Dog House Blues

“Dumpster, no!” I called. But it was too late.

Dumpster had found another garbage can and

succeeded in getting the lid oﬀ and knocking the

whole can over. Now his nose was digging into the

pile of fallen garbage. As he rooted through banana

peels, coﬀee grinds and empty Styrofoam meat trays,

a plastic bag broke open and something brown and
wet oozed over the back of Dumpster’s head.

008-012

8.95 cdn

6.95 us

Cover artwork by

Susan Reilly

Orca Book Publishers

Erika hates being called

at school, but she loves her dogs.

form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any

information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission

in writing from the publisher.

National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data

Pearce, Jacqueline, 1962-

Dog house blues / Jacqueline Pearce.

ISBN 1-55143-360-5

I. Title.

PS8581.E26D63 2005 jC813’.6 C2005-905438-7

First published in the United States, 2005

Library of Congress Control Number: 2005933001

Summary: Erika longs for a new best friend, but a girl at school calls her Dog Girl,

interfering with her chances for a new friendship.

Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs

provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Department

of Canadian Heritage’s Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP), the

Canada Council for the Arts, and the British Columbia Arts Council.

Cover design and typesetting by Lynn O’Rourke

Cover illustration by Susan Reilly

www.orcabook.com

Printed and bound in Canada

08 07 06 05 • 6 5 4 3 2 1

Orca Book Publishers

Box 5626, Stn.

Victoria,

Canada

v8r 6s4

Orca Book Publishers

Box 468

Custer,

wa usa

98240-0468

To the members of the

BC SPCA

Kids’ Club,

and to the memory of Kevin Anderson (1973-2002),

who was killed by a car while coming to the aid of a stray dog.

Kevin lived his life with care and compassion

for people and for animals.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Nina, Gord, Jake and Joey Hobbis for shar-

ing with me their experiences living in a real dog house with Basil,

Teddy, Sara and Vyla. (Basil was the model for my dog character

Dumpster.) I would also like to thank Marj Sargent and her grade

six class at Nelson Elementary School in Burnaby, whose hero

speeches inspired the hero speeches in this book. Thank you also

to the British Columbia Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to

Animals (

BC SPCA

) education department for input and encour-

agement in the writing of this book.

Dog Girl

The Dog House

Paperboy

Back to School

Grade Six

Kyla

Assignment

The Note

Keeping Secrets

Speech Time

Close Call

Plans

The Model

Graded

Disaster

Fireworks

Lost

101

Help

108

Real Heroes

115

Friends?

121

The Truth is Out

128

Ready or Not

133

No More Secrets

140

Dog Girl Again

145

o, Dumpster!”

I stopped walking and pulled on the dog’s leash.

The basset hound had veered oﬀ the sidewalk and, true
to his nickname, was heading straight for a garbage can.

“Jenny, Muﬃn, wait!” I called to the other two dogs,

who were still heading down the sidewalk. I held their
two leashes in my left hand and Dumpster’s in my right,
and I was being stretched in two directions. I felt like a
rope in the middle of a tug-of-war.

Jenny, who was a light brown Lab mix, stopped obedi-

ently and sat. I felt a ﬂash of grateful pride. Jenny was my
dog. We’d had her since she was a puppy and I was little.
She was always gentle, good-natured and well-behaved.

“Good girl, Jenny.”
Muﬃn, a small gray poodle-terrier cross, was the old-

est of our dogs, though we hadn’t had him as long as
Jenny. He glanced back over his shoulder as if to check

“

Jacqueline Pearce

out what Jenny was doing before making his decision.
Then he too sat.

Dumpster, as usual, was ignoring me.
“Dudley, come!” I ordered, hoping that if I used his

real name, he’d know I meant it. At the same time I
hauled as hard as I could on his leash. Dudley’s legs were
short, but the rest of him was big, strong and solid. If he
didn’t want to come, I wouldn’t be able to budge him.
Reluctantly, however, he turned away from the garbage
can and trotted back to the sidewalk ahead of me.

“Good boy, Dudley!” I said, trying to reinforce his

good behavior with praise.

We continued on our walk, and I began to relax. This

was working out okay. I could handle all three dogs, just
like I’d told Dad.

“Are you sure you don’t want to wait for me to ﬁnish?”

Dad had asked.

He had his oﬃce in the basement, and usually he’d

take a break in the afternoon and drive us all to the oﬀ-
leash park. But I was tired of waiting. It felt like I was
spending my whole summer waiting—waiting for Dad
to ﬁnish work; waiting for Mom and my little brother,
Marcus, to get home; waiting for Lisa to write; waiting
for school to start again. It wasn’t that I was looking for-
ward to starting grade six. It was just that I couldn’t help
thinking about it. Couldn’t help worrying about it.

Dog House Blues

“We need some exercise now,” I’d told Dad. “Don’t

worry. I can handle them.”

“Slow down!” I called to the three dogs now. They

were walking fast, tugging at the ends of their leashes
and threatening to pull my arms out of their sockets.

Dumpster dropped his nose to the ground and began

wandering oﬀ the sidewalk again, following a new scent.
I saw another garbage can up ahead and tried to pull him
back. For a moment, he resisted, and I felt a twinge of
panic. If only my best friend Lisa hadn’t moved away,
she’d be here to help now, and we could be having fun
walking the dogs. If Lisa hadn’t moved away, the whole
summer would be diﬀerent.

The dogs had stopped pulling and were once again

walking at a more manageable pace. I waited while they
all stopped to sniﬀ a telephone pole and took turns sniﬀ-
ing a spot on the grass beside the sidewalk.

“Smells are like the morning newspaper to dogs,” was

how Mom, the vet, explained it. “Each smell tells some-
thing about the dog that left it—what it had for break-
fast, maybe, what mood it was in, whether there was
danger around. Smell messages would have been pretty
useful to the dogs’ wolf ancestors.”

I wondered what messages the dogs were picking up

now. I could see nothing that made that one spot on the
grass more interesting than any other. The dogs went next

Jacqueline Pearce

to sniﬀ the base of a scraggly-looking bush. Dumpster
and Muﬃn both lifted a leg to add a message of their
own. The idea of reading smells was only interesting if
you didn’t think about what the messages were made of.

“Come on!” I gave the leashes a tug, and the three

dogs trotted back to my side.

At the end of the block I turned left, tugging the dogs

after me. The next street seemed to have just as many
interesting smells as the ﬁrst one. We continued to walk
and pause, walk and pause. After a while, Dumpster wan-
dered onto the grass again and began nosing the ground
intently as if he were looking for something. Then he
stopped and crouched.

I groaned, moved all three leashes into my left hand

and dug into the pocket of my shorts for a plastic bag.
Then I bent down to scoop up the poop with the bag.
Just as I closed up the bag, the leashes tugged suddenly
forward, dragging me oﬀ balance.

“Yikes!”
I struggled to avoid falling on my face and ﬂinging the

bag of poop to the sky.

Rwoof! Rwoof! Dumpster’s deep bark rolled down the

street, echoed by Jenny’s clear woof and Muﬃn’s sharp
yap.

I looked up to see a black squirrel scurry out of reach

up the trunk of a tree.

Dog House Blues

“Dumpster, Jenny, no!”
It took all my strength to hold on to the leashes.
“Need some help?” a voice asked from the street.
I turned to see Conner Lee, a boy who’d been in my

class last year, standing astride a black

BMX

bike.

Oh, no. Just what I didn’t need.
Conner’s short black hair poked out in spikes from

under his black bicycle helmet. I’d never talked to him
much before, and when I met his eyes he looked away. I
didn’t trust him.

Before I could answer him, I felt the leashes tug again.

One of them slipped from my hand. I turned quickly. Jenny
and Muﬃn were still at the tree. Where was Dumpster?

The thud of heavy plastic hitting pavement gave me the

answer.

“Dumpster, no!” I called. But it was too late.
Dumpster had found another garbage can and suc-

ceeded in getting the lid oﬀ and knocking the whole can
over. Now his nose was digging into the pile of fallen
garbage. As he rooted through banana peels, coﬀee grinds
and empty Styrofoam meat trays, a plastic bag broke open
and something brown and wet oozed over the back of
Dumpster’s head.

I groaned. I didn’t dare look at Conner Lee.
“Like I said,” Conner repeated, smothering a laugh,

“do you want some help? It looks like you could use it.”

Jacqueline Pearce

Anger seethed up from my stomach. The name-call-

ing and the laughter of the end of the school year came
back to me as if it had all just happened. What a story
this would make once we were back at school.

“The last thing I want is your help!” I snapped, turn-

ing on Conner.

Conner stopped grinning, and his face went blank.

For a second I thought I might have hurt his feelings,
but that wasn’t likely. He had only stopped to make fun
of me, and now he’d be reporting another dog girl story
to Kyla Tupper and the others in September. I’d have no
chance of it all being forgotten.

“Dudley, come!” I said, turning back to the dog.

This time I was careful to use his real name in front of
Conner.

Dumpster did not even look up.
I would have to grab him again. Oh, why didn’t

Conner take a hint and leave?

I wound the other two leashes around the top of

a fence-post, gritted my teeth again and went after
Dumpster with both hands. I pulled him away from the
garbage and picked up his leash. As soon as I loosened
my grip on him, Dumpster shook. His whole body rip-
pled, and his long ears swung out in a blur of movement,
wrapping around his face one way, then back the other.
Brown stinky drops ﬂew into the air.

Dog House Blues

“Yuck!”
The drops hit my legs like the spray of a sprinkler. I

heard Conner laugh again. It was the last straw. I turned
and screamed, “What are you staring at?”

I had the satisfaction of seeing the laugh freeze on his

face. He opened his mouth as if to say something more,
but then closed it and glared at me.

“All right, then,” he said with a nod at the garbage.

“Help yourself!”

He planted a foot on a bike pedal and pushed oﬀ. I

watched him ride away, his back square and angry. My
face burned with embarrassment and frustration. Kyla
Tupper would eat this story up.

The leash tugged in my hand again, and I turned back

to the dogs and the mess. Oh, why had I picked a gar-
bage day to try walking the dogs on my own?

“

ow was your day?” Mom asked as we stood at the

kitchen counter preparing vegetables for supper.

Dad had just left to pick up Marcus from the babysit-
ter’s.

I paused before answering Mom. I didn’t want to admit

what a disaster my ﬁrst time walking all three dogs had
been, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to explain about the
dog girl teasing and that I was worried about it starting
up again when school started.

Mom noticed my hesitation. She stopped chopping

and turned to look at me, pushing a strand of frizzy
blond hair away from her face.

There was a ﬂash of movement behind her.
“Watch out!” I warned.
Dumpster’s nose had popped up to the top of the coun-

ter on the other side of Mom. In an instant, he sighted
the pile of carrots and opened his jaws.

Dog House Blues

“No!” Mom barked. It was a tone seldom needed for

anyone but Dumpster, and it usually had fairly instant
results.

Dumpster dropped back to the ﬂoor, quickly swal-

lowing the few carrots he’d managed to steal. He slunk
back a few steps where he could watch for his next
chance.

“Erika,” Mom asked, “could you please put Dudley

outside? He’s driving me crazy, and I’m afraid I’m going
to trip on him.”

“Come on, Dumpster,” I said, taking the dog by the

collar and ushering him to the back door.

I returned to ﬁnd Mom dumping the sliced vegeta-

bles into a pot of water.

“I think it’s safe to set the table now,” Mom said. She

seemed to have forgotten her earlier concern about how
my day had gone.

When Dad and Marcus arrived home from the baby-

sitter’s, Dumpster followed them back into the house.

“Wash for supper!” Mom called to everyone.
I poked my head into the living room where Jenny

was curled up on the couch, taking up a whole cushion,
and Muﬃn was a tiny ball of gray fur in one corner of
the big matching chair.

“You’re not supposed to be up there,” I whispered,

but they looked so cozy I didn’t have the heart to make

Jacqueline Pearce

them get oﬀ. I decided to pretend I hadn’t seen them.
Keeping the dogs oﬀ the furniture was a lost battle any-
way.

Dumpster had resumed his post in the kitchen, and

when Mom, Dad, Marcus and I sat down at the table,
he plunked himself on the ﬂoor behind Marcus’s chair.
Lying on the ﬂoor, Dumpster looked relaxed and sleepy,
but I knew it was fake. If the tiniest bit of food dropped
on the ﬂoor, Dumpster would be on it in a ﬂash.

As we ate, Marcus stealthily pulled a hand away from

his plate and lowered it under the table. Dumpster shot
forward.

“Mom, Marcus is dropping carrots,” I complained.
“Marcus, don’t drop food for Dudley,” Mom said

sternly. “You know we’re trying not to encourage his bad
habits.”

Dumpster’s bad habits developed before he came to live

with us, though maybe they’d gotten worse since then. I
knew that part of his overly developed focus on food was
caused by his basset hound nature, with its strong sense
of smell and urge to seek things out. Basset hounds were
bred to follow smells to help their human masters hunt
for rabbits and other animals. Now, without the hunt,
Dumpster’s strong urges were focused on food.

Five years earlier, Dumpster’s previous human brought

him to Mom’s vet clinic to ﬁnd out what was wrong with

Dog House Blues

him. The x-ray showed a dinner fork lodged in his stom-
ach—as well as something that turned out to be a large
chunk of beef bone. Dogs tend to swallow their food
whole, Mom had explained.

“He must have eaten the fork along with my steak

dinner!” the man had complained. He’d refused to pay
for the operation Dumpster needed and left him at the
clinic.

“You can have the mutt!” he’d said angrily. “I’ve had

enough of him.”

Mom did the surgery at her own expense and brought

Dumpster  home  with  her.  He  was  still  called  Dudley
then, but he earned his nickname quickly. His ﬁrst day
at  our  house,  he  pulled  both  the  garbage  can  and  the
compost  bucket  out  from  under  the  kitchen  sink  and
decorated the kitchen ﬂoor with the bits he hadn’t man-
aged to eat. In all the years Jenny had been with us, she’d
never even been interested in the garbage.

Muﬃn was the most recent addition to our family, but

he was also the oldest dog in the house. He was sur-
rendered to the local animal shelter with mangy, patchy
fur, bad teeth and a cold. He was so old and in such bad
shape the shelter expected to have a hard time ﬁnding
someone to adopt him. Mom, who did vet work for the
shelter, said she would foster Muﬃn until he was health-
ier. She brought him home, took care of his teeth and

Jacqueline Pearce

cold, had him groomed and put him on better food. Once
he was well enough to be returned to the shelter, however,
we didn’t want to part with him. Now Muﬃn was like
a new dog—hardly recognizable. His coat was shiny and
healthy, and he was perky and happy—though a bit stiﬀ-
jointed in colder weather.

Marcus was born between the arrival of Dumpster

and Muﬃn. He learned to crawl following Dumpster
and Jenny around the house. I’m sure he thought he was
a dog. Several times I caught him with his face in one of
the dogs’ dishes, lapping up water along with Dumpster
or Jenny. The ﬁrst word he spoke was woof. It was no
wonder half of my class at school thought I lived in a
crazy house.

I looked over at Marcus’s round, impish face. At least

he sat at the table to eat now and no longer barked—or
not often.

“Knock, knock,” Marcus said loudly, noticing my

attention on him.

“Who’s there?” I asked obligingly.
“Dog.”
“Dog who?”
“Dog poo!”
“Hey, I’m eating supper here,” I complained.
“Marcus, that’s certainly not talk for the dinner table,”

Mom scolded.

Dog House Blues

“It wasn’t bad, though,” Dad put in. “I think he’s actu-

ally starting to get the concept of a knock-knock joke.”

I rolled my eyes.
After supper Dad and I cleared the table before

Dumpster could snatch any of the scraps left on the
plates. Mom put water on for coﬀee and shooed Jenny
and Muﬃn out of the living room.

“Erika, can you and Marcus please take the dogs out-

side while Dad and I sit and have our coﬀee?” Mom
asked, sounding tired.

Three sets of dog toenails scrabbled across the kitchen

ﬂoor as they hurried to the back door. Jenny already had
the worn green tennis ball in her mouth. I hadn’t even
seen her look for it.

“I guess I have no choice,” I told Mom with a laugh.
Outside it was still warm and sunny. I took the slobbery

ball from Jenny’s mouth and threw it across the yard for
her to fetch. Muﬃn and Dumpster snuﬄed around, noses
to the grass, checking for any new smells since they’d last
been out. Marcus followed them on his hands and knees,
pretending to be a dog. I rolled my eyes again.

Jenny trotted up and dropped the ball at my feet. She

backed oﬀ, ready to run again, as I picked up the ball. I
faked a throw, and Jenny started to run for it. Then she
stopped short, realizing her mistake, and waited for the
real throw. I lobbed the ball as far as I could without

Jacqueline Pearce

throwing it into the neighbor’s yard, and Jenny sprinted
after it.

“Good girl, Jenny!” I called as she snapped up the ball

on its ﬁrst bounce.

I liked throwing the ball for Jenny. She seemed to

enjoy it so much. Retrievers were originally bred to fetch
downed birds and other animals shot by hunters, and the
retriever part of Jenny loved to fetch. But I couldn’t help
missing Lisa and wishing I had a human friend—espe-
cially one who acted human. I looked over at Marcus,
who was now copying Muﬃn and raising his leg by an
azalea bush. Why couldn’t I live in a normal house?

I remembered the one time Kyla Tupper came over to

visit. We were actually friends then. When the three dogs
ran up to greet her, she screamed, “Get them away! I hate
dogs!” She refused to come in the house, called the dogs
ﬁlthy and dangerous and said that Muﬃn looked like a big
rat. Our friendship deﬁnitely went downhill after that.

I tossed the ball for Jenny again, wishing that Lisa

hadn’t moved away.

I lay in bed that night, staring into the dark. I heard a soft
womp and felt the bed shift as Jenny jumped up beside
me. Jenny always circled around a few times, then settled
on top of the covers near my feet. She’d slept on my bed
every night since she was a puppy. Tonight she seemed

Dog House Blues

to sense my cloudy mood. She lay down closer to me and
rested her head on my chest. I smiled and reached down
to stroke Jenny’s soft fur.

My mind returned to memories of school and how bad

things had gotten after Lisa moved away. At ﬁrst the bad
part was just missing Lisa, but things went from bad to
terrible after the spring ﬁeld trip to the city museum.
Dad was one of the parents driving. He’d left the dogs at
home and tried to clean the dog hairs out of the van, but
this was not good enough for Kyla, who was in the group
to go with Dad and me.

“This car stinks!” Kyla announced as she climbed into

the back of the van.

Dad raised his eyebrows but didn’t say anything.
As we drove, Kyla kept whispering to her friends. I

couldn’t tell what they were saying, but I knew it was
about me. They kept giving me snobby sideways looks for
the whole tour of the museum.

Back at school after the trip, Kyla complained about

all the dog hairs on her clothes.

“This is disgusting,” she said, swiping at the brown

hairs on her white sweater. Jenny’s hairs, I realized. The
hairs had woven their way into the knitting and had to
be pulled out one at a time.

“How can she live in that dog house?” I heard Kyla say

to a group of her friends.

