“Stay here and be good,” I said. Just to be safe, I shut the bedroom door behind me.
David and Bowser were going into their room as I reached the top of the stairs. They both glared at me. “I hope you’re leaving Mr. Meanie-Weenie up here,” David growled. “We don’t need him yapping away and giving everyone a headache during dinner.”
“Obviously I’m leaving King up here,” I said, spreading my empty hands. “I mean, do you see him?”
He snorted, went into his room, and slammed the door. I guessed that Harper had gone home.
Aidan was setting knives and forks on the table as I came into the kitchen. He looked up at me and smiled. “Guess what, Charlie?” he said. “Giovanni showed me how to make pizza dough! It’s so cool! We put it in this machine and it goes round and round and round and you can watch it getting smushed and squished!”
“If we weren’t lazy we’d use our hands instead of a machine,” Giovanni said, adjusting his glasses. “But it should be OK anyway.” He was slicing up a large round pizza covered in red and yellow peppers, ricotta cheese, and mushrooms.
“It smells awesome,” I said. I got myself a glass of water from the fridge, ignoring the icy stare from the cat overhead.
“What did you guys do?” Aidan asked. “Did you play with the giraffe? Did King like the giraffe? Did you pick a name for it?”
“Yeah, he loved it,” I said. “He’s all worn out now —”
An enormous bang from upstairs cut me off. We all stood very still, even Giovanni, listening to David’s angry footsteps thundering down the stairs.
“That doesn’t sound good,” Aidan whispered.
David burst into the kitchen. His neck and face were bright red with fury.
“Who’s been in my room?” he demanded. “Who’s been touching my stuff? Which one of you was it?” He narrowed his eyes at Aidan and then at me.
“It wasn’t me!” Aidan said quickly. “I’ve been down here with Giovanni all day!”
“Me neither!” I said. “Satoshi and Midori and I were in the attic with King! We haven’t gone anywhere near your room!”
“You’re lying!” he yelled. “Somebody went into my room and snooped around and took my stuff! I want it back!”
Uh-oh, I thought. Was that where King had gotten the gray piece and the silver cone? But why would David be so upset about a couple of weird little things? It wasn’t like King had run off with his PlayStation controller or something. And how had he even noticed such small things were missing in the big mess of his room?
Well, I definitely didn’t want to admit to something that I wasn’t sure I’d done, especially when it would only get King in more trouble with my family.
“What, uh — what exactly are you missing?” I asked.
David huffed for a second. “That’s none of your business,” he snarled.
“David,” Giovanni said reasonably, “if we don’t know what’s missing, how can we help you find it?”
“The person who took it knows what he took!” David shouted. “Just give it back!” He took a threatening step toward me.
Giovanni jumped in his way, making soothing motions with his hands as if he were taming a wild mountain lion.
“Shouting isn’t going to solve this problem,” he said. “Let’s sit down over dinner and see if we can figure out what happened. OK?”
“I know what happened,” David said. He jabbed a thick finger at me and then at Aidan. “My annoying little brothers did something annoying, nosy, and stupid. Again. I will find out who did this!” He whirled around and stomped out of the kitchen.
Giovanni sighed. “I guess I’ll save him some pizza for later, then.” He went back to the counter and divided the pizza onto five plates, setting two aside for Mom and David.
My mind was whirling. If those pieces were David’s, I had to put them back without him knowing King had taken them. But if they weren’t his, and he suddenly found them in his room, he’d be this mad all over again about one of us “snooping.”
I glanced at Aidan. It didn’t seem like him to go into David’s room and take something. Maybe Giovanni had knocked something behind the desk when he went in to get David’s laundry. Or maybe David had just misplaced whatever he was looking for. Maybe this wasn’t King’s fault at all.
I’d have to ask Satoshi and Midori for their advice at school tomorrow. Their parents didn’t like anyone to call during dinner, and I always seemed to get it wrong when I tried to wait until afterward.
“RARF RARF RARF RARF RARF RARF RARF RARF RARF RARF RARF RARF!”
