Ella Unleashed Read online

  I take a deep breath. “What we’re doing is okay, right? It’s not too mean?”

  “Of course not,” Keiko says. “How is it mean? We’re trying to land her an awesome new boyfriend. Your dad is the best.”

  “Yeah, but she thinks she’s meeting him today. I’m sure she’s all nervous and excited, and then she’ll be disappointed when he doesn’t show up.”

  “She’ll probably meet him eventually, though,” Mir says. “You just need to do a little research first and make sure she’s good enough for him. You’re only trying to protect him. And in the meantime Penny will have fun at the zoo with her kids. It’s not like we told her to meet us at a garbage dump or a dentist’s office or something.”

  It’s true. The zoo is fun regardless of whether you have a date, and I’m sure Penny’s a reasonable person who understands that plans change sometimes. When she meets my dad for real, she’ll probably like him so much that she’ll forget this ever happened.

  “Okay. You’re right.” I dig the lucky watermelon lip gloss out of my pocket and we pass it around, and then I say, “Let’s do this.”

  We push through the doors into the dim humidity of the Tropical Forest, ripe with the smells of fruit and leaves and animal pee. It kind of reminds me of the end of the day at a dog show, when the doggy bathrooms start to get a bit disgusting. I don’t see anyone who looks like Penny right away, but the gorilla enclosure is a big glassed-in peninsula that juts into the middle of the space, so there are lots of places she and her kids could be. It’s hard not to get distracted by the lemurs and the ocelot and the ridiculously weird capybara as we make our way down the path, but I force myself to keep my eyes on the humans.

  Keiko nudges me and tips her head toward a family looking at the pygmy hippos. “Is that them?”

  I turn around slowly, trying not to look obvious. The woman near the hippos has the right haircut and three kids, but it’s not her. “Nope,” I whisper. “Those kids are too young, and her hair is too dark.”

  A huge commotion starts up to our left—some little boy is making incredibly loud “Hoo-hoo-hoo-ha-ha-ha” noises and doing that stupid monkey thing where you scratch your head with one hand and your armpit with the other. (What even is that? I’ve never seen an actual monkey do that.) There’s a gorilla a few feet away on the other side of the glass, and she stares at the kid with this superior expression, like she’s thinking about how basic he is.

  And then the boy’s mom turns around and says, “Dylan, you’ve got to stop, honey. The animals don’t like that,” and my heart lurches into my throat. She’s got sandy hair and a friendly-looking face, and on her other side is a girl who looks about eight. Every few seconds the woman glances around hopefully, like she’s waiting for something great to happen. It’s definitely her, and she gets a big point in the plus column for how excited she looks about meeting my dad. Her older son doesn’t seem to be with them, which is disappointing.

  I duck out of sight around the corner of the tamarin enclosure. “The kangaroos are out today,” I say, which is the code phrase my friends and I decided meant I see them!

  “Where?” Miriam says. “I mean, where do they keep the . . . kangaroos?”

  “Around the other side of this wall,” I say. “They’re making a lot of noise right now.”

  Jordan’s eyes go wide. “Oh no,” she says. “Not those kangaroos.”

  I shush her, even though I agree that the annoying kid goes in the minus column. “Stick to the plan. It’s not about the baby kangaroo. It’s about the mom.”

  “All right,” Jordan says. “It’s your funeral.”

  “Good luck,” I say, and the three of them head off to put the Is Penny A Good Person? test into action. I wish I could help, but Penny can’t see me at all today or she might recognize me when she starts dating my dad. All I can do is hide and make some observations.

  My friends edge close to Penny, and when they’re right next to her, Jordan dodges in front of Keiko and “accidentally trips her.” Keiko dramatically falls to the floor, clutching her ankle and yowling. She might be overdoing it a little. Jordan and Miriam crouch down next to her and rub her back.

  “I’m sooooo sorry,” Jordan says. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  Penny looks around, obviously searching for Keiko’s parents. When she doesn’t see anyone rushing to her rescue, she kneels down next to my friend right away, exactly as I hoped. I give her another point for genuinely caring about other people’s children.

