Waylon! Even More Awesome, Volume 2 Page 2

  A round man in an Animal Control shirt rolled out of Meg’s office holding a clipboard.

  Baxter ran to him. “Why is the cage locked?” he cried. “Where’s Meg?”

  “Maternity leave. I’m her replacement.” The new guy looked over at Waylon. “What are you boys doing in here?”

  Waylon stroked Eddy’s neck through the cage bars. “It’s okay. I’ll get you out in a minute,” he promised. He hurried down the hall, trying to ignore Eddy’s yelps. “Meg had a baby? When’s she coming back?”

  “A couple of months.”

  Waylon pointed to Eddy, who was frantically trying to dig under the door. “We take care of that dog whenever he’s here. But the cage is locked. Can you—?”

  “Whenever he’s here?” The new officer sucked in a cheek and cocked his head. “He’s been here before?”

  “Never mind,” Baxter cut in. “But please don’t lock his cage. We’re going to take him for walks while he’s here—all ten days.”

  “Ten days?” The new guy leaned up against a cage and rubbed his back against the bars. “What ten days is that?”

  “The ten days you keep a stray before you turn him over to a shelter,” Waylon said. He heard his voice rise. Eddy was whimpering now, and the sound hurt. “You know—the rule.”

  “Ten days? Might have been Meg’s rule. But, as I think you can see, I’m not Meg.” The replacement guy chuckled as if he had made a good joke. Then he looked over at Eddy for the first time. “And anyway, from what you’re saying, that mutt has already had plenty of ten-day vacations here. He’ll be off to…”—he looked down at his clipboard—“the Springfield Animal Shelter on Tuesday.”

  “Tuesday?” Baxter gasped.

  “Springfield?” Waylon added. “But that’s…Where is Springfield?”

  “About a hundred miles from here. You boys need to clear out. I’ve got work to do; it’s my first day. Maybe you can take that dog for a walk tomorrow.”

  “Can’t we stay?” Baxter tried. “We’ll help feed the dogs—Meg lets us sometimes.”

  The new officer put a hand on his hip and drew himself up. “I told you, I’m not Meg,” he said again. And this time he wasn’t chuckling.

  Outside, the boys sank to the marble steps of the station. Dusk settled around them like a cold blanket, and they hunched their shoulders against the wind.

  “It’s not fair,” Waylon said after a while. “Why did Meg have to go and have a baby?”

  “We have to put up with Officer Sure-Not-Meg for a couple of months,” Baxter agreed with a shake of his head. “And now we have to get Eddy out by Tuesday.”

  There was another moment of silence as the bad news sank in. They’d run out of places to put Eddy weeks ago.

  Which meant they were going to have to set him loose.

  Waylon looked at the sky. “It’s supposed to snow tonight. Maybe eight inches.” He shivered, picturing Eddy’s still-kind-of-patchy coat. “Of course, snow’s not the problem.”

  “What do you mean? How would you like to be outside all night in the snow?”

  Waylon explained the science. “A layer of snow is about ninety percent air, trapped between the crystals, so it’s good insulation. People live inside igloos, and they stay warm.”

  Baxter stood up. He kicked at a ridge of ice. “Great. One tiny problem: Eddy can’t build an igloo.”

  “I know.” Waylon sighed and got to his feet. He tugged his collar up and started down the steps.

  Then he stopped. He turned to face Baxter. “No, Eddy can’t build an igloo,” he said, feeling a grin slide across his face. “But we can.”

  Waylon woke up to a silence so deep it could mean only two things in a city as noisy as Boston.

  He patted around his ears. No, his head was not encased in osmium, the world’s densest material, whose atoms are so closely packed together that sound vibrations don’t penetrate it. And that left…

  He jumped out of bed and ran to the window. Yes! Snow!

  Snow, and lots of it. Mrs. Gluckman on the floor below was sweeping it off the kale in her window box, and a few people on the street were stabbing shovels into car-shaped mounds, but otherwise his neighborhood was thickly coated in perfect white.

  Waylon had lived his whole ten years in a city that saw a fair share of winter storms, yet the whiteness amazed him every time. Snow was made up of frozen water crystals, which were translucent, so wouldn’t you think it would be clear?

