“Rochester,” Noah said, glancing down at the football jersey. “Close enough.”
“You’ll like it here,” I said. “There are lots of kids with dogs. Some of my friends are coming now.” I looked at my wrist, forgetting again that I’d lost my watch. “Um, sometime soon anyway. You can meet them and all their dogs, too.”
Now Noah looked really nervous. “Um, actually, I gotta go home,” he said, standing up. “I still have to unpack. My room is a mess.”
“Oh, please,” I said. “I am the queen of messy rooms. Are you sure you can’t stay?”
“Sorry,” he said, clipping a silver chain leash onto Jeopardy’s collar. “But, uh, it was nice to meet you.”
It was funny how polite he sounded. “Nice to meet you, too,” I said. “Good luck finding your way home! See you in school on Monday!”
“Yup,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck again. As he led her to the gate, Jeopardy looked back at us like she wanted to stay and play.
I noticed that Noah didn’t talk to her at all. I’d yak-yak-yakked to Yeti the whole way here, like, “Ooo, what do you smell, is it amazing?” and “Good boy, peeing outside!” and “Hey, Yeti, maybe we should run away together, what do you think? But then I wouldn’t get to go to India. And I really like my house and my parents and my friends. I just want to keep you, too! Come on, Yeti, help me brainstorm.” Anyone who’d passed me on the street probably thought I was a lunatic.
Danny and Rosie and Buttons showed up about two minutes after Noah left. Buttons is an insanely adorable poodle puppy, all white fluff and sparkly black button eyes and turbocharged energy. Yeti fell madly in love with her on sight. She was only about the size of his head, but when she pounced on his paws, he rolled right over and let her climb on top of him.
Buttons flopped across his face and rrrrrrrred triumphantly as if she’d managed to pin him down. He batted at her gently with his paws.
Then the gate squeaked and both of them bounced up with their tails wagging. Coming into the dog run were Eric and Rebekah. Eric turned bright red when he saw us, but Rebekah waved and smiled. Her little dog, Noodles, came bounding over and jumped on Buttons like they were old friends. In a second they were rolling around with their paws wrapped around each other. Yeti lowered his head and sniffed them curiously, like he was trying to figure out how one small furry friend had suddenly multiplied into two.
“Hey Eric,” Danny said, raising his eyebrows at Rebekah.
“Hey Danny,” Eric said, making the same face at me. Danny cleared his throat and started talking about the weather really fast.
Eric’s bulldog, Meatball, shambled over slowly, sniffing the ground every couple of steps. He rolled his eyes up at us in a Hmmm, I don’t know what I think of you kind of way. But after I let him sniff my hand for about half an hour, he finally let me scratch him behind the ears. It seemed like he really liked that; he went SNAAARRRRRZZZGARRRAAARRRR, which sounded like growling, but Eric said that was his happy noise.
“Who are you?” Rosie said to Rebekah, a little bit rudely.
“You know Rebekah,” I said. “She’s in the same class as me and Danny.”
“Huh,” Rosie said, looking from her to Eric.
“I like your dog. She’s really cute,” Rebekah said to Rosie, and that seemed to get her on Rosie’s good side.
We threw the ball for Buttons and Yeti. Yeti turned out to be great at fetching, just like Buttons — he brought the ball straight back to me, but he couldn’t seem to figure out that he was supposed to drop it afterward. He poked my hand with his nose, but when I reached for the ball in his mouth, he jumped back. Or when I finally grabbed it, he’d hang on, so I had to wrestle it out of his jaws.
Danny laughed at us. “Your dog’s a goof,” he said to me.
“We’ll have to work on that,” I teased Yeti. And then I realized we wouldn’t get to work on fetching. I wouldn’t get to train him to drop the ball, or teach him to sit and roll over, or cuddle with him on the couch. After that night, I might not even see him again.
“Heidi?” Rebekah said as Danny ran off, chasing Buttons. “Are you OK? You look so sad all of a sudden.”
“It’s all right,” I said. I didn’t want to spend the day being sad. Or at least, I didn’t want my friends to know how sad I was. “Come on, Yeti,” I called. “Race you to the water fountain!”
