“Oh, that’s OK, it’s true,” Danny said.
“I liked your skit, though,” I said to him.
“Thanks.” He grinned.
“I guess you warmed up to your dog after all,” Parker said.
“Yeah, she’s not so bad,” I said, tickling Trumpet under her chin. Her soft brown eyes gazed up at me and her pink tongue hung out of her mouth, making her look like she was smiling.
“Hey, guess what?” Danny said. “My mom has decided we can get a dog now! I think she likes Merlin,” he said to Parker. “So I’m hoping we can get something big and hairy like him.”
“Not if I have anything to say about it!” his sister, Rosie, announced. She patted Trumpet gingerly. “I want something small! And cute! And adorable! I want a poodle! So I can dress her in cute pink outfits and we can match!”
“Oh, no,” Danny groaned. “That’s all we need, a small, furry version of Rosie!”
“See you Monday,” Parker said to me. “Or maybe at the dog run in the park, if you guys are ever there.” He patted Trumpet’s head again and they moved on to talk to Kristal.
Trumpet wriggled up my shoulder to sniff somebody behind me. Her tail wagged. I turned around, expecting my parents, but to my surprise it was Avery. He stepped back when I saw him.
“Just saying hi to your dog,” he mumbled. I couldn’t believe Trumpet had wagged her tail at him. Couldn’t she sense that he was evil? Avery shoved his hands in his pockets. “Well, at least I didn’t fall asleep this time,” he said gruffly.
“I’m glad,” I said, trying to sound polite and like I totally didn’t care.
“Good thing your dog can sing better than you can,” Avery said.
But this time, it didn’t hurt my feelings. It was almost like he was trying to be funny, although he couldn’t tell a joke very well. And it didn’t matter what he thought. I knew everyone else had loved it.
“Thanks, Avery,” I said sweetly. He rubbed his head, scowling, and then stomped off, pushing people out of his way as he went.
“Great job, Ella!” Nikos said, sliding through the crowd toward me. “You guys rocked!” Trumpet wagged her tail when she saw him. See, now there was someone she could wag her tail about. That was kind of how I felt when I saw him, too.
“Thanks for your help, Nikos. Did you give her this?” I asked, touching the bandanna.
“No, she was like that when I picked her up,” Nikos said. “I had to take it off for a while so we could run around in my yard this afternoon, but I put it back on.”
“That was my idea,” said my dad’s voice, behind me. I turned around. Dad was grinning from ear to ear. He gave me and Trumpet a huge hug. “I figured she could use a costume, too,” he said.
“I might have known you were behind this,” Mom said to him.
“But it was my idea!” I said. “I found the song. Did you like it?” I asked her anxiously.
“It’s not exactly what I was imagining for you,” she said. “But — I loved it.” Her smile was as big as Dad’s. She gave me and Trumpet a hug, too. She even let Trumpet lick her ear. “It was much better than The Smashing Mozarts,” she whispered.
“I heard that!” Dad said.
“So can we keep her?” I asked. “Please? Please please?”
“Please please please?” my dad added, giving my mom a big soulful gaze just like Trumpet’s.
“YEAH! I wanna keep Trumpet!” Isaac shouted.
My mom laughed. “Now how am I supposed to argue with that?” she said. “Besides,” she added, “according to the lawyers, Golda also left you a lot of money to be set aside for music school later, if you want it. So it seems wrong to take part of her gift and not the rest. I think she must have wanted you to have Trumpet for a reason.”
“WOO-HOO!” Heidi shrieked in my ear, making me jump. “Sorry, I was listening in,” Heidi said. “But WOO-HOO!”
I hugged Trumpet tightly and she gave my chin lots of enthusiastic licks.
“Hey,” Rory said, squeezing between people to get to us. “Do you guys want to go out for pizza? My mom said she could drive us to Formosa’s.”
“That’d be perfect, because Trumpet could come!” Heidi said. Formosa’s Pizzeria has an outside deck where they let people sit with their dogs while they’re eating. I’d been there a few times with my parents, but never with a group of friends. I turned to Mom and Dad.
“Of course!” Dad said.
“Go celebrate,” Mom said. “But don’t stay out too late.”
I felt all fizzy and happy inside. I’d won the talent show. I had two new friends — maybe even best friends. And I had the best dog in the world. Well, sort of. Hopefully no one would be singing at Formosa’s.
“You want to come, too, Nikos?” Heidi said.
“I dunno,” Nikos said. “Me and a bunch of girls? The other guys would never let me hear the end of it.”
“Then we’ll bring another guy,” Rory said.
