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  911 it’s Rufus

  What’s up?

  Opal gave him a gal of chocolate milk.

  Symptoms?

  Lying down, panting. almost dead?

  Not funny, is stomach distended?

  Yes

  Bring him in, I’ll be waiting

  OK, luv u

  Luv u 2

  “Okay, Aunt Opal. I have to take Rufus in to the animal clinic.”

  “What? No! My baby. He gone die! No, Rufus!” she screamed.

  “Auntie, relax. He just needs to be monitored to make sure he is okay. I think it’s better for him there. Just let me take him. You can come too,” I said as if I was talking to a child. As I bent down to pick him up, Rufus made the sound that is unmistakable to anyone who has had dogs—the sound that says, “Watch out. I’m gonna blow.” And blow the little bastard did. All over me.

  “Fuuuu—!” I tried to put him down or get out of the way, but I was not fast enough. Opal and Tina got out of the splash zone in time, but I was left holding Rufus, and now I was the chocolate milk–covered dog girl. Great.

  “Oh, get the dog. Get the dog now,” I cried, as I held him at arm’s length and tried not to throw up.

  Rufus gave me a look that said, “Please, don’t drop me.”

  “Day, hold on. Let me get something! I’ll help you!” said Tina frantically. She ran to get towels to clean up the milk spill, because if I fell in the milk spill...

  “Aunt Opal, do you have something, like a shirt or something, I can throw on, so I can take Rufus to the clinic? I don’t have time to change, and I’m afraid he will get sick again if we wait.”

  “I have jus’ tha thing,” she yelled and ran—more like shuffled—up the stairs.

  She came back downstairs with what looked like a tarp. No, really, it looked like a flowery tarp that you throw over something. Why was she bringing a tarp down?

  “Here, throw this on ova your clothes. It’ll cover all that mess up.”

  Oh. My. God. It was a muumuu. She expected me to put on a muumuu? She had to be shitting me. “Um, Auntie, don’t you have just like a large nightshirt or something?” I asked.

  “Oh, hush up, chile, and put dis here on. Who you tryin’ to impress?” She proceeded to maneuver it on over my head and around Rufus.

  I had no choice now but to become the milk-covered, muumuu-wearing dog girl. Awesome.

  As Tina made her way back into the kitchen, she stopped dead in her tracks, taking in the sight.

  “If you value your life and our friendship, you will gloss over this picture in your mind like you don’t see it and move on,” I said through gritted teeth.

  “Noted,” was all she said, then proceeded to wipe up the milk spill while I made my way carefully out the door, silently cursing Rufus to hell.

  There was no way I was going to be able to drive and hold Rufus, so Tina grabbed my keys. After placing almost every towel Aunt Opal had in her house in my back seat, I settled with Rufus in a somewhat comfortable position while a semi-hysterical Aunt Opal was in the front seat with Tina, and we made our way to the Shaddy Groves Animal Clinic.

  When we pulled up, Trevor was waiting at the door and came to meet us. He was used to Aunt Opal and her antics. He was a hard-core animal lover, which is why he worked hard and graduated early to become a veterinary technician at the only animal clinic in town. With all the people in town like Opal who treated their pets like their children, this clinic saw as much business as a human hospital. People would do anything to prolong the life of their pets.

  “I won’t even begin to ask what the hell you have on,” he said as he reached for Rufus. “Or why you smell like sour milk. Ugh, babe,” he said, making a face.

  “Let’s just focus on the dog dying in my arms,” I said irritably.

  “Dyin’? Ain’t nobody said nothin’ ’bout him dyin’. Oh, Ruuuufus!” wailed Aunt Opal.

  “Babe, really?” Trevor chastised. “Did you have to say that?” He turned to Opal. “He’s not going to die, Opal. He’s just sick. Let me take him inside so I can take a look at him. I’ll take really good care of him. I promise.”

  “Well, I s’pose that’d be all right,” she sniffled.

  Tina patted Aunt Opal on the shoulder to comfort her and leaned over to whisper in Opal’s ear. “I can’t stand him, but the man is good at what he does. Trust him.”