King’s bark suddenly echoed through the house. I’d never heard him sound so wild and frantic. I dropped my plate back on the counter and ran upstairs. I could hear Aidan and Giovanni running behind me.
David was in our room, pulling things off the shelves and tossing clothes out of the closet. From under the bed, King was barking madly at him. I was glad he was smart enough to stay out of range of David’s heavy boots.
Bowser sat in the doorway, looking confused. He didn’t even growl at us as we squeezed by into the room.
“Hey!” I shouted. “Quit it! You’re making a mess!”
“That’s mine!” Aidan shrieked as a plastic velociraptor flew across the room and bounced off the opposite wall. “Stop it, David, stop it!”
“Whatever you’re looking for, we didn’t take it!” I yelled. I focused very hard on not looking at the laundry hamper. David hadn’t touched it yet. He yanked open our drawers and started rummaging under our pajamas.
“Rarf rarf rarf rarf rarf rarf rarf rarf rarf!” King added.
“OK, that’s enough,” Giovanni said. He stepped forward and firmly closed the drawer David had pulled open. “This is not adult behavior,” he said to David.
“How am I supposed to act like an adult when I’m living with two snooping babies?” David demanded.
“Either talk to me about this sensibly,” Giovanni said, “or go to your room and think about how else to solve this problem. In a way that doesn’t involve violence or property damage, please.”
David glared at him. Even King stopped barking, as if he wanted to see what would happen. For a moment I thought David might try to fight or yell some more, but then he stepped back, pointed at me and Aidan one more time, and stalked out of the room. Bowser slipped in behind him just before David slammed his bedroom door.
Giovanni sighed. “I’ll help you guys clean this up after dinner, OK?”
“Thanks, Giovanni,” Aidan said, poking a pile of his clothes with his foot. Giovanni put his hand on Aidan’s shoulder and steered him toward the stairs.
“You were a good watchdog,” I said to King. I crouched down and slid a couple of treats under the bed. I could hear his tail whacking the underside of my mattress as he scarfed them up.
I backed out of the room, giving the laundry hamper one last guilty look.
Had King stolen those things from David’s room?
Why was David so upset about them?
Was this all my fault?
When Mom got home, Giovanni told her what had happened, and they went into her office to talk about it in quiet voices. David didn’t come out of his room for the rest of the evening, although after we all went to bed I’m pretty sure I heard him sneak downstairs to get that pizza.
I didn’t have a chance to ask my friends for advice at school because all anyone wanted to talk about at lunch was the announcement that Miss Woodhull, one of the sixth-grade teachers, was going to direct the fall school play and we could all try out for it next week. Not that I cared — there was no way you could get me up on a stage performing for a whole audience full of people. But Michelle and Midori were super-excited, and even Satoshi and Arnold kept trying to guess what the play would be.
“If it’s a musical, Ella should get the lead,” Midori said. “Remember? The girl with the beagle who won the talent show?”
“Yeah, totally!” said Michelle. “You know, unless Miss Woodhull wants t
o give the lead to me.” She flipped her emerald green scarf back and flapped her eyelashes dramatically. Midori cracked up. Midori, by the way, was wearing an emerald green shirt and earrings, so I guess I was right about them planning to match.
I couldn’t really concentrate on the play conversation because I was too worried about what King might be doing while I wasn’t home. The worst part was that I wasn’t even going straight home from school. I had my art class after school with Mrs. Bly, so I had to spend that whole hour worrying about King, too.
Usually Mrs. Bly’s class is my favorite part of the week. She lets us do pretty much anything we want to, as long as it involves art. This week she’d brought in a whole bunch of different colors of clay for us to sculpt with.
I took some red-brown clay that was pretty close to the color of King’s fur and sat down on a stool at one of the high tables in the art room. Sunshine was pouring in the big windows all along the walls. Mrs. Bly says that “natural light” is the best for “creating art” so she always leaves the blinds open. The room smelled like paint and chalk and glue. There’s a bulletin board for each grade, so you can see the best finger paintings from the kindergartners all the way up to the best photographs and watercolors by the sixth graders. Mrs. Bly changes them all every couple of weeks so everyone gets a chance to be on display.
