Dog Days

Chapter 2
Chapter 2

The sun was a firebrick in the sky as Trevor trudged his way to the Callaghans’ mansion. The wooden front door was shaped like a gravestone and guarded by manicured bushes shorn neatly into teepees. He knocked, and Mrs. Callaghan opened the door, holding the pup in her arms.

“Hello!” she beamed at the man-turned-boy. “Isn’t that your old shirt you’re wearing?”

“Yes.” he said as he tugged sheepishly at the faded fabric. “My Mum never throws anything away.”

“You’re so thoughtful!” she exclaimed. “That’s perfect for keeping everything the same as the first time. We’ve already arranged for the food, the toys, the activity schedules, everything.” She passed Reagan into his arms, where the pup immediately began to flail its four paws and nip at the drawstrings on his shorts.

“Thank you, Mrs. Callaghan.”

“Oh sweetie, you can call me Lilian.” She squeezed his shoulders and gave him a peck on the cheek.

As he watched her silver Mercedes back down the driveway, Trevor felt a sense of déjà vu sweep over him, as if he was once again the middle schooler starting his first summer job, the only kid in the neighborhood who could handle the Callaghans’ difficult new puppy. He always had a thing for animals, and in kindergarten had dreamed of becoming a zookeeper.

He carried Reagan to the front garden, where he lay down and placed the pup down beside him, watching it frolic and roll in the grass, before springing up and clutching his left arm in a clumsy embrace. He reflected on how things were different and the same, how the maple trees had grown while the flowerbeds remained in a state of perpetual suspended bloom. And how absurd it was, him gone back in time, playing with a puppy on a sunstruck morning while everyone else was driving to work; scratching its belly, baby-talking, and flipping it over on its back each time it charged.

Twice a day, he brought the pup to the park, where Reagan would streak back and forth with the other dogs, leaping and tumbling and nipping in doggy rhapsody, all paws and pink panting tongue. In the corner was a basketball court where boys his age hung out, and sometimes he would join them for a game. But he didn’t know any of the video games they played or shows they watched, nor was he up to date on their lingo, and so ended up feeling like an imposter, like the grown-up trying too hard to be one of the cool kids.

And despite how silly it felt, he was conscientious with trying to imprint the past on Reagan, doing “whatever he used to do”, as Mr. Callaghan instructed. But what he used to do included a lot of napping, reading and sneaking into the house to plunder the kitchen and watch TV. So the days drifted by in a lazy haze as he worked down his book bucket list and zoned out in front of ESPN, serene and rudderless, frittering his life away.

Mum’s condition wasn’t improving, though she did seem a lot happier, ensconced in her new hospital suite that looked like it had been transposed from the Waldorf Astoria. A battalion of specialists swooped in and out while a private nurse tended to her like an Egyptian servant girl, all but fanning her with palm fronds. But he knew there was no cure for her dementia, and Mum didn’t recognize him any better at 12 years old than she had when he was 28. At least she was spared the pain of watching her only child, the one-time tennis star and aspiring comedian, reduced to a glorified houseboy.

One afternoon, as Trevor was munching a sandwich in the cool, empty kitchen, the door swung open and a girl fluttered in.

“Who are you?” she asked, startled.

“I look after the dog.” he said. That seemed to amuse her. She was a little taller than him, and appeared to be about 14.

“Oh yeah, Daddy did say he hired someone to watch the pooch. I’m Ayla. I just got back from Paris. School field trip.”

“I’m Trevor.” he said, faintly recalling the whiney preschooler he had seen a few times before heading off to college. He surmised that the Callaghans’ enthusiasm for creating the exact same experience for Reagan did not extend to sending their offspring back into diapers.

“Daddy told me that you were once a man. And you became a boy again to do this?”

“Yes, I’m much more mature than I look.” he said, now acutely aware of his high-pitched nasally voice, which made him sound like a nerdy little dweeb. Ayla was pretty, her eyes like a sliver of light-blue glass, her dishwater blond hair up in the kind of messy bun that took hours to construct, her pastel shorts rolled down to expose a strip of golden waistline. He found himself pulling back his shoulders, trying to puff himself up.

She laughed, and grabbed his arm. “Come, Trevor. I want to introduce you to my friends.”

He followed her down a paneled hallway to the back of the house, where the spotless yard collapsed into a pool of twinkling water framed by terra-cotta tiles. Four girls in swimsuits were lying on chaise lounges, slathered with lotion, busy cooking their skin cells. Soft pop music played from a patio speaker.

“Hey everyone! This is Trevor. He watches Daddy’s pooch.”

There was a collective creak as they sat up.

“Hello Trevor!”

“So you’re the new clone-sitter?”

“Aunt Martha said you used to be a manly man?”

There was a flurry of giggles, and then Ayla said: “But he’s so much cuter like this.”

He blushed as she pulled him over to her lounge chair and asked him to sit down beside her. In front of them was a white canvas mounted on an easel. A plastic tray of watercolors and a mason jar of murky water perched on a wooden side table.

“Do you like it?” she asked.

He squinted at the incomplete painting. It was a mess of squiggles. Purple and green and blue, with an inexplicable orange streak down the middle. He wasn’t sure what to make of it.

“It’s beautiful.” he said, and she laughed again.

“You’re so sweet, Trevor. Would you do something for me?”

“What?”

“Take off your shirt, and lay belly-down on my chair.”

“Why?”

“I want to paint a tattoo on your back.” she said, gesturing with her paintbrush.

Alarm bells went off in Trevor’s head. He needed to leave now, this was wrong, surely Reagan needed him urgently, for a walk, to play ball, anything. But his hot-blooded adolescent body was having none of that, and he found himself pulling off his shirt and laying down as instructed.

“You should take that off too. I won’t want to get paint on it.” She pointed to his thin necklace with a silver cross. He slipped it off his head and handed it to her.

“I’ve never seen boys wear necklaces before.”

“My Mum gave it to me. It was a birthday present.”

He lay still, arms crossed under his chin, feeling the wet tip of her paintbrush on his skin as the sun made sequins on the surface on the pool.

“What are you drawing?”

“It’s a surprise.” She stroked his head, just like the way his Mum used to when he was sad.

When it was over, she blew gently on his back to dry the paint, and helped him to his feet. For a fleeting moment, he felt a warm burst of happiness. Ayla was very nice. He would be coming to her home every day for years to come, and there will be something to look forward, someone he could talk to and be his friend.

Then he noticed the other girls were staring at his back, their eyes wide open and hands over their mouths, sputtering with laughter. He glanced questioningly back at Ayla, but she was clutching her belly and laughing hard too, a mean glint in her eyes.

As the truth of his predicament dawned on him, he was assaulted by a flashback to his first middle school dance, where his awkward adolescent self had tried to kiss Tracy Fischer at the end of the slow number, but missed and ended up planting his lips on her hair, in full view of the entire class.

“What did you draw on my back?!” he squeaked, spinning and twisting his head in a vain attempt to see behind him, his entire body flushing crimson.

“Looks much better on a red background.” Ayla jeered as the girls howled with laughter.

He turned a wounded eye at her, and saw that she was spinning his necklace around her index finger. “You want this back, doggie-boy?” she taunted, and with a flick of her wrist, sent it scissoring thru the air and into the pool. “Go fetch!” she said with a wicked grin.

Hot tears flooded his eyes as he dashed forward and dove into the water, clawing at his back with his fingers and sending contrails of colors wafting up behind him. He seized his necklace and huddled at the bottom of the pool, hugging his knees, wishing he could stay within its depths forever, away from the pack of hyenas crouching at the surface, whose shadow filaments flashed and extinguished in the rocking fluid.