© 2012 by Lauraine Snelling & Kathleen Damp Wright
Print ISBN 978-1-61626-560-1
eBook Editions:
Adobe Digital Edition (.epub) 978-1-60742-800-8
Kindle and MobiPocket Edition (.prc) 978-1-60742-801-5
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted for commercial purposes, except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without written permission of the publisher.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the authors’ imaginations or used fictitiously. Any similarity to actual people, organizations, and/or events is purely coincidental.
Cover illustration: Jamey Christoph/lindgrensmith.com
Published by Barbour Publishing, Inc., P.O. Box 719, Uhrichsville, Ohio 44683, www.barbourbooks.com.
Our mission is to publish and distribute inspirational products offering exceptional value and biblical encouragement to the masses.
Printed in the United States of America.
Dickinson Press, Inc., Grand Rapids, MI 49512; February 2012; D10003168
Dedication
Lauraine:
Dedicated to basset rescue organizations everywhere
Kathleen:
Dedicated to my parents
Acknowledgments
Lauraine:
I’d like to thank Dawn at Daphneyland
Basset Rescue in Action, California, for time
and encouragement in all things basset.
Kathleen:
Thanks to The Daily Drool for questions answered on what Wink might do. Thanks to Blue Water Resort in Garden City, Utah, for the free extended stays at the condo for writing; and Sue’s and Ramona’s stories to remind me why I like to write. Becky and Louise for all the reasons they know and don’t know in the adventure of girlfriend-ness. Thanks to my students for their “what box?” creativity and bug-eyed thrill that I’m publishing a story.
From both of us:
Always grateful for our husbands: Lauraine’s Wayne and Kathleen’s Fred for accepting that this is a viable way to live and have adventures. Our gratitude to God for all the dogs that have graced our lives with unconditional love, hysterical behavior, and saliva.
God, You are our Forever Home.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Countdown to Total Humiliation
Chapter 2: Too Many Melissas
Chapter 3: Mystery Woman by the Lake
Chapter 4: Help! Murder! Frank!
Chapter 5: Soggy Puppy
Chapter 6: Mission: Make Mom Love Wink
Chapter 7: A-Not-So-Great Start
Chapter 8: A Waddle Is a Winner
Chapter 9: Oh No! Another Microphone!
Chapter 10: Big Plans, Big Trouble
Chapter 11: Melissa Causes Trouble
Chapter 12: Piles of Puppy Pellets
Chapter 13: A Clue to the Crocs Killer!
Chapter 14: What Is Melissa Up To?
Chapter 15: Racing against Time
Chapter 16: Hooray!
Chapter 17: Climbing the Fence
Chapter 18: Stupid in a Group
Chapter 19: Banished
Chapter 20: Missing: One Hound Dawg
Chapter 21: Who’s Got Wink?
Chapter 22: The Race
Chapter 23: Who Is That Hound?
Chapter 24: Crocs Killer!
Chapter 25: Who Will Win?
Chapter 26: Not More Trouble?
Chapter 27: Things Change
Chapter 28: Forever Homes
Mom’s Peanut Butter Cookie Recipe
About the Authors
Chapter 1
Countdown to Total Humiliation
Five empty seats left. Five chances remaining for total humiliation.
Don’t pick me, don’t pick me, don’t pick me. Aneta Jasper’s plea zipped through her mind. Kind of like when Grandma zipped the two of them through traffic on the electric pink scooter. On this June Friday, the Oakton City Community Center auditorium was hot and crowded with sweaty kids her own almost-sixth-grade age.
The stage gaped like a monstrous mouth, the eight chairs on its edge—like teeth. A microphone stood in front.
Aneta closed her eyes as the mayor of Oakton City’s raspy voice announced the first three of eight winners of the Founders’ Day poster contest. She didn’t want to walk up in front of all these people. She didn’t want to sit on that stage. And she didn’t—didn’t—want to speak her bad English into that microphone. She also hadn’t wanted to enter the contest in the first place. Mom’s idea. At the thought of her adoptive mom, Aneta smiled even while she clutched her stomach.
