Bella's Story Page 4

  “Good luck,” Mom said.

  Lucas and I left, practically running until we were down the street and around the corner. Then he stopped. I sat, not sure what we were doing. Then Olivia came! She wanted to go for a walk after all!

  “Her car isn’t there. We can do this,” Oliva said.

  “Okay, Bella. Time for you to learn how to go home,” Lucas said, his hand rustling in his pocket. I stared because I could smell treats in there.

  Then, in a move that was even more bewildering, Lucas left me with Olivia. I watched, utterly perplexed, as he walked down the street and up the steps to our home.

  “Go Home!” Olivia told me. She dropped the leash.

  “Here, Bella!” Lucas called.

  I ran straight to Lucas. Lucas knelt down beside the door and patted a spot behind a chair. His hand smelled very interesting—he had one of those treats in there!

  I nosed at his hand, but he just kept patting. Then I remembered that Lucas often wanted me to lie down somewhere if he patted it. I flopped down and got the treat. Excellent!

  We played Go Home a lot. At first I ran straight to Lucas and lay down by the door and got my treat. Then Lucas picked up my leash and we walked together with Olivia by our side. Maybe we were going to the park. That would be fun.

  Then Lucas dropped my leash. “Go Home!” he told me.

  I stared up at him. This was very odd. Go Home meant running to Lucas! But Lucas was already here!

  Lucas and Olivia were watching me intently.

  “She’ll get it,” Olivia said to Lucas. “She’s really smart. Just wait.”

  They stared at me. I stared at them. They wanted me to do something. But what?

  They wanted me to do Go Home. Go Home meant running to Lucas and lying down by the chair and getting a treat.

  But Lucas was right next to me. I could not run to Lucas.

  I could lie down. I did that. I looked up hopefully.

  “She doesn’t get it,” Lucas said to Olivia. He sounded unhappy.

  I was frustrated. Where was my treat? I was lying down. When I lay down before, Lucas gave me a treat.

  But I hadn’t been lying down on the sidewalk. I’d been lying down behind the chair, next to the door. Was that what Lucas wanted?

  Why?

  The treats in his pocket were my favorite—chicken—and that’s what made me decide to take a chance. I sprang up and raced toward the door. Once I got there, I lay down behind the chair, just like I’d done before.

  Would I get a treat now?

  “Bella! Good girl!” Lucas shouted. He and Olivia came running up, and he gave me two treats. “That was amazing!” he told me.

  He and Olivia were so happy that we played the Go Home game over and over. I liked it very much. Go Home meant running and treats and a happy Lucas.

  I loved Lucas.

  After that day with Olivia, we played Go Home often on our walks. Lucas would unsnap my leash, and I would run back to our house and curl up beside the door. When we did Go Home, I was a good dog who was given food. But somehow, when we played No Barks, I never felt like a good dog, even when I got a treat.

  “She’s so smart,” Lucas told Mom. “I told her to go home all the way from the park, and even though she wanted to go in and play with the other dogs, she turned right around and came here and was waiting behind the chair for me when I got back.”

  “Good dog, Bella,” Mom praised. I wagged.

  “So now, even if animal control sees me with her, I can just take the leash off and give her the command, and she’ll run up on the porch where she is safe.”

  “Are you positive it will work?” Mom asked.

  Lucas was silent for a long moment. “It has to, Mom. I don’t know what else to do.”

  7

  The next day, Lucas said school and went away. Mom did, too, leaning on her stick. I did No Barks, but nobody was there to give me treats. Sighing, I went into the kitchen and nosed open a door to a small room where my food was kept in a bag on a shelf, up out of reach. I kept hoping one day I would open the door and the bag would be lying on the floor, but so far that hadn’t happened.

  When Mom walked in the door I was excited to see her. But something unusual was going on: Mom paced in the living room, pausing to peer out the window. She also picked up her phone and stared at it. A phone is something people will look at and talk to like it is a dog. I guess Mom and Lucas had gotten into the habit of doing this before I got there. They must have been crazy with loneliness without a dog.

