Zoo Breath Read online

  “Git!” Mr. Tanaka said.

  Sulfur

  Streak came slinking out of the garage when Darci and I got home from school. I squatted down and sat on my heels.

  “Ho, man! What now?”

  Even Darci puckered up. “What is that smell, Calvin?”

  “Barf. Look.”

  She must have gotten into something down at the river that made her sick.

  Streak inched up closer, her head hanging down. She knew she was in trouble. Luckily Mom was at work. And Stella wasn’t home yet.

  “You just can’t stay out of trouble, can you?”

  Streak barked.

  “Time for another bath, you mangy mutt.”

  “Can I help?” Darci asked.

  I nodded. “Sure. Go change. We’re gonna get wet.”

  Darci ran into the house.

  I unfolded the crinkly pool and popped out the air valve. As I was blowing it up I saw something green near the paint cans.

  “Ah, man. Not Petey.”

  I picked up Darci’s stuffed parrot. Streak had been gnawing on it. Luckily, she hadn’t ripped it apart, but it was crusty with dried dog spit.

  I took the pool and Petey out on the lawn. “Jump in, girl. It’s this or get sent back to the Humane Society.”

  Streak tilted her head.

  “That’s right,” I said. “So stop fooling around. We’ll make it quick.”

  Darci came out and pulled the hose over.

  I held Petey up. “Look what Streak had. We need to give him a bath, too. I’ll make sure he’s okay.”

  Darci grinned and ran back to turn on the water.

  I held the hose at arm’s length. Sometimes centipedes came squirting out with the water. Nothing this time. I let water spill into the pool.

  Streak watched as I gave Petey a quick bath and laid him out to dry in the sun.

  “You know what, Darce? We should brush Streak’s teeth, too.”

  We gave Streak a double dose of dog shampoo and ran water over her head. She liked it.

  “Now are we going to brush her teeth, Calvin?”

  “Sure. Go get an old toothbrush. Look under the sink in our bathroom.”

  Darci ran into the house and I got Chewy’s old toothpaste from the garage. It didn’t smell all that great, but it was for dogs, right? I ran back before Streak could jump out of the swimming pool.

  “Got something special for you, girl.”

  She smelled it.

  Darci came back with a red toothbrush.

  “Isn’t that Stella’s?” I said.

  “It’s her old one. It was in the bottom drawer. There weren’t any under the sink.”

  I shrugged and squeezed out a double dose of toothpaste. “Open her mouth, Darce.”

  Darci wrapped her arms around Streak’s muzzle and I peeled back her lips.

  “This will taste good,” I said. “You’ll like it.”

  Crazy. I was brushing a dog’s teeth! It was funny. Streak licked it up and smacked her lips as I worked the toothbrush around her spiky teeth. Then I got the hose and squirted water into her mouth. She barked at it.

  Darci ran over and turned off the water.

  “There,” I said, squatting with my arms over my knees. “How can anyone complain about your breath now?”

  Streak nosed me like, Hey, thanks! That was great!

  When Darci came back I handed her the toothbrush. She ran inside to put it away.

  Streak jumped out of the pool and shook. Already the sun was drying her black-and-white coat. I gave her a hug.

  “This is the cleanest you’ve been since you were born, I bet.”

  Streak sat and scratched, her back leg working.

  “And believe it or not, you smell sweet … sort of.”

  Late that afternoon when Mom got home I was sitting on the grass with Streak, trying to think of what to say in class. Was toothpaste better than mouthwash? Or maybe dogs should just stop eating fish heads and carrying around dried-up dead toads.

  Mom parked in the garage and came out. She kissed the top of my head, then got down close to pet Streak. “Oh my!” She scrunched her nose.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Her breath smells like a peppermint swamp.”

  Maybe I needed stronger toothpaste.

  Naruto

  For the special occasion, Mr. Purdy brought his time-to-show-me-what-you’ve-got raised eyebrow to school. “All right, junior detectives, it’s presentation day! You ready?”

  “Yes, Mr. Purdy!” we said.

