Oh No, Newf!, Page 5

  Then I went out through the garage, where I managed to crash into only two plastic garbage cans and knock over one box of soda bottles for recycling, so really, I’d call that a success.

  It was really, really dark outside. Most of the lights were off in all the houses around us. I could see one light still on upstairs across the street, where Ashley and Karen live, and the blue glow of the TV was still flickering from Avery’s living room window, which probably meant his mom had fallen asleep in front of the TV.

  The gate squeaked a little when I went through it and I stopped for a minute, holding my breath. The only sound was a small curious “woof” from the shed. I hurried over and unlatched the door.

  Yeti threw himself into my arms with all the joy of an astronaut finally returning to Earth after, like, three hundred years in space. I had to grab the side of the shed to stop myself from falling over. He danced and jumped around me with his long black-and-white fur swooshing and fluffing. I know some people might disagree, but I’m pretty sure he was just as happy to see me as he was to see the food.

  I pulled the door closed behind me and dumped the food out into the second bowl. Yeti licked my hands while I was doing that, like he was saying thank you and also Quick! Hurry! Out of my way! Let me at it! As soon as I moved back, he buried his nose in the bowl and ate like he’d never been fed before.

  I sat down on the nest of blankets and watched him in the sliver of moonlight that peeked through the dirty window. I wished I could give him a bath. His fur was all clumped with mud and tangled with leaves. I could imagine how that felt.

  “Where did you come from?” I whispered to him.

  Harrromph chomp chomph roorrfle chomp, he answered, his long black furry jowls wobbling as he scarfed up the chicken.

  “I wonder what your owners are like,” I said, stroking his side. “I wonder if they know how awesome you are.”

  Yeti looked up with peanut butter smeared across his nose. His expression was like, Dude, no one understands how completely awesome I am. His big pink tongue slurped out, trying to lick the peanut butter off.

  I checked the bowl. All the food was gone!

  “Ruh-roh,” I said to him. “You’re a big eater, aren’t you?”

  Yeti wagged his tail.

  “That’s OK,” I said. “I am, too. I’ll bring you more tomorrow before school, if I can.” Oh, man, school … I couldn’t leave Yeti in here all day, could I? Surely he needed to be walked. And what if Kelly heard him howling or barking or something? But she’d be gone most of the day, and so would my parents. At least it was Friday.

  Yeti nudged my hand with his nose. I’d stopped petting him while I worried about what to do. I went back to rubbing his head and immediately felt better. We’d figure something out. For now, the important thing was being here with Yeti.

  The dog flopped down on the blankets beside me and sighed in what I think was a happy way. I lay down next to him with my arm over his back and he licked my nose, which made me giggle.

  “I have to go back inside,” I said. “I’m sorry, Yeti. I’ll come back soon.”

  Yeti scooted closer to me and rested his head on my other arm. He felt like a giant teddy bear, all soft and snuggly. His long silky ears draped across my wrist and elbow.

  “OK,” I said, stroking his fur. “Maybe I could stay for a bit longer.”

  Well, yeah, of course you can guess what happened next. I fell asleep. Like the biggest moron on the planet.

  When I woke up, there was pale light coming in through the window … and the shed door was creaking open.

  Busted!

  I nearly screamed until I saw it was Avery. He actually did go “AAAAAH!” when he saw me, but it was just a yelp, and then he jumped inside the shed and closed the door behind him.

  “Tyler!” he said in a low voice. “What kind of crazy are you?”

  “I fell asleep!” I blurted, sitting up. I realized that sometime in the night I must have moved so my head was resting on Yeti like a big furry pillow. The dog raised his head, blinking, and went rrrroooof in a low rumbly voice at Avery.

  “SHHHHHHH!” Avery hissed at him. “Yeah, I can see you fell asleep, dummy. How long have you been out here?”

  “What time is it?” I rubbed my eyes, trying to wake up.

  “About six in the morning,” Avery said. “My mom is still asleep, so I figured I’d come out and … uh …”

  “You brought him food!” I cried, spotting the dish in his hand. “Avery, you’re the best!”

