Disclaimer: Mush *sniff* does not belong to me. He belongs to Disney (selfish bastards!) and though I know that if they were to give him to me for safekeeping I'd do a great job of it, I have a feeling Disney probably wouldn't be willing to hand him over. So here goes...
Chapter One: How I Spent My Summer Vacation...
Ten o'clock in the morning, my parents have only been out of town less than 36 hours, and already the house is a mess. Mail and newspapers litter the living room coffee table, half of my piano music is lying in a pile on the floor by the piano bench, dishes and empty Lean Cuisine boxes cover the kitchen table, and video boxes form a precarious barrier around the TV in the family room. How could this much junk have possibly accumulated in two days? Am I really that messy? If the house already looks this bad, what will it look like in two weeks when my parents return from Maui?
I take a deep breath and begin loading the dishwasher. Once the plates and silverware are put away, the kitchen doesn't look nearly as bad as it did before, although I have a feeling the overflowing recycling and trash cans will probably want to be emptied pretty soon. I have always had a hard time admitting to myself that I am perpetually lazy and prone to procrastination, but when it comes down to it, cleaning and staying organized are definitely not talents of mine.
After I'm done tidying up the kitchen, I feel a break is in order, and I cross over to the family room to the leaning tower of videos. Gladiator, Singing' in the Rain, The Wedding Singer, and North By Northwest, along with half a dozen others, are all out of their boxes on the floor, some only halfway rewound. I, however, just grab the remote and switch on the movie that is already in the VCR. The movie I watched last night, earlier yesterday afternoon, and will probably watch again later tonight...
Who would have thought that a 19-year-old college student studying music history, whose favorite movie is Casablanca, would develop such an obsessive fixation with the movie Newsies? I surely didn't. I hadn't even thought of the movie in years when, my parents out of the house and my friends busy with work, I was rummaging through the closet full of movies in the computer room and my eyes fell on Newsies. Now, my friends roll their eyes at me every time I mention the film or try to coerce them into watching it with me. They just don't appreciate the thrill of watching dozens of cute boys in turn of the century clothes sing and dance their way across the streets of New York.
"It's not that they're even that cute," I had explained to my best friend Erin, who merely shook her head resignedly, "but there are so many of them!"
So it seemed from the start that I would be cursed to spend the entirety of my parentless two weeks alone in my house, watching Newsies with my dog Peg, wishing sadly that adorable Mush had more screentime. As I fast forward through the previews (wow, who actually remembers Encino Man?), I make a mental note not to mention this part of my summer vacation to my college friends when I return to school in the fall.
********************
Okay, it's one o'clock in the morning and time to go to bed. I do, after all, have a piano lesson in the morning and I don't know how well I'll be able to play Schubert if I'm half asleep. After pulling out my contacts, washing face and brushing my teeth (and nearly forgetting to floss) I pull on my Victoria's Secret pajamas and fall into bed, barely remembering to set the alarm clock for nine the next morning. Peg is curled up at my feet, grunting occasionally and shuffling around. I'm just nodding off when all of a sudden, a piercing bark shatters the silence of my room and my dog is scampering toward the edge of the bed, growling frantically at the open window.
"Peg," I mutter, hoping against hope that my CD player will spontaneously fall on her and knock her out, "shut up! There's nothing outside." With my parents out of town, unfortunately, I am the one who has to put up with the obnoxious lhasa apso who manages sleep all day long, and yet can't last through the night without finding some imaginary threat on the hillside to bark at. Peg, as suspected, will not be quiet, and pretty soon I understand why. Now even I can hear movement in the open space right outside my window. It is definitely too big to be a racoon or a cat.
"It's just a coyote," I tell Peg, nudging her roughly with my foot. She grunts and paces the foot of the bed restlessly, and finally settles down to sleep again. The noise on the hill has subsided, and my last thoughts before I drift off are that I don't know how long my dog is going to survive these two weeks before I strangle her...
********************
I am awoken the following morning before the alarm goes off by an incessant scratching at my door. I try to ignore it as long as I can, but finally, with a groan of annoyance, I drag myself out of bed and open the door to let out Peg, who flies down the stairs toward the back door. I follow her much more slowly, fumbling with my glasses and rubbing the sleep out of my eyes. When I reach the back door and pull open the blinds, I barely even have time to register the sight that greets me on the other side of the sliding glass door before Peg lunges at it, barking furiously at the stranger who is standing, a shocked look on his face, on the other side.
"AUGHHHHHHHH!" I scream when I've found my voice, and the boy outside does the same. He turns to run, slips on the garden hose, and tumbles to the ground. Meanwhile, I have grabbed the fireplace poker and the cordless phone, pulled open the door, and dash outside before he can get away.
"Don't hurt me, please!" he begs, shielding his face from me and clutching his leg. "I didn't mean any harm!"
"What the hell do you mean, no harm?" I scream, brandishing the poker at his cringing figure. Peg charges out of the house and begins growling and sniffing the now terrified intruder. "What do you mean by skulking around my house and scaring me half to death? What are you doing in my back yard? Who are you? You'd better start talking or I'll call the police!"
"I don't know what I'm doing here," he insists desperately, scuttling away from the enthusiastic growling of my dog and still hiding his face. "I don't even know where I am or how I got here, please believe me!"
Suddenly I stop waving the poker and stare at the boy crouching on the ground. Something about him looks oddly familiar. I still can't see his entire face, but there is something about his curly brown hair, olive complexion, and odd clothes that makes me think of...
"Mush?" I gasp. The weapon falls from my hands with a loud clang. The boy doesn't appear to have heard me speak, but he looks up at the sound of the falling poker. No, I think to myself, it can't be! I have totally lost my mind. I'm a nutcase, being by myself for two days and watching nothing but Newsies has caused me to completely lose it. And yet, this all seems so real.
"Who are you?" I say again, my voice shaking, afraid to hear the answer.
He stands hesistantly, brushes off his brown cut off pants, and reaches out as if to shake my hand. "Me name is Mush," he says. I stare in shock. I've lost my mind.