After “Wheels on the Bus” sung three times through (not skipping any verses) and five readings of But Not the Hippopotamus, Kirby went down for a nap, at last. Evelyn peeked into Charlie’s room on her way down the hall. The socks and underwear sat on the dresser, still in their bags, untouched. She eyed the dishes in the kitchen sink, ignoring them while she filled a plastic bowl with water and stepped onto the porch. Pressing her palm against the wooden rail, she felt the smooth wood and nothing else. The porch wasn’t shaking, and Evelyn felt a pang, thinking the dog might be gone.
“Hello down there,” she sang softly. “Are you thirsty?” There was no movement as she set the bowl next to the opening, but a tiny whimper let her know the stray was still there.
Evelyn went inside and picked up the phone to call the rescue center. Joe was busy, which was not hard to imagine, and Evelyn left a message with the friendly girl at the desk before adding kibble to the shopping list.
They hadn’t eaten dinner when Charlie’s caseworker called. Evelyn and Jora set the table while Charlie was on the phone.
When Charlie came out from the bedroom his nose was red. Evelyn couldn’t see his eyes as she took the phone in exchange for a bag of dog food and a metal bowl. She knew better than to ask questions. She knew that, to Charlie, she was still a stranger.
The boy walked straight out the front door. He clumped down the stairs, sounding heavier than his slim frame could possibly be. Jora ran after him, anxious to cheer him up, but Evelyn held her back. “Come on, plum cake,” she said. “I need help with the dishes. Will you rinse?”
That night the dog emerged from his hiding place. He slunk up the stairs and onto the porch, standing at the edge, his feet ready to run. Charlie watched silently, patiently, for a long time. Finally he opened the door. The licorice snout quivered in the narrow opening for a moment. Then the pooch stepped into the hall, his broad head hanging below skinny shoulders.
“Stinky!” Kirby announced, holding his nose. The dog smelled something awful.
Out in the light the animal looked like a mash-up of every canine who had ever lived in Pawley, and a few that hadn’t. Smaller than a Lab, bigger than a beagle. He was black and brown and gold with two stripes on his low-hanging tail and a brindle back end. His eyes were dark and deep, and his ears flopped. His paws were too big for his body.
Jora thought she heard Charlie whisper something to the dog as he followed him to his room. She wondered if she imagined the flicker of a smile on Charlie’s face.
The next morning when Charlie and Jora went to school, the dog went back under the porch. He slipped out silently with one of Charlie’s dirty socks in his mouth, and when Evelyn looked in on him later he had it curled around his nose. Charlie’s new bag of socks had finally been opened.
After school the dog greeted Charlie with a baleful bark. He wagged and wagged and the stink rose off him, prompting Jora to come running with a bottle of baby shampoo.
“Not yet,” Evelyn said, though a bath was a good idea, and the thought of all the bedclothes that now needed to be taken to the Laundromat made her cringe. She held Jora back. “They’re settling in.”
They all settled until the sound of a horn in the drive, about an hour later, made everyone jump. Kirby smashed his face against the screen door, which made Jora laugh and smash hers on the other side.
“Joe.” Evelyn could have slapped her forehead when she saw who it was. She had forgotten all about him. She waved and smiled, stepping off the porch to meet him.
“I got your message about a stray. I was just headed back to the rescue center and thought I’d see if I could give him a lift.” He smiled, and Evelyn’s stomach clenched. A stray.
His eyes crinkling at the edges, Joe took a moment to say hello to Jora and Kirby, still playing with the screen. Evelyn glanced back. She scanned the small yard. No dog. No Charlie. “Mighty nice of you, Joe.” She smiled back. “Only …”
“Only what?” he asked. He had a gentle face. Patient.
“Only, it’s gotten complicated.” Evelyn sighed and rubbed at her eyes. She stepped to the far side of the porch, the one without the opening, and motioned with her head. Through the lattice they could both see the dog and the boy, crouched together in the cobwebs.
