Next Door to Happy by Allison Strout

Author:Allison Strout [Strout, Allison]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Holiday House
Published: 2022-07-12T00:00:00+00:00

After school, Reggie asks me what I want to do.

“Soccer drills?” I say.

“Nah,” he says, kicking a rock in front of him.

“Some other game?”

“Nah,” he says. Then he stops and leans in and whispers even though there’s no one around us to hear. “Can you keep a secret?”

Can I keep a secret? Is the sky blue? Do chocolate chip cookies deserve their own food group? Will a golden retriever lick your face?

“I’m going to build a fort in a tree in the woods behind our house,” he says.

“You are?” I say, tapping the rock that Reggie has kicked over to me.

“Yeah. I need my own private place to escape to, especially now that school has started. I wasn’t going to tell anyone, but I guess I can tell you. We could even share it,” he says tentatively. The look on his face reminds me of Goldie’s—right before you throw a ball for her—serious and careful as she tries to anticipate which way you’re going to throw.

“That sounds great.”

“Don’t you have to tell your mother you’re here?” he says as we approach the back door.

“I’ll text her, but she doesn’t really pay much attention when she’s working,” I say.

“You’re lucky,” Reggie says.

He lets us into the house, and Goldie bounds in from the living room and jumps on Reggie, wild with excitement. Reggie kneels down and throws his arms around Goldie, who uses her tongue like a washcloth, cleaning his nose and his cheeks. Then she goes for one of his ears, licking it up and down.

“Stop, Goldie. That tickles!” he says, laughing so hard he has to sit down. Her tail wags furiously as if her plan has paid off, and she throws her whole self into his lap.

“You’re too heavy for that. Here, girl,” he says, patting the floor next to him.

Goldie sits, and Reggie rubs her head with long, gentle strokes until she settles down.

“Can you stay with her while I tell my mother we’re going to walk her?” he asks, giving her one last pat on the head.

I sit down cross-legged next to Goldie. After she watches Reggie disappear, she uses me as a replacement, resting her heavy head in my lap. I stroke her a few times, and when I stop, she nudges me with her nose to remind me that she’s still there.

“Such a smart girl,” I say.

“She’s the best,” says Reggie as he comes back in. He picks up Goldie’s leash from the basket in the mudroom and attaches it to her collar.

“I wish I were a dog,” says Reggie. “Then I wouldn’t have to go to school and do things I didn’t want to do. Nobody would bother me. I could hang out all day sniffing around and digging holes.”

“But there’s stuff you’d miss,” I say as we head out to the driveway.

If I were Reggie, I would definitely miss playing with his brother and his sisters and eating his mother’s cookies and sitting on one of those comfy chairs in their living

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