Second Chance Summer (22 page)

“I guess so,” Gelsey said, with a shrug. “My sister works there,”
she said, a note of unmistakable pride in her voice that surprised me.

Nora glanced over at me, unimpressed, then back to Gelsey. “Want to go over there?” she asked. “I’m totally bored.”

“Me too,” Gelsey said, the morning’s adventure of finding a home for a lost dog apparently now forgotten. “There’s
nothing
to do here. My mom’s even making me take tennis.”

Nora’s eyes widened. “Me too!” she said. “It’s so stupid.”

“I know, right?” Gelsey replied.

“Totally,” Nora said.

I had a feeling I knew what the rest of the conversation was going to be like, so I just took the ribbon from Gelsey, who surrendered it easily. “I’ll see you later,” I said. Gelsey waved at me over her shoulder and continued her conversation, not even looking back.

I pulled Murphy, who was far too interested in sniffing every rock on the Gardner driveway, back to the road. I couldn’t help taking a little bit of satisfaction in the fact that Gelsey seemed to be on the road to making a friend, that my plan had been a tiny bit successful. I walked with the dog to the edge of the Crosby driveway, but the house had the look about it that indicated all the occupants were elsewhere—no cars or bikes in the driveway, nobody in the tent, the curtains drawn.

I steered the dog back toward our house, wondering what I would have done if it looked like people had been home. I wanted to think that I would have gone up and rung the bell, but I wasn’t
quite sure. I did know that ever since the ice-cream parlor, I had been thinking about Henry more than I probably should have, since he was still mad at me (with good reason) and had a girlfriend. But I couldn’t help it.

When we reached the driveway, Murphy no longer needed to be pulled. Instead, he started running ahead, straining on the makeshift leash. I tied him up to the porch steps and walked into the screened-in porch, where my father was sitting in his normal dinner spot, frowning at his laptop, and Warren was reading a textbook, his legs extended in front of him on a second chair.

“Hey,” Warren said, looking up from his book after carefully marking his place with a sticky flag. He half-stood and peered out to the driveway. “What is that?” he asked, and I could hear a note of panic in his voice. “Why is there a dog there?”

“It’s nothing to worry about,” I assured my brother, as my dad shot me a tiny smile, then looked back at his laptop before Warren could see. “He’s pretty much the world’s least frightening dog. Seriously.”

“Right,” Warren said, nodding like this was no big deal, but I noticed he was keeping an eye on the porch. He shifted his chair a few feet away from the door, in a move I’m sure he thought was nonchalant. “Sure.”

“No owner?” my dad asked.

“Not next door, at least,” I said. “But we met the neighbors. There’s a girl there Gelsey’s age.”

“Wonderful,” my dad said with a smile. “But what about the canine?”

“I was going to bring him to the pet store,” I said. “See if he’s microchipped.”

“Good thinking,” he said with an approving nod, and I wondered if I should actually tell him it was our screenwriter neighbor’s idea, but decided to just let it go. “Son,” he said, turning to Warren, “didn’t you say that you wanted to go to the library?”

Warren cleared his throat and cast another glance at the porch. “I did mention that,” he said. “But upon further consideration, I think that I can—”

“Oh, just come,” I said. “I’ll keep the dog away from you. I promise.”

“It has nothing to do with that,” Warren muttered, nevertheless turning a bright red that nearly matched his polo shirt. “I’ll just go and get my wallet.” He headed into the house and my dad smiled at me over his laptop.

“You see?” he asked. “An excursion. I told you it was going to be a big day, kid.” He hit a few keys, then leaned back in his chair. “You know, if you’re going into town, you’ll be by Henson’s. And if you wouldn’t mind picking me up some licorice…”

Ten minutes later, Warren, Murphy, and I arrived at Doggone It!, Warren staying a good three steps behind us. Despite the fact that I
could lift Murphy with one hand—not that I wanted to; my father had been right about his smell, and we’d had to drive with all the windows down—Warren still didn’t seem convinced that he wasn’t going to turn into a murderous beast at any moment.

