“After our ice cream sodas!” I whined.
“Okay, fine,” said my dad. “But then, everyone upstairs!”
Five minutes later, we said good-bye to Daisy. As we watched her walk across the street to her house, Irwin turned to me.
“Sorry, dude, but I think she likes me,” he said.
“Not a chance,” I said. “She likes me.”
We both looked at Baxter.
“Leave me out of it,” he said.
FACT: If two friends are fighting over a girl and ask your opinion on who’s right, the only way to stay friends with both of them is to keep your mouth shut.
While we brushed our teeth, I took one last look in the mirror. My blotch was back down to the size it was when I first discovered it three days earlier—the shape of Rhode Island, according to my dad. The medicine was definitely working. Did that mean it was going away for good? I had a weird thought all of a sudden.
I wasn’t sure I wanted it to totally go away. It seemed to bring me luck, in a strange sort of way.
And besides, Daisy said it gave me “character.”
Back in my room, we all got in our sleeping bags. Abby came in and climbed all over us, nipping and pawing.
“See how playful she is at night?” I said to the guys. “That’s another sign that she—”
“Let it go,” Irwin said. “Let it go.”
It was obvious I couldn’t convince him.
Yet.
It was a lonely life, yes, but a noble one. Jonah couldn’t get close enough to anyone to reveal his true self, but it was a price he was willing to pay. He had no choice. He was there to help people, whether they knew who he was or not. It was part of the deal. Yes, he was alone. Yes, he could get discouraged. But he couldn’t have been more proud of who he was. And no one could take that away from him …
Irwin and Baxter had drifted off to sleep, but I stayed awake, reading the last few pages of Fang Goodness.
Eventually, I closed the book, then closed my eyes and thought about the book. This is totally made up, I said to myself. None of this could ever actually happen. Right? I watched Abby in the closet, playing with a sock, and I tried to see Irwin’s side. Maybe I was being dumb. Maybe I was letting my imagination run away with me. Maybe it was just a coincidence that Abby had eyes that were really sensitive to light and a tendency to bite bad guys on the neck. I laughed, thinking how silly it must have sounded to my friends … me thinking that she was anything other than a regular dog with a few strange habits … Grow up, Jimmy, I said to myself. It’s not possible … It’s not … It’s …
Whoosh! Thwack!
I woke up with a jump. There was Abby, right on schedule, tiptoeing along the windowsill. I wanted to wake up the other guys, but then I decided not to. Maybe it was better this way.
Maybe it was good that I was the only one who knew what Abby really was.
In a flash, she darted through the open window, leaped to the lawn below and started walking in circles, sniffing and panting.
I watched her and wondered: Maybe she’s just out there looking for groundhogs.
But maybe not.
Maybe Abby was working.
Because after all … a CrimeBiter’s job is never done.
A huge fang you to my incomparable editor, Nancy Mercado, for keeping a straight face when I pitched her an idea about a vampire dog; to David Levithan, Yaffa Jaskoll, Rachael Hicks, Erica Ferguson, Jeremy West, and the whole team at Scholastic Press for their wonderful Scholasticness; to Adam Stower for creating drawings that made me laugh out loud; and to the swell Brianne Johnson, for telling me what to sign, why to sign, when to sign, and most importantly, where to sign.
TOMMY GREENWALD AND HIS DOG, ABBY
TOMMY GREENWALD is the author of the Charlie Joe Jackson series about the most reluctant reader ever born. Tommy lives in Connecticut with his wife, Cathy; their kids, Charlie, Joe, and Jack; and their dogs, Coco and Abby. Abby is not necessarily a crime-fighting vampire dog—but she makes Tommy and his family very, very happy, which is definitely a kind of superpower when you think about it.
Copyright © 2015 by Tommy Greenwald
Illustrations copyright © 2015 by Adam Stower
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Press, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC, SCHOLASTIC PRESS, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available
First edition, October 2015
Cover illustration © 2015 by Adam Stower
Cover design by Yaffa Jaskoll
e-ISBN 978-0-545-77333-1
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
My Dog is Better than Your Dog Page 10