“It’s always good to talk,” said Hank. “Not talking stirs up the a’a.”
The wrinkles between Frank’s eyebrows deepened into a puzzled V. He cleared his throat. “But now I’ve been thinking.”
Something about the quiver of that last word—“thinking”—made Hank look up.
“If I had some helpers, if I could find some do-gooder type people who could help me keep everything in order—”
Hank stood up. “Us! Choose us! We are do-gooder types of people.”
“I’d have to pay, mind you,” said Frank. “I’d need to know that you would come regularly and that you would do the things I needed—and not just the fun stuff either.”
“We can do it, Mr. Jorgensen. We would be happy to do it.” Hank plopped his rocks back into his pocket and his hands began to spin, but they didn’t spin in the a’a way, not in the destroyer-of-worlds way. They spun because he could not contain his happiness.
“And if I could find someone—someone who lived very close, mind you—who could share with me the work of taking care of three dogs—”
“Mr. Jorgensen,” said Maisie, jumping up and down. “That’s me, Mr. Jorgensen. I live very close to you. I would be happy to share that work with you.”
“Hold on a minute,” said Frank, pulling his back straight so that he stood tall on his seat. “There’s something else that is important to discuss, so sit down.”
Maisie sat down. Hank threw her a worried glance.
“All this help you’re offering will be a blessing to me, but it won’t help Booler. Here is the thing. I’ve spent too many hours at the vet with this dog. He doesn’t like it. I don’t like it. And I don’t even have a car to take to the vet anymore. I know it is not ideal, but Booler is still going to need to stay tied up to that tree. It’s the only way I’ve found to keep him safe.”
The weight of Frank’s words pushed Hank back down in his chair. He looked at Maisie. Her legs were curled underneath her and she looked like she would cry.
“I know that this issue is very personal for you, Maisie.”
She looked at Frank, her neck darkening. “You do?”
“Sweetheart, your parents explained it all to me a long time ago.”
She pushed her hair in front of her face and looked away.
Hank remembered the night in the forest. He remembered Maisie staring, her lips smacking together over and over. He had promised to keep her secret—and he had—but here was Mr. Jorgensen knowing it anyway. Hank pulled his chair close to Maisie and put his hand on her shoulder.
“I need to know that you will respect my decision,” said Frank. “I need to know that you will trust me to know what is best for my own dog.”
Maisie twisted in her seat. She peeked over at Hank and sighed. He could not tell what she was thinking. Her face was as much a mystery as Mrs. Vera’s, but he felt somehow that she expected him to do something, say something. But what could he say? What could he do? He was not a planning genius like Maisie. He was not a hero dog like Booler. He looked away, toward Maisie’s house. He could see Sam’s stroller standing outside Maisie’s front door, and if he tried very hard he thought he could hear his brother crying the way he did whenever he ran his face into a piece of furniture. Sam hardly ever cried like that at home anymore, what with all the babyproofing, but Maisie didn’t have a baby in her family. Her house was a normal house with normal sharp edges and pokey corners. Leave it to Sam to figure that out so fast.
Hank suddenly had a non-stinker of an idea. “You should babyproof your house.”
Mr. Jorgensen looked at Hank like he had just recommended brushing his teeth with cauliflower. “What the heck is babyproofing?”
Maisie’s eyes grew wide. “Hank, you’re a genius!” She jumped up and ran home.
“It’s really annoying,” Hank explained, watching Maisie run. “It is when you put a bunch of padding on the edges of your tables and furniture so that your baby brother won’t break his head open if he falls.”
Maisie was already running back, followed by her mother and Hank’s mother, who held a pink-faced, runny-nosed Sam in her arms.
“Do you have more babyproofing supplies, Mrs. Hudson?” asked Maisie, a big grin spread across her face.
“I guess so,” said Mrs. Hudson.
“And if it was okay with Mr. Jorgensen could you help put it all around his house so that Booler wouldn’t hurt himself if he fell during a seizure?”
“Of course,” said Mrs. Hudson, smiling. “If that’s what Mr. Jorgensen wants.”
Mr. Jorgensen looked from Hank’s mom to Maisie to Booler. He shrugged his shoulders. “I guess we could give it a try.”
13.
Booler galloped across the long expanse of the yard. The time in the cow paddock had not been a fluke. The dog was fast. Superfast. So fast that Maisie and Hank had started playing The Flash. Booler was the Flash. Hank and Maisie were his trusty sidekicks. Cowboy and Honey were a rolling parade of evildoers, but they were always good sports about it.
