Keys to the City by Lisa Schroeder
I pulled it out of my pocket. “I hope you like Taylor Swift.”
“Odie does; that’s all that matters. Turn it on, and we’ll show you.” So I found “Shake It Off.”
“Odie, up!” Tyler said. Odie got to his feet, and then, as Tyler put one of his hands out, Odie stood on his hind legs and put his paws into Tyler’s hand. “Okay, dance, Odie. Dance!”
Tyler let go and we watched as Odie danced in a circle on his two hind legs.
I laughed so hard.
Tyler smiled and said, “That’s better.”
Fancy, an official member of the Library Cats Club, lived the good life.
She slept at the end of the Mr. and Mrs. Parker’s bed on her very own super-soft blanket.
She drank cream from a crystal glass.
And she traveled to libraries all over the country, curling up with kids and good books.
“Fancy deserves the best,” Mrs. Parker would say.
Zero, an official member of nothing, slept in a doghouse. Outside.
He ate his food from a plastic bowl.
And the Doggone Good Dog Kennel was the only place Zero ever visited.
One day, Zero studied pictures of Fancy surrounded by children. He could almost feel the love coming through the picture. Almost.
If only I could be a cat, Zero thought.
And so, he tried his best.
While Mr. Parker read his favorite magazine, Zero jumped on his lap, like Fancy. Mr. Parker put an end to that.
Zero tried sleeping at the end of the Parkers’ bed, like Fancy. Mrs. Parker put an end to that.
The poor dog even tried climbing a tree, like Fancy. The tree put an end to that.
When it was time for another library trip, Zero squeezed into Fancy’s travel crate and wouldn’t budge. The Parkers got the hint.
On the plane, Fancy got a window seat.
“Fancy deserves the best,” Mrs. Parker said.
Zero got stuck between some luggage.
At the library, Fancy was greeted outside and given a special welcome and nametag. Mr. Parker tied Zero to a tree and left him there, alone. Zero stared at the library. Sadness gurgled inside of him until it finally came gushing out.
“Yowwwwwwwww,” Zero howled.
The bookshelves rattled. The kids dropped their books. And Fancy bolted outside to see what was wrong. But then a very big dog in search of a very fluffy toy snatched Fancy off the ground and ran.
Zero watched. He thought of the spot on the Parkers’ bed. It could be his.
He thought of the cream in the crystal glass. It could be his, too.
He thought of the kids at the library and how maybe a dog could be just as good as a cat.
Fancy looked back at Zero with her scared green eyes. The children ran outside and one of them yelled, “We love you, Fancy. Please come back!”
Of course Fancy deserved the best. Zero knew in his heart he was the best dog to save her. So he pulled on that rope. He pulled and he pulled until finally the rope broke free so he could run after Fancy. He lunged at the very big dog, and when he did, Fancy was tossed to the ground.
The big dog ran away, and Zero and Fancy waited patiently for the Parkers to come get them, which they did as soon as they discovered what had happened. Mr. Parker scooped up Fancy. Mrs. Parker scooped up Zero. The dog licked the woman’s face.
“That dog’s a hero!” one child shouted.
Mr. Parker laughed. “Zero the hero!”
“We love you, Zero,” another child yelled.
The Parkers finally got the hint.
“Zero deserves the best, too,” Mrs. Parker said.
Back home, things changed. Zero got his very own super-soft blanket. He ate his food from a crystal bowl. And best of all, he became an official member of the Library Cats AND Dogs Club.
After we played with Odie for a while, Tyler left and I wrote a story about a dog, since I had dog on the brain. Well, okay, the story is about a dog and a cat, but mostly about a dog that wants to be loved as much as the cat.
When I finished, I was thrilled with how it turned out. It’d been a couple of hours since I’d last seen Mom and Dad, so I walked out to the family room, starving, wondering when the Chinese food would be delivered. It was so strange, though—it was like time had stopped inside our apartment. Dad still sat in front of the television.
“Dad, where’s Mom?”
“At her desk, I assume.”
“But it’s dinnertime. Past dinnertime. Shouldn’t Davis be home soon? Shouldn’t we be getting ready to eat? Aren’t you hungry?”
He sat forward, blinked his eyes, and pulled his phone out of his pocket. “It’s not that late, is it?”
What was even happening? It was like they’d forgotten they had kids or something. I turned around and marched toward my parents’ room. When I opened the door, I was about to say the same things I’d just said to Dad, but Mom wasn’t at her desk. She was asleep on her bed. So that’s why we weren’t getting ready to eat and why no one was checking to see if Davis was on his way home yet.
I quietly shut the door and returned to the family room. “Mom’s asleep,” I told Dad.
“I just texted Frannie,” he said as he got to his feet. “They’ll be here in a few minutes.”
I flopped down on the sofa and put my head in my hands.
“Lindy? What’s wrong?”
How could I explain it? Nothing was wrong, and yet nothing felt quite right, either. It reminded me of the time the four of us got stuck at the top of the Ferris wheel at the Dutchess County Fair last year. We hadn’t known how long we’d be up there—could have been five minutes or five hours. More than being stuck, it was the not knowing that had kind of freaked me out.
