Midnight at the Shelter by Nanci Turner Steveson

Author:Nanci Turner Steveson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2022-09-29T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

Ozzie stuck his wet nose inside my ear.

Wake up!

What’s wrong? What happened?

Last I knew, Ozzie’d been asleep on the bed in the guest room snuggled up beside Toby. Now he was standing in front of my kitchen bed in the dark, his lower teeth shining from the deck lamp outside the glass door.

C’mon. We’re goin’ out.

Why?

Oh-my-dog, wadda-ya-mean, why? MomDoc’s gone, it’s time for fun!

It’s the middle of the night.

I know it’s middle of night, that’s wut makes it an adventure! Come on!

Maybe because it was dark and I’d been deep asleep, or maybe because MomDoc was gone and Toby was here but Domino was not and it had been a crazy kind of day at the shelter and I was still confused, or maybe it was just because Ozzie was so excited and happy, whatever it was, I let him convince me to go. He pushed through the doggie door from the laundry room to the garage and, after the plastic thing swung back, I went, too. The garage smelled like cut grass and Toby and gasoline, because that’s where the mower-machine lived when Toby wasn’t using it.

Ozzie disappeared underneath the worktable and pushed his way past some empty crates and three very large bags of birdseed. It was dark and musty back there, but not so dark that I couldn’t see a mouse with a mouthful of sunflower seeds when it ran right underneath me.

Ozzie! Where are you?

Through the hole in the corner!

It wasn’t just a hole, it was a dark tunnel. I didn’t particularly like dark tunnels. But I went anyway because Ozzie was on the other side and somehow he thought this was going to be fun. I struggled to get all the way through because it’s harder without The Spare, but when I came out to the other side, I was under the stars in the yard and Ozzie was so happy to see me he jumped around in circles.

Hot diggity-dog, you made it, Di!

That’s your secret escape place?

Haha! Not telling—watch this new trick!

He pushed aside a loose board at the backyard fence, but this time he didn’t wait for me. When I got through myself, he was already running off down the road in the dark. I didn’t catch up to him until he was as far as Lilah’s house.

Wanna go peek in Lilah’s window? Maybe she’ll come with us!

I looked longingly at the yellow house, but Lilah was too good. She was too dedicated to Mr. Crandle. She’d never leave him alone in the night to go on an Ozzie-adventure.

No, she needs to stay. Maybe we should go back, Oz.

No way! Let’s go see the shelter-frens. I’ll lead the way.

Ozzie didn’t run off until he’d sniffed my face and knew I was okay. Out of breath, but okay. Then he trotted off ahead of me. We got to the path behind the two houses, and instead of going left toward the butte, he turned right on our shortcut to the shelter that we took when MomDoc wanted to walk instead of drive or ride her bike.

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