m smiling and chewing, chewing and smiling.

  I gag a bit—kak. Too much p
aper.

  My gaze locks with Ashvi’s.

  Her coppery eyes widen. Zeus, no! she mouths. Shakes her head.

  I curl. Tuck my tail. Ashvi’s eyes dart toward the garbage can, and I can tell she’s trying to puzzle out how to throw away the paper I’m chewing without anyone else seeing us.

  Ah, the evidence! I try to hide the mush I’ve created by lying on top of it. There! They won’t notice.

  A hand slices the air like a bolt of lightning.

  Jake’s hand.

  “Mrs. Shadrick?” he shouts above the saxophone now playing. “Look at Zeus!”

  He turns his lightning bolt hand toward me, his pointy finger zapping me all the way across the room.

  The saxophone stops playing.

  The music screeches to a halt.

  All eyes turn on me.

  There is complete silence.

  Silence?

  I’ve done it!

  Operation Destroy Music is a success.

  ★ 10 ★

  Take That, Tuba

  The look Mrs. Shadrick turns on me makes me think of canned dog food: Flat. Bland. Lumpy. No bite.

  Her shoulders droop, and I can see the weight she carries on them: teaching all these kids all these instruments, all these notes, all this music. But then she sighs, shrugs, and she’s apparently fine managing that weight. She is business, and she is awesome. I hate that I have to destroy something she is so good at. “I’ll just make more copies of our new sheet music tonight. Zeus, take your seat.”

  Business. She talks to me like any of her other pupils, and for that, I am grateful. I weave back through the maze of chairs and music stands, but I tuck my tail farther and tighter as I go. The other pupils stare at me, some full of pity, some full of displeasure, and all these eyes on me? It feels like getting poked with the jabby ends of a hundred broomsticks. The glare that pokes the hardest is Ashvi’s. Even from across the room, I can smell her disappointment.

  I finally reach Madden’s chair. The look he gives me is angry, like a bee sting. You’re welcome, I say, trying to lighten things up. I wink at him through all this silence. Now we can get back to being invisible. Madden doesn’t smile.

  “Okay, then. Let’s practice ‘Feliz Navidad’ next,” Mrs. S says. The kids fan through the pages in their notebooks, raise their instruments, and breathe.

  A song skips and bounces out of each instrument.

  I blink.

  I cock my head.

  They can still make music!

  And it’s as glorious as running wild and fast and free as the wind.

  This confuses me. How can I destroy the wind?

  I realize my folly: I didn’t destroy all the sheet music. Each pupil’s notebook is filled with sheets, all printed with telephone wires and blackbirds. I can’t chew that much paper! The only thing I’ve seen chew that much paper is the terrible copy machine in the front office.

  The song bounds and hops around the room like the cats we studied, twitching their whiskers, shimmying their tails. Somehow, the kids look at those pieces of paper and spin the markings into music. Some kind of magic must be involved in that, like dust motes dancing in slanting sunlight, or butterfly wing powder. The students read those blackbirds, hooked and hanging, and then blow into shiny horns, and pound on loud drums, and twee into thin flutes, and altogether it braids rainbows and spins starlight.

  I shake my head, jangle my tags. Music is too powerful to label. That scares me. Labels help me understand things, and to understand a thing is to love it.

  That’s why I haven’t yet shouted, I love you! to Madden. I can’t label him. I don’t understand him.

  Madden smiles and bounces behind his instrument, beaming like light, his fiery anger forgotten. His blood is wild: up and down, down and up. Not dangerous—not yet—but it’s practically dancing, led by the strain of playing music. Madden is anything but invisible right now. Mrs. S shouts, “Nice job, tubas! Keep it up!”

  The box over Mrs. Shadrick’s head crackles in the middle of the song, and the voice—the Big Dog in the Sky—shouts, “MRS. SHADRICK, MADDEN NEEDS TO TAKE THE BUS AGAIN TODAY.”

  Madden’s gaze bounces in my direction, and I can feel him having to make the choice again between the tuba and me.

  And my mission failed. Taking out sheet music wasn’t the wisest tactic. There must be a better maneuver, another way to destroy their song. And it must be destroyed; it is too powerful. And it is not good for Madden; I agree with the lieutenant on that. She may have been reassigned, but she is correct that the tuba is a big strain on Madden and his blood. Feeling my racing heart, my muscles twitching to the rhythm, my jangling tags, I am more convinced than ever: I must eliminate music.

  He chose me again!

  Take that, tuba.

  I’ve decided to name Madden’s brassy, twisted tuba Beef, because it reminds me so much of the brassy, twisted Beef I went to school with. Madden leaves Beef behind, and I follow him to the bus. I curl up under the plastic seat in front of Madden.

