Ghost Dog Secrets (15 page)

“Class,” she said, “we have an opportunity to help another mistreated animal.”

Everyone quit talking and paid attention.

“Rusty and Andrew rescued a dog named Ra.” Everyone stared at me and Andrew but they were good stares, full of admiration. Andrew grinned at me and I knew he wasn't angry any longer. If we had left school to go to the hearing, we would have missed this.

“Ra got loose yesterday,” Mrs. Webster said, “and he is still missing. They need help to find him.”

The class immediately buzzed with plans to look for Ra. While they talked, a student helper from the school office came to my classroom with a stack of flyers that said LOST DOG. REWARD. They had Ra's picture and a phone number on them. Mrs. Webster had asked someone at the Humane Society to e-mail the flyer attachment so the school could print them.

Several kids said they'd distribute Lost Dog flyers; some said they'd ride their bikes and look for him; others said they'd e-mail all their relatives.

While Mrs. Webster distributed the flyers, Andrew asked me, “Did you look for Ra at the fort? Maybe he went back there.”

I slapped my palm to my forehead. I couldn't believe I had not thought to look around the fort. That had been his safe home, and he was used to being walked there. It made sense that he'd return. What if he'd been sitting at the door of the fort all night?

“I'm the most ignorant person ever born,” I told Andrew. “I am a bona fide brainless blob. It never occurred to me that Ra might be there.”

“We can look there right after school,” Andrew said.

I thought about calling Mrs. Gardiner and asking her to go look at the fort but she uses a cane, and the greenbelt terrain is uneven. What if she fell? I knew Mom wouldn't like it if I called Mrs. Gardiner. Also, the fewer neighbors who knew about the fort, the better. If Ra had gone there, I hoped he would stay and wait for me to come to him.

My row was the last to receive flyers. When Gerald got his, he said, “That's Buddy! That's my uncle's dog! Somebody stole him.” Gerald turned in his seat and looked suspiciously at me. “Where'd you get this dog?”

“What's your uncle's name?” I asked.

“Uncle Kip.”

“His last name.”

“Myers. Kip Myers.” Gerald looked back at Mrs. Webster. “His dog was swiped right out of his front yard. The cops didn't do nothing about it, but Uncle Kip says he knows who took Buddy and he's suing them to get Buddy back.”

Mrs. Webster looked worried. “Many German shepherds look alike,” she said. “Are you positive this is a picture of your uncle's dog?”

“That's him, all right,” Gerald said. “That picture was taken in Uncle Kip's front yard. Now we know for sure who the thieves were! ” He gave me a triumphant look, and I knew he was remembering when I caught him stealing dog food out of the donation bin and had called him a thief.

“I agree with Gerald,” I said.

“You do?” Gerald said.

“It is the same dog,” I said. “We rescued him from the yard of a man who beat him and left him chained up with no food or water. The man's last name is Myers.”

I heard murmurs of disbelief from some of my classmates.

“So you admit it! ” Gerald said. “You stole my uncle's dog!”

“We rescued him.”

Mrs. Webster said, “Quiet, everyone! This situation is more complicated than I realized and won't be an appropriate class project. Please pass the flyers forward.”

“I want to keep mine,” Hayley said. “I'm going to help find Ra.”

“Me too,” said Jordan.

“His name isn't Ra,” said Gerald. “It's Buddy.”

It was clear that the sympathies of the class were with Andrew and me, not with Gerald, but Mrs. Webster was adamant. “What you do on your own time outside of class is up to you,” she said, “but this will not be a school activity. Please get out your math workbooks.”

I got out my workbook and pretended to look at the problems while my mind mulled over the fact that Mean Man Myers was Gerald's uncle. No wonder Gerald was a jerk if that's the kind of family he had. I wondered what his parents were like. Maybe they were as horrible as his uncle, which would explain a lot about Gerald's behavior.

I wondered why he had tried to steal dog food. Maybe he had a dog and his parents didn't feed it enough. Maybe he had planned to give the food to Ra.