  “Are you okay?” she asks. Her voice sounds gentle but firm, the kind of tone that says I can keep calm in a crisis. It’s exactly the kind of voice I’d want to hear if I had actually hurt myself.

  “My ankle,” Keiko moans. “I think it might be sprained.”

  “Where are your parents?” Penny asks.

  “Her mom’s not picking us up until two,” Mir says.

  Penny turns back to Keiko. “What’s your name, honey?”

  “Keiko,” she says tearfully. I have to admit, she’s doing a pretty good job of acting now.

  “All right, Keiko. We’re going to get you fixed up. I’m sure there’s a first aid station somewhere.” Penny pulls a zoo map out of her back pocket and unfolds it, and I give her another point for being prepared. “Here, there’s one at the office, but it’s all the way across the park. Can one of you girls find someone who works here so they can call for a wheelchair?”

  “I’ll do it,” Miriam says, and she scampers off. As she passes me, she gives me a thumbs-up.

  “I don’t need a wheelchair,” moans Keiko.

  “You can’t possibly walk all the way there with a sprained ankle. Now, let’s get you out of the way so you don’t get trampled. There’s a bench near the sloth cage. Put your arm around my neck, and I’m going to help you get up, okay? Don’t put any weight on your bad foot.” She turns to Jordan. “Can you wait here for your friend and show her where we are when she gets back?”

  I smile to myself—Penny is passing my test with flying colors. I love how she’s taking charge of the situation, and she’s so focused on Keiko and her “bad ankle” that she hasn’t even looked around for my dad in a few minutes. She clearly has her priorities in order: children before romance. Once she’s done taking care of Keiko, I’ll send her a message and suggest a new time and place to meet. I’m sure she won’t mind—I didn’t need to worry so much before. Maybe we can all go to the aquarium next weekend, and she and my dad will meet for the first time by the Great Ocean Tank as the sea turtles swim by, and it’ll be super romantic, and they’ll always buy each other turtle stuff on their anniversaries in honor of that moment, and—

  “Kyle,” Penny shouts off to her left. “Hey! Kyle!”

  For the first time, I notice a boy my age standing in the corner between the pygmy hippo and the snake. He’s in a black hoodie and way-too-baggy jeans, and he’s wearing a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes and enormous headphones. Two pygmy hippos are nosing at each other in an incredibly cute way in the cage behind him, but his eyes stay glued to his screen. Phone games are fun and everything, but I don’t understand people who block everything out all the time, especially when there’s incredibly cool stuff going on in the real world.

  Kyle still hasn’t looked up, and Penny sighs and turns to her daughter. “Sarah, can you please go get your brother’s attention?”

  I watch the girl go over and tap Kyle on the arm, and he shrugs her off like she’s a gross bug. She tugs hard on his sleeve, which finally makes him rip off his headphones. “God, what?”

  “Mom wants you,” the girl says. She doesn’t look remotely surprised by his violent reaction, which probably mean he treats her like this all the time. Big mark in the minus column.

  Kyle rolls his eyes so hard I’m pretty sure he can see his own brain. Then he trudges over to Penny and Keiko, headphones dangling from his skinny neck. “What?” he says again.

  “Watch your sister and brother for a minute, okay?” Penny says. �
��This girl hurt herself, and I need to find her some help.”

  “Ugh, fine,” grumbles Kyle, and he heads toward the gorilla enclosure, already looking back down at his phone. He reaches for his headphones, and Penny says, “Headphones off!” without even looking. Kyle sighs like she’s asked him to chop a load of firewood.

  Penny scoops Keiko off the floor in one smooth motion, and they snuffle-hop in the direction of the sloth cage. The second Penny turns her back, her younger son starts pounding on the glass with both hands again while he lets out another round of monkey shrieks. A bubble of annoyance expands in my chest—I know he’s a little kid, but I hate when people do that in zoos. I mean, can you imagine if someone pounded on your windows and made faces at you while you were trying to eat and do your homework? So rude.

  “Dylan, stop,” says Sarah, but the boy pounds harder. All the gorillas have moved to the other side of the enclosure, which is exactly what I would do if I were a gorilla. Then Dylan presses his mouth to the glass and starts making fart sounds. When he pulls back to laugh hysterically, a string of spit stretches between the glass and his bottom lip.