Jacqueline Pearce

The next day, I walked into the classroom.
“Do you smell dog?” someone asked in a loud voice.
I looked over at the desks where Kyla and her friends

sat. They snickered together, pretending not to see me.

“Yeah,” said Kyla. “Something in this classroom stinks

like a dirty old dog.”

Almost everyone laughed and started calling me dog

girl after that.

I sat up in bed and buried my face in Jenny’s warm,

soft fur. Tears stung the back of my eyes as they had that
day in school. Jenny wiggled out of my arms and licked
my face. Even in the dark, I could see the shine of Jenny’s
big brown eyes. Don’t worry, they seemed to be telling
me. I’ll always love you.

urry up and ﬁnish your breakfast,” Mom urged

Marcus the next morning. “I’m going to be late for

work.”

Mom always dropped Marcus oﬀ at the babysitter’s on

her way to the clinic. I wished I could sleep in, but there
was too much noise and commotion in the house, and it
was my job to feed the dogs.

We kept the dog food on a shelf in the carport, which

was built right oﬀ the kitchen. As I headed for the door,
I wrinkled my nose at the sight of Marcus’s mushy bowl
of Spidy-berry cereal, which had turned his milk purple.
The dogs followed me out to their three bowls and waited
side by side, a nose over each bowl, as I poured their
food from the giant bag. They started eating before I’d
even ﬁnished. When Dumpster moved too close to her
dish, Jenny growled softly. Breakfast was one time in the
day when even she didn’t have tolerance for Dumpster’s

“

Jacqueline Pearce

greedy habits. When Jenny had eaten all she wanted and
backed away from her dish, Dumpster nosed right in to
smell if there was anything left or if there had been any-
thing better than he had. Muﬃn moved in to check out
Dumpster’s dish. I made sure the water bowls were topped
up, then went back inside, leaving the door ajar.

Marcus was just climbing down from his chair at the

kitchen table. Mom reached down to wipe his face with
a wet cloth.

“Do you have any plans for today?” she asked me.
“No, not really,” I said with a sigh.
“Are you sure you don’t want to go to the babysitter’s

with Marcus? You’d at least have some other kids to play
with there.”

“Little kids, you mean.” I wrinkled my nose. “I think

I’ll try to get some reading in today,” I added.

“If I get my report done early, I can take you to the

pool this afternoon,” Dad announced as he cleared his
breakfast dishes oﬀ the table.

“That would be great!” I said, following Dad to the

sink.

“I wanna go to the pool too!” Marcus whined.
Crash! We all whirled around. Lying on the ﬂoor by

the kitchen table was Marcus’s cereal bowl. Dumpster
was busy licking up the last drops of purple milk and the
few Spidy-berries left in the bottom of the bowl.

Dog House Blues

“Erika, can you pick that up?” Mom asked with a sigh.

“I’ve got to get going.”

I groaned but nodded.
It wasn’t until Mom and Marcus had left and Dad had

disappeared into the basement that I settled down at the
kitchen table with my own bowl of cereal. I liked to wait
until everyone else was gone before I had my breakfast.
I sighed with pleasure as I dug my spoon into my bowl
of Apple-Cinnamon Flakes, my current cereal of choice,
and enjoyed my moment of peace and quiet. It was one
good thing about the summer holidays.

After breakfast I found my book and went outside to

sit in the yard at the side of the house. It would be nice
to sit out in the sun before it got too hot. The three dogs
were already sniﬃng around the grass and doing their
morning business. I would have to do some poop scoop-
ing, but I could leave it until later. I settled back in the
lounge chair with my feet up, the book on my lap. Jenny
came and lay on the grass beside me.

I opened the book to the place I’d marked with a scrap

of paper and began to read. I was dressed in shorts and a
T-shirt, and the sun felt warm and pleasant on my bare
legs and arms.

The leaves of the big maple tree that stood in the

middle of the yard rustled softly, and birds twittered
in its branches. I turned a page, then reached down to

Jacqueline Pearce

rest one hand on Jenny’s sun-warmed fur. Dumpster
and Muﬃn sank down on the grass close by. All was
peaceful.

Thump!
Jenny’s body jerked under my hand. Dumpster and

Muﬃn leapt to their feet, barking loudly. I looked up to
see a newspaper lying in the driveway. Conner Lee was
looking at me over the fence.

Not him again.
“It’s okay, Jenny,” I soothed, stroking the dog’s fur.

Sudden noises always startled Jenny. Thunder sent her
running for cover under my bed. This time, Jenny relaxed
as she realized there was nothing to fear. She followed
the other two dogs in their rush to the driveway, adding
her bark to theirs.

I stood up and walked after the dogs.
“You scared my dog,” I called to Conner, hands on my

hips.

“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to.”
“We have a mailbox, you know.” I pointed to the

wooden box attached to the fence by the driveway gate.

“Sorry,” he said again. “I didn’t see it. Today’s my ﬁrst

day delivering papers.”

“Well, next time put it in the mailbox, please,” I said,

bending down to pick up the newspaper, hiding my red-
dening face. Boy, I sounded just like my mom.

Dog House Blues

I started to walk back to my chair, expecting Conner

to  go,  but  when  I  glanced  back  he  was  still  standing
there,  holding  onto  his  bike.  What  was  his  problem?
My  self-consciousness  increased.  Here  I  was,  hanging
out by myself, surrounded by dogs. My eyes found the
spots on the lawn where I hadn’t yet scooped. Had he
noticed them? What would he tell everyone at school?
Suddenly my embarrassment turned to anger, as it had
the day before.

“What are you waiting for?” I snapped at Conner.
“Nothing,” he stammered. He looked like he wanted

to say something more, but he frowned, looked away and
climbed onto his bike. He glanced back one last time, but
he seemed to be looking at the dogs rather than at me,
and pedaled oﬀ.

opened the mailbox hopefully. If there was a letter

from Lisa, I told myself, it would mean good luck

for the ﬁrst day of school tomorrow. It would mean I still
had a best friend—even if she was far away. At least I
could feel I wasn’t totally alone. I scooped out the small
bunch of letters and junk mail, riﬄing through the enve-
lopes as I carried them back into the house. Nothing.
I ﬂipped through the envelopes again, just to be sure.
Still no letter from Lisa. I hadn’t heard from her since
that measly two-line postcard at the start of summer. She
probably had so many new friends and was having such a
great summer that she’d forgotten all about me.

“So, are you ready for school?” Dad asked at the sup-

per table that night.

As ready as I’ll ever be, I thought dismally, but I mus-

tered a smile.

“Yeah, sure,” I said.
Marcus bounced in his seat.

Dog House Blues

“I’m ready! I’m ready!” he announced loudly. He

would be starting kindergarten. “I get to go to school
with Erika. Can Dumpster come too?”

I rolled my eyes. That was all I needed to get school

oﬀ to a good start. I pictured Dumpster roaming down
the hallways, following his nose from classroom to class-
room, rooting out all the lunches from all the backpacks.
Wouldn’t that make me popular?

Mom and Dad smiled.
“Sorry, pal. Dudley has to wait for you at home,” Dad

told Marcus.

“You won’t be at school for very long the ﬁrst day any-

way,” Mom explained. “You can come right home and
tell Dudley all about it.”

I rolled my eyes again. Couldn’t anyone in this house

act like people were people and dogs were dogs?

That night I watched

for as long as I could before

Mom and Dad realized it was getting late and sent me
oﬀ to bed. I took my time brushing my teeth. Already
I could feel butterﬂies in my stomach when I thought
about the morning. Would Kyla Tupper be in my class
again? How quickly would Conner tell everyone how
dog girl Erika spent her summer lying around with dog
doo and following dogs into garbage cans? Would there
be anyone at all who would want to hang out with me?

Jacqueline Pearce

Jenny was already lying in her spot at the bottom of the

bed when I walked into my bedroom. She raised her head
to greet me, and her tail thumped the covers. I sighed and
reached over to stroke her head. Then I climbed under the
covers and nestled my feet up to the warm lump that was
Jenny’s body.

As I feared, the next morning arrived much too soon,

and the next thing I knew I was climbing into the van
with Marcus and Dad. The school parking lot was already
crowded with cars and people when we arrived ten min-
utes later. Marcus was out of the van almost before Dad
had turned oﬀ the motor. Dad quickly followed him, but I
hung back, my hand on the door. Then I noticed the back
of Dad’s jacket.

“Wait!”
I jumped out of the van and hurried after them. I didn’t

want to be seen arriving with my dad and little brother,
but worse than that, I didn’t want people noticing Dad
was wearing a fur coat when he shouldn’t be. I scurried up
to him and began wiping at his jacket.

“What? Am I covered with dog hairs?” Dad asked,

twisting around to try and get a look at his backside.

“Hold still,” I whispered. Couldn’t Dad see I was trying

not to draw attention?

Marcus skipped along beside us.
“Erika, you’re hairy too!” he sang out in his loud voice.

Dog House Blues

My stomach did a nosedive. I twisted around to look at

my own back view. The whole back of me was covered with
hairs that had been stuck to the van seat. Great! This was
just perfect. I glanced around, but we were still at the edge
of the parking lot, away from the people crowding around
the front of the school. No one had noticed us yet. A group
of kids at one side of the crowd looked to be grade sixes.

“I’ve got to go over there,” I said. “I’ll see you guys later.”
I forced a cheerful smile when Dad turned to look at me,

and as soon as he and Marcus started away again, I veered
oﬀ to the closest side of the school building. I ducked out of
sight around the corner and brushed my clothes clean of dog
hairs. Why did my family have to have three dogs? And
why did they—especially Jenny—have to shed so much?

I stepped back around to the front of the school, took a

deep breath and headed toward the grade six kids.

“Hey, Erika!” someone called. “How was your

summer?”

I smiled at a familiar girl with short black hair. Annie

Chang had been in my class the year before.

“Pretty good,” I lied.
“Did you hear what Kyla did?” another girl asked.
I shook my head slowly. Why did I have to hear about

Kyla already?

“Her whole family went to Disneyland in California!”

the girl gushed. “Isn’t she lucky?”

Jacqueline Pearce

“Yeah, really lucky,” I said with fake enthusiasm. I

followed the girl’s gaze and caught sight of Kyla stand-
ing in the middle of a large group of friends. She was
the center of attention as usual. With any luck, she’d be
too busy playing Queen Kyla to remember to be mean to
me. I glanced around for Conner but didn’t see him. The
boys all seemed to be in their own group, so maybe he
wouldn’t even say anything to Kyla.

“Did you see Lisa in the summer?” Annie was asking.
“No.” I couldn’t help letting some of my disappoint-

ment show. “But we wrote letters,” I added quickly. It
was partly true. I had written letters to Lisa, and Lisa
had sent me that one postcard.

The bell rang, and I quickly looked to the main doors

of the school. There were usually lists posted there telling
us which rooms to go to.

“You’re in the same room as us,” Annie whispered.
I smiled at her gratefully and fell into line behind

Annie and the others. There had been two grade ﬁve
classes last year, so there would be two grade sixes this
year. I hadn’t had a chance to look at the class lists, so I’d
have to wait to ﬁnd out who else would be in my class. As
we funneled into the school, I was caught by the excite-
ment around me. Last year was last year. This year was a
new year. Maybe things wouldn’t be so bad after all.

y name is Miss Chien.”

The teacher stood at the front of the classroom

and pointed to her name, written on the blackboard in
perfect looping handwriting. I hadn’t seen her at our
school before, so I guessed she had to be new. She was
petite and looked younger than most of the teachers
who’d been at the school last year. Several boys on the
far side of the room were talking and banging around in
their seats as if they hadn’t noticed the teacher. I guess
they ﬁgured she’d be a pushover and they could get away
with whatever they wanted.

Miss Chien frowned. She walked straight down the

aisle beside the boys and stood in front of them, arms
folded over her chest. She didn’t say anything at ﬁrst, but
somehow her silence seemed more ominous than if she’d
yelled at them. She no longer seemed as small as I’d ﬁrst
thought. She stood planted in the aisle, staring at the
boys, until they shut up and looked up at her.

“

Jacqueline Pearce

“When I’m talking, I need everyone in this class to be

listening to me,” Miss Chien said in a stern, no-nonsense
voice that made all the kids in the class pay attention.
“That means I want to see everyone facing forward and
looking at me.”

The boys looked sheepish. You could have heard a pin

drop as the teacher walked back to the front of the room.
Everyone in the class was sitting up straight and looking
right at her when she turned back to us.

“Good,” she said with a nod. “Now I’m going to start

by taking attendance.” She held up a clipboard and
glanced down at the sheet of paper clipped to it.

I didn’t need to hear the attendance called to tell me

what I already knew. Kyla Tupper was in my class. She
was sitting two seats up from me, ﬂanked by the worst of
her friends, and across the room, right in the middle of
the noisy group of boys, was Conner Lee.

“Victoria Abbott?” Miss Chien called out the ﬁrst

name.

The girl on Kyla’s right shot up her hand. “Here.”
The teacher nodded and penciled a tick mark next to

the name on her list. She kept calling out names. Maybe
there’d been a mistake, I thought. Maybe Kyla Tupper
wasn’t supposed to be in this room, or maybe I wasn’t
supposed to be here.

“Conner Lee?” the teacher called.

Dog House Blues

Okay, it was oﬃcial. He was supposed to be here.

But maybe there was still a chance that I wasn’t.
Alphabetically, my name was next. If the teacher didn’t
call it, then I could get up and walk out. I could move to
the other class. I held my breath and willed Miss Chien
to not read out my name.

“Erika Leveson?”
I sighed and raised my hand.
“Did I say that correctly?” Miss Chien asked.
“Yes,” I answered quickly, not wanting any extra

attention directed at me. I couldn’t help glancing
toward Kyla and her friends, but they were looking
down at something on Kyla’s desk and didn’t seem to be
paying attention to the roll call. Kyla shifted sideways
and I caught a glimpse of a photograph—probably of
Disneyland.

“If I pronounce your name incorrectly, please let me

know,” the teacher said to the class. “Politely,” she added
with emphasis.

“Everyone makes mistakes sometimes,” she went on.

“And in this class I expect each of you to show respect to
each other at all times.”

She went on with the list, progressing toward Tupper.

It would be so great if Kyla were the one in the wrong
class.

“Mercedes Sharma?”

Jacqueline Pearce

That was a name I hadn’t heard before. Even Kyla and

her friends looked up.

“Here,” a clear voice rang out from near the back of

the room.

All heads swiveled around to look. Two seats behind

me sat a new girl with light brown skin and long wavy
black hair. One strip of hair hanging to the right of
her face was dyed red and strung with white beads. It
matched her red and white T-shirt. She didn’t seem to
mind all the stares focused on her, and she smiled back
at us.

“Mercedes,” the teacher repeated. “What a lovely

name.”

One of the boys made a stiﬂed gagging sound, and

Miss Chien looked sharply in his direction. Kyla Tupper
leaned toward one of her friends and whispered some-
thing. I felt uneasy. If Kyla decided she didn’t like this
new girl, maybe she would be their next target.

The new girl smiled ruefully at the teacher’s comment.

“Sure,” she said. “It’s nice—if you like being named after
a car.”

Everyone laughed, and Miss Chien smiled. The ten-

sion that had risen disappeared. Miss Chien forgot about
the boy who’d made the rude sound. She kept on with
the roll call.

“Kyla Tupper?”

Dog House Blues

“Here.”
I watched Kyla’s hand rise high in the air. Well, that

was it. I was stuck with her.

“This is my ﬁrst year at this school,” Miss Chien said

after she’d ﬁnished the attendance. “I’m looking for-
ward to getting to know you all. Is there anyone else here
who’s new?”

Everyone turned to look at Mercedes Sharma, who

raised her hand.

“I’d like someone to volunteer to show Mercedes

around and make sure she knows where everything is,”
Miss Chien said.

Several girls, including Kyla, raised their hands.

Before I could give it any thought, I stuck mine up as
well.

“Good,” Miss Chien said and nodded in my direc-

tion. “Erika. That’s right, isn’t it? Would you please be
Mercedes’ partner for this week?”

I turned to smile at Mercedes, and she grinned back

at me as if she was glad I was going to be the one to
show her around. It would be interesting to ﬁnd out more
about her. Maybe being back at school wouldn’t be so
bad after all.

I turned back to the front again, the smile still on my

face. Then I met Kyla Tupper’s eyes, and I felt the smile
slide right oﬀ. She glared at me.

Jacqueline Pearce

“How did it go?” Dad asked when I joined up with him
and Marcus after our early dismissal.

“Pretty good,” I had to admit. It hadn’t gone nearly as

badly as I’d expected. Kyla Tupper hadn’t actually said
anything to me; Conner Lee seemed to be ignoring me,
which was good as far as I was concerned; and lots of
other people had been friendly.

“There’s a new girl in my class,” I said. “Her name’s

Mercedes.”

“That’s unusual,” Dad commented.
“Yeah, I guess, but she said to just call her Mercy.”
That was what she’d told me when I’d given her a

quick tour around the school.

“Her family just moved here,” I told Dad. I really

didn’t know Mercedes yet, but listening to myself talk,
it sounded like she was already my friend. Was I wishing
maybe that she would be? I thought about Lisa and felt
a twinge of guilt. Lisa was still my best friend. Wasn’t
she?

Marcus tugged at my shirt.
“My teacher’s name is Miss Balloon,” he said proudly.
My eyes met Dad’s, and we both tried not to laugh.

What Marcus meant was Mrs. Baluen. She’d been my
kindergarten teacher as well.

“We get to play with toys at school!” Marcus went on

excitedly. “Do you, Erika?”

Dog House Blues

“No. In grade six we actually do work,” I told him.

Although all we’d really done that day was make name
cards for the top of our desks.

At home Dad’s keys jangled as he took them out to
unlock the side door of the house. Immediately we heard
barking from inside and the clicking of dog feet scur-
rying across the kitchen ﬂoor. Dad opened the door,
and the three dogs rushed at us, their tails moving like
windshield wipers gone berserk. Jenny sniﬀed at my legs
eagerly, as if she could tell by the smells where I had been
and what I had done. Then she sat and held up one paw.
I shook it and reached in closer to ruﬄe the thick fur
around her neck.

“I was only gone two hours,” I told her. But I was glad

to see her too.

he next day, I walked into class to ﬁnd the teacher

had moved our desks into rows of pairs. I sat down

in an empty desk, and Mercedes slid into the seat next to
me, smiling hello. The ﬁrst part of the morning was noisy,
with chairs scraping and low chatter as people unloaded
school supplies and arranged them inside desks. But after
that it was down to business, as if the summer had never
happened.

“Next week we’ll do our ﬁrst oral presentations,” Miss

Chien announced.

A wave of uneasy whispers swept the room. A presen-

tation? Already?

“Don’t worry,” Miss Chien continued. “All I’m asking

for is a short one-minute speech from each of you.”

Beside me, Mercedes seemed to be sitting up straighter,

as if she was excited about the idea of making a speech.
Her hand shot up.

Dog House Blues

“Is there a topic?” she asked.
“Yes,” Miss Chien said with a smile. “I want you to

write about what it means to be a hero.”

