Contents
* * *
Title Page
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Glossary of Terms
Acknowledgments
Sample Chapter from ICE DOGS
Buy the Book
Middle Grade Mania!
About the Author
Connect with HMH on Social Media
Copyright © 2017 by Terry Lynn Johnson
All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to [email protected] or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.
www.hmhco.com
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Names: Johnson, Terry Lynn, author.
Title: Sled Dog School / by Terry Lynn Johnson.
Description: Boston ; New York : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, [2017] | Summary: When eleven-year-old Matt must set up a business to save his failing math grade, he overcomes his self-doubt and also gains two friends along the way.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016045212 | ISBN 9780544873315 (hardcover) Subjects: | CYAC: Dogsledding—Fiction. | Sled dogs—Fiction. | Dogs—Training—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction. | Business enterprises—Fiction. | Alaska—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.J63835 Sle 2017 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016045212
eISBN 978-1-328-82893-4
v1.0917
For everyone who has loved a dog
One
Matt didn’t have much time.
“Haw,” he called to his leaders, Foo and Grover, as they approached the fork in the trail. At the sound of his voice, the dogs’ ears swiveled back. It made Matt proud that they listened to him the same way they listened to his dad, even though Matt was eleven.
The team didn’t break stride as they charged down the left trail. Matt loved watching them charge. When the dogs were happy, he was happy. Most times.
The wind grabbed the scarf Matt’s dad had made for him and whipped him in the face. He wouldn’t wear it to school—it was kind of girlie—but out here it was okay. He tucked it back down into his jacket. It was cold for November, but Matt wasn’t worried about that. All he could think about was getting to the mail on time.
Usually it took five minutes flat to get to the mailboxes at the top of the road. His mom would be coming home any minute. He needed to get there before her so he could grab the letter he knew was coming. She couldn’t see that letter.
“Yip-yip-yip!” he called for more speed.
They were almost at the tall pine tree where he’d be able to see the road. See if there was a red Toyota on it. The dogs sprinted, their feet picking up chunks of ice, which pelted Matt in the face. He crouched on the runners and grinned.
Just as the pine tree came into view, he heard a scream behind him. He whipped his head around to see Bandit, one of the yearlings, racing toward him pulling an empty basket sled. Only it wasn’t quite empty. Someone was hanging off the back of it, being dragged along the trail. When Bandit saw Matt and the team, he lowered his head and shot forward. The dog’s burst of speed dislodged his passenger.
“Matt!” a voice shrieked. A small figure in a snowsuit tumbled down the trail, rolling like a big blue hot dog.
“Lily!” There wasn’t time to yell anything else. Matt hit the brake on his sled to stop his team. He then threw the snow hook and stomped on it to hold the huskies in place. He prepared to launch himself at the runaway sled. But Bandit crashed into him first, knocking both of them into a snowbank in a pile of legs and fur.
Bandit’s eyes, ringed in black—the reason for his name—were full of excitement and chaos. He bounced off Matt and dived for the team, but Matt grabbed his harness. As Matt struggled to hold Bandit, he wondered how his six-year-old sister had managed to harness the young dog with all of his energy and sneak away to follow them.
Lily shuffled toward them, her snowsuit making sh-sh-sh-sh noises as she came closer. “I wanted to come!”
“I told you no.”
“Bandit didn’t like being left neither.”
“Not cool, Lily! Bandit hasn’t even been trained! What were you thinking? He could’ve been hurt—” Matt stopped short when he saw his sister’s face. Her lip pulled down, her eyes red. “Aw, jeez. Fine! Get in the sled. Just hurry up!”
She stopped crying so fast, Matt knew he’d been played, but there was no time to be mad.
He didn’t know what to do with Bandit. Matt was not allowed to take more than four dogs out by himself, and he already had four on the gang line. Bandit leaped and wiggled in Matt’s arms. The team grew impatient with the wait. Atlas let out a scream to go.
Matt let Bandit loose and left Lily’s sled on the side of the trail to pick up later. There was a fire in his belly now to hurry. Just imagining his mom’s face as she opened the letter made him jittery.
Bandit completed a joyous sprint around the team, a goofy grin on his face. And then he took off for home. Foo and Grover immediately turned the team around to chase.
“No!” Matt yelled, but they were already flying down the trail in the wrong direction. So much for listening to him.
“Bandit!” he called, hoping that the dog could hear him above all the pounding feet. Bandit suddenly wheeled around for a crazed drive-by, his mouth wide open in a smile, his tongue flying out to the side of his face. Matt’s leaders also wheeled. At last, they were all going toward the mailboxes.
They made it to the big pine, but Matt couldn’t even look for his mom. He was too focused on not tipping over as they careened around the corner in a spray of snow.
“Yay!” Lily cheered.
When Matt finally looked up, he sucked in a breath at the sight. It wasn’t a red Toyota, but a brown Chevy pickup, which was almost as bad.