The store was fairly small, with birds in cages, a large aquarium full of fish, kittens in a pen along one wall, and the rest devoted to pet accessories. It looked like there was a grooming station to the back, behind the register. There was nobody behind the counter, and no helpful bell to ring, like there had been at Borrowed Thyme. I looked around for a moment, but the only sound in the store was one of the birds chirping loudly, in what I was pretty sure was an imitation of a car alarm going off.

“Hello?” Warren called, causing the bird to chirp even more loudly.

“Coming, coming, so sorry!” a voice called out from the back. The door opened, and the girl I’d seen before—the one who’d offered to make the phone call for my father—came out, wiping her hands on a red
DOGGONE IT
! apron that covered up a white T-shirt and jeans. Upon seeing her closer, I could tell she was about my age, with blue eyes, a sweet-looking, heart-shaped face, and long red hair in braids that reached past her shoulders. She glanced from me to Warren, smiling. “What can I do for you?” I noticed that the stitched embroidery on her apron read
Wendy
.

“Well,” I started, when I heard my brother make a strange throat-clearing noise. Warren was staring at Wendy, his mouth
hanging open slightly, and he was apparently trying to form words, without much luck. “We found this dog,” I said as I lifted Murphy up to the counter, where he sat immediately, looking around, seeming to enjoy the elevated view. To my surprise, my brother didn’t immediately move away, but stayed right where he was, in close dog proximity. “And we didn’t know where he’d come from,” I said. “I heard you can check for microchips here?”

“Right,” Warren said, jumping in a moment too late, recovering the power of speech. “Microchips.”

“Are you lost, buddy?” Wendy asked. She reached forward and scratched just behind Murphy’s ears, not seeming to care about how he smelled. He closed his eyes and his tail thumped on the counter, onto a stack of pamphlets about flea collars. “Well, we can check for that, no problem.” She reached under the counter and pulled out a device that looked a little bit like a remote control, with a screen taking up the top half. She ran it slowly over the dog’s back while scratching his ears with her opposite hand. When she passed a spot just below his shoulder blade, the device beeped. “There you go!” she said, smiling at Warren and me. I noticed Warren smiled back, but not in time, because she was already sitting down and wheeling her chair over to the computer.

“So do we know who he belongs to?” I asked, leaning over the dog on the counter to try to see what she was looking at.

“Not yet,” she said. “That only gave us the microchip number. I
just have to check the database and it should tell us where this little guy lives.”

“Or girl,” I said, since we still didn’t have confirmation on this, and I was pretty much going off the fact that his collar was blue. Wendy stopped scrolling through her screen and stood up again, lifting the dog’s front paws up.

“Nope,” she said. “Definitely guy.” She sat back down again, and started typing.

“Did you know that the name Wendy came into usage in 1904?” Warren asked suddenly, all in a rush. “Through J.M. Barrie, in his play
Peter and Wendy
, which later became
Peter Pan
.”

Wendy looked at Warren quizzically, and I felt myself do the same. I was about to interject, say that my brother had had too much sun today or something, when she smiled wide. “I never knew that,” she said. “Thanks.”

Warren nodded, then said, in a voice that sounded like he was trying very hard to be casual, but failing miserably, “Have you, um, worked here long?”

“About a month now,” she said, giving him a quick glance before returning to the computer. “Just making some extra money before starting school in the fall.”

“Oh?” Warren was practically eye-to-eye with the dog, he was leaning so far over the counter to continue this conversation. The dog took advantage of this opportunity and licked his ear and Warren,
to his credit, only flinched slightly. “Where are you going?”

“Stroudsburg State,” she said, still looking at the computer. “They’ve got a great veterinary program.”

“Great,” Warren said, trying to disengage himself from the dog, who had now moved on to enthusiastically licking his face. “That’s great.”

