Thank-you notes for the judges.
Esther’s dad’s friend—truck bed at park tonight.
Tell Melissa how much we made.
She nudged Vee and pointed at the last item. “Mean.”
Vee looked like she might argue. Aneta sincerely hoped she would not. Then Vee pushed her hand through her hair and crossed out the last item.
“Only because you’re a S.A.V.E. Squadder and—” She swallowed. “You’re right.”
“Let’s swim!” Aneta said. They had special permission tonight since they were a group. She didn’t have to say it twice. The girls raced each other into the house to change into their still-wet suits and leaped into the pool—one, two, three, four. Aneta dove down to touch the drain like she always did.
Tomorrow would be the last chance for her to get Mom to fall in love with Wink. Nadine had promised to bring Wink to the park early so he could get into his costume, and she’d okayed Aneta taking care of him all day.
The girls were flinging a beach ball from one to another, and she joined in, bumping up the ball when it came near her. Soon it had changed into a crab crawling contest in the shallow end with shouts of laughter. Esther was very good at crab crawling. Soon Aneta’s face ached from smiling. She hoped her smile would be even bigger tomorrow.
Nearly an hour later, Mom stepped through the doorway. “Hey, girls, you must be wrinkled as prunes. The Dog Dictionary show is on. Want to come in and watch?”
The Dog Dictionary show, featuring “everything dog from A to Z,” was a favorite with Sunny and Esther as well. Vee remarked her stepbrothers, the Twin Terrors, were loyal fans. The girls sprawled on the long leather sofa facing the screen attached to the wall above a stone fireplace. The evening had cooled enough that they opened the french doors to feel the breeze sweeping through. Mom had just left the room when the opening credits ended and the announcer, with his New Zealand accent that Aneta loved, began the segment:
“It could be in your city, your town. Even across your street. Pet owners who try to make money from their dogs. They don’t know what they’re doing, and it’s not a good thing.”
The girls were riveted. With the first hidden-camera footage of a room with stacked cages with pans underneath, Aneta’s eyes widened. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Sunny gulping. Vee twisted her fingers. Esther pulled on her earrings.
In the next few minutes, Aneta had learned that making mother dogs have more than one litter a year for several years is unhealthy. Such irresponsible breeding is not allowed in many towns and cities. These dogs didn’t get to run around. They spent their lives in a cage having puppies, who also didn’t get to run around. Puppies were often sold before they should have left their mothers. She thought about leaving Mom ever. A tear trickled down her cheek.
To get around the rules, backyard breeders were shipping or delivering dogs to pet stores who didn’t ask for breeding records, bloodlines, or anything else to ensure the puppies they were selling were healthy. To reduce or eliminate the barking and whining, some backyard breeders had installed kennel-barking devices that silenced the dog with a painful high-frequency sound when it barked. Hidden cameras showed air-conditioning units kept the rooms too cool for puppies but diffused the smell of dog waste not cleaned up promptly.
At the end, Aneta pointed the remote to the TV and clicked. No one said a word. Vee rolled her pen back and forth between her fingers. “Do you remember that high-pitched sound the day we went to Mr. Leonard’s yard?”
Chapter 17
Climbing the Fence
Sunny slowly sat up, her freckled face troubled. “Are you going to say what I think you’re going to say?”
Esther straightened, blinking quickly. “My aunt has air-conditioning in her house. Mr. Leonard had the same type of machine outside his—” She paused then whispered, “Not outside his house. Outside the garage.“
Aneta’s brain whirled. Wink pulling his sturdy body toward that house. Like maybe he remembered it? Or was it simply his extra-efficient nose had sniffed out other dogs?
Sunny smacked her fist into her palm. “We have to go there. Get evidence.” She looked out at the darkness over the patio and the pool. “Now.”
The other three all talked at once:
“We can’t; we’ve been banned from there.”
“My mom said I should have known better than to trespass.”
“If I get in trouble again, Mom might send me back.”
The girls swung around to Aneta.
“What?” Esther asked as though Aneta had suggested she should cut off her arm to lose weight.