Dad.
By the time the team arrived at the mailboxes, his dad had parked and leaped out of the truck, leaving the door wide open.
“Lily!” he yelled, which was his normal tone for saying anything. “I went to find you in the house, and I didn’t know where you were!” He grabbed Lily from the sled and hugged her. “Don’t do that again—you scared me!”
The dogs rolled on their backs, making little contented grunts. Matt dropped the snow hook and kicked it in as he tried to figure out how he could get the mail now without his dad noticing. He inched from the sled toward the sixth box in the row.
Lily pointed at him. “We took the dogs out for a ride.”
“Yes,” Dad bellowed, standing tall. He wore his dusty apron and clogs. “Matthew is taking you whenever he goes out with the dogs now.”
Matt froze. “What?”
“I’m too busy with this order, son. I have to get the bowls done on time, or I’ll lose the contract. You can look after your sister.”
Not for the first time, Matt wished his dad had a normal job. Staying home and making pottery was just another thing for the kids at school to bug Matt about. He also wished he could mention how unfair it was that he had to take Lily all the time. But at the moment, he just wanted to get the l
etter.
Matt pointed at Lily. “I think she got a bruise from falling off the sled.”
When Dad turned to her, Matt lunged for the box with his hand ready with the key. Just as he turned it, the Toyota came around the corner. His mom coming home from her researcher job.
“Aha! A lovely surprise,” she said, as she stepped out of the car in her rubber boots and light blue office dress. “Whatcha seen, jellybeans?”
“A purple rhinoceros!” Lily shrieked.
“Good word, Lily!” Mom said.
“Errant children!” Dad boomed.
Matt reached into the box and grabbed the mail.
His mom hooted and came in for a hug that knocked off her orange hat and Matt’s ski hat. Nothing Matt’s parents did was quiet or small. His mom’s frizzy brown hair, always sticking out around her face, tickled Matt’s nose. The large paper flower she wore as a pin on her lumber jacket got crushed between them.
Matt had never noticed how weird his parents were until Jacob had pointed it out when they used to be friends. That was the biggest mistake of Matt’s life, letting Jacob come over. He hadn’t shut up about Matt’s family since.
Matt finally peeked at the mail he was holding. The top letter in the pile had the Sunset School District logo on it. His heart pounded as he read:
To: Clara and Tomas Misco
Box 47 Birch Lane
Copper Creek, MI 48339
“Well, let’s all get home,” Mom said. “I brought pizza.”
Matt was momentarily stunned by this news. They never got cool food like store-bought pizza. But the distraction cost him. Mom reached out like a cobra and plucked the mail from his hands. He watched the letter disappear into her purse.
Two
“What’s that, Smokey?” Jacob Tonge asked, hanging over the bus seat in front of Matt.
Jacob’s dark hair was plastered to his forehead from wearing a hat, and he had something brown lodged between his front teeth.
Matt could hear others snickering in the back of the bus but didn’t turn. “Don’t call me that,” he said, casually slipping the math assignment into his backpack. Not casually enough, though. Jacob lunged and snatched it out of the bag.
“‘Extra-Credit Project,’” Jacob read aloud, as if he hadn’t gotten the assignment too. “Everyone’s chance to pull up their grade. Can you still earn extra credit if you can’t count?” Jacob grinned as his comment was rewarded with laughter from the back of the bus. He turned back to Matt’s homework. “‘Create a small business plan,’ ‘include operating costs,’ ‘you won’t see profits unless . . .’ Blah, blah, blah.”
Jacob crumpled the paper and tossed it over Matt’s head to one of his friends. Matt leaped straight up and caught the ball before Stewart could. Matt might not be good at math, but he was faster than anyone on the bus.
“Sit down in your seats!” Mrs. Wilson yelled. “And face the front!” Her glare burrowed into the wide mirror above the windshield and reflected back to land directly on Matt.
Jacob bumped Matt’s shoulder as he clomped past to find his seat. Matt stuffed the math paper into his bag.
“Smokey, Smokey, Smokey.” The chant began just as the school bus approached his driveway. The voices followed Matt off the bus. He tucked his neck farther into his coat until the doors closed and the chant was replaced by something else.
Dog song.
Smiling, Matt jogged down the driveway to greet the dogs in the yard and let their howling fill him.
* * *
In his room that night, Matt picked up the whittling knife on his desk as he remembered the letter from yesterday. He thought of how Mom had read it and then quietly passed it to Dad. She never did anything quietly. It took her a long time to look at Matt.
“Fighting, Matthew? Really? I can’t believe it. Haven’t I taught you anything?” She looked as if she was going to cry, which made Matt’s throat close up. “I want you to use your mind, not your fists.”
Why were you fighting? Matt worried she’d ask. He didn’t want to tell her what Jacob had said. About “Maniac Misco.” That’s what the kids called her ever since she’d spoken to his class during career week about being a researcher.
