The Grump I Despise (When In Waverly 3)

Norah

I haven’t been this excited in my entire life, which is ridiculous. I’m thirty-one years old, and the most exciting thing to ever happen to me is spending a day playing with dogs and cats at an animal shelter? I really have to start getting out more. Maybe I’ll finally get on one of those dating sites my sisters keep bugging me about, and I’ll meet the man of my dreams, get married, have 2.5 children, and buy a house. Then, I could say one of those is the happiest day of my life.

Who am I kidding? At the rate I’m going, I’ll be alone forever. No man is going to be interested in a woman who can barely afford to feed herself. Men these days want women who can afford to go Dutch on dates, and I’m securely in the I-have-to-order-from-the-kids’-menu group if I want to eat out—and it’s not because I eat small portions.

But my goodness, that little tan puppy bouncing around, wagging his tail on the other side of that fence looks like he would show me undying love and devotion. He's just begging me to take him home and love him and cuddle him and give him food and toys and security. He deserves it. I can tell. A dog would love me better than a human man ever could. I would shift things around in my very tight budget to give him the cushy life he deserves if my parents hadn’t forewarned me this morning that bringing home an animal would result in my immediate eviction from their house. I don’t think they were serious, but I’m not certain enough to test it.

The students standing around me are equally in awe of all the little furballs barking and meowing at us. “How much trouble do you think I would be in if I snuck that cat out in my hoodie?” I hear one of the girls ask her friend next to her.

“No idea, but we can go down together because I need that puppy!” her friend replies. She’s talking about my puppy. I might have to fight her later.

Colby stands off in the distance with a clipboard in his hands with a roster of all the students' names and forms to log their community service hours. I watch him closely as he watches the animals in their cages. I thought he hated animals after he argued against volunteering here, but the look on his face is making me question that theory. He has a hint of a smile on his face as he watches two dogs play and wrestle together. The man does have a heart after all.

The worker who will be overseeing all our tasks, a middle-aged woman with shoulder-length gray, curly hair, comes out to greet us. She introduces herself as Elizabeth and then gives a quick overview of what we’ll be doing and lays out some ground rules for us. They’re pretty straightforward: no feeding the animals anything other than the specified foods, only play with the animals in the approved areas, etc.

She breaks us up into teams and starts assigning tasks. She gives Colby’s group the task of bathing some of the dogs, which doesn’t sound like a good job for someone who is supposedly allergic to dogs.

“Oh, nay nay,” I say. “Mr. Stuart here is allergic to anything with fur—or so he says.” I pat Colby’s arm, and he steps away from me with a scowl on his face. Elizabeth puckers her mouth as she looks down at her list again.

“Okay, well, Mr. Stuart, your group can take cleaning up the yard, and Miss Sullivan, your group can bathe the dogs. How does that sound?” She looks back up at us with a warm smile.

“Sounds great! And please, call me Norah.” She nods her head and looks to Colby again.

“Wonderful. Mr. Stuart, the pooper scoopers are right over there for you all to use,” Elizabeth says, pointing at a wall with supplies lined up, ready for use. Colby and his entire group glance at the dreaded pooper scoopers with their mouths hanging open in surprise.

“We have to scoop…poop?” one of the boys asks. His face is suddenly a little green-looking. I back away just in case. I don’t do well with vomit.

“Yes, sir. Did you think you were going to be petting puppies all day? This is a service project!”

“Well, no, but…” the boy says.

“It’s okay. There will be plenty of time for petting puppies…” Elizabeth says as she pats him on the shoulder, “...after the yard is cleaned.” She names off everyone else’s tasks, and other employees start taking them to where they need to go.

Elizabeth has my group follow her inside once she’s done. She leads us to a massive stainless-steel washing station. There’s already a large dog that looks like a golden retriever mixed with some type of shepherd dog waiting for us. Elizabeth walks us through all the steps of washing the animals, showing us where things are and techniques for keeping the dogs calm as she goes.

She finishes her demonstration with the first big guy and then brings us the next dog. She has the three of us in my group—consisting of me, a boy named Jeremy, and a girl named Amelia—do the washing on this little pup while she watches us to make sure we’re getting the hang of it. After he’s all washed up, she declares us ready to be on our own. She hands me a list of all the dogs we’ll be washing today—ten total. That’s a whole lot of fur scrubbing ahead of us. Quickly, she shows us where all the dogs are, and then we’re really and truly on our own.

The first dog we wash goes smoothly. She’s an old, docile girl named Stella, and she just stands there and lets us do what we have to do. I have declared her to be an angel. She lures us into a false sense of security, because it gets progressively worse from there. The second dog is a little more reluctant. He manages to get out of the tub while he’s covered in shampoo and tries to run away. He slides across the floor on his wet paws and crashes into a cart full of supplies. Jeremy grabs the dog and shoves him back into the tub where we spray him off as quickly as possible. There might be some shampoo residue on him, but we aren’t professionals here! There’s no way that dog is going to stand here long enough to get it all off. We decide to use less shampoo from now on.

As I’m taking the wild guy back to his home, I hear the girls that were tasked with replacing the blankets, toys, and filling food and water dishes talking and giggling together. They sound like they’re having a great time. Why couldn’t I have gotten that job? It could always be worse, I remind myself. I could be cleaning up poop out in the yard with Colby’s group in the cold, winter weather.

“Jeremy is so cute,” one of the girls says. I perk up and strain my ears to listen to them. “I mean, have you seen his eyes?”

“I don’t know, I’m kinda into Mr. Stuart,” another girl says with a giggle. I think I’m going to throw up. What could they possibly see in him? I mean, I know what women my age see in him: muscles, chiseled jaw, a perfectly symmetrical face, piercing blue eyes, a house, financial security. Need I say more?

But this is highly inappropriate. These girls are, what? Fifteen? Sixteen? Doesn’t he seem kind of like a grandpa to them? And that broody personality cannot be attractive to them. Teenagers are supposed to go after the goofy, golden-retriever boys. You know, boys who smile every once in a while, make jokes, act a little nervous when they’re talking to you. They aren’t supposed to like grown men who scowl at everyone like they’re mad at the world. A gorgeous face and a perfect body doesn’t excuse that type of behavior.

“Who isn’t into Mr. Stuart?” another girl responds.

“Oh, gross. He’s like my uncle. He hangs out at our house so much,” a third girl, Lo, says.

“You’re so lucky,” the first says in a dreamy voice while Lo laughs hysterically.

I scoff under my breath at the thought of someone thinking that having Colby Stuart in their home is luck. More like a curse. I consider suggesting that Lo have a priest come and exorcize the demons from her house, but then they’d all know I’m eavesdropping.

I continue on my way and leave the girls to have their conversation in private—well, as private as an animal shelter full of high school students could be. I lock the jittery dog back in his cage and bring out the next pup. I’m walking back to the wash station and pass by a large window that looks out onto the play yard. Colby and the three boys on his team are still busy picking up all the dog poo in the yard. Colby has a bucket in one hand and a pooper scooper in the other, and he looks absolutely disgusted. The man teaches biology and oversees dissections in his classroom. Who would have thought that a little dog poo would be too much for him?

The green-faced boy from earlier has a hand covering his nose and is gagging with each clump of dog poop he drops into his bucket. You’d think he’d be over it by now, but it looks like it’ll be a long day for him. I’m crossing my fingers that he can get through it without actually puking.