  “I’m boooorrrred,” Sarah whines at Kyle.

  “Too bad,” Kyle says. His thumbs race over the phone screen.

  “I want to go see the lions.”

  “So go,” Kyle says. “I don’t care.”

  “But Mom said we had to stay with you.”

  “Then wait.”

  “But I want to go nooowwww,” the girl wails, and it sets my teeth on edge.

  “Shut up, Sarah.” Dylan launches in with another round of pounding, and Kyle shouts, “God, both of you shut up! I hate you!”

  “I hate you!” Sarah shrieks, and she shoves him into the glass.

  And just like that, I know I can’t possibly set Penny up with my dad. Sure, she’s competent and gentle and nice, and I feel terrible for having led her on. But it’s like Miriam said—my dad has to come first. I need to protect him and make sure he doesn’t end up in a bad situation. And I can’t possibly think of a worse situation than stepfathering a bunch of monsters.

  From: SuperDad_DSC

  To: PennyForYrThoughts

  Penny,

  I’m so sorry to bail on you, but my daughter started throwing up in the car on the way to the zoo. I hope you didn’t hang out in the gorilla house too long waiting for me.

  Okay, please don’t hate me, but . . . I actually don’t think we should meet each other after all. I’m not totally sure my daughter is ready for me to start dating yet, and she’s pretty stressed out preparing for this dog show she’s doing in November, and I really don’t want to make her life harder. So I think I’m going to hold off on Head Over Heels for now. You seem awesome, and I hope you find a guy who’s as great as you. Seriously, I am really, really, really sorry.

  David

  * * *

  From: PennyForYrThoughts

  To: SuperDad_DSC

  Man, that’s such a good reason that I can’t even hate you.

  7

  I’m pretty sad that the Penny experiment was such a failure, and the fact that I have to hide my disappointment from my dad all night and pretend I had a great time at the zoo makes me feel even worse. But fortunately I don’t have too much time to focus on it. We start learning complicated new choreography for the winter ballet recital on Monday, I have an essay about The Giver due on Thursday, and I spend all my spare time running patterns with Elvis in the backyard. I barely even have time to look at Head Over Heels, but when I’m able to sneak a few minutes here and there, I’m pleased to see that my dad’s inbox is bursting with messages. Maybe the perfect woman is waiting one click away. Until I have time to go through them carefully, I can hope for the best.

  Before I know it, it’s Friday night again, and Mom and Krishnan and I are on the way to Hartford for the dog show Saturday morning, aka my shot at redemption. We stay at a dog-friendly motel, and Elvis chooses to sleep on my bed instead of with my mom and stepdad, which seems like a good omen. He starts out snuggled on my feet, but by morning he has moved up and claimed most of my pillow. I don’t really mind, even though his breath smells disgusting; maybe spending so much time with our heads close together will give us that dog-owner mind-meld we haven’t been able to master so far. I watch the way his tail wags as I give him his breakfast and take him out to pee, hoping I’ll get better at understanding what he’s trying to tell me.

  As I shower, I run through the judging process in my head three times, making sure I have every step down. I put on the blue dress I wore to my cousin’s bar mitzvah in the spring—it’s getting tight around my ribs, but Mom has been too busy to take the one Elvis ripped to the tailor. I Velcro the pouch filled with treats onto my arm, then look in the bathroom mirror to get the full effect. The black fabric of the pouch blends into my cardigan sleeve, and the silver designs I made with glitter glue and stick-on rhinestones match the sequins around my sweater’s cuffs and hem. This time I’ll have plenty of sparkles, like everyone else.

  “You’ve got this,” I tell my reflection. “Today is going to be perfect.”

  This show is a bit smaller than the one we went to a few weeks ago, but there are still a ton of weird things to look at. Between the door and our grooming station, we pass a woman selling gigantic paintings of dogs riding dragons, a guy who will make you a custom doghouse that’s a replica of your actual house, and a couple who makes Christmas ornaments out of edible dog biscuits. There are racks upon racks of Halloween costumes; one guy is trying to get a French fries costume onto his German shepherd, and another lady is dressing her pug like a fire hydrant. (My friends and I already have a group costume planned—we’re going to be Steven Universe and the Crystal Gems, and Elvis is going to be Steven’s pink lion.) People walk around with dog combs sticking out of their ponytails and drool rags trailing from their pockets, and I smile and pat my pouch. I’m totally a real dog show person now.

