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You know, it’s amazing how fast you get used to living in a funeral home. I mean, it can be a little weird. For example, where most basements have, like, bowling trophies in old cardboard boxes and Christmas decorations in big plastic bins, our basement has freezer drawers and floor drains and other stuff you don’t want to think too hard about. And then there’s the attack peacock and the endless work in the fancy garden that I’m thinking we could pave for extra parking. But if I avoid the part of the house with the shining wood and the stained glass and the crying people, and if I don’t have
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If you haven’t gathered this by now, Mom likes her humor like her coffee: black. Like, espresso black.
I sound like a robot but it’s on purpose. If you sound enough like a robot, people don’t tell you details about why they’re calling a funeral home.
Agate and I have been talking through the What When Where Why How of our message for a couple of weeks without getting anywhere really, but suddenly I’m stuck in that four-minute world and I don’t even have a question for her.
Later I figure out that Agate is actually in pretty good shape, she just has that kind of flush that makes redheads look like they are developing heatstroke—but just then I don’t know that and I think Agate might die. She doesn’t die.
but before I can, my dad comes out the back door with a pitcher of dead-people punch and a weird expression on his face. Like a cross between oh wow and no way. It makes a crooked wrinkle between his eyebrows.
My dad shoots me a look. I try sending him a message with my face: No, she doesn’t know, and don’t you dare tell her. But it’s like how Agate knows the runt is my favorite. She gets it and I don’t have to tell her.
His needle teeth prick at my hand, and he slobbers on me. Aww, man. I wasn’t going to get attached, but the truth is I am in love even before the puppy, belly up in my arm, lets loose a little fountain of pee to claim me. “Oh boy,” says Mom. And that’s how I get a puppy. I name him Hercules, son of Todd.
My first night with Hercules is awful. We think about training him to sleep in a dog crate, but a) we don’t have a dog crate, and b) the thought of putting him in a tiny space where he’s scared and can’t get out is just way more than I can handle.
She does not mean “couch” the way a normal human would mean “couch”: It’s also what funeral directors call the padded inside lining of a casket. They are removable. (It’s best not to ask why.)
It’s not a terrible dog bed if you stop yourself from thinking about it too hard, and I have a lot of practice with that. Herc seems happy with it—or at least, he immediately starts destroying it with his needle-sharp puppy teeth.
I feel different, like the world is different, like my body is different, like I’m on a secret annoying side-quest in a video game called Comfort Your Puppy and the art is different and the rules about motion and stuff are a little off. “I think my actual brain is throbbing.” “You’re just tired.” I am. For sure I am. But also, it’s my job to take care of Hercules and what if I can’t? He’s so little. What if I can’t take care of him?
She looks worse than I feel—and I’m so tired I can taste color.
And when I wake up, I discover that puppy ears are like the silky edges on baby blankets, and—well, there’s just no looking back after that.
Of course, by the end of that week I’m an absolute zombie, but both my parents are happy to recount tales of Screamy, Colicky Baby Simon and tell me that it will all be worth it as a sacrifice for love.
And then there is the pee. Herc has no idea what to do with pee. I mean, besides let it out, obviously. He’s got that down. Like, a couple times an hour he’s got that down. But he has no idea where. I learn to watch him till he gets this Certain Little Look in his eye, at which point I have to stuff him under one arm like a football and rush him to the backyard. If he manages to “do his business” outside I go dancey-happy for him, saying, “Good business!” over and over. I get the impression he has no idea what he’s done right, but he’s happy I’m happy.
It’s like…you know how you feel about the puppies in the Super Bowl commercials? It’s like that. Even more.
Behold, the confidence of a man who lives in a town with no Google. Who knows how long squirrels live? No one. Who knows the technical definition of blasphemy? My dad.
Dad is serious about this religious stuff, but he doesn’t take it seriously. Hardly ever.
She sounds like a principal telling us we should all just think about our behavior.
This is important because Catholics believe that conse-crated altar bread—the Host—is actually turned into the body of Christ. Which is why we keep it in a super holy gold-plated (but evidently not squirrel-proof) cabinet.
“That squirrel is now thirty percent Jesus by volume,” says Mom. “It’s our new god.”
My mom and dad always say that they have an agreement: They make life-and-death decisions together, but Mom gets to make the death decisions all on her own. Dad goes.
Though, apparently, it helps if the tabernacle is squirrel-proof.
You know…I wonder if I’m ever just going to be normal, without anyone celebrating it, the way I hope someday my puppy will pee and I won’t have to wiggle around saying, “Good business.” Good tweenager, Simon, Mom’s face says as she beams at me. It’s almost like nothing happened to me at all.
“Oooh, bad sign,” I say. “When dog books get a sticker, it’s because something awful happens to the dog.”
“Oh man, Sy,” says Kev. “This hound is going down.”
“Why,” Kevin asks him, baby-voiced, “why would any author want to hurt you and make us cry, huh? Herc, huh? Why would they be so mean to puppies, boy, why?” “Do you want to trade books? Mine’s about kids in prison.” “Bet that’s got a sticker, too.” Kev looks disgusted—or as disgusted as a person can be when being licked by an ultra cute puppy.
