How I nicky Flynn fINAllY Get A liFe ANd A dog I hate guessing I said Reggie used to be a seeing-eye dog she said Isn’t told her And it’s totally true I’m sleeping on a foldout sofa in the living room There’s barely enough room for the two of us without adding a big drooly pound dog into the mix especially one that looks all sad and sort of embarrassed about his name Guess what Nicky Mom said That’s me Nicky Flynn though technically speaking my name is Nicholas But nobody ever calls me that except her and only when she’s mad that great So why isn’t he working for some blind guy I said Seeing-eye dog my foot I’m nobody’s fool In fact you wouldn’t believe what I’ve been through Mom says I’m way too serious for a kid my age She says I’m like this forty year-old man trapped in an eleven-year-old body Yeah well believe me if I were a real forty-year-old there’d be a few changes around here P S I’m eleven and three-quarters I guess it didn’t work out Mom said What did he do I said She didn’t have the details The pound doesn’t give those out All they would tell her was that Reggie was a full blooded German shepherd which is supposedly one of the smartest breeds out there I gave him the once-over He didn’t look all that smart to me Just sad He did look like a German shepherd though I’ll give him that much 2
You CAN’t teACH AN old doG New trICks Take him back I said But you’ve always wanted a dog she said I’ve always wanted a pool table But the landlord’s not going to allow that up here either I said Our landlord lives right below us He’s always telling me to pick up my feet and turn down the TV I never even thought about my feet where we used to live We had a big house of our own and we could say or do whatever we wanted I already asked Mom said The landlord told me a dog was OK as long as it wasn’t too big and didn’t make a mess of the new carpet We both looked over at Reggie He must go eighty pounds easy Let’s just give it a few days Mom said And that was that She led Reggie into the living room my room and told him to make himself at home He sniffed around a little then whined What’s the matter boy Mom said Are you hungry We ended up going to Taco Mucho over in the strip mall We drove-thru and ate in the parking lot with the public radio station on so we could catch the rest of the news Reggie just sat there in the backseat panting Maybe he guessed we would stop off at the Supa-Sava on the way home to buy him a can of dog food Or maybe he just knew better than to beg any tacos off of me That’s when she remembered about the groceries 3
How I nicky Flynn fINAllY Get A liFe ANd A dog a little background inFo like I said my mom lies Which is why I decided to start this mental log of when and where and how That’s what Dr Ice my secret favorite cartoon crime-fighter does whenever he’s keeping tabs on his archenemies the Heat Technically speaking I’m a little old for Dr Ice But I’m sick and tired of Mom getting off scot-free with everything she says Here’s a list of a whole bunch of stuff she told me this past summer that just isn’t true She said for instance that we’d be much better off living here in Boston than out in the suburbs I can already tell you after just three weeks here We’re not First of all Charlestown isn’t Boston You can sort of see Boston from Charlestown if you squint through a bunch of highway overpasses and bridges But Charlestown itself is pretty much exactly what it says a town named Charles not much bigger than Littleton where I’m from About the only difference is that Charlestown’s a lot more run-down and dirty Plus the buildings are all squished together in rows which they call town houses even though the houses where I’m from in a real town have big front and back lawns with lots of trees We now live in a one-bedroom apartment on the parlor level which is the first-and-a-half floor of one of these so-called town houses on Eden Street Eden is supposedly the beautiful garden where Adam and Eve lived 4
You CAN’t teACH AN old doG New trICks when they named all the animals About all they could name here in Charlestown are alley cats and squirrels And Adam would have to sleep in the middle of the living room just like me Back in Littleton we used to own a real house on King Street a big white one with green shutters I had my own room with a door that locked Plus I went to fifth grade at this really great elementary school in Littleton Common that had a campus with a swimming pool an auditorium and a computer lab In fact I was just about to ask my best friend Marky if he wanted to try out for junior high soccer when ZAP Mom tells me out of the blue in mid-August that she’s put the house on the market and rented an apartment in the city I had the worst Labor Day weekend ever While Marky was barbecuing hot dogs and hamburgers in his backyard I was actually you know laboring I can’t tell you how many boxes of old clothes and toys I schlepped out of my room into the car and over to Goodwill The very next Tuesday I found myself walking through the doors of this totally sketchy middle school in Charlestown you’d swear was a maximum-security prison if you didn’t read the sign Forget about sixth-grade soccer My new school doesn’t even have grass It only took about a week for everybody in class to realize I’m like a half a grade ahead when it comes to math and reading Me So now everybody thinks I’m some kind of book freak and nobody will talk to me 5
