Two Friends, One Dog, and a Very Unusual Week, page 9
Suddenly Penelope Pinkney was behind her.
“How can you say that?” Penelope demanded. “My brother’s only four years old! And he’s lost in the city all alone!”
“No, he’s not,” Rani said calmly. “Otto’s with him.”
“Otto? A dog? Your dog?” Penelope snapped. “You think some dumb dog can take care of a little kid?”
But Otto wasn’t dumb. He wasn’t an ordinary dog at all, Emily thought with a rush of relief. If Jonah was with Otto, then Jonah really was all right.
“Being lost with a dog is still being lost!” Penelope went on.
“But Otto’s never lost,” Rani explained. “Sometimes other people don’t know where he is, but that’s not the same thing. Otto always knows where he is.” She got up, settling her backpack more securely on her shoulders and turned toward the gates.
“Rani.” Emily tried her best to sound firm. “I already told you, we can’t go anywhere. They’ll all be really worried if we get lost too.”
“And I already told you. Otto never gets lost. But we can go find him if you want. And your little brother too.” Rani started off across the blacktop.
Emily looked at Penelope. Penelope looked back at her. Then she glanced across the playground at her mother.
Mrs. Pinkney was still seated on a tree trunk with Emily’s mom beside her. Their backs were to Penelope, Emily, and the playground gates.
Penelope returned her gaze to Emily. Her eyes narrowed.
“Can she really find Jonah?” she asked.
Emily didn’t know what to answer.
Rani could climb up a flagpole. She could build a trampoline and a chicken feeder and a dog hoist. She could summon an ice-cream van to a school window. But could she find Otto and Jonah? Emily wanted to say yes.
But she just wasn’t sure.
Penelope seemed to get impatient, waiting for Emily to answer. She stuck her chin out. It made her face look lumpy and stubborn. “I’m going with her,” she announced.
Rani was already on the other side of the school gates. Penelope hurried after her.
Emily couldn’t believe it. Or rather, she could easily believe that Rani was leaving the playground after being told not to—but Penelope?
Penelope Pinkney was going with Rani?
Emily knew perfectly well what she should do. She should go tell her mother—no, her mother was busy hunting in her purse for another tissue for Mrs. Pinkney. Well, her father, then. She should find her father and tell him that Rani and Penelope were going to hunt for Jonah. And for Otto too.
Then the grown-ups would stop the two girls. Bring them back. Keep them safe. Nobody else would get lost.
And nobody would find Jonah and Otto.
Because, Emily thought, the grown-ups would never believe that Otto actually was with Jonah—looking after him, keeping him safe. Just like he did with Rani.
And they’d never understand that Rani could really find Otto.
Letting Rani do just that was the quickest way to get Jonah back. To make Mrs. Pinkney feel better. To return everything to normal.
“Wait!” Emily gasped. “I’m coming too!”
Emily felt shivery as she hurried after Rani and Penelope. Her whole back prickled, as if her skin were trying to warn her about the many, many rules she was breaking.
She waited for her mom to call her. Or her dad to come out and notice what was happening. Mr. Cleary or Mr. Hayes would shout her name. Or the gates would clang shut on their own and trap her inside.
But none of that happened. And Emily, along with Rani and Penelope, found herself standing on the sidewalk.
“Which way?” Penelope asked.
Rani pointed toward the corner of the block.
Emily’s eyes followed her finger but all she saw was a woman in a purple vest walking a dog with curly white fur. The dog had its nose to the pavement and was eagerly licking at something.
“So unsanitary,” Penelope muttered.
Rani set off at a confident jog. Emily and Penelope followed. The woman tugged her dog away as the three of them reached the corner.
Emily gazed up and down the street. Cars trundled past. Bikes swooped by. People walked or jogged with earbuds in their ears. A dad pushed a stroller. A teenager teetered along on a unicycle.
There was no sign of a four-year-old or a big black dog.
