The Pet-Sitting Peril Read Free

had the painting and the roof finished—to go to Disneyland.
    Barney made fun of Nick’s dog-walking job, but Nick felt lucky to have found any way at all to earn money during the summer. He’d just about given up before he heard about Rudy.
    He hated being the smallest boy in the sixth grade. For that matter, a lot of the girls were taller than he was. His mother said that was only natural at his age, because the boys didn’t have their growth spurt until later than the girls. Nick still hated it, and it kept him from getting jobs.
    Barney made fun of his friendship with Sam, too, because Sam was the biggest kid in the class. He was bigger than some of the boys who were in ninth grade.
    â€œYou look so funny together,” Barney would say. “He’s so big, and you’re so little. A giant and a short person.”
    Nick had all he could do to keep from hitting his brother in the mouth when he said things like that. The only reason he didn’t do it was that Barney was not only older, he was taller and stronger. He was always trying to provoke Nick into a fight; if Nick struck the first blow, Barney could say, “He started it, so I had to hit him back, didn’t I?”
    Once their mother happened to overhear an exchange about Sam and came to stand in the doorway of their room. “Barney, I don’twant you to say things like that. A giant and a short person. Nick’s not short, he’s just growing slowly right now. Even if he were short, it would be a terribly cruel thing to say, to criticize anyone for his size, large or small. People can’t help what size they grow to be.”
    After she’d left—and Barney peeked into the hallway to make sure she’d gone downstairs—Barney’s lip curled in derision. “I still think you look funny together, you and that overgrown lunk. Why don’t you find a buddy your own size.”
    Nick refrained from pointing out that if he picked someone his own size it would have to be a fifth grader. “I like Sam,” he told his brother coolly. “Which is more than I can say about you.” And on that note he left the bedroom he had to share with Barney and went downstairs, too, just so he wouldn’t have to listen to his brother any more.
    He’d sure be glad when Charles went away to college and freed a room so the two of them wouldn’t have to share anymore. Then he wouldn’t have to hear what Barney thought about Sam, or dog-walking jobs, or anything.
    As soon as he got home from Mr. Haggard’s, he went downstairs and asked Dad about the flashlight, so if that light kept going out in the entry hall of the Hillsdale Apartments he wouldn’t have to walk into the pitch dark every night when he brought Rudy home.
    It wasn’t that he was afraid of the dark, of course. It would just make it easier to get the keys in the locks, if he could see what he was doing.

Chapter Two
    Nick had started his Rudy-walking job with Mr. Haggard right after school was out. It didn’t pay as much as he would have liked to make, especially now with 75 percent going to the Disneyland Fund. But it was better than nothing. The Monday after the third lightbulb burned out in the hall, however, things began to look up. Mr. Haggard reported to him when he came in that morning that two other tenants in the building were interested in his services. So after he had taken Rudy for his morning gallop, he went to find out about the new jobs.
    Mrs. Helen Sylvan had apartment two, across the hall from Mr. Haggard’s. It was identified by the same means as all the others in the place, with a scrawled numeral in blackcrayon on the brown painted door. Mrs. Sylvan also had a neat white card with her name on it, tacked below the crayon writing.
    Mrs. Sylvan was tall and skinny. Even her voice was thin and high-pitched. She had a cat named Eloise, a big white Persian that looked as if she were washed and brushed