Maisie and Hank had been true to their word. They were excellent do-gooders. They wrapped padding on all of Frank’s wood furniture and duct-taped bubble wrap near everything in the yard that might be defined as pokey or sharp. They pulled Frank’s trash bins to the street before trash day. They helped him dust his house and empty his dishwasher. They bathed and walked the dogs. They gave the dogs their flea medicine. They weeded the vegetable garden.
There were some things Hank and Maisie could not do. They proved horrible at cleaning bathrooms. They proved even worse at doing laundry. They could not take Frank to the doctor or cook healthy meals. But with the help of a couple that Colleen hired to come in twice a week and assist with the bigger jobs, things settled into a new normal, a normal that looked like friends helping friends.
Sometimes even Hank’s and Maisie’s parents got into the act, like when it came to changing the propane tank on the old grill found in the toolshed. And, according to Frank, if you were going to change the propane tank, then you should at least fire up the barbecue to make sure it worked. And if you were going to barbecue you might as well make a little party of it.
So Frank provided the hot dogs, and Hank’s dad made some potato salad, and Mrs. Huang made a chocolate cake, and when Frank couldn’t really read the writing on the barbecue knobs, Mr. Huang said, “How would you feel about me doing the grilling? Maybe you could teach me.”
And—boom—the party started.
At one point Hank overheard Mrs. Huang whisper to his mom, “I’m not entirely sure how long this solution can last.”
To which his mom replied, “Well… it’s good enough for now.”
Hank moseyed away. He didn’t like thinking about what might come next, like if Mr. Jorgensen’s eyesight got worse, or if he started to need a wheelchair instead of a walker, or if if if if if if. If there was one thing he knew about the word “if,” it was that it could be really unpredictable.
So he went and waited next to the barbecue. Cowboy and Honey stood nearby, their eyes following each hot dog as it moved from the grill to a plate. But Booler was just running, running, running, every once in a while stopping next to Cowboy and Honey and nudging them with his nose, lowering his front legs and wagging his tail, and giving them each a sharp bark.
Come, he seemed to say. Don’t you know we are free? It’s time to play.
Hank had just scooped some potato salad onto his plate when he saw the SUV pull up. He recognized its Minnesota plates and looked around for Maisie. She was sneaking pieces of hot dog to Honey and Cowboy. He sidled up next to her and pointed at the car.
She grimaced and said, “What fresh bother is this?”
The two of them were actually getting along better with Colleen these days. A few weeks earlier she had come to help with a yard sale. The whole purpose of the sale was to clear out space in the little house. It had been Frank’s idea, but on the day of the sale he started having second thoughts, saying, “You never kn
ow when you might need things.” Instead of being a real pill about it, Colleen had listened patiently to her dad and didn’t seem evil at all. But then she was also in a very good mood because Princess Lillikins was getting ready to become a mom to “perhaps the finest litter of miniature poodles the world has ever seen.”
Maisie had smiled when Colleen shared that bit of news, but later she told Hank that “a lemon is a lemon.”
Hank figured you could not argue with that logic.
They watched Frank roll over to the front fence that separated his yard from the sidewalk. He was nodding at his daughter, whose mouth was moving like a car on an open highway. Occasionally, he would look around until he saw Booler and shake his head.
“What’s going on?” said Maisie’s mom. Her arms were crossed and tiny wrinkles stretched down from her pinched mouth. She and the others had come to stand next to Maisie and Hank.
“It’s Colleen,” said Maisie. “Finally everyone’s happy so of course she has to come and ruin everything.”
“You don’t know that,” said Mrs. Huang, one fist now tucked beneath her chin.
Frank shrugged and walked over to them as the daughter returned to her car. “It turns out we have a bit of a Romeo and Juliet situation on our hands,” he said, with a twinkle in his eye.
Hank tugged on his mother’s sleeve. “What does that mean?”
She suppressed a surprised laugh. “I think it means Booler is a dad.”
The back of the SUV popped open and now Hank could see a large metal dog crate strapped in tight. Colleen leaned into the back of the car and when she emerged she was holding four puppies. She brought them into the yard and settled them onto the grass, where each one raced in a separate direction. Except for possessing a ridiculous amount of curly white fur, each puppy looked exactly like a miniature Booler.
Maisie’s eyes were bugging out. “Those are the cutest puppies ever!”
“He’s the proud papa all right,” said Colleen, trying hard not to smile as she headed back to her car.
Maisie tugged on Frank’s shirtsleeve and whispered, “I thought Booler got fixed.”
He whispered back, “I guess not soon enough.”
Colleen returned holding Princess Lillikins, who tossed a lovelorn look at Booler.
