That familiar uh-oh stomach clutch struck with that many pairs of eyes on her; Aneta regretted spitting out the name. He had become Wink to her when he opened his eyes after Nadine breathed into him. He’d looked right at her, and he had been frowning, the extra skin above his eyes folding deeply. And then he had winked. At her. Saying thanks.
Vee appeared from around the side of the community center. “Nadine called and said the puppy is at the vet. They are going to at least keep him overnight to see… Well, to see.” She shrugged.
“The puppy,” Esther said. “Aneta named him Wink.”
A slow smile, the first one Aneta had seen, curved the wide mouth. “Hey, you’re right. The puppy does. He’s got one eye that’s pretty squished. When he blinks—”
“He winks!” Sunny and Esther chorused. “Aneta, you’re brilliant. That has to be his name!”
“Anyway,” Frank said, walking in the door. The girls lengthened their strides to follow him. “Wink’s lungs sounded like they needed help.”
“Is he going to die?” Aneta asked. She swallowed hard in a dry throat. If her best hadn’t been good enough… She wished Mom weren’t on a trip or that Gram were there. She searched the parking lot for her grandmother’s Pink Flamingo scooter, but it had yet to swing into the half-circle parking lot. Mom wouldn’t be home until Thursday. Aneta bit her wobbly lower lip.
Frank surveyed the four sad faces in front of him. He sighed. “Oh boy. This wasn’t in the job description.” Leaning against the door, he folded his arms and stared at his sandals. “I’m not going to lie to you girls. This is not a perfect world.”
Vee waved her hands in front of her, signaling frustration. “We’re eleven years old. We’ve seen stuff. Is he or isn’t he?”
For a moment Aneta heard a buzzing in her head, and Frank’s face swirled in front of her. The wish that had begun when Wink winked at her pushed further into her bones. Aneta thought her heart might shatter if Frank said what she thought he was going to say. Now that she had a family who said they loved her and had a home, she had hoped her heart might stop breaking. Now her stupid heart was cracking again. Over a soggy bunch of wrinkles who probably wouldn’t live. Wink.
Chapter 6
Mission: Make Mom Love Wink
On Wednesday, Gram remembered. They’d spent the day shopping and taking a walking tour of the historical district in a nearby town. A great day, but Aneta was tired. She had her head tipped back, eyes half-closed, watching the trees and the sunlight speckle over her head. The trip had been planned to help Aneta with being sad over the short life of Wink, but it hadn’t worked. He was all she could think about. Gram abruptly pulled to the side of the road.
“On Friday, when you ran inside your house to change out of your wet clothes and grab your duffle bag, what did you do with the lake-stink-and-vomit clothes?” she asked, removing her helmet and turning to her granddaughter.
“Um…,” Aneta said, removing her own helmet.
“That’s what I thought. So they’ve been where? On the floor of your room since Friday?”
“Oh no,” Aneta reassured her grandmother, knowing that the hardwood floors did not do well with wet clothes. “I put them on the washing machine.”
“On the washing machine, not in the washing machine.”
“Yes.”
Gram jammed the helmet back on her head. “Put your helmet on—we need to make a detour to your house.”
Half an hour later, rather than heading straight to Gram’s, her grandmother pulled the Pink Flamingo through the security gate, down the lane, and turned right into Aneta’s driveway. “You grab the clothes. We’ll wash them at home. I’ll check the answering machine.”
Aneta hit the fridge for a bottle of water on her way to the mudroom and the clothes. The ride had been warm. Once in the fridge, she pulled out a couple of leftovers she’d been supposed to take to Gram’s on Friday. Making a face, she dumped them in the trash, containers and all. Good thing she’d remembered to at least throw them out!
“Aneta!” Gram called from the living room. She appeared in the kitchen with the scooter keys jingling in her hand. “Accelerate, granddaughter. What meeting is a Frank talking about at the children’s section of the library in”—she glanced at her watch, also waterproof with a stopwatch like Aneta’s—”five minutes! Time to rock and roll!”
Nine minutes later, Gram dropped Aneta off at the doorway of the library. Gram told her to call her when the meeting was over. “Then you can tell me what this is all about. Does your mother know?”
