CONTENTS
TITLE PAGE
DEDICATION
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
TEASER
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALSO AVAILABLE
COPYRIGHT
My dog was staring at me again.
I have no idea what she wants when she does that. She just sits there and … stares. Her black eyes are kind of close together and she has this long elegant nose, and it’s like she’s peering down that nose at me, just … waiting for something. But I don’t know what.
I wasn’t even doing anything interesting. I’d unpacked a bag full of T-shirts and shorts and stuffed them into a couple of drawers, so I was sitting on my bed, taking a break from unpacking. I could see the corner of a red shirt sticking out of the drawer, but I didn’t feel like getting up to fix it. My new room was still a disaster. It would take me weeks to make it look right. And my dog was sitting in the middle of the new rug, staring at me.
“Stop it, Jeopardy,” I said.
She tilted her head as if I had said something mysterious and fascinating. Her ears always stick straight up. It’s like she’s listening really hard even if nothing is happening at all. Her eyes went from my face to my hands to my face to my hands.
“I’m not doing anything!” I said. I held up my empty hands and she instantly jumped to her paws, wagging her tail. “Good grief, Jeopardy,” I said. “Chill out.”
I got up to get another box and she hurried over to nose at my hands and paw at the cardboard flaps. This had been happening all day. Every time I twitched or shifted, even a tiny bit, she’d jump to her paws as if I’d set off a burglar alarm. I couldn’t move an inch without her following me across the room. Then she’d stare at me while I put something else away.
It made me nervous. How was I supposed to unpack with this dog fidgeting around and watching me like I was trying to hide the Mona Lisa or something?
“Mom!” I called. I wondered if Mom could hear me in this big old house. Our house in Rochester was just the right size for the four of us, but this new house had too many extra rooms, plus an attic and a basement. We didn’t even have enough stuff to put something in every room. Mom said I could have the whole basement to hang out in if I wanted. But what good was a whole basement when I didn’t have any friends to hang out with?
“Mom!” I called again, but there was no answer. I could hear clattering from the kitchen downstairs, so she was probably unpacking pots with my sister, Violet. Violet can usually drown me out, even without the help of her favorite pot lids. She’s three and she is already the loudest person I’ve ever met.
I looked inside the box and sighed. I thought I’d hated packing, but it turned out unpacking was even worse. On our last day in Rochester, when I couldn’t put it off anymore, I had just started throwing all my stuff into any box I could find. So now I kept opening boxes packed like this: two yo-yos (one broken), nineteen Hot Wheels race cars, three paperback Hardy Boys books, a snow globe with the Eiffel Tower inside it from our trip to Paris, a set of military-looking dog tags with my name on them (which my friend Victor got for me for my eleventh birthday), a picture of me and Josh and our dads at a Buffalo Bills game, a deflated football, a couple of test tubes from the old chemistry set I lost a while ago, the mask and cape from my Zorro costume last Halloween, a watercolor painting of a horse that Anjali had given me to remember her by, the CD case for my favorite computer game (I had no idea where the CD itself was), and a Far Side wall calendar that was supposedly a Christmas gift from Violet, although of course it was really from my mom and dad, because, like I said, she’s three. If she’d been allowed to pick out her own gift for me, I’d have ended up with, like, a purple stuffed hippo. Or a tutu. Or a pot lid, if I was really lucky.
What the heck was I supposed to do with all of this? I put the dog tags around my neck and looked at the inscription again: CAPT. NOAH LOCKE, BEST FRIEND SQUADRON. Victor’s said SGT. VICTOR HALE, because he’d thought sergeants were above captains, so then it was really funny when we checked online and he turned out to be wrong.
I picked up the wall calendar and went looking for a thumbtack, but of course I couldn’t find one. I couldn’t find anything I actually wanted. I found a stapler and an orange highlighter in a box labeled DESK STUFF, but everything else in that box was old papers and homework assignments. I’d probably just emptied a whole drawer of my desk into the box and taped it up.
