I didn’t believe that, but I didn’t want to argue with him. “Just come over and have pizza with us,” I said. “After Ashley gets off the phone. So guess what? I had the best idea!”
“Uh-oh,” Avery said, rolling his eyes.
“Mom and Dad will be gone for hours,” I said, “so I’m going to take Yeti inside and give him a bath!”
“That is not the best idea,” Avery said, shoving his hands in his pockets. “That is the opposite of the best idea.”
Yeti sat down next to me and I crouched to hug him, picking twigs out of his black-and-white fur. “It is the best idea,” I insisted. “We can wash him in my bathtub and then bring him back outside. Ashley won’t even notice. He totally needs a bath, look at him. Besides, don’t you think Mom will like him better if he’s all cleaned up before she meets him?” I smiled brightly at Avery.
“You are a crazy person, Tyler,” said Avery. “And none of this we business. Leave me out of it.”
Right then, I heard a cling-cling from our driveway. Danny peeled up to our house, wobbling on his bike from the weight of the bag hanging from one of the handlebars.
Whoops. So much for keeping Danny and Avery apart. A ferocious scowl was already spreading across Avery’s face like an oncoming thunderstorm.
“Hey Heidi!” Danny called, leaning his bike against our garage.
“What’s he doing here?” Avery growled.
“He’s helping,” I said.
Danny came through the gate, and Yeti bounded right over to him, wagging his tail. All of Yeti’s fur rippled when he moved, like waterfalls flowing off his back. Danny went “Heeeeyy!” and held out his hand for Yeti to sniff. Yeti bumped his fingers, pushing them up onto his head so Danny could pet him.
“Oh, man!” Danny said. “He’s totally awesome! Buttons will love him!”
Avery snorted. “Buttons. That’s the stupidest name for a dog I’ve ever heard.”
Danny noticed Avery for the first time. He frowned, too, rubbing his free hand through his dark hair. “Heidi, is this jerk bothering you?”
“No!” I said quickly. Avery looked mad enough to break something. “He’s helping! Well, he was helping. But I’m about to give Yeti a bath, so I guess Avery’s going back inside. Right, Avery? You don’t want anything to do with it, right?”
“I can help you with that,” Danny said, standing up and looking all important, like helping me give a dog a bath was the most heroic thing he’d do all day.
“Forget it,” Avery said. He glared at Danny. “I’m helping with the stupid dog’s bath. You can run along home.”
“You go home,” Danny said. “Heidi and I don’t need your help.”
“I’m already home, stupid,” Avery said. “And Heidi and I were doing fine with Yeti until you came along.”
“Oh my gosh, enough,” I said, exasperated. “Listen, right now I am taking Yeti inside and giving him a bath, and I don’t care if you both want to come hold down a wet dog for me or if I have to do it myself, but I don’t want to hear any more arguing about it. OK?”
“Well, I’m coming,” Danny said, folding his arms.
“Me too,” Avery said grouchily.
Great. Nothing could go wrong with this plan.
All right,” I said, taking a deep breath. “Avery, go get the bowls from the shed.”
“Why?” he said, like he was ready to pick a fight.
“Because I have to put them back in the garage!” I said. “Are you going to help or not?”
Avery stomped over to the shed and slammed the door open. As he vanished inside, Danny whispered, “I can make him go away if you want. You must be so sick of him.”
“No, it’s fine,” I said. I knew Danny was probably confused, but I didn’t want to give him a long explanation about Avery right then. “Did you bring a leash?”
The collar he’d brought from Parker’s was deep purple, as wide as a ruler, and just barely fit around Yeti’s neck with room enough for him to breathe. Yeti squirmed and twisted his head around trying to see what I was doing, but I finally snapped it on and clipped the long black leash onto the silver loop. Yeti immediately tried to grab the leash in his mouth.
“No,” I said firmly, taking it away.
He wagged his tail and gave me a look like, Oh, I can wait. I WILL be the boss of this leash!
