Hotel For Dogs (5 page)

Having Tim Kelly as part of the hotel staff was nice for Bruce, but it took Andi only a short time to discover that she did not like it at all.

“I wish he had never stuck his nose in,” she grumbled.

“You’re nuts,” Bruce told her. “Tim’s cool. Look how much he’s helping us! We never could have managed to keep Red in dog food if Tim hadn’t found him and me after-school jobs.”

“Friday doesn’t like him,” Andi said. “She knows he isn’t used to dogs. It upsets her to have him tramping in to look at her puppies.”

This was completely untrue, and both of them knew it. Friday was a proud mother and delighted to show off her puppies to anyone, including Red Rover. The thing Andi really resented was the fact that she no longer was able to run things
exactly as she wanted. Until now, she and Bruce had been equal partners, with Andi actually holding the position of manager. Now suddenly everything seemed to have gone out of her control.

“Tim and I are earning the money to run this place,” Bruce said. “It’s up to us to decide what we’re going to do with it.”

The two boys were working every afternoon and on Saturdays, raking yards around the neighborhood. Out of their earnings they had purchased a whole case of dog food and a brush and comb for Red and some salve for the injured area around his neck. They were setting the rest of the money aside in a special fund to be used to purchase Red Rover.

“You might spend some of it on Friday,” Andi said irritably. “There are so many things she needs — her own brush, for instance, and a collar and rubber bones and things for the puppies.”

“Friday ought to feel lucky just to be getting some of Red’s food,” Bruce said. “Remember, you’ve still got to pay Aunt Alice for the material you took. You haven’t put aside any money for that, not even your allowance.”

“I couldn’t,” Andi said, bristling. “I borrowed
against it last month to buy postage stamps, and then there was a movie — no, two movies — that I
had
to see. And Mom caught me when I was returning Aunt Alice’s shampoo, and the tube was almost empty, so she made me replace it —”

“That’s okay,” Tim said soothingly. “Girls don’t know anything about earning money. My sisters never earned a dime in their lives.”

The superior tone of his voice infuriated Andi even more than Bruce’s statements, and the worst of it was that she couldn’t think of a way to respond. It was true that she had never earned money, and with her mother irritated at her and Aunt Alice no longer so certain that she was a “dear, helpful little girl,” it didn’t look as though she was going to be offered many opportunities to do so.

“I’m reaching the end of my patience,” Mrs. Walker had told her in the firmest voice Andi had ever heard her mother use. “Back in Albuquerque we lived in a very casual way, but here we are living in somebody else’s home. It’s hard when there are so many people in a small house, and you have to do your share.”

“Aunt Alice is a picky old maid,” Andi said irritably. “All she thinks about is dust, dust, dust.
She’s boring and gushy, and I wish we were living in a tent.”

“She is not an old maid,” Mrs. Walker said. “She was married many happy years to your father’s uncle Peter. If she seems ‘gushy’ to you, it’s because she isn’t used to children. She never had any of her own, and she doesn’t know how to talk to them.”

“What’s so hard about talking to children?” Andi demanded. “Children are human beings.”

“So are grown-ups,” her mother said quietly. “If you were to open that stubborn mind of yours a little, you might let yourself discover it. Very few people are boring when you really get to know them.”

Andi started to fire back an answer and then, seeing the stressed-out expression on her mother’s face, decided against it. Mrs. Walker was no longer nearing the end of her patience — she had already reached it.

Aside from the fact that she was at odds with almost everyone in her family, Andi had another reason for being cross and irritable. Her poem had come back from
Ladies’ Home Journal.
She had been very hopeful about that poem. It had been called “Death Owns a Ship” and was the most dramatic
thing she had ever written, and the magazine had kept it for three whole weeks.

Toward the end of that time she had become quite certain that they had decided to buy it and were trying to make up their minds about how much to pay her. Every day she had rushed home from school to see if her check had arrived. At night, when she lay in bed at the edge of sleep, she had visualized herself strolling along the sidewalk past the yards where Bruce and Tim were slaving away with their rakes, with Friday and the puppies marching proudly ahead of her, each with a diamond-studded leash attached to an emerald-studded collar.