It was too late to take back those words. Mom and The Fam had said on the day of the court date that she was a Jasper now. Would always be. But what if Aneta getting into trouble made it too difficult for Mom to keep her?
“I do not want to get sent back and not be a Jasper.” Her mouth twisted, and her eyes felt like they were on fire. She closed her eyes. She heard the squeak of the leather sofa and felt the shifting weights of the girls around her. She opened her eyes.
“I think I know how you feel, kinda,” Vee said in a low voice, her gaze fixed on Aneta. “When my parents got divorced, I thought if I did anything wrong, they’d send me to the other house and if I messed up there, I was out of places.”
Vee, so confident, like she had everything planned out all the time, felt afraid like Aneta?
“I can tell you that you’ve already got your forever home,” Sunny said, her chapped hands clasping Aneta’s and squeezing. “The Fam is not going to let you go. They’re crazy about you.”
Esther bobbed her head in agreement.
Sunny leaped to her feet. “We have to leave now. There’s no time to be lost. Who even knows if Mr. Leonard suspects us or thinks we’re just nosy kids?”
Vee nodded and tucked her notebook and pen into her back pocket. “I agree.” She glanced toward the wide doorway to the hall. “How will we get out so no one hears us?”
“Why don’t we ask Mom if she can take us? She’s a lawyer,” Aneta said.
All three stared at Aneta.
“Aneta, you have something to learn about parents.” Sunny patted Aneta’s arm like an old grandma. “They aren’t really big on adventure. Especially, um, nighttime adventures. They’ll say we have no proof.”
“Yet,” Vee inserted.
“Yet,” Sunny repeated. “That’s what we’re going for. Then we can tell our parents. They’ll tell us what to do next.”
Sunny walked over and poked Esther on the shoulder. “You’re quiet.”
The short girl blew out a long wobbly breath that sounded as though it had been stuffed in her a long time. “I’m not going.”
“Why not?” Aneta asked.
“Because we shouldn’t prowl around Mr. Leonard’s garage in the dark. I think we should tell Aneta’s mom,” Esther said firmly.
“Okay.” Vee jumped into bossy mode. “You stay here. We don’t have time to argue about this.” She headed toward the patio door. Standing on the threshold, the slight breeze blowing her nearly dry ponytail, she turned back. “Ready, girls?”
Sunny looked at Esther and then at Vee. “Oh boy, I bet I’m going to regret this,” she muttered but walked out the patio doorway past Vee. “I guess we go over the fence? If C.P. can do it, so can we.”
Vee glanced at the miserable Esther, who was pulling so hard on one earring Aneta was afraid she’d pull her ear off. “Are you going to tell on us?”
Esther bit her lip. Vee made a disgusted sound and a beeline for the fence. “If anyone’s coming, now’s the time.” She moved a patio chair to the fence, hopped up on it, and jumped up until her hands caught the top. Knees squeaking on the vinyl fence, she was up and over. Sunny, slower, but not by much, was next.
Aneta was torn. The sooner they could solve the mystery of who tried to murder Wink, the sooner Mom would see that he needed a Jasper forever home. If she stayed here… She hugged Esther. “Please do not tell.” Then
she walked resolutely over to the chair and fence.
Chapter 18
Stupid in a Group
The plan was simple. Once over the fence, they’d run through the park and into Mr. Leonard’s yard. There they would snap pictures of the Puppy Pellets, the hat, and lift Vee—the lightest—up to the garage window. Her ATP camera would capture the evidence. Aneta trotted along with them, the evening air heavily sweet yet disapproving. It had not cooled to the normal night temps. She thought of Mom sleeping, thinking the girls were talking all night on the patio, not knowing that they were running in the dark. Across a darkened park. To a darkened house—without permission. She shivered in spite of the warm breeze.
“Oh no!” Vee stopped short and clapped her hand to her shorts pocket. “My phone!”
“What? Did you forget to charge it?” Sunny asked. She sounded a little breathless and bent over with her hands on her knees. The shortest of the three, she had struggled to keep pace.