  Herky-jerky, start-and-stop, this bus ride. We wind and turn and bump and it feels like my stomach can’t keep up with the rest of me.

  Even from under the seat, I can smell Madden’s house—my house?—approaching, bleachy and strong. I stand, follow Madden down the aisle, off the bus, onto the cold sidewalk.

  “Hey, you!”

  It’s a voice from the bus. Madden and I turn. A jumble of boys hangs out of various windows overhead. Jake from band is one of them. I don’t know why he called Madden you. He knows his name.

  “You. Is that a seeing-eye dog? Are you blind?”

  Madden’s mood darkens, turns spicy like a huff of pepper.

  “Yes,” Madden says calmly. “In fact, I can’t even see what finger I’m holding up.”

  Madden shows the boys one of his fingers.

  The bus explodes with a mixture of laughter, gasps, shoving, “Duuuuudes,” and a few threats of “You’re gonna be in so much trouble!” and “Bro, your mom is right there.” The bus drives away in a blur of noise.

  That is one powerful finger.

  Someone clears their throat behind us.

  The lieutenant!

  Madden swirls about. He’s embarrassed now, like he got caught sneaking extra treats. This moment feels charged, our hair practically standing on end, just before the lightning.

  But instead of her being angry like Madden expects, a small grin blooms on the lieutenant’s face. Her eyebrows lift. “Do you hang out with that boy? Jake?”

  Madden’s mood smells suddenly dry and acrid, like moldy bread. “Not really. We’re in band together.”

  “Yeah? He’s my superior’s son.”

  Madden looks and sounds like he is choking on a chicken bone—kak! “Really? Your boss is Jake’s dad?”

  “My superior officer, yes. They seem a lot alike. So how was your day? Is Zeus helping?”

  Ah, here we go. Here’s where he brags about me at last. How Ashvi talked to Madden for two whole minutes in the hall today, thanks to me shooting her my hello, there eyes. How I managed to halt the music momentarily, creating a hollow, echoing silence. How I woke him in the middle of the night and saved him from washing into the inky black sea.

  But Madden is maddening.

  “Nah, not really.”

  We go inside, Madden’s mom asking about things like carbs and insulin and bolus. Madden mutters, sputters, heads upstairs, slams a door, and starts studying for a test. I follow. I remember tests from my service dog training, so I don’t interrupt. I sit in a corner and pull the white, plasticky fluff out of a chew toy. It looks like delicious cotton candy, but it tastes dry and fake.

  It tastes maddening.

  ★ 11 ★

  Not Plastic

  Strict.

  I like this human label, and not just for the obvious reason that it sounds a lot like stick. (Stick!) No, strict is a short leash—strict keeps you focused. It is a command like sit or stay, a pinched treat held juuuuuust
above your wet nose saying, Look, Zeus! Middle school schedules are strict. The horrible bells shriek a command: Change classes now! And the students obey. They follow this strict schedule for six classes every day.

  But today! There was a surprise awaiting us in Language Arts: a colorful, plastic jar on each desktop. When the students saw them, their moods grew lighter, fuzzier, sunnier, and they became a pile of shoving, warm, roly-poly puppies.

  Now, I like surprises as much as the next dog, which is to say: they are awful and I hate them. Surprises usually involve noise and fire and too-rapid heartbeats. Honestly, why do anything out of the ordinary? But seeing Madden’s mood shift from oniony green weed to sunny yellow dandelion makes me smile.

  “Nothing says Shakespeare like bubbles, kids!” the teacher, Mr. Nance, announces. “Open your books to page eighty-six. Open your bubble juice—is it called juice? No one’s been able to tell me all day. Anyway, I read, you blow. GO!”

  And then Mr. Nance, sporting a bow tie and a pair of glasses, hops about the room and recites a poem from memory: “‘Double, double, toil and trouble. Fire burn and cauldron bubble!’”

  And the kids take out their tiny plastic sticks and blow. They breathe out, exhale, and once again, their human breath creates magic.

  Orbs! Shiny, clear, plastic orbs, trembling and floating and spinning. Like the orbs that hang in Madden’s room. Like, like . . . music notes. Madden calls them bubbles.

  The bubbles drift and shift, round rainbows, all sheen and spin, and each one hovers there, taunting me, tempting me like slow-motion tennis balls. Lovely and confounding, just like music. Drat those music notes, always besting me!

  Beautiful and almost invisible—my favorite quality in a thing.

  My every hair prickles.

  A shiver runs down my spine.

  My teeth itch.

  I whimper a bit.

  And then I can’t stand it anymore.

  I leap.