Several hands went up.
“You mean like Superman?” a boy asked when she

pointed at him.

“That’s what I want you to decide.”
I scanned the room. Some people looked like they

were already thinking of what they wanted to say in their
speech. Others were frowning.

I noticed that Conner Lee was looking down at his

desk as if he wasn’t listening to the teacher, but then
he glanced up furtively and there was an anxious look
on his face. His eyes met mine, and I quickly looked
away.

“I don’t understand,” someone admitted.
“I want you to tell us what qualities you think make

a hero,” Miss Chien explained. “Is a hero someone with
super powers, like Superman? Is a hero an ordinary per-
son who does something extraordinary? You tell me—or
rather, you tell us. The whole class will be your audi-
ence.”

She walked to the blackboard at the front of the room

and took up a piece of chalk.

“Now, what are some of the things you need to make

a good speech?”

Jacqueline Pearce

No hands went up.
“What about speaking clearly?” Miss Chien prompted.

She turned to the board and wrote the word clarity in her
perfect script.

“Use expression,” Mercedes suggested.
“Very good.” Miss Chien wrote expression on the

board.

“You have to say something interesting,” Kyla said,

looking around the room as if she were giving the class
a warning.

“Don’t talk too fast,” someone else suggested.
“What about using pictures and props?” Miss Chien

asked.

“Yeah,” several voices agreed.
The list on the board grew longer.
“Now remember,” Miss Chien said ﬁnally, “this is just

a small speech to get your feet wet. I don’t want you to
worry too much about it, and I want you to have some
fun.”

I glanced around the room again. There weren’t any

frowns left, and most people looked interested. My eyes
passed quickly over Conner. I didn’t want to risk catch-
ing his eye again.

“We’ll be doing longer presentations in November,”

Miss Chien added. “But you don’t have to think about
that yet.”

Dog House Blues

“Do you know what you’re going to do for your

speech?” Mercedes asked as we headed out of the school
for recess.

I shrugged. “I’ll think about it tonight, I guess.” It

was only a one-minute speech. We wouldn’t have to say
much.

We emerged out onto the playground.
“What do you do at recess here?” Mercedes asked.
“We could play tetherball,” I suggested, gesturing

toward the tetherball poles, “or we could walk around
the school.”

“Hey, Mercedes!” a voice interrupted.
Kyla Tupper and three of her friends caught up to us.
“What school did you go to before this?” Kyla asked.
“It was in another town,” Mercedes answered. “We

just moved here.”

“So, do you like it here?” Kyla gave Mercedes a mea-

suring look as she asked this.

“Sure. It’s nice so far.”
Kyla smiled. I guess Mercedes had said the right

thing—proving again that she wasn’t a snob.

“Come on,” Kyla said, taking hold of Mercedes’ arm as

if they were old friends. “We don’t want to stand around
here all recess.”

Ignoring me, Kyla started to pull Mercedes away. The

others followed, as if they had short leashes tying them to

Jacqueline Pearce

Kyla. As I hesitated, Kyla turned and glared back at me,
telling me with her eyes that she didn’t want me to join
them. Mercedes didn’t seem to notice. She looked back.

“Come on,” she called to me.
I took a step to follow.
“Erika! Erika!”
Someone pulled on the back of my shirt. I turned around

to see Marcus standing there, his eyes full of tears.

“Forget about her,” I heard Kyla say behind me. “She’s

got to look after her snotty little brother.”

“Is he okay?” Mercedes asked, ignoring Kyla.
I looked down at Marcus.
“I can’t ﬁnd Mini Dudley!” Marcus wailed tragically.

Mini Dudley was the tiny plastic basset hound he’d put
in his pocket before school that morning. He carried the
toy whenever he had to go somewhere without the real
Dudley. He claimed that he could whisper to the toy and
the real Dudley back at home would hear him. I was
relieved he hadn’t called the toy dog Mini Dumpster.
This was something I didn’t want to have to explain in
front of Kyla.

“Don’t worry,” I called back to Mercedes, waving her

away. “I have to help my brother ﬁnd something. You go
ahead.”

I turned away from Kyla’s smug look as she dragged

Mercedes oﬀ.

hat do you think a hero is?” I asked Dad as we ate

supper. Mom had called to say she’d be working

late at the clinic, so it was just the three of us at the table.

“Spiderman!” Marcus declared immediately.
I rolled my eyes. This was no surprise. Marcus had

Spiderman toys, Spiderman pajamas and Spiderman
underwear—not to mention Spidy-berry breakfast
cereal. It was the only non-dog-related thing that inter-
ested him.

“Pssshhh! Pssshhh!”
Marcus pointed his wrist at me and pretended to shoot

out web strands.

“I don’t mean a cartoon hero,” I said, waving away the

imaginary strands.

Dad frowned thoughtfully.
“Well, I guess you could say a hero is someone who

always helps other people—even when it’s dangerous,”
he suggested.

“

Jacqueline Pearce

“Like a ﬁreﬁghter?” Marcus asked.
“Sure.”
“Fireﬁghters are strong and brave like Spiderman,”

Marcus added.

“That’s right,” Dad said as he scooped up a forkful of

spaghetti. Then, mouth full, he waved his fork in the air
as if he were trying to say something in sign language.

“But sometimes a hero isn’t brave or strong,” he said

after swallowing. “Sometimes a hero is just an ordinary
person who does the right thing even though it’s diﬃcult
and even though he—or she—is scared.”

“Spiderman’s not that strong,” Marcus said thought-

fully. “But he can climb up walls and swing from webs.”

He waved his fork, copying Dad, but it was loaded

with spaghetti and sent a stream of sauce and noodles
splattering across the table.

I sighed and got up to get a cloth.

We had cleared the table and loaded the dishwasher by
the time Mom arrived home. Marcus ran up to greet her,
jabbering something about Spiderman and the time-out
chair at school.

“You get to sit there when you’re bad,” he told her

excitedly, as if it were a treat. Over Marcus’s head, Mom
gave Dad a look, but she didn’t ask how Marcus knew so
much about the kindergarten time-out chair already.

Dog House Blues

“Sorry I’m so late,” Mom said when she could ﬁnally

get a word in. She dumped her briefcase and purse on
the kitchen table and collapsed onto a chair. “We had
an emergency just before closing. Someone brought in a
stray dog that had been hit by a car—a big female Lab
cross. A beautiful dog.”

I thought of Jenny.
“Is the dog going to be okay?” I asked.
Marcus climbed up onto the chair next to Mom’s, for

once not interrupting.

“She has a compound fracture of the right femur, but

she’ll be okay. She’s stable now and we’ve got her on pain
medication, but I couldn’t put a splint on.”

“Didn’t you ﬁnd the dog’s humans?” I asked. I knew

that, without permission, all Mom was allowed to do was
stabilize and relieve distress. She’d need the owner’s per-
mission to operate or splint the leg—although, around
our house, we didn’t use the word owner. You can’t own a
living thing, Mom always said.

“No.” Mom frowned and shook her head. “There was no

identiﬁcation on the dog. No tag, no tattoo, no microchip.”

“Did you call the

SPCA

?” Dad asked as he placed a

plateful of spaghetti in the microwave to heat up for
Mom.

SPCA

stood for the Society for the Prevention of

Cruelty to Animals. It operated the animal shelter and
took care of animals who had been mistreated or lost.

Jacqueline Pearce

“Yes, but I’m keeping her at the clinic for now. The

health technician will keep an eye on her overnight.”

She met Dad’s eyes, and I knew he was wondering if

she’d be getting paid for all of this.

“I’d like to operate as soon as I can. If we can’t ﬁnd the

dog’s people in four days, the

SPCA

will have the author-

ity to give permission.”

Dad nodded. Mom never wanted to let an animal go

without doing everything she could to help.

The microwave dinged, and Dad brought Mom’s din-

ner over to the table. Just as he placed it in front of her,
there was a loud clanging crash behind us. We whirled
around in time to see spaghetti oozing over the edge of
the stove and down the nearby cupboard doors. Dumpster
sat on the ﬂoor, mouth open, happily vacuuming up a
huge pile of noodles and sauce, the empty spaghetti pot
beside him. Mom and Dad both groaned, while Marcus
squealed with delight. Dumpster must have pulled the
pot right oﬀ the stove.

“Well, we won’t be having leftovers tomorrow,” Dad

said.

Later, I sat at the desk in my bedroom, thinking about

what to do for my oral presentation. Jenny lay on my bed,
nose resting between her paws.

“What is a hero?” I said out loud.
Jenny raised one eyebrow.

Dog House Blues

I thought about the dog my mom had helped today,

recovering in a kennel at the vet clinic. Not every vet
would have done as much as Mom did. Some would
be quick to send the dog to the

SPCA

shelter, and they

wouldn’t be oﬀering to operate without pay or at the dis-
counted prices Mom gives the

SPCA

. There was Dumpster

too. Another vet might have sent Dumpster to the shel-
ter when his human refused to pay for his operation. But
Mom did the operation anyway, and she took him home.
She also saved Muﬃn.

Mom was a hero.
I could talk about my mom—how she cares about

all the animals, how she works late, how she helps even
if she’s not going to get paid. I turned to my desk and
picked up my pencil. But then I remembered Kyla. What
would she say if I told the class about all the dogs Mom
has saved? I’d have to mention the ones she ended up
bringing home. What would everyone think when they
heard about Dumpster swallowing a fork? When they
heard about all the dogs we have at our house?

No, I didn’t want to talk to the class about dogs. I

would have to come up with another idea. Better to talk
about someone who helped people—like Terry Fox or
Mother Teresa.

hen Miss Chien let us out for recess the next day, I

pretended to be looking for something in my

desk.

“Go ahead,” I said to Mercedes. “I’ll catch up in a

minute.”

I looked up to see Mercedes walk out of the classroom

with Kyla and her friends. I had no plans of trying to
catch up. It would only give Kyla the opportunity to tell
me to get lost. Maybe if they didn’t see me, they wouldn’t
say anything bad about me to Mercedes.

When everyone from the class had left, I got up and

walked down the hall in the opposite direction. I wasn’t
sure what I was going to do, so I stopped at the wash-
room to kill some time, taking as long as I could to wash
and dry my hands. Finally I wandered down to the doors
by the kindergarten room. There was no one around.
Through the windows in the double doors leading out to

Dog House Blues

the playground, I caught sight of Marcus in the sandbox
with a group of kindergarten kids. They were engrossed
in digging and building something. Marcus paused as if
to survey the work he’d done so far, and one hand brieﬂy
patted the outside of his right pants pocket, checking that
Mini Dudley was still there. Then he bent back down to
his pile of sand. He was ﬁne. He didn’t need me.

I looked over the rest of the playground. Conner Lee

and some of the other grade six boys were involved in a
soccer game. Way down at the end of the ﬁeld there was
a huddle of girls. It was Kyla’s group, and Mercedes was
with them. I wondered what they were talking about.
Had Kyla said anything about me yet?

I felt a heavy weight on my chest, like someone was

standing on it. Had it only been ﬁve months ago that
Lisa was still here, and I still had friends?

When the bell ﬁnally rang to end recess, I stepped

outside and blended in with the kids lining up to go back
into the school.

“Hey, where were you?” Mercedes called as she came

up beside me in the line. She still seemed friendly—as if
she hadn’t heard anything bad about me.

I shrugged.
“I had to help my little brother again,” I said, telling

myself it wasn’t a total lie, since I actually had checked
on him.

Jacqueline Pearce

“You’re so lucky to have a little brother,” Mercedes

said. “He’s so cute.”

I looked at her skeptically. “You wouldn’t say that if

you had to live with him.”

She laughed.
“Mercy!” Kyla’s loud voice interrupted us. “Come here

for a minute. I want to ask you something.”

I felt a twinge of jealousy. She’d called Mercedes the

shortened name as if they were old friends.

“I’ll be right back,” Mercedes told me.
She hurried to where Kyla and her friends were stand-

ing, and I saw her head bend in close to Kyla’s. The group
laughed at something Kyla was saying, and I felt a prickle
go up my back. Was it something about me?

Miss Chien appeared then, and we ﬁled into the

school, Mercedes still with Kyla. I glanced at Mercedes’
face as we sat down in our desks, but I couldn’t read it.

“Take out your math textbook,” Miss Chien directed.
It was when we were quietly working on math prob-

lems that I noticed the note being passed from desk to
desk. Miss Chien sat at her own desk with her head
down and didn’t see. Up ahead in my row, a hand stealth-
ily reached back and dropped a folded piece of paper on
the desk of the girl in front of me. The girl unfolded the
paper, paused, then passed it to the person next to her.
The two girls looked at each other and snickered quietly.

Dog House Blues

The second girl glanced at Miss Chien, whose head was
still down. As she turned back, her eyes met mine, and
my stomach began to tighten in a familiar way. The girl
refolded the paper and passed it to Mercedes.

Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Mercedes set

down her pencil and carefully unfold the note. My stom-
ach turned uneasily, and I looked away. I wanted to know
what was on the note, and I didn’t want to know. I heard
Mercedes sniﬀ as if she was stiﬂing a laugh; then she slid
the paper over to me.

Slowly, I looked down at the unfolded note. In the

middle of the smudged, creased sheet was a penciled car-
toon drawing of a girl. Instead of human ears she had
ﬂoppy dog ears, and from under her skirt curved a long
dog’s tail. Underneath the drawing was the scrawled cap-
tion Dog Girl.

“Erika!” Miss Chien’s voice was like an unexpected

punch. “Please bring me whatever it is that Mercedes just
passed to you.”

I swallowed hard, folded the note and stood. I didn’t

look at anyone as I walked across the room, but I could
feel their eyes on me. My throat felt dry and constricted.
Don’t cry, I told myself. My hand shook slightly as I
held out the paper to Miss Chien. She seemed to look
at my face a long time as she took it from me. Then she
unfolded the paper and looked over the drawing. Would

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she ask me to explain it? Would she ask me to read the
words out to the class? Not everyone had seen the note
yet, but as soon as they heard the words they’d know who
it was about.

Finally Miss Chien looked up, and I swallowed

again.

“Thank you, Erika,” she said. “You may go back to

your seat.”

That was it? Relieved, I walked back to my desk.

Everyone else returned to their math problems. I slipped
back into my chair, and Mercedes gave me a sympathetic
look. Did she know about Dog Girl? Did she know what
the drawing meant? I picked up my pencil again and tried
to focus on the work in front of me, but it was hard to con-
centrate. My throat was still tight, and my stomach now
felt like a knot of heavy rope. If Mercedes didn’t know
yet, she would soon. It had started again.

t lunchtime we stayed in the classroom eating until

the ten-minute bell rang; then everyone rushed for

the door. I hung back, waiting for the others to leave.

“Erika,” Miss Chien called. She was still at her desk,

getting some things together before heading down to the
staﬀ room.

Mercedes hesitated at the door.
“Mercy, hurry up!” Kyla’s voice called from the hall.
I turned away and started over to Miss Chien’s desk

for the second time that morning. The lump of dread in
my stomach had grown larger.

What could she want?
I stood at her desk, the sounds of the other kids fading

into the distance. The classroom was empty and quiet.
Miss Chien opened the top drawer of her desk, took out
the Dog Girl note and smoothed open the folds.

Jacqueline Pearce

“I don’t know what this note is about,” she said, look-

ing at me carefully. She didn’t seem angry. “But I can tell
that it’s upset you,” she continued. “Would you like to tell
me about it?”

I felt my face redden. Should I explain to her about

the dog girl teasing? About Kyla? What would I say? Kyla
hadn’t actually said or done anything to me that I knew
of this year. Not really. I didn’t even know if the note was
from her. What if it wasn’t meant to be about me at all?
Maybe it was just an ordinary cartoon that didn’t mean
anything. I didn’t believe that for one minute, but Miss
Chien might.

“Erika?” Miss Chien prodded. She smiled kindly,

waiting for an answer. Maybe she would understand. On
the ﬁrst day of school she’d said that one of the rules of
the class was that everyone was supposed to show respect
for each other. But what would she do? Ask Kyla if she’d
written the note? If Kyla denied it, would Miss Chien
ask the whole class? Would she bring up the Dog Girl
thing in front of everyone?

I shook my head.
“Are you sure?” Miss Chien asked, her voice serious.

“If something’s going on in this class, I’d like to know
about it.”

“It was just a silly note,” I said, forcing myself to meet

her eyes.

Dog House Blues

“All right,” she said slowly. “But if you are having any

trouble—any trouble at all, even if it doesn’t have to do with
schoolwork—I hope you know you can come to me.”

She looked into my eyes again. She meant what she

said.

“Thanks,” I said, nodding. Maybe I would talk to her if

things got any worse.

Outside on the playground, I was surprised to ﬁnd

Mercedes standing by herself. She smiled when she saw
me and hurried over.

“Hey, what was that about? Is everything okay?” she

asked in a rush.

“It was nothing,” I said with a shrug. Then, quickly, to

change the subject, I added, “Do you want to get a bas-
ketball?”

I remembered, Mercedes was probably doing something

with Kyla. “Or maybe you…” I glanced across the ﬁeld to
see if Kyla and her friends were waiting for her.

“Sure, basketball would be fun!” Mercedes said. “I was

getting tired of just walking around the school all the
time.”

That night I snuggled under the bed covers, my feet
pushed up under the warm lump that was Jenny. I felt
warm and cozy. The day had started out badly, but it had
turned out to be okay. I even had my hero speech done.

“

t’s a bird. No, it’s a plane. No, it’s…Superman!”

A boy named Jake stood at the front of the

classroom, shading his eyes with one hand and pretend-
ing to scan the sky (our classroom ceiling). Miss Chien
had drawn names out of a jar to decide the order of the
speeches, and Jake’s had been picked ﬁrst.

“Some people think a hero is someone in a comic book

who ﬁghts bad guys, but I think a real hero isn’t in a
comic book. It’s a real person like a ﬁreﬁghter or a police
oﬃcer or a doctor,” he continued.

The next speech was similar, and so was the next

one. By the time I stood up to give my speech, Terry
Fox had already been mentioned twice. I wasn’t going to
sound original at all. At least no one else had mentioned
Mother Teresa.

“Terry Fox was an ordinary person until he lost his leg

to cancer,” I told the class, holding up a photograph I’d

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printed oﬀ the Internet. “He could have sat around feel-
ing sorry for himself, but instead he decided to run across
Canada to raise money to help other people with cancer.”

I held up the photograph I’d found of Mother Teresa.
“Mother Teresa was once an ordinary girl called Agnes,

who was born in the former country of Yugoslavia. She
could have stayed home and had a good life, but instead
she chose to become a nun, move to India and help the
poorest of the poor people.”

I glanced down at the card I’d written notes on and

looked up at the class again, trying to seem as if I was
talking to everyone without looking at Kyla Tupper.

“So,” I concluded, “you never know who will turn out

to be a hero. It could be me. It could be you.”

The class clapped politely as it had done after every

speech. Relieved to be ﬁnished, I headed back to my seat,
forgetting about Kyla. As I passed her desk, my eyes met
hers, and she gave me a dark, sneering look. My stomach
ﬂip-ﬂopped. Stupid, I told myself. Who cares what she
thinks?