How long was this stuff between my parents going to last? What if Mom did everything she could think of, and still couldn’t get enough reservations to make Dad happy? Then what? Would we have to move again?
“Lindy?”
I sighed and lifted my head. “I’m hungry, that’s all. Do you need help figuring out what to order? Or should we wake up Mom?”
“No,” he said. “Don’t wake her. I guess I’m not the only one who felt exhausted today. Shall we have dumplings delivered again from Dumpling Kingdom?”
“Yes, please.”
“Okay. I’m on it.”
He sat down next to me and pulled out his phone just as the front door opened. Davis bounded in, Frannie right behind him.
“Dad, guess what?”
“What?”
He didn’t even look up, just kept scrolling on his phone. Like he didn’t even care why his son was excited.
“Did you guys win?” I asked, trying to match my brother’s excitement.
“We did, but that’s not the best part. I hit a home run!”
I jumped up and gave him a hug. Davis only let it last about a microsecond, because, you know, I’m his sister and there’s nothing cool about hugging your sister. Still, it was more than my dad did. “Dad, isn’t that great?”
Dad smiled. “Way to go, big man.” He held out his hand for a high five, and Davis slapped it.
“I wish you’d been there, Dad. It went over the right fielder’s head and then when he threw it in, the second baseman missed the catch. Which meant—”
“You kept running,” Dad said. “Did they try to tag you out at home plate?”
“Yeah, but I slid and they missed.”
“It was very exciting,” Frannie said from the doorway.
“It sure sounds like it,” Dad said. “Thanks again for taking him.”
I kept waiting for Dad to say how sorry he was to have missed it, but he never did.
“My pleasure. Is Mrs. Mackay here, by chance? I’d like to speak to her about next week’s schedule.”
“She’s sleeping,” Dad said. “Can I have her call you tomorrow?”
“Sure. That’d be fine. I’ll be off, then.” She looked at Davis. “Congratulations again, young man. I hope you a
We all said good-bye, and after the door had closed, Davis asked, “Can we do something fun, Dad? Please?”
“I was just about to order some dumplings. How does that sound?”
“But we eat Chinese food almost every Saturday night,” he said. “Can’t we do something special?”
Just then, Mom appeared, yawning as she walked toward us. “What’s going on?”
“I hit a home run,” Davis said. “Sorry if we woke you up.”
The good news seemed to shake her awake a little bit. Her eyes got big and wide, and she looked genuinely happy. “Davis! That is so exciting! Of course it has to be the one time neither of us could make it.”
“Well, you could have made it, but you didn’t,” I said. “Don’t you wish you’d gone?”
Maybe I was being kind of bratty, but I wanted them to realize they were being selfish, letting other stuff get in the way of family stuff.
“Yes, I do,” Mom said. And that’s all she said about that. Dad ignored me altogether. I felt like a piece of dirt they were trying to shove under a rug or something. “Should we go out to celebrate? Kevin, what do you say?”
Dad held up his phone. “I was about to call in an order for food. I’m not sure I’m up to going anywhere. I think we have a cake mix and some frosting in the pantry. Lindy, you want to make a cake for dessert?”
Okay, I definitely did not want to do that. I’d had enough time in the kitchen for one day, thank you very much. Lucky for me, Davis likes to bake a lot more than I do. “I’ll do it! Can I, Mom? And can I put the whole can of frosting on the cake when it’s finished? Please?”
We all laughed. “I wouldn’t want it any other way,” Mom said. “Come on. Let’s get that going while Dad takes care of dinner.”
After they’d gone, Dad kind of scowled at me. “You didn’t need to rub it in like that, Lindy. Of course we feel bad we missed the home run. But trying to make someone feel bad when there’s absolutely nothing that can be done, it’s not very nice. Do you understand?”
“Sorry,” I said, staring at the red-and-black area rug that covers the family room floor. “I felt bad for him, that’s all. Sometimes it feels like …”
I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say next. Or if I should say anything at all.
“What?” he asked as I looked over at him. “Feels like what?”
“Like we’re stuck on top of the Ferris wheel again.”
He blinked his eyes a few times and then took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose with his fingers. “What in the world are you talking about?”
I shook my head. “Never mind. Can you make the phone call, please? I’m starving.”
“That I can do, yes.”
He went back to his phone. And I went back to my room, alone.
Sometimes
it feels like
I’m floating around
in a big, clear bubble
looking at people
floating around
inside
another big, clear bubble
and if I’m not careful
we’ll bump
into each other
and
POP
and then what?
Davis and I went to an art camp the following week in Brooklyn. Talia’s mom signed her up, too, so it was fun hanging out with my friend all week. We ate lunch together every day and laughed at all her funny Rudy stories. She noticed my key necklace one day and asked about it, so I told her about Vivian and Tyler and how they were trying to help me unlock my secret talent.
“What have you done so far?” she asked.
“Made pizza very, very badly.”
“There’s no such thing as bad pizza,” she said.
“There is when you drop the crust on the floor you’re standing on.”
“Oh,” she said, trying not to laugh. I told her she could laugh since I’d already decided I’d stick to only eating pizza from now on.