“Here,” Avery said, stomping up and shoving the bowls at me. Danny grabbed Yeti’s leash while I juggled the two Mementa “masterworks.” They were covered with dog hair and bits of peanut butter, but I have to say, even if they hadn’t been, they still didn’t look like art to me. If one of them crawled out from under my bed, I’d probably scream and throw my alarm clock at it. They were ugly. But I had to clean them and put them back in the garage, and then hope my dad would just think he missed them.
Yeti was jumping around at the end of his leash, trying to grab it in his mouth and wrestle it away from Danny.
“Whoa buddy,” Danny said, skidding across the lawn. He wrapped the leash more firmly around his hand. “Calm down! Man, he must weigh like twenty times as much as Buttons does.”
“I can take him,” Avery said. “I’m stronger than you. And you’re doing it wrong.”
“I am not,” Danny said just as Yeti lunged toward the fence and nearly yanked Danny off his feet.
“Come on, let’s go,” I said before they could start fighting again.
Yeti dragged Danny through the gate and up the driveway. He would have kept going to the street, but then he saw me open the side door in the garage and he came bounding back with Danny flailing along behind him.
I rinsed the bowls under the water tap and dried them with one of the blankets in the garage, then packed them back into the cardboard box. Yeti sniffed through the other boxes while I did that. Danny watched him warily, waiting for him to lunge away again, while Avery watched Danny.
As I tucked the bowl box carefully behind a pile of other boxes, Yeti stuck his nose into a bag of birdseed. His tail went wag wag wag as he poked his head to one side, then the other, burying his nose farther inside the bag. Suddenly he jumped back and sneezed enormously: KRRRCHOOOOOF! KRRRCHOOOOOOF! KKRRRRRSNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOFT!
The bag tipped over. Birdseed exploded in all directions, across the floor and through the air as Yeti shook himself. Startled, Yeti leaped sideways, crashed into a wall of boxes, and knocked over a whole file of art museum fliers.
“Ack!” I yelped as the papers scattered under my feet.
“See, you’re doing it wrong!” Avery shouted, trying to grab the leash from Danny. Yeti started barking with alarm as the boys tugged the leash back and forth.
“Shhhhhh!” I said. I shoved myself between Avery and Danny and knelt beside Yeti. He stopped barking, wagged his tail, and licked my face. “Good boy, Yeti,” I said. “Shhhhh.”
“Good boy?” Avery said indignantly. “Look at the mess he made!”
“It’s OK,” I said, although it was kind of a disaster. “I’ll clean it up later. But we have to keep him quiet. Even Ashley might get suspicious if she hears barking from inside the house!”
Danny laughed. I pried the leash out of their fingers and hung onto it myself. Boys, I thought. More trouble than they’re worth.
“All right, now quietly,” I said. “Ashley’s probably in the nook, so we just have to sneak past. Quietly. Ready?”
They both nodded. I led Yeti over to the kitchen door and carefully opened it a crack.
Ashley was sitting at our kitchen table with her back to the door.
“I know!” she said. “It’s barmy! That’s what I said! You’re off your nut! That doesn’t taste like popcorn at all! And then you’ll never guess what she said!”
She was laughing, which meant she was still in the early stages of the phone call. Yeti poked the door with his nose and it swung open a few more inches. I wrapped the leash firmly around my hand and waved to the guys.
Cautiously we tiptoed around the doorway and into the den. This
time I kept an eye out for menacing bird statues, but nothing had appeared in the last ten minutes.
“And then she goes, ‘I do so look like Keira Knightley!’ Imagine!” Ashley’s voice floated out of the kitchen behind us.
Yeti’s nose was going nuts, like it was on a little motor of its own. He leaned away from me like he wanted to go explore, but I used the leash to keep him close to my side as we hurried through the den. I could still hear Ashley laughing as all four of us galloped up the stairs.
As we reached the upstairs hallway, Yeti nearly lunged away from me, but Danny threw himself in the way and I was able to steer the big dog into my bathroom, which is across the hall from my room.
“Is that your room?” Danny said, glancing through my open door. He started laughing at the giant piles of stuff that covered the carpet and the bed. “That’s hilarious. It’s just like your locker! How do you ever find anything?”
I laughed, too. “Well, it takes a while,” I admitted. “But come on, I bet your room isn’t any better.”
“OK, yeah. You got me there,” he said.