I tapped Gerald on the shoulder. He glared at me. “Do you have a dog?” I whispered.

“Why do you care?”

“Do you have a dog or not?”

“None of your business.” He turned back to his math book.

My temporary sympathy for Gerald evaporated. Probably he stole the dog food because he couldn't resist a chance to steal something.

Gerald, I thought, is a rotten repulsive rat.

After school, I rushed to the fort as soon as I got off the bus. I walked through the trees calling Ra, but he wasn't there. He wasn't waiting by my house, either. I circled the block once and then went inside to leave my backpack.

Andrew arrived on his bike.

“I need to check the phone messages before we start searching,” I said. “Mom put an ID tag on Ra with our phone number on it, so if anyone finds him they'll call us.”

There were three messages. We drank lemonade while we listened.

The first message was from Mrs. Gardiner telling us she had not see Ra.

The second was from Heidi Kellogg. “Bad news,” she said. “The judge let Mr. Myers off with only a warning.”

“We should have gone to court,” Andrew said. “Our sign might have helped.”

The third message was from Mean Man Myers. “When I get my watchdog back,” he said, “I'm coming for revenge.”

Andrew and I looked at each other. I left all the messages for Mom to hear.

“We have to find Ra before he does,” I said.

I scribbled a note to Mom, in case she got home before we returned:
Andrew and I are riding our bikes to look for Ra.

We went outside, hopped on our bikes, and began to search.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

A
ndrew and I rode around for three hours. We took a staple gun with us and stapled flyers to telephone and electric poles. We saw a mail delivery person and asked him if he'd seen Ra. He hadn't, but he took one of the flyers and said he'd be watchful. He told us he'd once found a stolen bicycle because the kid who owned it had given him a picture of the bike and asked him to look for it on his rounds.

As we worked, I thought how good it was to have a friend to help me, someone I could count on in good times or bad to always take my side. Andrew was there for the fun days of bowling and building a fort and playing with Ra, but he also showed up to distribute flyers and ride for miles, calling and searching. If he had felt unhappy over not seeing the collie's ghost, and for being less involved with Ra than he'd been while Ra lived at the fort, he had put those feelings aside, and I was grateful.

Andrew had to be home by six, so I went home then, too. Mom and I made peanut butter sandwiches for dinner, then ate them in the car while we looked for Ra. I kept my window rolled down despite the cold. I called until my voice was hoarse, shining my flashlight into shrubbery and alleys.

How could he vanish without a trace? Several times we saw one of our Lost Dog flyers and didn't know who had put it up. It helped to know that other people were also searching for Ra.

“He could be anywhere,” Mom said as she wearily parked the car back in our garage. “Some kind person might have thought he was a stray and taken him in and is feeding him.”

“How could anyone think he's a stray? He has on a collar and a tag. He was dragging the leash behind him.”

“Maybe the collar came off. Maybe the leash got caught on a fence or bush and Ra jerked out of the collar. Who knows? All I know is, we can't look any longer tonight.”

We trudged inside and checked for messages. There weren't any.

Before we went to bed, Mom and I took flashlights and looked around the fort. Then we walked to the end of our block and back, calling. Finally we gave up and went upstairs for the night.

 

The collie's ghost woke me. I knew she was there even before I saw her because I felt the icy air next to my bed. She paced back and forth between my bed and the door. For once, I was glad to see her. I had decided this was a good dog ghost who wanted to help Ra. Maybe she knew where he was. Maybe she had found him and would lead me to him. I wished she could tell me her secrets.

I dressed quickly, slid my feet into a pair of flip-flops, and followed her downstairs. I got one of the flashlights that Mom and I had used earlier. I thought about Mean Man Myers and Mom's warning that I shouldn't go walking around alone until this matter was settled. I knew Mom would want me to wake her up, but what would I tell her? That I was following the ghost of a dog?

That day when the ghost dog had tried to block us from getting in the car, Mom had not seen her. She wouldn't be able to see her now, either, so how could I possibly explain why I intended to follow this apparition into the night?

