Waylon! Even More Awesome, Volume 2 Page 3

  Eddy looked puzzled for a minute. Then he tunneled into the snow near where the apple had disappeared. Eventually he popped up, whuffling snow from his snout, the apple in his mouth. He trotted back and handed it over.

  Waylon threw the apple again. This time, Eddy dove in a couple of feet past where it had entered the snow and retrieved it perfectly.

  “Wow. Genius dog.”

  Waylon looked up. A teenage girl stood beside him. She wore a red scarf wound around her face so he could only see her eyes. They were watching Eddy in wonder.

  “He is,” Waylon agreed. He tossed the apple again. “He’s figuring the apple’s trajectory.”

  “He’s like the Einstein of dogs,” the girl said. Puffs of steam leaked out of her scarf with the words. “You’re so lucky.” Then she ducked her head deeper into her scarf and moved on down the path.

  “I am,” Waylon said out loud. “I am so lucky.” He swept a bench clear of snow and sat down to watch his dog.

  He had to admit that Dumpster Eddy wasn’t much to look at. In fact, Eddy struck him as the kind of thing that would happen if some aliens decided to make an Earth dog, and they understood the basics—four legs on the bottom, a head on one end and a tail at the other—but all they had was a pile of leftover parts. The kind of parts that actual Earth dogs would have rejected as being too ugly.

  Waylon loved this mismatched dog with all his heart, which, whenever he saw Eddy, he could feel swelling so fast it seemed in danger of exploding right out of his chest.

  For as long as he could remember, a dog had been the one thing missing from his life. Not a cat or a bird or even a potbellied pig, which his mother had offered once, since it didn’t have fur for her to be allergic to.

  No, it had always been a dog and only a dog for him.

  A year ago, Waylon had started to build himself a robot puppy. He’d filled a stuffed poodle—a realistic one, of course, not some dumb fuzzy toy—with springs and gears and a mini recorder with twelve different barks, all wired to a remote control. He’d programmed the tail to wag and the ears to perk, and he knew that with a few simple parts from his mother’s robotics lab he could make that dog roll over and trot and probably even play Frisbee in the park.

  But he’d stopped.

  He stopped because of the eyes. The robot dog’s eyes were dull black, like stones, and they had bothered Waylon.

  He’d understood why when he met Dumpster Eddy. Eddy’s eyes were shining with life. They could be worried or trusting, joyful or sad, playful or serious. Intelligent eyes. Waylon had known then that no robot dog would ever have understood him—grokked him—the way a real dog could.

  The way Dumpster Eddy did.

  And he grokked Eddy, too.

  Eddy bounded up onto the bench and shook the snow from his coat. Waylon knew he could grok with Eddy right now and find out what the whining in the station had been about. But for some reason he didn’t want to.

  Eddy shivered. Waylon unzipped his coat and held it open. “Hop in,” he invited.

  Eddy did, and Waylon zipped him up until only the tip of his nose poked out. He carried him the seven blocks back to the lockup. And even though Dumpster Eddy was twenty-three pounds (Meg had weighed him), nestled against Waylon’s chest, he didn’t feel any heavier than an extra heart.

  Friday morning, Charlie was waiting for Waylon in the Pit. He handed over Cosmo-Quest, beaming.

  Waylon beamed back. He opened the booklet and read. His smile disappeared.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson would never take him seriously if he saw something like this.

  He held the booklet out. “What’s this?” he asked. “Right here. Astronaut Char-Lon got off the hover-board and slipped on some green slime. You changed what I wrote, Charlie! There’s no green slime on Pluto. Pluto is covered in reddish dust.”

  Charlie rolled his eyes. “Reddish dust isn’t funny. Green slime is.”

  “But green slime isn’t scientifically accurate. Reddish dust is.”

  Charlie air-waved Waylon’s words away.

  “The science has to be right,” Waylon said, a little louder than he’d meant to. He was starting to get riled up by the air-waving. “It’s an astrophysics comic.”

  Charlie crossed his arms over his chest. “It’s an astrophysics comic. The funny has to be funny!”

