Danny snorted. “Yeah, like letting the dog out of the bathroom.”
“That was your fault!” Avery flared.
“Oh, stop, it’s fine,” I said. “Mom and Dad would have found out eventually.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Danny said. He was still fiddling with his bike chain. He acted like he was waiting for Avery to leave, but Avery was clearly waiting for Danny to leave. Boys are such trouble. I mean, seriously. Well, I wasn’t about to stand there all night and wait for one of them to give up.
“All right, good night!” I said, tugging on Yeti’s leash. Realizing they were about to be left alone with each other, Danny and Avery both kind of grunted and took off in opposite directions.
I told Ashley I was sorry about a million times, but once she stopped being afraid of Yeti, she thought it was all kind of funny. She helped me find a couple of bowls for Yeti that didn’t cost, like, a million dollars each. She even let him lie on the couch in the den with us while we watched the first episode of Robin Hood, which was just as good as she’d said it was.
Yeti rested his massive head on my lap with a sleepy contented expression. His eyelids kept drooping, but then he’d suddenly open them again and look up at me, like he was checking that I was still there. I’ve always thought watching TV would be a million times better with a dog on my lap, and I was totally right. Patting his thick, fluffy fur made me feel calmer and less anxious about what Mom and Dad would say when they finally got home.
I was tired after chasing Yeti around the house, so I went to bed a little early. Yeti trotted up the stairs behind me, and when I climbed into bed, he hopped right up and curled up next to me.
“I should make you sleep on the floor,” I mumbled, putting one arm around him. “That’s what all the TV dog trainers say.” Yeti went ooooorrrrmmmrrrr and licked my ear. I giggled. “OK, but don’t push me out of bed. All right?”
That plan didn’t go so well. I mean, Yeti was huge. First, he stole all the blankets, and then I couldn’t get my pillow out from under his head, and every time he rolled over it seemed like he was scrunching farther into my space. I kept waking up right before getting dumped out onto the floor.
So I was actually still awake when Mom and Dad came home a little while later. I heard them talking in low murmurs to Ashley and then coming up the stairs. Dad peeked through the doorway into my room.
“Heidi?” he whispered. “You awake?”
I sat up. “Yeah.”
He turned on the light as they came in. Mom wrinkled her nose when she saw Yeti curled up on the covers beside me.
“It’s OK,” I said. “I checked him for fleas when I gave him a bath. He’s totally clean!”
Mom and Dad both shuddered. Dad sat on the bed, and Mom pulled up my desk chair and they made me tell them all about finding Yeti. The only thing I left out was the part about accidentally sleeping in the shed. I didn’t think Mom would be very thrilled about that.
“He was in Kelly’s shed overnight?” Mom said. “Does she know?”
“No!” I said. “Please don’t tell her — I don’t want to get Avery in trouble.”
Mom sighed. She tells Kelly almost everything, but I’m pretty sure she agrees with me that Avery doesn’t need any more trouble than he already has.
“I know he’s a big dog,” I said, running my hand over Yeti’s back. “But I really love him and I really want to keep him. Please? Please please? I’ll do anything for him. I’ll even give up candy.” I know Mom thinks I eat too much candy. It’s what I spend most of my allowance on (apart from dog biscuits and books). I usually keep my stash in my locker at school so I don’t accidentally get chocolate on the couch at home or something dreadful like that.
“Wow,” Dad said. “Giving up candy? That does sound serious.”
“You did a good job cleaning up downstairs,” Mom said. “I appreciate that.”
“And in the garage,” I said. “And in your bedroom. And in my bathroom. Did you see?”
Mom rubbed her forehead. “You really had a wild time in the half hour we were gone, didn’t you?”
“We didn’t mean to,” I said. “He’s really a very good dog. He tries to be good.”
Dad held out his hand. Yeti stretched toward him and went sniff sniff sniff, and then he licked Dad’s fingers like he was saying, OK, you’re all right.
“Careful you don’t get hair on your tuxedo,” Mom said. “Heidi, honey, this dog probably belongs to someone. We should try to find his real owners. They must be worried about him.”