  Props were everywhere. Handmade posters, photographs, books, all kinds of objects, and two living creatures—Streak, who smelled like toothpaste, which I’d rubbed onto her teeth at the last possible minute, and Ace’s parrot, BooBoo, in a cage in the back of the room. Julio had made our chart, which he was hiding until we were ready.

  Mr. Purdy raised his hand. “Okay, listen up. I’m going to draw team names from my coffee cup. Whoever I draw is up.”

  “Bring it on!” Rubin shouted.

  Mr. Purdy reached into his cup.

  I crossed my fingers. Not me and Julio, please, not us first.

  Mr. Purdy looked up. “Ace and Doreen!”

  I sat back, relieved.

  Ace got his parrot and brought it to the front of the room. He held up the cage. “Say hello, BooBoo.”

  “Hel-lo … blaaach … hel-lo.”

  The class thought that was hilarious.

  Streak’s ears shot straight up.

  Mr. Purdy leaned back on the edge of his desk. “Tell us what your research question is, Doreen.”

  “Ace thought of it,” she said. “He’s been teaching BooBoo how to talk. He can say ‘Hello,’ ‘Goodbye,’ ‘Awesome,’ and ‘Feed me.’ So our question was this: You can teach a parrot to talk, but can you teach it to sing?”

  Ace set BooBoo’s cage on Mr. Purdy’s desk next to the terrarium that held our class pet, Manly Stanley, a centipede. Manly slithered under his rock, probably afraid BooBoo would eat him.

  BooBoo squawked.

  “BooBoo,” Ace said. “Sing ‘Happy Birthday.’ ”

  “Squawk!”

  “You can do it, come on.”

  “Squawk! Achh!”

  Streak barked once. I clamped a hand over her muzzle.

  Ace dug into his pocket. “Here, if you sing I’ll give you some Fritos.”

  Mr. Purdy laughed. “Your parrot likes Fritos?”

  “Yeah. And sweet potato chips.”

  “Acch! Squaaawk!”

  “ ‘Happy birthday to you,’ ” Ace sang. “Come on, BooBoo, sing for us.”

  “Hap-py bir-day to you … squawk!”

  Amazing! The whole class stood up and whooped and cheered and generally went bonkers until Mr. Purdy hissed, “Sssssss.”

  We settled down.

  Ace gave BooBoo a piece of a Frito.

  “Terrific, Ace,” Mr. Purdy said. “You, too, Doreen. Did you both teach that to the bird?”

  “Yeah,” Ace said. “Doreen is a good teacher, too.”

  “Excellent.”

  Ace and Doreen took BooBoo to the back of the room.

  Mr. Purdy reached into his coffee cup. “Who’s next?”

  I crossed my fingers. Not us, not us.

  “Willy and Rubin!”

  Rubin stood up so fast his chair fell over. He grabbed his box of props and ran up front with Willy.

  Streak sat up, alert. I could imagine her thinking, This school stuff is so cool! Bring on the show!

  “Start by giving us your research question, boys.”

  Rubin swept his hand toward the box like a magician. “In this box we have two complete sets of something I got in Japan.”

  He nodded to Willy. “Show them.”

  Willy reached in and brought out two manga books, the Japanese graphic novels you read backwards.

  “Our question is: Which is better, Naruto or InuYasha?”

  “Naruto!” someone called out.

&nbs
p; “No, no, InuYasha!”

  “Ssssssss,” Mr. Purdy hissed. “Let them continue.”

  Rubin grabbed a handful of Naruto books from the box.

  “Naruto stories are funny and interesting. They make you want to keep on reading. Naruto is a boy about twelve years old, and he just wants to impress people. Then there’s Kakashi, who’s skilled in combat. And Gaara, who has the will to kill.”

  Willy grabbed a few InuYashas.

  “And InuYasha is about eighteen,” he said.

  “He’s half demon and half a white-haired guy. Sometimes he’s good and sometimes he’s not. He wants to become a full demon by collecting shards of the Shikon Jewel. Once he gets all the shards he can piece them together and make the Jewel of Four Souls, and become a full demon.”

  “I see,” Mr. Purdy said. “So what’s your conclusion, and why?”

  Rubin pinched his jaw. “Well … Naruto is better. He’s not that smart, but he wants to be the best ninja ever … but InuYasha has better art.”