Yesterday his mom had phoned the principal and had learned that Matt was in school on probation. He hadn’t been suspended or anything. But when he got home today, she was still looking at him with those disappointed eyes. No big hug. No jellybean greeting.
Matt stared at the poster on his bedroom wall:
ADVICE FROM A SLED DOG:
WORK AS A TEAM
KEEP MOVING FORWARD
HOWL WITH YOUR FRIENDS
BE WARM-HEARTED
LOVE WHAT YOU DO
The only thing Matt loved about living on a dead-end road with crazy parents and no electricity was the dogs. But it was easy for them to dish out life advice—they didn’t have to go to school.
A knot formed in his stomach as he stared at the crumpled sheet outlining the new math assignment.
Extra-Credit Project for the Semester—worth a bonus fifty points to add to your final grade
Create a small business plan for your idea
Include operating costs and use formulas to show salary
Run the actual business for the rest of the semester—six weeks
Make weekly reports
You must have at least three clients to show it is a thriving business
You won’t see profits unless you have accurate math skills!
What would happen if Matt failed math this year? Everyone would call him stupid, not just Jacob. And his mom . . .
But if Matt could do well on the assignment, it might be enough to bring up his semester average. He was glad there wasn’t a letter coming to his parents about his math grade. Yet.
What kind of business could he do? Dad ran his own, but Matt couldn’t do his project on pottery. The guys would never let that fly.
Matt picked up his half-finished carving and began to whittle. The head was the fun part. He loved seeing the wood come to life.
Scrape, scrape, scratch, scrape.
Curls of cedar fell from the knife.
He wished math were as easy as whittling. Normally, the way the wood responded to his hands helped him think. But not tonight. Matt put down the knife and opened his glass display case. He ran his fingers over the smooth finished pieces inside, but even that didn’t distract his mind.
Matt absently repositioned the carvings, stroking each dog before placing them in front of the little wooden sled. He’d been working on this dog team for almost a year. It was his longest project, and he had to whittle one more husky to make a glorious six-dog team.
Matt’s door burst open. His dad’s large frame lurched into the room just as Matt closed the display case.
“Homework done?”
Matt slid the math assignment under his books. “Yes, sir.”
“Okee dokee. Story. Teeth. Bed.” He counted off by smacking his hands together the same way he did every night.
Matt padded into the living room, where he knew most kids had a TV. Lily was already on the couch surrounded by a pile of husky puppies and Pegasus, their mother.
“I’ll call this one Boots,” Lily said, holding up a black pup with two white front legs. The four-week-old puppy opened her mouth and curled her tongue in a yawn complete with a full-body shake. Pegasus nuzzled the pup worriedly like a good mom. Lily returned the puppy to the pile with her four littermates.
“You only get to name two,” their dad said. “So think hard.”
“This one’s Dragon,” Matt said, reaching to run a finger over his favorite. The rusty brown male had a white facemask and fierce red eyebrows. And he howled already, a pebbly sound that made Matt laugh.
“What’s it going to be tonight,” their mom asked, “Origami Yoda or Marty McGuire?”
Matt didn’t know why she bothered asking them both, since Lily always got her way.
“Marty!” Lily yelled.
While his mom read aloud from a book featuring Lily’s favorite third-grader, Matt thought of the math assignment. He was lucky Mr. Moffat had given them a chance to make up some marks. Almost as if he’d done it on purpose so Matt wouldn’t fail.
School had always been hard for Matt. Gym was his favorite class, but there were no baseball or soccer classes in math. Or dogsledding classes. That’s what his school needed.
And just like that, Matt knew what he’d do for his extra-credit project. He jumped up.
His mom stopped reading abruptly.
“I just remembered, I forgot to do my homework.”
Dad raised his arms wide in a question. Matt gave him a shrug and ran back to his room.
The propane lamp on the wall hissed as he turned it on and grabbed a fat blue marker and a piece of paper. He already knew he wouldn’t get clients from his school. No one would brave being teased because they’d gone to Smokey’s house. He’d have to put up posters at the town library tomorrow morning first thing. That’s where everyone put up signs looking for lost cats.
In careful letters across the top of the page, he wrote:
MATT’S SLED DOG SCHOOL
The reports had to be read out loud.
Matt hoped Tammy Fuller couldn’t hear his heart racing as she brushed past him on her way to the front of the class. Her blond hair was parted in a straight line and braided in two neat ropes down her back. Green ribbons matched her dress.
Matt hardly paid attention to her as he tried to calm his jitters. His whole body vibrated. Why do we have to go to the front of the class? It was bad enough that the extra-credit project had assignment reports that needed to be turned in every week throughout the rest of the semester. Five in total. But now students had to read them out loud. In front of everyone.
“My small business is making all-natural lip-gloss,” Tammy began.
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