Only Only Marisol Rainey, page 1
Dedication
To Virginia
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Ginny
That One Terrible Thing
Would You Rather
The Most Disturbing Flyer in the World
But First
Frankly
What Now?
For the Record
Goody, Goody, Gumdrops
Sometimes We Fall
Being Cautious Isn’t a Bad Thing
The Lookout
At Felix’s House
Companionable
C’est La Vie
A Terrific Idea
A Fantastic, Wonderful, Terrific Idea
Vanilla and Sprinkles
Mejores Amigos
Flint
Good Boy
Home
Ginny, Bunny, and Flint
About the Author
Copyright
About the Publisher
Ginny
Marisol Rainey can do many things, but she’s not good at all of them.
She can jump, but not very high.
She can run, but not very fast.
She can throw, but not very far.
Marisol is a good Hula-Hooper, an okay mathematician, and a so-so speller.
But if there is one area in which Marisol Rainey excels, it’s bike riding. If riding bikes were a subject at Getty Elementary, Marisol would get an A+. She rounds corners like a professional. Her balance is superb, like an Olympian. She can speed up, slow down, and brake at a moment’s notice. She loves the way the Louisiana breeze feels on her face as she glides down the streets. When she is on her bicycle, she doesn’t have a care in the world. She can ride from one end of the earth to the other. She can ride all the way to the Philippines and meet some long-lost relatives if she wanted. That’s how it feels, anyway.
Marisol believes that all important things should have names, so she has named her bike Ginny. Ginny belongs to Marisol, and only Marisol. Nothing can come between them.
Well.
Almost nothing.
That One Terrible Thing
Marisol loves her neighborhood. Her best friend, Jada George (whose bicycle is named Bunny), lives nearby and can come over almost any time. Her other friend, Felix, isn’t far, either. Most of the streets are named for flowers or trees, which Marisol appreciates—though she would rather live in a neighborhood where the streets are named after cats.
Marisol and Jada have a favorite route for bike riding. Down Oak, right on Lily, then right on Rose. Their favorite time to explore the neighborhood is on Saturdays and Sundays. Jada goes to her dad’s every other weekend, but other than that, Marisol and Jada have standing plans to ride bikes together, starting on Saturday morning.
Off they go—breeze blowing, tires rolling pleasantly across the cement, the hot sun on their skin. The oak trees tower above them and make shadows on the sidewalk. They pass Miss Penelope’s flower garden, and Miss Penelope herself, if she happens to be outside. All is well . . . until they see the white fence about halfway down Rose.
That’s when their eyes widen. That’s when they tap their brakes.
Behind that fence is the One Terrible Thing about their neighborhood.
The thing they fear above all else.
Sometimes they pedal really, really fast, until the fence is behind them. Most times, though, they slow down and pedal really quietly and try not to look at what’s on the other side of the fence. It’s not good to make eye contact—Marisol’s older brother, Oz, told them that. But it’s hard. They need to look because they want to be prepared in case something happens. Because they know what lurks behind the fence. It’s a deadly, terrifying, bloodthirsty beast.
No, not the squirrel. That’s just Reginald.
The deadly, terrifying, bloodthirsty beast is named Daggers.
Daggers has sharp teeth.
Daggers has angry eyebrows.
Daggers is very big, with pointy ears.
Daggers never moves when they ride by. He just stares and stares—and drools—like he’s wondering how he can get them into his food dish.
In short: Daggers is d-a-n-g-e-r-o-u-s.
Thankfully, Daggers is also behind a fence, which prevents him from getting loose.
It would be awful, dreadful, and downright horrible if he ever broke free.
Who knows what would happen then?
Would You Rather
In all honesty, Marisol doesn’t know if Daggers is dangerous. She also doesn’t know if his name is Daggers. That’s just what she calls him, because the name seems fitting for a big German shepherd who likes to eat children.