But the fifth-grade bulletin board almost always has something on it by Pippa Browning, Rosie’s best friend. This week it was a colored pencil drawing of Rosie’s puppy, Buttons, wrestling with a long pink ribbon. The board was right next to my table, so I looked at it for a while as I rolled the clay around in my hands. I wondered if my rocket ship on Mars painting might be up there the next week. I knew it wouldn’t be my Voyager drawing; I’d barely had time to work on it at home, what with all the time I had to spend on King instead.
Pippa sat down across from me, holding some dark purple clay. Her long, pale blond hair was clipped back on the sides with turquoise butterfly barrettes, and then pulled back into a ponytail so it wouldn’t get in the clay. Her clip-on earrings were silver lace daisies with a blue stone in the middle. She was wearing an apron over her navy blue sweater, too. Mrs. Bly has aprons for everyone, but I always forget to wear mine.
“That’s a really good drawing,” I said to Pippa. I pointed at the sketch of Buttons.
“Thanks,” she said, turning pink. She poked her clay for a minute without looking up. “Um — so, what are you making, Charlie?”
“I’m trying to do a sculpture of my new dog,” I said. “He’s a dachshund. His name is King. He’s awesome.” Well, most of the time. “But it’s hard to make such a long body stay up on these stubby legs.” I hadn’t even started on the head because the body kept caving in.
“Maybe try making the body less thin,” Pippa suggested. She watched me muddle around with the clay, squashing it this way and that with my fingers. “And, um … you could spread the paws out a bit more. For balance. I mean, if you want to.” She ducked her head and went back to her own sculpture.
“Hey, that worked,” I said five minutes later. My sculpture didn’t look as sleek and graceful as King’s actual body, but at least it was standing up without collapsing in the middle. I started working on a separate ball of clay for the head. “Thanks, Pippa.”
She turned pink again. “Sure.”
“What are you making?” I asked.
“I’m not sure yet,” she said. “Maybe an elephant.”
“Cool.”
Her fingers were really thin and they moved quickly as she pressed and shaped the clay. I could see perfect elephant ears appearing already.
“Hey,” I said, “can I ask your opinion about something?”
She looked up and blinked at me. I pulled out my sketch pad and tried to draw the mysterious gray thing King had found. “What do you think this is?” I asked her.
Pippa put down her clay and leaned over to peer at the drawing. “Um,” she said. “A — maybe a — maybe … is it …” She turned an even brighter shade of pink. “I’m sorry, Charlie. I think you’re a really good artist! I just don’t recognize it. Maybe it’s the angle …”
“Oh, no, I have no idea what it is either,” I said. “It’s something King found and brought to me.”
Pippa exhaled and shook her head so her ponytail slipped over her shoulder. “Oh thank goodness,” she said. “I felt so bad!”
“I’m just trying to figure it out,” I said. “He also brought me this.” I drew the silver cone thing. “They don’t look important,” I said. “But they might be my brother’s.” I told her about how mad David had been the night before. “It’s weird, though, right?” I said. “Why would he be so mad about things like this?”
“Maybe they’re parts of something,” Pippa said thoughtfully. “Like, something he’s building? Does he build things?”
“David? No way,” I said. “He lies on his bed snoring or playing video games.”
“Oh,” Pippa said. “Because I was thinking, maybe he got so mad because he can’t finish building whatever it is without these pieces. You know, like when you’re trying to make a sundae but there’s no chocolate sauce or whipped cream.”
I laughed. “That is the worst,” I said, and she smiled. “I could believe David building a sundae,” I added, “but not something with mysterious gray and silver parts. Maybe they’re not his after all. Maybe he’s missing something else.”
“Why don’t you just show those to him and ask him?” Pippa suggested. “He can’t be mad at you for something your dog did.”
