“Let’s take these,” I said, grabbing a big bag of small, chewy treats. The label said ALL NATURAL and REAL BEEF! so I figured King would like that. “See you around, Rosie.”
“That was so cute — we should let them play again,” she said, catching Buttons and picking her up in her arms. Buttons wrapped her paws around Rosie’s neck and licked her cheek a couple of times until Rosie giggled. King sat on the floor and gazed up at Buttons in bewilderment. He didn’t move as I picked up the end of his leash.
“Yeah, maybe,” I said, although I could see Satoshi making a No! Run while you can! face behind Rosie’s back.
“We go to the park all the time,” she said. “Maybe we’ll see you at the dog run.”
“Sure,” I said. “Yeah. Maybe.”
“’Bye Charlie,” she said with a big smile. “’Bye King! ’Bye Satoshi.” She ran to catch up with Parker and Danny, her black curls bouncing.
“She’s not that bad,” I said to Satoshi when she was out of earshot. “She can be really nice. And she’s great at math.” We’d shared a table for the bake sale and she’d taken care of all the money stuff and acted really friendly.
“She’s just crazy,” Satoshi said, shaking his head. “A little too bossy for me. But I have to be on Midori’s side anyway; that’s the rule.”
“What are they fighting about?” I asked as we headed for the toy aisle. “Do you know?”
Satoshi shrugged. “It’s really Michelle who’s fighting with her. Midori’s not into all that drama, but she kind of got sucked into it when she made friends with Michelle.”
“Girls,” I said.
“Tell me about it,” he said.
“Charlie, look what we found!” Aidan called, waving a couple of toys at me from the other end of the aisle, where he was standing with Midori. “These even look like badgers!” King’s ears perked up when he spotted the toys.
“I explained about the badger hunting,” Midori said with a grin as we came up. “They don’t have any badger toys, but they do have a zebra, a panda, and a black-and-white cat.”
“Or there are all of these,” Aidan said rapturously. He gestured at the long row of toys. “Blue hippos! Green squeaky bones! Look, this one’s a really fat duck!” He poked the shockingly yellow toy and it went “SQUUACK!”
“I like the zebra,” I said, taking it out of Midori’s hand. “What do you think, King?” I held it out and he tried to grab it from me.
“That seems like a good sign!” Midori said with a laugh as King tried to jump and climb up my leg to get to the zebra.
Aidan laughed, too, but then his eyes strayed back to all the other choices. “Could we get him more than one?” he asked.
“Let’s start with one and see how he likes it,” I said. “This is coming out of my allowance, after all.” I’ve been saving my allowance for ages because I want to buy myself a telescope, although I haven’t told too many people about that plan yet. But I knew I’d have to spend some of my saved-up money on King … I was just hoping to have a bit left over!
Aidan’s face brightened. “I have an allowance, too!” he said. “I can buy King another toy with my money!”
“You don’t have to do that,” I said, frowning. I didn’t want to look like the bad guy who wouldn’t spend money on his dog while my little brother lavished gifts on him.
“It’s OK! I want to!” Aidan said. “Like a welcome-to-the-family present. Please can I, please?”
“Oh, why not?” Midori said. “I think it’s a cute idea.”
“I’m sure King won’t mind an extra toy,” Satoshi added.
As I’ve mentioned before, all my friends think Aidan is so cute.
“OK, fine,” I said.
“Which one do you want?” Aidan asked. “You can still make the final decision.” He beamed at me and I felt like a jerk.
“No, that’s all right,” I said. “You can pick.”
“Really?” he said. He studied the toys with shining eyes as if this was the most important decision he’d ever had to make. “Well, if he has a zebra, he should get another jungle animal to be its buddy. Right? How about this one?” He pulled out an orange giraffe with purple spots and stubby purple horns on its head.
“Sure,” I said with a shrug. King looked pretty interested in it. Interested enough that he wasn’t avoiding Aidan the way he usually did. I wasn’t sure I liked that.
“You guys all set?” Giovanni asked, strolling into our aisle. He was carrying a bag of kitty litter and a case of cat food tins.