“Thank goodness Daggers can’t get out,” says Jada as they continue down Rose Street on a particularly bright Saturday morning during spring break.
“Agreed,” says Marisol.
The corner of Rose and Daisy is up ahead. It’s one of Marisol’s favorite corners to turn because the road is nice and smooth there. On Tulip, there’s a big crack you have to avoid, and on Orchid Street, some of the cement is rocky. But the corner of Rose and Daisy is marvelous.
“Would you rather be trapped in the yard with Daggers for thirty seconds or stand next to Mr. Zhang’s beehive that’s been knocked over for thirty seconds?” asks Jada, over her shoulder. Jada is a philosopher, so she loves asking questions. Would You Rather is one of her favorite games.
Mr. Zhang is Marisol’s neighbor. He keeps bees in his backyard. Marisol was scared of the bees for a long time after her family moved in, but Mr. Zhang told them that honeybees weren’t aggressive. One day he brought a jar of honey to the Raineys and invited Marisol and Oz to see the beehive. Oz wasn’t nervous at all, but Marisol was.
“They just want to find food and get home safely,” Mr. Zhang explained. “Stinging is a last resort.” He told Marisol that she should stand very still if a bee came near her. “Once it realizes you’re not a flower, it will go away peacefully all by itself,” he said.
And it was true. It worked!
Sometimes, things are less scary when you understand them.
Even though Marisol knew a lot about the bees now, she still wouldn’t want to stand next to a hive after it had been knocked over. No way. What if the bees were angry and confused and blamed the first person they saw? Thirty seconds doesn’t seem like a long time, but “time is relative,” according to Marisol’s mother, who is the smartest person Marisol knows.
Marisol glides around the corner onto Daisy Street and decides to count to thirty before she commits to an answer. She wants to see how long it is.
One-Mississippi. Two-Mississippi. Three-Mississippi.
She hasn’t even reached five-Mississippi before Jada says, “Did you hear me, Marisol?”
“Yes,” Marisol replies. “I was trying to decide my answer.” Bees versus Daggers is a hard decision.
“You were taking forever!” Jada says.
“Only five seconds.”
Time is relative.
Marisol eventually decides she would rather stand by Mr. Zhang’s toppled beehive than be trapped in a yard with Daggers.
She can’t imagine ever being face-to-face with Daggers.
The Most Disturbing Flyer in the World
By the following week, Marisol has already forgotten about playing Would You Rather with Jada and choosing bees over Daggers. But then Marisol, Mrs. Rainey, and Marisol’s big brother, Oz, walk out of the house to run errands and Marisol immediately notices something tucked under Charlie’s windshield.
Charlie is the name of Mrs. Rainey’s sedan.
No one else knows this. Only Marisol.
Oz spots the flyer, too. He reaches over and snatches it up.
“What is it?” Mrs. Rainey asks as she gets into the car.
“Someone lost their dog,” says Oz. He and Marisol climb into the backseat. Oz thinks he’s old enough to sit in the front, but Mrs. Rainey says he can’t for another year at least.
“Let me see,” Marisol says. Oz doesn’t give her the paper right away because sometimes he likes to be super annoying for no reason whatsoever. Marisol is forced to take initiative, so she grabs it out of his hands, takes one look at the paper, and everything comes to a screeching halt.
Not really. But it feels like it.
Marisol’s whole world suddenly stops. Her heart. Her breathing. Her ability to move. The neighborhood going by outside the car window. But only Marisol notices.
Daggers is on the loose.
Only his name isn’t Daggers. It turns out it’s Gregory.
“Who names their dog Gregory, anyway?” Oz says. “If I had a German shepherd, I’d name it Bloodborn. ‘Gregory’ doesn’t sound scary at all.”
Bloodborn is one of the characters from Knights of Redemption, Oz’s favorite video game.