Bottom line, there were four puppies who would need homes as soon as they were old enough to wean, and Colleen, in an unexpected gesture of goodwill, thought Booler and her father should at least get to meet the cuties before she began the hard work of finding them families of their own.
“And make no mistake,” she said grumpily. “It will be hard, unappreciated work.”
“I’ll take them!” said Maisie, falling down in front of the puppies and cooing. “I’ll take them all.”
“You’ll take one,” said her mother and father at the exact same time.
“I’ll take one! Hank will take the others,” Maisie declared, with a quick flip of her hand in his direction, not taking her eyes off the puppies.
Hank froze, aware without looking that every eye was now on him. He had finally adjusted to a baby brother. He had finally adjusted to furniture covered in padding, and a scar on his side, and late afternoons playing The Flash, and pulling trash bins to the street. Could he handle three puppies? Would his parents even let him have three puppies? His mother had been very firm before. She had refused to let him have Booler, and Booler had needed a hero. Then Booler had been a hero—Booler had been his hero.
He looked at the little balls of fur with their stocky legs, square heads, and soft white curls. The other dogs, including Booler, had come up to them and were darting their noses close to the new dogs, taking a quick sniff and then pulling their heads back. They circled the puppies as if they weren’t quite sure what to make of the little fluff muffins.
Hank’s mom and dad squatted next to Hank. Hank’s mom had her arms wrapped around Sam, who said, “doggy, doggy, doggy,” and reached with frustration for the puppies beyond him.
“What do you think, Hank?” said Mom.
“You could have one, but it’s up to you. It’s really up to you,” said Dad.
It would be so hard. It would mean turmoil and change and disruption, disruption, disruption. And what if the puppy was loud? And what if the puppy was wild? And what if the puppy knocked over his rock collection? And what if the puppy did things, things that Hank could not predict, that Hank did not like, that made him feel all a’a?
Hank looked again at the puppies. One stood alone. While the other three puppies turned their faces from dog to dog and person to person, happy tongues lolling, one puppy plopped its belly on the ground and began sniffing a rock.
Booler came and crouched next to the rock-sniffing puppy. He nudged the puppy with his nose. The puppy pulled out a little tongue and licked the rock. Booler cocked his head and then licked the rock as well. The puppy looked up at Booler. Then it wiggled forward and put its head on Booler’s paw. Suddenly all the puppies were next to Booler, nudging him, jumping on him—all but the first puppy. That one kept its head on Booler’s paw and gave its tail a lazy thump.
A smile crept across Hank’s face. He was ready to be a hero.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Dear Reader:
Thank you for reading this book! Your engagement highlights the myth that writing is a solitary pursuit. It is not. We Could Be Heroes was always written with you in mind. Likewise, I relied on a team of earlier readers who gave me ideas and constructive criticism so that I could revise what I thought was a good book into a much better one. Those readers included my daughters, Elizabeth and Mary Finnegan. Elizabeth has autism and epilepsy, and she helped me write—what seem to us—honest depictions of those experiences. Mary is really good at finding holes in logic and helped ensure that my story made sense. Cathy Perlmutter, Jackie Sloan, and Desiree Zamorano also gave me helpful advice about improving my work. After all those people read my story, I revised it, and then guess what? I got even more (and really good) feedback from my agent, Tracy Marchini. So I revised my story again! And then guess what? Tracy sold this book! So then I got more (and really fantastic) feedback from the editor at the publisher, the amazing Alex Borbolla. So I revised my story again. AND THEN AGAIN! AND THEN AGAIN JUST TO CHECK FOR TYPOS! So I want to thank all of these people—including you—because without everyone’s help, this story would still be a nice rock in desperate need of polish.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Margaret Finnegan’s work has appeared in FamilyFun magazine, the LA Times, Salon, and other publications. She lives in South Pasadena, California, where she enjoys spending time with her family, walking her dog, and baking really good chocolate cakes. Connect with her at margaretfinnegan.com.
Visit us at simonandschuster.com/kids
www.SimonandSchuster.com/Authors/Margaret-Finnegan
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2020 by Margaret Finnegan
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Finnegan, Margaret Mary, 1965– author.
Title: We could be heroes / Margaret Finnegan.
Description: First edition. | New York : Atheneum Books for Young Readers, [2020] | Summary: Fourth graders Maisie and Hank, who has autism, become friends as they devise schemes to save a neighbor’s dog, Booler, from being tied to a tree because of his epilepsy.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019006544 | ISBN 9781534445253 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781534445277 (eBook)
Subjects: | CYAC: Friendship—Fiction. | Autism—Fiction. | Dogs—Fiction. | Epilepsy—Fiction. | Family life—Fiction. | Schools—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.F53684 We 2020 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019006544
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