“Better than a ghost,” I say.
“If you don’t rescue her, she might become one,” says Nicholas.
“I’m glad I heard you,” I say. “The school is practically deserted.”
“Well, I didn’t know what else to do,” says Nicholas. “It’s not like I could just leave to get help, because I couldn’t take my eyes off Given even for a second. You wouldn’t disappear on us, wouldja, Given?” Nicholas asks softly.
“Actually, she would so totally do that. She loves an adventure, just like me.” I fold my arms and step back, thinking. “Climbing a filing cabinet is a little bit like climbing a tree, right?”
“Don’t ask me,” says Nicholas. “I’ve never climbed a tree in my life.”
When I stand on my tiptoes, I see a bit of Given’s curled tail in the crawl space. “I bet, like if she was up in a tree, Given wants to come down but doesn’t know how.” I just have to decide this tall filing cabinet is a tree. “You’re a tree,” I tell it, to get it ready. Nicholas watches as I stretch myself from the stepladder to the plastic bin to the cabinet. I can do this, right? Firefighters climb for cats all the time!
But now that I’m kneeling on the very top of the cabinet, I feel woozy. I’m glad there is no poster with safety rules here. I am probably breaking a lot of them.
I edge my hand up carefully. Wriggle my fingers. “Given. It’s just me.”
From inside, I hear a tiny meow.
Another inch of my hand, and I’m rewarded with a brush of whiskers, an inquisitive pink nose, and then—Given leaps out of the crawl space and onto my lap, carrying such a cloud of lint and dust that a sneeze rockets out of me.
She feels like a warm, heavy powder puff in my arms. When she stares up at me and meows, I am pretty sure it’s a thank-you.
“Good tree climbing,” says Nicholas.
By the next second, Given has jumped down into Nicholas’s arms.
“It’s going to take me a few more minutes to get down from here,” I say. “Last I checked, I don’t have any cat-pouncing chromosomes.”
Slow and steady, and holding in my sneezes, I get there. Once I’m safe on the ground, cleaning the dust off my glasses, Nicholas says, “Thanks, Becket, for rescuing my cat.”
“Thanks to you, Given, for finding my dog,” I say, popping my glasses back on to look at our pets. They both make me feel so good inside, like I’m made out of melted cotton candy.
“Good teamwork,” says Nicholas. “Given followed Dibs, and I followed Given, and you followed my music. And now we all can go home together.”
We smile at each other and say, at the same time: “Many Branches, one tree!”
Chapter 20
Two Two, Ten Ten
Later, after we’re all home from the Pumpkin Patch, Mom, Dad, and I take Dibs out to the back lawn to practice Sit and Stay. Dibs mostly does fine, but I have a feeling that “training Dibs” is a chore that will remain on the board for a while.
“We really need to get Stay down cold. A missing pet is more adventure than this family needs,” says Mom, who still doesn’t look like she’s totally recovered from our story of the carrier-escape dog and the cat in the crawl space.
After dinner, Dad heats up mugs of apple cider and the whole family goes out to the back porch to look at the sky full of stars. Nicholas brings Clive down for an outdoor concert. Starry nights and cello music go together like cider and cinnamon sticks.
“You’re getting good, Nicholas,” says Dad.
“Puts a tear in my eye,” says Gran.
“It’s the Branch family’s biggest Beautiful Alert of the fall,” I say.
Dibs nudges his pink ball over to me. For the millionth time, I toss it, and for the first time ever, he catches it and balances it on the tip of his nose.
“He did it!” I am truly amazed. “And, Caroline, you didn’t even have your phone! I can run in and get it for you?” If I had a photo of Dibs doing something bedazzling, then maybe it could go up in the online Pumpkin Patch photos—or we could use it as a holiday card! “I bet I can get him to do it again.”
“No, no. I don’t want to take any more pictures today.” Caroline sips her cider.
“Besides, we saw,” says Gran.
“Maybe that’s all the audience that Dibs needs,” says Nicholas. “Same as me.”
“Dibs does remind me of you,” I say. “He saves his bedazzling for the family. He likes a peaceful, low-key atmosphere.”