“RARF! RARF!” King barked at him.
“Look what we got!” Aidan announced, holding up the giraffe and pointing at the zebra.
“Perfect,” Giovanni said with a smile. “What a lucky dog.”
Midori squeezed my elbow as we headed up to the cash register. “Ready?” she said. “Now we’re going to discover all of King’s hidden talents and teach him how to be a good dog! It’s going to be so much fun!”
I nodded and smiled, but inside I was crossing my fingers and praying that she was right. If King had hidden talents, I definitely wanted to know about them. And if we could train him to be a good dog … well, I wasn’t sure it would be fun, but it sure would be a miracle!
We decided we had to start by making King like my friends. In the car to and from the pet store he sat on my lap and rarfed grumpily at them over the back of the seat. When they tried to pet him, he lunged backward as if they were holding sharp, pointy weapons. I knew if we all wanted to play with him, he’d have to get used to them, and the sooner, the better.
“Don’t worry,” Midori reassured me. “Treats and toys should do the trick.”
I told Aidan to go help Giovanni with dinner, and then the rest of us went up into the attic. Arnold thinks it’s kind of spooky and haunted up there, but Satoshi and Midori love it as much as I do. I blocked off the trapdoor with a couple of trunks so that King wouldn’t accidentally fall down the stairs, although I was pretty sure he was smarter than that.
“That’s weird,” I said, shoving the last trunk into place. “I thought this trunk was closer to the window last time I cleaned up here.” I shoved it another inch. “And it feels lighter than usual, too.”
“How can you keep track?” Satoshi asked, rubbing the polished wooden lid with his fingers.
“There’s a system, it’s just hard to explain,” I said. “For instance, the stuff on that side is my grandparents’ and the stuff over here, like this trunk, was my dad’s.”
“What are you reading now?” Midori asked, lifting books out of my crate. I told her about the books Mom had just given me. “Oooh,” she said. “The Witches is great, but Matilda is my favorite.”
“The one about a little girl who’s a genius?” Satoshi said. “Gee, I wonder why you like that one.”
“I’m not a genius,” Midori said, but she totally is, and we all know it because Ms. Applebaum always gives her more advanced work to do so she won’t get bored with the slow pace the rest of us have to learn at.
King pawed at the sheet over the mirror, as if he remembered finding a dog there the day before. I told my friends about that and they laughed.
“Chihiro did the same thing when she was a puppy!” Satoshi said. “But she’s used to mirrors now. She’s like, ‘Oh, it’s you, boring mirror dog. Like, whatever.’”
“King, come here!” Midori called from the beanbag. King stuck his nose under a corner of the sheet and ignored her.
“At least he’s not barking at us right now,” Satoshi said.
“I’ll get him,” I said. I went over and showed them how to pick him up so it wouldn’t hurt his back, the way Mrs. Schwartz had told me to, supporting his front end and rear end at the same time. King gave me a disgruntled look, like Um, can’t you see that I’m exploring here?
“This’ll be just as much fun, I promise,” I said to him. I sat down on a blanket across from Midori and opened the bag of treats from the pet store.
That got hi
s attention. King sat bolt upright and stared at the treat bag with his nose twitching. I took one out and let him gobble it off my hand.
“You like that?” I said. “Well, you can get more if you’re nice to my friends.” I tossed the treat bag to Satoshi, who sat down on the floor in kind of a triangle from me and Midori. He put a treat on his hand and held it out low to the ground.
King’s eyes had stayed on the treat bag as it flew through the air over his head. He stared at the treat in Satoshi’s hand, sniffing cautiously. With a couple of careful steps, he leaned off my lap and edged toward the outstretched hand.
“Don’t move,” Midori whispered. “Don’t startle him.”
Satoshi stayed perfectly still. King glanced up at his face, then looked back at me like, Are you sure this is safe?
I nodded encouragingly. “Good boy, King,” I said. “Good boy. Take the treat.”