“Um,” Aneta said.
“I thought as much. Call me when you’re done.” The helmet went on and Gram drove away.
As Aneta approached the children’s section with its red, yellow, and blue flags fluttering from the rushing air-conditioning ducts, she heard Esther’s high, nasal voice.
“We need a plan we all agree on, not just you bossing us.”
She ducked behind the stacks that blocked the girls from seeing her. She did not want to be part of this group. She’d been hoping since Friday that Frank would forget about her and go with the other three girls. They certainly did not need her. She closed her eyes and remained motionless. Think calm, cool, pool water.
“Well hi, Aneta!” Sunny’s bright voice sounded near her. Her eyes flew open as Sunny twirled past. “Good thing you’re here. I hope you have good ideas. We are not getting along.” She pulled Aneta around the stacks and toward an empty, large desk. The nameplate said NADINE, CHILDREN’S LIBRARIAN. Aneta could hear Vee and Esther quarreling but could only see the tops of their heads. Why were they sitting on the floor?
Suddenly the two girls giggled. “Oh, squish alert. He’s so stinking cute!” That was Esther’s voice, almost a coo.
Then she heard a puppyish, “Aroo! Arooo!”
Her heart squeezed. Could it be?
Sunny grinned at her. “Cool, huh! We were all surprised when we showed up.”
In three steps Aneta was around Nadine’s desk, legs trembling. There stood a small wire pen with blankets, a water dish, and an overturned food dish with a couple of bits of food around it. There, also, was Wink. He lolled outside the pen between Vee and Esther, ripples of puppy wrinkles squishing up around his face as the girls petted and rubbed his belly. Every now and then he grunted like a piglet, as if saying, “Don’t stop!”
“He is alive!” Aneta cried, dropping to her knees.
Nadine returned to her desk. She smiled at Aneta. “We just weren’t sure he was going to pull through, and when you girls didn’t call us, we decided we better wait before telling you how he was. We almost lost him two days ago, and then he seemed to perk right up. He’s a survivor, that dog. Then Frank said you hadn’t come up with your idea yet—”
“Our fund-raiser!” Vee said, scooting her legs back and jumping to her feet. “We have to agree on something.” She pulled out her phone and checked the time. “I’ve got to leave in ten minutes.”
“Where do you have to go?” Sunny asked. She had dropped to the floor and was on her stomach, her face nose to nose with Wink’s. A long pink tongue—not Sunny’s—flicked out and licked the redhead’s face. She giggled, scooped up the puppy, rolled to a sitting position, and cuddled him. She glanced up, noticed Aneta’s face, and shoved the puppy toward her. “Here. You named him.”
Soft, warm. Alive.
Vee ignored Sunny’s question after spearing the girl with a glare. “What’s wrong with a book sale to benefit the library? I love the library.”
Aneta, holding the puppy under her chin and giggling as the quick licker washed her neck, said without thinking, “It is more important to find the Crocs Killer.”
The three girls swung around toward her. Aneta flushed. Had that been her voice sounding so…bossy?
“You actually can talk when you want to, can’t you?” Sunny’s warm smile took any sting out of the words. “You’re right. We’ll find her and bring her to justice.” Sunny pulled her usually smiling fac
e into a fierce frown. “She’ll be sorry she messed with us.”
Now that Aneta had spoken, she was at a loss. How would they find a woman of whom she had only caught a glimpse and noticed she wore the same kind of shoes Gram did? Those plastic Crocs Gram had in rainbow colors. In the intervening moments between the shock of hearing the puppy yelp, Aneta had noticed only a hat and the beige Crocs. Not much to go on.
“Finding her might be a bit hard since we didn’t see her face.” Vee set down her notebook, pulled the ponytail holder from her hair, and plunged her fingers through it. Then she drew in a sharp breath, checked her phone again, and yanked her navy backpack onto her back. “I’ve got to go. We are going to get in trouble if we don’t come up with a plan.” She glared at the group and took off at a run through the library toward the glass doors.
“Guess this meeting’s over,” Sunny said, smiling like it didn’t bother her. “Frank is not going to like this.”