  My stomach rumbles as Mom and Krishnan set up the grooming table, and I ask, “Can I go get some food while you get Elvis ready?”

  “Sure,” Mom says. “Be quick, though. We’re running a little late, and we should head over to your ring at 8:50.”

  “I will.” She hands me a twenty, then gets to work clipping the fur between Elvis’s toes as Krishnan blow-dries his tail to make it extra fluffy.

  I get bagels for all of us in record time. But on my way back I pass Stan’s Smoothie Shack, and even though I know I’m supposed to hurry, I can’t resist. Stan’s kind of a fixture at dog shows in the northeast, even though he once told me he’s secretly a cat person. When he sees me coming, he breaks into a huge smile, his eyes crinkling up so much that it sends wrinkles clear around the sides of his shiny bald head.

  “My favorite customer!” he booms, and even though he probably says that to everyone, it makes me feel special. “What’ll it be today, Miss Ella?”

  “Strawberry mango breeze, please,” I tell him. Mom probably won’t be thrilled that I’m spending seven dollars on a drink, but Elvis gets treats all day, and I’ve worked as hard as he has. I deserve a treat too. When I tell Stan I’m actually going into the ring today for the first time, he gives me a high five and sprinkles some extra coconut flakes on top of my drink for luck.

  I eat my breakfast in a folding chair next to the grooming table and run through everything I have to remember one last time while Mom and Krishnan finish primping Elvis. When they lift him down to the floor, his tail starts swishing back and forth in what I’m pretty sure is his “ready to go” wag. “Time to head over,” Krishnan says. “You all set?”

  I expect to feel nerves ricocheting around in my stomach—what if today is a repeat of last show’s disaster? But I know that’s not going to happen. This time I’ve thought through all the things that could go wrong. I’m totally prepared, and that means everything is going to be fine.

  I brush the crumbs off my hands, check my pouch, run a hand over my hair. Everything is in place. I reach
into my pocket and apply some lucky watermelon lip gloss, and then I stand up and give my stepdad my most confident smile. “Yup. Ready.”

  Mom laughs. “Come here, you’ve got cream cheese on your face. Let me—”

  I step toward her, and my foot hits my enormous smoothie, which is sitting on the floor next to my chair. It topples, and I gasp and jump out of the way as a slushy strawberry lake spreads across the floor. Elvis is immediately under my feet, lapping up my drink like he’s been in the desert with no water for weeks. He’s so fast that it’s almost all gone before any of us is able to grab his collar and pull him away.

  “Elvis, no!” I shout at him. “Bad boy!” He just gazes up at me lovingly and licks his chops, his nose all sticky with strawberry. His tail is going absolutely insane.

  “I’m so sorry,” I say as Krishnan swoops in with a wet washcloth. “It’s all strawberries and bananas and mangoes, so it won’t make him sick. Should I—”

  “Run to the bathroom and get some paper towels to clean up the floor,” he says. “It’s okay, but we have to hurry or we’re going to miss your ring time.”

  I run, my stomach knotting and my pouch flapping against my arm. I’m going to have to put an extra Velcro strap on this thing—I didn’t account for having to dash around with it on. It makes me wonder if there are other things I didn’t think of.

  Elvis’s muzzle isn’t quite dry by the time we make it to the ring, but at least we manage to arrive on time. We plant ourselves at the end of the line behind a girl with a really cute Westie, and I try to calm my racing heart as I rubber band Elvis’s show number around my arm below my treat pouch. Fortunately I don’t recognize any of the kids from the show two weeks ago, which means nobody here has seen my underwear. The judge hasn’t even arrived yet, and I’m grateful for the time to catch my breath. The dash across the convention center actually seems to have been good for Elvis—he’s not doing that nervous leash-tugging thing from last time—and I tell myself everything is okay. Sure, we had a little hiccup, but it’s over now. And Elvis got some extra vitamin C, which means he won’t get . . . scurvy? Is that the thing you get on ships?