Free Dinosaur Boy by Cory Putman Oakes Page A

course,” she was saying as she walked to the end of the driveway. “We miss him terribly. But we’re managing.”
    Sylvie looked at me questioningly. I mouthed, Parker’s mom.
    The three of us crouched down even farther and did our best to be invisible. But Mrs. Douglas appeared oblivious to our presence, even when she paused at the end of the driveway, less than an arm’s length away from us, on the other side of the plant.
    â€œI finally got started on his room today,” she said into the phone. “You wouldn’t believe the clutter. It’s going to take me days to clean it out!”
    She swung the garbage bag onto the curb and turned, walking back into the garage. The three of us sat in silence as the garage door shuddered and slowly rolled back down.
    Elliot and I stared at each other. Sylvie reached around the bush and dragged the garbage bag into her lap.
    â€œShe was talking about Parker, wasn’t she?” Elliot said finally.
    Instead of responding, Sylvie started picking at the knot on the top of the bag.
    â€œI think so,” I replied, the pain in my tail momentarily forgotten as I struggled to make sense of Mrs. Douglas’s words.
    It’s been difficult… We miss him…
    Those aren’t the sorts of things you say about someone who has been safely enrolled in the school across town. Those are the kind of things you say when somebody has—
    No , I told myself. Don’t even think it.
    â€œHe can’t be dead ,” Elliot whispered, stealing my thoughts again. “What could have happened?”
    Sylvie gave up on the knot and ripped a hole in the side of the garbage bag, spilling the contents onto the muddy ground in front of her.
    Clothes.
    A wadded-up assortment of shirts, jeans, and track pants fell out of the bag. I spotted a familiar shade of red and pulled it out of the pile.
    I shuddered as I recognized the sneering face of the Angry Bird.
    The last time I had seen that shirt, Parker had been wearing it. And leading half of our computer class in the Butt Brain chorus.
    I reached over and dug through the rest of the clothes, looking for holes. Stains. Rips. Anything that would explain why Mrs. Douglas would throw them away.
    But there was nothing. The clothes were all perfectly ready to be worn. There was no reason to throw them away.
    Unless, of course, there was no longer someone to wear them.

Do Stegosauruses Like Salsa?
    That evening, my tail wouldn’t stop hurting. So Mom took me to the vet.
    The. Vet .
    When I asked her why we weren’t going to see my regular pediatrician, Dr. Bakker, my mom turned to me in exasperation.
    â€œAnd just how many broken tails do you think Dr. Bakker has ever seen?” she demanded.
    I guess she had a point.
    But still. The vet ?
    Dr. Gilmore, whom I had last seen when we brought Fanny in to be spayed, saw me right away. She bumped me to the front of the line, ahead of a golden retriever who had bitten through his stitches and a Pekingese with an ear infection. After a quick X-ray, she diagnosed me with a sprained tail and sent me home with an anti-inflammatory and orders to ice the injured area.
    My dignity was still smarting the next day, but my tail felt much better. And after school, Sylvie invited Elliot and me to visit her mother’s new restaurant. My mom seemed unusually enthusiastic about my going. Probably because the restaurant was on the edge of downtown, quite a long walk away, and Dr. Gilmore had told her that exercise would help my tail heal properly.
    The restaurant’s front door was papered shut. There was a large banner draped over the front of the building, which read, “COMING SOON—MAMA JUAREZ’S CUCINA.” Over the door was a drawing of a smiling woman with Sylvie’s hair and milk-chocolaty brown skin, offering a plate of tortillas to the passersby.
    Sylvie led us in through a door in the back. Inside, several dozen tables were shoved