  “All right, fine,” Charlie grumbled when the first bell rang. “How about this: Astronaut Char-Lon falls into this hole, this hole in the reddish dust, and at the bottom—”

  “No, that couldn’t happen,” Waylon interrupted. “He couldn’t fall in. Not without a gravity suit.”

  “So what? It would be hilarious! Holy Kooka-Moly!”

  “Hilarious, maybe,” Waylon admitted, “but it’s called Cosmo-Quest, not Made-Up-Stuff Quest!”

  Charlie’s face crashed.

  “I’m sorry, Charlie, but science is science.” Waylon walked into the classroom, disheartened that anyone would want to mess with something as amazing and perfect as science.

  All day, he only grew more depressed. He’d pinned a lot of hopes on Cosmo-Quest. At the end of school, he slumped into the Pit, avoiding Charlie, who was avoiding him.

  Baxter came up to Waylon during the avoiding. “Can you go with me to see Eddy today?” he asked.

  Waylon felt his bad mood completely, instantly evaporate. “Yes!” He pulled out his scientific life’s work journal. Investigate the mood-altering power of dogs, he wrote, then tucked it back in his pocket. “Yes!” he shouted again, hurrying after Baxter.

  “Hey,” he said, catching up. “How come you’re letting me share your day today?”

  “So Eddy will have company. The chief wants to see me in his office again.”

  Waylon shivered as he walked alongside Baxter. “Are you in trouble?”

  “Of course not!” Baxter looked insulted, as if the mere idea were ludicrous.

  “Well, you were in trouble with Principal Rice on Wednesday. Clementine said you put guts in her briefcase.”

  “Guts? No, nuts,” Baxter said. “I filled it with nuts. It was a total success.”

  “Except you got caught,” Waylon said.

  “Don’t care. That wasn’t the point.”

  “Then what was?”

  Baxter stopped. He looked more serious than Waylon had ever seen him. “I am going to be the world’s greatest criminologist when I grow up. To do that, I have to understand how the criminal mind works. To do that, I have to re-create their crimes myself.”

  Waylon got it. He always understood famous experiments better when he repeated them himself. “So what does that have to do with Mrs. Rice?”

  “I always try them out on her. On Wednesday, I re-created the Great Ruby Heist of 1989, which used identical briefcases. I’d seen Mrs. Rice’s briefcase when I went to her office the day before. I realized there was one exactly like it in the back of my dad’s closet. The actual crooks substituted fake rubies, but I only had all these walnuts, left over from Christmas. The point was, I switched her briefcase.”

  “And Principal Rice lets you get away with this stuff?”

  “Not exactly. But she sees I’m fulfilling my destiny.”

  Waylon appreciated destiny, too. Since he was little, he’d known it was his destiny to be a scientist. “Sure, okay,” he said. “Still, I can’t believe you don’t get detention.”

  “Oh, I do. I owe a total of thirty-eight hours now. But Mrs. Rice knows I’m studying to become a junior police officer. She says if I earn my certificate, she’ll wipe out all the detentions.”

  “Wow. I didn’t know she was so nice.”

  Baxter smacked his forehead. “Here’s the weird part. She says she’s not being nice! She says she’s doing it because when she retires, she figures she’s going to need a friend on the police department.”

  “You’re making that up,” Waylon said. “She’s the principal of the whole school!”

  Baxter shrugged. “Think about it. You spend all those years making rule
s, and forcing kids to follow rules, and punishing kids for not following rules…well, I bet it makes you want to break some rules sometimes.”

  Waylon brushed the idea away. Baxter was messing with him. “So if you’re not in trouble, how come you’re seeing the chief today?”

  “He’s helping me study for the junior-officer course.” Baxter pulled a pamphlet from his jacket. “Today he’s testing me on Traits of the Ideal Police Officer. You can quiz me on the way.”

  Waylon took the pamphlet and they started out again. “Okay, what’s number seven?”

  “Hmmm. Is that about teamwork?”

  “Yep.”

  “Okay…A good officer demonstrates the ability to work on a team. A good officer values the different and unique skills of others.”

  “Perfect,” Waylon said. “How about number three?”

  Baxter slid on a patch of icy sidewalk and then rebalanced. “Number three. Respect for Individuals. A good officer demonstrates an ability to work with people of various backgrounds, beliefs, and opinions.”

