My Homework Ate My Homework

Author

Can I talk to you a minute, Mr. O.? I say to the mirror. You’d better sit down.

I make a face that shows how sorry I would be if what I was saying were true. The sunglasses holding my hair back aren’t working. They make me look too glamorous, and that’s not the look I’m after. I pull them off and my strawberry blonde hair tumbles down over my shoulders. This is worse. I make a mental note to stop washing my hair a few days before returning to school.

It’s about Bandito, I say and pause …… dramatically. I love dramatic pauses. They’re very …… dramatic.

You see …… I can’t seem to find him. I’m sorry.

I cast my eyes downward. Casting your eyes downward is very effective, especially if you want somebody to think you feel bad about something you did. Even if you don’t.

Casting them upward, by the way, is good if you want to pretend to be thinking, or trying to remember something. For example, I look up when I say, I’m pretty sure I turned that in, Mr. O., even though I know I didn’t do the assignment. Casting your eyes sideways makes you look like you’re making up an excuse, or just plain fibbing. Only do this on purpose and onstage. It’s important to control sideways looks in real life. They can give you away.

Practicing eye-casting is difficult to do in a mirror, so I’m video-recording myself on my mother’s cell phone.

How did Bandito get out of his cage? I ask rhetorically. I don’t know, Mr. O., and shrug my shoulders up to my ears. I really look like I don’t know that I left the ferret’s cage door open after I fed him. Which is what happened.

Now I shift from faux-clueless to faux-suspicious. (Faux is French for fake and is pronounced foe, like friend or foe, and makes fake sound fancier.)

I’m pretty positive my baby sister, Abalina, opened the cage door, I say, and tighten my lips, like I’m holding back anger. That girl is always getting into my stuff.

No. I don’t want to come across as blaming, especially of a baby. A baby isn’t responsible for her actions. Or so my mother keeps telling me. But that’s another story.

I reach up and make an erasing motion with my hand. I’m starting over.

My baby sister, Abalina, probably opened the cage door, but she’s just a baby and isn’t responsible for her actions, so I’m not angry at her.

That’s good. I’ll keep that.

But then something awful happened.

No, not quite right. I erase it.

"But then something terrible happened."

Better, but still no. Erase.

But then something HORRIBLE happened!

Yes, that’s it. Now I swallow loud enough for him to hear, flash a faux-horrified-bordering-on-sick-to-my-stomach face, pause dramatically …… then deliver my well-rehearsed punch line: My homework ate my dog.

Bandito is my homework and he is hideous. Sure, he has a shiny brown-and-white fur coat, kind of like a cat’s, but instead of covering an adorable purring kitty, it covers a creepy, wheezy, slithery ferret. Bandito has ratlike toes and ratlike ears, a twitching ratlike nose, and a white face with a raccoonlike black mask. He’s a mustelid, which means he’s cousins with stinky skunks and weasels.

Although Bandito lives in a cage way in the back corner, he stinks up every inch of my classroom. He smells like a combo of sewage and boiled cabbage. Having to smell him all day long has affected my learning. That’s right: My homework has harmed my young brain.

We get extra credit points if we make notes in the Ferret Observations notebook, so lots of kids who are done with their work sit by Bandito’s cage and record the mustelid’s clicking, wheezing, and slithering. They must have to hold their breath while they do it. I would … if I ever sat there. Which I don’t.

I could use extra credit points, but you can’t get any unless you’ve finished all your work. Doesn’t Mr. O. know that it’s the students who don’t turn in all their work who need extra credit? Talk about unjust.

I got pretty far behind in math—mostly because I think math is stupid and don’t like doing it—and I wanted to get a passing grade on my report card, so I suggested to Mr. O. that we make a deal: I’d take Bandito for winter break and write daily notes in the Ferret Observations notebook if he would forget about the math assignments I didn’t finish. This seemed just to me. Just as in the opposite of unjust, I mean.

Shockingly, Mr. O. said no deal, but he did say he’d count watching Bandito as extra credit if and only if I returned from the break with the ferret, the Ferret Observations notebook filled with two weeks of notes, and the completed math assignments. Whoa. The guy obviously doesn’t understand what a break is.

I said, That’s unjust, but okay. Deal. And we shook on it.

When my mother picked me up at the end of the day and I told her I was ferret-sitting, she got all motherish on me.

