Hotel for Dogs by Lois Duncan ch 2-1
CHAPTER TWO For Andi, the hardest part about starting her new school was the fact that Bruce was not starting it with her. For as long as she could remember, Andi had depended on her brother to make friends for both of them.
Now Bruce was a whole mile away at Elmwood Middle School. It was a terrible, lonely feeling not to have him to lean on. Andi, who was never at ease with strangers, found herself acting stiffer than ever.
On her first day at the new school a blond, bright-faced girl named Debbie Austin had come up to her on the playground and asked if she wanted to play a game called “Double Trouble.” Andi, who had never heard of the game and was embarrassed to admit it, had responded, “No, thank you.” “Oh, come on,” Debbie coaxed her. “It isn't much harder than ‘Singles.' You'll catch on fast.” “I'm really not interested,” Andi told her. Debbie had walked off, looking hurt, and Andi had been furious with herself, especially when she saw the little group of girls playing double jump rope. It was a game that she had often played back in Albuquerque, and she'd actually been pretty good at it, but she'd never heard it referred to as “Double Trouble.” Now that she realized what it was, she was dying to rush over and say, “Oh, I do want to play after all!” When she thought about doing that, though, something knotted up inside her and she simply couldn't. Instead, when Debbie or any of the other girls glanced in her direction, she stared straight through them as though she didn't see them. Nobody ever asked her to play jump rope again.
So even though it was her own fault and she knew it, Andi found herself at the end of her first week at Elmwood Elementary School without a single friend.
At home, she pretended.
“We had such fun on the playground today,” she told the family at dinner, or, “You should have heard the jokes the girls were telling me at lunch!” Then she felt guilty when Aunt Alice turned to her mother and said, “Linda, you and John are fortunate to have such a popular daughter! Imagine making so many new friends so quickly!” But the thing Andi missed the most in the entire world was Bebe. Bebe had been her dog for almost three years now. She had gotten her for Christmas the year she was eight, when Bebe was just a puppy, so tiny that it had hardly seemed possible that she was real.
She had been under the tree in a box all wrapped with Christmas paper, with little holes in the sides so that air could get through. Andi had unwrapped the paper and felt the box move. Then the lid had popped off, and there had been Bebe, pointed little face all bright and sparkling, nose wiggling, eyes shining, tail long and thin like a piece of black wire thumping against the bottom of the box.
“We got Bruce a digital camera, but we thought you would like this better,” Mr. Walker had said, laughing at the startled look on his daughter's face. Then, as though she had heard and understood the words, Bebe had jumped out of the box right into Andi's arms, and from then on there had been nobody else for either of them. Many people might like Bruce best, but not Bebe. Bebe thought there was nobody in the world as wonderful as Andi.
I wish she was here now, Andi thought as she left the classroom and walked down the long hallway to the outside door. All around her, boys and girls rushed by with arms filled with books, laughing and chattering, calling to one another, “Wait up! Wait for me!” It seemed to Andi that she was the only one in the whole school who had no friends to walk with when the final bell rang.
I'll pretend Bebe is out there, she told herself. I'll pretend she's waiting right outside the door. That thought made her feel oddly better, and when she had walked out the door and there was no little dog standing there, she told herself, She's waiting a little farther on, down by the street. When she reached the street, she thought, No — she didn't come this far. She's still at home in the corner of the yard, keeping her eyes on the sidewalk, hoping I'll be coming. Andi thought about Bebe all the way home. She thought about her so hard that she found herself getting more and more homesick. By the time she reached her own block, her eyes were swimming in tears and she could hardly keep from sobbing out loud.
She hurried along the sidewalk, staring straight ahead of her — past the rows of maple trees, already beginning to redden with the chill of autumn nights, past the overgrown brown house with its “FOR SALE” sign out front, past a vacant lot and a yellow house with curtains over its windows — and turned up the neat white path that led to Aunt Alice's front door. Then she stopped. She could not believe her eyes. There on the porch steps, sitting in a forlorn little heap as though he were waiting for someone, was a dog.
“Bebe?” Andi spoke softly, almost afraid that the sound of her voice would make the dog disappear. Wiping the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand, she crept up the walk until she was only a few feet away.
Now that she was close, she could see that the dog was not Bebe, was not even a bit like Bebe, really, except for the color, which was brown, and the small size. This was a shaggy dog with long, dirty, uncombed hair hanging in all directions.
“Hi there, little dog,” Andi said softly. “Are you waiting for me?” The bundle of hair turned so that what seemed to be the front of the head was facing Andi, and from somewhere at the back of the bundle something began to twitch in what Andi thought must be a wag. Reaching out, she pushed aside the hair that covered the dog's face, and there, gazing soulfully up at her, were two bright button eyes. “What are you doing, waiting here?” Andi asked. “Are you hungry? Come on, you poor little thing. Andi will get you something to eat.” Gathering the dog up in her arms, she carried him through the house to the kitchen. Her mother was there peeling carrots. Mrs. Walker had fallen into the habit of doing the early part of the dinner preparations when she could have the kitchen to herself while Aunt Alice was upstairs taking her afternoon nap.