Man, I hated moving. When I get older, I’m going to find one perfect place to live (probably Rochester, if Victor and Todd and Anjali are still there) and never move again. I propped Anjali’s horse painting on the windowsill, dug my laptop out of my backpack, and sat down on the floor. My old room had a fuzzy dandelion-yellow wall-to-wall carpet, but this new house had hardwood floors everywhere. Dad had found me a big orange-and-blue rug that covered most of the floor in my new room, but it was way less comfortable to sit on. I could tell I wouldn’t be doing much homework on the floor anymore.
Jeopardy immediately came over and sat down next to me. I tried to ignore her while I turned the laptop on. But have you ever tried to ignore someone who’s sitting a foot away from you, staring intently into your face?
“WHAT?” I finally said to her.
She tilted her head at me again.
“Can’t you go bother someone else?” I asked.
She tilted her head the other way. When I didn’t say anything else, she pawed at my knee with one delicate white paw.
Jeopardy is a Shetland sheepdog, or Sheltie for short. She looks like a small version of Lassie, with long brown- and white- and honey-colored fur. Her face is mostly honey-tan around her bright black eyes, with a small blaze of white across her nose. She has a halo of darker fur around that and dark brown ears, the same color as my hair (and, like me, she always seems to need a haircut). Her chest is a puff of white fur and all of her little paws are white.
She’s really pretty, but I think she’s really, really weird. We got her a year ago because my mom was on the TV show Jeopardy! and the dog was supposed to be a thank-you to the rest of us for helping her study before she went on. It surprised me because I never really thought about getting a dog. I guess we had a Dalmatian when I was really little, but I don’t remember him much. Victor has a cat and Anjali has two chinchillas, so I’d thought maybe I’d get something like that one day.
But then my mom and dad came home with this fuzzy Sheltie puppy and decided to name her Jeopardy after the show. For no apparent reason, she loved me best of all. Even as a puppy, she’d kind of stagger around behind me, yipping until I picked her up. So first I had to get used to having a dog follow me around all the time. And then, six weeks ago, Mom and Dad told me we were moving.
Moving! Right in the middle of the school year! Well, kind of near the beginning, but my dad’s job wouldn’t let him move until October, so it meant that I’d have a month of sixth grade in Rochester, and then I had to start over here. What if they were studying different things? What if these sixth graders were way ahead of me?
But the worst part was leaving Victor and Anjali and Josh. I knew there wouldn’t be anyone like them here. For one thing, I was pretty sure I was the only Buffalo Bills fan for three hundred miles.
And then there was Jeopardy. She’d always been a little crazy, but when we started packing she totally freaked out. She kept jumping into boxes while
we were packing them, or grabbing whatever we were trying to pack and hiding it under the bed or in the sofa. She didn’t let me out of her sight for the whole last week before we moved. She’s supposed to sleep on the floor beside my bed, but I kept waking up in the middle of the night when she jumped up to sleep next to me.
I mean, I like my dog and all, but it was getting kind of annoying.
Speaking of annoying, we’d moved in on a Wednesday, and here it was already Saturday and we still didn’t have an Internet connection. I was pretty sure someone was trying to torture me. All I wanted to do was e-mail my friends and make sure they still remembered me, but I couldn’t even do that.
Jeopardy poked my elbow with her nose.
“Stop it,” I said, frowning at her. “I’m not in the mood for your weirdness, Jeopardy.”
Her ears perked up even more when I said her name. She stood up and wagged her tail as if I’m not in the mood for your weirdness actually meant It’s playtime!
“MOM!” I yelled just as my mom appeared in the doorway.
“Goodness, Noah,” Mom said. “There’s no need to shout.”
“YEAH, NOAH!” Violet hollered from behind her legs. “NO NEEDS FOR SHOUTING!”
Mom made that face where she’s trying not to laugh. She thinks Violet is a lot funnier than I do. My sister and I both have blue eyes, but when Violet opens hers really wide and goes “What I do?” she can get away with anything. I guess the wispy blond ringlets probably help, too. Today she was wearing her sequined purple leotard backward, but she’d thrown a screaming fit when Mom tried to change it, so Mom just put a pink skirt over it and let her wear it like that. I was very sure I hadn’t been that ridiculous when I was three.