  Right down the list, Baxter didn’t miss a single trait. Protects a Source, Perseveres, Has a Partner’s Back, Shows Good Community Morals—Baxter knew them all.

  By the time they got to the station, Waylon had learned a whole lot about police officers, too.

  But not as much as he’d learned about Baxter Boylen.

  Seeing Eddy four days in a row was great. But as he said good-bye and latched the cage, Waylon realized how much he wished he could have Eddy full-time. He was still feeling sad when he walked into the kitchen.

  “Apple-cranberry,” Mr. Zakowski said, waving his hand over a pie on the counter. “Spun caramel topping. Extremely tricky. How was your afternoon?”

  Waylon dropped his backpack and slumped onto a stool. “Good and bad. That dog? He’s back. I took him for a walk. That was the good.”

  “He’s back again? Seems he’s there a lot.”

  Waylon felt his stomach flip. “Um…he’s a repeat offender.” He pointed to the pie. “So, no word yet?”

  “No word yet. Must be nice for you, having that dog around. Almost like having your own, eh?”

  Waylon sighed. “Almost. Except not.”

  “So what was the bad today?”

  Waylon pulled Cosmo-Quest out of his pack and handed it over. “I got it back from Charlie.” He dropped his head to the counter. “It’s ruined. Charlie changed what I wrote. He didn’t care about the science.”

  Mr. Zakowski sat down. “Collaboration’s tricky,” he said. “You can’t disrespect someone else’s skills.”

  Waylon swallowed hard. Was his dad talking about Charlie, or him?

  Mr. Zakowski reached over and grabbed two forks from a drawer. He pulled the pie between them. “Pie’s famous for cheering people up. Let’s see if it works.”

  Waylon stuck in his fork and took a bite. It was delicious. But it didn’t work.

  “Your dad left early,” Waylon’s mother said when he came into the kitchen Saturday morning. “He’s setting up the lights for a show at the Beantown Rep. He said you could join him at the theater if you want.”

  “No, thanks.” Waylon fixed a bowl of cereal and sat down. After a few bites, he noticed his mom was dressed in her lab clothes instead of her Saturday sweatpants. He pointed his spoon at her hair, which was pinned in a tight going-to-work bun. “What’s up?”

  Mrs. Zakowski flashed an excited smile. “Boston General is sending a team of neurosurgeons over to the lab this morning. They want to see my new robotics model. Want to come along, watch the presentation?”

  Hearing the words neurosurgeons and new robotics model in the same sentence was almost too much to resist. Almost.

  “I can’t.” Waylon bent over his cereal again, hoping his mother wouldn’t ask why.

  Mrs. Zakowski sat beside him and pressed her hand to his forehead. “Are you feeling okay?”

  “I’m fine. I just have something to do this morning.”

  Waylon’s mother cocked her head, frowning. “No to the Rep? No to the lab? Must be something important.”

  Waylon kept his gaze on his cornflakes as he answered. “I’m building an igloo. With Baxter.”

  “That sounds like fun,” his mother said. “For a fort?”

  Waylon would have to work hard to only let out a little bit of the truth. “No. It’s for…You know that dog Baxter and I take for walks sometimes? He’s back, and we thought we could play with him there.”

  “The same dog? How does he keep getting loose?”

  “Uh…” The cereal sloshed in Waylon’s stomach. He pushed the bowl away. “Can I borrow a cooler to make the snow blocks with?”

  Mrs. Zakowski went into the pantry and came back a minute later carrying two coolers, a big one and a small one. “Honey, I’m sorry.”

  “About what? These are great.”

  “No, I mean…I’m sorry you can’t have a dog. I’ve never seen anyone want one more, and it breaks my heart that I’m the reason you can’t have one.”

  Waylon jumped up to throw his arms around his mother. “It’s not your fault.” He forced a smile. “Besides, when I’m a famous scientist, I’ll invent an anti-dog-allergy pill, and you won’t be allergic anymore!”

  Mrs. Zakowski laughed and scrubbed his head. “If anyone can do that, kiddo, it’s going to be you. Now get out of here.”

  * * *

  Baxter showed up carrying two plastic bowls. “One for water, one for food,” he said.