  “He’ll be here in a few minutes, Bella!” Mom said to me. I wagged at her excitement.

  When Lucas walked in the door, Mom and I both tried to get to him first. I put my legs up on him while Mom reached around me for a hug. “Lucas, I got a job!”

  Lucas stared at her. I decided his arrival called for a ball and raced to get one.

  “I thought you said you didn’t feel ready for that yet,” Lucas was saying when I returned. I dropped the ball at his feet and gazed at it suggestively, waiting for him to get it and throw it. We really needed a slide in the living room, I decided.

  “It’s perfect because I will be working in Dr. Gann’s department at the VA,” Mom said enthusiastically, “so I’ll actually have more support than what I can get here at home. It’s just part time. And you know what this means, don’t you?”

  “I just don’t want you pushing yourself too hard,” Lucas replied.

  “Lucas, the extra income means we’ll have the money to break our lease and move! We can be in a new place in two months!” Mom said happily.

  “You would do that for me?” Lucas whispered. I abandoned the ball because I felt a rush of emotion in Lucas, like heat on his skin. Not sadness, but something.

  “Not for you, for us. For our family!” Mom beamed.

  That night we took a long walk. For some time, it seemed like Lucas liked the darkness. We only headed outside before the sun brightened the sky in the morning, or after it had vanished in the evening. I didn’t mind—there were just as many interesting smells in darkness as in light.

  “It’s going to be okay, Bella,” Lucas told me. “I thought we were going to have to do this for ten more months, but now it will be less than two. You’re safe!”

  Whatever he was saying, I could tell he was happy. I was, too.

  I noticed a change, though—now, when Lucas said school and left, Mom would tell me work and she would leave as well. I could manage life alone, but it seemed to be happening every day.

  Whatever work was, it seemed to make Mom happy. “Thank you, Bella,” she whispered to me once. “Thank you for forcing me to quit making excuses. I thought it would be too hard for me, but I love having a purpose in the world beyond just healing myself. You gave me that. I love you.”

  I wagged at Mom’s hugs, but then she left and I was alone once more.

  This new set of circumstances left me bored. My legs ached to run. I wandered the apartment. Usually I curled up and slept on my Lucas blanket until my boy got home again, but I didn’t feel like doing that right now. Too many days had passed where all I could do was nap and wait.

  After a while of pacing, I stood by a window. The glass part of the window had been moved up, and only the screen was left between me and all the good smells coming in from outside. Trash. Leaves. People walking past. The burned, bitter smell that cars left when they drove by. Squirrel.

  Squirrel!

  My ears perked up. My body tensed. There it was—I could see it as well as smell it. A small, furry body was scampering across the grass not ten feet away from me.

  It was time to play Chase-the-Squirrel!

  Before I even had time to think about it, I coiled my back legs and surged forward in a powerful leap. My head crashed into the screen, but the screen could not hold me back. It gave way with a sound like cloth tearing, only louder, and I was through the window, all four feet landing on the lawn.

  The screen was still clinging to my neck like a st
range, prickly collar, but it wasn’t slowing me down. I lunged toward the squirrel, and it streaked across the lawn, heading for a tree.

  This time it wouldn’t get away. I’d catch it for sure!

  I got so close to the squirrel I could almost taste its tail, but in the end it whisked up a tree as they always do, leaving me to stand on my hind legs with my front feet up on the trunk and bark and bark and bark.

  When I tired of trying to coax the squirrel out of the tree, I left and started sniffing the bushes. Some male dogs had been there before me.

  “Oh, no,” said a new voice.

  I turned my head and there was Hat Man! He still had the hat on, and he smelled the same, of sweat and smoke and the scent of lots and lots of dogs. He was standing a very short distance from me. “What are you doing out here?”

  He knelt and I went to him, wagging my tail. He reached out and pulled off the screen—I was glad to get rid of that collar! I licked his hand and he sighed. “Now what am I supposed to do?” he whispered to me.