“Remember, these winners become Junior Event Planners for our Founders’ Day charity fund-raisers,” the mayor remarked, looking up from her notes. “Next winner, Melissa Dayton-Snipp.”
Junior Event Planners? Fund-raisers? Aneta’s eyes flew open. Her throat dried up. She swallowed, adjusting the headband that held back blond hair skimming her shoulders. The words in the application had been too hard to read. Aneta had simply signed the form and handed it in. The ache in her stomach grew. She was glad Mom had left today for a work trip. She’d be home Thursday and wouldn’t see Aneta embarrass the family by losing…or worse, by winning and standing up in front of people—and Melissa—and speaking bad English.
Aneta watched her private-school classmate, a brown-haired girl with chunky blond highlights, walk the “Melissa Walk” to the stage. Her hips swung back and forth, her head tilted up. Like she was the princess. From Aneta’s arrival at The Cunningham School, Melissa had appointed herself Aneta’s interpreter and American role model.
“It will be a great opportunity for teamwork and community service,” the mayor said.
Uh-oh. Opportunity was one of Mom’s favorite words. Opportunity meant Aneta ended up doing things she didn’t like and didn’t do well. It was hard enough learning to be an Annette instead of Aneta, a Jasper instead of an orphan, and an American instead of Ukrainian. She wanted to make Mom smile, to be a Jasper the way The Fam were Jaspers: loud, smart, and—brave. So she’d said yes to the contest. The more she said yes, the less they might send her back.
Four chairs left.
Aneta shivered. Now more than ever, she did not want to, could not win. Speak and then be in a group? “Don’t pick me, don’t pick me, don’t pick me,” she muttered again, hands tucked under her capris, staring down at her lime-green sandals, bright against the tan of her narrow feet. She’d rather be home in the pool.
Someone nudged her. Opening her eyes and turning toward the nudge, she looked into the curious almond-shaped brown eyes of the girl on her right. The girl’s black hair was pulled back in a high ponytail that shone under the auditorium lights.
“You okay?” the girl asked. “I’m Vee.” She stuck out her hand.
Aneta had yet to get used to Americans with their hand shaking. Vee was the first kid to do so. Aneta slowly offered her own hand, and Vee pumped it briskly.
“Me?” Aneta swallowed, reminded this was her answer to nearly every question. “I’m okay.” She would bet Vee was the confident kind of girl who would be good at everything and prob ably got picked first for PE.
“Vee Nguyen,” the mayor announced. She pronounced the last name as “new-winn.”
The girl smiled, showing straight, white teeth. “I knew it.” She leaned to whisper in Aneta’s ear as she rose. “I have an awesome idea for a fund-raiser. Plus I did a makeover of the Oakton City logo. In calligraphy.”
“Oh.” Aneta nodded as if she knew what Vee was talking about. The theme had been “Looking Back and Looking Ahead.” Her own drawing, in Prismacolor colored pencils, had been more memory than great art. The tall, stone orp
hanage where she’d spent the first ten years of her life had been easy to sketch, as well as shading in the outlines of stray cats and dogs that hovered around the gates waiting for fresh garbage.
Mom called it “profound.” Aneta thought it just looked sad. Animals and kids nobody wanted. She’d been one of the lucky ones, adopted by Mom, a lawyer, and into The Fam, the kind-yet-strange bundle of grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins.
Three seats left. Aneta resumed the singsong in her head.
“Esther Martin,” the mayor announced.
The dark-blond-haired girl on Aneta’s left, who filled her own chair and spilled over a little against Aneta’s leg, leaped to her feet. “I have a great fund-raiser all planned,” she hissed to Aneta and began to push past knees to the aisle. Her yellow T-shirt with big letters: AND YOUR POINT Is? stretched tightly over her stomach. Long, dangling earrings bounced against her perspiring face.
Some of the kids whispered as Esther’s rear end bumped past. Aneta felt bad for her and thought her brave. During the school year, kids had whispered and laughed about Aneta’s bad English. She spent a lot of time hiding in the bathroom. She hoped they wouldn’t taunt this year, now that she was in sixth grade—or would be in September. It was summer; she could ride the Pink Flamingo scooter during the day with Gram, swim with Mom in the evenings and on weekends, and not worry about her English.