I’d tell Rebekah and Danny about Yeti’s real owners later.
For today, he was my dog.
I didn’t sleep much Saturday night. For one thing, I was too worried about meeting Yeti’s real owners and finding out that they were as terrible as I was afraid they would be. For another, somebody kept hogging the whole bed.
When Yeti and I came downstairs in the morning, my dad was making blackberry pancakes, which are my favorite kind. His laptop was open on the table with a travel website about India on the screen. I clicked on a picture of something called the Qutb Minar, which looked like a big tower. I wondered how you were supposed to pronounce that.
Yeti was nearly tall enough to rest his head on the table while keeping all his paws on the floor. He came over and poked the table with his nose, blinking at the laptop. I reached for his collar and he jumped back, getting his paws tangled in the power cord. The laptop skidded across the table, and I just managed to catch it before it crashed to the floor.
Yeti looked surprised, like that couldn’t possibly have been his fault. He picked up one front paw, then the other, sniffing them like they were big sausages he’d suddenly found at the end of his legs.
“It’s OK, Yeti,” I said, placing the laptop carefully back in the center of the table. “I know how you feel.” If Yeti hadn’t knocked over the laptop, I probably would have done it myself somehow.
Dad put the syrup on the table and looked down at me while I put my shoes on. “This is for the best, sweetheart,” he said. “Can you imagine living in this house with a dog that big?”
I rumpled Yeti’s fur. “He’s a good dog, Dad. I could train him not to knock things over. I know I could.”
He chuckled. “Honey, you can’t even train yourself not to knock things over.”
That was true. “Well, it’s kind of hard when there are so many things just waiting to be knocked over,” I pointed out. “But maybe he’s smarter than I am.”
We both looked at Yeti, who had moved on to sniffing his own tail with a befuddled expression on his face.
“Maybe not,” my dad said with a smile. “Well, hurry up and take him out. The pancakes are almost ready.” He unplugged the laptop and moved it to a shelf where it was safe from both me and Yeti.
I was about to clip on Yeti’s leash when the doorbell rang.
Ding-dong! Ding-dong!
“WOOF! WOOF! WOOF! WOOF!” Yeti announced, leaping around in excitement. Dad whisked a plant out of the way before Yeti’s exuberant tail could knock it over.
“Oh, no!” I cried. “It can’t be them already!” Yeti came over and buried his nose in my hands, almost like he knew what I was feeling.
We left him at his food bowl and came out of the kitchen as my mom opened the front door. A scraggly-looking couple was standing on the doorstep. The guy had a thin wispy mustache the same color as his face. The woman’s hair was flat and blond, and she was chewing gum. They were both wearing black rain boots and jeans with lots of holes in them.
“We’re here for the dog,” said the woman. She cracked her gum and peered over Mom’s shoulder into the house.
My mom looked a little confused. “Sure, come on in,” she said, stepping back.
“Nah, that’s OK,” said the guy. “We’ll just take him and go. Rufus! Come on, Rufus!” He let out a weird airy whistle through his mustache.
Yeti came trotting out of the kitchen with his ears perked up. My heart sank. He knew that name, all right. But he stopped when he saw the couple, and then turned around and ran back into the kitchen.
“What’d you do to our dog?” the woman asked, squinting.
&nbs
p; “Yeah, and where’d you find him anyway?” asked the guy. “I mean, it’s kind of weird. He was tied up in the yard and everything. We’ve never had a dog escape before.”
“My daughter found him in the park across from her school,” my mom said. I could tell she was trying to be polite. “Do you have many dogs?”
“Yeah, we breed ’em,” said the woman. “Newfies, Saint Bernards, pit bulls, all the big dogs. Whatever people want. Although this one we got from a friend, so we ain’t had him long.” She squinted at my mom again. “You looking for a dog? We got some good guard dogs.”
Mom glanced at me. “Is, er … Rufus for sale?”
“No,” the man said before I could get my hopes up. “He already has a buyer. We were supposed to get rid of him two weeks ago. Rufus! Come here! More trouble than he’s worth,” he muttered. “I should charge double.”