I shook my head. “Look how thin he is. And he didn’t have a collar or anything. I bet they don’t care about him at all.”
“We’ll find out,” Dad said. He patted my foot. “Go to sleep, and we’ll see what happens in the morning.”
All night I dreamed about getting buried in piles of black-and-white fur. A couple times I woke up because Yeti was breathing right in my face. But in the morning when I opened my eyes and saw his big shaggy black ears flopped across my pillow, I felt like I was filling up with happiness like a hot-air balloon.
I buried my face in his neck and he went huurrrrruff in a sleepy way.
“Morning, best dog ever,” I said, rubbing his stomach. Yeti poked his nose under my pillow, exactly the way I do when I don’t want to get up. But then he flipped his head up and sent my pillow flying off the bed. With a small “woof,” he rolled over on his back and started wriggling playfully with his paws up in the air. I jumped on him, and we wrestled in the covers until we both fell off the bed with a thump.
“Ow,” I said, sitting up and shaking my head. “I wonder if Mom and Dad will let me have a bigger bed. What do you think?” Yeti sneezed and looked surprised. “Yeah, you’re probably right,” I said. “Let’s work on keeping you first.”
Yeti braced his front paws on the carpet and stretched way, way back like one of my mom’s yoga poses. His head went up as we both heard a voice murmuring from the hallway.
I opened my door a crack and listened. I could tell it was my dad on his cell phone, because he always talks louder than he does on the regular house phone. It’s like he thinks there’s no way someone could possibly hear him on such a tiny thing.
“That’s right,” he was saying. “Black and white. A Landseer Newfoundland. Really large.” He paused for a moment. “No, no collar. The park across from Westminster Elementary.” He paused again. “Really? How long ago did they lose him?”
Oh no! My dad couldn’t have found Yeti’s owner already, could he? That would be so unfair.
Yeti stuck his nose under my hand and gave me a look like, What? Why are we so worried all of a sudden?
What could I do? Maybe I should hide Yeti again. If I told Mom and Dad he ran away, I could keep him in Avery’s shed and still get to see him every day. Or no — they’d definitely check the shed. Was there anywhere else I could hide him?
Danny’s house was way too crowded to hide a big dog; he has three brothers and a sister and they’re all loud and a little crazy. Ella’s mom wasn’t much more of a dog person than my mom, although she’d come around to liking Trumpet by now. Kristal didn’t have any dogs, and her mom would call my mom right away if I showed up there trying to hide an enormous Newfoundland.
Maybe Rebekah could help me. She got a new dog over the summer, a tiny Maltese-poodle mix, and I knew her parents loved dogs. I heard my dad wander downstairs, still talking on his cell phone. Quickly I took Yeti’s collar and hurried down the hall into our computer room. I shut the door behind me and picked up the phone. Yeti poked his head under the computer desk and began sniffing the cables.
“Don’t you dare chew anything,” I said to him. “My dad is, like, in love with that computer.”
Yeti’s face was all As IF I would do any such thing! He crouched lower to the carpet and crawled farther under the desk. I dialed Rebekah’s number, and she answered after two rings.
“Hello?” she said.
“Rebekah!” I cried. “I need your
help! They’re going to take away my dog! They’re going to give him back to the bad people who don’t love him, but I love him and I need to keep him and I was thinking maybe we could hide him in your garage oh no, wait — your parents are cleaning out the garage this weekend, aren’t they? Ack! What do I do? Help!”
“Heidi?” said Rebekah.
“Where else could we put him?” I said. “Does anyone else have a shed or a garage where their parents don’t go? He’s really big, like, super-huge, like, twice as big as you, but he’s the sweetest dog ever and he won’t bother anyone and he’ll be so good and I don’t want him to go back to his terrible owners…. Rebekah! What do I do?”
“What?” said Rebekah. “What dog? What are you talking about?”
“Yeti!” I said. “Remember? Yeti!”
“Yeti?” she echoed. “Like Bigfoot? You have a Bigfoot?”
“Did I wake you up or something?” I asked. Then I remembered that she hadn’t been with us at lunch when I told everyone about Yeti.
“I was just making sandwiches,” Rebekah said. “I’m going to the park today. You’ll never guess with who.”
