Leftovers by Heather Waldorf Page B

trampled to death, I lunge in front of Judy and grab asnowflake cookie off the tray before she can jump up onto the counter to help herself.
    â€œJudy! Sit!” I yell, trying to sound like what the books call “enthusiastic and authoritative.”
    Judy sits. The sound of her big butt plunking onto the kitchen tile is like...music. (Percussion, but music nevertheless.)
    I give Judy the cookie. She gobbles it up and immediately tries to leap up on the counter for another.
    I block her again, bracing myself for the thud and subsequent bruising as Judy hip-checks me into the counter. “Judy, sit,” I command.
    Judy sits.
    I give her a cookie.
    Judy sits again. This time without a command.
    I give her another cookie and throw my arms around her hairy bulk. Over Judy’s smelly shoulder —what the hell has the rotten mutt been rolling in now?—I see Dr. Fred standing in the kitchen doorway, grinning from ear to ear. He applauds as if Judy and I are rock stars.
    â€œVictoria ran into me—literally,” he explains. “She told me you were baking,” he adds, giving me a thumbs-up. “Good work.”
    Hot with embarrassment, I mumble thanks and turn my back on Judy just long enough to put a half-used carton of eggs back in the fridge.
    Bad move.
    In the five seconds it takes for me to shove the carton in and slam the fridge door, Judy has lunged up on thecounter and scarfed down at least another dozen cookies from the tray on the counter. Dr. Fred just stands there busting a gut laughing. In response, Judy gives Dr. Fred and me a “joke’s on you” flick of her tail as she bounds out the unlatched screen door, down the porch stairs and onto the field, her back end dancing across the island in cookie-induced euphoria.
    Okay, so Judy’s not a one-session wonder dog. But at least I know she isn’t stupid either. Judy has issues, but she also has...potential.
    It’s food for thought.

FIFTEEN
    Late the next afternoon I am back in the kitchen, this time making dinner. Chicken fajitas with homemade salsa.
    Down the hall in his office, Dr. Fred is whistling “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window” as he tabulates the week’s food receipts.
    He and Nicholas have just returned from the weekly grocery run. I sent them over to town two hours ago with a three-page shopping list. (A list pared down, I might add, from my original nine-page “wish list.” Victoria told me that I needed to keep my menus within the Camp Dog Gone Fun food budget and the limited selection at the local No Frills. I’m not sure how many ground beef and macaroni miracles I can perform in one summer, but I’ll give it a shot.)
    Nicholas is in the kitchen too, tossing bags of apples and pears into the crisper and glowing with pride. Dr. Fred, the optimist, believes it’s because Nicky resisted shoplifting during his so-called adult-supervised outing.
    Ha.
    â€œLook what I stole,” Nicholas whispers to me. He reaches a hand down the back of his baggy jeans and extracts roughly fifteen packs of Trident gum from the waistband of his underwear. “Maybe I can keep off the weight I’ve lost here at camp.” (Nicholas always says “at camp,” like Camp Dog Gone Fun is a flipping Boy Scouts retreat or something and he’ll go back to his grandmother at the end of the summer with a Dog Grooming badge or a carved wooden key chain in the shape of a bone.) “Brant said if I start lifting weights too, that I’ll really be able to
wow the hot babes
when I start high school this fall.”
    Brant’s advice isn’t worth two steaming Chihuahua turds. “You won’t wow
any
babes if you end up in jail,” I tell him.
    Taylor traipses into the kitchen and reaches over Nicky’s head for a bottle of water. “Not unless your idea of a hot babe is a hairy, tattooed, drug-addicted ax murderer named Bubba,” she says, chugging down