Hotel for Dogs by Lois Duncan ch 13-1
CHAPTER THIRTEEN They planned it for midnight. “After all,” Andi said, “midnight is the spookiest time. Besides, everyone will be asleep by then — Mom and Dad and Aunt Alice and all the Gordons.” “Are you sure you can get the projector?” Tim asked. “No problem,” Bruce told him. “Dad lets me use it whenever I want it. All I have to do is ask him to let me show some slides after dinner and then not return it until morning. What about an extension cord?” “I can get that,” Tim said. “My parents have a lot of them.” They grinned at one another excitedly, hardly able to believe the thing they were going to do. It was truly, as Andi had said, the best idea she had ever come up with.
“We'll have to get Debbie,” she said now. “She should be in on it, too. Why don't I invite her to spend the night? I know Mom will let me. Aunt Alice says she likes having children around.” “I'll tell my mom and dad I'm spending the night with Bruce,” Tim said. “Then I'll go over to the hotel and dog-sit Preston. At a quarter to twelve, I'll meet you in front of your house.” His blue eyes were sparkling. “Do you think it really will work?” “Of course it will work,” Andi said decidedly. “It has to!” That evening was the longest that Bruce and Andi ever had sat through. Even the fact that Debbie was with them, having been given permission to eat dinner there and spend the night, did not make the hours move faster. After the dishes were cleared away, Bruce suggested showing slides, and Mr. Walker happily agreed. They spent an hour looking at pictures of the Southwest — of the big adobe house where they had lived, of the mountains stretching their purple tips into the sky, of aspen trees and tumbleweeds and arroyos. The last slide that Bruce showed was of a little brown dachshund with a pointed face.
“That's Bebe,” Andi said softly to Debbie. Suddenly all the old homesickness for her pet flooded through her, as sharp and painful as it had been on the day she had said good-bye. “Oh, I wish she were here now — I miss her so much!” “You'll be seeing her soon, honey,” Mrs. Walker said, smiling. “Now that we know we're in Elmwood to stay, we'll find a place of our own and get settled and send for Bebe to be flown out on the very next plane.” “Are those all the slides you have, son?” Mr. Walker asked as Bruce turned off the projector and reached for the light. “Haven't you taken any pictures since we got to Elmwood?” “Well, yes,” Bruce said. “But I thought we could look at those another time. It's bedtime now, isn't it?” “Already?” His mother looked surprised. “Since Andi has a houseguest and tomorrow's a holiday, I thought you might want to stay up a little later than usual and pop some corn and play games the way we used to do back in Albuquerque.” “That's okay, Mom,” Andi said hastily. “Debbie and I are tired, too. I think we should all go to bed now.” “That's a good idea,” Debbie agreed, giving a great yawn. “I'm awfully sleepy. I'm used to going to bed early.” “All right,” Mrs. Walker said, looking more surprised than ever. “I know Bruce has been tired lately, but you girls, too? They must be working you terribly hard at school. I wonder if I should talk to your teachers.” She was still worrying out loud to Mr. Walker when the three children left the room. Any other night Bruce would have slept the moment his head touched the pillow. Tonight, though, things were different. He could hear the alarm clock ticking through the pillow right into his ear as it always did, but he was too keyed up to let it tick him into slumber. Instead, he lay there listening, wide awake and alert to everything around him.
He could hear his parents and Aunt Alice talking in the living room. How long, he wondered, were they going to stay up? He could hear the trees rustling outside his window. He could even hear his own heart beating strongly against his chest.
It seemed forever before he heard the adults' footsteps on the stairs and their voices pitched low as they bade each other good night. How long would it take for them to go to sleep? Huddled under a blanket, he counted the seconds, making them into minutes, sixty seconds to one minute, sixty minutes to one hour. Flicking on the light on the end table, he pulled the clock out from under his pillow and looked at the dial. Only a quarter to eleven. One whole hour to go.
He was sure that Andi and Debbie were lying awake in Andi's fold-down bed in the sewing room, whispering together, too excited to sleep, just as he was. He wished they were here with him so they could at least share the waiting.
“It will never get there,” he told himself, looking at the minute hand that seemed solidly stuck in place against the face of the clock. “I'll lie here the rest of my life, and it never, ever will move.” But, as it turned out, at some time between then and a quarter to twelve, he fell asleep, and it took the muffled jangle of the alarm to bring him to. He had been sleeping so hard that for a moment he thought it was five o'clock and time for Red's dawn run. Then, almost immediately, he remembered. Getting quickly up from the sofa, he pulled on the clothes that he had laid out on the chair beside him.
The light was on in the front hallway, and the girls were already there, waiting for him.
“We never even took our clothes off,” Andi told him. “We just pulled the blankets up over them. We've been counting the minutes on Debbie's watch.” Bruce shushed her with a finger against his lips, and they put on their jackets in silence. Debbie whispered, “The projector?” It was standing by the front door where Bruce had left it. He drew a quick breath of relief that his father had not noticed it there and put it away.
Picking it up with one hand, he opened the door with the other, and the three slipped out into the night.
The moment the door was shut behind them, the darkness closed in from all sides.
Debbie gave a little gasp. “It's so black! We'll never find our way.” There was a sudden burst of light, and Tim spoke. “I brought a flashlight. Are you all set?” His voice was gruff with suppressed excitement.
“Did you bring the extension cord?” Bruce asked him.
“Sure did. Where can we plug it in?” “The Gordons have an outdoor outlet on the side of the house,” Bruce said. “I've seen Mr. Gordon plug in his electric grill there. Shine the light ahead of us and follow me.”