  This seemed to make Opal feel better, as her tears stopped. Trevor took Rufus from me, towels and all, and walked back toward the clinic doors. Then he stopped and turned around to say good-bye.

  “I would kiss you, babe, but no. And Tina? Thanks for the compliment. I am good at my job, and the feeling is mutual.” He winked and went inside.

  Tina shot him a look that said “asshole” and that only I caught, as only I would. I had to stifle a laugh. Here I was, covered chocolate milk dog vomit, wearing a muumuu, and standing in a parking lot with my crazy, hysterical aunt and best friend—and I had to be to school in twenty minutes. The absurdity of it all was just funny.

  “Let’s go!” I said. “We still have to drop off Opal back at home, and I’m going back home to change ’cause there is no way in holy hell that I’m going to class with this thing on. I’ll take the late mark.”

  “That ther’ was high fashion in my day, chile,” said Opal as she pursed her lips as if I didn’t appreciate fashion, which clearly, I didn’t.

  By the time I got to school, I had missed thirty minutes of my first class and the professor gave me the “Really, you’re late for the first day of class?” look, which I tried to ignore as I slid into an empty seat in the back. I considered myself a “professional student,” since I hadn’t yet stuck with one major. Currently, it was journalism, since I like to write, so the class I was in now was creative writing. Last semester, I thought I wanted to be a nurse until I saw all the math I would have to do—forget that! I’m horrible with numbers, and doing math made me feel like Forrest Gump. Truth was, I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I was only twenty-two and I had time, right?

  I sat through the class and listened to the professor give the syllabus for what was to come during the semester and what was expected of us. Great, we have to write a five-thousand-word creative writing paper at the end of the course on how we changed. Really? Just then my phone buzzed with a text. Thank god I remembered to put it on vibrate before class.

  Sissy!

  What A?

  I <3 my Class!

  Can U B any louder by text?

  Omg YES!!!!!

  I’m in class. Point?

  Mom wants 2 do lunch

  OK I’m free @ 130

  Me 2, well 135

  OK meet by oak tree

  Kk, MUMU girl lol

  WTF! How do u know that?!

  Lol I just do. Bye

  I swear, news got around in this town like the town slut. I’m sure someone had told my mom and then my mom told Aria, or someone had told Aria and Aria told my mom. Either way, bigmouth townspeople. Not that it was a secret, but it was embarrassing, to say the least. I texted Tina.

  So I’m MUMU girl now?

  As opposed to ho?

  Not funny. MUMU really?

  Relax only old people know what a MUMU is ne ways

  Hello! This town is old people!

  Oh Get over it Mu. I mean Day

  F U!

  U kiss ur mom w/that mouth?

  I put my phone away. It would go on if I let it. My class let out, and I went on to the next few classes while running into a few other friends I had made during my first semester and playing catch-up. Each one had given me a knowing look that said they knew the muumuu story. Great, it was all over town. No way to live that down but to own it. So when another one of my high school–turned-college mates approached me with the knowing “muumuu girl” look, I let it all out.

  “Okay, yes, I had a big flowery muumuu on this morning in the parking lot of SGAC. Would the whole town just get over it already? It’s not national ne
ws!” I huffed.

  “Whoa there, sister,” said Riley Williams, hands held up with palms facing me as if he was warding off my attack. “I just came to see how your break was, Dacey. I hadn’t heard anything about a muumuu and SGAC.”

  “Oh. Well, now I feel bad, Riley. I’m sorry. It’s just the whole town has been staring at me like it was a crime to wear a muumuu to an animal clinic or something.”

  “Nah, I’m kidding. I totally knew about the muumuu, but that’s not why I came over here,” he said with a smile.

  “Riley, I could face-punch you, but I won’t,” I laughed. I had known Riley like most kids in this town since birth, but unlike most kids in this town, Riley was a friend, and I didn’t have a lot of those. Not because I didn’t want friends, but people just didn’t know how to take me. Most of the time they didn’t know if I was being funny or bitchy or sarcastic, and in truth, I couldn’t tell you which one I was being. But Riley kind of didn’t care. He made me laugh, as he had a dry sense of humor that most people in town found weird. He fit in with my off-kilter friends. We weren’t close, but he always seemed to be around.