“He is definitely in a learning mode with you girls. He’s coached basketball and taught kayaking and river running, but you four…” Nadine shook her head. “I’m sure you’ll all figure out a plan in the end.”
Plan? Aneta now had a plan. The plan had jumped from her heart into her head the second she’d seen Wink rolling on the carpet. Bring Wink home. Forever.
Aneta called her grandmother, and then the three remaining girls walked outside and spied Vee just disappearing off to the right.
Esther squinted. “I wonder where she’s going. She sure didn’t want to say where.”
“I will adopt Wink,” Aneta said suddenly then covered her mouth with her hands.
At that moment, a pink scooter zipped into the turnaround at the front of the community center.
“A scooter!” cried Sunny and Esther in unison. And then, looking at each other, they laughed together for the first time.
“I love scooters,” Esther said. “They’re so cute.”
“Eco-friendly, too.” Sunny’s eyes glowed. “Look, the driver is taking off her helmet.” In another moment: “It’s a grandma lady!”
Indeed, the woman who stood up, still astride the bright pink, shiny scooter, had short gray hair that curled over her head. Or rather, as Aneta knew, that would have curled over her head if the helmet hadn’t squashed the curls into helmet hair. Her grandmother ran from her house, five miles away, to Aneta and Mom’s house and back regularly. She could beat Aneta in the pool easily. And that was just the beginning of her activities. Days with Gram meant Aneta fell into bed at night, nearly asleep before she pulled up the sheet.
Now the woman was moving toward them.
“When I get my driver’s license, I’m going to have a scooter.” Esther talked more to herself than anyone else. “That way only the person I invite can be with me.”
“Annette, darling!” Gram’s familiar greeting. She picked up her pace. Aneta was pretty sure no one in the world could walk faster than Gram.
Two heads swiveled toward Aneta.
“That’s your grandmother?” Sunny turned, open mouthed, toward Aneta. “She rides a pink scooter? How cool is that?”
“So, what is it? Annette or Aneta?” Esther folded her arms across her T-shirt, which showed a brilliant sun and dancing children above the words THIS IS THE DAY THE LORD HAS MADE and bored her gaze into Aneta. “You never said.”
Because I do not know.
She stepped forward, hugged her grandmother, and gestured toward the girls who were watching her expectantly.
“And the meeting was for?” Gram prompted with a grin.
“These are the other girls who won the poster contest for Oakton Founders’ Day. Vee had to leave.”
“Yeah,” Esther said quickly, “and she didn’t want to tell us where she went.”
Sunny jumped in. “We won Friday, but finding Wink kind of stopped our brainstorming.”
Gram shot Sunny a quick look before applauding the girls. “Congratulations, winners! I didn’t know”—another glance at Aneta—“the awards were Friday. The Fam would have been there for sure. I know your mother would have liked to come.”
Her face might as well burst into flame and be done with it. Belonging to The Fam meant every occasion was a group occasion, complete with loud cheering. They would always attract attention. You’d think by now she would be used to it. Maybe even say her opinions loudly, like The Fam. Laugh a lot, like The Fam. Get in trouble with their mouths, like her cousins. But she didn’t. She liked staying out of trouble. It was easier that way. If she didn’t get in trouble, well, they wouldn’t send her back.
Gram stuck out her hand toward Sunny. The redhead took it and then squeaked. Aneta winced. Gram had a crusher grip.
“I’m Sunny.”
Gram shook Esther’s hand. “You’re the winners then?”
“Wow,” Esther said. “You make us sound important. And we don’t even have a proj—”
“We don’t have a fund-raiser yet!” Sunny shrieked, clapping her hands to her head. “You guys!”
Out of the corner of her eye, Aneta had seen Esther glance between her and her grandmother when her grandmother called her “Annette.” Time to get out of there before any more questions. Like about her adopting Wink. That had slipped out.
“Hi, Gram! I am ready.” She turned to the others. “Good-bye.”
“Wait—Aneta—” Esther placed a hand on Aneta’s arm. “We have to meet to get a plan. Melissa already has hers. And for finding…you know who.” She gripped Aneta’s arm. “What’s your phone number? We need to set up a time to get our project!”