Joe ran his hand through his coarse graying hair. He nodded, eyes still crinkling. “So he’s not a stray after all.”
“Not after all,” Evelyn agreed.
“You sure you have room for another foster?” Joe asked.
“Foster!” Kirby parroted from the doorway.
Under the porch the dog barked, like he’d understood it all.
“Foster.”
Evelyn startled. It was the first time she’d really heard Charlie’s voice. He and the dog crawled out from under the porch and Charlie stood up.
“Foster? Is that your name?” he asked with his hands on his knees, looking into the dog’s face. The dog barked again. Charlie pushed his hat back just enough so he could see … a little … and looked at Evelyn. “He can stay?” he asked timidly.
Evelyn nodded, tired but happy. “Sure, he can stay. Looks to me like Foster’s already home.”
Jane B. Mason & Sarah Hines Stephens live in Oakland, California, but not in the same house. They spend their time, which seems to keep disappearing on them, writing, cooking, gardening (mostly Sarah), and swimming (mostly Jane), while attempting to keep up with their respective children, husbands, and dogs, who don’t usually disappear but are increasingly hard to keep up with. They are the authors of A Dog and His Girl Mysteries (woof!), and several Candy Apple titles, including The Sister Switch and Snowfall Surprise.
Simon knew the bully’s weapons all too well: There was the wedgie and the purple nurple, the swirlie, the noogie, and the punch-buggy dead arm (no punch-backs).
Those were the most common tortures, but there were others that didn’t have names, like the one where they splashed water onto his pants so it looked like he’d wet himself, or when they called out “Thorry, Thhhh-imon” in high-pitched voices just because he lisped sometimes.
But that was all about to change.
After today, no one would dare mess with him, because his parents were taking him to the Pawley Rescue Center to get a dog. And he meant to pick out the biggest, baddest, meanest-looking dog he could find. He was going to put a spiked collar on it and he was going to teach it to growl at anyone who made fun of him.
The police used big German shepherd dogs to chase down criminals. Maybe he’d get one of those and call him Axl. Or a pit bull — people were always scared of pit bulls. Maybe he’d get a big pit bull and name him Spike.
No, that wouldn’t do. Spike started with an S. Too risky. Axl wouldn’t work either. There was a chance he’d say “Ack-thel,” and then everyone would laugh at him, mean-looking dog or no.
Maybe Diablo, which was Spanish for “devil” and didn’t have any S sounds in it. He figured his parents wouldn’t let him just name the dog Devil, but Diablo was multicultural. His parents would like that.
“Diablo,” he said out loud to try it out on his tongue. “Di-a-blo.”
“What was that, honey?” His mom turned around from the front seat.
“Nothing,” Simon said.
“Are you excited?” She smiled at him. “Big day! I’ll never forget when my parents took me to the kennel to adopt my first dog. He was a big mastiff, taller on his hind legs than my sister and me. We named him King Kong.”
“Cool,” said Simon, adding a mastiff to his list.
“He was cool,” said his mother. “And the sweetest dog you ever saw. He was huge, but he’d never hurt a flea. Mostly he just slept and snored and snored and snored.”
“You don’t think it’s sweet when I snore,” his father said as he merged into the exit lane.
“Well, you aren’t as fuzzy and cute as King Kong was.” His mother laughed.
“I think I want a pit bull,” said Simon. What was the point of having a giant dog if it was
just fuzzy and cute?
“Simon, remember,” his father said, “you aren’t picking a new toy. A dog is a living thing. You can’t choose just based on looks. In fact, I think it’s the dog who chooses you, rather than the other way around. Let’s just wait and see which dog wants to be a part of our family.”
When the car stopped at the squat brick building, Simon jumped from the backseat to run inside.
“Remember,” his father called after him. “It’s the dog who chooses you.”
“I know!” Simon groaned, already picturing Diablo with his slobbering jaws and massive fangs. He wondered if the shelter sold spiked collars.
But an hour later, when they left the shelter, Simon wasn’t thinking about spiked collars. He was thinking how unfair it was that the dog his parents said had “chosen him” was nothing like the dog he’d pictured.