“Heidi!” my mom called from downstairs.
“OH, NO!” I yelped. “They’re coming! They’re going to take him away! Rebekah, we’re doomed! Poor Yeti! It’s the end of the world!”
“I’m sorry,” Rebekah said, and she sounded like she meant it, although she clearly had no idea what I was talking about. “Anyway, don’t you want to guess?”
“HEIDI!” my mom yelled again.
“I gotta go,” I said, throwing my free hand up in despair. Obviously Rebekah was going to be no help.
“Wait! Guess!” she said. “Come on, you’ll never guess!”
“Is it a boy?” I said. I could tell from her voice that it was something silly like that. She sounded like Tara when she was always going on and on about Nikos last year.
“Yes!” she squealed. “But I mean, we’re just friends. We’re just going to the park. That’s all.”
“As long as it’s not Brett Arbus,” I said. “I nearly couldn’t be friends with Kristal anymore when she had a crush on him last year. And I think he’s dating Josephine now anyway.”
“Ick, no,” Rebekah said, which made me like her even more. “No, OK, I’ll tell you. It’s Eric!”
“Eric Lee?” I said. “That’s awesome. He’s cool.” Eric is one of Parker and Danny’s best friends. He’s really quiet, but I find quiet people kind of fascinating. Like, how do they stop themselves from talking? Aren’t there things bouncing around in their heads all the time that they want to say? Everything I think seems to pop right out of my mouth, so when I meet people who don’t do that, it totally confuses me.
“Well, we’re just friends,” Rebekah said again. “But he’s bringing his dog and I’m bringing my dog, so …”
“I really gotta go,” I said, hearing my mom call me again. “But have fun!”
“Good luck with your, uh … problem,” Rebekah said. “Sorry I couldn’t help.”
“That’s OK,” I said, feeling sad again. “It probably wasn’t a good idea anyway.”
I hung up and ran downstairs with Yeti. Mom and Dad were sitting at the kitchen table with matching cups of coffee. They looked very serious.
“Hi, sweetheart,” Dad said. “Want some cereal?”
“No thanks,” I said. My stomach was tied in knots. I couldn’t even think about food.
Yeti didn’t have that problem, though. He trotted over to his bowl and stuck his nose into it, then looked up at me. I poured some dog food out for him and he started eating, crunch crunch crunch.
“Heidi,” Mom said gently. “I think we’ve found the dog’s owner.”
“Already?” I cried. “But are you sure? Maybe it isn’t them.”
“Well, they’re going to come over and see if they recognize him,” Dad said. “That’s the bad news.”
“There’s good news?” I said hopefully.
“They can’t come until tomorrow,” Mom said. “So you can spend the whole day today with Yeti, if you want.”
I liked that Mom remembered his name. Except I guess it wasn’t really his name. Tomorrow he’d have to go back to someone else’s house and have a whole different name and different owners who couldn’t possibly love him as much as I did. I only got one day to spend with my new best friend. That didn’t sound like much good news to me.
I crouched down and gave Yeti a hug so Mom and Dad wouldn’t see that I was close to crying.
“Hey, you know what?” Dad said. “I got some great travel books about India. We can talk about it tonight. There’s this ghost town we can visit that was abandoned years and years ago — it sounds really cool.”
I knew he was trying to cheer me up. I love looking forward to our trips. But right then I felt like I wouldn’t be able to think about anything but Yeti ever again, and how sad and confused he would be about why I didn’t want to keep him.
“Can I take Yeti to the park?” I said, my voice muffled by Yeti’s fur.
“Sure, honey,” said Mom. “Take my cell phone so you can call us if you need a ride home or anything.”
I went back upstairs to change and call Danny. At least now I could finally meet his famously brilliant dog, Buttons. I didn’t tell him that my parents had found Yeti’s owners. I wanted to pretend, just for the day, that Yeti was really mine and we’d get to stay together forever.
When I got back downstairs, Mom had packed a lunch for me and a bag for Yeti with water and a tennis ball and a few biscuits. It nearly made me cry again. I had no idea my mom knew anything about taking care of a dog. Maybe she’d actually been listening while I watched all those dog shows on TV. Maybe she was more OK with the idea of me having a dog than she let me know.