  He knew the science of it, of course: when light photons hit snow, 80 percent of them bounced back, and they bounced back equally along the color spectrum. White was the result of a reflection of all colors. Still, the blank whiteness of fresh snowfall was always a surprise.

  Waylon dressed in a hurry, doubling up on shirts and socks. He skidded into the hall and was just reaching for the phone when it rang. “Corner of Beacon!” he cried into the receiver.

  “See you in fifteen!” Baxter fired back.

  Waylon hurried into the kitchen to grab an apple and leave a note. But his dad was just opening the oven, and the aroma that came out almost knocked Waylon over. The human nasal cavity has about five million scent-receptor cells, and he could feel all of his jostling for a front-row seat.

  “Cinnamon scones,” his father said, bowing over the tray.

  Waylon leaned in for a deep sniff. “So you haven’t heard about the screenplay yet.”

  “Not yet. School’s canceled, by the way. It’s just you and me. The subway’s tied up, so your mom left early, and your sister’s sleeping in. Sit down. I’ll frost these.”

  “Can’t.” Waylon stepped into his boots and started lacing them up. “I’m meeting Baxter. We’re making an igloo.”

  “Speaking of…” Mr. Zakowski tipped the hot scones onto a plate. “I thought he’d be having dinner here the other night. He seemed pretty interested in doing that.”

  Waylon grabbed his coat from the hook.

  “He was hinting pretty hard, buddy. Why didn’t you invite him?”

  “Dad, we’re not, you know…friends.”

  “No? Seems you do a lot of stuff with him.”

  Waylon felt his stomach roll. He always felt queasy whenever the subject of Baxter and Eddy came up around his parents. Waylon was a terrible liar, and just the thought of trying to hide what he and Baxter were doing made him feel the way he had the last Fourth of July, after a plate of bad fried clams.

  “I don’t know why you’d want me to be friends with a criminal,” he mumbled.

  Mr. Zakowski looked up sharply. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing. I’m just not friends with Baxter. We do stuff together about that dog we visit. Like this igloo—we’re making it so we can visit with him there.” Waylon pressed his lips together so they wouldn’t say anything more and jammed his hands into his gloves. “I have to go, Dad.”

  Mr. Zakowski heaved a sigh that said All right, but think about it, then slid four scones into a paper bag and tucked it inside Waylon’s jacket. “Two for you; two for your not-friend,” he said. “And keep your hood up—it’s cold out there.”

  Waylon stopped at his condo’s storage area for a shovel, and then pushed open the back door. Plowing through the sparkling drifts, the scones warm against his chest, he did think about what his dad had said.

  Sometimes Waylon thought that Baxter would make a good friend. Baxter always listened whenever Waylon mentioned some fascinating science—he never acted bored, and he never laughed.

  He never horned in on Waylon’s days with Eddy.

  And Baxter was easy to talk to. Waylon’s friend Rasheed liked to shoulder-butt people every few sentences. His cousin Josh broke into monkey hoots when he was excited. Charlie inserted the punch lines of funny movies into everything he said. For the last month, it had been “Holy Kooka-Moly,” which Waylon didn’t find so hilarious after the first hundred times.

  Once in a while, Baxter talked out of the side of his mouth, the way he said detective partne
rs do so criminals can’t read their lips. But otherwise he just talked. No shoulder-butts, no monkey hoots, no punch lines. That was a good thing in a friend, wasn’t it?

  But after thinking like this for a while, Waylon always remembered: Baxter Boylen was the closest thing to a juvenile delinquent he had ever encountered. Almost every day, it seemed, Principal Rice hauled him down to her office. And he had pretty much become the Encyclopedia of Crime he checked out so often. In the just the past week, Baxter had informed Waylon that leaving the US with more than five dollars in pennies can land you in jail for five years; a person with an identical twin can’t be found guilty based on DNA evidence; and the electric chair was invented by a dentist.

  He’d dropped these bombshells as though they were nothing, but Waylon had felt himself blanching.

  Wasn’t it safer to stay away from someone that interested in criminal activity? Who practically lived in the principal’s office? Except when it came to Dumpster Eddy, Waylon kept a distance from Baxter Boylen.