  I looked over his shoulder and wagged because the woman who smelled like cats was coming toward us rapidly. “I told you!” she called as she approached. “I see them walking that animal all the time! Why haven’t you come when I called?”

  “I did come, ma’am. I’m here, aren’t I?” Hat Man reached into his pocket and took something out. A treat! I gobbled it up, glad to know this new friend.

  Somehow, while I was eating the treat, Hat Man slipped a strange new collar over my head. And suddenly I was on the worst leash imaginable—stiff and hard, like a branch from a tree. I twisted against it. “No!” Hat Man said curtly.

  I stared up at him astonishment. No? Why was he saying no? Anyone would want to get this leash off!

  “That dog needs to be destroyed before it bites somebody else!” the woman declared hotly.

  “Oh? Who did she bite?” Hat Man asked.

  I sat, thinking if I was good the bad leash would be removed from my neck.

  “It’s a lucky thing no child was injured,” the woman replied. I decided I didn’t like anything about her except how she smelled.

  “You do know you’re more likely to be bitten by a Chihuahua than this dog?” Hat Man asked.

  “You should be glad I called you,” the woman replied.

  “Yes, thank you,” Hat Man said. He dragged me over to the street! I did not like it. This was not like going for a walk—it was something else. It was scary.

  I whined and pulled and tried to look around for Lucas. Where was he?

  A small truck was parked by the curb. It smelled of gas and metal and smoke, the way all cars do, but it also smelled of dogs. Unhappy dogs. A loud, shrill yapping was coming from inside it.

  Hat Man opened a door on the back of the truck and then grabbed me with one arm, holding the stiff leash with the other. He lifted me up. I didn’t like having my feet in the air. I barked sharply.

  The man dropped me inside the truck and pushed me into a crate. Then he pulled the new collar off over my head. I shook my head. The door to the crate slammed shut.

  Next to my crate was another with a small dog inside. Once I was nearby, this little dog stopped yapping and cowered away.

  Hat Man closed the door to the truck. It was dark inside. I thought I was probably supposed to do No Barks, but I couldn’t manage it.

  Lucas! I wanted Lucas! I wanted to do Go Home and get a treat and have Lucas and Mom tell me all about what a good dog I was. I wanted a T-i-i-ny Piece of Cheese.

  The truck growled and started to move.

  Where was I going? Why wasn’t Lucas with me?

  8

  At first it had seemed that Hat Man was a friend—the kind of friends who carries treats. Then he’d put that strange leash on me and shut me in this crate, so I figured I’d been wrong. He wasn’t any kind of friend at all.

  But then the truck stopped. The back door opened. Hat Man stood there, shaking his head.

  “Can’t believe I’m about to do this,” he muttered.

  We were home! I lifted my head and started to wag. When Hat Man opened up my crate and slipped that strange leash over my head again, I let him.

  He’d taken me back to Lucas, so he was a friend after all. Even if he did have the worst leash ever.

  Hat Man tugged on the leash and I jumped to the ground. He took me up to our door and knocked on it.

  Lucas opened it. Lucas! I jumped up on him, panting into his face to tell him all about how I’d chased the squirrel and gone for a car ride and could he get this uncomfortable leash off my neck, please?

  He did. And then he and Hat Man talked. Lucas didn’t seem as happy as I was to be back together. I licked him a lot to remind him of how nice it was whenever we were near each other.

  “You need to understand,” Hat Man told Lucas. His voice was stern. “I broke the rules to get her back to you this time. I can’t do it again. If any animal control officer sees her outside, we have to pick her up and she’ll be put down.” He pulled his hat down more firmly on his head. “You need to get her out of town now.”

  Mom came home, and Mom and Lucas talked. Then Mom and Lucas talked into their phones, almost as if they’d forgotten that they had a dog right here to play with. It was very strange. Nobody seemed happy at all. When I licked at Lucas’s face, it tasted salty and damp.

  “Mom, she’s going to think I abandoned her,” he said. Then he sat down on the floor and hugged me very tightly.