It had been a terrible disappointment to walk into the house one day and find an envelope waiting for her on the hall table with her poem and a form rejection slip inside. At the bottom of the form there was a handwritten note:
We’re sorry we can’t use this in an upcoming issue, but your writing shows promise. Do try us again when you are older.

Older!
Andi thought. She would be eleven the first of December. That was less than two months away.

“What’s the matter, Andi?” her father had asked her at dinner that night. “You’re so quiet.
You must be off in space somewhere, composing a new poem.”

Andi drew a long breath and made her announcement.

“No,” she said. “I’m not. I’ve decided not to be a famous writer. In fact, I’m never going to write a poem again.”

There was a moment of total silence. Everyone at the table turned to stare at her. Even Aunt Alice stopped talking.

“Why, Andi,” Mrs. Walker said finally, “you’ve always loved writing! How can you simply decide to stop?”

“I’ve changed my mind,” Andi said. She did not want to talk about it any further because she was afraid she might cry. She had been so sure that she would become famous within the time limit that she had set for herself. “I’m going to be something more interesting like a — a — helicopter pilot or maybe a ballet dancer.”

“You’re not graceful enough to be a dancer,” Bruce said. “You can’t be a pilot either because you can’t stand heights. You wouldn’t even look at the pictures I took of the Grand Canyon because you said they made you dizzy.”

“Then I’ll be a teacher like Mom,” snapped Andi, blinking back tears. “Or like Mom
used to be,
before she had to quit work.”

The thought of prickly Andi patiently teaching school was so inconceivable that no one could think of a single comment, and the rest of the meal took place at a very quiet table.

The next day at school the subject came up all over again. This time it came from Miss Crosno, Andi’s teacher.

“Who was it,” she asked, “who turned in a poem along with the English compositions this week? There isn’t a name on it, and I don’t recognize the handwriting.” When no one in the class raised a hand, she continued, “It’s called ‘Bebe.’ It’s about a child who loses her dog.”

“Oh!” Andi was so startled that she spoke before she could stop herself. “That’s mine, but I didn’t mean to turn it in. I guess I just got an extra paper mixed in with the composition sheets in the notebook.”

“I’m glad I got to see it,” Miss Crosno said. “It’s a very nice poem with a great deal of feeling. Would you like to come up front, Andi, and read it to the class?”

“No, thank you,” Andi said.

Then, because this sounded rude even to her own ears and, after all, Miss Crosno would be the one who would be making out report cards, she added, “I never read my poems to anybody but my family. If they’re not good enough to be published, they’re not good enough for people to have to listen to.”

“Do you submit your poems to magazines?” Miss Crosno asked. “Which ones do you send them to?”

“The ones on Mom’s coffee table,” Andi said. “But I don’t any longer. I’ve done it for two years now and used up about a million envelopes and stamps, and it hasn’t gotten me anywhere, and I think that’s enough.”

That day at lunchtime, when Andi was unloading her tray at the corner table in the cafeteria where she usually sat and read, she was surprised to find another tray suddenly placed beside her own.

“Is it okay if I sit here?” Debbie Austin asked her.

Debbie had not tried to speak to her since asking her to play double jump rope in the school yard, and Andi could not imagine why she was doing so now.

“Sit wherever you want,” she said.

Debbie was unloading her tray and did not seem to notice the ungraciousness.

“I had to talk to you,” she said, “after this morning and what Miss Crosno said about your poem. Before, I thought you were just unfriendly, but I didn’t know you were a poet. That makes it different. I mean, lots of poets don’t play jump rope and things.”

“I do play jump rope,” Andi said. “I didn’t know that’s what you meant by ‘Double Trouble.’“

“Why didn’t you say so?” Debbie sat down across from her and regarded her solemnly. “The thing I wanted to tell you is — now don’t repeat this to anybody, I don’t want the other kids to think I’m a nerd — but I write poetry, too.”

“You do!” Andi said. It never had occurred to her that other girls ever wrote poetry.

“I have a whole notebook of poems at home,” Debbie said. “I keep it hidden under my bed so my brother won’t see it. He says only dweebs write poetry.”

