Bella's Story Read online

Then I thumped into something and stopped. I heard a gasp from high above me. It was the boy. “Puppy? Were you living under the house, too?”

  I had been in such a blind panic I had blundered right into his legs. He crouched down to see me.

  “Puppy, hey, puppy. Come here.”

  He stretched out a hand toward me.

  I did not run anymore. I didn’t feel that I needed to run. I felt something else entirely.

  For reasons I did not understand, I wanted to be close to this boy.

  I wanted his hand to touch me. I wanted to hear his voice, for him to talk to me again.

  It wasn’t just that the boy had been bringing us food. It was far more than that. It seemed right to be near him. To touch him with a paw. To lick his skin and find out what he tasted like.

  I wanted this boy.

  I bounded forward. He gasped and then laughed. I chewed on his fingers, feeling warm and safe inside, the way I felt when I snuggled with Mother Cat. It was as if all the love in my body was flowing through me, through my jaws, and into the boy.

  The boy brought his other hand to me. Carefully, he scooped me up and lifted me close to his chest.

  I liked it! I could smell him even better here. I could burrow inside his jacket and stick my nose into his shirt and sniff up all the smells that I could find. I could lick under his chin.

  The boy laughed.

  “You’re such a silly puppy!” he told me.

  I had no idea what his noises meant, but I understood that he was making them at me. I liked that. I licked him again so that he’d make more noises for me.

  “Okay, okay, I like you, too,” he told me. “Come on.”

  He stood up, still holding me. Suddenly I was much higher above the ground than I had ever been. New, fresh smells wafted past my nose up here. My heart pounded with excitement and also with joy. I wagged my tail.

  I did not know where Mother Cat had gone, nor what had happened to my kitten family. I still missed my first mother and my littermates.

  But everything was different now that I had this boy. I somehow knew I was right where I was supposed to be. Everything would be just fine, now.

  I heard feet running quickly over the dirt. I pulled my head out from under the boy’s chin to see. It was a girl—a young female human.

  “Oh!” she said. She had short, dark curly hair, and she was smiling. “I thought for a minute you found another kitten, but it’s a puppy! Was she in the crawlspace, too?”

  “I think so,” the boy said. “Anyway, she doesn’t have a collar.”

  I decided to go back to licking the boy’s face.

  “Aw, she likes you,” the girl said.

  She reached out a hand and rubbed behind my ears. That felt good. I liked this girl, too.

  “You’re Lucas, right? I’m Olivia. You stopped that bulldozer! That’s amazing! Everybody’s talking about it. Here, give the puppy to me. I’ll take her to my mom. She works at the rescue.”

  “Um,” the boy said.

  “You want to take her to the car? We’ve got a crate she can go in.”

  I cuddled close to the boy and chewed contentedly on his fingers.

  “I don’t want to take her to the car, no.”

  The boy and the girl looked at each other for a few moments while I enjoyed the boy’s fingers.

  “Okay, what?” said the girl.

  “I thought I’d just take her home,” the boy said.

  “Oh! Well, look, we’re not really supposed to do that. You can’t just grab a stray puppy. There’s a whole process to adopting a dog. Forms and stuff. And my mom has to interview the people. We want to be sure they’re going to good homes. You know?”

  “You think I’m not going to take good care of her?” the boy asked.

  The girl sighed. “Of course you are. I mean, you saved her life! And she loves you. That’s pretty obvious. I just … okay. My mom’s coming over. Put the puppy in your jacket and cover her up, okay? And don’t tell my mom!”

  The boy carefully tucked me inside his coat. He held one arm under me, to keep me safe. I felt as cozy as I did while snuggling with my dog mother and my littermates, or my cat mother and her kittens.

  I could feel the boy’s heart pounding close to his skin. He was happy and excited, too, just as I was. He was as glad to be with me as I was to be with him. But he was worried about something. What? Wasn’t everything okay now?

  “Hello, are you Lucas?” a woman’s voice said. “I have to thank you for insisting they stop tearing down the house. The cats would have been injured or killed for certain. And did you hear that one of the workers saw a puppy?”

