The Puppy Plan Read online

Aha! So they’re not actually called Stingy and Gross . . .

  But it wasn’t really the moment to check with April what her place of work was really called as Honey was starting to yowl and was looking at Mr Beard in a very scared manner and trying to back away from him off the table. I think she had worked out about the injection.

  I glowered in a way that I thought told my sister to stop chatting and to let poor Honey get her major ordeal of being injected over and done with. April did not see the glowering, so I put my own hand on Honey and pinched my sister’s hand to get her to move it from MY puppy.

  ‘Ouch! Summer, what are you doing – sweetie?’ said April, rubbing her hand and pretending to still smile at me while actually gritting her teeth in a threatening way.

  ‘Sweetie?’ I repeated, feeling quite baffled as she never ever calls me that. But I couldn’t say any more, because Honey squirmed round and nipped me on the hand and then fell off the table in a howling heap.

  ‘There, all done,’ said Mr Beard.

  I did not know what he meant, but then I saw he was holding a syringe in his hand – he was holding it up in the air in his rubber-gloved hand just like they do on the telly in those doctor programmes and I thought, Thank goodness, he must have done the injection when I wasn’t looking.

  And then I fainted.

  8

  How to Behave at a Puppy Party

  April was strangely cross with me after the fainting episode at the vets’, which I thought was very Hurtful and Uncaring and even Unsisterly of her. I said so, but she just said that I was the Unsisterly one and that I should know better than to embarrass her by pinching her and fainting in public.

  Mum laughed far too long and loud when I told her about the visit to the vet and about how April had chatted annoyingly to Mr Beard and not let me say anything about MY puppy. I didn’t see one little bit what was so funny, especially since the whole visit had been a Major Ordeal for me and for poor little Honey.

  Apparently I’d missed out on the best bit while I’d been lying on the floor in my dramatical fainting fit, because Mr Beard had invited me, April and Honey to a ‘puppy party’ the next week! It had to be in the evening so that people could get there after work. This was something April was apparently very pleased about. I was pleased too, as I was of course at school in the day.

  ‘I love parties!’ I cried, immediately feeling a bit better, even though I did have an impressive lump on my head which I kept on rubbing as I wanted Mum and April to see that I still needed lots of Tea and Sympathy. (Although I actually prefer hot chocolate and marshmallows.)

  ‘Can Molly come? Can we dress up? Do we get to eat cake and play Pass the Parcel?’ I blushed when I said that last bit, as everyone knows Pass the Parcel is a very babyish-type game, but I love it, especially when there is a jelly baby between each layer of the paper.

  April did her rolly-eyed sophisticated sighing thing and said, ‘No, Summer, we won’t be playing silly party games. It’s a party for the puppies, not for us. And yes, bring your little friend. It might stop you from pinching people and fainting again.’

  I did not dignify my annoying older sister with a response to her hurtful and unsisterly comment, but rushed instead to call Molly and ask her if she wanted to come to the puppy party.

  ‘Does the sun rise in the morning?’ she asked.

  So we started planning what we were going to wear (which obviously takes a week’s worth of planning) and whether or not we should bring our cameras in case there were any celebrity dog owners there or maybe even teacherly Monica Sitstill, telly personality and dog trainer extraordinaire (that’s French for fab, according to Molly who is as good at French as she is at, well, everything really).

  In the end the puppy party was quite good fun, but unfortunately as it was at the vets’ and not at a glam Venue of any sort, there were no celebrities, just Mr Beard – although you would have thought he was a celebrity the way April spent the whole time fluttering her eyelashes and flicking her hair and crossing and uncrossing her legs. She was obviously pleased to see him again.

  Honey was not.

  She took one look at him when we arrived at the party and whined and hid her head in my jacket.

  Molly nudged me and pointed at my sister and said, ‘Do you think April’s all right? She looks as if she is desperate for the loo all the time. Do you think I should tell her that there’s one out in reception?’

  I just said, ‘No, let’s concentrate on Honey.’

  So we did.