The art part of the camp, though? Fun is not the word I would use to describe it. Let me try to find one.
Challenging?
Sad?
Completely and totally frustrating?
Four words, but yep, that about sums it up.
My mother has told me and my brother a few different times that it’s good to challenge ourselves—to try new things and to struggle and to watch ourselves improve because … well, I don’t remember why, really.
So every day when I left frustrated with myself, I’d tell myself it would get better. That the more I practiced, the better I would get. During our week at camp we did portraits, a couple of still-life paintings, and some landscapes. My self-portrait looked like something a three-year-old would do. I drew my nose three times bigger than my eyes and mouth. My mother told me she wanted to have it framed. Framed, to hang on the wall! I told her if she did that I would have to move out and live somewhere else because I could never, ever talk to someone who came over to our apartment and saw that horrible painting.
“You’re being too hard on yourself,” she said as we looked at the artwork I’d brought home that day.
“You’re being too nice because you’re my mom,” I told her. “It’s not good. At all. And it’s okay to say so.”
“Honey, what if I like it because you made it?”
“Then you can stick it away in a drawer and keep it. But I’m too embarrassed to have other people look at it. I’m not a good artist, and you can’t really make me change my mind about that.”
“Like I’ve said before, I believe everyone is an artist,” she said. “Some just need more time and practice.”
“But what if I don’t really like painting or drawing? What if it doesn’t make me happy, only stresses me out because everywhere I look, someone else’s art is better than mine?”
She thought about that for a minute. “Hm. Well, maybe you shouldn’t look around. Have you ever heard that saying—comparison is the thief of joy?”
I hadn’t heard it before. I had to think for a second about what it meant, and then, as if she could read my mind, Mom explained a little more.
“There will always be someone who can do it better,” she told me as she picked up the painting. “Don’t focus on that because it will only bring you down. Focus on what you’ve accomplished. Be thankful for what you can do. Do you know I have one of these self-portraits that you did in first grade?”
I let out a little gasp. “You do?”
“Yes. Let’s go look. I bet you’ll be amazed at how much you’ve improved since then.”
And she was right. I had gotten better. In the first-grade portrait, my ears looked like big, round wings. Why had I drawn them that way? I wondered. Was that how I had seen myself? But that wasn’t the only problem. My face was crooked, and my head very pointy. I also didn’t attempt a single bit of shadowing like I’d done this time.
She put her arm around me and gave me a little squeeze. “It’s really not so bad, Lindy. We are our own worst critics. Believe me?”
I nodded because it seemed like that was probably true. But there also wasn’t anything she could say that would make me magically love my latest self-portrait.
I have a question. And I know you can’t answer me because you are a notebook and notebooks don’t talk, unfortunately, but I’m going to ask you anyway. How am I supposed to not compare myself to other people? Seriously, how? I scroll through Instagram and all I can think is:
She’s cuter than me today.
She’s funnier than me.
I never get that many likes when I post a selfie.
It’s like the world is set up to make us compare ourselves to other people. I wonder if it was different a hundred years ago, before the Internet. When life was a lot simpler. Or maybe farmers looked across the field and thought, Well, gosh darn it, his corn is taller than mine.
Maybe that’s just what humans do. Maybe we can’t help it.
Except we are the
Shouldn’t we?
On Saturday, I waited outside the brownstone for Vivian and Tyler just like I had the week before. Vivian had texted me a few days ago to tell me we’d need to meet up in the morning instead of the afternoon, though she didn’t say why. It worked out perfectly because Mom had told me I could ask Nora to sleep over Saturday night and we were expecting her around four o’clock that afternoon.
This time I’d decided to dress casually and comfortably, and I was happy to see Tyler had on shorts, too. It looked like the weather was going to be perfect—sunny but not too hot.
“Hello, Miss Lindy,” Vivian said. “And how are you this fine morning?”
“I’m pretty good,” I said.
“Hope you had a nice week. We’ve been busy with all kinds of fun outings.”
“We saw Matilda,” Tyler said as he pulled a pair of black sunglasses out of his pocket and put them on. “And since it’s been sunny, Grandma bought me these shades. Do you like them?”
I smiled. “Yeah. When we go swimming you can wear them to the pool. Just take them off before you jump in. Pretty sure it’s hard to keep them on your head when you do that.”
“So, Lindy, are you ready for your next adventure?” Vivian asked.
“I hope so,” I said as I nervously fiddled with the thin ruffle at the edge of my pink shirt. “Will you tell me where we’re going, or do we have to wait until we get there again?”
“I think I feel better waiting. I’m afraid if I tell you beforehand and you don’t like the idea, you’ll try to convince me to change our plans. And I truly believe you don’t know how you feel about something until you give it a try. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“You’re such a good sport, you know that?” she said as we took off toward the subway.
“I’m trying,” I said. “It’s hard, though. Do you think you know right away that you’ve found the thing, or does it take time?”
“Hm. That’s a good question. I think it can go either way. Sometimes the degree of difficulty can shadow everything else. But as we practice and it gets easier, we often discover we do enjoy it.”