For her speech, Kyla ﬂounced up to the podium at the

front of the room, unrolling two large posters and taping
them onto the blackboard behind her.

“Some people think a hero is a movie star or a rock

star,” she said in a loud, conﬁdent voice. She gestured
at the posters of Hilary Duﬀ and Justin Timberlake.

Dog House Blues

“These people are famous, but have they ever cured a dis-
ease or saved someone’s life? I think not.

“Real heroes are doctors, nurses and scientists,” she

continued, with a self-satisﬁed ring to her voice, as if
she ﬁgured she was the only one of us who realized this
truth.

When she was ﬁnished, Kyla carefully rolled her post-

ers back up, and I wondered who she really thought was
most important. I would’ve bet she didn’t have any post-
ers of doctors or scientists on her bedroom walls.

Several people had said doctors and nurses were heroes,

I realized, but no one had said anything about vets. For a
moment, I imagined how a speech about my mom would
have gone over. I could even have brought in the x-ray
of Dumpster’s stomach to show. It would have made my
talk more original, that’s for sure.

My attention returned to the front of the room as

Conner Lee stepped up behind the podium. He cleared
his throat and shifted his weight from one foot to the
other.

“Today I’m going to talk to you about what is a hero,”

he began as so many others had begun. His voice was
quiet, and he ﬁngered the note cards in his hands.

“You’ll have to speak a bit more loudly,” Miss Chien

interrupted from the back of the room. “And remember
to look up at your audience.”

Jacqueline Pearce

Conner cleared his throat again, and I found myself

feeling sympathy for him. I didn’t like to speak in front
of the class either, and I knew what it felt like to worry
about what people thought of you.

“Some people think a hero is someone with special

powers,” he went on, “like in comic books or cartoons.”

By now I was getting tired of hearing the same old thing

about heroes, and, even though I felt sorry for Conner, my
thoughts drifted away. Then they snapped back.

“A hero can even be an animal,” he was saying now.

“Like a dog that rescues a person buried under snow.”

He lifted a book oﬀ the podium and held it open for

the class, showing a photograph of a black and white dog
standing in the snow beside a man who wore an orange
ski jacket with a shiny white cross on the upper arm of
the jacket. There were snowy mountains in the back-
ground.

When he was ﬁnished, Conner hurried back to his

seat, not looking at anyone.

Mercedes’ speech was one of the best. She hung the

ﬂag of India oﬀ the top of the podium and talked about
Mahatma Gandhi, a man who used nonviolent resistance
to help change a whole country. She spoke in a clear, natu-
ral voice, and her words held everyone’s attention.

“That was really good,” I whispered when she returned

to her seat.

Dog House Blues

“Thanks.” She grinned back at me.
When the speeches were ﬁnished, Miss Chien stood

in front of the class.

“A very impressive ﬁrst eﬀort,” she said. “Now I want

you to start thinking about a topic for a longer presenta-
tion. It can be on any topic you like. You can work on it
alone or in pairs. And this time I want you to put more
eﬀort into research and visual aids.”

She picked up a piece of chalk and turned back to the

class.

“Now, when you’re researching a topic, where do you

look for information?” she asked.

A few hands went up.
“The Internet,” someone called out.
“Books,” someone else suggested.
“Good,” Miss Chien said, her chalk squeaking across

the board.

Mercedes nudged me. “Do you want to work on some-

thing together?” she whispered.

I glanced at her in surprise.
“Sure,” I answered, trying not to sound too eager.
Then my eyes went to Kyla Tupper, sitting a few seats

ahead of me. She was probably planning to partner with
Victoria, as usual, I told myself. What would she care
about who anyone else partnered with?

“

told Kyla I’d go to her house after school today,”

Mercedes said apologetically. “I promised her

a few days ago. But maybe you could come over to my
place tomorrow, and we could ﬁgure out what topic we
want to do.”

“That sounds good,” I said, trying to hide my disap-

pointment.

She was just going to Kyla’s this one time, I told

myself. It didn’t mean she liked Kyla more than me.
But I couldn’t help imagining what Kyla would say to
Mercedes once she got her alone. She was sure to tell
Mercy that she shouldn’t like me: that I was boring or
stupid or stuck-up or something…and that I smelled like
dogs…and worse. Maybe Mercedes would feel sorry that
she’d agreed to work with me on the presentation.

When I got home, the dogs were out in the yard. As

I opened the gate, Jenny ran toward me, followed by
Dumpster, baying loudly, and Muﬃn bringing up the

Dog House Blues

rear, his short legs moving double-time as he tried to
keep up. I closed the gate behind me and glanced back
up the street to see if the noise had caught anyone’s atten-
tion. No one was around.

“Hello, girl,” I greeted Jenny, bending down to pet

her.

She lifted her head to lick my face.
Dumpster kept barking until I’d petted him as well,

and Muﬃn pushed his way between the other dogs and
me. He pawed at my leg, raised both front paws in the
air and balanced on his hind legs until I’d scratched his
head too.

“I wish I was this popular at school,” I said, laughing,

as I tried to pet the three dogs at once.

When I straightened and made my way to the house,

the dogs followed, sticking close to my legs.

Dad was in the kitchen making a cup of coﬀee. His

thick brown hair stuck up in uncombed tufts on top of
his head, and his eyes had that just-waking-up look he
gets when he comes out of his oﬃce and has to refocus
on the world.

“Hey!” he said, blinking at me over his coﬀee mug.

“You’re home.”

“Hi, Dad.”
He smiled and ran a hand through his hair.
“Guess what?” His grin broadened. “I’m ﬁnished work

Jacqueline Pearce

for the day. I thought we might pick up Marcus and head
to the park.”

I dumped my backpack on the counter, thinking. I

wasn’t sure if I felt like spending the rest of the afternoon
running around with a little brother and a bunch of noisy
dogs. I had homework to do, and there was the presen-
tation topic to think about. My mind went to Mercedes
and Kyla, and an uneasy feeling rose in my stomach.
Maybe Mercedes was changing her mind about working
with me right now.

Suddenly, getting out to the park and forgetting about

school for a while seemed like the perfect idea.

“Sounds good, Dad!” I said, my voice sounding a little

too cheerful.

Dad picked up his car keys and jacket, and the dogs

rushed to the door. I followed more slowly.

Dad barely had the van door open, and the dogs were

inside, ready to go. I looked at Dad as I climbed into the
seat beside him. “Do you think they know where we’re
going?”

Dad craned his head around to look back at the dogs.

All three mouths were open, tongues hanging out as they
panted eagerly.

“I’m sure they know,” he said with a laugh.
Marcus was jiggling with excitement when we picked

him up early from his afternoon day care. Dad had to

Dog House Blues

order him to wait when he began opening the door before
the van had come to a complete stop in the parking lot at
the oﬀ-leash park.

“Okay, now you can get out,” Dad said as he turned

oﬀ the motor.

Marcus heaved open the side door, and the dogs

squeezed past him, knocking Marcus oﬀ balance so that
he fell out of the van onto the gravel of the parking lot.
He picked himself up and ran after the dogs, forgetting
about the open van door. I dug behind the front seat for a
tennis ball and the ball thrower before closing the doors
and following. Dad waited for me, the leashes in one
hand, and we walked across the grass together.

Up ahead, Marcus and the dogs trotted toward some

other dogs already in the park. The two groups came
together, tails waving high. Rather than meeting face to
face, the dogs sniﬀed each other’s behinds. Kyla Tupper
would be disgusted, but I knew this was just the dogs’
way of saying hello and checking each other out. Smell
and body posture were important to them.

After greeting a big German shepherd, Jenny planted

her forelegs on the ground in front of her and ducked
her head, still keeping her eyes on the other dog—
a play bow was what Mom called this. The German
shepherd lunged at Jenny, and Jenny leapt up and oﬀ to
the side. The two dogs bounded oﬀ together, playing

Jacqueline Pearce

a kind of tag. Marcus raced after them, wanting to be
part of the game. I couldn’t help laughing as I watched
them. Marcus ran one way and then the other, trying
to keep up with the dogs. As the three of them ran past
Dumpster, Dumpster raised his nose to the sky and
barked mournfully. Then a scruﬀy brown and white dog
trotted across the grass, and Dumpster stopped barking
and went to meet the newcomer. Muﬃn scampered to
get there ﬁrst.

“Here, Max,” a woman called from the path ahead of

Dad and me.

Reluctantly, the German shepherd broke away from

Jenny and trotted oﬀ to join the woman. Jenny followed,
but when he no longer paid attention to her, she wan-
dered away and sniﬀed around the bottom of an ever-
green bush. She seemed to be licking the tips of the low
branches, and I remembered that dogs assess smells not
just with their noses, but also with a gland in the roof of
their mouths. Every male dog that had visited the park
had probably left a pee message there.

“Jenny!” I called, holding up the tennis ball.
Jenny raised her head and saw the ball. She immedi-

ately forgot the bush and tensed in the pose of a football
player ready to sprint for a long pass.

I ﬁtted the ball into the thrower, raised it over my head

and ﬂung the ball in a long arc across the park. It ﬂew

Dog House Blues

much farther, with much less eﬀort, than if I’d thrown it
with my hand alone.

Jenny took oﬀ like a shot, racing after the ball.
Dumpster and Muﬃn chased after her for a few paces

and broke oﬀ to check out some new smells. They were
not fetchers like Jenny. Jenny was nearly eight, which was
close to ﬁfty in human years, but she still seemed to have
plenty of energy for chasing balls.

“Can we go to the playground after?” I heard Marcus

ask Dad behind me.

“Sure,” Dad answered.
Jenny loped back to me, the ball in her mouth.
This time, as I readied the ball to throw, Jenny didn’t

wait. She sprinted down the ﬁeld, turning her head to
watch for the ball. Again, the ball sailed over the grass,
catching up to Jenny. She leapt up and snapped the ball
into her mouth.

“Good girl!” I called. Marcus cheered and ran to inter-

cept Jenny and the ball.

“Where’s Dudley?” Dad asked.
I looked around. Jenny was now playing keep-away-

from-Marcus, and Muﬃn was bounding around at their
heels. Near the parking lot, an old man was leading away
the scruﬀy brown and white dog. The German shepherd
and his human were small specks at the far end of the
park near the playground. I could see two kids moving

Jacqueline Pearce

on the swings. There was no sign of Dumpster. I scanned
the park again. I couldn’t see him around the bushes, but
he might be hidden in the trees between the playground
and us.

“I’ll go look for him,” I told Dad.
“You better take a leash,” he said, handing one to me.
I jogged across the grass toward the trees, calling out

both names.

“Dudley! Dumpster!”
I squeezed between two bushes and stepped into the

cluster of trees. Some trees were still green, but others
already glowed with fall yellow and orange, and a bright
carpet of leaves crackled under my feet. I paused for a
moment, squinting at the space around the tree trunks.
Where was that dog? Once he got stuck on a smell, he’d
drop his nose to the ground and follow it for miles if you
didn’t stop him. He couldn’t have left the park, could
he?

I made my way through the trees, calling and looking

around. As I got closer to the playground, I could hear
two girls’ voices and the squeaking of swings. I glimpsed
the yellow and blue of their coats beyond the trees. As
I reached the edge of the grove, I saw Dumpster on the
path behind the playground.

At that same moment, I recognized the two girls on

the swings.

Dog House Blues

Mercedes and Kyla were pumping lazily, talking and

laughing like old friends. My heart banged in my chest.
If I called Dumpster or came out of the trees, they were
sure to see me. But if I didn’t stop Dumpster, he’d keep
going, right out of the park.

Suddenly there was a noise behind me. It was Jenny’s

bark. Dumpster heard it too. He stopped and lifted his
head. I ducked behind a tree as Jenny crunched through
the leaves to join me, barking excitedly. Dumpster barked
back.

“Shh!” I tried to quiet Jenny and peered around the

tree. Mercedes and Kyla had twisted around to look in
the direction of the sounds. I plastered myself to the
trunk.

Now what was I going to do? I didn’t want them to

see me—especially not with the two annoying dogs. But
Dumpster…

Rowlf! Rowlf!
Dumpster’s deep bark was loud and close as he burst

in on our hiding place. He sniﬀed my leg and greeted
Jenny, tail wagging.

I peered back around the tree. Mercedes and Kyla were

swinging again, the sounds forgotten. Relief washed over
me, followed by annoyance as I bent down to hook the
leash to the basset hound’s collar. Why did I have to get
stuck in a family with three dogs?

“

rika! Erika! Are you listening to me?” Marcus’s

voice ﬁnally penetrated my thoughts.

“Yeah, I’m listening.” The truth was I’d almost forgot-

ten he was walking beside me, even though he was hold-
ing my hand. I was too busy worrying about what would
happen at school when we got there. Would Mercedes
be one of Kyla’s gang now? Would she still be talking to
me? Would the project be oﬀ?

When we got to the school, I brought Marcus over to

the kindergarten lineup, then joined the line outside my
classroom.

“Hi, Erika!” Mercedes smiled at me and moved to

open a spot in the line beside her.

“Hi.” I grinned back, relieved. She still seemed to be

the same friendly Mercedes. I couldn’t help feeling wary,
though, as my eyes searched out Kyla. She stood with her
back to us, whispering closely with Victoria and another

Jacqueline Pearce

girl. Were they whispering about me? Didn’t Mercedes
notice them?

“So is it okay? Can you come over to my place after

school?”

I could hardly believe what she was saying.
“You still want me to?” I asked.
“Of course. We are going to work on the presentation

together, aren’t we?”

“Oh, yeah.” I shook my head and laughed as if I’d just

been kidding around. “Sure, I can come.”

Inside the classroom, Kyla gave me a dark look as I

passed by her desk. I looked away and hurried to my
seat.

The morning passed and recess came.
“Mercy, over here,” Kyla called as we emerged from

the building onto the paved courtyard.

“I’m going to shoot some baskets,” Mercedes called

back, smiling and waving as she made her way to one
of the poles that held a backboard and hoop. “Come on.
Don’t you want to play too?”

Kyla’s mouth dropped open.
“I don’t shoot baskets,” she said with a glare at me.
“Why not? It’s fun!” Mercedes said as she waved for a

pass from Annie Chang, who’d just picked up a basket-
ball. Mercedes caught the ball against her chest and took
a shot at the hoop. The ball bounced oﬀ the backboard,

Dog House Blues

and Annie ran in to catch the rebound. Mercedes turned
back in time to see Kyla and her followers walk away. She
shrugged and returned her attention to the court.

“Can we play?” asked Jake from our class. Behind him

stood Conner Lee. Several other people seemed ready to
join us as well.

I tried to signal Mercedes and Annie with a look and a

shake of my head. Shooting hoops with a couple of peo-
ple was one thing, but I wasn’t that great a player. I didn’t
want to give the others more excuses to make fun of me.

“Sure,” Mercedes said. She grinned broadly. “That

gives us enough for a game!”

The teams were picked, and the game started. My

stomach felt like lead, and I was sure I wouldn’t be able
to catch a pass—let alone make a basket.

“Erika!” Mercedes called, lobbing the ball across the

court.

I fumbled for the ball, bounced it once and passed it

up the court to Annie. She dribbled inexpertly, laughing,
and lost the ball to Conner Lee, who was on the other
team. No one got mad.

Gradually I found myself relaxing and having fun.

Recess passed in a ﬂash, and the basketball game contin-
ued at lunch. The teams were pretty evenly balanced, so
the game was close. But it never got too serious. Once,
Mercedes accidentally passed the ball to Conner on the

Jacqueline Pearce

other team, and he made a basket. Later, he made a joke
of pretending he was going to pass the ball to her. She
snatched it from his hands, thanked him and made an
exaggerated shot that shouldn’t have gone anywhere near
the hoop. It dropped straight through. The game ﬁnished
with everyone laughing. I walked back to class realizing
that I’d been having so much fun I’d forgotten to worry
about anything.

After school I left with Mercedes. We walked side by

side, and the farther we got from the school, the lighter
I felt. As we neared the apartment building where she
lived, a bang startled us both. Up ahead a puﬀ of smoke
lingered on the sidewalk, and we caught a glimpse of
two high-school-aged boys ducking around the far cor-
ner of the building. Fireworks. They’d started already,
and Halloween was still over a month away.

“That reminds me,” Mercedes said. “Do you go trick-

or-treating?”

“I went last year.” Last year Lisa and I had dressed

as vampires and stayed out until our treat bags were too
heavy to carry. I always looked forward to Halloween,
but  this  year  I  didn’t  know  what  I  was  going  to  do.
I  didn’t  want  to  end  up  trick-or-treating  on  my  own
or  with  Marcus.  How  pathetic  would  that  look?  Did
Mercedes trick-or-treat or did she think we were way
too old?

Dog House Blues

“There’s also ﬁreworks on the school ﬁeld,” I added.

Maybe that sounded more mature. Lisa and I usually
went to watch the ﬁreworks with one of our parents after
trick-or-treating. Last year Marcus had come too, for the
ﬁrst time.

“You mean real ﬁreworks?” Mercedes asked. “Not just

kid stuﬀ?”

“Yeah, big ﬁreworks, and music too. ”
“Wow, that sounds fun!” Mercedes looked excited.

“Maybe we could meet there Halloween night.”

“Sure,” I said, feeling a spark light inside me. That

morning I’d thought today would be a terrible day. I’d
thought that Mercedes wouldn’t like me after talking
to Kyla. But Mercedes had still been friendly, I’d had
more fun at school than I’d had since Lisa left, and now
Mercedes wanted to do something with me on Halloween.
Maybe things were going to be okay after all.

“Maybe we can meet some other kids too,” Mercedes

went on.

Other kids? Did she mean Kyla?
“Sure. That sounds like fun,” I said, but the spark

inside me dimmed slightly.

At the entrance to her apartment building, Mercedes

pulled a key on a string from inside her shirt and unlocked
the glass front door. As I followed her into the building, I
noticed a small sign that read No Pets Allowed.

Jacqueline Pearce

“Come on,” Mercedes said, taking my arm and lead-

ing me through the lobby to the elevator. “We’re on the
fourth ﬂoor. My mom’s probably home by now.”

Mercedes’ apartment was bright and freshly painted.

The walls of the entrance hallway were a friendly yellow,
and a painting of red ﬂowers in a green ﬁeld hung on the
wall by the door.

“Hello there!” Mercy’s mom greeted us as we walked

into the living room. She was an older version of
Mercedes, tall and slim with long black kinky hair, but
hers was pulled back and clipped behind her neck.

“Mom, this is Erika,” Mercedes said. “We’re working

on a project together.”

“That’s great, girls.” Mercy’s mom had a warm, wel-

coming smile. “Can I get you a snack ﬁrst?”

We followed her into the kitchen and sat down at the

small round wooden kitchen table. A bunch of large red
ﬂowers in a vase in the middle of the table looked like
they had been picked out of the painting back in the hall.
Mercy’s mom set a plate of cookies in front of us.

“Apple juice? Milk?” she asked, opening the refrigera-

tor door.