“He didn’t have a collar when I found him,” I said. “You should give all your dogs collars. And microchips. In case they get lost.”
The woman gave me a mean look. “Or stolen,” she said.
“Like I said, they don’t usually get loose,” the guy added. “We’ve got about twenty of them tied up in the yard or in the crates back there most of the time, and this is the first time I’ve seen one get out.”
Poor Yeti. Tied up with twenty other dogs and nobody to love him. He must have been very clever to escape them. Part of me wished I were as brave and dumb as Avery right now, so I could kick them both and not care what happened afterward. But I’d never actually do something like that.
“Heidi, go get the dog,” Mom said.
“I should give the leash back to Parker,” I said.
The man handed me a collar and leash already hooked together. I turned them over in my hands and realized it was a choke collar, with bits that would stick into the dog’s neck if he tried to pull. I gave Dad a horrified look and saw that he was looking at the collar, too.
“Go on, Heidi,” my mom said.
I walked slowly back into the kitchen. Yeti was under the table, pressed into the corner. He lowered his head and peeked out at me under the white-and-pink tablecloth. I got down on my knees and crawled in next to him.
Arroorrrrooof. Yeti lay down and put his head on my knee. His big brown eyes looked up at me trustingly. How could I put this collar on him and give him back to those people?
I wondered what would happen if I just opened the back door and let him run off again. Would he know to run and hide? Would he come back? What if they caught him as he ran down the driveway?
I buried my hands in his fur and rubbed his back. I knew they were all waiting for me. But I couldn’t do it. I wished I could stay under the table with Yeti forever.
I saw my dad’s black sneakers come in from the den and walk over to us. He crouched beside the table and rested his elbows on his knees, looking at me and Yeti.
“Dad,” I said, but I couldn’t talk, or else I’d start to cry.
“Honey, listen,” he said. “Do you really want this dog? This particular dog?”
I nodded really hard. Yeti’s tail thumped on the floor.
Dad glanced down at his hands. “What if it meant we couldn’t go to India next year?”
I rubbed my eyes. “Why?”
His voice got quieter. “We asked how much it would cost to buy him, and they said we’d have to pay more than the other buyer. It would take a bite out of our travel savings. We’d have to spend the summer at home instead. But if you really want him …”
“Yes!” I blurted. My head was spinning. I couldn’t believe my parents had even asked — that there was even a chance they’d say yes, let alone give up their trip for my dog. “I’d rather have Yeti, more than anything in the world. Oh, please, Dad, please please please —”
“All right, give me that,” he said, holding out his hand. I passed him the choke collar and chain. He winked at me as he got up and went back into the den.
I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I wrapped my arms around Yeti and held on tight, wishing and hoping that I wouldn’t suddenly wake up and find out this was all a dream.
It seemed like a few centuries went by. Maybe a few thousand years. Maybe the entire age of the universe. The Egyptians could have built four hundred pyramids in the time we spent under the table, waiting in agony.
But finally I heard the front door close. Mom and Dad came back into the kitchen. They both crouched beside the table.
“Thank you, Mom,” I whispered.
Aaaoooorrrrrooof, Yeti agreed.
“I’m still not sure this is a good idea,” Mom said, but she was smiling. She reached under the table and stroked Yeti’s long, soft fur. “But I think we’re stuck with him now.”
I probably shouldn’t tell you about the glass giraffe we broke or the bowl of pancake batter we knocked over while Yeti and I were leaping around the kitchen celebrating.
“Oh, dear,” my mom said, pressing her hands to her head while I ran around trying to clean up the mess. “Arthur, what are we going to do with these two?”
“Maybe it’s time to make the house a bit safer for the clumsier members of the family,” Dad said.
“Really?” I said. “Could we? I swear, I’m sure I wouldn’t break things so much if there weren’t so many things to break!” That sentence made a lot more sense in my head.
“Well,” Mom said thoughtfully, “I do like the living room the way it is. But perhaps we could make the den a bit more Heidi-friendly.”
“And Yeti-friendly,” added Dad. “We don’t have to keep the Orrefors vases or Chihuly glass flowers in there. They could go in the sala.”