  Waylon held up the wicker basket he’d found in his building’s laundry room. “His bed.”

  “Also this.” Baxter pulled a flashlight out of his pack. “It’s going to be dark in there.”

  “Actually, it won’t be that dark,” Waylon said. “Snow is pretty translucent.”

  “Translucent?”

  “Look.” Waylon held up his hand. “You can’t see through it, right? But hold your flashlight against my palm.”

  Baxter did, and Waylon’s hand glowed orange, his bones darker lines. “That’s translucence. Even solid things, like…”—Waylon pointed to the building—“like even those brick walls allow some light through. Our eyes just can’t detect it.”

  Baxter didn’t look convinced.

  “Really,” Waylon said. “Twenty percent of the light that hits the igloo will make it through. Eddy will be able to see well enough, at least during the daytime.”

  “Well, we’ll find out when it’s finished.” Baxter took the lids off the coolers. “Let’s get started. Do we have water?”

  “I called Mitchell. He said he’ll bring some down to his lobby at ten.”

  When they walked into Mitchell’s building, they found Clementine taping snowflakes to a window in the lobby. Mitchell stepped out of the elevator, holding four plastic jugs of water.

  “Yo, Science Dude,” Mitchell said.

  “Yo, Science Dude,” Waylon said back. Sometimes Waylon automatically repeated whatever Mitchell said. This was because Mitchell was fourteen and a sports star. “I mean, yo, Mitchell.”

  Clementine dropped her tape. “What are you doing here, Waylon?” she demanded. “Baseball is over.”

  Mitchell set the jugs on the floor and clapped his hands to his chest as though he’d been stabbed. “Dudette, baseball is never over,” he corrected her. “It’s eternal.”

  Waylon’s hands clapped themselves over his chest. “It’s eternal,” he repeated. “It’s never over.”

  “Well, Mitchell’s not teaching you how to play today,” Clementine said, pointing out the window at the piles of snow. “So what are you doing? What’s the water for?”

  “Nothing,” Baxter said before Waylon could answer. He picked up the jugs and headed for the doors. Their supply sled awaited them outside.

  They got to work right away: shoveling snow into the coolers, sprinkling it with water, and packing it down. Then they overturned each block to harden in the freezing air. When they had enough bigger ones for the first row, they laid
them around the perimeter, tight against each other.

  “I forgot about a snow saw,” Waylon admitted. “You?”

  Baxter drew a coil of wire from his pocket. “Ta-da!”

  “What will that do?” Waylon asked.

  “What won’t it do is the question.” Baxter looked smug. “‘Metal wire is the most valuable tool in the criminal’s arsenal,’” he said, and Waylon could tell he was reciting from the Encyclopedia of Crime. “‘It can be used to jimmy locks, rewire alarms, tie up kidnapping victims, break into cars, slice through—’”

  “Okay, okay,” Waylon interrupted. “How’s it supposed to cut snow blocks?”

  “Watch and learn,” Baxter said. He unrolled about two feet of wire and held it taut. “Angled like this?” he asked.

  Waylon nodded. Baxter sliced the wire through the block. When Waylon lifted off the top of the block, what was left was slanted just right.

  Baxter cut through the next block and the next, all around the entire first row. When they set the second row, the blocks leaned in just the way Waylon had predicted.

  They worked steadily through the morning, making blocks and stacking them. The igloo walls were about waist-high when they heard the sound of laughter.

  “Uh-oh.” Baxter pointed down the alley. Clementine was towing a little kid on a sled. “What if she sees us?”

  “She’ll ask a million questions, that’s all,” Waylon said. “I’ll out-question her until she gives up.”

  Clementine drew up. The little boy on the sled tumbled off and began filling his hat with snow.

  “What are you doing?” Clementine asked.

  “Building an igloo. What’s your brother’s name today?”

  “Arugula. How come you’re building an igloo?”

  “It’s for that dog I told you about. Remember?”

  “Oh, so it’s a dogloo,” Clementine decided. “How are you going to keep him warm?”

  “Snow is good insulation,” Waylon said. “Is dogloo a real word?”

  Clementine shrugged, and then she grimaced. “I sure wouldn’t let my cat live in an ice house. Even if you called it a catloo.”