Rachel Alexander 05 - The Wrong Dog

and placed it on the top of her head, and, as if gravity were doing the work for him, let it slide down the slope of her nose. Bianca closed her little pig eyes and wagged her short fat tail. It was one of the few times I’d seen her sit relatively still for more than a couple of seconds.
    “She’s the clone, isn’t she?” he asked, wide eyes watching my face.
    I nodded.
    “Jeez, she’s gorgeous. I knew it was true. I knew it.”
    Bob was still standing. He looked at Bianca, at me, at Everett, and then at Ruth. “It’s her? It’s Bianca, Ms. Gordon’s other dog?”
    Ruth nodded.
    He shook his head slowly from side to side. This time he addressed me. “Can I touch her?” He was thin, with a long horsy face and wire-rimmed round glasses that made his eyes look too big. The hearing aid was in his left ear.
    “Of course.”
    His backpack was forest green. He shrugged it off and knelt next to his friend, both of them petting Bianca so tenderly that my heart broke all over again, thinking of Sophie and what a wonderful teacher she must have been, how tender, trusting, and honest with her students.
    And what a big mouth she had about what was supposed to be kept secret.
    More kids were pouring out of the doorway, some signing, some talking. It wasn’t nearly as loud as it would have been at a school for hearing kids. For some of them, I thought, going home wasn’t as much fun as school. Going home, in fact, might be a lonely thing to do.
    I crouched down and touched the two boys on their shoulders. A little girl wandered over, too big to be sucking her thumb but doing it anyway.
    I smiled at her, then addressed the boys.
    “Ms. Gordon told you all about Bianca?”
    “She did,” Everett said. “She told us someone had cloned Blanche so that other people with epilepsy could have seizure-alert dogs, but she never brought Bianca to school with her, only Blanche.”
    “Where is Blanche?” Bob asked.
    “She’s with me, at my house. I’m taking care of her until I can find out if Ms. Gordon arranged for anyone to take care of them when she no longer could.”
    “Which is now,” Bob said.
    “That’s right,” I told him.
    Ruth took out a wad of tissues and blew her nose.
    “She told us she was tested,” Everett said. I watched him as intensely as he was watching me, both of us needing to lip-read to be sure we understood each other.
    “That’s right,” I told him. “Both bullies had a DNA test recently.”
    “That’s because Ms. Gordon didn’t trust the first one.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “She said Bianca was tested when she was a puppy, before Ms. Gordon got her, but that when you test a puppy, you sometimes get the mother’s milk on the swab and then you might have the mother’s DNA. Ms. Gordon wanted to be sure Bianca was really a clone. That’s why she had her tested again.”
    “She told you everything?”
    He nodded. “We were her family, she said.”
    “Just like family,” Bob said.
    “It’s almost the same thing,” Everett said. He was crying.
    “Did Ms. Gordon ever mention her other family to you, in class, you know, her blood relatives?”
    “Just her sister,” Everett said.
    I nodded. “Did she mention her name?”
    “Rhoda,” he told me. “That’s hard to say. She made us all practice it.”
    “Rhoda,” Bob said.
    The little girl took her thumb out of her mouth and said, “Rhoda,” making bubbles as she did, popping the thumb back in as soon as she’d said it. A woman carrying a bag of groceries tapped her on the shoulder. She smiled and reached for her hand.
    Another boy joined us, blond and nearly as pale as an albino.
    “Hi, Will,” Ruth said.
    “Hello, Ms. Stewart. Is it Blanche?” he asked. “She got skinny. She must be grieving, too.”
    “This one’s Bianca,” Ruth told him.
    “The clone?”
    We all nodded. Bianca had two more hands on her now, which was mighty fine with her.
    “So, what else did Ms. Gordon tell you about her sister? If I can find her, then maybe she’ll give the dogs a good home. That’s why I’m asking.”
    “It’s okay to tell her whatever you know,” Ruth told Will. “Rachel is a good person and she’s trying to help. She’s been taking care of Blanche and Bianca.”
    “You won’t find her,” Everett said.
    “Why not?”
    “She’s dead, too,” he said.
    “Yeah. She died when Ms. Gordon was real little. In a car accident,” Bob said, “But Ms. Gordon didn’t. She only got epilepsy.”
    I looked at