But it didn’t matter. I didn’t want another dog. I wanted Yeti.
Yeti had no idea that anything was wrong. He danced along the sidewalk next to me, grabbing the leash in his teeth and bumping into my legs with his head. I saw Avery watching from his window and I waved, but he barely waved back. I wished I could invite him to the park, but I knew his mom wouldn’t let him go anywhere for at least a week after he got detention.
It was one of those ridiculously pretty October days where it’s still sunny and blue and gold outside and you can’t even imagine that winter is coming. Some of the leaves were turning orange and red, and the air smelled like bonfires and the last outdoor grilled hamburgers until May.
Yeti’s fur was silky and shiny in the sunshine. He kept lifting his nose and inhaling like he wanted to gather up all the smells in the world. A stray red leaf whisked across the path in front of him, and he slapped it down with one big paw, then grinned at me like, I’m pretty tough, aren’t I?
We got to the dog run in the park before anyone else — or at least, that’s what I thought when I opened the gate. Then I realized that there was someone sitting on the bench at the far end. I might not even have noticed him, but his dog came galloping across the gravel to say hi to Yeti.
“Oh, hi!” I said, crouching to pet the new dog. It was one I’d never seen before. She was a small, perfectly gorgeous Sheltie with intelligent dark eyes and perked-up ears. She looked like a delicate miniature Lassie. Her white paws danced on the gravel as she darted around Yeti, trying to get close enough to sniff him without letting him sniff her. Yeti’s ears flapped as he spun around, ready to play.
“Sorry,” said the Sheltie’s owner, hurrying up to us. It was a guy about my own age, but I’d never seen him before either. He had bright blue eyes and he was wearing a Buffalo Bills shirt with jeans, which was funny because we weren’t anywhere near Buffalo. He needed a haircut; his brown hair was a little shaggy and he had a few strands tucked behind his ears to keep them out of his eyes.
“That’s OK,” I said. “What’s your dog’s name?”
“This is Jeopardy,” he said, waving one hand at the Sheltie. “I’m Noah.”
“Hi Noah,” I
said, sticking out my hand for him to shake. “I’m Heidi, and this is Yeti. Do you live around here?”
“Yeah,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck and looking around. “I think so. I hope I can get home again.”
I laughed, but then I stopped when I saw he looked serious. “Don’t you know where you live?” I asked.
“We just moved here,” he said, shoving his hands in his pockets. “I start school on Monday.”
“Really?” I said. “But you missed the first month!”
Noah hunched his shoulders. “I know,” he said. He didn’t look as happy about that as I would be. One less month of school? That sounded fine by me!
“Well, you didn’t miss anything important,” I said. “Blah blah pyramids and South American geography and whatever. Hey, maybe you’ll be in my class. Sixth grade? Westminster Elementary?”
Noah nodded. “Mr. Perry, I think,” he said.
“Peary,” I corrected him. “Oh, hey! That is my class! That’s so cool! Mr. Peary is awesome!” I don’t know why I got so excited; I think maybe I just wanted Noah to get excited, too, since he looked kind of nervous about starting a new school and I guess I would be, too. But I kind of jumped up and down and clapped my hands and then Yeti got excited, too, and he woofed and jumped on me and I fell over and ended up with both dogs on top of me somehow.
“Are you OK?” Noah said, pulling Jeopardy off me. He looked very concerned, but I couldn’t stop laughing. I mean, what could be better than having a dog jump on you whenever you fall over? The way I see it, that maybe makes it look like you fell over on purpose to play with the dog.
“Yeah, I’m all right,” I said, sitting up. I gave Yeti a big hug and he buried his face in my neck, panting happily.
“Your dog is enormous,” Noah said, squatting beside us. Jeopardy sat next to him and put her paw on his knee like she thought he’d give her a treat if she did that, but he didn’t.
“Isn’t he huge?” I said, ruffling Yeti’s fur. I didn’t want to explain that he wasn’t really my dog. I pointed to Noah’s shirt. “Did you move here from Buffalo?”