“No,” Vee cried. “I forgot to bring it! It was poking me when we were watching TV, so I took it out of my pocket and put it on the coffee table.”
For a moment, Sunny and Aneta could only stare at Vee. Her bleak face stared right back. Aneta crossed her arms, rubbing her elbows. This plan had seemed perfect on the patio. Now what?
“Think, think, think. We can’t waste time.” Sunny blew out a breath and glanced past Vee. “Uh-oh.” She quickly looked at the ground. “Don’t look over there, but there’s a creepy white van slowing down on the side of the park.”
Aneta and Vee, of course, turned toward the van.
“I said, don’t look!”
“Creepy,” Vee said. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Run!” Sunny said. “We’ll think on the way!”
Aneta dug in her sneakers and dashed off toward their goal. Whoever the van driver was, she hoped he or she was not interested in three stupid girls up in the night without parents.
“Aneta!” Vee and Sunny’s screech stopped her. She looked back. She stood alone in the middle of the street in front of Mr. Leonard’s house. Vee and Sunny were nearly at the opposite edge, closest to running home. They were gesturing wildly. “You’re going the wrong way! This way!”
The van had disappeared.
When Aneta reached the girls, the two took off running again. She had to put on extra speed to catch up. Sunny was gasping out ideas.
“Vee—gasp-gasp—you’re the fastest.” She swallowed, stumbled on a curb, flailed, and righted herself. “Get over the fence, get the phone, get back over the fence.” Sunny finally stopped. “I gotta rest.” Aneta, while not winded, was relieved.
“Where are you two going to be?” Vee asked, not breathing even a little hard.
“Right behind you,” Sunny said. “You meet us, we’ll turn around. We’ve gone this far getting into trouble.”
Aneta nodded. “When we show Mr. Leonard is bad, we will not get in trouble.” She bit her lip. “Maybe.” It was both scary and kind of thrilling—this being out in the middle of the night without parents. She tipped back her head; the stars were out with a quarter moon. The Fam had taken her on the first family field trip to the Oakton Observatory after she became a Jasper. A memory she had tucked away then as the best day of her life. After tonight, she hoped she got to stay a Jasper.
With Plan B in place, they ran once more. Once she began gasping, Aneta realized she was forgetting to breathe, so conscious was she not to make any noise that might wake up the neighbors. C.P.’s bedroom window was open and his light on as they quietly jogged across his front yard to the fence. What was he doing up so late? Eating, probably.
As Sunny predicted, Vee made the fence just ahead of them. With one smooth motion that told Aneta Vee had climbed many fences before, the dark-haired girl was on the top, had turned around, and was preparing to drop down when a familiar grown-up voice that was not Esther’s came out of the darkness.
“Where are the other two, Vee?”
Chapter 19
Banished?
Parents crowded the living room.
Aneta watched Sunny, Esther, and Vee’s parents stand with them while Mom paced the front of the room. Mom had never acted this way. They would need to buy gobs of peanut butter. Aneta had shamed Mom—made her look like a bad mom.
A weight like the entire city of Oakton pressed on Aneta. She had already cried and now attempted to keep from breaking into fresh tears. It wasn’t working; the tears were rolling silently down her cheeks anyway. How long would it take Mom to decide that Aneta was trouble and send her back? From the looks on the faces of the other parents, they were as unhappy as Mom.
They had already gone through how dangerous it had been to go out alone. “Stupid is what it was,” Sunny’s dad had said. “So was sending Vee back alone. What were you thinking?”
“We were right behind her,” Sunny protested. “At least we were stupid in a group. Does that count?” From Sunny’s dad’s expression, Aneta knew it didn’t. The large-panel van slowing down as it passed them at the park rushed back into her mind.
She agreed with Mr. Quinlan.
“We were stupid,” she said, raising her eyes to meet his. “I am very sorry we did not think better.”
“Well.” He didn’t seem to know what to say.
“Don’t think you’re off the hook, Esther, because you didn’t go. You should have told Aneta’s mother the girls had left. They could have been… Well”—Esther’s mother glanced at her husband—“a lot of things could have happened.” Esther flushed a dull red.