There are certain things about puppy training you learn the hard way.
I am not training Herc for his future service-dogging. I mean, it’s all I can do just to teach him that he should do his business outside. But Agate has explained that he is in the middle of his “fear imprint stage.” That’s when puppies leave their den and their mother shows them what things in the world are safe and what things are scary. If they see something and get scared of it, they might be scared of it for life. But if they don’t see it, later they might not be able to trust that it’s safe. My job is just to be Herc’s mom and stick close and keep him happy and show him as many of the
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But just then I realize that even though I hang out with Kevin, and I hang out with Agate, I don’t hang out with Kevin and Agate. I’m just myself with both of them, but I’m not sure it’s the same self. I’m not sure how to be.
The space alien thing doesn’t seem too weird when I’m with Agate, out between the emu meadow and the giant telescope. But here and now, it is weird. “I want to hear the duck thing,” Kevin says. “Were you heading to Slaughter?” I ask Agate, inter-rupting on purpose because I know the duck thing is going to be weirder than Kevin is counting on, and I want my friends to be friends. Also: “Heading to Slaughter” sounds wrong. It’s so ridiculous that we live in such a teeny town that we’re not allowed to change the extremely inappropriate name of our funeral home because people are used to it. On
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“Do you want to know the disgusting things I know about pepperoni?” “Man, don’t ruin pepperoni for us!” exclaims Kev. I guess now we’re an us. We—all of us—head for Slaughter. That’s good. I think that’s good.
Agate looks at me, big-eyed, and nods her head so fast that she vibrates, like a plump red-headed hummingbird. I know what she’s thinking: Behold, the signal maker for our fake alien message!
I am suddenly not sure I want to do this. I’m not even sure I want to see the rest of the movie. Hercules wakes up, and it’s like someone flipped a switch. He’s up and zooming, tearing in circles around the couch and coffee table and tangling all our legs. Then he slows like someone dropped him into a lower gear and starts heading for the back of the couch again: a danger sign. An escape hatch.
I click my tongue at Herc and leave my two friends sitting on the couch with the popcorn, watching Agate’s SETI-gets-a-message plan turn into my personal nightmare on my family’s flat-screen TV.
Okay. I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me that faking a message from space aliens would get all kinds of bad attention. Maybe I’m like an old-school computer and I only have one slot labeled bad attention in my brain, which was already filled. But, whatever. Now that the switch is flipped, my brain is going six directions at once about Agate’s fake message project. What if we fake a message and we get swarms of media and crowds of people talking about God in Grin And Bear It? What if we don’t fake a message and Kevin’s mom doesn’t get her funding and all the junior scientists at the Hello
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She keeps saying things like “Math is the universal language!” and “Microwaves are perfect!” She dimples and she glows, and I don’t want to crush that. I like having friends again. I don’t want these ones to get hurt. So, I pull the Simon Says special. I don’t decide—I hide.
“Usually you shouldn’t interact with service dogs, because it distracts them from their work,” says Agate, in her expert voice, with her heel-drum. “But Hercules is being socialized, not trained, so it is okay to pet him so he learns that people aren’t scary.” Except that people are kind of scary. Or at least, Herc seems to think so.
In a single week I go from being the new kid who lives with dead people to the new kid who brings a puppy to school. People still don’t know what team to put me on, but they like puppies, so: major upgrade. Maybe that’s why school seems so different all of a sudden. I don’t know. Hercules is growing fast, but he’s still super small. When I try to imagine what his world looks like, it looks bigger.
But it’s like my body remembers even though my head forgets. ’Cause all of a sudden I’m not sleeping so good, and loud sounds are like needles heading for my eyes—they just totally freak me.
A note from her could say anything.
At the word “microwave” my heart fires up at maximum power and starts to throw off sparks.
I still haven’t decided what to say to Agate. Agate being Agate, I’m probably not going to get to ease into it.
Nevertheless, I can’t say I’ve thought about goats much. Now I think about goats.
What’s obviously happening is that the goats are getting sheared. Over by the barn Agate’s mom—whose first name is Pearl—has one clamped between her knees and is going at it with huge electric clippers. It is bleating. Baa-ing? Anyway, it’s making a noise like it’s getting murdered and finds getting murdered kind of annoying. She finishes and lets it go. It wobbles up and then shoots off, weirdly skinny and totally outraged, like a cat that’s just been dunked in a water bucket.
“But that’s not fair,” says Coral. “Fair exists only in baseball,” says Pearl.
The goat meadow is sunny and everything, but it’s also covered with goat droppings that I’m hoping to avoid having a socialization experience with, plus my brain is beeping and sending out sparks.
“Sorry!” she says, then bursts like when you accidentally open a Coke that’s been shaken: “But, but, but: I have the best news! Vega rises right behind it.” I feel so overloaded that Kevin could use me for a science project. Also, I feel confused. In Contact, Vega is the place the message comes from. “From the movie? Vega’s real?” Agate blinks at me like she thinks I might be kidding.
“I think—It’s like when you see a photo, it doesn’t look different because someone took it a while back and a long way away. You see it and it’s the same. A photo is now.”