I roll my eyes. “There’s no way I’ll win,” I say, because I don’t want them to get their hopes up. It’s bad enough that I’m secretly desperately hoping I’ll win. “Too many people want this and everyone is trying really hard.”
“I would vote for you if I could,” Abuela says. She reaches across the table and pats my arm.
“Thank you,” I say, smiling at her. I kept my phone in my room so I wouldn’t be tempted to check it during dinner. But as of an hour ago, I had slipped down to number 53. This sucks. First thing tomorrow, I’m going to come up with a plan to do a lot of nice things for a lot of people. It’s only day one, after all. I’m not giving up that easily.
Six
MARK
The volunteer manager at the Brazos Animal Shelter is old enough to be my grandma, yet she looks like she could kick my butt if she wanted to. Her name is Nora. She’s muscular, about five feet tall, and she smells like coffee.
“What made you want to volunteer?” she asks as she glances over the volunteer form I just filled out. “I see you’re not a member of the animal club like most teenagers who come around here.”
I can’t tell her the truth—that I’m trying to win a free car by sucking up to the Animal Club which is our largest school club and they all volunteer here after school—so I just give her a smile. “I love dogs and my parents won’t let me get one,” I say. “I thought it would be nice to play with some shelter dogs.”
“Wonderful,” she says, seeming to believe my answer. I mean, I do like dogs. And my parents also hate dogs, so it’s not a total lie. “Let me show you around.”
I spent all of last night thinking of ways to get more kudos this month and volunteering sounds like a great idea. The Animal Club is always posting flyers around campus, asking people to volunteer to help the shelter dogs. I like dogs, so I plan to come here every chance I can so people can see me helping out and then give me kudos. Volunteer kudos have to count more for the algorithms than the kudos you get for giving pretty girls compliments, right?
Nora shows me around the facility and then tells me I can play with any dog that doesn’t have a red sticker on their chart. The red sticker dogs are aggressive and can only be handled by more experienced volunteers. I try not to make it obvious that I’m looking around the kennels, trying to see if anyone I know from school is here to see me doing this good deed. In fact, it’s probably best if I don’t make eye contact or small talk with anyone. That way people will see me minding my own business while volunteering. That’s bound to get me a ton of kudos.
It’s hard to choose a dog because I want all of them to have fun, so I just pick randomly and promise myself I’ll come back here as often as it takes to have time to play with all of them. I open the metal kennel door and kneel down to the small brown and white mutt in front of me. He’s wagging his tail excitedly. “You ready to play?” I say, reaching over and letting him smell my hand the way Nora had told me to do. He’s friendly and seems to be trusting of me, which is a good sign.
I take him outside to the large fenced in backyard. Nora said I’m allowed to run and play with him out here, using whatever toys they have available. Visiting hours end at seven when the dogs have to come inside to eat dinner, so I have three hours to earn some mega-kudos and climb up the scoreboard. I grab a tennis ball, but this little guy seems happier to lick my hands than to play.
One of the employees has several large dogs playing in one area of the yard, so I walk my little dog around the corner of the building. Right as I turn the corner, I see the last person I expect.
Abby Pena.
Her nostrils flare when she recognizes me. “What are you doing here?”
“Same thing you are,” I say, tossing the ball toward my borrowed dog. He chases after it, his tail wagging the whole time.
“But you’ve never been here before,” she says, putting her hands on her hip. Two scruffy dogs play tug-of-war with a toy, but when she talks, they stop and look up at her. “I don’t know what you think you’re trying to do, but I’m not giving you any kudos.”
I snort. “I’m not giving you any, either.”
She quickly ignores me, walking away and calling the two dogs to follow her. I watch her leave, taking a deep breath to settle my nerves. What are the odds that Miss Perfect also volunteers here? Pretty good odds, I guess. Sheisin the top ten of our scoreboard, after all. And it’s only day two, so clearly she frequently does good things to have gotten so much early kudos from our teachers.
With a groan, I try to forget about her while I play fetch with my dog. After he’s all worn out and happy from the attention, I take him back and get another dog from the kennels. Besides the employees and Abby, I don’t see anyone else here for the first hour.
Where the heck is the rest of the Animal Club? It’s pointless being here if no one can see me and give me kudos. I really want to leave, go somewhere more public where people can see me and vote for me on the app. But Abby is still here, sitting under a tree in the far corner of the lot while she plays with a few dogs, and I can’t bring myself to leave if she’s still here. So long as she’s doing a good thing, so will I.
The next dog I play with just wants to sit in the sun and relax. The fur around his snout is turning gray so I’m guessing he’s an older dog. Nora brings me two younger dogs to play with while the old one is enjoying laying by himself in the grass. These two girls are part lab, and they’re only a year old so they’re full of energy.
They like chasing after a ball when I throw it but they don’t like giving the ball back to me. I don’t even know how much time has passed because I’m having way more fun than I thought I would. Maybe those Animal Club students are onto something. This place rocks.
Before I realize it, Nora is waving me inside because it’s the dogs’ dinner time. Even though only one Brazos High student was here to witness me doing volunteer work (and she won’t give me any kudos), I’m glad I came. Playing with dogs does a lot to heal stress. I feel happier than I have since before Gran died.
As I’m walking out to my car, I notice Abby sitting on the bus stop bench down the road. It’s only seven o’clock and it’s not fully dark outside yet, but I still worry about her sitting there all alone in a busy part of town. I should drive away and head home but she hasn’t noticed me yet, so I see no reason to leave. I’ll just sit here and keep an eye on her.
When the bus arrives I pull onto the road behind it since it’s heading in the same direction as my house. I could get in the next lane and zoom around the clunky old bus, but I don’t.
I don’t know, I guess I’m curious about Abby. All of my friends have cars. I kind of forgot that some people don’t. I can see why she wants to win this contest so badly.
A few stops later, Abby gets off the bus at a busy intersection. There’s no way she lives in a shopping center, and now my Spidey-senses are on high alert. Is she going to volunteer somewhere else to get even more kudos from our classmates? Ugh.
Curiosity gets the best of me and I pull into the parking lot and watch her walk toward a dance studio. I know, I know, this kind of makes me some kind of creeper, but I can’t help myself. If she’s volunteering to teach dance class or something, I can’t compete. I have no dancing skills whatsoever. She’ll win this contest much easier than I can.