“Mom, Jeopardy is driving me crazy,” I said.
“Aw, come here, sweetie,” Mom said to the dog, kneeling down. Her long, light brown hair was tied back with a thin blue scarf that had little gold spangles woven into it. Mom teaches high school, but sometimes she gets mistaken for one of the students because she looks really young. So whenever she’s working, she wears jackets and heels and really professional-looking clothes (which is what she wore on Jeopardy! too). But today she was wearing jeans and a paint-spattered black T-shirt. The paint spots were lavender, the new color of Violet’s walls (my sister has a thing for purple, if you’re wondering).
Jeopardy trotted over to her, wagging her tail and ducking her head. She let Mom pat her for about ten seconds, and then she jumped away and looked at me again. Her golden-brown fur fluffed out around her face and her small black eyes were very serious.
“See?” I said. “It’s like she wants me to do something. What do you want from my life, dog?”
Mom stood up and glanced around my room. I hadn’t gotten much done since Wednesday. My orange-and-white-checkered bedspread was on my bed and half my clothes had made it into the closet. But there was nothing yet on the dark wooden bookshelf except a box of Kleenex, a framed photo of Josh and Anjali, and Bridge to Terabithia, which we read last year in fifth grade. There were open boxes stacked all over the room and piles of stuff that I couldn’t deal with. The only thing on the wall was a collage of photos of African animals — another present from Anjali. I’d stuck it up over my bed on Thursday, using tape because I couldn’t find anything else.
“Also,” I said, “we still don’t have the Internet, and I hate this floor.”
“I HATES IT, TOO!” Violet bellowed. But she didn’t mean it. She just repeats everything I say, because she’s like Jeopardy in that she lives to annoy me.
Mom put her hands on her hips. “Maybe you need to go for a walk,” she said to me.
Jeopardy’s head whipped around at the word “walk.” She stared at Mom, wagging her bushy tail frantically, swish swish swish.
“I don’t want to go for a walk,” I said.
Jeopardy nearly had a heart attack. She galloped over to me and tried to leap into my lap, which was already full of my laptop. She planted her front paws on my shoulders and poked her nose into my face with a searching gaze.
“ACK!” I yelled. “Quit it! Off!” I dove away from her and moved my laptop to the safety of the desk.
“There’s a park only a few blocks away,” Mom said firmly. “You can take Jeopardy. I think you both could use a break.”
“That wouldn’t be a break for me,” I pointed out. “Since she’d still be there, staring at me. Like she always does.” I widened my eyes at Jeopardy, but she just wagged her tail and stared back. I’d never beaten her in a staring contest.
“Should Violet and I come with you?” Mom asked.
“YES!” Violet shrieked.
“No!” I said. “Fine! I’m going!”
Mom had packed Jeopardy’s stuff all in one box, so it was easy to find when we got here. Her silver chain-link leash was hanging on the front doorknob. As I went to put my sneakers on in the front hall, Jeopardy galloped over and grabbed her leash between her teeth. She pulled it off the door and dragged it over to me.
That’s a new trick. We didn’t teach it to her. In our old house, we kept her leash on a shelf next to the door, where neither Violet nor Jeopardy could reach it. But there wasn’t a shelf like that here, so on Wednesday night after he walked her, Dad left it on the doorknob. Then on Thursday night, when he started getting ready to take her out, Jeopardy ran over and brought the leash to him. It didn’t take her long at all to figure out where it was.
Violet, on the other hand, still hadn’t found the downstairs bathroom.
I clipped the leash onto Jeopardy’s new collar, which is pale green with dragonflies embroidered on it. I told Mom I thought it was too girly, but she said, “Well, Jeopardy is a girl,” and I couldn’t exactly argue with that.