“That’s not so,” Andi said. “It takes very bright people to be poets. Think of Shakespeare and people like that. Besides, you’re not a dweeb. You’re very popular.”

“Well, yes,” Debbie admitted. “I guess you could say that. Still, I don’t have anybody I can talk to — I mean
really
talk to — about things that matter. Most of my friends feel just like my brother does. I don’t want people to think I’m weird.”

“I personally don’t mind it,” Andi said. Then she paused and added more honestly, “Well, yes, I do mind it some. It would be nice to be popular. Maybe I will be, now that I’ve stopped writing.”

“What do you write about?” Debbie asked. “I mean, what did you write about back when you were a poet?”

“Sad things mostly,” Andi said. “My last poem, the one I sent to the
Journal,
was about shipwrecks.” She drew a deep breath and quoted:

“Wow!” Debbie’s eyes widened in admiration, and she gave a shudder. “That’s the goriest thing
I’ve ever heard. I don’t see how any magazine could help but buy it!”

“Well, they didn’t,” Andi said. “I’m practically eleven now, and I can’t be spending all my time on something that isn’t bringing any success. Especially now when I’ve got to start finding ways to earn money, because Friday isn’t getting half the nice things Red Rover is getting and —”

She stopped herself in horror and clamped her mouth closed tight.

“Who is Friday?” Debbie asked, exactly as Tim had the first day he came to the hotel.

Perhaps it was the thought of Tim’s question that did it, Tim’s question and the memory of Bruce’s answer,
“Of course he won’t tell.”
What right had Bruce had to decide whether or not Tim could be trusted when she herself had not decided? Why should Bruce be able to pick out a friend and make him a member of the hotel staff when she, Andi, didn’t?

Two boys and one girl — it wasn’t a fair balance. How could the girl ever hope to have anything her way as long as the boys outnumbered her? But if there were
two
girls —

Thoughtfully, Andi regarded the girl across the table from her. Debbie was certainly not a blabbermouth. If she were, she never would have kept the fact that she was a poet from all of her friends.

“Can you keep a secret?” Andi asked.

“Of course.” Debbie’s voice dropped to a whisper, and she leaned forward eagerly. “Is it about a poem?”

“No,” Andi said. “It’s Friday. She’s a dog, and Red Rover’s a dog, and there are three others who are just puppies. My brother and I are running a hotel for them.”

“A hotel!” Debbie exclaimed. “You mean you take homeless dogs off the streets and give them a place to stay?”

“Something like that,” Andi said.

Debbie’s face was aglow with excitement. “That’s awesome! Do you suppose — oh, Andi, does the hotel have an extra room for another guest?”

“It has all sorts of rooms,” Andi said. “There’s a whole second floor. But what other guest are you thinking about?”

“MacTavish,” said Debbie.

“Who?” Now it was Andi’s turn to look blank.

“That’s the black-and-white dog who always hangs around the school grounds. He used to belong to a boy who went to school here, but last summer the boy’s family moved and they didn’t take MacTavish with them.”

Andi was horrified. “You mean they left him here to starve?”

“Oh, he doesn’t starve,” Debbie said. “All the kids feed him, and he sits outside the cafeteria at lunchtime and the ladies who do the cooking put out scraps for him. The thing is, it’s starting to get cold now. What will he do when winter comes and he doesn’t have a warm place to go?”

“Isn’t there anybody who wants him?” Andi asked. She thought of the careful plans her own family had made to leave Bebe with the Arquettes. How could people possibly get into a car and drive off without making any kind of arrangements to have their pets cared for?

“Couldn’t you take him?” she asked.

“If only,” Debbie said wistfully. “But my mother has a cat. Fluffy is a very special, blue-ribbon Persian, and she hates dogs. If we got one, Mom is afraid Fluffy might run away.”

“Isn’t there anyone else who might want him?”

Andi asked the question, but her mind was flying ahead of her. It was moving on wings down the hallway that led from Friday’s pink bedroom, past the family room where Red Rover stayed, and up the stairs to the second-floor hall where a whole row of doors opened into unused bedrooms.

I wonder,
she thought,
if a black-and-white dog would like blue wallpaper better than green?