  Mr. Purdy looked at Willy. “Is that your conclusion, too, Willy?”

  “To tell the truth, Mr. Purdy, I’m still trying to figure out how to read backwards.”

  The class roared.

  I hugged Streak close. She didn’t stink at all. How could Mom and Stella think she did? They just didn’t want a dog, that was all.

  Mom was going to make me find Streak another home. I just knew it.

  I slumped in my chair as Willy and Rubin went back to their seats.

  “Next up is … Shayla and Maya.”

  “Aiy,” I whispered.

  A Nose for News

  The class went wild over Maya and Shayla’s discovery question: “Why do boys have to smell everything? Or are they just weird?”

  Ace pumped his fist and shouted, “Right on!”

  All us guys stuck our noses up and started sniffing the air. Even Mr. Purdy looked amused.

  Shayla and Maya smiled and waited.

  I remembered what Maya had said: If I was you two I wouldn’t even come to school on Tuesday.

  Aiy-yai-yai.

  Mr. Purdy held up his hands for quiet. “Proceed, girls.”

  Maya and Shayla’s prop was a big poster. They’d taped newspaper over it so no one could see it before they were ready. Shayla uncovered it and stood it up.

  Photographs.

  Of me and Julio!

  Mr. Purdy bent close to look, then grinned. “This should be interesting.”

  I leaned over my desk and squinted at the photos.

  Maya grabbed a pencil to use as a pointer. “Here we have Julio smelling his armpit.”

  Even I laughed at that. Streak barked, too.

  “Shhhh,” I said. “No barking in school.”

  Then I thought: Wait! How did they get that picture? It was on our street. And I was in it, too.

  “I wasn’t smelling my armpit,” Julio shouted. “I was scratching my nose with my arm!”

  Shayla went on. “And here we have Julio and Calvin scooping up dog poop with a shovel, then smelling their hands.”

  “Yeah, but you stepped in it,” Julio called from the back row.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Shayla said.

  “Oh yes you do. You were hiding down by Calvin’s house. You were sneaking through the bushes where he throws all the—”

  “And look at this picture,” Maya interrupted. “Calvin is kissing his dog.”

  The class cracked up.

  “No I wasn’t, I was smell—I was … ah, forget it.”

  I was stuck. Smelling Streak’s breath would sound worse than kissing her.

  “And here’s a picture of Julio smelling his fingers after throwing a dried-up dead toad down the road.”

  Mr. Purdy grinned. “I remember flinging dried toads myself.”

  I wondered: Did he ever capture a dog fut in a jar?

  Maya and Shayla went on … and on … and on. After a while I didn’t care anymore. I didn’t even care that I won my bag-of-shrimp bet with Julio. So what? Boys smell stuff. Big deal. And anyway Maya and Shayla didn’t know that all that smelling was part of our research. When we told our story, we would take theirs apart.

  “Well,” Mr. Purdy said. “You girls sure have a nose for news. So what’s your conclusion?”

  Maya glanced over at me, then back at Julio. “We decided that boys are just weird, that’s all. It’s not their fault. They can’t help it. Good, bad, or disgusting, they gotta smell it.”

  Rubin jumped up. “Stinks forever!”

  Mr. Purdy raised an eyebrow toward Maya and Shayla. “Does the weirdness of boys include your teacher, girls?”

  “Oh, no, Mr. Purdy, not you!” Shayla looked shocked.

  He chuckled. “I appreciate that. But you forgot the good stuff we boys like to smell. Our favorites are popcorn at the movies and teriyaki meat sticks at the beach, right, boys?”

  We all jumped up, making smirky faces at the girls.

  Mrs. Leandro from the class next door appeared in the door with her you-are-disturbing-my-class teacher look.

  Mr. Purdy nodded at her, grinning. “Okay, class, pipe down. Back to work.”

  Mrs. Leandro vanished, and Mr. Purdy went over and shut the door.

  “Who’s next?” He pulled out another slip of paper, looked up, and winked.

  At me.

  A Good Stink II

  I set Streak on the floor.

  Julio and I stood up.

  Maya and Shayla had just walked all over us. We’d have to say something pretty good to put ourselves back together again.