Penelope folded her arms and glared at Rani. “Why do you even think Jonah went this way?”
But Rani was busy inspecting a sticky patch of sidewalk.
Emily suddenly realized what the white dog had been licking—a gooey orange blob melting across the concrete.
“Jonah wanted ice cream!” Emily exclaimed.
Penelope was now studying the blob too. “That’s the kind he likes,” she said slowly. “The orange kind. With rainbow sprinkles. Look!”
A scattering of sprinkles had drifted along the sidewalk, as if Jonah had turned the corner and continued down the block.
“The bookstore,” Penelope said. She was pointing at a storefront about halfway down the street. “He likes the bookstore.”
She set off at a run.
In the store’s front window, a model train wove its way in and out among books. “He always stops to watch this train,” Penelope said, puffing a little as they came up to the window.
She shoved the bookstore’s door open and disappeared inside. Emily saw her talking to the person at the counter. In another minute, Penelope was back.
“He’s not in there,” she said. “But that lady said she saw a kid in a red T-shirt looking in the window a little while ago.”
The model train chugged underneath a tall picture book that had been propped open to make a tunnel. Penelope started searching up and down the sidewalk again. Rani gazed at the sky, rose up on her toes, bent one knee, and spun in a pirouette.
“Rani?” Emily asked. “Which way should we go?”
Rani lowered her bent leg to the ground behind her and swept a curtsey, spreading her pink skirt wide. “Don’t know,” she said.
“You don’t know?”
Emily’s stomach wobbled. She glanced back to the corner where the ice cream blob still sat on the sidewalk. Should they retrace their steps to the Henrietta Minnow School? They’d found out something about Jonah, after all. They could tell Mrs. Pinkney and Emily’s parents and Mr. Cleary and everybody….
The door of the bookstore swung open as a customer hurried out. Reflected in its glass, Emily caught a glimpse of something red. She whirled around.
But it wasn’t Jonah. It was just a bright red scooter propped against the front stoop of a three-story apartment building a little farther down the block.
A scooter…
“Jonah really liked that scooter in the SuperSmartSaverMart,” Emily said. “Remember, Rani?”
Rani bounced up from her curtsey, smiling. In less than a minute they were all grouped around the scooter.
But there wasn’t a store clerk here to talk to. Nobody to ask if they’d seen a little boy and a big black dog.
Above them, at the top of the steps, a door banged open.
“Hey!” called a familiar voice. “What are you guys doing?”
Emily’s heart jolted in her chest and then jittered down to a steadier rhythm as she saw Anson at the top of the steps.
Rani kept on doing pirouettes. Penelope was looking up and down the block, and she never talked to Anson, anyway. So it seemed to be up to Emily to explain.
“Penelope’s little brother got lost,” she said. “We’re trying to find him. He’s somewhere with Rani’s dog.”
“That big black dog?” Anson asked. “There was a dog like that in the park. Drinking out of the fountain.”
He pointed across the street. A triangle of ground on the corner of the block had been planted with grass and decorated with a few tubs of geraniums. In the middle a small fountain bubbled and sloshed.
Penelope spun around. “Was there a boy with the dog? In a red T-shirt?”
Anson shrugged. A silver car swished past, then a blue one.
“Jonah knows he has to hold somebody’s hand to cross the street,” Penelope said.
“But Otto doesn’t have any hands,” Rani pointed out. “He has paws.”
Penelope snorted, waited for a tandem bike to pass, and hurried across the street to the park. Emily and Rani followed, and to her surprise, Emily realized that Anson was behind her. “What are you doing?” she asked as they reached the fountain.
“I don’t want to miss this!” Anson said. “Seriously, is your dog, like, a rescue dog?” he asked Rani. “Can he track people and stuff?”
Rani beamed. “Of course he can!” she said. “Once he—”
Emily interrupted before Rani could tell about what Otto had once done. “But you didn’t ask your parents!” she told Anson.
“So? Did you ask yours?”