Marisol doesn’t say a word. Instead, she looks out the window. There are so many places for a dog to hide. Behind the bushes. Behind the trees. Behind the houses. And she doesn’t care if the dog’s real name is Gregory or that the flyer describes him as friendly. Maybe he’s friendly at home, Marisol thinks. But that doesn’t mean he’s friendly with everyone.
Surely no one can be friendly all the time. Not even a dog.
Besides, Marisol has never once seen Daggers—er, Gregory—wag his tail. Isn’t that what dogs do when they are happy?
Her heart thumps.
Tha-thump. Tha-thump. Tha-thump.
Gregory could
Anywhere.
But First
Marisol’s friend Felix Powell claims he can talk to animals. Jada doesn’t believe him, but Marisol does.
At least she thinks she does.
“Everyone knows people can’t talk to animals,” says Jada as they ride their bikes to the Powells’ the next Saturday. The missing-dog flyer is folded up in Marisol’s back pocket. “So I don’t know why we’re asking Felix for help.”
Marisol has trouble concentrating on what Jada is saying, because she’s too busy looking to the left, to the right, and over her shoulder. She doesn’t feel free and happy, like she usually does when she rides her bike. In fact, she hasn’t ridden Ginny ever since she found the flyer. But she and Jada made a promise to look out for each other, and that’s exactly what they’re doing now. It makes Marisol feel a little bit better, but part of her still feels she has a big, enormous bull’s-eye on her back.
The Powells live in a small one-story house on the corner of Rose and Amaryllis. When Marisol and Jada pull up, they lay Ginny and Bunny on the grass, then walk cautiously to the front door. They’ve never been on Felix’s porch before. Going to someone’s house for the first time is always a new adventure.
Marisol clears her throat so she can sound as polite as possible. Felix lives with his grandmother—whom he calls Nan—and Marisol wants to make a good impression.
Nan opens the door. She’s wearing a long floral dress. Marisol thinks it’s pretty, but she’s too shy to say so.
“Hi, Ms. . . .” Marisol pauses. She doesn’t know what to call Felix’s grandmother. Should she call her “Nan” too? Or something else? “Ms. . . . uh . . . Ms. Nan. Is Felix home? We were wondering if he wanted to ride bikes with us.”
Nan smiles. “Yes, he’s home. But I don’t think he’ll be able to ride bikes.”
Marisol wants to ask why, but she doesn’t want to sound nosy.
Nan turns around and calls out, “Felix! Your friends are here!”
Felix’s dog, Mary Puppins, runs around the corner of the living room at the sound of visitors and bounds onto the porch with Felix behind her.
“Careful, Puppins!” he says as Jada squeals with delight. Mary Puppins is cute and small and sounds like a squeak toy when she barks. Marisol has never heard Gregory bark, but she’s certain it wouldn’t sound like a squeak toy.
Mary Puppins’s tail is wagging so hard that her bottom shakes. Jada bends down so she can scratch the little dog behind the ears before Nan shoos Mary Puppins back in the house.
Nan goes inside, too.
“Don’t want to waste the air conditioning!” Nan says before she closes the door.
Mrs. Rainey says the same thing when Marisol or Oz leave the door open too long.
Felix is smiling from ear to ear, even though he has no idea why Marisol and Jada are there. Felix is one of the smiliest people Marisol knows.
“Hi!” Felix says. “What’s up?”
“Do you want to ride bikes with us?” asks Marisol.
This is the first time Marisol and Jada have invited Felix to ride bikes, so he looks confused for a moment. Then he says, “I would, but I can’t.”
“Why?” Jada asks. “Are you busy or something?”
“No,” Felix says. “I mean, I can’t. I don’t know how.”
Marisol raises her eyebrows. She thought everyone knew how to ride bikes. Jada is surprised, too. She even gasps.
“Ay naku,” Marisol mutters. Ay naku is a Filipino expression that means something like “oh my goodness.” Mrs. Rainey says it all the time, usually under her breath.
“You don’t know how to ride a bike?” Jada says. “No one ever taught you?”
