Aces Wild by Erica S. Perl

beloved indoor grilling machine. “I suppose I should be grateful we only have two Aces.”
    “There’s four aces in a deck,” announced Sam. He held up one to demonstrate, then placed it on top of a card tower he was building at the kitchen table. Ace had started teaching him card games recently, and he liked to show off his new information. “I could be Ace and you could be Ace too, Dad, and then we’d have four Aces.”
    Four Aces!
I pictured the four aces from a deck of cards. Except each one was walking around, with little feet and hands, plus glasses, bushy eyebrows, and a big nose. Like Groucho Marx … or a certain grandpa of mine. More cards joined them, all aces, until I had imagined an army of the card-men. They looked like something out of
Alice in Wonderland
, which Ace used to read to me when I was much too little to understand any of it. Rectangular and flat, yet broad-bellied and balding, the cards were all blowing their noses and hitching up their pants and arguing with each other … and there were so many of them, sort of like all those Herman-the-cats.
    My dad’s eyes were wide. He must have had the samethought. “No way,” he said firmly. “Two Aces are plenty, thank you very much.”
    “One Ace is behaving better, don’t you think?” I asked pointedly. “He definitely knows his name, right?”
    “Ye-es,” said my dad slowly, examining the handle of the spatula he was holding. It appeared to have been chewed on. “It would just be nice if he mastered a couple of other tricks.”
    “He will!”
    “HE WILL IF YOU PRACTICE,” said Ace, who had wandered into the kitchen.
    “I
have
been practicing!”
    Ace shrugged. “THERE’S PRACTICING AND THEN THERE’S PRACTICING.”
    “It’s how you get there,” said Sam matter-of-factly, adding another card to his tower. I looked at him, confused, but his eyes were on the structure in front of him. Sometimes, if Sam was concentrating hard, he said things that made no sense because he was responding to a conversation that had ended a while earlier.
    “EXACTLY,” said Ace. I could feel a round of “Who’s on First?” coming on.
    “What’s how you get—”
    “CARNEGIE HALL!” said Sam and Ace together. Sam laughed so hard he knocked his card tower down. Cards fell all over the table and floor. Ace dove under the table on cue. I grabbed him by the collar before he could destroy another deck.
    “I’m not so sure Carnegie Hall is ready for Ace,” said mydad, shaking his head. I could tell he was having the same thought I was: Ace-the-dog performing his world-famous sit-stay onstage for an audience. I guess that was funny for my dad, because he was sort of smiling, but for me it was an exciting thought.
Maybe, with practice, he’ll be so well behaved and obedient that Mrs. Wright will ask me to demonstrate for the rest of the class
. I pictured Ace-the-dog wearing a tuxedo, bowing low to thunderous applause. I imagined myself at his side, curtsying and catching the long-stemmed roses people were throwing.
    “Maybe he’ll get so well behaved, he won’t even have to take the test,” I said. “Because Mrs. Wright will know he’ll ace it.”
    “He’ll
Ace
it!” laughed Sam. “Get it, Zelly?”
    “Yeah, I get it,” I said. I picked up Ace and cradled him in my arms like a baby. “The question is, do
you
get it? Do you, sweetie? I hear they have really yummy dog biscuits at Carnegie Hall.”
    Ace licked my nose at the sound of that.
    Fine, I’ll practice
, I thought. But I had a lot of homework on Monday, and then on Tuesday I forgot, so on Wednesday I decided to do an extra-long session to get Ace ready for Thursday’s class. I figured I’d walk him up to Redstone Campus, where there’d be plenty of distractions—students, other dogs, Frisbees—to test him so he could maybe break through to a new level of listening to me.
    I went straight to the kitchen to pack up some dog treats and found Sam sitting at the kitchen table