The dachshund stretched himself as long as he could so his back paws were still touching my jeans. He reached his snout way, way out, and with a quick, darting motion, he slurped the treat off of Satoshi’s hand and then ran back to me. Satoshi and Midori applauded.
“Good boy!” I said, scratching his sides. “What a good dog!”
“Now me!” Midori said. Satoshi handed her the treat bag and she did the same thing, putting the treat on her hand and resting it on the floor. “Here you go, boy,” she said in a low voice. “Good King. Good dog.”
King was still wary, but this time it didn’t take him quite so long to go out and get the treat before running back to me. And as Satoshi and Midori passed the treats back and forth, he got more and more confident. Finally he even deigned to sit still in front of Midori long enough for her to pat his head while he ate his treat.
“Awesome!” Midori said. “Now if you do that with the rest of your family, he’ll get used to them, too.”
“That’s OK,” I said. “I kind of like that he likes me better than them.”
“You may like it now,” Satoshi said, “but just wait until you need someone else to walk him!”
“Let’s try hide-and-seek!” Midori said, clapping her hands. “Charlie, you hold him here. Satoshi and I will go hide a couple of treats and the two toys somewhere in the attic. We’ll see what he finds first!”
“Let him sniff the toys before we hide them,” Satoshi suggested. I dug the toys out of the bag and held them up to King’s nose. He seized the giraffe in his jaws and tried to wrestle it out of my grip.
“Nope, you have to find it first!” I said, laughing at the determined look on his face. I pried it loose and gave the toys to my friends. King watched them go off with his new giraffe in magnificent outrage.
“Don’t look,” I said, turning him toward the window. “No cheating.”
“Hrrrrrruff,” he huffed, but then a bird flew by the window and that distracted him from being furious with me.
“OK!” Midori called. “Time to seek!”
“Ready, King?” I said. I stood up and set him on the floor; he looked up at me with his tail wagging. “Ready — go find it!” I pointed out at the attic.
King looked in the direction I was pointing, then back up at me like, Yes? And?
“Go on!” I said. “Find it!”
He tilted his head in one direction, then the other.
“Maybe you should look with him,” Satoshi suggested from his perch on a nearby armchair.
I started walking through the attic stuff as if I was searching for something. “Find it!” I said to King. “Where is it? Where could it be? Find it!” He padded along beside me, watching me intently. After a moment, it was like a lightbulb went off in his head. He started looking in the same direction as I was, sniffing the floor intently. When I turned, he turned, bouncing a few steps in front of me to scout ahead. I got down on all fours to peek under a blanket and he immediately burrowed all the way underneath it. He came back out shaking himself like, Nope, nothing there, boss! Where should we look next?
Midori giggled. “You’re getting warmer,” she said. “No, wait, colder. No, warmer! Nope, ice cold. It would help if you were crawling, of course.”
“Why do I have a feeling you’re laughing at me and not just at the dog?” I said.
“I would never!” she said innocently.
The first thing King found was one of the treats. It was sitting right on top of one of the bronze clawed feet of an old cabinet. He rarfed with glee when he spotted it and pounced on it right away. In one chomp, it was gone.
“Good boy!” I cheered. “Hooray!”
“Long live the King!” Satoshi cried, laughing.
King found the other treat poking out of the keyhole of a leathery old trunk. A minute later, he spotted the zebra half-buried in the open bottom drawer of a chest of drawers. He dragged it out and shook it vigorously for a minute. Then he lay down on the floor and started chewing on one of its ears.
“There’s still one more thing to find, dopey,” I said.
Rrrumph rrumph rrrumph, went King, chewing and looking pleased with himself.
“OK,” I said. “I think the zebra’s dead. You killed it, you win. Now find the giraffe! Go on, King! Find it!”
It took a while, but either he got bored of the zebra or he realized I was still on the hunt and finally joined me. About ten minutes later, he found the giraffe at long last, propped on a cushion behind a stack of paintings. He came bounding over to me with it between his teeth, grinning like a maniac.
“Woo-hoo!” Satoshi whooped. King dropped the giraffe and then pounced on it as if it was trying to run away from him. He rolled around with it, tugging on its tail and making cute growling noises. It was hysterical.
