Seaglass Summer (4 page)

“Hey, Poppy. Nice lab coat.” Hawk gives me a flashy grin. “You know any movie stars in L.A.?”

“Know any killer whales?” I ask. My face is hot.

“Saw J-pod this year.” His blue eyes are trained on my face. “Out at West Bluff State Park.”

I want to ask him what J-pod is, but I pretend I already know. “Well, good for you.”

“Come on back,” he says. “I’ll show you around.”

“Don’t go touching everything!” Saundra yells after us.

“Can’t stop my feet from touching the ground,” Hawk mutters, but his mom doesn’t hear. He leaves the mop and bucket in the hall and leads me to a room in the rear of the clinic. “Animals stay here if they’re boarding, or if they’re going to have surgery.” He points to cages—small ones on top, big ones along the bottom. A fluffy gray dog trembles in a bottom cage. Bags of pet food line one wall, across from the cages.

“Doc took a tumor off his leg last Friday.” Hawk opens the cage to pet the dog. “He stayed over the weekend, goes home today.”

I touch the dog’s soft fur, and he nudges my hand with his wet nose. His watery eyes gaze up at me as if to say,
Please take me with you
. I want to hug him, but I’m afraid I’ll hurt him.

Hawk closes the cage. “Come on. I’ll show you some gross stuff.”

I follow him down the hall. “I hope you’re not going to show me blood and guts. I get queasy.”

“And you want to be a vet?”

“Once, when my uncle visited us in L.A., he told me he used to get queasy, too, when he first started out. He was even afraid of needles when he was a kid. But
he
became a vet.”

“I can’t believe Doc was afraid of needles.” Hawk laughs. He points to a hallway branching off to the right. “There’s the X-ray room, two surgery suites, an employee lounge. We have a laundry room for washing towels and lab coats. People are in and outta here all the time. Deliveries, lab transport, Doc’s relief vet. Come on, this way.” He leads me into a room marked
PHARMACY.
The faint smell of medicine hangs in the air. A white countertop runs along the wall, cabinets above and below.

Hawk opens a cabinet and shoves a jar in my face. Two spongy tan globes the size of golf balls, covered in thin skin, float inside. A stem sticks out of each one.

Maybe these are miniature deformed brains—the kind crazy scientists like Dr. Frankenstein keep in their laboratories. “What are those things? I hope they’re not—”

“When a dog gets neutered, Doc cuts off its testicles. These are dog balls.”

My breakfast bubbles up in my stomach. So Uncle Sanjay collects way more than air. “Why does he keep them in a jar?”

“For scientific purposes. I took them to school. Everyone thought it was cool.”

“You’re trying to gross me out.” Speckles dance around in my vision.

“Yeah, and it worked.” He shows me another jar, full of thin white strands floating in fluid. “These are roundworms.”

“Eeeewwww.” I press my hand to the countertop to keep from fainting.

“And these are maggots, fly larvae.” He shows me puffed white worms. “A dog came in with open, rotting sores. Maggots grew in them, but Doc cleaned out the wounds. The dog lived. He’s fine now, but he almost died. This is what’ll happen to you when you’re dead. The maggots will eat you—”

“Stop!” The blood drains from my face.

“Hey, you okay?” Hawk grabs my arm and pulls me
toward a chair. “Come here and sit down. Put your head between your knees, like that. Keeps the blood flowing to your brain. I’ll be right back.”

I follow his orders. Slowly, the pins and needles disappear from the insides of my eyelids.

Hawk brings me a glass of water. “You got a weak stomach, huh?”

I sip the water and take deep breaths. “I’m okay, a little light-headed.” My cottony brain slowly clears.

“My mom thinks you’re too young to hang out here.” Hawk picks at his fingernails. They’re short, bitten down.

I glare at him. “I am not too young. I’m eleven. How old are you?”

“Thirteen, old enough to handle this stuff. You were gonna faint.”