The dog and I were already halfway down the block when I realized I had no idea where this “park” was. I was too annoyed to go back and ask Mom, so I let Jeopardy lead the way. I didn’t care if we just went around the block and ended up at home again.
But Jeopardy had her own plans. She took me straight to the park. It’s almost like she has a GPS in her nose or something. She kept stopping and looking back at me as if she couldn’t understand why I was going so slowly. Or maybe she was checking to make sure I wasn’t doing anything interesting while she had her eyes elsewhere.
It was already cold enough for a jacket in Rochester, but here I didn’t need it yet. The sun was shining in this bright blue sky and the wind rustled through the trees so it sounded like the green and gold leaves were whispering about me. Who’s the new kid? He needs a haircut. Why’s his dog so weird?
Once we were inside the park, Jeopardy found the dog run in no time. It was a huge fenced-off area surrounded by thick hedges, with a water fountain in the middle and trees all around it. A little wooden post by the chain-link gate had a box of plastic bags attached to it and a sign that said: DON’T FORGET TO CLEAN UP AFTER YOUR DOG!
I was nervous as we walked up to the gate, but there wasn’t anyone inside. That surprised me, because it was a Saturday morning, but I was glad, too. I took off Jeopardy’s leash and headed for the dark green benches at the far end. I just wanted to sit and forget for a while about moving and unpacking and starting a new school in two days. I wasn’t ready to talk to any strangers yet.
But it turned out I didn’t have much choice. Five minutes later, Jeopardy barked and ran over to the gate. My heart sank as I saw a girl my age coming in with a giant shaggy dog.
Ready or not, I was about to meet somebody new.
For a moment I thought about staying on my bench and hoping she wouldn’t notice me, but Jeopardy was already leaping around the girl’s feet and sniffing at the big dog. I wasn’t sure if the girl would like that, so I had to go over and get my stupid dog to leave her alone.
“Sorry,” I said, reaching for Jeopardy’s collar, but the girl crouched down and started to pet her. Jeopardy poked her long thin nose under the girl’s hand, and then backed away to focus on the other dog.
; “That’s OK!” the girl said to me. She smiled at Jeopardy in this big, excited way, like meeting a new dog was the highlight of her day or something. “What’s your dog’s name?”
“This is Jeopardy,” I said. I wondered if she would think that was a weird name. I hoped I wouldn’t have to tell the whole story of my mom being on the show and everything.
Her dog was absolutely enormous, with a huge black, shaggy head and gigantic white paws and really long black-and-white fur. His pink tongue hung out as he grinned at Jeopardy, who was darting around him like a mosquito, trying to get close enough to sniff him without getting swatted.
“I’m Noah,” I added.
“Hi Noah,” she said, shaking my hand. “I’m Heidi, and this is Yeti.”
OK. I felt a little better. Yeti was at least as funny a name as Jeopardy, although it was pretty appropriate for such a big-pawed, Abominable-Snowman–looking dog.
Heidi was really tall, taller than me, with tangled blondish-reddish hair that looked like maybe she hadn’t had time to brush it yet that morning. Her long-sleeved dark red shirt had a cartoon English sheepdog on the front and little white paw prints around the hem and collar and sleeves. There was a small chocolate stain on her left elbow, which puzzled me. How do you get chocolate on your elbow?
She kept touching her dog like she was making sure he was still there, although at that size he’d be pretty hard to miss. Yeti was tall enough that she didn’t have to reach down to pat his head, and he kept leaning into her side with this adoring look on his face.
Jeopardy doesn’t look at me like that. Her look is more like, Well? What are we doing now? How about now? Really, we’re still playing this video game? Still? How about now?
“Do you live around here?” Heidi asked, holding her hand out for Yeti to lick her fingers.
“Yeah,” I said. “I think so. I hope I can get home again.” I realized how dumb that sounded when she started laughing. Man, I must have seemed like such a moron. Way to make a good first impression, Noah. By the time I got to school on Monday she would probably have told everyone how brain-dead I was.
Smarty-Pants Sheltie Page 1