This dog was a short, squat, black-and-brown, smush-faced French bulldog, with stubby legs and big bugged-out eyes and a little pink tongue that hung out the side of her wheezing, panting, grunting mouth. That’s right: her mouth.
His big, tough dog wasn’t only not big and tough; she was a girl.
Also she already had a name, which was nothing like Diablo.
Beatrice.
Who named a dog Beatrice?
She did have slobbering jaws, though. She slobbered a lot.
“I think she’s adorable,” his mother cooed.
“She’s ugly,” Simon grumbled.
“She’s so ugly that she’s cute!” his mother replied. In her crate, Beatrice stared out at him with her black bugged-out eyes. Her panting mouth took up half her head, like a giant grin, and the way she wheezed as they loaded the crate into the car, Simon was sure the dog was laughing at him.
The animal shelter had told them that Beatrice was up-to-date on all her shots, that she was housebroken, and already knew a few basic commands like “sit” and “stay.” They couldn’t tell Simon whether or not she knew any tricks.
“Why don’t you take her outside and find out?” Simon’s father suggested before dinner. “You two could play and get to know each other.”
Simon crossed his arms and scowled. Beatrice, now out of her crate and sniffing around the kitchen, looked up at him, wagging her tail.
Except she didn’t really have a tail.
Instead, her whole backside wagged back and forth, so much that it knocked her little legs around under her and she skittered from side to side as she wagged. Her front paws danced back and forth, and the whole time she stared up at Simon with her dark bug eyes and she snorted. Her smushed nose made the loudest series of snorts and wheezes Simon had ever heard. She wasn’t a dog, he decided. She was an alien.
He could already imagine how the other kids would pick on him for this.
But he had promised to walk the dog if they let him get a dog, so he clipped her leash on and they stepped outside.
“Come on, alien dog,” he told her as she bounded across the yard, each of her steps like a pounce. He prayed no one would see him. He prayed no one would make him say her name out loud.
They made their way across the lawn and turned onto the sidewalk. The dog tugged ahead, trying to drag him, but she wasn’t nearly strong enough so she just tilted sideways as her paws scraped at the sidewalk. With every step she took, she made more weird noises … and not all of them came from her front end.
When he turned from his street onto Maplewood Drive, he saw Patrice Grayson and her little brother playing basketball in their driveway. They looked in his direction, and Patrice said something to her brother. He laughed and pointed at Beatrice. Simon tugged her in the opposite direction.
Beatrice didn’t even notice the pointing. She sniffed at every bush and investigated each mailbox. She stared at Simon and panted.
“Would you do your thing already?” Simon groaned, but Beatrice would not be hurried. She stopped to cock her head at the birds singing in Mrs. Quinto’s magnolia tree.
Suddenly she made the craziest noise. She warbled. Or cooed. It definitely wasn’t a bark or a growl like a normal dog.
But she wasn’t warbling at the birds or cooing at the magnolia tree. She was warble-cooing at the two figures who stepped out from behind Mrs. Quinto’s magnolia tree at that moment: Mason Pratt and his dog, Maximus.
Mason was an eighth grader, which he thought made him the boss of the neighborhood. Maximus was a Doberman pinscher, a tall, black-and-brown dog with rippling muscles, a long brown snout, and a narrow head with ears that poked up like devil horns. He was the kind of dog Simon had dreamed of. He was terrifying.
“Hey, Thhhh-imon,” Mason said.
Simon ignored him and tried to walk past with his head held high, but Beatrice had other plans. She used all the might in her little legs to drag him toward Mason and Maximus.
“Is that supposed to be a dog?” Mason sneered, as his own dog cocked his devilish head at Beatrice and let out a low, belly-rumbling growl.
“Beatrith, no!” Simon shouted, and then he saw Mason smirk. He blushed.
“Beatrith?” Mason laughed. “Its name is Beatrith?”
“Be-a-trice,” Simon said slowly, making sure he got the S sound right.