  Once Mr Beard had moved away from us to talk to some other people, Honey calmed down a bit and ended up having a marvellously fabulous time at the party. Apparently the whole idea about a puppy party is to get the dogs to Socialize and Interact. I worked out that this means ‘get used to other dogs’. Honey is not a shy dog, I have found.

  She spotted the biggest dog there, which unfortunately was the huge slobbery dog with the dribble that I’d seen in the vets’ waiting room when we came for the injections, and she ran over and put her paws around his neck.

  The big slobbery owner with the scary droopy face just stared at Honey. I tried to engage him in some polite chatty conversation about how nice it was to see our puppies playing together. It’s the kind of thing I’ve heard Mum say to another mum when I make a new friend and go round to their house. But the scary slobbery man had obviously not mastered the art of polite chatty conversation himself, because he just stared at me like he had stared at Honey. Then his dog growled at Honey and tried to bite her.

  I wanted to get her back, but Mr Beard piped up at this point and said, ‘Don’t worry, Autumn, that’s just natural dog behaviour.’

  ‘I’m called Summer,’ I said sternly, ‘and I don’t like the way that dog growled at my puppy—’

  ‘Ahem, what my little sister means is that I’m sometimes a bit overprotective of my dog,’ said April, cutting in and me with her lying, which would be described as Bare-Faced, I think. In other words – OUTRAGEOUS!

  ‘Sorry – Summer – and er . . . ?’ Mr Beard looked questioningly at April, which seemed to make her face go a sort of dark red unattractively sweaty kind of colour, and she said, ‘A-April,’ and giggled. I was still very upset by the way she was pretending that Honey was her dog, so I couldn’t find the words to say anything at all at this point, but it didn’t matter as Mr Beard was still wittering on.

  ‘Don’t worry about the growling. It’s only a little warning so that Honey doesn’t get too big for her boots and play too roughly,’ he said.

  Molly and I exchanged a look when he said this. I knew she was thinking the same thing as me (we quite often do): how could Honey be too rough for such a horrible huge slobbery monster? I was about to say something, but Honey was actually quite happily rolling around with Slobberchops again, and anyway, Mr Beard wanted to tell us about a game called Pass the Puppy.

  Aha! I thought. No ‘silly party games’, eh, April? and I tried to smirk knowingly at my sister to show her that I’d been right all along, as indeed I often am.

  But April was looking rather stressed and was furiously wiping at her white jeans in a quite panicky manner. Honey had bounded up to her after finishing her game with Slobberchops and had nuzzled her cute little pink nose all over April’s jeans.

  Normally puppy-nuzzling is something lovely; it was just a shame that Honey had got herself totally covered in Slobberchops’s slobber and was now getting April’s white jeans covered in it too.

  We played Pass the Puppy. (Well, Molly and I did. April didn’t bother to join in as she was being what Mum calls a Prima Donna and fussing over her jeans and smoothing down her long blonde hair, while she and Mr Beard nattered on about something dull.) The game was basically just the owners passing their puppy on to the owner next to them, so that we all got a chance to make a fuss of different puppies. The puppies were supposed to get used to being handled by different types of people. The only thing was, the puppies were more interested in the other puppies than in t
heir boring owners, so we didn’t get much of chance to pat and cuddle them.

  So we all gave up quite quickly and just let them roll around on the floor and chew each other’s ears and sniff each other’s bottoms which is what puppies seem to like doing more than anything.

  Then at the end of the party, when the puppies were all quite worn out and exhausted, Mr Beard actually stopped talking to my sister for about five minutes and told us all about pet insurance. This was possibly the most BORING thing I have ever had to sit through in my whole long life; even more dull and deadly boring than the Victorians and their completely useless penny-farthing-type inventions.