When I finally stopped laughing and took it away from him, we played the game again with different hiding places, and this time he caught on a lot faster. It only took him fifteen minutes to have the zebra and the giraffe corralled back at the beanbag, where he sat on them with a very proud expression on his face.
“Who says you’re untrainable?” I crowed. “You’re the smartest dog ever!”
“Uh, Chihiro begs to differ,” said Satoshi, but he was grinning, too.
I patted King’s head and gave him another treat. “You’re not a hot dog at all,” I said. “You’re a hot-shot dog.”
Midori groaned. “Oh, you did not just say that.”
King climbed onto my lap and I stroked his long, droopy ears. I felt a lot less worried than I had been since he’d arrived. “Yeah, OK,” I said. “Maybe there’s hope for you yet, buddy.”
Before Satoshi and Midori went home, I showed them the gray mystery thing King had hidden under the bed. I was careful to do it when Aidan wasn’t around, just in case it was his. I hoped maybe they could help me figure it out so I could put it back wherever it came from before anyone noticed.
But they both shook their heads.
“Sorry,” Satoshi said. “I have no idea what that is.”
“Me neither,” said Midori, turning it over in her hands. “Weird. Let us know when you find out, though!”
I left King upstairs while I walked my friends out. He was flopped on my rug looking exhausted, and he didn’t even twitch when they both patted his head to say good-bye.
“You guys are magicians,” I said as we went out the front door. “It’s so cool how all that actually worked! If only David would let you work that kind of magic on Bowser.”
Midori shuddered. “That’s OK,” she said. “I’d love to save Bowser, but not if it means dealing with David.”
“I can’t believe he’s still out,” I said. We’d passed by his room and if he’d been in there, the door would have been closed. “It’s been hours. How does Harper put up with him for that long?”
“Maybe they went to the park,” Satoshi said. Their dad wasn’t outside yet, so we sat on the front steps to wait. “We should take King and Chihiro to the dog run this weekend and see how they get along.”
“Ooh, and Michelle can bring Tombo!” Midori sai
d. “That would be fun!”
“If you guys made up with Rosie, she could bring Buttons, too,” I said.
Midori was quiet for a minute, wrapping one of her pigtails around her finger. “Buttons is super-cute,” she admitted. “Well. It’d be OK with me, but it’s really up to Michelle.”
Her dad’s car pulled up before I could say anything else, but I hoped she would sort Rosie and Michelle out. I knew now that King would play with Buttons — I wasn’t sure how he’d react to Chihiro and Tombo.
“’Bye Charlie! See you tomorrow!” the twins yelled out the window as they drove off. I waved for a minute, and then in the distance up the block I spotted David and Harper coming back with Bowser trotting slowly between them. Ruh-roh. I didn’t want to run into them if I could help it.
Quickly I scooted inside and ran upstairs.
“Where are you going, Charlie?” Aidan called from the kitchen. “Want to play outside with King? I finished my homework!”
“Maybe later,” I called back.
King wasn’t in the middle of the rug anymore. I glanced around the room, and then I crouched down and peered under the bed. Sure enough, he was curled in a little ball on the floor, snoozing away.
And nestled between his front paws was another mystery thing.
“King!” I said. “What did you do?”
He opened his eyes and blinked at me, all Hey dude, I was sleeping here.
I lay down on my stomach and pulled out the new object. It was silvery and metallic-looking and sort of cone-shaped, but with a rounded bottom instead of being pointy like an ice cream cone. It was a bit bigger than my hand. And again, it didn’t look at all familiar.
“King, why are you so weird?” I said. “Where do you get this stuff?”
His tail thumped on the floorboards as if he were saying, I know, I astonish even myself.
The front door slammed, and almost at the same moment, Giovanni called, “OK! Time for dinner!”
I sighed and buried the silver cone thing at the bottom of the laundry hamper. King wrinkled his snout at me like he couldn’t believe I kept taking his lovely stash of mystery things.