“Juice, please,” Mercedes and I answered in unison,

then looked at each other and laughed.

“How’d your job interview go?” Mercedes asked

her mom.

Dog House Blues

“Pretty good, I think.” Mercy’s mom placed two

glasses on the table in front of us and poured the juice
into them. She smiled at Mercy.

“Mom’s looking for a new job,” Mercedes explained

to me. “The computer company Dad works for had an
opening here, and that’s why we moved, but Mom had to
give up her old job.

“We had to give up a lot of things,” she added under

her breath, so her mom couldn’t hear. She bent forward
as she said this so that her long hair hid her face. Until
this moment I had never seen her look anything but con-
ﬁdent and happy, and I wondered what else it was they’d
had to give up. Before I could say anything, Mercedes
looked up again, a smile back on her face.

“Come on,” she said after we’d ﬁnished our snack.

“We better get to work.”

Mercedes’ bedroom was full of stuﬀed animals lined

up on the bed against the wall, leaning against each
other between books on shelves and lying in corners on
the ﬂoor where they must have fallen. She had dogs of all
sizes, cats, mice, bears, rabbits, a horse, an elephant and
one long red-and-blue-striped snake.

“Wow!” I said. “You sure like stuﬀed animals.”
Mercedes grinned and shrugged.
“It was a bit of a ﬁght persuading my mom and dad

to let me bring them all,” she admitted. “My dad was

Jacqueline Pearce

afraid we’d have to order an extra moving truck just for
my stuﬀ.”

I laughed.
“So what do you want to do for our presentation?” she

asked, ﬂopping down on top of the bed. She pushed a
few of the bigger stuﬀed creatures aside to make some
room for me beside her.

“I don’t know,” I said, leaning back against a giant

brown dog. I wondered if I should make a joke about
the apartment building not allowing pets and her hav-
ing so many. But maybe she didn’t like real animals.
Real  animals  were  not  always  cute  and  cuddly.  They
were  smelly,  they  left  hairs  everywhere,  they  pulled
spaghetti oﬀ stoves, they used the toilet as their drink-
ing fountain and your whole neighborhood as their toi-
let, you had to pick up after them, they caused certain
people  to  call  you  names…No,  I  would  not  mention
pets.

“It has to be something interesting,” Mercedes was

saying. “And we need some good visual stuﬀ to go with
it—like a poster or costumes or something.”

“We could do Ancient Greece and dress like ancient

Greeks—or ancient geeks, more like,” I joked. If we
stood in front of the class wearing togas, that’s what we’d
look like for sure.

Mercedes laughed.

Dog House Blues

“We could do Japan and make the whole country out

of papier-mâché,” she suggested. “Or we could do a book
and make the characters out of plasticine or something.”

“Japan might be good,” I said, sitting up straight. “It’s

an island, so it would be easier to make a model of it. We
could get a ﬂag too.”

“We could even bring some sushi,” Mercedes sug-

gested. Suddenly she leapt up.

“I better make a list,” she said.
Our eyes met, and a spark of excitement passed

between us. The project was coming together.

he next few weeks ﬂew by. Halloween had seemed

so far away, and now it was almost here. School

was busy, and several afternoons after school, Mercedes
and I got together to research Japan, work on our model
and talk about Halloween and other things. I hardly
noticed the dark looks Kyla Tupper gave me whenever I
passed her desk.

It rained the day before Halloween. I walked into the

classroom and heard Kyla’s voice.

“What’s that smell?”
“I don’t know,” Victoria answered loudly. “But it’s dis-

gusting!”

“It stinks like a wet dog,” Kyla complained.
My face burned.
A couple of people snickered. I glanced at Mercedes,

but she didn’t seem to be paying any attention.

Dog House Blues

“That’s enough, Kyla,” Miss Chien said as she walked

into the room. Her voice was light, but there was steel
behind it. “I’m sure we’re all a little damp this morning.”

“What’s with Kyla and dogs?” Mercedes whispered to

me later as we were working on math problems.

My heart thumped, but I shrugged and rolled my eyes

as if to say, Who knows with Kyla? If Mercedes didn’t
know what was going on, I wasn’t going to be the one to
ﬁll her in.

“Aren’t you tired of coming to my place?” Mercedes

asked after school. “Couldn’t we go to your house today?”

I thought quickly. If we went to my house, there really

would be the smell of wet dog—not to mention a house
full of dogs.

“My little brother is too annoying,” I said. “We wouldn’t

be able to get anything done with him around.” I didn’t
mention that Marcus would still be at after-school care.

“He wouldn’t bother me,” Mercedes said with a shrug,

“but if you’d rather go to my place again, that’s okay.” She
hesitated for a moment. “I don’t have any paint, though.
We didn’t buy any because you said you had some.”

“Oh, yeah. I keep forgetting to bring it.”
We stepped out into the rain and raised umbrellas over

our heads. Mercedes jumped over a puddle, laughing, but
after that we lapsed into silence. Was Mercedes annoyed
about the paint? Was she mad that I hadn’t invited her

Jacqueline Pearce

over to my house? Maybe I could ask Dad to take the
dogs out tomorrow afternoon, and Mercedes could
come over while they were out. But what about the dog
hairs, the dog toys, the dog dishes? There was no way I
could get home ahead of Mercedes to clean up and hide
things. And what if Dad came home with the dogs while
Mercedes was still there?

A loud screech made me jump. Up ahead on the road,

what was left of a screaming ﬁrework ﬁzzled in the rain.
I scanned the street around us, afraid that another ﬁre-
work might be heading our way. Mercedes didn’t seem at
all worried.

We crossed the street at the next intersection, leaping

out of the way as a passing truck sent a spray of puddle
water through the air.

“That was close!” I said with a laugh.
“Yeah,” Mercedes said. “I hope it’s not raining on

Halloween,” she added.

It was hard to believe that the next day was Halloween

already, and the following week our class presentations
were due.

We shook our umbrellas oﬀ before ducking into

Mercedes’ building.

“Let’s go over our checklist,” Mercedes said once we

were in her room. She picked up a piece of paper and a
pencil from her desk and began reading out the items.

Dog House Blues

“Model.”
We both looked at the lumpy arm of gray newspaper

sitting on a board on the other end of Mercedes’ desk.
We’d  discovered  that  Japan  was  not  as  simple  as  one
round island. The model didn’t look like much now, but
once  the  green  of  the  mountains,  the  blue  of  the  sur-
rounding  sea  and  the  gray  of  the  city  bumps  were  all
painted in, I was sure it would be more impressive.

“It’s almost ﬁnished,” I said. “If we don’t get it painted

today or tomorrow, we still have the weekend.”

“Don’t forget, tomorrow’s Halloween,” Mercedes said.

“And we still need drying time.”

“We’ll get it done by Saturday,” I insisted.
“Okay.” Mercedes made a tick mark on the paper.
“Flag,” she continued. “I’ve got that.” She unrolled a

white piece of cloth with a red circle in the center.

“That looks good,” I said. “Where did you ﬁnd it?”
“A store downtown,” Mercedes said. “My mom took

me there last weekend.” Mercedes read out the next item.
“Sushi.”

“I’ll get that Sunday night,” I said quickly. “There’s a

place near us.”

“Great,” Mercedes said, penciling another check mark.
“Now, most important is the speech part.” She looked

up from the list. “We should practice what we’re going to
say so we can say it without reading from anything.”

Jacqueline Pearce

Mercedes rolled oﬀ the bed and tacked the ﬂag to the

top of the bulletin board above her desk.

“Japan is made up of four main islands,” she began,

with a dramatic gesture at the papier-mâché lumps. She
launched into the speech, and I found myself leaning
forward to listen even though I already knew everything
she was going to say.

When it was my turn, I fumbled for my copy of the

speech, which Mercedes had typed up on her computer
and printed out. My part was small, but I still had to
read it.

“That’s okay,” Mercedes assured me after I’d ﬁnished

and apologized for not having it memorized yet. “You’ll
be ready by Monday.”

I wasn’t so sure.
“Look,” I said. “It feels like you’ve done most of the

work with the speech. The paints are at my house. Why
don’t I take the model home, and I’ll ﬁnish painting it?”

“I don’t think you can carry it,” Mercedes pointed

out.

“I’ll call my dad and ask him to pick me up.”

Mercy was talking to her mom in the kitchen when I
made the phone call to Dad.

“Don’t bring the dogs,” I whispered into the phone.

The last thing I needed was three dogs trying to cram

om and Dad leaned back on the couch with their

feet up on the coﬀee table, the

on in front of

them. The dogs and Marcus lay on the ﬂoor. Jenny and
Muﬃn were curled into tight circles, one large and one
small, their noses tucked in under their paws. Marcus lay
with his head resting on Dumpster, who was stretched
out like a huge bolster. I had just ﬁnished loading the
dishwasher and wandered into the living room. I resisted
the temptation to ﬂop down in the big chair and join the
others.

“I’m going to my room to do homework,” I announced.
Mom looked up and gave me a tired smile.
“Okay, dear.”
I returned to the kitchen to collect the acrylic paints

and brushes from the craft supply cupboard, ﬁlled an
empty yogurt container with water and headed to my
room, shutting the door behind me. The papier-mâché

Dog House Blues

lumps waited on my desk, looking like nothing rec-
ognizable. If I hadn’t forgotten to bring the paints to
school the past two days, Mercedes and I would have
had the model painted already. But now it was up to
me to get it looking like a country rather than a pile of
dried newspaper mush.

I poured a bit of green paint into a plastic container

and  dipped  in  the  biggest  brush.  I’d  paint  the  whole
thing green ﬁrst, let it dry, then add the next colors and
the  smaller  details.  The  green  went  on  fairly  quickly,
and  I  speeded  up  the  drying  time  with  a  hair  dryer.
The islands that make up Japan are close together, so
I had to paint the surrounding blue of the water care-
fully. Once the green and blue were ﬁnished, I paused
to survey my work. Not bad. Now it really did look like
islands.

Next came the detail work. I picked up a smaller

brush and dipped it into gray paint. We’d made square
lumps to represent buildings at the points were the
major cities were located. I painted Tokyo, the largest
city, ﬁrst. I stepped back and looked at the model again.
What would Mercedes think? I knew her well enough
now to know that she would probably say something
positive whether she liked it or not, but I wanted her to
be pleased for real. If our presentation went well, maybe
our friendship would too.

Jacqueline Pearce

By bedtime the model was nearly ﬁnished. It just

needed a few small touches, which I could do the next
day after school. I snuggled in under the bed covers with
Jenny warming my feet. I felt satisﬁed and hopeful. The
model looked good, and I knew the presentation would
be a success. The sound of rain on the roof was a com-
forting drone. In the distance, thunder clapped. Jenny
whimpered, and I reached my hand out from under the
covers and stroked her head.

“It’s okay, girl,” I soothed sleepily. “It’s only faraway

thunder. It won’t hurt you.”

It was still raining the next day, Halloween. The grade
sixes ﬁled into the classroom, wet and dripping. A couple
of girls wore witches’ hats, one kid sported a tall, droopy,
striped, Cat-in-the-Hat-style top hat, and one of the
boys had a creepy ghoul mask over his face, but other-
wise it was a normal morning—except that a stranger
stood at the front of the room. She was an older woman
with short-cropped gray-blond hair.

“Good morning, boys and girls,” the woman said as we

settled into our desks. “My name is Mrs. Burton. Miss
Chien is sick today, so I’ll be ﬁlling in for her.”

There were a few sounds of disappointment, as Miss

Chien had promised to bring Halloween candy today,
but there was also a hum of excitement. A few voices

Dog House Blues

went on whispering about Halloween plans, ignoring
the substitute teacher altogether. A few rows in front
of me, Kyla’s and Victoria’s heads leaned toward each
other slightly, as if they were trying to whisper some-
thing without being noticed. A seed of unease sprouted
in my stomach.

We didn’t get as much work done that morning as we

usually did, and there was an extra buzz of noise, like the
sound of an electric current, which Miss Chien would
never have allowed. Outside the classroom windows,
the sky was dark and the rain poured down. We had to
stay inside at recess and lunch, and with the teacher out
of the room during the lunch hour, the noise increased.
A few small groups hunched over board games. Kyla
and her friends huddled in a corner, their backs to the
rest of the class, forming a wall that blocked out every-
one else. Mercedes sat with them for a while, then came
over to join Annie and me in a game of cards.

“Are you going trick-or-treating tonight?” Annie

asked us.

“You don’t think we’re too old?” I asked. I hadn’t

planned to dress up, but I still had the previous year’s
vampire costume if I needed it.

“We’re meeting at the ﬁreworks,” Mercedes said.
“Hey, that sounds like a good idea,” Annie said. “We

could meet by the big tree.”

Jacqueline Pearce

A girl who was standing nearby came to join us.

“You’re going to the ﬁreworks?” she asked.

I felt a twinge of disappointment as Mercedes and

Annie told her about the night’s plans, but I pushed it
aside. Mercedes was right. It would be fun with more
people. I should be happy about how things were turn-
ing out.

“Hit me,” Mercedes said as we returned to the card

game. Annie gave her another card.

“Hit me,” I said. Annie dealt me a card as well.
“Thirty-one!” I triumphantly ﬂipped my cards face

up on the desk in front of us.

A volley of shrieking laughs escaped from behind

Kyla’s wall, attracting the attention of everyone in the
room. What did they think was so funny? The unease
in my stomach stirred again.

“It’s your turn to deal,” Mercedes said with a nudge

to my arm. Absently, I picked up the cards and shuﬄed
them.

“Careful,” said Annie. “You’re going to bend them.”
I looked at the cards in my hands. I hadn’t realized

I’d been holding them so tightly.

When lunch hour was nearly over, I noticed a change

in the room. The evenly spread noise had shifted. I
looked up. A crowd had gathered around the bulletin
board at the back of the room.

Dog House Blues

“I wonder what’s going on,” Annie said.
“Let’s check it out,” Mercedes suggested, rising from

her seat.

We made our way to the back of the room, where

bursts of laughter, snorts and groans escaped from the
crowd. Conner Lee pulled away from the group and
headed back to his desk. A few more kids moved away as
we came close, making room for us to see.

Someone had added a new piece of paper to the board.

As I pushed in closer, I made out the words hand-printed
across the top of the sheet. Grade Six Report Card.
Underneath was a list of names in alphabetical order.
Beside each was a letter grade and a comment. My stom-
ach tightened, and a sense of dread crept through me as
I read the ﬁrst line.

Victoria Abbott—A—Smart, good sense of style, popular.
My eyes scanned down the list until they found my

own name.

Erika Leveson—D—Stupid, less style than a sheepdog,

deﬁnitely unpopular.

“Whoa, that’s low!” one of the boys said with a

laugh.

“Hey, I got a worse grade than you,” another boy

announced as if he was proud of the achievement.

I hardly heard the voices as I pulled away from the

bulletin board. My face was burning, and I felt sick. I

Jacqueline Pearce

tried to force a smile to my face to show I thought it was
all a joke, but my cheeks felt stiﬀ. I had to get out of
there.

“Woof! Woof!” someone called after me as I headed

toward the back door of the classroom.

The bell went to end lunch hour, and I returned to

my desk, avoiding people’s eyes. The rest of the after-
noon dragged by. My stomach still felt queasy, and I
wished I could disappear. The buzz in the room contin-
ued, but the substitute teacher didn’t seem to notice. I
didn’t want to look at Mercedes. What was she think-
ing? She whispered something to me once, but I didn’t
catch what it was and didn’t ask her to repeat it. Maybe
she’d think even worse of me for ignoring her, but I
couldn’t help it. I wanted a wall between me and every-
one else. I wanted to be a turtle with a shell to hide
inside. Once, later in the afternoon, I looked up from
my work to catch Kyla staring at me with a smug trium-
phant look. She’d done it. She’d gotten back at me for
being friends with Mercedes.

When the day was ﬁnally over, I kept my head down

and riﬄed through my desk, waiting for everyone else
to leave the class before I headed for the door. It was
only then that I glanced at the back wall. Someone had
removed the report card from the bulletin board. If only
it could be that easy to remove it from inside me. There

ercedes was waiting for me outside the classroom.

She gave me a careful look.

“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Of course,” I said, forcing a smile. I walked past her,

wanting to step away from her questions. She hesitated,
then caught up to me.

“That report card was mean,” she said bluntly.
“People thought it was pretty funny,” I said, not look-

ing at her.

“Not everyone.”
I kept walking, but her words stayed with me as we

left the school. Mercedes hadn’t been one of the ones
laughing. Other people had walked away too.

“You know,” Mercedes continued, “people are going to

be too busy with Halloween to even remember that stu-
pid report card.”

Maybe she was right. It was Halloween that night.

Dog House Blues

Who would care about some dumb made-up list?
Mercedes didn’t seem to care. I felt a bit better.

“Have you done any painting on the model?” she asked.
I sighed, shoved the report card out of my mind—or

maybe just out of sight—and smiled. The model, at least,
was working out well.

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s almost ﬁnished, and I think it

looks really good.”

“Great,” Mercedes said, grinning back at me.
We stopped at the corner outside the school grounds,

and Mercedes took hold of my arm.

“Listen,” she said, looking me in the eyes. “You

shouldn’t care about what some stupid person says on a
piece of paper.”

My stomach twisted as the report card leapt out of

its hiding place in my mind. The advice was easy for
Mercedes to give. I didn’t want to care what Kyla said,
but I couldn’t help it. Besides, Mercedes was friends with
Kyla, wasn’t she? Maybe she didn’t realize it was Kyla
who was behind the report card.

“That stupid person is Kyla Tupper,” I said. Maybe

Mercedes wouldn’t believe me. I didn’t have any proof.

“Probably,” Mercedes said simply. “I think she’s jeal-

ous of you,” she continued.

My mouth opened and closed like a ﬁsh’s. Jealous of me?

Kyla Tupper?

Jacqueline Pearce

My mind was whirling as I walked the rest of the way

home after Mercedes and I separated. Kyla jealous of
me? What had she and Mercedes talked about? What
had Kyla said about me? And Mercedes still liked me?

The three dogs skidded across the kitchen ﬂoor to

greet me as I walked into the house. I tried to ignore
them, but Muﬃn and Dumpster barked, demand-
ing my attention. I bent down and petted the tops of
their heads, absently ﬂicking a bit of green paper oﬀ
Dumpster’s fur. Jenny licked my face, and I smelled her
doggy breath. My face probably smelled like dog breath
now. I pushed Jenny away. This was the exact kind of
thing that got me into trouble. Why couldn’t the dogs
ever leave me alone?

I kicked oﬀ my shoes and waded through dog bodies,

heading to my bedroom. Jenny tried to follow me into
the room, but I closed the door in front of her nose. I
needed time to think.

Finally alone, I wanted to ﬂop right down on my bed,

but what I saw on the ﬂoor stopped me cold.

Bits of green and blue and pieces of gray newspaper

were strewn all over the room. At ﬁrst I didn’t under-
stand what I was looking at. My eyes went to the spot on
my desk where I’d left the Japan model. It wasn’t there.
I remembered the green piece of paper I’d ﬂicked oﬀ
Dumpster’s fur. Then I realized what had happened.