  So I started whispering with Molly about the latest programme of Seeing Stars, which I’d seen the night before. There had been this really lame act on which was a man who thought he was so cool because he could ride on a bicycle with only one wheel (which is called a Monocle, I think) while balancing a plate of sausages on his head and singing ‘Is This the Way to Amarillo?’, and he was wearing a purple shiny suit, so honestly how on earth he could have possibly thought he was cool is beyond me. Also, he sang out of tune. Also, why on earth would you want to balance sausages? Surely he could have come up with something more glam than that? Of course, he didn’t get many points. And the judges were so rude! They said to him that they would gladly show him the way to Amarillo if only he’d take his Monocle and ride off there right away and take his sausages with him. It had made me laugh till I needed the loo quite desperately.

  Anyway, as I was telling Molly this hilarious thing, I was holding Honey on my lap. She’d gone to sleep, and she was being so quiet that I’d unfortunately sort of forgotten she was there, so when I did a marvellous and extremely realistic impression of balancing a plate of sausages on my head while wobbling on a Monocle bike, I accidentally knocked Honey and she fell off my lap at Mr Beard’s feet. She woke up at once . . .

  . . . and looked up to see Mr Beard bending over her to see if she was all right. Well, one look at him and Honey leaped into the air, yowling and howling and then scarpered back underneath my seat.

  This had the unfortunate effect of setting all the other puppies off barking and howling and they all made a dive for my seat as well. I think they thought it was a new party game where they had to chase Honey.

  In the confusion, I was knocked off my seat and I bashed my head on the shelf behind me.

  And I fainted again.

  9

  How to Be Ahead of the Game

  Mum laughed even longer and louder when I told her about how Honey had reacted to seeing Mr Beard again. Personally I thought she could have been more sensitive and caring about me Losing My Conscienceness, which is what the nurse at the vet’s said my fainting had been.

  ‘Looks like April’s got a tough job on her hands,’ Mum said. I thought this was a cryptical thing to say, and also frankly a stupid one – as it was me that got knocked out by my puppy being frightened of Mr Beard, so what did that have to do with April?

  That weekend Molly came round to my house as usual. Mum and April were clattering about the kitchen and arguing about something, so we made ourselves a snack and played with Honey in what Mum still calls the Playroom, but which I call the Den, as it sounds less babyish.

  While we were playing, I told Molly about this cryptical comment of Mum’s, and she said she thought she had worked it out because, while I was being helped by the other vets and nurses after my second faint, Molly was watching my sister and Mr Beard talking. She secretly spied on them while pretending to put all her attention on to Honey.

  Molly is very good at secretly spying on people while pretending to put all her attention on to other things. She does it at school all the time. That is how she always manages to Stay Ahead of the Game and know who is best friends with who, and which parties everyone is going to. This is why she will make a fabulous famous journalist when she grows up so that she can report on all the celebrities we will meet when we get on the telly with our Celebrity Club.

  ‘I have worked out all the answers to the mysteriousness of your sister’s recent behaviour patterns,’ Molly told me in a hushed and secretive way.

  ‘Eh?’ I said.

  ‘I know why your sister’s being weird,’ Molly explained, sighing in an annoying Mum-type manner.

  ‘Oh good,’ I said. ‘Does it have anything to do with Honey? Because I am feeling rather confused and upset about her pretending Honey is her puppy.’

  Molly smirked in a way that made me realize she absolutely did have all the answers and was dying to let me know how clever she was. ‘Well, you’re on the right lines,’ she said.

  ‘Molly, just tell me,’ I said in a grumpy tone. ‘I am not in a mood to play guessing games of any sort.’

  ‘It’s all to do with Mr Beard!’ she cried triumphantly. ‘Except that is not his real name.’

  ‘I know that!’ I shouted. Then I realized I didn’t actually know what his real name was. ‘What is his real name then?’ I asked more quietly.

  ‘It’s Nick Harris,’ she said smugly.

  ‘What a boring and dull grown-up name,’ I said. I was disappointed. Mr Beard was actually a much better and more DESCRIPTIVE name.

  ‘Well, I can’t do anything about that,’ said Molly. She was starting to seriously annoy me now. She might be my best friend, but she can still wind me up when she wants to. Or even sometimes when she doesn’t want to. ‘He’s called Nick Harris and he’s only just become a vet because he’s been a student until now, which means he’s not that much older than your sister,’ said Molly, still smirking.