“That’s not what you said,” Mason told him, grinning.
“I —” Simon felt the hot pressure of tears behind his eyes. His mouth twitched as shame burned through him. And then, with a lunge, Beatrice broke free from his grip and charged across the lawn toward Maximus, letting out a string of high-pitched almost-barks as she bounded toward the big dog on her stubby little legs. Her leash slithered in the grass after her like a snake.
“Arf! Arf! Arf!” she squealed.
“Grrrr,” Maximus warned, and Simon imagined he could feel the earth shake with the growling. He wanted to cry out, to call her back, to dive forward and grab the alien dog with the name he couldn’t say right, but his mouth felt like it’d been filled with sticky syrup and his feet felt like they’d been glued to the ground.
The hair on the Doberman’s back bristled. His lips curled to show sharp teeth glistening with slobber. Beatrice stuck her nose in the air right beneath those shining teeth, her bugged-out eyes fixed on Maximus, whose own had narrowed to cruel slits. The big dog reared back, snapping his leash from Mason’s hands and knocking the boy down.
“Max! No!” Mason called out.
Beatrice lowered her face to the ground, sticking her front paws out and raising her backside into the air, and then she flung herself at Maximus as he flung himself at her. When they collided, Beatrice landed on Maximus’s head, her legs splayed out on either side of his ears, like a hat. The big dog shook and sent the little French bulldog twirling through the air. For a moment, with her tongue flapping sideways from her mouth and her paws stretched out in front of her, it looked like Beatrice was flying. Just before she hit the grass and rolled, Simon could have sworn her slobbery lips bent up into a doggy smile.
In an instant, Beatrice popped onto her feet and bounded straight back to Maximus.
“Arf! Arf! Arf!” she challenged him. This time Maximus raised his backside in the air. But instead of springing on Beatrice, or swallowing her whole in his fearsome mouth, he flung himself sideways, dodging her as she leaped at him. He whacked her with his big black paw and she flew again across the lawn, popping back up with an “Arf” as soon as she’d stopped rolling. Maximus was ready for her next charge and rolled and bounced around her, as she leaped and barked around him.
“They’re — they’re — playing?” Mason said, his mouth hanging open.
Simon could only nod, watching his tiny, chubby, big-headed dog play with the most ferocious dog in the neighborhood.
“But … Max doesn’t like anyone!” Mason objected.
As if disagreeing with his master, Maximus barked once and rolled over onto his back, letting Beatrice jump over him and climb across him like he was a playground jungle gym. She licked the underside of his face.
Mason and Simon stood there,
side by side, watching as Maximus batted Beatrice around and Beatrice bounced back, all snorts and warbles.
“Your dog’s pretty tough,” Mason said.
“Yeah,” Simon agreed, casting a sidelong glance at the boy. “She is.”
He waited for an insult to follow, but none did.
When the dogs had tired themselves out, Maximus lay on his side, panting, and Beatrice lay curled between his front legs, using his big neck for a pillow. Her mouth was wide open and she snored. When Maximus tried to move, she growled. The big Doberman lay still again, not daring to disturb his little friend’s rest.
Mason and Simon both laughed.
“She’s such a bully!” Mason chuckled.
Soon Simon’s pocket vibrated and he took out his phone. “Dinnertime,” he said. “I gotta go.” He approached the sleeping dogs and picked up Beatrice’s leash. Maximus raised his head from the grass, then looked to his master and whimpered.
“Come on, Max,” Mason said.
As they walked half a block side by side, the big dog next to the little one, it looked like Mason was about to say something, but instead, when they reached the corner, they went in opposite directions without another word.
At lunch the next day, Patrice Grayson had Simon cornered with some of the other girls. They were all bigger than him. Patrice leaned across the red plastic tray he held. One good whack and she could knock his two slices of garden vegetable pizza casserole to the floor.
“I saw your weirdo dog, Thhhh-imon,” she said to him. “Was the pet store all out of real dogs?”
“She’s not from a pet thtore,” Simon answered.
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