“Yeah,” Avery said, peering into my room as well. “Heidi’s room is always like that.”
Danny gave Avery the weirdest look, as if a second head had just popped out of Avery’s elbow and announced that he was my best friend. Avery stared back at him like he was daring him to argue.
“OK, into the bathtub!” I said brightly. I could ignore the weirdness; oh, yes, I could.
But pretending everything was normal with Avery and Danny turned out to be the easy part, compared to getting Yeti into the bathtub. As soon as he spotted the tub, the Newfie dug his paws into the fluffy sky-blue bath mat and tried to scrabble backward out of the room. We piled inside and shut the door so he couldn’t go anywhere. He went rooooooooor in a disgruntled way and buried his head behind my knees.
“Come on, Yeti!” I said, trying to sound cheerful and encouraging. I unclipped his leash, hooked my fingers through his collar, and tugged him toward the tub. “This’ll be fun! A bath! Oh, boy!”
“Oh, brother,” Avery said as Yeti wriggled loose and tried to hide behind the toilet. He managed to fit his head between the seat and the wall, but of course the rest of him was way too big to squeeze in anywhere. I wrapped my arms around his chest and tried to heave him into the tub. I swear he must have weighed twice as much as I did.
Danny was laughing again, almost hard enough to fall over. Even Avery had stopped scowling and looked like he was trying not to crack up.
“I’m glad you’re so amused!” I said to Danny. “Now could you PLEASE HELP?”
“Here,” Avery said, tucking the shower curtain up on the rod so it was out of the way. Yeah, even my shower curtain has dogs on it. It’s white with little black dogs chasing yellow rubber ducks through a bunch of blue and green squares. Well, I think it’s pretty cute, anyway. And it matches the dark blue walls and white tiles and my bright yellow toothbrush.
“What do you want me to do?” Danny said. “Are we going to lift him in? For real?”
I tried to think what the trainers on my favorite dog shows would do. “Oh!” I said. “Did Ella give you any treats? Maybe that would help.” Yeti lifted his head and peeked out at me when I said “treats.” That seemed like a good sign.
While Danny unzipped his backpack, Avery turned on the tap and felt the water coming out of the faucet. “Is this warm enough?” he asked me as the tub started to fill up.
I leaned over and felt it. I didn’t really know the exact right temperature it should be, but I figured as long as it wasn’t too cold or too hot it would probably be OK.
“Yeah, sure,” I said, just as Danny pulled a dog biscuit out of his bag and held it out to Yeti.
Yeti’s eyes lit up. He practically did a backflip with a triple somersault to get to the biscuit. Before I could even turn around, he had snarfed the treat out of Danny’s hand and leaped right over me into the tub.
Splash!
Water soaked my arms and splashed over the side onto my jeans. Avery and Danny both jumped back out of the way.
“Oh, very helpful, thanks, guys,” I said, wringing out the bottom of my shirt. “Danny, hand me another treat.”
Yeti had his nose in the water, lapping it up, but he looked up when I held out the biscuit and splashed over to me. He sat down right there in the tub and snarfed it up, crunch crunch crunch. His ears swung and flapped on either side of his huge head. His long pink tongue licked the last crumbs out of my fingers and then he sat there, panting. He looked very pleased with himself.
The water was slowly rising up to his stomach. Mud was caked through his fur all along his underbelly and legs.
“Danny, check under the sink,” I said. “There should be a bottle of baby shampoo under there.” I knew you weren’t supposed to use regular human shampoo on a dog, but I’d read online that if you didn’t have dog shampoo, you could use really mild baby shampoo.
Danny pulled out a light pink bottle and handed it to me.
“Uh, why do you have baby shampoo?” Avery asked. “Like, you can’t wash your hair without crying, or what?”
“Shut up, Avery,” Danny said.
“It’s from when Julia visited,” I said, squirting some of it into my hand.
“Oh,” Avery said. “Her cousin,” he added to Danny. “She’s two.” Avery’s face was like, See? I know a lot more than you do. Danny wrinkled his forehead like nothing made any sense. He sat down on the edge of the bathtub beside me and watched as I rubbed shampoo along Yeti’s legs.