  This was not exactly an exciting piece of news that could be called a REVELATION at all.

  I put on a mega-sulk, which involved me crossing my arms, rolling my eyes and saying, ‘So?’ in a huffy way.

  ‘So?’ Molly cried. ‘So, it’s a very important bit of information which makes everything else fit into the picture perfectly.’

  Molly was being as cryptical as Mum, and I was distinctively losing interest in this conversation. I turned to walk away, and Molly realized how much I was distinctively losing interest in this conversation, so she quickly said, ‘April’s in love with him.’

  ‘Argh!’ I screamed. I couldn’t help it. April was This meant my sister was going to

  My scream frightened Honey, who had been following me as I was about to leave the room. She jumped back and yelped.

  Molly put her hand on my arm to calm me down. ‘It’s OK. I don’t think he is in love with her,’ she said quickly.

  ‘Phew!’ I said.

  ‘Yet,’ she said.

  ‘What do you mean, ‘yet’?’ I asked.

  ‘The thing is, Mr Be– I mean, Nick Harris, thinks Honey is April’s dog doesn’t he?’ said Molly.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘and I’m very cross about—’

  ‘I know,’ said Molly, ‘but listen. Nick thinks that Honey is April’s new pride and joy, and it’s quite obvious that Honey does not like Nick Harris, because both times she’s seen him Honey has gone mad and barked and howled like a crazy thing.’

  I thought this was quite a harsh and unkind and unsupportive thing to say about my new puppy, and was going to say so, but Molly didn’t give me a chance.

  ‘I was listening to Nick Harris and April talking, and April was saying, “Wouldn’t it be lovely to go for a walk with Honey together? I would so much appreciate your professional opinion on training her,” and Nick Harris said, “That would be so lovely indeed, but I don’t think your dog likes me very much.” And your sister kept trying other ways of saying how nice it would be to meet and Nick Harris kept talking to her in an extremely friendly way, but saying that he didn’t think it would be a good idea to upset Honey while she was still so small. So he obviously does not want to go out with April, so I don’t think he’s in love with her yet.’

  ‘Well, that’s that then,’ I said, feeling not a small bit relieved that Mr Beard wouldn’t be going out with my sister all the time. And ma
ybe her. Urgh!

  Molly was looking worried. ‘I’m afraid that’s not,’ she said.

  ‘That’s not what?’ I said, confused and bewildered.

  ‘That’s not that, I’m afraid,’ she said. ‘You see, if you go into the kitchen, you will find your sister sitting reading Love Me, Love My Dog and discussing with your mum about how to DESENSITIZE Honey to Men With Beards.’

  ‘What?’ I cried. ‘I thought they were arguing about April running riot with Mum’s credit card again.’

  ‘They were, but they’ve moved on from that,’ Molly said, sounding smug again. ‘When I went to the loo just now I hovered invisibly by the kitchen door and listened to what they were saying. This is what journalists have to do at parties and things to get juicy Celebrity Gossip. And have I got some juicy gossip for you, Summer Holly Love!’

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ I said feeling irritated that I had not thought of this invisible hovering-in-doorways idea. ‘So?’

  ‘So, I heard all about how April had seen Nick Harris in town when you first got Honey and how she liked him and found out he worked in the new vets’ surgery. That’s why she registered Honey there in the first place.’ said Molly, Warming to Her Theme. ‘And it would now appear that April is very determined to get Nick Harris to go out with her – and you know that when April is very determined, she gets what she wants.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said quietly. ‘But how can she make Nick Harris go out with her if he doesn’t want to?’ I asked. Surely not even my sister has those sorts of powers? I thought.

  Molly sighed as if I had overlooked a most obvious and basic thing. ‘I heard April say to your mum that the only reason that Honey does not like Nick Harris is because he has a beard, because April has read in our book that puppies who have never seen a man with a beard before often are very scared indeed when they see such a man for the first time. And she has found in the book what she thinks is a Sensible Solution.’