The Smart One by Ellen Meister Page B

least not without wetting myself.
    The last time I had felt that scared was when I was in ninth grade and heard a piercing howl from my backyard that was at once heartbreaking and terrifying. It didn’t sound like man or beast. It certainly didn’t sound like our schnauzer, Stephanie, whom I had let out just a short while earlier. It was late at night, and I was studying for a math test while the rest of the family slept. I had opened the door to the yard and stood staring into the darkness, scared that some strange predator had eaten Stephanie alive. I heard someone pad down the stairs and turned to see my father standing behind me in his bathrobe.
    “What’s that noise?” he asked.
    “I don’t know.”
    “Is Stephanie out there?”
    “She was.”
    He put his hand on my shoulder. “I’ll get a flashlight.”
    We stood side by side as he ran the beam across the yard until at last we saw the source of the horrible wail. It was our Stephanie, lying on her side, clearly in such horrible pain that she emitted a sound we had never heard before.
    “Be careful,” my father said, as I rushed across the yard to her. “Wounded animals will bite.”
    I was crying by the time I reached her. “What’s the matter, girl?” I said as I kneeled beside her. She lifted her head and wailed. My father pointed the flashlight on her and I saw what it was—the clip of her backyard tether had pierced the part of her hind leg where a bit of flesh served as webbing between anklebone and tendon.
    “How could this have happened?” I cried.
    She nipped at the air as I got closer, but my dad was calm and slow.
    “Easy, Stephanie,” he said, as he knelt. He put his hands on either side of the dog’s head, holding it steady as rubbed behind her ears.
    “See you if can ease that clip out,” he said to me.
    At the time, I thought it was crazy that I was the one performing the surgery when my father was a doctor. But of course, he didn’t want me to risk being bitten. And so, I held Stephanie’s leg and carefully, slowly extracted the clip. Then my father picked up the dog and carried her inside.
    “I guess she didn’t want to be tethered and was tuggingagainst it when her leg got caught,” my father said as he cleaned and bandaged her wound.
    That sounded logical except for one thing. I hadn’t tethered her. I had simply let her run free in our fenced backyard, which I knew I wasn’t supposed to do, as she liked to pee in a spot by the fence that bordered the Waxmans’ yard, and Sam complained that the urine was killing his grass. Months before, my parents had instructed all of us girls not to let the dog run loose in the back, but to make sure she was tethered on the opposite side of the yard. I usually complied, but it was late at night and I figured everyone was asleep and I could get away with it.
    All these years later and I still hadn’t solved the mystery of Stephanie’s injury. At least not until now. Lying on the floor in the Waxmans’ house, scared half to death, I finally understood that my next-door neighbor might have been psycho enough to hurt my little dog.
    The bed creaked again and before I could pull my hand from under it and run from the room, something grabbed my wrist. I screamed and tried to pull away.
    Joey came running up the stairs.
    “Help!” I called.
    “What’s going on?” she said from the hallway.
    I turned my head toward her and could see only the beam of the flashlight, first in my eyes and then as it traveled upward toward the bed.
    “What are you doing here?” Joey said.
    A voice from the bed spoke. “What are you doing here? You scared the shit out of me. Who’s under the bed?” The hand released my wrist.
    I scrambled to my feet and stood beside Joey, staring down at Kenny looking like a giant in his childhood bed.
    I put my hand to my heart in an effort to quiet the kettledrum player on methamphetamines who continued to pound away in my chest. Joey shined the flashlight on our