Now that Yeti was in the tub, he seemed a lot calmer. He sniffed my hands while I worked my fingers through his thick black-and-white fur. He tilted his head while I poured water over his back. I was really careful not to get any water in his ears. I used one of my own washcloths to wash his face so his ears would be safe.
Yeti thought that was pretty hilarious. He snagged the washcloth right out of my hand as I was rubbing under his chin. He shook it and shook it like he was defeating a wild animal and then dropped it in the tub and gave me a satisfied so there expression.
“Yes, you’re very clever,” I said to him, scratching his chin. I searched through his fur carefully, remembering what Kristal had said about fleas, but I didn’t see anything. Muddy water poured off Yeti’s legs as I rinsed him off. We had to empty the bath and run it again twice. I gave Yeti a few more biscuits to keep him calm, but he didn’t seem too worried.
“I can’t believe your babysitter isn’t wondering what you’re doing,” Danny said.
“She’s definitely going to want to know why you’re all wet,” Avery said. He was leaning against the door with his arms folded.
“I’m not that wet,” I said, and Yeti picked that exact moment to stand up and go SHAKE SHAKE SHAKE SHAKE SHAKE SHAKE SHAKE. I shrieked as he splattered water all over me. Danny jumped up with a yell, but there wasn’t anywhere to escape to. Even Avery got pretty splashed, over by the door. Tiny muddy droplets speckled the walls and tub. Yet another thing I’d have to clean up before Mom and Dad got home.
Pant pant grin, went Yeti.
“You were planning that all along, weren’t you, you silly dog?” I said to him. He tilted his head like, Who, me? This innocent face?
“Blargh,” Danny said, wiping his face with his hands.
Avery snickered, but he stopped smiling quickly when Danny looked over at him.
“Can I use your towel?” Danny asked me. My fluffy blue towel, the same cheerful color as the bath mat, was hanging next to him.
I smacked my forehead. “I totally forgot! We need a towel for Yeti!”
“Just use yours,” Avery suggested snidely. “I’m sure he doesn’t smell any worse than you do.”
“Hey.” Danny bristled.
“Ha-ha,” I said, “but if Mom sees muddy paw prints on my towel, I’ll be in real trouble.” I could just imagine the look on her face. Hiding a dog in a shed and feeding him out of priceless art was one thing. Getting
my towel dirty to clean him was quite another. “No, we need to get one of the old towels from the linen closet.”
“I’ll get it,” Danny said, stepping toward the door.
“No, I’ll go,” Avery said. “I know where it is.” He gave Danny a so there face that looked a lot like Yeti’s. And then he squeezed quickly out the door and shut it behind him.
Danny turned to me and put his hands on his hips. “OK,” he said. “I don’t get it. How come Avery knows your house so well? And your cousin and everything?”
Well, I didn’t care if he knew. It was only Avery who was weird about being friends with me. And I figured it was kind of too late to keep it a secret anymore.
I shrugged. “We’ve known each other forever,” I said.
“But you’re not, like … friends with him, are you?” Danny asked.
“Yeah, I am,” I said just as the bathroom door opened again. “So what?”
Danny looked flummoxed. He stood there staring at us as Avery came through the door holding a faded old green towel. Meanwhile, Avery was looking at me, and I was looking at the towel, so none of us was looking at Yeti.
And that’s when he made his great escape.
YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!” I shrieked as a giant wet ball of fur blasted past me. Avery lunged to stop him, but Yeti slipped right through his hands. I wasn’t even on my feet yet when I heard an enormous CRASH! from down the hall.
“Oh, no!” I yelled. “No! Yeti! No!” I pushed past Danny and Avery and we all ran down the hall to Mom and Dad’s room. One of their matching white china bedside lamps was lying on the floor in pieces. And in the middle of their perfect lavender comforter was a huge wet dog.
Yeti was rolling and rolling and scrunching himself across the bed, burying his nose under the pillows and flinging them up in the air again. Long black and white dog hairs trailed across the covers behind him. He kicked his paws in the air and rolled around on his back, making happy rruuuffing noises while his shaggy ears flopped around his head.
“Yeti!” I cried, horrified. “Stop! Off!”