  “Oh, blah blah blah,” Avery said, turning red as I hugged him. He was carrying a plate with a couple of toaster waffles covered in peanut butter and a few slices of turkey. I scraped the food into Yeti’s dish and he went to town on it, eating desperately, as if I hadn’t just fed him six hours ago.

  “I’d better buy some real dog food today,” I said. “He needs proper nutrition.” I liked the sound of that. I didn’t like it so much when my mom used it to mean we had to eat more vegetables, but it sounded like a grown-up thing to say about my dog.

  “Uh, Earth to Heidi Tyler,” Avery said. “That’s not your dog. You don’t need to buy dog food for him. You need to find his real owners.”

  “I looked!” I protested. “I checked on the Internet! I couldn’t find anything!”

  “This is not my problem,” Avery said, throwing up his hands. “Unless my mom finds that thing in here, and then I’m going to say I don’t know anything about it. Just so you’re warned.”

  “That’s OK with me,” I said. “I hope he’ll be all right while we’re at school. Oh my gosh! School! I have to go home! Dad’ll be awake any minute!” I scrambled out of the blankets and tripped over the food bowl, landing with a thud and sending up a cloud of dust.

  Avery grabbed my hand and hauled me to my feet. “I’m staying home sick today,” he muttered, so low I almost didn’t hear him. “So I’ll, uh, you know … let him out.”

  “You will?” I cried. “That’s so amazing!”

  “Do not hug me again,” he said, stepping back before I could throw my arms around him. “Jeez, you cannot get enough of me.”

  “Thanks so much, Avery!” I said, pulling open the door. He rubbed the short, spiky hair on his head and looked down at the dog. “See you after school — well, after detention, I guess. ’Bye, Yeti!”

  Yeti’s tail was wagging when I got up, but as I went through the door and started to close it behind me, it slowed to a stop. His head drooped and he looked up at me with deep brown puzzled eyes.

  “Sorry, buddy,” I said, reaching back inside to pat his head. “I’ll be back soon.”

  He licked my hand and made the saddest noise ever. It felt like he dragged my heart right out of my chest. How would I make it through the day, knowing he was back here waiting for me?

  But I managed to close the door and hurry across the grass, which was damp and sparkly with morning dew. It was colder than it had been the night before, and I shivered as I went through the gate. Streaks of pale yellow light cut through the thin gray clouds in the sky.

  I tiptoed through the garage and slowly, slowly snuck the kitchen door open to peek inside.

  Dad was in the kitchen! Dad was in the kitchen!

  I was doomed. Totally doomed. Beyond doomed. In big trouble, missy.

  Unless I could sneak by without him noticing me. He had his back to the kitchen door and was slicing bananas for our morning smoothies. Maybe if I timed it just right …

  Dad dropped the banana slices in the blender and hit the button. As the loud whirring echoed through the kitchen, I slipped through the door and shut it quickly behind me. Keeping my eyes on his back, I edged along the wall, slipped around the doorway into the den …

  … and smashed directly into an enormous metal bird statue that I swear had not been there six hours earlier, or in fact EVER IN THE HISTORY OF MY HOUSE.

  Try to imagine the sound of several washing machines falling down a flight of iron stairs. Now add that to a hail
storm of swords and rakes and pokers, plus, I don’t know, a choir of ogres shouting, “LOOK LOOK LOOK, HEIDI IS UP TO NO GOOD!” That’s pretty much what that bird statue falling over sounded like to me.

  I mean, I tried to grab it right away once it started falling, which is how I found out it came in three pieces (at least I hoped to God it was supposed to come in three pieces), since I ended up with an enormous beaked stork head in my arms while a pair of spiky wings knocked me to the ground and a heavy iron torso rolled thunderingly away across the den, ricocheting off the coffee table with a crash and thudding to a stop at the foot of the stairs.

  I heard someone yelling with terror, and then I realized it was me and I stopped.

  “Heidi?” my dad said from above me. He sounded more puzzled than I thought he ought to, considering he had clearly left this big, sinister, noise-making attack bird waiting here as a trap for me.