"The ferret is your responsibility, Zaritza, she said. You must keep the cage clean, and feed and water the ferret every day without being told, and blah blah blahbity blah …"

It was a huge mistake bringing Bandito home. He makes my room smell like sewage and boiled cabbage. I have to clean up his nasty mess every day. As a bonus I get to spend nights with a chattering, wheezing mustelid. He’s so creepy that I haven’t slept once during the whole vacation. Or not deeply anyway.

So when I discovered he had escaped, I didn’t bother looking for him. I didn’t want to find him, so why should I look? Besides, finding him would mean I’d have to catch him, which would mean I’d have to touch him, which I will never do as long as I live.

He’s the one who wanted out so bad. Now he’s out, and he can stay out forever for all I care. If he changes his mind and wants back in, fine. I left the cage door open.

Which is how he got out in the first place. Not that I’ll be telling anyone that.

Did my homework (Bandito) eat my dog? Maybe. I haven’t checked.

I use finger quotes because Wormy isn’t what I would call a real dog. Wormy isn’t his real name. I named him that. His real name was Sugar, which didn’t suit him at all. My father’s great-aunt Veronica gave him to us when she got sick once and couldn’t take care of him. Which is a decent reason, I guess, to dump a pet on your family. She could have mentioned, though, that Sugar came loaded with intestinal worms.

Then, a week later, my mother found out she (my mother, not Wormy) was expecting Abalina. That’s right, both the dog and the baby sister were surprises. I wasn’t, of course. I was planned. Wanted. Not something my parents got stuck with.

Wormy is (was?) a Maltipoo, and extremely hyper and noisy, usually at the same time. He’s always freaking out about nothing and going ARF! ARF! ARF! ARF! ARF! ARF! in a high, annoying voice, like one of those remote-control dogs that move around with stiff legs. He’s covered with kinky white fur that feels like doll’s hair, and he has shiny black eyes like black marbles. I really think he isn’t a dog. I think he’s an evil dogdroid monster sent here by Great-Aunt Veronica to drive us all crazy.

So if Bandito did eat Wormy, the only real downside would be that I’ll get in big trouble with my mother and Mr. O., which would be unjust, since the only thing I did wrong was forget to lock the cage after I refilled my homework’s food dish. Yes, I fed him. Big crime. Lock me up and throw away the key. It serves me right for being thoughtful. And how does he repay my thoughtfulness? By escaping and gobbling up my dog and getting me in trouble with my mother and my teacher. Talk about ungrateful.

Now I have to pretend I care about him, and about my revolting little dog, too. I’ll also have to lie to my teacher, and maybe frame my baby sister. I don’t have a choice there. I’m certainly not going to take all the blame. That would mean having to listen to my mother talk about responsibility and consequences for the rest of my life. Abalina doesn’t have any responsibilities or consequences, so what difference does it make if I pin the ferret’s escape on her?

My homework ate my dog, Mr. O., I say again to my reflection, punching the words homework and dog. I don’t finger-quote dog this time, because I want Mr. O. to believe that I care about Wormy, which, of course, I do not. I convey shock and horror by opening my eyes wide, then cast them downward to convey regret and grief. I add, I couldn’t feel worse about it, choking up on the word worse.

Good. That works.

Wormy is a Maltipoo, I say to the mirror, and Maltipoos are tiny little dogs. Tiny enough, I imagine, that a ferret could …

I let my voice trail off, then make a sick face, like I’m imagining what a ferret could do to a tiny doglike creature like Wormy. I don’t actually imagine it, because the thought of it makes me gag. Hideous eating hideous.

It would serve Wormy right if the skunk-rat ate him. The dog and the skunk-rat ruined my vacation. Not to mention I didn’t get what I wanted for Christmas, which was my ears pierced. My mother said maybe I’ll be old enough next year, and I said, You do understand that I am eleven now, right?

Her reply? Please don’t speak that way to me.

In other words, she changed the subject. Which is just so unjust.

What did I get instead? Clothes, books, and a pink calculator. A calculator! This was from my not-great-in-the-slightest great-aunt Veronica, the one who dumped the dog on us. I wish my grandpa never had a sister, either.

Sisters. Who needs them?

I bet my mother put Great-Aunt Veronica up to the calculator, probably because I don’t do my math. I don’t need a calculator or math. What I need are holes in my earlobes. I’ve explained to my mother that an actor must be able to wear earrings. Then I