“I was not.”

“Maybe you should go home. Go hang out on the beach.”

“I’m not going anywhere. I can be helpful here.”

“Oh yeah?” Hawk leans back against the counter. “What are you gonna do, Poppy? Say ‘Eewww, gross,’ whenever you see a worm or a dog testicle?”

My throat tightens. I glance at the walls, at the pictures of dogs and cats. In one photograph, a smiling blond lady is brushing a collie. I think of the spiffy job I did on
Uncle Sanjay’s hair this morning. “I’m a great stylist. I can brush a knot out of any hair.”

Hawk’s eyebrows rise. “Oh yeah? We got a tangled dog coming in. Name is Shopsy. Bet you can’t work your magic on him.”

“Bet I can.”

Chapter Seven
A TANGLED RUG

I
n the dog exam room, a rug is lying on the table. A tangled rug that rises and falls as if it is breathing. A doughy lady stands in the corner, wheezing. She is wearing a flowery bedsheet that has accidentally become a dress.

Hawk stands in the doorway behind me. I glance at him, and he gives me a look that says,
I bet you can’t do it
.

I step farther into the room.

“Hawk, clean up in the hall!” Saundra calls. Another dog must’ve peed. Hawk disappears, closing the door.

Uncle Sanjay comes in and pats the lady’s arm. “Good morning, Doris. We haven’t seen you in several weeks.”

Doris parts the strands of carpet and points to a red patch. “I don’t know if it’s an allergy or what.”

“Might be an infection. We’ll have to shave off some of this hair to get a better look at his skin. You can wait up front. Come, my dear niece.” Uncle Sanjay picks up the rug and tucks it under his arm.

Duff is waiting for us in the treatment room with an electric razor in her hand. “What took you so long? Poppy, help me hold Shopsy.”

I try to hold the stinky rug, but he squirms.

“He knows you’re nervous,” Duff says. “Here, let me.” She keeps Shopsy from moving while Uncle Sanjay starts to shave off the hair. Underneath, a huge patch of red skin appears, covered in raised red dots.

My skin begins to itch, too.

“Looks like an infection,” Uncle Sanjay says. “Let’s check the ears.” He parts the rug and an ear magically appears. He dips a long cotton swab into the ear and extracts a wad of crusty brown gunk. “See, Poppy? We take a sample, and then we check it for bacteria.”

My stomach churns, but I keep a brave face.

Uncle Sanjay peers into the ear. “Duff, better do the cytology.”

Duff smears the swab on a slide and puts it under a microscope. “Yeast and bacteria. Take a look, Poppy.” She motions me over. “The yeast looks like a boot print.”

I press my eye to the lens. Sure enough, miniature blue boot prints march across a field of scattered tubes. “Whoa,” I say.

“The other shapes are the bacteria. They’re like cylinders.”

“Like a whole other planet.” I gaze into a world of tiny boot prints and swirls and flakes.

“We need prescriptions for him. Come on.”

In the pharmacy room, Duff gathers special shampoo, antibiotic spray, and antibiotic pills.

“That’s a lot of medicine for a carpet,” I say.

“He needs it.” In the treatment room, Shopsy is still lying on the table. Uncle Sanjay leaves to answer a phone call.

“Poor little guy,” Duff says. “He looks funny with one shaved spot. He needs a good brushing.”

I pick up a comb from the counter. The metal glints in my hand. If I can comb Uncle Sanjay’s hair and make him look handsome, I can make a dog beautiful, too.

“Be careful with that,” Duff says.

My fingers tremble, and suddenly, Shopsy looks small
and fragile, a breakable dog. He’s tangled all over, and I can’t see his face. What if I accidentally comb his nose, or his eye, or his itchy ear? Or a sore spot on his red skin? I can’t ask him,
Does this hurt?

“Here, let me do that.” Duff reaches for the comb.