“Aneta?” Gram’s brows shot up. Aneta didn’t dare look at her. Gram turned expectantly to Aneta.
“Uh…uh…” It was happening too fast. When Gram nudged her, however, Aneta quickly spilled out her address.
“What about meeting tomorrow at Aneta’s? After Aneta’s mother gets home, after dinner? I’ll call her.” Gram patted her pocket.
Aneta wanted to get out of this group, not have it come to her house. If these girls came tomorrow, they would get in the way of Mission with Mom that was growing brighter and brighter every time she thought of Wink.
“The Gates?” Esther asked, eyebrows shooting upward. “Vee told me her mom lives right around the corner from there.” Jamming her fists into her pockets, she added. “We’re on Aspen Grove.”
“Aspen Grove? That’s the street where my brother’s piano teacher lives. It’s like a block away from our house,” Sunny said.
“Is Mrs. Nissen your brother’s piano teacher?” Esther asked, hands on hips. “My brother walks to his lesson every week. Where do you live?”
Sunny’s eyebrows shot up. Then she began to laugh. “We all live within a block of each other.”
“And we’ve never met,” Esther added. “Vee bragged she was gifted and talented at Oakton Elementary.” She pointed to herself. “I go to Oakton Victory Academy, same Christian school as C.P., that boy from the community center. Anyone else a Christian?”
“I am,” Sunny said with a smile. “My parents are home-schooling us. We call our school Quinlan Christian Academy.”
Aneta remained silent. Gram nudged her.
“I go to The Cunningham School,” she said softly then added, “where Melissa goes.”
“Oh, you poor girl!” Esther cried, rolling her eyes.
Aneta couldn’t wait to put on her helmet and swing her leg over the scooter to get away. Any plan to get out of the group was not going to work now that Gram knew about it. In addition, Aneta would have to come up with a second plan—the plan to convince Mom that Wink needed a home with them.
Chapter 7
A Not-So-Great Start
The next day, Aneta sat by the pool, deep in thought. Mom was coming home today, so she had to have a plan for Mission: Make Mom Love Wink.
“You’ve got a problem,” said a voice across the patio. Aneta looked up to see C.P. hanging over the six-foot fence. He was so short. How did he do that? One of these days, she was
going to go into his yard and find out.
“How do you know?” she asked. Sometimes C.P. said puzzling things. Life as Aneta Jasper—Annette?—had suddenly gotten very complicated. She desperately wanted a few turns in the pool to relax. But Rule for the Pool: No pool when there isn’t an adult. Plus her plan had to be finished before Mom came home from work. A quick glance at her watch showed she had about an hour from the time Mom’s plane landed and she arrived home.
“You want Wink to have a forever home with you.”
“Yes.” She leaped up from the chair and ran through the patio door and up the stairs two at a time. In her bedroom, the oak desk stood by the large bay window overlooking the pool. Aneta took a deep breath, telling herself that if she continued to shake, she wouldn’t be able to hold the pencil. That would not help Wink come home. She yanked open the middle drawer on the right. Once armed with a medium-sized sketch pad and current favorite pencil, she pounded down the stairs again and sat down at the patio table. C.P. still hung over the fence.
Now. To steady her hands. And draw. She took in a deep breath. The pool lay next to her, blue and with just the tiniest ripples from the fake clown fish moving through the water. She smiled. C.P. had given it to Mom after she said if The Fam was over, he could join them in the pool. That kid loved their pool.
“A forever home,” she said, rolling the words around in her mouth. They sounded safe.
“My mom calls God that,” the boy said matter-of-factly, as though he were sitting next to her instead of hanging over a fence. “Someone who never goes away.”
A forever home. Yes.
“That is what I want,” she said. Back to the mission: Bring Wink Home. Step One: Artwork. How to start? When Aneta had drawn the poster, every line and shading reminded Aneta of her previous life. The pencil had seemed to move on its own. Now she wanted the pencil to do the same. Think. Why had a soaking-wet little basset puppy captured her heart?
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