Felix shrugs, like it’s no big deal. Nothing is ever a big deal to Felix. Marisol wishes she was more like that. Sometimes she feels like everything is a big deal.
“My nan doesn’t know how to ride a bike, and I live with my nan,” Felix says. “There’s no one to teach me.”
Marisol remembers when she learned to ride a bike. Her dad taught her. He is only home one week out of every month because he works offshore in the Gulf of Mexico as an electrician on an oil rig. He spent three of his at-home days teaching her.
Marisol and Jada say, “We’ll teach you,” in unison.
That’s the thing about best friends. Sometimes you say the exact same thing at the exact same time.
Felix’s face lights up. “Really?”
“Yes,” Marisol says. “Really.” She clears her throat. “But first, we need you to do something.” She pauses. “We need you to talk to an animal for us.”
Frankly
Felix claims he has conversations with Mary Puppins all the time. That’s why Marisol wanted to go to Felix’s house in the first place. Surely he can talk to big, scary dogs just as easily as small, friendly ones.
Only it turns out that the animal must be in front of you. That’s what Felix says. Or nearby, at least. And no one knows where Daggers is.
“There’s nothing I can do,” Felix says. He shakes his head woefully. “If Gregory isn’t here, I’m not able to talk to him.”
Jada crosses her arms. “Frankly, I think the whole thing is suspect in the first place,” she says.
Marisol isn’t sure what frankly means exactly, but it sounds very grown-up at the beginning of a sentence. Jada is the third-smartest person Marisol knows, after her mom and Mrs. Ruby.
“I’m not making it up, if that’s what you’re getting at,” Felix says.
Jada sighs. “Everyone knows people can’t talk to animals, and they can’t talk to us.”
“That’s not true,” says Felix. “There was once a chimpanzee named Washoe who learned how to say hundreds of words in American Sign Language. And that’s just one example.”
“You know what I mean,” Jada says.
Marisol shifts from foot to foot nervously and glances at the street behind her. They are still on the porch. Daggers could be anywhere.
“Maybe—maybe—if you concentrate really hard, Daggers—uh, Gregory—will communicate with you,” Marisol says. “You know, through the universe or something.”
Felix shrugs. “Maybe. But I’ve never done that before, so I’m not sure.” He glances between Marisol and Jada. “Will you still teach me how to ride a bike, even if it doesn’t work?”
This time, Marisol and Jada have different answers.
Felix smiles, because he’s decided that he likes Marisol’s answer better.
What Now?
With Daggers—aka Gregory—on the loose, Marisol only feels safe at home. So Marisol, Jada, and Felix walk together back to the Raineys’ house. It’s much more fun to ride a bike than to walk one, but Felix says he doesn’t want to ride on the back of one of their bikes because it makes him too nervous. Instead, he offers to push Ginny so Marisol doesn’t have to. Marisol thinks this is a nice gesture.
It takes a relatively long time to get to the Raineys’. Marisol spends most of the walk scanning the neighborhood just in case Gregory is hiding behind one of the bushes. Her heart tha-thumps, tha-thumps the whole way.
When they finally arrive, they make a beeline to the kitchen for tall glasses of cold water. They are hot, especially after all that walking. Mrs. Rainey smiles at them and says hello to Felix. She’s sitting at the kitchen table, working on her laptop.
“We’re going to teach Felix how to ride a bike,” Marisol announces.
“In exchange for my animal whispering services,” adds Felix.
Mrs. Rainey raises her eyebrows.
“I don’t have a bike of my own,” Felix says. “So they’re letting me use theirs.”
“Wonderful,” Mrs. Rainey says. She taps the side of her head. “Once you know how to ride a bike, you never forget. It’s locked in your brain forever.”
Jada finishes her water. “You’re not using my bike,” she says, shaking her head. “No one gets on Bunny but me.”
Marisol looks at Felix. “We’ll use Ginny.”