Dog House Blues

“Dumpster! No!”
I felt sick. It couldn’t be true—not after all that hard

work. But it was. The model was destroyed. What was
Mercedes going to say? She’d hate me now for sure.

It was too much for one day. I dove onto my bed,

buried my head in my pillow and cried.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come with us?” Dad
asked at the supper table. Mom still wasn’t home from
work, and Dad and Marcus were planning to head out
trick-or-treating as soon as they were ﬁnished eating.
Marcus was already wearing his red and blue Spider-
man costume, and he’d dropped several pieces of maca-
roni and cheese down the front. Dumpster was under
the table, licking up the pieces that had fallen wide of
Marcus. He brushed against my leg, and I shoved him
away with my foot.

“Yes,” I said sharply. “I’m sure.”
Dad gave me a look.
“Is something bothering you?” he asked. “You haven’t

said much this whole meal, and you haven’t eaten much
either. Are you feeling sick?”

“No,” I said, “yes. I mean, maybe I am feeling a bit

sick. I don’t think I’m going to go to the ﬁreworks
either.”

“Is it the ﬂu?” Dad sounded concerned.

Jacqueline Pearce

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I just don’t feel well.”
I didn’t want to try to explain. I just wanted every-

one to leave me alone. I pushed my chair back from the
table.

“I’m going to go lie down for a while.”
“All right,” Dad said, his brow creased. “I’ll look in on

you before we leave.”

In my room, I lay down on my bed and turned to the

wall so I didn’t have to face anything. I’d picked up the
mess before going to supper and dumped it in my gar-
bage basket. The empty board, with its remaining scraps
of color and papier-mâché pulp, was leaning against the
side of my desk. Dumpster had pulled the whole thing
oﬀ the desk before tearing it to shreds and gobbling up
most of it. Why had he done it? It wasn’t food. It was just
ﬂour, water, glue and paint. Okay, ﬂour was food, but
not when it was mixed with the rest. No one sane would
think it was eatable.

I turned into my pillow and groaned. Why did

Dumpster have to be so obsessed with food? I wished
Mom had never brought him home.

Something scratched at my bedroom door. Jenny

wanted in. Why couldn’t she leave me alone for once?
Why couldn’t they all leave me alone?

“I hate dogs!” I yelled into my pillow.

e’re going now,” Dad said at my bedroom door.

“The dogs are outside. Can you let them inside in

a few minutes?”

“Sure,” I said, still facing the wall. I could feel Dad in

the doorway.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked. “Do you want us

to wait until Mom comes home?”

“No, I’m okay.” Reluctantly I rolled over and gave

him a weak smile to prove I wasn’t at death’s door or
anything. It had grown dark outside my window, and I
hadn’t turned on any lights in my room, so I couldn’t see
Dad’s face very well. The light from the hallway behind
him turned him into a silhouette.

“And you’ll get up to let the dogs in?” he asked again.

“Before the ﬁreworks start?”

“Yes, Dad. I’m not an invalid. I’m just feeling a bit

sick. I’ll be ﬁne in a while.”

“

Jacqueline Pearce

“All right, then.” He stepped away, and the hall light

fell on his face. He gave me a goofy grin and raised his
eyebrows. “Happy Halloween!”

I grinned back at him like he hoped I would. As soon

as he was gone, the smile dropped from my face.

How was I going to tell Mercedes the model was

destroyed? I couldn’t say that my dog ate it. What would
she think? And what if I didn’t tell her? There wasn’t
enough time to make another one. It needed days just
for the papier-mâché to dry. She was going to think I let
her down, that I wasn’t reliable. She was going to believe
everything Kyla told her about me.

Why was this happening to me? My whole life was

getting worse and worse. I hated everything! I hated
school. I hated everyone in the class. I hated the dogs. I
hated me. Kyla was right. I was a loser.

Distant sounds pricked the edge of my mind, but I paid

no attention. The dogs probably wanted in, but I didn’t care.
I buried my face in my pillow and let the tears come again.

“Erika, are you sleeping? Why didn’t you go out?”

It was Mom. She stood in the doorway for a moment,

then walked into my room, switched on the lamp on my
bedside table and sat down on the bed beside me.

“Are you feeling all right?” she asked, reaching out to

touch my forehead. “You do feel a bit hot.”

Dog House Blues

“I’m okay,” I started to say, but a dry sob heaved up

through my words.

“What’s wrong, honey?” Mom’s voice was soft, con-

cerned.

For a second I struggled to get my shell back in place,

to show her that I was ﬁne. But she was so close, and so
ready to sympathize. The next thing I knew I was ﬂing-
ing myself into her arms and crying like a baby.

She let me cry, patting my back and making sooth-

ing sounds as she hugged me. It felt so good to be in her
arms, to feel safe, to let go.

“Now, tell me what’s happened,” Mom said when my

tears began to slow. Her voice was gentle but ﬁrm.

I took a deep breath and told her everything. I started

with how I felt about Lisa moving away and the teasing,
and I ended with the Japan project and how Dumpster
had ruined it.

“Now Mercedes is going to hate me too,” I sobbed.
“I’m sure Mercedes will understand,” Mom said, pat-

ting my back.

“No she won’t! She lives in an apartment building

where no pets are allowed.”

Mom gave a little laugh. “What does that have to do

with anything?”

“I don’t think she likes animals. She’s going to hate me

just like Kyla does.”

Jacqueline Pearce

“Listen, Erika.” Mom put her hands on my shoulders

and held me so that I had to look into her eyes. “Kyla
has been acting like a bully, and bullies put other people
down to make themselves feel better. Nothing she says is
real. She’s just trying to feel better about herself.”

I thought for a moment. “Mercedes said she thinks

Kyla is jealous of me.”

Mom smiled.
“And she has plenty to be jealous of,” Mom said ﬁrmly.

Then she ruﬄed the hair on the top of my head with one
hand. “Maybe she’s even jealous of your three wonder-
ful dogs.”

“Ha!”
The idea of Kyla being jealous of Dumpster, Jenny and

Muﬃn was deﬁnitely oﬀ base, but it made me smile. I
felt a bit better.

A high voice pierced the quiet of the house and was

joined by Dumpster’s deep bark and dog feet skittering
across the kitchen ﬂoor.

“Hello!” Dad called. “We’re back.”
Marcus burst into the room, holding out his loaded

treat bag.

“Look! Look at all I got!”
Dumpster and Muﬃn followed at his heels.
“Wow,” Mom said as Marcus held the bag under

her nose. She got up oﬀ my bed, pushing Dumpster’s

Dog House Blues

muzzle away from the treat bag. Then she began ushering
Marcus and the others out of my room.

“Who’s for hot chocolate?” she asked.
“Me! Me!” Marcus chorused.
Mom turned back at the door.
“Erika?”
I swung my legs oﬀ the bed. “Sure, I’ll have some.”
I was suddenly tired of feeling sorry for myself. I had

to get up and rejoin the world sooner or later. Might as
well be now.

I went to the bathroom to rinse my face and joined the

others in the kitchen.

“How were the ﬁreworks?” Mom asked Dad as she

poured milk into a pot on the stovetop.

“Not bad,” Dad answered.
Fireworks. Had they happened already? Had Mercedes

wondered where I was?

“Boom!” Marcus made the sound of a ﬁrework explod-

ing as he tossed one of his candies into the air above his
head. Something tugged at the back of my mind.

“Boom!” Marcus said again.
In the distance outside the house, a real ﬁrework

exploded, like an echo.

Suddenly that tug at the back of my mind leapt into

the front. Jenny! She was scared of loud noises. She hated
ﬁreworks. I looked down at Dumpster and Muﬃn, who

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100

sat as if they too were waiting for hot chocolate. I spun
around.

Where was Jenny?
With a sinking feeling, I remembered that Dad had

asked me to let the dogs inside before the ﬁreworks
started, and I hadn’t even bothered to get up.

“Mom,” I asked quietly, “were the dogs outside when

you came home?”

“Sure, Muﬃn and Dudley were,” she answered

absently as she stirred the heating milk.

“Did you see Jenny?” I asked, swallowing a lump that

had formed in my throat.

“No. I thought she was inside.”
Dad looked up. “Didn’t you let them in, Erika?”
Mom stopped stirring and looked at me.
“Where’s Jenny?” Marcus asked.

enny! Jenny!”

Dad shone the ﬂashlight over the neighbors’ yards,

illuminating bushes, forgotten toys and burned-out jack-
o’-lanterns. There was a wet sheen over everything from
the rain we’d had earlier, but at least it wasn’t raining
now.

“Jenny!” I called again. But there was no answering

bark, no patter of dog feet on the sidewalk. I kicked at
the blackened cylinder of an exploded ﬁrework. How
could I have been so stupid? I knew Jenny was afraid of
noises. Why hadn’t I remembered to bring her inside? I
knew the answer. It was because I was too busy feeling
sorry for myself.

I was so worried about making new friends that I’d for-

gotten about my old friend. She was always there to greet
me after school, always happy to see me. She was there
on my bed each night, keeping me company, listening,

“

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102

making me feel better. And what kind of friend had I
been in return? With a sick feeling, I remembered pushing
Jenny away and shutting my bedroom door in her face.

“Jenny!”
Tears stung my eyes as we rounded the end of the block

and there was still no sign of her. What if we couldn’t
ﬁnd her? What if she was hurt somewhere and couldn’t
come to us? What if I never saw her again, and her last
memory of me was how I was mean to her? She wouldn’t
have understood that it was other things I was mad at,
not her.

“Excuse me,” Dad said as a man and a kid in a monster

costume walked toward us on the sidewalk. The kid held
onto his dad’s hand, looking tired. His monster mask
was pushed oﬀ his face and hung down the back of his
head like a hood. He clutched a heavy treat bag in his
opposite hand.

“Have you seen a brown Lab-type dog?” Dad asked

the man.

“No, sorry,” the man said, barely pausing.
“Can I give you my phone number,” Dad called after

the man, “in case you see the dog?”

“Sure.” The man sounded reluctant, but he stopped,

and Dad pressed a business card into his hand. I knew
that it had our home phone number on it. The man
looked at me.

103

Dog House Blues

“Your dog?” he asked.
I nodded, swallowing a lump in my throat.
“What type of dog did you say it was?” he asked.
“A brown Lab mix,” I said. “Her name’s Jenny.”
“We think she was scared by ﬁreworks,” Dad added.

“She must have jumped our fence.”

“Hmm,” said the man. “It’s not a good night for dogs

to be out.”

“We know,” Dad said. “It was a mistake.”
I looked down.
There was a pause, and I felt the man looking at me,

guessing it had been my fault the dog was left outside.

“Can we go, Dad?” the boy whined, pulling on the

man’s arm.

“Sure, just a minute.”
The man turned back to us as I looked up. “I’ll let my

wife know to keep an eye out for your dog too.”

“Thanks,” Dad said, and I mumbled the same.
“I hope you ﬁnd your dog,” the man called back over

his shoulder as they walked away.

We kept looking for over an hour, but still no Jenny. It

was getting late, and we passed few other people. From
time to time we heard the explosion of more ﬁreworks
somewhere in the neighborhood. At one point, a fright-
ened cat dashed out in front of us and raced across the
road. I hoped it would be okay and that it hadn’t been

Jacqueline Pearce

104

scared far from its home. No pets should be left outside
on Halloween.

The cat hid in the dark shadows under a parked car.

Was Jenny hiding somewhere too? Was she too fright-
ened to come out?

“Let’s check in with Mom again,” Dad said, stopping

under a streetlight and taking out his cell phone. “Jenny
might have turned up at home by now.”

I felt a small spark of hope as Dad dialed the num-

ber. Maybe Dad was right. Maybe Jenny had come back
on her own. Maybe while we were out here in the cold,
looking for her, she was warm and safe at home with
Mom and Marcus.

“Any sign of her?” Dad asked into the phone.
“No.” His forehead creased. “We haven’t seen her

either.”

The sick feeling in my stomach worsened.
Dad glanced at his watch, then at me.
“Yes, we’ll be home in a few minutes,” he said and

clicked the phone oﬀ.

“We can’t go home yet,” I told him. He wasn’t giving

up, was he?

“It’s getting late, Erika. We can’t stay out looking all

night.”

“But Jenny’s still out here somewhere. She might be

hurt.” My voice started to rise, and I felt tears welling up.

105

Dog House Blues

Dad put his hands on my shoulders.
“Look,” he said. “We’ll stop at home and warm up,

then I’ll take the car out and keep looking for a while
longer.”

“Okay,” I said, blinking back the tears.

It was ten o’clock by the time we got home. Mom had hot
tea ready for us.

“I’ll drive around and look for a while,” Mom oﬀered.

“You two stay here and warm up, and you can get ready
for bed, Erika.”

“But Mom, I want to come with you. If Jenny’s scared,

she might only come if she hears my voice.”

Mom hesitated.
“All right,” she said ﬁnally. “But if we don’t ﬁnd her by

eleven, we’re coming home.”

I brought my tea with me out to the van. Mom backed

the van out of the driveway, and we began cruising slowly
through the neighborhood, stopping partway down each
block to call and listen. Once, a dog barked from inside a
house. It sounded familiar.

“It might be her,” I suggested desperately.
Mom parked the car and got out.
“Stay here,” she told me. “It’s a bit late to be bothering

people, but I’ll give it a try.”

I watched her walk up the stairs to the door of the

Jacqueline Pearce

106

house and knock. My stomach tensed. I gripped the door
handle next to me, ready to jump out of the van at the
ﬁrst sign of Jenny. After a moment, the front porch light
went on and a man appeared at the door, holding a large
black dog by the collar. The dog strained against the
man’s grip and barked again. The man quieted him.

I heard Mom apologize and begin to explain, but then

I tuned out. The dog was not Jenny.

“Sorry, dear,” Mom said as she climbed back into the

van.

She started the motor again, and we continued to drive.

I peered out the side window, my eyes roving intently
over the yards. If I were a scared dog, where would I be
hiding? I willed my eyes to see beyond the shadows—to
see the shape of Jenny by a tree or a fence.

“Stop the van!” I called to Mom.
“Do you see her?”
“I don’t know.”
Mom pulled over again, and I opened my door.
“Jenny,” I called. “Jenny!”
Nothing. Just a shadow.
Mom looked at the digital clock illuminated on the

van dashboard.

“It’s almost eleven,” she said apologetically. “We’re

going to have to go home. It’s too late to be calling in the
street now. People are going to be trying to sleep.”

107

Dog House Blues

“Just a little bit longer?” I pleaded.
“Sorry, Erika.” Mom was ﬁrm. “I said we’d look until

eleven. Now it’s time to call it a night.”

“But Jenny’s still out there. What if she’s hurt?”
“She could be just ﬁne,” Mom soothed. “If she showed

up in someone’s yard, they might have taken her inside
for the night. They could be planning to take her to the
animal shelter in the morning. She’s got an

tag on her

collar and an ear tattoo. The vet clinics and the shelter
are all closed now, but if someone brings her into one in
the morning, all they have to do is check her

on the

computer, and they’ll give us a call.”

“But our phone number’s on her tag,” I pointed out. “If

someone found her, they could call us.”

“Maybe they think it’s too late to call now,” Mom sug-

gested. “Maybe we’ll get a call ﬁrst thing in the morn-
ing.”

I wanted to believe her. I wanted to believe that Jenny

was warm and safe in some nice person’s house, waiting
for morning to come. But it did not seem likely.

As Mom headed the van home, I stared out the win-

dow into the dark night. Jenny, where are you? My left
hand still clutched the mug with its now cold tea.

woke up the next morning with a jolt. Jenny was
missing. Worry ﬂooded back into my mind. I looked

at my bedside clock. 7:25. I had thought I’d be awake
the whole night listening for her, but I’d been sleep-
ing soundly for hours. I jumped out of bed and ran to
the kitchen. Maybe Jenny had come back on her own.
Maybe she was waiting outside right now. I unlocked
the door to the carport and ﬂung it open. No one was
there. I looked out to the yard, but it too was empty.

Behind me, dog feet skittered across the ﬂoor. I

turned back to the kitchen as Dumpster and Muﬃn
rushed up to my legs. I scratched their heads in a good-
morning greeting. But it was not a good morning. Jenny
was not with them. Dumpster and Muﬃn hurried past
me out to their dishes. They stood over their bowls,
mouths ready. The third bowl sat oﬀ to the side, dogless
and accusing.

109

Dog House Blues

It was my fault Jenny was lost.
I shut the kitchen door, leaving Dumpster and

Muﬃn outside, and glanced at the kitchen clock. It
was too early to call the animal shelter or vet oﬃces. I
could go out and look some more. If I took my bike, I
could cover more ground.

I changed quickly. I could hear Marcus talking to

himself in his bedroom, but Mom and Dad were still
in bed, so I left a note on the kitchen table. I poured
myself a quick glass of orange juice, then headed out,
Jenny’s leash in my pocket.

It had been a while since I’d ridden my bike, and my

legs felt clumsy and heavy.

“Jenny!” I called loudly. Then I remembered that

our neighbors might still be sleeping since it was
Saturday, and I quieted my voice and called more
softly, “Jenny!”

I set my feet down on the pavement and paused to

listen. Nothing.

I rode around our block, then the next one, calling

as I went. Occasionally a car passed me, but few people
seemed to be out yet. Around the next corner I noticed
someone on a bike farther down the street, but I didn’t
pay any attention.

“Jenny!” I called. “Jenny!”
Still no responding bark and no sign of Jenny anywhere.

Jacqueline Pearce

110

“Hey,” a tentative voice hailed, and I looked up to see

Conner Lee approaching on his bike. He had a heavy-
looking shoulder bag hanging from his side and a rolled
newspaper in his hand. He stopped his bike and tossed
the newspaper up to the top step of the house next to
us.

“It sounds like you’re looking for someone,” he said,

turning back to me. He didn’t meet my eyes, but his voice
was straightforward. It didn’t seem to hold any mockery
or hidden meaning.

I thought back to the last time I’d met Conner on the

street, in the summer when I had been walking all three
dogs. I’d assumed he wanted to make fun of me, and I’d
blown up at him. No wonder he didn’t want to meet my
eyes. I’d thought he would tell Kyla Tupper all about me
and the dog mess. But he hadn’t.

Other images of Conner ﬂashed through my mind—

the fun we’d had the day he’d played basketball with us;
the way he walked away from the mean report card, not
laughing at it; his nervousness when he stood at the front
of the class to give his hero speech. He’d even said a dog
could be a hero too.

I made a sudden decision to trust Conner.
“It’s my dog, Jenny,” I said. “She’s been missing since

last night.”

It was a relief to get the words out.

111

Dog House Blues

Conner seemed to forget his shyness and looked right

at me.

“Jenny. Is she the brown Lab?” he asked, concern and

interest showing in his eyes.

“Yes, that’s right,” I said, surprised that he knew.
I explained how I’d forgotten to let her in before the

ﬁreworks started.

He nodded.
“I remember you got mad at me for scaring her when I

threw a newspaper onto your driveway.”