  “So you know what people are saying?” he asked as he casually fell into step beside me while I was walking toward the oak tree to meet Aria.

  “And by people you mean...?”

  “Yes, I mean the whole entire town,” Riley finished my sentence.

  “Not really, but I know you’re going to tell me, so out with it.”

  “Well, since you asked so nicely.”

  I shot him a look.

  “Okay, okay. But don’t shoot the messenger, okay?” he said, hands held up again as if protecting himself.

  “They are saying that you are becoming just like your aunt.”

  “What?” I screamed, causing several students to look my way.

  “Remember what I said about not shooting the messenger,” he said, backing away.

  “Oh, cut that out. I’m not going to hit you,” I said edgily.

  “Oh, I don’t know, your fists say differently,” he said, looking down at my balled-up fists.

  I hadn’t even realized I had balled them into fists. But I had. I was so mad. “The townspeople think I caught the crazy train like my aunt? That’s crazy!” I said incredulously.

  “Well...” He drew out the word.

  “Shut up, Riley! I know what that sounds like, okay, but you know how ridiculous that sounds, right?”

  “I know, but you know small-town craziness is small-town craziness, no matter how it sounds.”

  “Yeah, I know. Ugh, thanks for the heads-up,” I said as I spotted Aria sitting under the tree.

  She looked up from her phone and smiled when she saw Riley. “Hey, Ri-Ri.”

  “Yeah, that isn’t cute, but hey, what’s up, Aria? How’s your first day so far?” He smiled at my little sister. Everyone liked her, even my friends who were four years older than her.

  “Great! All my classes are so cool. Did Dac tell you what my major was? You’ll never guess. Guess! Guess!” she said excitedly.

  “Okay, calm down, and next time have decaf coffee,” he said calmly as he placed both hands on her shoulders to get her to stop jumping up and down.

  “Silly, I don’t drink coffee,” she said, but she did stop jumping up and down.

  “Really?” asked Riley skeptically. “Then you should bottle your hyperness and sell it, ’cause man!”

  “I should! Dac says that. I think she tried when we were little. That’s how I got this scar on the back of my neck.” She lifted up her hair to show off the perfectly round scar that came from a handlebar accident when she was eight and I was twelve. It totally looks like someone tried to stick a tube in her neck. Had Riley been anyone else who hadn’t grown up in this town, he might have believed her too.

  “If I wasn’t there, I might have believed that, but your sister thought she killed you that day, kiddo,” Riley said.

  It was true. Aria had screamed murder from the accident, and I thought I had broken her. It was the scariest day of my life. But she just fractured her neck and had to wear a neck brace for six weeks and got me to wait on her hand and foot because of it. I complained, but secretly I didn’t mind because it was my fault and I would do anything for my sister.

  “I’m still waiting for you to guess, Ri-Ri,” said Aria.

  “And I’m still waiting for you to say my name correctly, but in the interest of saving time, I’ll guess theater. Am I right?”

  “Boo. You told him,” she accused me.

  “No, I actually didn’t. He’s just very perceptive,” I defended myself.

  “I am perceptive, but it could have something to do with the Intro to Arts and Theatre syllabus peeking out of your folder that I perceptively saw,” said Riley, pointing to her folder on the ground by the tree that she had left there when she jumped up to meet us.

  I couldn’t help but laugh.

  “Aw, man. I really wanted you to guess too,” she pouted.

  “It’s okay, kiddo. I would have never guessed theater, so we are square,” he said, like that made total sense. “I’m gonna take off. I have another class across campus in five and if I walk briskly, I’ll just still be late. So see ya.”

  Laughing, I waved him off. “See ya, Riley.”

  “That crazy boy,” said A, shaking her head.

  “Yea, that crazy boy. Where is Mom? I thought you said she was meeting us?”

  “She is running late. She’ll be here. Relax, muumuu girl.”

  “Ugh, shut the hell up. That’s an Opal story. I’ll tell you about it later,” I said, not wanting to relive it so soon, especially the chocolate vomit part.

  “Looks like it’s going to rain. I hope Mom gets here soon,” she said, looking up at the sky.

