My Boyfriends' Dogs Read Free Page B

the contest entry from the back. Mom loved contests. She’d won more appliances than we’d use in a lifetime, but we always had gifts on hand for weddings.
    Mom shuffled back into the kitchen. “Where’s my purse?”
    â€œOn your arm.”
    She yawned. “I stayed up for WKMM’s Midnight Madness phone-in contest. Worth it, though. I was the twenty-eighth caller. Got us two free tickets to some band named Disaster’s Death.”
    â€œCool.” I aimed her toward the front door. “Seriously, I can’t be late, Mom.”
    â€œLate schmate,” she muttered with her unique brand of motherly logic.
    Once outside, we both headed for the driver’s side of the van.
    â€œYou have to let me drive, Mom,” I insisted, snatching the keys out of her hand. “I’m never going to get my real license if you don’t let me practice.”
    She gave up, and I started the van and backed down the driveway. Backing was my best driving skill. I wasn’t too bad going forward. But I kept failing that stupid parallel parking exam. “What’s so great about parking along curbs?” I asked halfway across town. “Nobody’s parallel parked in Missouri since the Stone Age.”
    â€œLeft!” Mom shouted when we were still a solid block from our turn.
    We spotted the West End vultures, two women from a rival antique store. They revved their engine. “Pull over to the curb so they can’t get in!” Mom screamed.
    I swerved. My front wheel rolled over the curb in an unorthodox parallel parking maneuver. We leaped out and snatched a table out from under the beaks of the vultures, which wasn’t half as hard as cramming the disgusting thing into the van.
    â€œThis will look fantastic when I refinish it,” Mom declared, shoving the last pockmarked, splintered table leg inside the van and sliding the door shut fast.
    â€œWhen you refinish it? Like the day after I pass my parallel parking test?”
    â€œHey! This table is a diamond in the rough, Bailey.”
    Maybe. But as far as I knew, all of Mom’s “diamonds” were still sitting in our garage, as rough as the day she’d discovered them.
    Mom dropped me off at the deserted schoolyard. Everybody was already inside. “Sorry I made you late, honey. Worth it, though. You can have the table when I die.”
    Great. Clutching my pack, I backed up the sidewalk, turned to run in, then tripped over something and sprawled flat onto the sidewalk. Dazed, I lay on my back and squinted into the sun, hoping nothing was broken and that maybe Mrs. Weaver would count this as excused tardiness now.
    â€œArf! Arf!” A skinny white dog scrambled out from under me.
    â€œ You tripped me?”
    The dog pranced to my face and started licking. I scrambled to my feet, but he scratched at my bare legs until I picked him up. He had the most gorgeous green eyes, but seriously bad breath. “Thanks a lot, doggie.”
    He wagged his tail and wiggled, still trying to get at me.
    I set him down and jogged over to my fallen backpack, trying to ignore my sore backside and bruised pride. When I turned back around, the dog was gone.
    â€œFickle, fickle you,” I muttered.

2
    After English, Amber and I bucked the crowded halls back to our lockers.
    â€œDid you really get knocked down by a giant dog on your way to class?” Amber didn’t sound like she believed me any more than Mrs. Weaver had.
    â€œYeah. Only he wasn’t giant.”
    â€œWhose dog was it?” Amber asked, as if that were the crucial question here. Not “Are you hurt? Did you get rabies? How will you get Weaver to stop hating you?”
    â€œI’ve never seen that mutt before,” I answered, finally breaking the secret code of my smelly locker, which had smelled even worse before I’d inherited it and filled it with cinnamon sticks. Now it smelled like Christmas vomit instead of regular