The Middle of Somewhere by J.B. Cheaney

Author:J.B. Cheaney [Cheaney, J.B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-48822-0
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2007-09-04T04:00:00+00:00

Some things are meant to be.

—Veronica Sparks,

whose mother always says that

At first, I was just plain mad: I didn't catch Dinner to be scarfed down by a mutt who couldn't even appreciate fine dining. But that was the least of our problems.

Because Pop was even madder—more than I'd ever seen him. “Didn't I say no dogs? What do you think that meant? One dog that I don't see? You kids have just about pushed your limit—”

Leo bolted for his old hiding place under the rear axle and flattened himself like a rug. Gee followed, but before diving under the RV he turned around and screamed, “If you run over him, you'll have to run over me, too!”

If I were Mrs. Mac, I would have gunned my Italian scooter and buzzed away right then, but she was better stuff than that. “Jack, what is it you have against this dog?”

“How about stealing my dinner, for starters? Besides, dogs are nothing but trouble, and they have fleas and they bark.”

“Well,” she said reasonably, “it wasn't just your dinner. It was Ronnie's, too, and she—”

I spoke up. “This dog doesn't bark or have fleas. And if we hadn't been forced to hide him, he wouldn't have got into the fish. Gee was in such a hurry when we heard you coming, he must've got careless with the rope.”

Pop pointed a finger at me. “You mean to say it's my fault the dog got loose?”

“Of course not,” said Mrs. Mac, putting a hand on my shoulder. “Nobody's blaming you, Jack—”

“They'd better not. They flat-out disobeyed me—I made myself very clear about not taking him, and they brought him along anyway.”

“That's not what happened.” My natural anger mode is sarcastic and huffy, but I tried to chill on the huffy while explaining how Leo had stowed away on the bike trailer, with Clint the A-1 Auto guy as accomplice. “Here's your money, by the way.” I pulled the five-dollar bill out of my pocket, but Pop just looked at it like it was a poopy diaper. My story hadn't softened him a bit, but it did earn sympathy with our audience, which had grown while I was telling it.

“Come on, Jack,” said Mrs. McClintock. “Have a heart.”

Our next-door neighbor chimed in. “Besides, every kid needs a dog. Didn't you ever have a dog, Jack?”

Pop doesn't like to be pushed—and he especially doesn't like to be boxed in, like he was now, with a feisty female on one side and a nosy neighbor on the other. Any attempt to make him change his mind only set it harder. I let the huffiness loose, turned away with a sharp sigh, and stomped back toward the campfire to clean up Leo's mess. But a noise from under the RV stopped me: Gee's sobbing. I could barely see him, wrapped around all that fur. It reminded me of how he used to go to bed with a new pair of socks.

But Leo was a lot more than his latest special thing.

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