Gabby

Part 2

On Saturday Gabby helped Deb get ready to take Cheers to a show. She stayed for most of the day and did her homework in the backyard. George sat at her feet while she read Huckleberry Finn until he couldn’t sit still anymore and started nudging her and running circles around the yard. After a while Gabby put her book down and chased George around the yard, wrestled him into a belly rub, and they played tug-o-war with a knotted rope. She ran out of breath, and when she collapsed, laughing, onto the grass George barreled over and tried to climb into her lap. Deb came out of the house and George ran over to her and jumped onto his hind legs to try and reach her face.

Deb grinned. “Dumb dog,” she said.

“Have you ever bred him?” asked Gabby.    

“And create a litter of little George’s?” said Deb. “No thank you. The world only has room for one George.” Gabby laughed and stroked the dog’s fur.

“Actually,” Deb continued, “George’s sire had hip dysplasia, and we try to breed those things out.”

“What’s that?”

“Hip dysplasia? It just basically means that the hip joints are weak and out of whack. Sometimes you just give them pain meds, but if it’s bad then they have to do surgery.”

Gabby nodded, and when she patted George’s head he tilted his muzzle into her palm and sneezed. “Bless you,” said Gabby.

Gabby downloaded the audio versions of all her school books so she could listen to them while she walked the dogs. There was something soothing about letting George tug her along under the white birch branches while she listened to Huckleberry Finn or Taming of the Shrew. She just focused on the words and George’s wagging tail and the time passed by quickly.

One morning, after a few weeks of what she now called dog-wrangling, Gabby slept through her alarm and had to get dressed fast. So fast she almost didn’t realize her belt buckled one hole tighter than before. She didn’t have time to make herself believe it but she grinned, put in her favorite hoop earrings, and ran to catch the bus.

That day in biology Mr. Bertram was talking about protein synthesis. When Gabby looked up from her notes she saw Dexter looking at her. He looked away very quickly and out of the corner of her eye she could see him blushing. She felt her face getting hot too. When she looked back down at her notes she couldn’t help smiling.

Gabby kept thinking about it after school when she was playing with the dogs. She asked George why she was being so silly, and he responded by dropping a slobbery tennis ball into her lap.

For weeks now she had been trying to ignore the disapproving glint in her mother’s eye whenever she came home from Deb’s, but that night at dinner her mom brought it up.

“You’re spending an awful lot of time scrounging around with those dogs, sweetie,” she said.

“I know, mom,” said Gabby. “But Deb’s working with this guy in Denver to mate one of his dogs with either Cheers, so there’s a lot I need to help with.”

“Sweetie, you don’t have to work, it’s not like your father and I…”

“I know, mom. I want to.”

“You want to.”

“Yes. I like it. It’s fun.”

Gabby’s mom tapped her French-tipped nails on the table and Gabby could see her struggling to not say anything more. The phone rang and her mother answered it. “It’s for you,” she said, frowning.

It was Deb.

“Hey, girlie, I got some bad news. Georgie’s got hip dysplasia.”

“Oh, no!” said Gabby. “Does that mean surgery?”

“Not at this point. So far it’s just meds.”

“Does he hurt?”

“Nah, just a little stiff. But Dr. Bridger said we have to keep him moving and less food. Keeps a lighter load on the joints. Means a lot more walking.”

“I can do that.”

“I know you can, girlie-girl.”

After school the next day Deb showed Gabby how to give George the medication. “Put the pill on the back of his tongue, then stroke downward on his throat to make him swallow,” said Deb, demonstrating. Gabby gave him the second pill to show she could do it. George was surprisingly relaxed about taking pills, and Deb and Gabby fussed over him and petted him until it looked like his tail was going to wag the pills right back out again.

Gabby took George on an extra long walk that night. “It’s ok, George,” she said. “We’ll get you all better. You’re still a pup; it won’t be so bad.” George watched Gabby talk and his tail wagged as much as ever. “Are you ready to do this?” George’s tongue lolled out of his mouth. Gabby tightened her grip on George’s leash and started walking faster and faster. Soon they were jogging, and then Gabby took a deep breath and broke out into as fast a sprint as she could manage, George following at her side. Gabby watched his paws hit the cement and his leg muscles push his body forward until she couldn’t run any further. She flopped onto the grass, her chest heaving. George flopped and panted next her.  Gabby lay back on the grass and George scooched over to her and sniffed into her ear. Gabby laughed so hard she started crying. She wrapped her arms around the dog and ran her fingers through his fur until she could breathe again, and her heartbeat had returned to normal.

After a few more weeks and another tightened belt loop Gabby decided to confront the scale. She waited till no one was home and then went into her mother’s bathroom and locked the door. She stripped down to her underwear so she wouldn’t have any extra weight and then she stepped onto the cold white scale. She waited a few moments and then looked down. She had lost eleven pounds. She stepped off and onto the scale again. Still eleven pounds. She stepped off and on a few more times. She looked into the mirror and slapped her stomach and watched the red print of her hand appear on her pale skin.

The next day after biology when Gabby was packing up her backpack, she felt a tap on her shoulder. She turned around and saw Dexter. He looked down and cleared his throat. “Hey, Gabby,” he said. “Um, I was wondering…I don’t…I didn’t really understand the chromosome section in the packet, and I saw that you had really good notes and you always do good on the tests, so I was thinking that maybe if you have time sometime that you could maybe explain it to me or something.”

Gabby blinked. “Uh, yeah, that would be fine.”

“Yeah, ok. So…good.”

“So maybe at lunch?”

“Ok. Then I’ll see you.”

“Yeah, ok.”

Gabby sat on her window-seat, looking down at the yard, thinking about the chromosomes and green eyes and dog slobber. Dexter had caught on after only a quick explanation, like she knew he would. But he had said something about wanting to double check tomorrow, and she said that was fine, and she wondered if that meant another lunch appointment. She looked at her shoes sitting on the floor and realized they were covered in dirt and dog hair. Tomorrow she would let her mom take her shoe shopping. Maybe.