I thought of someone else who never got invited anywhere — someone who also seemed to have no friends, because of his focus on something else. “How about Pradesh?” I said. “I bet he needs a break from hearing about how amazing his sister was tonight.”
“Sure,” Rory said. “I’ll go ask him.” My mom looked even more proud of me. It was time to get out of here before she said something really embarrassing.
“Come on, Trumpet,” I said. “Time to introduce you to pizza. I bet you’ll like it even better than meatballs.”
“Meatballs!” Mom said. “Who gave her meatballs?”
Dad and I exchanged guilty looks. “Um, nobody,” I said.
“Definitely not us,” Dad said. “Especially definitely not me.”
“OK, ’bye, Mr. and Mrs. Finegold!” Heidi said quickly. “See you later!” She grabbed my arm and dragged me after Rory. I held up Trumpet’s paw to wave to Mom and Dad and they waved back.
“This is the best night ever,” Heidi said. “Man, Ella, I’m so glad you got Trumpet.”
Trumpet flopped her head onto my shoulder and made a cute snoozing sound. Maybe she would sleep through the pizza-eating.
“Yeah,” I said, stroking her velvety ears. “Me too.”
The puppy blinked big black eyes at us. She kind of swayed in place like she wasn’t sure what to do first. Then she shook her head, crouched, and charged at Danny. Only she was too little or too sleepy to run straight, so she wobbled off course and ended up tripping over his sneaker.
“YIP!” she protested, flopping over sideways. She spotted Danny’s shoelace and pounced on it like it was responsible for tripping her. She got the shoelace between her tiny teeth and dragged it backward, grrring and snrrrfing and batting at it with her tiny paws.
“Hey,” Danny said, trying to get it away from her. She promptly jumped on his hand. The funniest thing was that she was so tiny — she was only about the size of Danny’s hand, but she went ahead and bravely attacked it anyway. But she didn’t try to bite it; she had her mouth open and kept going “Arrrr arrrr” while she wrestled with his fingers.
I caught Danny hiding a smile.
The puppy still hadn’t come over to say hi to me. I thought she’d sit in my lap as soon as she saw me. I thought maybe she would lick my fingers delicately a few times and then curl up and fall asleep. Instead she started running in giddy staggering circles around Danny. She kept tripping over her paws and doing little somersaults on the rug. Then she’d bounce up, blinking and looking around like she was trying to catch whoever was doing that to her.
“Come here, Princess,” I said, holding out my arms to her.
“Does it have to be Princess?” Danny pleaded. “You got to pick the dog; shouldn’t we get to pick her name?”
“No way!” I said. I know my brothers.
“Fuzz,” suggested Miguel.
“Twinkletoes,” suggested Danny.
“Marshmallow Fluff.”
“Foo-Foo the Snoo.”
“Señorita Fancypants!”
r /> “Lady Snooty McSnooterfluff of the Waterford McSnooterfluffs!”
“Paperweight!”
“Kickball!”
“Danny!” I yelled.
“No, she doesn’t look like a Danny,” my brother said, pretending to look at the dog thoughtfully.
“Stop it!” I said. “Her name is Princess!”
“Her eyes look like little black buttons,” Miguel said.
“Buttons!” Danny cried. The puppy leaped to her paws and scrambled onto Danny’s lap. “See, she likes it,” he said. She tried to climb his arm to get up to his face. He picked her up with both hands around her little chest and let her lick his nose. Her tail was going bananas again.
Oh, no. Maybe she did like the name Buttons. At least it was better than Lady McSnooterfluff or Kickball. But what about my perfect little Princess?
Mom and Belinda came back into the room. Mom saw Danny holding the puppy and gave me a thumbs-up behind his back. But that wasn’t the point at all — Princess was supposed to like me best!
And her name was supposed to be Princess!
In addition to the New York Times- and USA Today-bestselling Wings of Fire series, Tui T. Sutherland is the author of several books for young readers, including the Menagerie trilogy, the Pet Trouble series, and three books in the bestselling Seekers series (as part of the Erin Hunter team). In 2009, she was a two-day champion on Jeopardy! She lives in Massachusetts with her wonderful husband, two adorable sons, and one very patient dog. To learn more about Tui’s books, visit her online at www.tuibooks.com.
Copyright © 2009 by Tui T. Sutherland.
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc.
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First printing, April 2009
Cover photo by Michael Frost
Cover design by Yaffa Jaskoll
e-ISBN 978-0-545-30033-9
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
Tui T. Sutherland, Loudest Beagle on the Block
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