  “Come on, girl,” I whispered to Streak as Julio got our chart from the back of the room.

  Streak followed me to the front. Mr. Purdy squatted down to pet her. She licked his hand.

  “And what’s your name?” he said.

  “Streak,” I said. “You can pick her up if you want.”

  Mr. Purdy lifted Streak up and showed her to the class.

  “This is the dog I wrote about in my essay,” I said.

  “Ah, the one with the short attention span.”

  Doreen leaned over her desk. “Is that the dog you were kissing, Calvin?”

  I ignored her.

  Mr. Purdy sat on the table and set Streak in his lap. “Okay, boys. What did you research?”

  “Stinks,” Julio said. “Lots of stinks.”

  “See?” Maya said, jumping up. “We told you they were smelling stuff.”

  “Yeah, but you don’t know why,” Julio said.

  “Sure I do. You can’t help it.”

  Mr. Purdy hushed us. “Tell us your discovery question, boys.”

  Julio looked at me.

  I nodded. “Okay, this is it: Why do dogs have terrible breath and what can you do about it?”

  “I love it!” Mr. Purdy said. “Tell me, because I know lots of people who would like to know.”

  Julio gave Shayla and our traitor-friend Maya a superior look because we had Mr. Purdy on our side. “We were smelling things,” Julio said, “because we wanted to grade stuff, bad to worse, see? Because some stinks are more worse than other stinks.”

  “Just worse, Julio,” Mr. Purdy corrected. “Not more worse.”

  “Yeah, sure, Mr. Purdy. But anyway, let’s start with the least worse, and that one is the stink that’s only in your mind.”

  Huh? We didn’t talk about that one. I waited for more.

  Mr. Purdy, still petting Streak, cocked his head. “Tell us about that one, Julio.”

  Julio grinned. “Well … you know what? I think Rubin can explain it better than me.”

  The jar!

  Rubin shut his eyes to make it look like he was sleeping at his desk.

  “Somebody wake him up,” Mr. Purdy said. “We don’t want him to miss anything.”

  Doreen reached over and slammed Rubin’s desk.

  Rubin jumped and sputtered. “Uh … what? Huh?”

  Julio was pumped now. “Okay, the best
stinks are, like, when you pet a dog and smell your hand after? That’s not too bad. But then you got your heavy-duty stinks, like the boys’ bathroom, fresh dog doo, and dead stuff, like toads.”

  “And a toilet hole,” I added.

  Mr. Purdy tilted his head. “Toilet hole?”

  “You know, the part under the toilet.”

  “The sewer pipe?”

  “Yeah, that.”

  Julio shook his head. “Hoo, man! That was uku nasty!”

  Half the girls were making faces. Some were covering their ears. They not only didn’t want to smell bad stuff, they didn’t even want to hear about it.

  “Look,” I said, holding up the chart. “We put stinks in order, the worst at the top. First the absolute worst: the toilet hole—that’s the sewer pipe. Then dog doo, dead toad, dog fut—”

  The class burst out laughing over that one.

  I went on. “Then after that you got dog breath, cat breath, pig breath, and possibly white rat breath.”

  Julio felt the tip of his nose when I said that one.

  Mr. Purdy looked at the poster, thinking. “Why did you come up with this question, boys?”

  Julio hooked a thumb toward Streak. “Because of that dog.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, my mom and Stella—she lives with us—well, they say Streak stinks, and they don’t want her in the house because of it, and … I wanted to think of a way to, you know … clean her up.”

  “So he can keep the dog,” Julio added. “He might lose it.”

  “Eh?” Mr. Purdy said. “Why?”

  I shrugged. “Because she stinks.”

  Mr. Purdy sniffed Streak. “Just smells like a dog to me.”

  “It’s more about … her breath.”

  “Smell the dog’s breath, Mr. Purdy!” Ace shouted.

  Mr. Purdy grinned. “You know what, Calvin? I think the class should get involved with this. Who wants to come up and see if this dog has bad breath?”

  “Eeew!”

  “Not me!”

  “Sick.”

  “It’s not bad,” I said. “I kind of, uh … brushed her teeth before school.”

  “Aw, man!”

  “Any takers?” Mr. Purdy asked.