  I wiggled out of Lucas’s grip and went and got my ball and dropped it in his lap. A ball would definitely make him happier.

  But it didn’t.

  After a little while, the doorbell rang. It was very hard to do No Barks, but I did it. I sat right at Lucas’s feet to be sure he noticed and would give me the treat that I’d earned.

  “Oh, Bella,” he said. He gave me a whole handful of treats!

  Audrey and Olivia came in the door, and I charged to greet them and wag at them. How nice. More people to pet me and be happy with me!

  “We came as soon as we could,” Audrey said. “I’m so sorry. What a terrible situation.”

  “I hate that stupid law!” Olivia said angrily. She sat down on the floor with Lucas and me and picked up one of Lucas’s old socks for me to tug on.

  “We all do,” Audrey said. “But we can’t change it right now. The important thing to do is to keep Bella safe.”

  “You can help us?” Mom asked. “We just need a few more weeks to find a new place to live.”

  Audrey nodded. “My sister Loretta lives about seven hours away. They don’t have a pit bull ban in her city. She and her husband can take Bella for a little while.”

  I pulled the sock right out of Olivia’s hand. Yes! I won! I took the sock to Lucas and laid it down on his lap. More playtime, please?

  But Lucas didn’t pick up the sock. He looked at Mom, and his face crumbled. He was in such misery that I wanted to bark to chase away whatever was hurting him.

  He put his arms around me again. He pressed his face against my shoulders. I squirmed around so that I could lick him. I mostly found an ear and a bit of cheek.

  I did not understand all the sadness. We were home! We were together! I’d been a good dog! Couldn’t we do T-i-i-ny Piece of Cheese?

  “We’d better take her now,” Audrey said. Her voice was gentle.

  Lucas hesitated. Then he let go of me and took his face out of my fur. He went to find my leash and I shook myself happily. We were going on a walk! Nobody could be sad on a walk!

  Lucas walked me outside to the street. Audrey and Olivia and Mom came, too, Mom leaning on her special stick. Oliva carried a blanket over her arm—my Lucas blanket.

  But we did not go on a walk after all. Audrey opened up the back of a car, and there was a crate inside it. Olivia put my Lucas blanket inside the crate. This was very strange.

  Lucas patted the blanket. “Okay, Bella. Inside,” he told me. His voice was hoarse.

  I looked around uneasily.
I didn’t really want a car ride right then. But I did what he said. I hopped up into the crate, turned around once, and lay down.

  Lucas shut the door. I looked at him appealingly. I whined. I didn’t like having the door of the crate between us.

  “I know you don’t understand,” Lucas said. He was getting sadder and sadder. I whined louder. I couldn’t comfort my boy inside this crate! “But I’m not abandoning you, Bella. I’ll come and get you. It won’t be long before you can go home.”

  Go Home? My whole body sprang to alertness. We were doing Go Home?

  But how could I? I was stuck inside this crate and the door was closed.

  Before I could figure it out, Lucas took something out of his pocket. It was a plastic bag that rustled in a very interesting way.

  I sat up. Lucas pulled something out of the bag.

  It was a T-i-i-ny Piece of Cheese!

  I did not understand what was going on, but I was so happy and grateful to be a good dog. Whenever we did T-i-i-ny Piece of Cheese, I was good. I watched Lucas’s hand carefully. He moved it up and down and in a circle. My head moved with it.

  Then he reached through the bars of the cage and let me take the treat. It tasted wonderful. I licked Lucas’s hand very carefully, to get every last bit of cheese there was.

  Then Lucas took his hand away and stepped back from the cage.

  Audrey closed the back door of the car. A minute later, the car started to move.

  Lucas was not in the car!

  I knew I should do No Barks, but I couldn’t help myself.

  9

  The smells around me changed as the car kept moving farther and farther away from Lucas. Before this, I had always been aware of a combination of cars and people and animals and smoke and dirt and growing things, but it was only a background for the smells that really mattered: Mom and Lucas and me and the home where we all lived together.