I knew tonight I wouldn't turn back; I would go where the collie's ghost led me. Yet, I also knew that I needed to be careful. I opened Mom's purse, removed her cell phone, and put it in my pocket. I saw a business card for Heidi Kellogg and took that, too. I paused a moment, trying to think what else I might need. My camera? I grabbed it and stuck it in my other pocket.

I wrote a note:
I've gone with the collie. Andrew can explain.
If something awful happened to me and I never came home, at least she'd know why I left.

No! I told myself. Don't be negative. You'll come home. You'll probably return before Mom wakes up and realizes you're gone, and, with any luck, you'll have Ra with you.

I let myself out the front door and trotted down the sidewalk after the collie's ghost. I hoped she had discovered Ra, shut by accident in the garage of someone who was gone for a few days, or maybe she'd found him wandering behind a strip mall, foraging in the Dumpsters for food. Perhaps he was hanging around the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant, begging for handouts. He might be hopelessly lost, running in circles the way people do when they're lost in the woods.

Those possibilities vanished as I realized where the collie's ghost was leading me—straight back to Mean Man Myers's house. Had he found Ra, after all, and somehow managed to force him into the car?

We were still half a block away when I saw Ra lying in the dirt, chained to the tree, exactly where he had been the first time I ever saw him.

I ran to him. He saw me coming and struggled to get up. His tail wagged but I could tell he'd been injured. He staggered briefly, then lay down again. I dropped to my knees and threw my arms around him.

“Oh, Ra! ” I whispered. “I'm so glad to see you! I'm taking you home, right now.”

I didn't have a leash with me, but I knew I didn't need one. Ra would go with me whether he was leashed or not. Ra's blue collar with the suns on it had been replaced by a choke collar, and when I reached for the chain to unhook it, I discovered that there was a small padlock attached. Ra's collar was locked around his neck and locked to the chain!

As I debated whether to call Heidi Kellogg, knowing I'd probably get voice mail at this hour, or go home and wake up Mom, knowing she'd be angry that I had come here by myself, the ghost dog began nudging me with her nose.

“I found him,” I told her. “Thank you. You led me right to him.”

The collie nudged again and then trotted toward Mean Man's driveway. She paused and looked back at me, her way of telling me she wanted me to follow her. I shook my head. I'd already found Ra; I had no desire to go closer to the house.

The ghost dog trotted back to me and pushed her head insistently against my thigh. Then she turned and went back to the driveway. Meanwhile, Ra moaned quietly, clearly uncomfortable. I wondered if he had been hit by a car or if Mr. Myers had hurt him again.

I could not imagine why the collie wanted me to walk up that driveway. I had confronted Mr. Myers the day he tried to take Ra, and it hadn't done any good. I sure didn't want to talk to him again.

The only reason I could think of for the ghost to want me to approach that house was if Mr. Myers had another dog in there. Perhaps Ra wasn't the only dog that the ghost wanted me to rescue.

I knew I couldn't do that, not by myself. If another animal needed help, I would go through the proper channels this time rather than plunging in on my own. But I couldn't ask Heidi Kellogg to respond unless I knew for certain that an animal was in danger.

I ran my hand gently down Ra's back. He didn't look able to walk anywhere tonight, even if I could get the padlock off his collar. I'd have to get help and come back for him.

I looked at the ghost dog, who watched me from the edge of the driveway. Her white fur glowed in the moonlight. Somewhere in the distance, a siren screamed, rising and falling urgently, then fading away. I took a deep breath and followed the collie toward Mean Man's house.

The shrubs around the house were denser than I had realized. From the street, they looked like a thick hedge but as the driveway went into that area, I saw that there was more than one row of shrubs, planted close together with their branches intertwined to form a solid barrier. They towered above me, at least ten feet high. One branch snagged my sleeve as I passed, its twiggy fingers hanging on until I pried them loose.

As soon as the driveway passed the hedge, it curved to the right and I saw the house ahead. A white car blocked the driveway near the house; the old blue car was parked in front of it. I walked around them.