Dog's Best Friend (Must Love Pets #4) by Saadia Faruqi

Author:Saadia Faruqi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.

Candy gets tired after a little while, so she comes back to me. I rub her ears and she flops at my feet as I sit on a patio chair with London and Olivia. We’ve got my laptop with the music on low, and we’re watching Dada Jee as he tends to his precious lemon trees.

“Tell us another story, Dada Jee,” Olivia says.

“About what?” he asks, turning to us.

“Anything,” she answers.

“Ooh, I know!” London says. “Imaan’s dad.”

Dada Jee is lost in his thoughts so long, I wonder if he forgot what London said. Then he clears his throat and begins. “He loved animals too, you know. He’d come home from school sometimes with an injured bird in his hands. He’d keep it in a little box lined with towels, and dig up worms from the back garden to feed it.”

“Ew,” I say, but I have a warm feeling in my heart to know Baba did that. Gross but amazing.

“I thought the same thing the first time I found him with one of those worms,” Dada Jee tells us. “We got used to it after that.”

“What else?” I ask eagerly. I can’t get enough of these stories.

“Oh, lots of animals over the years. He named each one of them, even if they stayed with him only a day or two.”

“Names like what?” Olivia asks. She’s also enjoying the stories, I guess.

Dada Jee taps his chin. “Urdu names, mostly. But also sometimes English names, like the ones he knew from television.” His eyes light up. “Oh, you girls will like this. When Imaan’s baba was in high school, he found a stray cat that was hurt. It had been in a fight or something. Blood on its face and scratches on its stomach. He cleaned him up and named him Rambo.”

Olivia giggles.

I wrinkle my nose. “What’s that?”

“It’s a movie from the eighties,” London says. “Rambo was a fighter.”

Dada Jee’s smile fades. He ducks his head and goes back to his lemon trees. “So was Imaan’s baba.”

I know he’s thinking about Baba’s fight with cancer. London reaches over and squeezes my hand. Olivia smiles at me. I smile back. No matter what happens, I always love hearing Baba’s childhood stories. It makes me feel so close to him, like the stories envelop me in a hug or something.

Cheesy, right?

Right.

There’s a noise from the door in the fence. It swings open, and Mr. Bajpai walks in with a little boy Amir’s age. “Hello, hello!”

Dada Jee looks up. “Ah, I was wondering when you’d arrive,” he says.

Mr. Bajpai looks around the yard. “The playground looks great!”

Dada Jee stands up, grunting. “No thanks to you and Greene.”

Mr. Bajpai looks offended. He holds up a big, plastic box. It’s rectangular, with holes all over. And orange. “I was busy. But look what I brought.”

I think he’s talking about the little boy. “You mean your grandson Rahul?”

We’ve met Rahul before, of course. He’s six, like Amir, and also into superheroes. “Hi,” he says shyly.

“Rahul! Rahul! Come see what we made!” Amir rushes over like a whirlwind and drags Rahul away to the playground.

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