Both of Vee’s parents were there; her mother with her new husband and Vee’s father with his wife. It was double trouble for Vee, thought Aneta. She only had Mom to look at her so disappointed. Her shame deepened.
The parents left the girls to confer in the kitchen.
“That’s not good that they are talking together,” Vee said. Her face was pinched, and there were circles under her eyes.
Aneta yawned. It was nearing midnight. “Why?” she asked.
Sunny answered before Vee. “Because it means they’ll come up with a punishment for all four of us as well as—”
Esther finished Sunny’s sentence, “—as well as getting punished individually by our own parents for getting them out of bed to come here and find us in trouble.”
Aneta’s gaze moved between the three girls. “How do you know this?”
Each girl shrugged.
Sunny replied, “Practice.”
“Will they ground us all?” Vee wondered, her brows nearly touching each other.
“What about the Waddle tomorrow?” Aneta cried.
Esther hissed, “They’re coming.”
The nine parents reentered the room. The girls faced them. Mom spoke like Aneta imagined she did in the courtroom. “We have agreed that the Waddle is a community project that needs you four girls.”
Aneta felt relief.
“So you will be there tomorrow—to help others.”
Four whooshes of pent-up breath. Aneta squeezed Sunny’s hand. Sunny squeezed back.
Mr. Nguyen stepped forward. Although his words were for all the girls, he never took his gaze off his daughter. She stared at her feet. “However, after that, you four are restricted from seeing each other. Between antagonizing Mr. Leonard by going into his yard and now this, we think”—he gestured toward the parents standing together—“your being together is not a good thing for a while.”
Vee’s head shot up.
Esther gasped. “Banished?”
Sunny sent a pleading look toward her mother. Aneta could only stare at Mom. They had just become the S.A.V.E. Squad! It was not fair! Two months ago, she had wanted nothing but out of the group. Now? She finally had friends. What would it be like without them?
Sunny’s parents nodded. The girls held hands. There didn’t seem to be anything more to say. Mom broke a silence so thick it stole the air from the room.
“Thank you for coming tonight. Again, I am—so
sorry.”
Everyone began to move toward the front door. Aneta heard Sunny say to her parents as they passed through the door way, “Mom and Dad, please forgive me for being an idiot. I’m sorry I disappointed you.” Aneta watched both parents embrace their daughter.
When the door closed on the last person, Mom turned to Aneta. Her eyes were red. As she walked toward Aneta and the living room, she rubbed them and sighed. Aneta had thought she would say what Sunny had said to her parents. Instead she threw her arms around Mom. “Please don’t send me back. I am sorry I am so much trouble! Please don’t send me back!”
“Sweetie!” Mom’s mouth dropped open. “What are you talking about?”
Once seated on the couch, Mom’s arms held her tight. Aneta sobbed until the cries became jerks and gasps. It made her stomach hurt. Mom kept whispering, “Shh, sweetie. Shh. It’s all right. You’re not going anywhere,” until the words began to sink into Aneta’s pain.
She raised her head. “You will not send me back?”
Mom shook her head. “Jaspers don’t send Jaspers away. I love you so much, Aneta.”
Aneta cried all over again. She was still a Jasper. Mom said always a Jasper.
“I am sorry I was stupid,” she said, wiping her eyes. “I want my forever home here with you and The Fam.”
Mom’s eyebrows shot up. “Forever home? Sweetie, I love that.” She snuggled Aneta. Aneta felt herself drifting into sleep. Did she dream that Mom tucked her in bed like a little girl, whispering, “Tomorrow’s the Waddle, my little Jasper, and it will be great”?
Chapter 20
Missing: One Hound Dawg
Aneta knew she wouldn’t sleep a wink, what with worrying about Wink, the Waddle, and the upcoming separation from the S.A.V.E. Squad. But then Mom woke her up the next morning and smiled at her.
“French toast, Jasper-style, ready to rumble,” Mom said. “Your grandmother brought over a big batch before you were up.”
Dog Daze Page 9