  That’s the thing about Florida weather. One minute it could be sunny and hot; the next it would be cloudy and overcast getting ready for the heavens to open up. I hadn’t even noticed the birds were circling in the sky like they do when there’s a storm coming.

  Now Aria was standing up looking at the birds, saying, “It’s coming. See the birds? Heeere birdies, heeere birdies.” And people thought I was the one turning out like Aunt Opal?

  “I don’t think that works on birds, and even if it did, would you really want fifty birds zooming straight at you? It’s like you haven’t seen The Birds with me and Mom ever.”

  “Oh my god, you’re so right! See, this is probably why you’re smarter than me,” she said.

  “Hey, have you heard that people are saying that I’m turning into Aunt Opal?” I asked her seriously.

  “Oh, that. Yeah, I heard some rumors, but no one has said anything directly to me, so I didn’t think anything of it,” she said with a shrug.

  That was Aria, blissfully in the dark about most things, but then again, most little sisters were. I would ask Mom later. I hated small-town gossip, but I hated people thinking bad about me or my family more. It was probably one of the reasons I always stuck by Wally. Sure, he was a craptastic father, but I wouldn’t have anyone else thinking that about him.

  I decided to text Mom to see where she was. She replied that she was parking.

  “Mom is parking. Let’s go meet her,” I told Aria. I started walking over to the student parking lot. I saw Mom’s silver Lexus sedan sitting in the parking lot, and she was on the phone talking. I was so hungry, but I resisted the urge to bang on her window to hurry up and just stood patiently next to her car while Aria plopped on the trunk and kicked her legs back and forth like the kid at heart that she was.

  When Mom opened the door, she didn’t bring her purse with her and she had that “I’m sorry” look on her face.

  “Oh, no. Don’t tell me you’re canceling?” I guessed.

  “I have to. Your dad needs help at the shop, and we are going to grab lunch, but come by for dinner and we can talk about what happened with the muumuu and Opal today,” she said.

  “Geez, everyone does know about that, I guess,” I sa
id, throwing my hands in the air.

  “I’m afraid it was watercooler news today at school, honey,” she said, patting me on the shoulder.

  “Oh, great. I made the elementary school watercooler news circuit,” I mumbled calmly. “Now, future kids will think I’m beginning to be like Aunt Opal too. The town has one crazy person, one. And Aunt Opal is it. Guess who’s in line to take her place? You’re looking at her.”

  “Yeah, I heard something like that too, and I set those old hags at the school straight about you too,” she said.

  I hated that she was left trying to defend me against a bunch of old hags and gossip hounds who had nothing better to do. Shouldn’t they have been off trying to educate the future kids of the world or something other than worrying about why I was in a muumuu in the parking lot of SGAC?

  “Mom, you know I was tied up with Opal this morning, again. She gave Rufus a gallon of chocolate milk, and when I went over there to help and take him to Trevor, he threw up on me.”

  “Gross!” interjected Aria as she had hopped down from the trunk and was now avidly listening to the story.

  “I know! So I asked Aunt Opal for something to put on just to get to Trevor, and she came back with a muumuu, and before I had time to protest, she had the dang thing on me and she was hysterical thinking Rufus was going to die, so I just let her, and long story short, boom—clinic parking lot, crazy Aunt, me in a muumuu,” I rushed out.

  “Breathe, Dacey. It’s okay. You don’t have to plead your case to me. I know the Aunt Opal stories,” Mom said evenly.

  “No, Mom. Don’t calm her down. Maybe her head will do that spinny thing, and she will spit green stuff from her mouth,” said Aria.

  “Wow, really? I’m a little disturbed by how excited you got by that prospect, you freak,” I said, even though it made me smile because it did calm me down. She always knew how to do it.

  “I see it worked,” she murmured proudly.

  “Whatever,” I murmured back.

  Mom carried on like she had not heard a thing, which, knowing Mom, she probably did, but she had long since given up on trying to decipher our sister talk. “Don’t worry about it, dear. It will blow over. You know these rumors—they spread like butter and are gone with the rising sun. Tomorrow it will be about how old man Simmons and Coramae are special friends,” Mom said.