Emily didn’t want to answer. A weak, watery sense of helplessness started to rise inside her, beginning in her knees and creeping upward.
She hadn’t kept an eye on Jonah when she’d been told to. She’d left the playground without permission. And after all that, they couldn’t even be sure if the dog Anson had seen was really Otto.
And if the dog really had been Otto, was Jonah still with him? If the two were actually still together, how would four fourth graders figure out where they’d gone next?
Penelope seemed to be having some doubts of her own. She folded her arms and glared at Rani. “You said your dog’s with my brother. You said you could find your dog. But maybe you can’t. And maybe he’s not. Maybe you made the whole thing up. Like you make everything up.”
Rani gazed back at her. “I make everything up?”
Penelope rolled her eyes. “You know you do. Everybody knows you do.” She turned to Emily. “Even you know she makes stuff up. Don’t you?”
Emily opened her mouth.
Of course she knew it. Hippos did not eat peanut butter sandwiches. Orangutans did not drink tea—or coffee either. Nobody dreamed on drifting icebergs in the Arctic night.
Emily knew that. But…
She also knew that girls did not live alone in attics, or rappel down brick walls, or build trampolines from deflated snowmen, or ride scooters through the SuperSmartSaverMart.
Inside Emily’s brain, it felt as if she were swooping between fact and fiction. Truth and lies. Penelope and Rani.
Before Emily could land on one side or the other, Anson stepped forward.
“Hey! I used to have one of these!” He picked up something small and green and damp sitting on the rim of the fountain.
Penelope grabbed it from his hand. “That’s Frogman! Jonah loves Frogman!”
“Look,” Emily said a little faintly.
Water had slopped over the edge of the fountain, making a puddle. Leading out of the puddle were two sets of damp footprints…one made by small sneakers and one made by big paws.
The prints crossed in front of the fountain, vanished in the grass, reappeared on the sidewalk, wandered along a curb, and disappeared on the black asphalt of the road. Jonah had crossed another street.
Emily was surprised to see Mr. Rose’s deli on the other side of the road. She hadn’t even realized that they were so close to home. Was that where Jonah and Otto had gone next?
Rani seemed to think so. “Mr. Rose keeps treats to give to all the dogs,” she said, and hopped off the curb.
There was no big black dog sniffing the bunches of bananas or the piles of apples set out on tables along the sidewalk. No little boy peering around buckets of tulips and roses.
But Mr. Rose was there, filling up a bin with carnations. “Hi, Rani!” he said cheerfully.
Rani waved, snatched up an orange, and began peeling it. “Did Otto come by for his biscuit today?” she asked.
“She just took an orange! Can she do that?” Anson asked Emily.
Emily shrugged.
“Sure he did,” Mr. Rose answered Rani. “Had a little kid with him. Friend of yours?”
“My brother!” Penelope burst out. “And he’s lost. Where’d they go?”
“Didn’t seem lost,” Mr. Rose said. “They went right down that alley like they knew just where they were going.” He pointed the way with a dripping bunch of flowers.
“Thanks!” Rani snatched up a second orange, tossed it to Anson, and skipped toward the alley.
Emily had never been down this alley before. Empty plastic crates were piled along a side wall of the deli, and scraps of cabbage leaves and bits of old labels and sodden paper bags squelched underfoot.
Rani and Anson added their orange peels to the litter.
Penelope frowned. “I don’t think Jonah would come back here,” she muttered as they made their way ahead.
“Oh, I think he would,” Rani answered cheerfully.
Penelope bristled. “How would you know?” she demanded. “He’s my brother. Not yours.” The alley turned a corner. Now the back of a shoe repair store ran along one side. On the other was a wooden fence.
“And my mom would never let him go anywhere like this,” Penelope went on. “There’s dirt. There’s trash. There’s—”
Rani stopped alongside a fencepost. Beside it, two wooden slats had been broken off. A tuft of shaggy black fur was snagged on the splintery edge of one board.