  He turned the corner, and there was Baxter. Waylon had to admit he didn’t look anything like a criminal, smiling and waving a shovel. Still.

  Waylon pulled the bag of scones out. “From my dad,” he said.

  “Okay,” Baxter said, after they’d licked their gloves clean of scone crumbs, one finger at a time. “So, like we decided last night, this is the perfect location. It’s exactly in between our homes, so Eddy will know we’re nearby and won’t run away.”

  Waylon pointed to the apartment building on their right. “And my friend Mitchell lives there—my parents won’t wonder why I’m coming here all the time.”

  Waylon and Baxter squeezed through a passage to the back alley. The alley had a good, unused look: it had been plowed, but nobody had shoveled out paths from the doorways, and there were no footprints. Large snow-covered mounds might be garbage cans or air-conditioning equipment—an igloo would blend right in.

  Waylon pointed to a corner where two brick walls met. A Dumpster guarded the nook from view. “How about back there?” He trudged through the drifts. “I like it,” he called to Baxter. “It’s already protected on three sides, like a cave.”

  Baxter scuffed in along the path Waylon had made. He stood and surveyed the space, nodding. “There’s supposed to be another storm Saturday night. If we can finish the igloo by then, the new snow will camouflage it.” He clumped over to the Dumpster and swept off a spot on its lid. He hoisted himself up and tipped his head toward the space beside him.

  Waylon climbed up. From the new perspective, the alley sparkled with promise. He felt a smile lift his face. This was real. He and Baxter would make a secret home here for their dog, Dumpster Eddy.

  Their dog—Waylon was finally going to own a dog. Just sitting on the Dumpster made him feel closer to Eddy.

  Maybe he’d give himself a matching nickname. Dumpster Waylon…that sounded pretty good.

  Although, of course, it would have to be a secret nickname.

  Waylon had gotten himself a journal in the fall. In it he’d begun to track his life’s work as a scientist. Pretty soon, he planned to send this journal off to Neil deGrasse Tyson. Neil deGrasse Tyson, he hoped, would be so impressed, he’d invite Waylon to be a junior correspondent on his show. But Neil deGrasse Tyson wouldn’t ask someone named Dumpster Waylon to be a junior correspondent, that was for sure. No, Dumpster Waylon would be something he’d only call himself around his dog.

  His dog! Waylon glanced over at Baxter. He was surveying the alley with a pleased expression, as if he was feeling the same way Waylon was.

  Maybe he would let Baxter call him by the secret nickname, too.

  Baxter spread his hands. “Okay, so how do we build it?”

  Waylon scooped together a snow pillow and leaned back. The bright blue sky glittered with frosty powder drifting from the rooftops. “An igloo’s made of blocks of snow,” he began in the voice he would use if he actually did get to be a junior correspondent on Neil deGrasse Tyson’s TV show. “First we set a row of big ones in a circle. Then we take a snow saw, and we—”

  “A snow saw?”

  Waylon nodded, but he saw the problem. “I’m sure we can figure out something else. Anything that will cut through the blocks. We need to take the tops off the first row, slanting up and inward.” He held his hand out at an angle and spiraled it up. “After that, the blocks form a dome.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  Waylon sat up. He tugged off his gloves and dug into his shirt pocket for a pencil. He pulled the empty scone bag from his coat and began to draw. “See? The angle helps the rows support each other.”

  Baxter nodded. “How about air? How will Eddy breathe?”

  “There will be chinks between the blocks—we won’t fill in all of them. We’ll stick tubes—maybe pieces of hose—through some of them. Horizontally, so that even if it snows again they won’t get blocked.” Waylon dropped to the ground and scuffed out a circle about six feet across. “This will be the perimeter.”

  Baxter followed, stamping the circle into a flat ring. “How about a door?”

  “Right. There’s usually a short tunnel, so the wind doesn’t blow straight in.” Waylon moved toward the back wall and dragged an X with his boot. “Here, so it’s hidden from the alley. Let’s start making some blocks.”

  Baxter scanned the empty alley. “What if this friend of yours sees us building it?”