Mom glanced around the kitchen. “Who really needs crystal bowls anyway?” she said. “We can store them in the dining room sideboard for special occasions.”
“And there are a couple of pieces in the den that would look lovely in the museum,” Dad suggested. “Or at my office.”
“You’ll be lucky,” Mom said with a laugh.
“WOOF!” Yeti barked happily, and then his long swooping tail swept our basket of keys and gloves and mail onto the floor with a crash.
“All right, get out of here,” Mom said, making shooing motions with her hands. “Give us a chance to save the artwork before we’re arrested for destroying national treasures.”
As she fluttered into the den, my dad patted my shoulder and whispered, “I never liked that green vase anyway.”
Yeti and I nearly flew across the grass to Avery’s back door. Kelly answered after a couple of knocks. She gave Yeti a startled look.
“What is that?” she asked.
“This is my new dog,” I said proudly. “His name is Yeti. Isn’t he wonderful? Can I take him upstairs to see Avery?”
Kelly pressed her lips together. “I suppose so,” she said. “But he’d better be doing homework when you get up there.”
I hurried up the dark stairs to Avery’s room. I didn’t go into their house very often, unless Kelly was having a party of some sort. Usually we hang out in the yard or at my house.
“Guess what?” I yelped, throwing his door open.
Avery jumped a mile. He was totally not doing homework. He was watching an old episode of Heroes on the TV at the end of his bed.
Yeti galloped into the room and sailed onto the bed, scrambling over Avery’s feet.
“Hey, watch it,” Avery grumbled. But he reached out and scratched Yeti’s ears, and Yeti flopped over onto his lap, offering his belly to be rubbed.
I closed the door quickly behind me in case Kelly was coming up the stairs. “You’ll get in trouble if she sees you doing that,” I said, nodding at the TV.
“What, more trouble?” Avery said sarcastically, hitting the mute button. “Oh, no. That would be terrible.”
“So guess what?” I said, climbing onto the bottom of the bed. But I couldn’t wait for him to guess — or, knowing Avery, make sarcastic comments instead. “Mom and Dad are letting me keep Yeti!” I burst out. “He’s mine! Fo
r real! We bought him from his owners and everything!”
Yeti rolled back onto his paws and jumped off the bed. He started sniffing around the room. It wasn’t as messy as my room, but it wasn’t neat either. And it was really dark, because Avery kept all the shades down all the time. The only light came from his desk lamp and the glow of the TV.
“Wow,” Avery said in a flat voice. “That’s unexpected.”
There’s a photo frame that sits on the table beside Avery’s bed. Normally he keeps it tipped over so you can’t see the picture, but today it was upright. I picked it up and tilted it toward the light.
I knew what it was, of course, but I hadn’t seen it in a while. It’s a photo of me and Avery when we were both eight years old. We’re crouching in the grass in my backyard, pointing at the camera because we’re trying to get Avery’s dog, Stitch, to look at the camera, too. But he’s too busy licking Avery’s face to pay attention, and we’re all laughing, so it’s a pretty silly picture of all of us.
Stitch was a mutt — a crazy, hyperactive, funny brown-and-white dog with pointy ears and scruffy terrier fur. Kelly bought him for Avery when she remarried his dad and they were all supposed to be a happy family again. Avery named him after the alien in Lilo and Stitch, which was one of our favorite movies of all time.
Stitch wasn’t exactly a good dog. He was kind of like Avery that way. He got into mischief and barked at nothing and tried to pick fights with dogs way bigger than him. But he loved Avery like crazy. He followed Avery everywhere. And I got to play with them all the time.
But then Kelly and Avery’s dad started fighting again, and for some reason that made Stitch act even more hyper and crazy and bad. Soon after they got divorced for a second time, Kelly decided she couldn’t handle “that monstrous little dog” anymore. While Avery was at school one day, she took Stitch to a shelter, and we never saw him again.
Isn’t that the saddest story ever? I cried for days when Mom told me. I cried so much, she actually got the name of the shelter from Kelly and drove me out there to say good-bye to Stitch. But he’d already been adopted by someone else by the time we got there. That’s the only good part of the story. At least he found a new home, and the shelter people said it was somewhere he’d be happy.