“There’s chickens!” Rani finished triumphantly.
Emily stared through the hole in the fence at her own backyard.
There was the brick patio. There was the coop for Araminta, Betty, and Carlotta. There was the whirligig Rani had made for them, twirling in a stately circle under a gentle breeze.
Beside it sat Otto, his tail wagging gently. Jonah Pinkney crouched beside him, a wide smile on his face, blobs of orange ice cream on his shirt, scattering bits of crumbled-up dog biscuit in the dirt for the chickens to eat.
Now, everything would be all right.
All they had to do, Emily thought, was get Jonah back to the school playground. Mrs. Pinkney would stop crying. Mr. Cleary would stop worrying. (Well, Emily had to admit that Mr. Cleary would probably never stop worrying.) Emily’s own parents would calm down. And things would go back to normal.
As normal as they could get with Rani around.
But nobody else seemed to understand how important it was to hurry back to the Henrietta Minnow school.
Penelope was busy hugging and scolding her brother. Anson was examining the whirligig. Otto was panting gently with the tip of his tail swishing back and forth. Rani was…What was Rani doing?
Buckling on her climbing harness, which hung down from the roof of the building on a long line.
“Um,” Emily said. “Rani? It’s sort of a bad time to do that.”
Rani fastened a buckle. “Oh, I don’t think that three forty-two in the afternoon is such a bad time,” she said. “Not like eleven fifty-nine. You really have to keep an eye on that one.”
“And you’re never, ever, ever supposed to cross the street by yourself!” Penelope said to Jonah, who emptied his last fistful of crumbs over one of the whirligig’s funnels.
“But, Rani, we have to—”
“Or seven seventeen!” Rani continued. She bent down to pick up Araminta and tucked the feathery bundle inside her red backpack.
“Hey, did you build this thing?” Anson asked.
“See you later!” Rani said, waving to everyone. “More fun and friendship!”
She turned and began to hoist herself up the wall. From inside the backpack, Araminta gave several approving clucks.
“Whoa.” Anson stared as Rani headed upward. “Where’s she going?”
Emily ignored him and leaned down a little to take hold of Jonah Pinkney’s sticky hand.
“Time to go,” she said.
Penelope took Jonah’s other hand. Together they towed the little boy along as he craned his neck to watch Rani, who had reached the second floor. Otto got up, shook himself all over, and trotted behind them.
Anson followed Otto, walking backward so he, too, could keep an eye on Rani. He didn’t take his gaze off her even when he tripped over Betty and landed on top of her. She escaped with an explosion of furious clucking.
“Anson, shake a tail feather!” Emily called over her shoulder. “We have to get back to school!”
But it turned out that they didn’t.
Mrs. Pinkney, Mr. Cleary, and Emily’s parents had not stayed on the school playground. As Emily and Penelope led Jonah around to the front of the apartment building, they found all four grown-ups hurrying down the sidewalk toward them. A police officer was walking behind them and a black-and-white car had just pulled up to the curb.
A second officer got out of the car. “You said there was a lost kid?” he asked the first one. Both took in the hugging, admonishing, and explaining that was going on all around them.
“A bunch of them,” she answered. “Looks like they all got found.”
The officer who’d come on foot took a small notebook from her pocket. “Can I just get some—” But she didn’t finish her thought. She was staring at the top of the apartment building and had gone very still.
“Everyone stay calm,” she said in a quiet, urgent voice. “We can’t startle her. No noise, all right? Let me handle this.”
The faces of everyone in the group turned up to find Rani standing on the roof of the apartment building.
She waved.
Mr. Cleary cupped both hands to his mouth. “Don’t move! Come down! We’ll come get you!” he shouted.
“I said no noise!” the police officer snapped.
“It’s okay,” Emily said. “Really. She does this kind of thing all the time.”
Nobody appeared to find this reassuring.
“Get down from there this instant!” Mrs. Pinkney shrieked.