“Oh yeah,” I said, reddening slightly. “Sorry about

that.”

“It’s okay,” he said. “I just mean, I remember that your

dog doesn’t like noises.”

There was a moment of awkward silence.
“I could help you look for her,” Conner said.
He’d oﬀered to help me with the dogs before, I real-

ized, but I’d been so worried about what people might
say and think about me that I hadn’t seen his oﬀer for
what it really was.

I managed a rueful smile.
“Thanks,” I said this time. “That would be great.”
We decided to split up to cover more ground. Conner

turned left at the next street, and I turned right. We
planned to meet again at the end of the block. This was
one of the streets I’d driven past with Mom the night

Jacqueline Pearce

112

before, but I wanted to look more carefully this time.
Maybe Jenny was still close by.

I pedaled slowly, scanning the bushes and other pos-

sible hiding spots around each house. If I were a scared
dog, where would I go? What would seem like a safe
place? I stopped the bike and called again, then listened.
Chickadees sounded their dee dee dee call from a nearby
tree. There was the distant sound of a car motor. A crow
cawed from the top of a telephone pole farther down the
street.

“Jenny!” I called again.
From the block over came the faint echo of Conner’s

call.

Then silence.
I pedaled farther, stopped, called.
Again, no answer.
Was she still in the neighborhood or had she gone

farther away? Could she have headed to the dog
park?

“Jenny!”
A small answering sound came to my ear, and my

heart jumped.

“Jenny!” I called more loudly.
Was that a bark?
“Jenny, is that you? Where are you, girl?”
I dropped my bike on the ground beside the sidewalk

113

Dog House Blues

and looked at the house in front of me. It was small and
old, with brown paint peeling oﬀ in spots. The front yard
was open, but there was a fence along both sides. The
sound seemed to be coming from the back of the house.
I started to walk around one side, then paused. Maybe I
should knock on the door ﬁrst.

An older woman answered my knock, looking friendly,

but wary.

“Excuse me,” I said. “Do you have a dog?”
“No.” She sounded surprised that I should ask.
“I lost my dog,” I told her, “and I think she might be

in your backyard.”

I explained that I’d been calling and heard the bark

come from behind her house.

“Go ahead and look,” the woman said, waving toward

a path that went around one side of the house. “I’ll meet
you out the back.”

She disappeared into the house, and I hurried down

the path toward the backyard. As I rounded the house,
the back door opened, and the woman appeared, button-
ing on a coat, her feet now in short rubber boots.

“I don’t see any dog,” she said, looking around her.
The yard was small with a green lawn down the mid-

dle and now-empty ﬂowerbeds along each side. Two
small fruit trees stood at the back beside an old wooden
shed that leaned slightly to one side.

looked at the small wooden shed, which was raised
slightly above the ground and had a tall step up

to the door. The woman and I hurried closer and bent
down to peer under the building. There was about a foot
of space, crammed with stacked planks of wood and stuﬀ
I couldn’t make out. It was dark, and the things blocked
my view.

“Jenny, are you there?”
Woof!
Relief and joy surged through me. It was Jenny. But

why wasn’t she coming out? Was she still scared? Was
she stuck?

“Come on, Jenny. Everything’s okay, girl. Come on

out.” I made my voice as calm and reassuring as I could.

I heard a rustle of movement, then a whimper. Then

silence again. Fear and panic stabbed at my chest. Maybe
Jenny was hurt.

Jacqueline Pearce

116

Ruﬀ! Ruﬀ!
The energy in her sudden barks encouraged me. Get

me out of here! she seemed to be saying. Perhaps she was
only stuck. I dropped down to my hands and knees on
the damp ground and placed my head in the gap under
the shed to get a better look. Light shone through from
the opposite end of the building in sections, silhouetting
the dark shapes of wooden boards and junk. The space
was damp and cold. Images of spiders and bugs crawled
through my head. I didn’t mind them when they kept to
their own space, but this probably was their space, and
I didn’t particularly relish the idea of intruding on it. I
started to pull my head back out, but Jenny whimpered
again.

“It’s okay, girl. I’m going to get you out of there.”
I began to inch forward through a gap between piles.
“Are you sure you want to do that?” the woman warned.

“There might be nails poking out of those boards. Who
knows what else is under there?”

“I’ll be careful,” I called back. My voice sounded loud

and close in the tight space.

I inched forward on my stomach, pushing aside what

felt like an old rake or some other kind of long wooden
garden tool. I squealed and closed my eyes as a net of
sticky cobwebs, thick with dust, pulled free from the
ﬂoor above me and dragged across my face.

117

Dog House Blues

“Are you all right?” The woman’s anxious voice sounded

distant through the wood around me.

“I’m okay.”
In the stillness under the shed, I could hear my breath-

ing, then a scratching sound. It must be Jenny, trying to
get to me.

“Stay there, girl. I’m coming,” I whispered and started

moving again.

I thought I heard the woman say something else, and

paused again. There was another voice too.

“Erika, is that you under there?” It was Conner.
“Conner!” I called over my shoulder. “Jenny’s stuck

under here.”

“Hold on a minute and I’ll help you,” Conner called

back.

The sound of his voice was louder now and coming

from low down, right behind me, where my legs stuck
out from under the shed.

For a second, I thought of how ridiculous I must

look—like a tornado had just dropped a tiny house on
half my body. But I pushed the thought aside. I didn’t
care what I looked like or what anyone thought of me. I
was going to rescue my dog.

“I don’t think two of you under my shed is a good

idea,” the lady was saying. “It might be dangerous. I’d
rather you both came out and I called for some help.”

Jacqueline Pearce

118

“Don’t worry,” Conner told her. “I’m not going under.

I’m just looking.”

“A skunk lived under the shed this past summer,” the

woman added.

A skunk! My eyes darted right and left, trying to pen-

etrate the darkness. I thought of the scratching sound I’d
heard earlier. It had been Jenny, hadn’t it? Or was I about
to get a face full of skunk spray?

“Hey, Erika,” Conner called to me again. “If you come

out and help me, I think we just need to get some of
these boards out of the way.”

I thought for a moment. I seemed to be wedged in

between two piles of boards, so maybe he was right.
Maybe Jenny had somehow knocked some of the wood
over once she was under here, and that had blocked her
from getting back out.

“Okay, I’m coming out,” I called back to Conner, then

to Jenny I whispered, “Hold on, girl. We’ll get you out.”

I squirmed backward until I was free from the shed

and got to my feet, dusting dirt, old leaves and bits of
wood from my clothes. It was a relief to be out of that
dark closed-in place, but Jenny was still under there.

Conner was bent forward, tugging on the end of an

old two-by-four.

“Is it all right if we pull these out?” he asked the

woman as the board slid toward him.

119

Dog House Blues

“Yes, of course. Go ahead. Do you want me to help?”

the woman asked.

“No, thanks,” I told her as I crouched down beside

Conner. “We can do it.”

I began pulling out another board.
“Careful,” Conner said. “We don’t want anything to

fall on Jenny.”

I froze for a moment, worried. Had something already

fallen on her? Was she hurt? I hadn’t been able to get a
proper look at her yet. Maybe she was hurt and wouldn’t
be able to get out even with the boards out of her way.

Woof! Jenny sounded impatient now. If she was hurt,

it mustn’t be too bad. I would call Mom as soon as we
got her out.

I grabbed hold of the wood again and pulled.
Conner and I were both grimy and a bit sweaty by the

time we had a pile of boards lying on the grass beside the
shed. I got down on my hands and knees again to peer
into the dark. I could see the shape of Jenny far to the
back. Now nothing big seemed to be blocking her way
out.

“Come on, Jenny. Come on!” I patted the ground

beside me.

Jenny barked once more, the sound loud and echoey

under the shed. Then, with a rustle and a scrabbling
sound, Jenny began to move. She was still in shadow, but

Jacqueline Pearce

120

she must have been inching forward on her belly, just as
I had done.

She stopped and whimpered slightly, and I called

more encouragement. “Come on, Jenny! You can do it.
Come on, girl.”

Conner and the woman also bent forward eagerly,

their eyes glued to the base of the shed, but they were
silent, waiting.

Jenny moved forward again.
Finally she was right in front of me, almost out. I

restrained myself from reaching out to touch her for fear
she might stop crawling. She was so close.

“Good girl, Jenny. Come on, Jenny.” I patted the

ground again.

Jenny’s brown furred head emerged, dark with dirt and

cobwebs. She barked with excitement and slithered the
rest of the way out. As soon as she was free, she jumped
to her feet and slathered my face with her tongue, her tail
wagging her whole body. I threw my arms around her
neck and buried my face in her thick dusty fur.

She was all right.

t wasn’t until after Jenny was safe that Conner and

I and the woman ﬁnally introduced ourselves. Her

name was Eva Miller, and she’d lived in that same house
for almost forty years.

“I don’t know if I should have someone block oﬀ the

bottom of the shed so that no more animals get stuck
under there, or if I should leave it open so that scared
animals have a place to hide,” she said, one hand rubbing
the top of her gray head.

“If you’ve got some nails and a hammer, I could use these

old boards to block it oﬀ for you,” Conner suggested.

“Thank you, dear. I’ll think about it,” she said, smil-

ing. “You’ll think I’m daft, but I don’t know if I want to
keep the skunks out. They give me something diﬀerent
to watch out for.”

By this time I had clipped on Jenny’s leash and brushed

the dirt and bits out of her fur the best I could with my

Jacqueline Pearce

122

ﬁngers. I was anxious to get home to let Mom and Dad
know I’d found her.

“Mrs. Miller, do you mind if I leave my bike here and

come back to get it later?” I asked.

“No, not at all. And please call me Eva.”
“I can push your bike home for you,” Conner oﬀered.
“But what about your bike?”
“I can ride it with one hand and push yours with the

other,” he said. “It’s not far.”

“If you want,” I told him, shrugging.
We said good-bye to Eva and promised to return to

visit.

“I’ll bring Jenny back when she’s nice and clean,” I

called as we walked away.

Conner pedaled his bike slowly along the side of the

road, balancing my bike beside him. Jenny and I walked
parallel to him on the sidewalk. Suddenly I no longer
knew what to say to him. I kept my eyes on Jenny, who
trotted slightly ahead of me as if she was on an ordinary
everyday walk.

“Do you think she’ll be okay?” Conner asked.
“She seems okay already!” I said.
We both laughed and lapsed into silence again.
The front wheel of Conner’s bike wobbled, and he

struggled to keep it from knocking into my bike.

“I guess it’s hard riding so slow,” I said, embarrassed.

123

Dog House Blues

“I could take my bike if you want. Maybe I could tie
Jenny’s leash to the handlebars.”

“No need,” he said ﬁrmly. “I don’t mind riding

slow.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to ride ahead? You know

where I live. You could just drop the bike oﬀ.”

“I said I don’t mind.”
We walked silently again, then Conner turned to me.
“I wish I could meet your other dogs too,” he blurted.
“Really?” I stopped and stared at him, surprised.
He braked quickly, bumping the two bikes. Then he

looked down, his face reddening.

“Yeah. You’re so lucky to have three dogs!” He looked

up as he said this last bit, and I could see that he wasn’t
kidding. He actually seemed to mean it.

“You like dogs?” I asked. I was thinking about the

Dog Girl name-calling and how everyone in our class at
school seemed to think there was something wrong with
me because I lived with three dogs.

“Of course,” he said. “Who doesn’t?”
My mouth fell open. What planet had he been on this

past year?

“Kyla Tupper, for one,” I told him.
“Oh yeah, her,” Conner said with disgust. “But she

doesn’t like anything.”

I laughed, and we started moving again.

Jacqueline Pearce

124

“I’d love to have a dog,” Conner admitted. “But my

parents don’t want one. They won’t let me have any
pets.”

“Oh.” I suddenly remembered the book about dogs that

Conner had used in his hero speech, and the way he had
looked at Dumpster, Muﬃn and Jenny over our fence
when he delivered the newspaper. He’d been interested
in dogs all along. It must be awful not to be allowed to
have one. I’d complained about our dogs quite a lot lately,
but I couldn’t imagine a house with no dogs at all.

When we got to my house, I opened the gate for Jenny

and let her oﬀ the leash. Dumpster and Muﬃn, who
were still out in the yard, began barking at once, and the
three dogs bounded to meet each other. Jenny added her
bark to theirs.

I turned back to Conner and took my bike from him.

I wheeled it through the gate, then held the gate open
for Conner.

“Come on in,” I told him. “You might as well meet

everyone.”

Once they had ﬁnished greeting Jenny, Dumpster and

Muﬃn trotted over to Conner and me. Conner held out
his hand for them to sniﬀ. Then he petted the top of their
heads.

“That’s Dudley,” I said. “We call him Dumpster, and

you can guess why. The other one’s Muﬃn.”

125

Dog House Blues

I was impressed that Conner knew the correct way

to meet dogs—letting them smell his hand ﬁrst. They
must have smelled something they approved of, because
Muﬃn immediately put his front paws up on one of
Conner’s legs.

“He likes you,” I told Conner. “He wants you to pick

him up, but just ignore him.”

“Down!” I ordered Muﬃn.
The side door of the house opened, and Marcus came

running out.

“You found her! You found her!”
Mom poked her head out the door, followed by Dad.

They both grinned with relief when they saw Jenny. I
introduced Conner to them and told them the story in
between Marcus’s excited interruptions. By the time I’d
ﬁnished, we were all standing in the kitchen, and Dad
was oﬀering everyone juice and cookies.

We hadn’t closed the door tight behind us, and Jenny

nosed it open and trotted into the kitchen, followed by
Dumpster and Muﬃn. She stopped in front of me and
barked sharply. She obviously wanted something. Then it
hit me. She hadn’t eaten since the previous morning.

“Oh, Jenny!” I cried, ruﬄing her fur. “You must be

hungry. Come on, I’ll get your food.”

I opened the door again, and the three dogs followed

me out. Conner came too.

Jacqueline Pearce

126

“Do they each get the same amount?” he asked as he

watched me scoop dry food out of the big container we
keep in the carport, then dump it into Jenny’s dish.

“Muﬃn gets less,” I said.
“Can I do the others?” Conner asked, a little sheep-

ish.

“Sure.” I handed him the scoop.
“How’s that?” he asked as he dumped Muﬃn’s scoop

of food into the third dish.

“Just right.”
Conner stepped back to watch the dogs eat, grinning

as if he were in seventh heaven. I couldn’t help smiling
too as I looked down at the three dogs and listened to the
steady sound of crunching dog food. Jenny was home and
safe. I felt a warm glow of aﬀection for all three dogs.

Just then Mom opened the door and stuck her head

out. “Erika, Mercedes is on the phone.”

My happy feeling dropped like a fast elevator.

Mercedes was going to ask why I hadn’t shown up at the
ﬁreworks, and I still hadn’t told her about the destruc-
tion of the Japan model. Conner must have noticed my
changed expression. Maybe my face had gone white. He
looked at me quizzically.

“I better go talk to her,” I said. There was no more put-

ting it oﬀ.

He nodded.

“

hat happened to you last night?” Mercedes’ voice

demanded after I picked up the telephone. “Why

weren’t you at the ﬁreworks?”

“Just a second,” I said, stalling her as I walked into my

bedroom with the phone and closed the door behind me.
What was I going to say? I could tell her I’d been feeling
sick. That was partly true. But how was I going to explain
what happened to the model? I took a deep breath.

“I didn’t go because I was feeling awful about some-

thing,” I ﬁnally admitted as I sat with a thud on the end
of my bed.

“What?” Mercedes’ voice was concerned.
I hesitated, then pushed ahead. “The Japan model got

wrecked.”

“Wrecked? What do you mean?”
“Uh…”
I took another deep breath.

129

Dog House Blues

“My dog ate it,” I said bluntly.
There was a moment of silence on the other end of the

line, then Mercedes’ incredulous voice. “You’re kidding!
Your dog ate it?”

“I’m sorry, Mercedes, but I’m not kidding.”
“Not all of it?”
“All of it,” I repeated dully.
There was another silence while the truth must have

been sinking in. My stomach felt sick now for real. What
was she going to say? Finally her voice came again.

“What kind of dog?” she asked.
“Basset hound,” I told her, wondering what diﬀerence

it made.

“Oh,” she said and burst out laughing.
This was not what I expected.
I waited for a moment, but she kept laughing. I found

myself starting to smile, though I didn’t know why.

“It’s not funny!” I blurted into the receiver. “The model

is totally destroyed! We’ve got no model for our presenta-
tion.”

The laughter paused.
“I know, it’s awful,” she said, then snorted. “But can’t

you picture it?” She broke into her full ringing laugh
again.

“What do you mean?” I asked, confused. Why wasn’t

she mad? And what was so funny?

Jacqueline Pearce

130

Mercedes made an obvious eﬀort to swallow her

guﬀaws.

“It’s like in those old movies,” she said. “You know,

those old monster movies where Godzilla or some other
giant creature attacks Japan?”

I didn’t know what she was talking about at ﬁrst. Then

I remembered that I’d watched one of those movies on

late one night with Mom and Dad. I remembered

laughing at how the English-language sound did not
match the movement of the Japanese actors’ mouths.

“Oh yeah,” I said.
“Well—” she said expectantly. “Don’t you get it?”
There was a pause again while she waited for me to

clue in. I felt stupid, then suddenly it clicked.

“Ohhh!” I said, then started to laugh as I pictured it.

My dog just ate Japan!

After a while our hoots and snorts subsided. Then

Mercedes cried out in mock distress, “But teacher, it’s
true. My dog did eat my homework!”

And we were laughing again.
“Erika, what’s so funny?” Marcus demanded, opening

my bedroom door and poking his head into the room.

“Go away!” I ordered, throwing a pillow at him.
He pulled his head back out of sight and shut the door

quickly. The pillow hit the wall beside the door and fell
to the ﬂoor.

131

Dog House Blues

“But seriously,” I said to Mercedes. I wanted to keep

laughing and avoid our real problem, but the spell was
broken. “We have to talk about what we’re going to do
about the presentation.”

“I know,” Mercedes said. She sighed and the laughter

hissed out of her like air from a balloon.

“We don’t have time to build another model,” I pointed

out.

“That’s okay,” Mercedes said brightly. “We’ve still got

enough for a good presentation without it.”

“Yeah,” I said hesitantly. “We do. But it’s mostly all

your stuﬀ. Without the model, I feel like I haven’t really
contributed anything.”

“Don’t be silly,” Mercedes said. “The ideas are just as

much yours, and I can give you some of my words to say.”

“But you know everything by heart, and I don’t. It

won’t sound as good if I talk.”

I ﬂopped backward onto the bed, letting the phone

fall from my ear for a moment. I could hear the distant-
sounding buzz of Mercedes’ voice, protesting again. My
eyes were caught by the framed photograph I kept on my
bedside table—Jenny when she was a puppy, big eyed, big
pawed and ﬂuﬀy. Lying on the empty bed, I felt a sharp
pang stab through my chest. Jenny had slept with me on
this bed every night since she was a puppy—except for
last night. I’d almost lost her.