“No, I’m good.” I take a deep breath and try to work the comb through the knot of hair on Shopsy’s neck, but the teeth get stuck.

I’m starting to sweat.

Shopsy fidgets on the table.

“Let me help.” Duff holds him, but I can’t get the comb to move; it’s stuck in his hair. He shakes his head and growls. I pull harder on the comb, and Shopsy yelps.

I let go of the comb and step back. “I hurt him.”

“You need practice,” Duff says gently. “Here, let me.”

I step away. Shopsy whines and trembles.

“Hang in there, little guy.” Duff grabs a pair of electric clippers. “Hold still.”

I back toward the door. The clinic noises swirl around me; people race by. The phone rings, and a dog barks. I hear Doris’s muffled voice from the hallway. “Was that my Shopsy crying? What are they doing to him back there?”

My throat closes.

Saundra’s strong, reassuring voice: “Why don’t I check
on him for you?” Her footsteps clop down the hall. She pokes her head in the door and glares at me. “What’s going on in here?”

“All under control,” Duff says without looking up. “Tell Doris five minutes.”

“Fine.” Saundra’s angry gaze pierces a hole in my forehead. Then she clops back down the hall, and I hear her speaking in a low voice to Doris.

Duff starts to trim the knot with the clippers. She works slowly, a little at a time. “I learned to do this using scissors, way back when,” she tells me. “You can accidentally cut a dog and not even know it. Sometimes they don’t even feel it. You notice when you see the blood.”

I feel woozy even
thinking
about blood. “What do you do, stitch it up?”

“If the cut is big, but first you clean it and apply pressure to stop the bleeding. But we don’t use scissors anymore. We use clippers. They’re safer.” She manages to talk while holding Shopsy with one hand and working with the other. The comb is still stuck in his hair, but soon the clump of fur is no longer attached to the dog. A big bald spot appears on his neck.

“Well, that takes care of that.” Duff twists and pulls at the comb until it slips free of the hair; then she throws the clump into the garbage.

“How did you do that?” I ask. I wanted to make Shopsy beautiful, but I couldn’t.

Duff grins at me. Her top front teeth stick out a little. “You gotta feel for the knots. You can’t just yank the comb through. You gotta pay attention, and practice. Eventually, you become an artiste.”

Chapter Eight
DOG AFTERNOON

S
hopsy goes home with big patches of hair shaved off, as if a killer razor attacked him. Doris shouts, “Oh my Shopsy!” and “I’m never bringing him back here again!”

“This is all my fault,” I tell Uncle Sanjay in the treatment room.

He spritzes cleanser on the table. “No it’s not. Doris doesn’t take care of Shopsy the way she should. Look what happens.”

“But if the comb hadn’t gotten stuck—”

“Shopsy’s a matted dog with a nasty skin infection. Perhaps you should try brushing a healthy dog.”

Duff has come in, carrying a chart. “Maybe Daffodil. She’s a golden retriever. Owner’s leaving her here to be groomed later on. We only do the basic stuff. You know—brushing.”

“Daffodil, yes! A very sweet dog,” Uncle Sanjay says.

Hope sparks inside me again. “I can do more than brushing. I’m good at styling.”

Duff grins. “Well, there you go.”

But Saundra keeps closing doors in my face—the door to the surgery suite, the door to the exam rooms, the door to the pharmacy room. She smiles at everyone except me. Whenever she breezes past, she screws up her face, like the clinic is a big sugar candy and I’m the only sour drop. “Doris is probably going to take Shopsy up to Freetown from now on,” she mutters, turning her back to me.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “Shopsy had knots.”

She doesn’t reply, just keeps answering phones. I peek at a litter of fluffy kittens here for their vaccinations. The needles look scary and sharp, but the kittens don’t let out a peep.

A pug puppy comes in for an exam, and a fat corgi with short legs needs to lose half his weight. Uncle Sanjay
keeps checking on me. He doesn’t want me to see anything else gross.