“Oh, yes he can!” I said. “I’d rather give them back without getting yelled at, if possible.”
Pippa nodded. “I don’t like getting yelled at either,” she said. I wondered how she handled being best friends with Rosie. I’d never seen Rosie get mad at Pippa, but she sure yelled about a lot of other things. Rosie’s brothers were all pretty loud, too; I’d seen them hollering at Danny during our baseball games.
Pippa went back to her clay elephant, and I finished my sculpture of King. When Mrs. Bly came by to see how we were doing, she was very pleased to find out I’d made something besides a spaceship. Although I might have had better luck making an alien … even I had to admit that my dachshund looked more like an elephant itself. Pippa’s elephant was exactly right, of course. Mrs. Bly ooooohed at it for a while and showed it to the rest of the class while Pippa turned pink again.
“Good luck figuring out what those pieces are,” she said to me as we left class. I could see Rosie and her mom waiting in the parking lot for her, in the car right behind Giovanni and Aidan.
Giovanni winked at me as I got in the backseat. “Who’s your cute little friend?” he asked.
“Who?” I said. “Pippa? She’s just a girl in my class.”
“When a girl plays with her hair that much,” Giovanni declared, “it means she likes you. You should bring her flowers next week.”
“Giovanni!” I said, and both Aidan and I started laughing. Giovanni thinks all of us should have girlfriends, even Aidan, who thinks girls are scary. But none of my friends were interested in girls, as far as I knew. How weird would it be if I suddenly asked Pippa out? Plus she would definitely say no.
“She doesn’t like me like that,” I said. “She’s just Pippa. She always plays with her hair, because she’s shy.”
“Of course she likes you!” Giovanni said. If he hadn’t been driving, he’d have waved his hands around the way he always does when we talk about this. “You’re the most handsome boy in the school!”
“What about me?” Aidan asked.
“All right,” said Giovanni, “the most handsome boy in the fifth grade.” Aidan grinned.
“OK, I think I’m embarrassed enough,” I said. “Can we talk about something else?”
“David and Harper went out with Bowser again,” Aidan said in hushed tones, like he was telling me about a pair of vampires wandering through our yard. “He said he was too mad at us to stay inside the
house where we could ease-drop on them.”
“Eavesdrop,” Giovanni corrected him.
“That’s what I said,” Aidan said, nodding. “I told him I would never ease-drop, especially since I know Harper wants to talk about her mom and dad getting divorced, and it’s none of my beeswax.” He looked unhappy. “But that only made him more mad.”
“I wonder why,” I said, and Giovanni chuckled. I guess Aidan’s snooping wasn’t just on me. But if it drove David out of the house, that sure made my life easier.
I hurried upstairs as soon as we got home. This time King heard me coming and wriggled out from under the bed. It turned out I was right to worry so much. He sat down right in the middle of my bright red rug, wagging his tail and sniffing something small and black that definitely didn’t belong to either of us.
“King!” I hissed, shutting the door quickly behind me. “What if Aidan had come in first? Or what if David had walked by earlier and seen you with that? You might have ended up on a hot-dog bun!”
King wagged his tail some more. He didn’t look very concerned about the prospect of being eaten by David and Bowser.
I peeked out into the hall. David had closed his door firmly while he was out. He’d also put up a sign with KEEP OUT! scrawled in huge spiky black letters.
Still, King could have stolen this piece earlier in the day, while Bowser was going in and out of the room. I turned it over in my hand. It did look like a piece of something, as Pippa had suggested. It looked a little bit like a tiny fan, like the ones Mrs. Bly puts in the windows of the art room during the summer.
This mystery was too big for me. It was time to call in backup.
I got the phone from Mom’s room, lifted King onto the bed with me, and dialed.
The phone rang about seven times before Satoshi picked up.
“Dude!” he said before I could say more than “hi.” “This is Midori’s cello practice time! You’re not supposed to call while she’s having a lesson!”
“This is an emergency,” I said. “Plus, come on, you guys are always busy with something. There’s no way I can keep track.”