  My mom came bolting down the stairs, still in her mint green silk pajamas. “What happened? Is everyone — AAAAAAAH! The statue! Mementa’s masterpiece!” She clutched her hair (which incidentally was perfect, even though she’d literally just leaped out of bed).

  “I’m OK,” I said nobly from the floor. “I’m all right. I wasn’t impaled by anything.”

  “The wings!” my mom said frantically. “They’re not bent, are they? What about the beak? WHERE IS THE HEAD?”

  “I have the head,” I said, a little indignant. I couldn’t roll over to show it to her because giant spiky wings were still pinning me to the ground.

  “It’s all right, don’t panic,” Dad said to Mom. He carefully lifted the wings off me as Mom brought the torso over. They arranged them back together, studying the statue for scratches and cooing over the “delicate interplay” of “planes” and “vortices” or some such gobbledygook.

  “No, really, I’m fine,” I said, sitting up with the head in my lap. “Everyone stop worrying about me.”

  “Heidi, what are you even doing up this early?” my mom said. “And isn’t that what you wore yesterday? Are you — how did you get covered in dust?” She glanced around, then down at my shoes, and I knew I had to talk fast to keep her from figuring out that I was just coming in.

  “Um,” I said. Dad took the head from me and balanced it on top of the statue.

  “There, it’s all right,” he said to Mom. “Now at least we know it’ll make the trip to the museum with no problem. Nothing could do more damage to it than Hurricane Heidi.”

  “Hey,” I said, still on the floor. I decided to go with righteous outrage. Maybe that would distract them from the other questions. “That bird wasn’t there before! I swear! Plus, it’s totally dangerous! I could have poked out an eye! Or been skewered by a beak! That bird statue tried to kill me! You’re the ones who brought a dangerous piece of art into the house! There was no way I could avoid running into it!”

  “You could have looked where you were going,” my mom said, putting her hands on her hips. “You’d be surprised how well that works.”

  “It’s partly my fault,” Dad admitted, which was nice and helpful of him. “I brought it up from the basement this morning. I thought the truck would be here to take it to the museum long before our little wrecking ball came downstairs.” He lifted me to my feet and checked his watch. “Wait, why are you up this early, Heidi?”

  “I have school in an hour,” I said. “It’s not so weird that I’m up.”

  “It is so weird that you are up,” my mom pointed out, and I guess since I normally sleep as late as I can and then have to be poked several times by my parents before I run around in a panic trying to get dressed and out the door at the last second, she sort of had a point.

  “Maybe I’m turning over a new leaf,” I suggested. “Showering in the morning instead of at night.”

  “That would be a good idea,” Mom said, looking me up and down. “Are your shoes wet? What on earth is all over your shirt?” She leaned toward me, and I had visions of long dark dog hair getting inspected between her perfect fingernails.

  “Nothing!” I yelped, jumping back. “I’d better hurry! Showering! And stuff!” I bolted up the stairs before they could say anything else.

  Behind me, I heard Dad say, “Wait … so why was she dressed before showering?” I flung myself into the bathroom and stayed in there as long as possible, so by the time I came out everyone was running around trying to get me and the bird statue out the door, and I was able to zip out to my bike without getting in any more trouble. At least for the moment.

  School was torture. I mean, I always think it goes by really, really slowly, but that Friday was the worst. When I looked at the clock for the fiftieth time and saw that only half an hour had passed, I pulled out my notebook and wrote a note to Ella, who sits right next to me. It was our free reading time, and I’d read my book, A Dog’s Life by Ann M. Martin, like, three times already.

  GUESS WHAT GUESS WHAT GUESS WHAT, I wrote in big letters across the note, and then slid it over to Ella.

  She glanced sideways at it, checked that Mr. Peary was at his desk grading papers, and then wrote What?

  I FOUND A DOG!!!!!!!!!!!!

  Ella tilted her head at the note and read it approximately fifty times, as if I’d written it in, like, Russian or something and she had to translate it.

  In her tiny neat handwriting, she wrote, Really?

  I love Ella, but sometimes she needs to work on her enthusiasm.