Jacqueline Pearce

132

“Listen, Mercedes,” I said into the receiver, interrupt-

ing her. “I just had an idea. I haven’t worked it out yet,
but I was wondering—” I paused and took a deep breath
as the idea that had just popped into my head began to
solidify. “Would you mind doing the Japan presentation
by yourself?”

“Why?” Mercedes demanded. “You just spent weeks

working on it with me.”

“It’s not that I don’t want to do the presentation with

you,” I tried to explain. “It’s just that I feel like what’s
left of it is yours.” I hurried on before she could protest
again. “And I have an idea for something I’d like to do
on my own.”

“But you only have one day left to prepare.”
I paused, thinking carefully. Did I have enough time?

Was this a stupid idea?

“There’s still the rest of today and tomorrow,” I said to

Mercedes and to myself. “So that makes two days.”

“Okay,” Mercedes said doubtfully. “If you really want

to do it. It’s your funeral.”

I wished she hadn’t put it that way.
“So, what’s your topic going to be?” she asked.
I opened my mouth to tell her, then changed my

mind.

“It’s a surprise,” I said.

n Monday morning, Dad drove Marcus and me

to school early so that I could talk to Miss Chien

before class.

While I talked to the teacher, Dad waited for me on

the playground with Marcus.

“It’s a go,” I said to Dad after coming back outside. I

felt nervous, but light. It was as if deciding to do the pre-
sentation had lifted some kind of weight oﬀ me.

“Is eleven thirty okay?” I asked, keeping my voice

quiet in case anyone from my class was nearby.

Dad gave me a covert thumbs-up sign. “Well, I’ll be

going then,” he said. He turned to Marcus, who was
playing in the sandbox. “Have a good morning, sport.”

I stood for a moment by the sandbox, watching Dad

go. The bell rang, and Marcus jumped to his feet.

“You better line up,” he told me. Then he ran toward

the clump of kindergarteners that had formed at the bot-
tom of the school steps.

Jacqueline Pearce

134

I squared my shoulders and headed for the grade sixes.
I slid into line beside Mercedes.
“I thought you might not show up today,” she teased.

She had her backpack on her back and the rolled-up map
of Japan in her hands, along with a plastic bag that must
have held the ﬂag. I’d left my own supplies in the class-
room when I went in earlier.

“I wouldn’t dream of missing presentation day,” I said

in mock seriousness.

“It’s tomorrow too,” Mercedes pointed out.
“Yes, but I’m doing mine today. Right after yours.”
“You talked to Miss Chien already?” Mercedes sounded

surprised.

“Yeah.”
“So you’re going ahead with something on your own?”
I nodded.
“Why didn’t you ask if you could go tomorrow? You

could have had one more day to prepare.”

“I wanted to get it over with,” I admitted.
Mercedes shrugged as if she couldn’t ﬁgure me out. She

was probably never nervous about anything. But I knew
that if I had to wait another day, I might lose my courage.

When we got to our desks I presented Mercedes with

a white cardboard box.

“What is it?” She ﬂipped open the lid. “Sushi! You

didn’t have to do that!”

135

Dog House Blues

“It’s a peace oﬀering,” I explained. “Since I bailed on

you.”

She laughed and reached out to give me a quick hug.
I felt embarrassed, but pleased.
“Good morning, everyone,” Miss Chien said from the

front of the room. “The day you’ve all been waiting for is
ﬁnally here.”

There were a few laughs and several groans.
I glanced around the room. Boxes, bags, boards, tubes

and rolls of poster paper sat on or leaned against many of
the desks. I caught Conner’s eye across the room, and he
smiled weakly. I remembered how nervous he’d seemed
when he did his hero speech, and I gave him an encour-
aging grin. I turned back to my own desk and checked
that my poster was still on the ﬂoor beside me. I noticed
that, two seats up, Kyla had what looked like two laptop
cases piled on top of her desk and a smug expression on
her face.

“All right, now, who goes ﬁrst?” Miss Chien said as

she checked her clipboard. “Kyla and Victoria. You can
get set up while I go over the rules with the class.”

“Thanks, Miss Chien,” Kyla said primly as she and

Victoria stood up.

“We should be able to ﬁt in four presentations before

recess,” Miss Chien continued while Kyla and Victoria
walked to the front of the room carrying the two cases.

Jacqueline Pearce

136

“What is that?” I whispered to Mercedes as Kyla took

a black box out of the larger case and set it on top of an
empty desk that Victoria dragged to the middle of the
room in front of the blackboard.

“It’s an

LCD

projector,” Mercedes whispered back.

“They’re going to do a PowerPoint presentation.”

I rolled my eyes. It seemed like showing oﬀ to me.
Victoria plugged the projector’s cord into the wall and

pulled the class projector screen down over the black-
board. Kyla turned the projector on, and a square of
white light lit up the screen.

“Kyla, are you ready?” Miss Chien asked.
“I just have to hook up the laptop cable,” Kyla said in a

loud self-important voice.

I wished she would hurry up and start. The more I

watched, the more nervous I got. This was so high-tech,
while all I had were drawings and old-fashioned photo-
graphs.

I looked around the room again. There were no other

signs of computers or expensive gadgets, although Annie
had what looked like an old slide projector. That wasn’t
too bad. Mercedes had a map, a ﬂag and some food, after
all. What could be lower-tech than that? And I was sure
everyone would love her presentation. Stop worrying, I
told myself. You don’t have to think about anything until
after recess.

137

Dog House Blues

My attention snapped back to Kyla and Victoria, who

were now ready to begin.

“You’ve all seen the

show ‘Urban Lives,’” Kyla began.

She held a cordless computer mouse in her hand and used
one ﬁnger to press a button. On the screen in front of us
appeared a photo of the opening credits of the show.

“What you probably don’t know is what goes on behind

the scenes,” Kyla continued. “Today, Victoria and I are
going to talk about the making of a television show.”

She announced this with a victorious ﬂourish.
I groaned inside and slouched back in my seat, pre-

pared to be bored by Kyla gushing about her favorite
actors and actresses. Kyla had actually visited the set of
the show during summer holidays, so she did have a few
interesting things to say about how a

show was made,

but she gave too many details about her own experience,
and Miss Chien had to interrupt and remind her about
the time. Finally she shut up and let Victoria say a few
words to conclude the talk.

I relaxed a bit. Kyla’s presentation had been showy, but

it hadn’t been that great.

“Thank you, Kyla and Victoria,” Miss Chien said.

“Conner Lee is next. Conner, would you please set up
while I make a few notes about the last presentation.”

I looked over as Conner got up from his seat. His

face was pale. He walked to the back door of the

Jacqueline Pearce

138

classroom and, to everyone’s surprise, left the room.
Maybe he was sick. We all turned to Miss Chien to see
what she would say, but she continued scribbling on her
clipboard. When she looked up, her eyes went to the
back door, expectantly. She smiled, and I looked back in
time to see Conner pushing his

BMX

bike into the room.

It was then that I realized a space had been cleared at the
back of the room.

“I suggest everyone turn around in their seats and look

toward the back of the class,” Miss Chien announced.
After waiting for us to resettle, she gestured toward
Conner.

“It’s all yours,” she told him.
Conner cleared his throat. He stood behind the bike,

one hand tightly gripping the handlebars, the other hold-
ing onto the seat.

“The pedaled bicycle was invented around 1840,” he

began. His voice started out quiet and halting but grew
louder and more conﬁdent as he continued. I leaned for-
ward in my seat. This was a subject Conner obviously
knew about. He ended his talk by demonstrating a few
bike tricks right there at the back of the room. He lifted
the front wheel oﬀ the ground and spun the bike around
on the back wheel, making it look easy—as if the bike
were an extension of himself. When he was ﬁnished,
everyone applauded loudly.

139

Dog House Blues

I felt glad for Conner.
“I’m very pleased with the creativity and eﬀort every-

one has put into their presentations so far,” Miss Chien
said just before recess. “I can hardly wait to see what the
rest of you come up with.”

The bell rang to announce the start of the break, and

everyone rushed to the doors, all talking at once. The
ﬁrst presentations had been good, but it was a relief to
get outside into the fresh air. After recess there would be
two more presentations, then my turn. My stomach jit-
tered at the thought.

“Come on!” I called to Mercedes. “I’ll race you to the

end of the soccer ﬁeld.”

Without waiting for Mercedes’ reply, I started run-

ning. My feet pounded across the gravel ﬁeld, and my
lungs sucked in the chill air. A few light raindrops hit my
face. I heard the sound of Mercedes running beside me
and saw her close on the edge of my vision. I ran harder.
For the moment, at least, I didn’t have to think about
anything else but running.

ercedes and I walked back across the soccer ﬁeld,

talking.

“I can hardly wait to get to my turn,” Mercedes said,

excitement edging her voice.

“You just want to eat the sushi,” I joked. But the thought

of the impending presentations made me feel sick.

Mercedes looked at my face.
“You’re not nervous about yours, are you?” she asked.
“A bit,” I admitted.
“Is it ready to go?”
I nodded.
“Then there’s nothing to worry about,” Mercedes

insisted. “You’ll do great!”

I forced a smile and looked at my watch. There were

still plenty of things that could go wrong. And what
would everyone think? I knew Kyla would hate my pre-
sentation. But what about everyone else?

141

Dog House Blues

“Are you sure you won’t tell me what you’re going to

present on?” Mercedes asked in a wheedling voice.

“Not yet,” I said with a genuine laugh.
The bell went, and we ﬁled back into the school.
After we settled in the classroom, Miss Chien called

on the next presenters, Jake and another boy. They strug-
gled up to the front of the room, carrying a giant lump
on a board covered by a towel. They set it down on top of
the same empty desk Kyla and Victoria had used for their
projector. Then they stepped back, Jake to one side of the
desk, the other boy to the opposite side. They each took
hold of a corner of the towel.

“Today we are going to talk about—” with a ﬂourish

they lifted the towel “—volcanoes!”

Exposed on the board sat a large papier-mâché moun-

tain, very much like our model of Japan. Mercedes and I
looked at each other. Mercedes leaned into me.

“I’m glad your dog ate ours,” she whispered, and I sti-

ﬂed a giggle.

When Mercedes’ name was called for her presentation,

I helped her carry her supplies to the front of the room
and attach the map to the blackboard. The podium had
been set aside for most of the presentations, so we had
to drag it back to the front of the room. Mercedes began
draping the ﬂag of Japan from the top of the podium,
and I went back to my desk.

Jacqueline Pearce

142

I sat down and looked to the front of the room.

Mercedes stood behind the podium, smiling and ready.

“Japan is made up of four main islands,” she began.
Although I’d already heard what Mercedes was going

to say when we’d practiced at her apartment, her ani-
mated voice captured my attention, and I found myself
listening with interest. For a few minutes, I forgot that my
presentation was next, but only for a few minutes. When
Mercedes ﬁnished, it would be my turn. My hands began
to sweat, and I found it harder and harder to pay atten-
tion to Mercedes’ words. I glanced at my watch. Eleven
ﬁfteen. Would Dad remember? What if he’d gotten busy
with work and forgotten the time? My stomach felt as if
Dumpster’s heavy paws were plunked down on top of it.

As the class applauded at the end of Mercedes’ presen-

tation, I gathered my things and stood up. For an instant,
my legs shook like jelly. I felt a stab of panic as I looked at
the back of Kyla Tupper’s head. My eyes darted to Miss
Chien. Maybe I could tell her I’d changed my mind. I
wanted to go back to doing the Japan presentation with
Mercedes. But it was too late. I took a deep breath and
walked to the front of the room.

I unrolled my poster and propped it up on the edge of

the blackboard. A few people snickered when they saw
it. I ignored the sound, took a deep breath and turned to
face the class.

143

Dog House Blues

“Today I’m going to talk to you about dogs,” I

announced.

“All domestic dogs, from the tiny Pekinese to the large

Great Dane, are descended from a wild wolf ancestor.”
I pointed to a wolf I’d drawn at the top of the poster.
“Outwardly, dog breeds may look completely diﬀerent
from the wolf and from each other, but on the inside,
each dog still feels and behaves like a wolf.”

I risked a look around the room. A few people looked

skeptical, but most looked interested. Kyla had her arms
crossed over her chest and a disgusted expression on her
face. I forced myself to ignore her and continued.

“Like wolves, dogs have a keen sense of smell. Like

wolves, dogs prefer to live in a pack, or social group. This
makes them ideal as pets. When dogs live with people,
they think of the people as part of their pack.”

I pointed to a photograph. It was my favorite one—the

photo I kept in the frame beside my bed.

“This is a picture of my dog, Jenny, when she was still a

puppy,” I said. I heard several awwws of appreciation.

I smiled, feeling encouraged.
“Like wolf puppies, dogs are born small, defenseless

and blind, and they rely on their mother’s milk for food.
After about nine days their eyes open, they begin to hear
and they soon need more solid food. Jenny was about six
weeks old when we adopted her from an animal shelter.”

Jacqueline Pearce

144

I went on, giving an overview of dog development, the

need for training, vet care, food, water, shelter and exer-
cise. I glanced at my watch. It was almost eleven thirty.
Had Dad remembered?

“Identiﬁcation for your dog is also important,” I said. “I

know this because I lost my dog on Friday night. Losing
my dog reminded me of something very important.”

I paused and looked around the room. Kyla drummed

her ﬁngers on the top of her desk impatiently. I swal-
lowed and glanced at Miss Chien. She nodded.

“I think the best way to tell you is to show you,” I

said.

I turned from the class and walked to the door, my

heart thudding. Was that a jingling sound coming from
the hall? I opened the door and there stood Dad and
Jenny. I smiled and took Jenny’s leash.

“Good luck,” Dad whispered.
I turned and walked back to the front of the class,

Jenny at my side. Exclamations erupted around the room.
My eyes met Kyla’s, and for an instant I saw fear in her
face. It was covered quickly by a scowl, but in that instant
I understood. Kyla was afraid of dogs.

Beside me, Jenny’s brown furry presence was warm

and reassuring. I faced the class and spoke in a clear
strong voice.

“I’d like you to meet my best friend, Jenny.”

“

ou are so lucky!” Mercedes said as we walked out to

the playground at lunch hour.

I laughed, still riding on a bit of a high after the success

of my presentation. Many people had wanted to come up
and meet Jenny, and they all protested when Dad had to
take her away again. But one person was not sorry to see
her go. Kyla Tupper had glared at me as I walked back to
my seat after my talk.

“Dog girl,” she whispered with venom as I passed her

desk.

But this time the words hadn’t bothered me the way

they would have just a week earlier. Since then I’d almost
lost Jenny; I’d found out that there were kids in my class,
like Conner, who did like dogs; and I’d seen a glimpse
into what lay behind Kyla’s meanness.

“Why didn’t you tell me you had more than one dog?”

Mercedes demanded.

Jacqueline Pearce

146

We had walked as far as the edge of the playing ﬁeld.

I looked at Mercedes.

“Don’t you remember that drawing that got passed

around the class last month—the Dog Girl one?” I said.

“Yeah.”
“And everyone laughed?”
“Yeah. So?”
“Well, that was about me. Dog Girl.”
“Oh,” Mercedes said. She looked embarrassed. “I

thought that was just a joke. I didn’t know it was meant
to make fun of you.”

She squeezed my arm.
“I’m really sorry, Erika. I wouldn’t have laughed if I’d

known. But I don’t understand. Everyone likes dogs.”

“Not Kyla Tupper,” I said, then gave Mercedes a side-

ways look. “And I thought maybe you didn’t either.”

“Me? Not like dogs?” Mercedes looked shocked.

“Why would you think that?”

I had to laugh at her expression.
“Well, you do live in an apartment building that

doesn’t allow pets,” I pointed out.

“That!” The word burst from Mercedes, and her hands

ﬂew out. “I hate that rule!”

A group of boys ran by and laughed at us as they

kicked a soccer ball out to the ﬁeld. Mercedes lowered
her voice.

147

Dog House Blues

“Do you know how hard it is to ﬁnd a place to rent

that allows pets?” she demanded. “I had to leave my dog,
Sheba, with my grandparents when we moved.”

Mercedes’ eyes were shining.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know.”
I remembered how, on my ﬁrst visit to Mercedes’

apartment, she’d said something about having to give up
a lot of things when she moved here. I’d had no idea
she’d been talking about a dog. No wonder she’d looked
so miserable.

Mercedes stopped the soccer ball with one foot as it

rolled oﬀ the ﬁeld. She kicked it back to the boys and
whirled around to face me, suddenly grinning again.

“Listen,” she said excitedly. “I’ve got an idea.”
She grabbed hold of my arm.
“We could start an animal club!”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“You know. We could have meetings to talk about

animals. We could organize a pet day at school, or we
could do something to help shelter animals or wild ani-
mals that are endangered.”

The words bubbled out of Mercedes, and her excite-

ment was catching. I began to picture it. Maybe Mom
could even arrange for us to have a tour of the animal
shelter. I caught sight of Conner running with the soccer
ball on the other end of the ﬁeld.

Jacqueline Pearce

148

“Could boys join too?” I asked.
“Of course,” Mercedes said. “Anyone who likes ani-

mals could join.”

She linked one arm through mine, and we started

walking back toward the school.

“Hey, Mercedes! Erika!” Annie waved to us from

beside the basketball court. She was standing with a
group of girls, talking.

“I really liked both your presentations,” she said as we

joined her. “And your dog is so nice, Erika.”

“Yeah,” the other girls agreed.
“Thanks,” I said.
We talked for a few minutes about other people’s pre-

sentations, and two girls said how nervous they were
about doing theirs after lunch.

“Aren’t you worried?” a loud voice cut into our talk.
Everyone turned to look at Kyla, who approached us

with Victoria at her side.

“About what?” Annie asked Kyla.
“About getting dog germs,” Kyla said, nodding toward

me.

Victoria laughed, but no one else did. Mercedes blew

out a loud sigh of exasperation. My face heated up, but
this time it was not with embarrassment. Anger ﬂared
through me. I wanted to turn on Kyla and say something
to put her down—something that would make her feel

149

Dog House Blues

as terrible as she’d made me feel so many times. And I
knew what might do it. She was a big phony who was
afraid of dogs. How would she like it if I told everyone
the truth? I opened my mouth, feeling like I was the one
on top for a change. But would putting Kyla down make
me as bad as her? I stopped and took a deep breath.

“Aren’t you getting tired of that, Kyla?” I said

instead.

“Yeah,” Mercedes joined in. “It’s getting really lame.”

She turned to the rest of the group and called out, “Let’s
go get a basketball!”

As we turned to walk away, Kyla’s face twisted into

a disgusted expression, but her eyes looked deﬂated.
Mercedes linked her arm through mine and leaned into
me.

“Come on, dog girl,” she whispered.
I looked into her face, and she grinned back at me, her

eyes twinkling. Suddenly Dog Girl seemed like the best
nickname I’d ever had.

That night I lay in bed under the covers with Jenny in her
old spot, curled up warm against my legs. So much had
happened in the last few months—and especially in the
last few days. I still hadn’t heard from my old friend Lisa,
but I no longer felt alone. Maybe I’d write her and tell
her about things—about Mercedes and Conner and the