  Waylon shook his head. “Mitchell can keep a secret. Clementine lives in the same building. She wouldn’t tell either. Let’s get started.”

  Waylon lifted the Dumpster lid, crumpled the scone bag, and was about to throw it away when Baxter grabbed his sleeve. “Wait. Any crumbs left?”

  Waylon passed over the bag and Baxter shook it over his mouth. “Man, those were good. I bet you hope your dad never hears about his screenplay.”

  “No.” Waylon put on his gloves and picked up his shovel. “I really hope he hears soon.”

  “Oh, right,” Baxter said. “Because then he’ll be famous, and you guys will be rich!”

  Waylon dropped his head. He stabbed his shovel into the snow and cut a square. Then another and another.

  Of course he was excited about what his father was doing. Mr. Zakowski used to work at an insurance office. A normal job, not too bad, Waylon had thought. The kind of job with spin-around chairs and a box of doughnuts in the break room—imagine being able to stop in for free doughnuts anytime you felt like it.

  But Waylon’s father hadn’t seen it that way. “That job was crushing the creativity out of me,” he explained. So, about a year and a half ago, on June 14, his fortieth birthday, he’d quit. Snapped his laptop shut, unpinned Waylon’s and Neon’s art from his cubicle walls and swept it into his briefcase. He’d yanked off his necktie and tossed it into a box of doughnuts on his way out, whistling “Oh Happy Day.”

  Waylon liked imagining the scene—it made him proud to have a father who’d done something so dramatic. And it was pretty thrilling to think that one day he and his family and all his friends, and oh yes, the whole world, including Neil deGrasse Tyson, would go into a theater and watch a movie his own father had scripted.

  But in his secret heart of hearts, Waylon was also a teeny, tiny bit worried. What if…?

  “What if it doesn’t work?”

  Waylon spun around. “Of course it will work! Wait. What?”

  Baxter pointed to the dozens of squares Waylon had carved into the surface. “I think the snow’s too fluffy. How are you going to get those out as blocks?”

  Waylon slid his shovel under a square and lifted. The snow crumbled into a pile of powder.

  “I’ve got an idea.” Baxter plowed back to the Dumpster.

  Waylon leaned on his shovel, thinking about his father again.

  Two years, was the deal Mr. Zakowski had made with the family. For two years, he would take odd jobs on the weekends, but otherwise he was just going to write. If he hadn’t sold a script by the end of those tw
o years, he’d go back to crunching numbers. Every time he promised that—“I’ll go back to crunching numbers”—he made it sound like I’ll go back to wrestling crocodiles in the sewer.

  June 14 was only five months away.

  Baxter came back, holding a shoe box. He packed it with snow, then he turned it over. The block held its shape, only crumbling at the edges. But when Baxter tried to lift it, it broke in half. “What we need is some water, to pack it down harder,” he said. “And a box that’s not cardboard.”

  “We’ve got a picnic cooler,” Waylon remembered.

  “Perfect.” Baxter ditched his shovel behind the Dumpster. “Let’s go get it. Maybe your dad’s making something great for lunch.…”

  Waylon turned away. “Well, uh…it’s my day with Eddy,” he said. “I want to show him snow. Let’s meet here Saturday morning and build it then.”

  When Waylon arrived at the lockup, Eddy knocked him down, licking him all over, as usual. But then he started whining. He sniffed all around Waylon in widening circles. He stood on his hind legs at the lockup door as if he was looking for something.

  “Let’s go for a walk,” Waylon urged. Eddy woofed a final cry at the door and followed Waylon to the Animal Control office.

  This time, Officer Sure-Not-Meg just waved okay without even looking up from his papers. Waylon took the old collar from its hook and fastened it around Eddy’s neck. He clipped on the ratty leash Meg kept beside the collar and led Eddy outside.

  “Eddy, meet snow,” Waylon said. “Snow, meet Eddy.”

  Dumpster Eddy and snow seemed to be old friends. Eddy zigzagged across the sidewalk, scrambling up and down the shoveled mounds. He plunged and rolled and shook himself off, plunged and rolled and shook himself off.

  In the dog park, Waylon let him off the leash. He took an apple from his pocket and threw it. “Fetch!”