Two chairs left.
“Sunny Quinlan.”
A yelp of pleasure echoed through the increasingly stuffy au ditorium. Across the room, a redheaded girl, shorter than Aneta—everyone her age was shorter—leaped toward the front. “Yayness!” she yelled, setting off a ripple of laughter.
That girl will have no problem speaking into the microphone, Aneta thought, lifting her hair off a sweaty neck. Sunny’s smile looked like it was used to spreading across her face.
Aneta’s stomach twisted sharply.
One seat.
Surely she was safe. She held her breath, preparing a relieved whoosh. She wouldn’t have to pretend to faint, run out of the room, or persuade Mom to let her not be a winner.
“And finally…,” the mayor said, folding her paper.
Don’t pick me, don’t pick me.
Chapter 2
Too Many Melissas
She had been terribly wrong. She was not safe. She tripped over feet to the aisle then stumbled up and onto the stage. A million nameless faces looked at her. She looked at them.
The short, round mayor beamed at the audience. “This young girl is a new citizen of the United States. She was adopted almost a year ago.” She placed a heavy hand on Aneta’s shoulder. “Go ahead and tell us your name, and as a special treat, tell us what you like best about living in America.”
Her name, her name. What was her name? The silence seemed longer than a day and only a breath shorter than forever. She heard Melissa whisper, “She doesn’t know her own name.”
“Aneta!” she blurted loudly. “I like—” What did she like about living in America? She loved The Fam. She loved Mom. She liked to eat. She loved to swim. Her mouth opened, but no words emerged. “I—I—”
She would find a phone. She would call Gram. And she would never, never return to the community center.
“Annette—er, Aneta?” A tall man stood in the hall, the flow of winners splitting around him. With his brown hair tied back in a ponytail, a red striped shirt over long shorts, and a tattoo covering his right forearm, he looked like a skinny pirate without a mustache. “Whoever you are. You’re in this room with Vee, Sunny, and Esther.” He jerked a thumb to the right.
Still dazed from the humiliation of being led off the stage by a smirking Melissa, Aneta looked up at him. Who was she? She wasn’t sure.
“Where is the phone?” she whispered, gazing up at him. Be in a group? Come up with a fund-raiser? She wasn’t even sure what one was, but it sounded quite difficult. “I call my grandmother,” she finished. That English sounded wrong. Missing words? At least he would see she wouldn’t fit in the group.
The impatience in his hazel eyes shifted to kindness. Melissa Dayton-Snipp swooped in the next moment, tugging Aneta through the kids in the hall to the drinking fountain.
“What a loser group you’re in,” Melissa said. She backed up into the final stragglers, the better to look up at Aneta. Easily five inches shorter than Aneta, she was thin and wore a summer dress. “Everyone knows Sunny’s homeschooled, and those kids are always freaks. Then you’re stuck with Vee Nguyen who bosses everyone….”
Melissa had perfected the I’m-so-much-better-than-that tone in her voice.
“Throw in that fat girl Esther Whoever with the loser wardrobe…like she doesn’t own anything other than a T-shirt?
Your group is toast.” She unclenched the death grip on Aneta. Melissa excelled at gathering information—Aneta remembered from school. Melissa raised her voice to a near shout. “Do you unnn-derrrr-stand?” As though Aneta had no ears and no brain instead of slower English.
On the inside, she imagined herself yanking her arm away from Melissa and saying, “I so don’t need your help.” She would say it, too, if she thought it would come out right. She also understood, however, that girls at school who didn’t pay attention to Melissa Dayton-Snipp found no other girls would pay attention to them either. Not that Aneta wanted a million friends, but she’d like one or two. She’d seen Melissa at work and didn’t want to become a…what was the word Mom used about her law clients? Victim.
Aneta glanced first at the man wearing a name tag that said FRANK, who was looking impatient, then at Melissa. What to do? Run into the room and face more girls like Melissa or remain in the real Melissa’s clutches?
