“I think it spells trouble” Justin says as the play “Where There’s a Will There’s a Murder” comes to an end.

“Music go, lights up” Katie says as I hear my queue to play the music to end the play for the final time. I press my buttons and turn it off when the time comes, a simple job but I know it’s important so I took pride in it anyways. As the music fades out and the play ends the cast and crew take their spots as I watch on, waiting for it all to fully end for me to emerge finally from my den. The whole cast meets up in the back of the stage finally and we say our congratulations and start discussing the party, I didn’t know what to expect but I was excited enough to go.

“I would like to go I just need a ride from someone” I say, I talk to one of the people I considered my friends in the cast and ask him for a ride. “Hey can I get a ride to the party” I ask him.

“Sure, I just need to run home first” he said cooly.

“That’s fine, I can wait for you to swing back by the school” we seemed to have an understanding so as everyone left I assured them I was fine, I had a ride and I would be there as soon as he showed up. He never did show up and I didn’t have his, or anyone else’s number. I waited for about an hour and a half sitting in the cold confident he would come. “I guess he really isn’t coming” I thought aloud, so I did the thing I feared, I called my parents and let them know it didn’t work out and I had been sitting in the cold for over an hour. “Mom can you come pick me up, my ride fell through and I don’t have the address, I just want to go home now” I said to her sounding defeated.
“Okay son i'm coming, we can talk in the car” she showed up soon after and took me home promptly.

“She looks nervous” I thought to myself “it’s not that big of a deal, it’s just a party” I realized quickly that was not why she was nervous so I asked her once we got home, not wanting to bother her while she was driving. “Mom, what’s wrong?”

“Oh it's just… oh don’t worry about it, it's better if I don’t say anything” my mother said nervously, seeming to want to look at everything other than me.

“Honey you shouldn’t have said anything, now he knows that something is wrong, and I know you, you will end up telling him” my father yelled from the other room.

“Mom what is it, please tell me what’s bothering you” I asked her, blissfully unaware of what was really going on.
“Its Lily, we think it's time to give up on her and give her away” my mother said, the words forming a fist rocketing straight toward my heart with the intent to destroy it. I loved Lily, she was our new puppy, gotten a little more than 3 months ago at that point, it’s true she was struggling from house training but I looked up about Shih Tzus and found out it’s not really her fault, we had been training her wrong. My mother was getting fed up with cleaning up spots on the floor and didn’t really have the time to properly train her.

“No” I said simply, I felt my eyes begin to tear up just by saying it. “I won't let you get rid of my dog, Scamper (our other dog of 7 years intended for me) loves you more than me, now that I have a dog that loves me like he does you, you try to get rid of her?”

“Michael I refuse to have a dog I will have to be constantly cleaning up after for the next 15 years, I can give her to our friend, she will have a good life” My mother said calmly.

“She has a good life” I told her angrily. “Since you can’t be bothered to train the dog you got for yourself I will, just give me a week, if she is still peeing in the house by then, I won’t stop you if you get rid of her” at this point I was both red in the face with tears and anger, “she pretends to feel bad that I couldn’t go to the cast party and then she tells me she is going to get rid of our-my, dog?”

“Why should I let you, you haven’t trained her in the past 3 months, why would you mange now”

“Because I thought you had it handled, but i'll handle it, i'll take care of the dog and nobody else will interfere or else it’s their fault if an accident happens and you can’t get rid of her”

“Okay Michael, i'll make it clear to the entire house, and in a week when she pees on the floor we will get rid of her”

“She won’t pee on the floor, so you have a deal” I retorted, angry that she thought she was outsmarting me.

Fast forward a month and my mom finally concedes that the dog is trained and that we will keep her, I managed to even get her to actually love her and accept her as a member of the family. This may be a sad memory but it is also something more, it's my favorite memory of Junior year because despite how horrible it started out the end result was my new fluffy best friend getting to stay, and that’s a pretty big achievement to me.