  I felt the boy’s body snap to attention. “No, ma’am, no one told me that. The workers were kind of angry at me.”

  “I imagine so! The manager told me they lost a day’s work,” the woman replied.

  “Mom, Lucas ran right out in front of a bulldozer and started shouting and waving his arms!” the girl exclaimed.

  “Did you get the cats?” the boy asked.

  “We caught all the kittens,” the woman said. “The mom escaped, but we’ll keep looking for her. We’ll find homes for the kittens. I wonder, though, where that puppy went?”

  “I think somebody found it and wants to give it a good home,” the girl suggested.

  I was starting to squirm a little inside the boy’s jacket. I had to pee. And I always peed on the ground, not up in the air under a jacket like this.

  “Hey, lady, can we get going on this job?” a man’s voice called. “I’ve got guys on the clock here.”

  “Go ahead,” the woman said. “We checked in the crawlspace. No more cats or dogs or—Lucas, wait a minute. What’s that in your jacket?”

  The boy froze.

  “What do you mean?” the boy replied.

  “It looks like you’re carrying a baseball mitt,” the woman observed.

  “I often do,” the boy agreed.

  “Interesting answer, Lucas.”

  The boy was Lucas, I decided.

  I heard a man shouting, “Let’s get back to work!”

  Then the angry growling started up again with a roar. I twitched, startled, and struggled to get out of the jacket.

  There was a long pause.

  “Better get home,” the woman said. “I don’t think your baseball mitt likes the noise of the bulldozer. And you’ve got to take it to a vet as soon as you can.”

  “Uh. Yeah. Okay,” Lucas mumbled. “Thanks.” And he started walking away quickly, holding me tightly to him all the while. I popped my head up and looked around in amazement.

  Something was happening to me here. The den, where I had been born and where I’d lived with Mother Cat, seemed like a place that I was leaving behind. Now I would be with this boy, wherever he took me.

  The boy walked for a while, holding me close, and then he stopped. I felt him sit down. He took me out of his jacket and set me on the ground. That was a relief. I squatted and peed right away.

  “Good boy!” the boy said to me. “Um, good girl, I mean.”

  I looked around and sniffed to see where he had taken me.

  He was sitting on a single step outside of a large building. At the top of the step there was a door. I looked around. There were other steps and other doors along this side of the building.

  Later I would learn that, just like Lucas lived behind his door, other people lived behind the other doors. Some of them even had dogs or cats of their own.

  For now, I was busy checking out what was right in front of me. On either side of the steps there were bushes, and some dogs had been here before me, peeing on them. I very carefully examined these important scents.

  The boy laughed. I left the bushes and ran to him and seized the cuff of his pants between my front teeth. I tugged on it.

  Lucas laughed again. But he was not entirely happy. I could hear it in his voice. I could see it in the angle of his head and shoulders.

  I sat back on my haunches and looked up at h
im. Why wasn’t he as happy as I was?

  “I didn’t really think this through,” he told me. “I could be in pretty big trouble.”

  I cocked my head up at him. Could he be talking about food? I liked food.

  “My mom … I don’t know. She might be pretty unhappy. But you and I belong together, little pup.”

  The boy sighed. He picked me up again.

  “Okay, let’s go,” he said.

  He carried me up to the door, opened it, and went inside.

  4

  Once we stepped inside, there were so many new sounds and sights that I was dizzy with it. And the smells! I could smell food and dust and chemicals and a woman.

  The boy set me down, and the floor was astonishingly soft beneath my feet—even softer than the dirt in my old den. I ran after him as he crossed the room and dove into his lap when he sat down on the floor to be with me.

  I could sense his anxiety rising. What was he worried about?

  “Lucas?” called a sleepy voice. “What’s that?”

  The voice came from the woman whose scent was layered on every object in the room. Clearly this was her den, and the boy’s, too.