“But Given is more like you,” says Nicholas. “She shines when there’s a lot going on. ‘The more, the merrier’—that’s Given’s motto.”
“We each picked a pet to match each other, instead of ourselves,” I say.
“Maybe because you knew that’s the pet that fits you best,” says Mom.
Then Caroline and Gran go inside and come back out holding a plate of lemon loaf, all lit up in birthday candles. It’s a do-over! Everyone sings the happy birthday song, and when Nicholas and I blow out the candles together, it feels like the real start to the Best Branch Year Yet.
Later, upstairs, Dibs and I make our goodnight rounds. Caroline is on the phone, but she smiles and makes a knocking motion to say that she will come to my room later.
Nicholas is in bed, in his lumberjack pajamas, playing with his fidget spinner. Has he figured out what’s different about his room yet? Then I notice something else new—a framed photograph centered on his bureau, between our old baby album photo and his globe.
“It’s Gran’s photo of Maxwell and Maxine,” I say. “And, look, now that it’s framed, it’s bigger than a grapefruit.”
“Gran said I could have it,” says Nicholas. “It makes the room homier, right? Especially since I’m sleeping here all by myself.”
“You’re not sleeping all by yourself,” I say. “Check under your bed.”
Nicholas looks scared. “It’s not another mouse, is it?”
“No! It’s way better than a mouse.”
He gets out of bed to look. I look, too, even though I know what I will see—Given’s eyes peeking out of her plaid sleeping saucer.
“You moved Given’s bed to under my bed!” says Nicholas. His smile has taken over his face. “What made you think of doing that?”
“Well, Given brought the mouse here, right? And she’s always sitting on your windowsill, or she’s hiding under your bed. She knows you’re her person, Nicholas. She’s pretty much your roommate already.”
“No matter how much attention Given is given all day, while I’m sleeping, she’s with me,” says Nicholas quietly. “When she’s not on the prowl, her sleep saucer is always her home base.”
“Nicholas, do you realize that next year, we turn eleven on the tenth day of the tenth month?”
“Yes,” he says. “So?”
“Eleven plus eleven is twenty-two,” I say. “Two two.”
“So?”
“Two two, ten ten,” I say triumphantly. “How cool is that? That only happens once in a lifetime! It’s the most incredible, special birth date I could ever imagine! And I was thinking if we start planning it now, we can make our Two Two, Ten Ten party exactly the way we want. Something with the exactly right amount of same and opposite, and the just-right balance of you and me.”
“Count me in,” he says. When I fling out my arms to hug him, I knock his fidget spinner out of his hand. Nicholas catches it just in time, and hugs me back.
Acknowledgments
Writing about the world of Becket Branch is a dream come true. After all, it’s a chance to follow my favorite fictional family through another season, and this time with new characters and pets for extra bounce and pounce. Thank you, Elise Howard, Sarah Alpert, and Elizabeth Johnson, for all your Beautiful Alert thoughts and care of Becket’s story. Thank you, LeUyen Pham, for bringing Becket to life. Thank you, Emily van Beek, Sarah Mlynowski, and Courtney Sheinmel, for those early reads. And a big hug to my real-life family—Erich, Jason, Hace,
Toby, and Trudy—for inspiring me to write about love, laughter, and lasagna. What fun!
Also by Adele Griffin
The Oodlethunks:
Oona Finds an Egg
Steg-O-Normous
Welcome to Camp Woggle
Witch Twins:
Witch Twins
Witch Twins at Camp Bliss
Witch Twins and Melody Malady
Witch Twins and the Ghost of Glenn Bly
Vampire Island:
Vampire Island
The Knaveheart’s Curse
V Is For . . . Vampire
Published by
Algonquin Young Readers
an imprint of Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
Post Office Box 2225
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225
a division of
Workman Publishing
225 Varick Street
New York, New York 10014
Text © 2021 by Adele Griffin.
Illustrations © 2021 by LeUyen Pham.
All rights reserved.
Published simultaneously in Canada by Thomas Allen & Son Limited.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
eISBN: 9781643752297
All Pets Allowed Page 8