I turned and stared at my brother, trying to contain my astonishment. Warren had always been a college snob, but it had just gotten worse since he’d gotten into an Ivy. I’d heard him refer to Stanford as his “safety.” The fact that he was talking positively about a school I was fairly sure he’d never heard of five minutes ago was so out of character that it was shocking. But then again, I’d never seen Warren this way around a girl before, ever.

“Okay,” Wendy said as she leaned closer to the screen, “it looks like we have a match!”

“Excellent,” I said, wondering what the next step was—if she would contact the owners, or if we would have to. Either way, as friendly as this dog seemed, I was ready to send him back where he belonged.

“And,” she said, scrolling down her screen, “it looks like the microchipping was actually done here, so he’s local. Which is a good thing. His address is…” She paused, then said, “84 Dockside Road in Lake Phoenix.” She looked at us and smiled, and I just stared back at her, sure that I’d heard wrong. “It’s not too far from
here,” she added after a moment. “I could print out directions.”

“I know where it is,” I said, staring down at the dog. I now understood why he was so eager to make it up our driveway. “That’s our house.”

Two hours later, Warren, Murphy, and I returned home. The dog had gotten a thorough cleaning, and now smelled faintly of chemicals. The groomer must not have cared that Murphy was a boy, because there was a pink polka-dot ribbon tied into his wiry hair, just between his ears. We had a bag full of supplies, including a dog dish, water bowl, bed, leash, and food. I hadn’t been under the impression that we were keeping him, but once Wendy had started picking out “the basics we’d need,” Warren had trailed her around the store, nodding at everything she selected, not stopping to consult me about the situation. It wasn’t until we were in the car driving home, just the three of us, Murphy panting happily out the window, his breath now much improved, that I turned to Warren and said, “I can’t believe this.”

“I know,” Warren said, shaking his head. He must have been attempting to look serious—his default expression—but it kept slipping into something a little more dreamy. “It must have been the renters last summer, right?” he asked. “Wendy said that that’s when the microchip information was entered.”

“And that’s their name,” I said. “Pretty conclusive evidence.”
I paused at a stoplight, noting the fact that my brother had pronounced Wendy’s name in the tone of voice he usually reserved for facts about tollbooths and lightbulbs. “So what happened?” I asked, speeding up again, even though I knew my brother, who had all the answers, wouldn’t know this one. “They left him at the end of the summer?” I asked. I could feel my anger rising as I said it, getting furious at these heartless, spice-stealing renters, treating the dog that way. “They just abandoned him at the house?”

Warren shrugged. “Or perhaps he ran away,” he said, his tone becoming, finally, one that I recognized—measured, careful, weighing all the facts. “We don’t know the situation. We’ll tell Mom, and she can contact them. Maybe this is all a misunderstanding.”

“Maybe,” I said, but not really believing it. I turned down Dockside, and as soon as we got close, Murphy pulled his head in from the window, scrambling up to try and sit on the console between us, straining forward, looking at the house, tail wagging wildly. And as I pulled into the driveway and he got more and more excited, I knew this was the proof, even more so than the computer’s confirmation. Murphy knew where he was, and was desperate to get back. When I killed the engine and opened the back door, he bounded out of the car and ran straight for the house, clearly delighted to have found his way home at last.

Truth and Daring

chapter eighteen

I
WAS ALREADY AWAKE AT TWO A.M. WHEN MY PHONE RANG
. I
HAD
no I idea why I hadn’t been able to sleep, and it was enough to make me wonder if my dad had been onto something with his talk about the diner’s coffee. I’d been lying awake for the last few hours, because having no social life meant that you went to bed early, even on nights where there was more excitement than usual.

My mother had been equally upset at Warren, for bringing the dog home fully accessorized without checking with her first, and at the renters, for abandoning him in the first place. She hadn’t been able to reach them at the number she had, but she’d called Henry’s dad and found out that they had had a dog all last summer, a puppy they’d gotten right when the they’d moved in. Henry’s dad remembered because it had gotten into their trash a few times, and the Murphys hadn’t seemed to care very much about it.