  She was lying on a long, soft thing that I later learned was called a couch. A blanket was covering her so that only her head and shoulders showed. She was stretching as if she’d just woken up, though her arms were in the air and not out in front of her on the floor. I wagged, happy to see her.

  “Lucas?” she said again.

  Lucas looked up at her.

  “It’s a puppy,” he said.

  “Well, I can see it’s a puppy, Lucas. What is it doing here?”

  “She’s a girl. Not an it.”

  “That is not an answer to my question.”

  “She was living in the house across the street,” Lucas explained, cuddling me in both hands. “The one where the stray cats were. The cats I was feeding. The animal rescue people came and got the cats, and I found this little girl, all lost and confused and alone and needing a good home like ours.”

  He put me on the floor and I hurried over to the couch. The woman wasn’t the boy, but I wanted to get to know her.

  She put a hand over the edge of the couch and I jumped up to sniff it. She smelled tired and in pain. I licked her to show that I’d help her. I’d comfort her, if she wanted me to.

  “And you brought her to our home because…” the woman said.

  “Because look at her. Someone abandoned her and she found her way under that house. She was living there with the cats. And she was so scared of the bulldozer. She ran right to me.”

  “Right. I understand. But, Lucas—”

  “She ran to me. She’s my dog now.”

  “Lucas, you know we can’t have a dog. Do you have any idea how expensive it would be? Vet bills and dog food, it adds up pretty quickly.”

  “I’ll get a job. I’ll earn some money.”

  “Lucas. Listen. You don’t have time for that. Once the summer is over, you’ve got to focus on school. You’re only thirteen, and—”

  “Focus on school? I do focus on school! Are you saying there is a problem with my grades?”

  Lucas scooted forward so he could pet me, too. Now both humans were touching me! I wagged my tail so hard my entire back end wiggled.

  “You’re trying to make this about something else. Obviously I don’t have a problem with your grades, Lucas. You do so well in school. You’re doing so well around here, too. I know I’m not much help.”

  “I can take care of things,” Lucas insisted. “Until you get better.”

  “I know you can. You already are. You clean up the apartment, you do the shopping, you cook half the time. And now a dog, too? Lucas, it’s too much.”

  “Don’t I get to decide if it’s too much?”

  There was a long silence. I looked back and forth from the boy to the woman. I wagged hopefully. I barked a tiny bark. When were they going to stop looking at each other and play with me? Wasn’t that why we were all here?

  “If I keep my grades up and help around here and get a job to make some money, can I keep her?” the boy asked. “If I do all that?”

  The woman sighed.

  “You shouldn’t have to do all that, Lucas. I’m so sorry…”

  “You don’t have to be sorry you got hurt. It was a war, Mom. Soldiers get hurt in wars. I know that.” Lucas pulled me into his lap once more. Finally! I set about chewing his fingers. “But you’re home from Afghanistan now, and I’m taking care of you,” he said.

  The woman’s head flopped back onto the pillow. “Oh, honey,” she said.

  “And I can take care of a dog, too. Please, Mom? Please?”

  The woman’s head lifted off the pillow. I stopped nibbling on Lucas and stared at her. “The way you two are looking at me, how can I say no?” she asked.

  * * *

  Over the next several days, I slowly became used to living in my new home. It was not like the den at all. The surface underfoot was not dirt. Instead, I ran on hard, slippery floors or soft carpeted ones. Light streamed in through many windows and glowed from globes in the ceiling. There were no cats or other dogs anywhere, but there were people. Two people. My people.

  The woman’s name, I learned, was Mom. She was nice.

  Lucas! I loved Lucas so much. I followed him from room to room. I sat on his feet when he was in a chair or the couch. Sometimes I took his fingers in my mouth. I didn’t bite down. I just nibbled him as gently as I could. I loved the taste and the nearness of his skin.

  I slept next to him in a soft pile of blankets that I shredded a little until I came to understand how unhappy this made him. I did not want Lucas to be unhappy at all.