Melissa kept right on talking as though Aneta were absorbing every word. Aneta imagined she was in the pool at home, slicing through cool water, watching the shifting blues on the bottom. The water didn’t care if she spoke good English or was accepted by other kids or if her adoptive family liked her enough to keep her. Gram said it “chilled her out.” Aneta hurled one last desperate glance up and down the hall for a phone somewhere, anywhere. Nothing.
Thankfully, Frank stepped forward. “Melissa, get going to your own conference room.” When she hurled the Death Stare at him, he laughed. Aneta couldn’t believe it. Then, as his gaze fell on Aneta, he tipped his head to the left. “Time to get going.”
Not her. She was going for a phone to call Gram and get out of there. She stepped away from Melissa and toward the room. As she passed him, Frank patted her shoulder with a warm hand. “Don’t ask me why they gave me a group of all girls, but they, in their infinite wisdom, did.”
“Oh,” Aneta said. He didn’t want to be in the group either. She entered the room. Vee and Esther, who’d already exhibited so much more confidence and courage than she, sat with pads of paper. Too many Melissas. She wished Mom hadn’t left on a business trip today. Wished Gram would hurry up and come get her and take her back to Gram’s house.
As she took the chair next to Vee, Aneta felt the heart-dropping feeling she often experienced in school. Was she supposed to have brought something for notes? Rule Three of The Endless Rules of Melissa: Never, never look like you don’t know what you’re doing or risk “Loser.” Her heart pounded and she checked her watch. Just after three. How long before Gram would come? She kept Aneta company and drove her around on the Pink Flamingo while Mom worked at her law office.
Frank’s gaze scanned the girls then dropped to his clipboard. “Okay, we’re missing Sunny Quinlan. I hope she gets here pronto.”
At that moment, a redheaded flash wearing an oversized white tee atop khaki cargo pants dashed into the room, flip-flops flipping. Sunny Quinlan had arrived. “Hey, gang. Sorry. I got talking to a girl from my soccer team….”
“About time,” Vee said with an exaggerated look at her cell phone and then at Sunny.
“Atti-toood,” Sunny replied, singing the word just loudly enough to be heard. As she dropped into a chair next to Esther,
she grinned across at Aneta like they were old friends. Aneta found her mouth tugging in a half smile.
“Okay, Frank.” Vee dragged her laser look from Sunny to flick an intense gaze at the others. “We’re Junior Event Planners. I say we have a book sale to benefit the library.”
Frank nodded. “Sounds good. What do the rest of you say?”
Vee continued, “So let’s list our strengths and start working.”
No kid she’d met in her nine months in America talked like Vee.
“You guys…er, girls…work together, make it happen.” He glanced around the table. “Everybody clear on the project?”
Clear and want to were two different things. Aneta clenched her hands under the table. These girls were all Melissas. One in her life was already one too many.
“Okay, everyone say what strength they bring to the group, and I’ll write it down.” Vee sat up straight and held her pen expectantly as she met each girl’s gaze.
A curl of panic, like icy fingers around a Slurpee, wrapped around Aneta’s spine. What strength they brought to the group? She didn’t even want to be in the group. She would die right here at the table.
“Hey, you’re not the boss,” Esther interrupted, her hands leaping to her hips in protest. “I already have an idea. We can paint the city fire hydrants like different little characters.”
Sunny wrinkled her nose. “Let’s come up with a rock-socko fun project.”
Esther ignored Sunny, her eyes fastened on Vee. “You’re not the boss,” she repeated, her tone not even a bit friendly.
“Okay, girls,” Frank said.
“We need organization,” Vee answered Esther in an equally cold tone. “My teachers all say I’m an organizer.”
That was the testy start to twenty minutes—Aneta timed it on her waterproof watch with the stopwatch—of Vee and Esther arguing. They both wanted to be the boss of everyone else. Aneta remained quiet.
“It could happen,” Vee said about a book sale to benefit the library, housed in another wing of the community center. “Easy.”
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