  YES, I wrote. BEST DOG EVER! Well, him and Trumpet, of course. I LOVE HIM SO MUCH! Hey, can I borrow some dog food? He’s a Newfoundland. Do you know what those look like? They’re like me! Too big and too crazy. But he’s PERFECT. What are you doing after school? Oh, wait, I have detention. How about tomorrow?

  Ella blinked and blinked at the note. She has really pretty sparkly brown eyes and dark curly hair and the best voice anyone at school has ever heard, like, in real life and not on a CD or whatever. Plus, she’s been totally amazing about letting me come over and play with Trumpet all the time.

  On my other side, Kristal kind of glanced at the note, like she was wondering why I hadn’t written it to her, which made me feel a little bad. But she doesn’t have a dog, so I figured she wouldn’t get as excited as Ella. Only you’d have to be asleep to be less excited than Ella right then. She mostly looked confused.

  Why don’t you have dog food? she wrote. Your mom really let you have a dog? A big one?

  “Girls,” said Mr. Peary’s voice, “that doesn’t look like reading.”

  We both jumped. He raised his eyebrows at us, and we quickly went back to our books. I had to wait until lunch to tell her the rest of the story.

  Eric and Rebekah were both taking a makeup math quiz, since they’d missed it when they’d been out of school on Wednesday, so it was just me and Ella and Parker and Danny and Troy and Kristal sitting together at lunch.

  “Whoa,” Parker said when I flung myself down in the chair next to Danny. “Somebody’s got a lot of energy today.”

  “I think that’s her excited look,” Kristal said, squinting at me like she was imagining me in a close-up on a movie screen. She took this awesome video class this summer and she’s been talking about movies ever since.

  “Uh-oh,” Danny said, shoving milk cartons and Jell-O cups and raisin boxes out of my reach. “Excited Heidi! Everybody brace yourselves!”

  “Ha-ha-ha guess what?” I said all in a rush.

  “Heidi got a dog,” Ella said, carefully unpacking her brown lunch bag.

  “ELLA!” I yelled.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. “Was that — I didn’t mean to —”

  “It’s OK,” I said, my words tumbling over her words. “I got a dog! Well, sort of, I sort of got a dog, only not really, but I found a dog, and he’s AMAAAAAAAAAZING, like, the most amazing dog ever in the history of the world.”

  “You found a dog you actually like?” Danny joked. “What are the chances of that?”

  “How did you ‘find’ a dog?” Troy aske
d, all detective-like. “Where was it?”

  “And isn’t your mom having a heart attack about it?” Kristal asked. “How many things has he broken already?”

  “Nothing yet,” I said. “Well, he hasn’t come inside yet. OK, technically, Mom doesn’t know about him. But did I mention he’s amazing?”

  “Heidi,” Kristal said, dropping her face into her hands all dramatically. I happen to know that’s a move she picked up from her mom.

  “Oh, Kristal, please don’t tell your mom,” I begged. I’d forgotten that they always tell each other everything. “Just give me a couple of days! I’ll figure it out!”

  “What’s to figure out?” Troy asked.

  “Your mom will never let you have a dog,” Kristal said.

  “Especially a big galumphing Newfoundland,” Ella said. Kristal kind of gave her a look like, How do you know so much about it?, but of course they were both right. I was crazy even to think I could convince her. The last thing Mom and Dad wanted was another, furrier Heidi galloping around the house crashing into priceless bird statues and antique vases.

  “Well,” I said. “That’s what I have to figure out.”

  “Uh-oh,” said Parker.

  “Maybe once she meets him,” I said. “Maybe once she sees what a good dog he is …”

  “You sure it’s worth it?” Danny asked. “If you’re going to beg her for a dog, maybe it’d be easier to get her to say yes to a small one. Like Buttons!” He grinned in a cute goofy way. It was funny because up until two weeks ago he’d been totally against small dogs, but now he was all mushy about his new toy poodle puppy.

  “Maybe, but I want Yeti,” I said, remembering his soft, thick fur and the way he poked his nose under my hand when I stopped petting him.