  I pulled one of those blankets onto the floor so I could snuggle up in it whenever I wanted. It smelled like Lucas, which made me happy. Curling up in it while Lucas was busy was nearly as good as lying next to him in bed. I thought of it as my Lucas blanket.

  Lucas was busy a lot. He opened and shut cupboards in the kitchen. This activity often went along with delicious smells. He stood at the sink and splashed his hands in soapy water. Sometimes he pulled out a long stick with bristles on the end of it and rubbed it on the floor. I helped by chasing the bristles and biting them.

  When Lucas was not busy with his jobs—and even when he was—he talked to me. A lot.

  “Quiet, Bella, we can’t make noise. Mom’s sleeping,” he’d tell me.

  “Here, Bella, I’ve got a toy for you! Bella, come!”

  “Want a treat, Bella? Treat?”

  Whenever he said this, I gazed up at him. I felt that he expected me to do something, but I didn’t know what.

  Then he’d pull his hand out of his pocket and give me a tiny chunk of something crunchy and meaty. The taste of it would flood my tongue.

  Treat! Soon it was my favorite word.

  And that other word that Lucas used so often—it became a favorite as well. Bella. Over and over, Lucas said, “Bella!” and I came to realize that when he said it, he meant me.

  Bella was my name.

  Lucas introduced me to all sorts of wonderful tastes and experiences, but one of my favorites came when he was sitting at his desk and I could smell something so insanely delicious my tongue was going berserk. I was licking my lips, staring up at him, whimpering. He smiled down at me. “You want some cheese, Bella?”

  I heard the question in his voice and wagged frantically.

  “Okay, just a tiny bit. Okay, here you go, a T-i-i-ny Piece of Cheese.”

  He held out a finger, and on it was a sliver of something so delicious it nearly made me swoon.

  After that day, every night, Lucas would say, “Bella, are you ready for your T-i-i-ny Piece of Cheese?”

  I would sit, quivering, waiting impatiently for the magnificent T-i-i-ny Piece of Cheese.

  Several times a day, Lucas would bring out something he called the leash, and snap it onto a thing around my neck, which he called your collar. He used the leash to
drag me around. At first, I hated the thing because it made no sense to me. Why was Lucas pulling me in one direction when there were so many exciting smells in the other?

  But then I learned that, when Lucas had the leash, we were going outside for what he called a walk. And I loved a walk! A walk meant fascinating smells, and new people who petted me and laughed at me and seemed so happy to see me.

  One new person who came over often was named Olivia. She was the girl who had talked to Lucas on the day he became my boy.

  Olivia liked to take walks with us. And she liked to play games with us. She knew a lot of games. “I’m going to be a dog trainer,” she told Lucas. “Bella’s going to be a big dog when she grows up—you can tell—so you better start training her now, when she’s still a puppy.”

  Here are some of the games Lucas and I played with Olivia.

  “Sit!” meant that I’d put my rear end on the ground and get a treat.

  “Down!” meant I’d put my belly on the ground and get another treat.

  Sometimes Olivia would hold my leash while Lucas walked away. Then he would call, “Come!” and she’d let me go. I’d run and run and run to Lucas and get another treat.

  Olivia understood how much dogs like treats. I liked Olivia.

  One game that we played, however, was not my favorite. It was called Do-Your-Business.

  “Do your business!” Lucas or Olivia would say while we walked. Then sometimes one of them would give me a treat. Sometimes they wouldn’t.

  Very strange and a bit frustrating. It was much more fun to go a place they called the park. I loved the park. There was a big grassy meadow where I could be off the leash. Lucas and Olivia would bring a ball with them and they’d throw it for me so that I could chase it and catch it and bring it back so they could do it again. That ball never got away from me.

  Chase-the-Ball didn’t even need treats to be an excellent game.

  Once Lucas threw the ball extra hard, and it flew over to a place where children sometimes played on swings. I was right behind it, gaining fast, when it bounced onto a plastic ramp and rolled to the top.

  I followed, trying to grip the slippery surface. At the top of the ramp the ball kept going and so did I. I jumped off and caught the ball in the air after it hit the ground.