JEROME WAS SITTING ON HIS camouflage sleeping bag on the floor of Max’s dim and shadowy bedroom, and Max was in his bed. They were having a sleepover. It was late, but Mother had said they could stay up talking as long as they wanted. The window shade was up and the only light came from the lights of the apartment house. They each had a bowl of popcorn, and Goldie was sitting on the floor between them, watching every bite they put into their mouths.
“I don’t know why you bothered with an imaginary dog when you had a real one,” Jerome said. “Goldie’s great. There are dragons whose eyes aren’t as intense as this dog’s.”
Max nodded. “Especially when there’s food around.” He had said, “Goldie, sit!” and “Goldie, stay!” After nearly a month of practicing, he was mostly remembering not to call her Ratty. And after nearly a month of practicing, she was mostly remembering to sit. Right now she was quivering all over and drooling, but she wasn’t jumping on them and knocking over the bowls or snatching popcorn out of their hands. Stay was still hard for her. He had to keep reminding her.
Ever since Goldie had begun obedience school, Max had had to walk her for fifteen minutes in the morning and half an hour after school, rain or shine. But it wasn’t as bad as it might have been. Except on Mondays, when the obedience class was held, and Thursdays, when Jerome had his trumpet lesson, Jerome had mostly gone along on the training walks. Sometimes Max let Jerome hold the leash and give the commands. They pretended they were on adventures as they walked. Sometimes Goldie was a dog. Sometimes she was a tiger or a Tasmanian devil. Once they pretended she was a robot, but Jerome said a robot would obey them better than Goldie did. She was still really hard to get past LaRosa’s.
On weekends, Polly and Mother and Max took Goldie to the park, where they could all take turns putting Goldie through her practice with the commands she was learning — heel, sit, stay, come. A lot of times, Jerome went with them. While Mother and Polly were working with Goldie, he and Max would act out adventures. Some of their adventures happened along the stream. Some happened in and around the park’s stone shelters, which became whatever they needed them to be — castles or forts or bunkers.
The adventures Jerome thought up were new to Max, and Max’s were new to Jerome. Sometimes the scourge the boys went after was a troll, a dragon, a giant, or a gang of goblins, and sometimes it was a bank robber or a kidnapper or a carjacker. Jerome knew more about that kind of scourge than Max did because of his father. But all the adventures were more fun with the two of them than they had ever been alone.
Jerome, who had finished his popcorn, reached under the desk to get Goldie’s ball. “Let’s see if she can catch this in the dark.”
Goldie began barking and waggling. Jerome bounced the ball and Goldie leaped for it. She snatched it out of the air and came back down, landing gracefully on all four feet. “Air Goldie,” Jerome said. “She’s good!”
Max watched Jerome take the ball from Goldie and bounce it again. There had never been another kid who liked what he liked and did what he did. There had never been a kid he could invite for a sleepover.
After Jerome had bounced the ball for her three more times, Goldie dropped it and jumped onto Max’s bed. Max emptied the last of his popcorn into his hand and held it out to her. She snapped it up, getting the ends of his fingers along with the popcorn. “Ouch!” he said. “Gently!” Gently wasn’t one of the commands Goldie understood.
Jerome yawned. “Would it be okay if she slept down here with me tonight?”
“She likes to sleep on my bed.” Max heard Jerome sigh as he settled down into his sleeping bag. If he put Goldie down there with Jerome, she wouldn’t stay, he knew. He felt sorry that his friend had never had a pet who could share his bed.
Goldie began pawing at the quilt to make herself a place to sleep. Max moved over to give her some room. She turned around and around and then flopped down against his belly.
“That sure was a terrific adventure we had today,” Max said.
“Yeah,” Jerome said, and yawned again. “Terrific.”
It had started in an ordinary enough way, Max thought. Jerome had been holding Goldie’s leash as they walked along 8th Avenue, pretending they were time-traveling knights who had been sent to this century to save the world from the scourge of international terrorism. Goldie was their bomb-sniffing dog. They had been watching the people on the street carefully, looking for anyone who was acting strange, when they saw a woman coming out of Agatha’s Antiques with a large and very oddly shaped package wrapped in brown paper. “Bomb?” Max whispered.
“Could be,” Jerome whispered back.
And then, right behind the woman came Nick. He was carrying a shopping bag and clutching another brown paper package against his chest. Max had a momentary urge to hide behind a parked car. But Jerome wasn’t afraid of Nick. “That’s Nick’s mom,” Jerome said. “I bet they’re really terrorists. And both of those packages are bombs.”
Nick and his mother were coming toward them, heading for a black car parked just down the street from the antique shop. Goldie had stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, her nose in the air. Her tail was circling, and a low growl came from her throat. As they got closer, the growl changed to a howl and she surged forward with a lunge so fast that the leash slipped from Jerome’s hand. Dodging the feet of the other people on the sidewalk, Goldie charged at Nick. He saw her coming and his face seemed to go white. Instead of holding her off with the shopping bag, Nick froze to the spot, yelling, “Dog! Mommy, dog!”
Goldie leaped into the air and hit him a little above the knees, knocking him backward. He screamed as he went down onto the cement, the brown paper package flying from his arms and crashing down next to him with a sound of shattering glass. Goldie, the handles of the shopping bag gripped firmly in her teeth, disappeared under a delivery van parked at the curb, dragging the bag with her. As it vanished behind the van tire, Max saw LAROSA’S printed on the bag.
“My vase, my beautiful vase!” Nick’s mother was yelling, and Max was stunned to see that Nick, sitting on the sidewalk next to the broken package, had begun to cry. “Nicholas Humphrey Berger, look what you’ve done! I’ll never be able to replace that vase!”
Humphrey? Max thought. Nicholas Humphrey?
“It wasn’t me!” Nick sobbed. “It was that dog!”
“That little thing? What did you think it was going to do? Eat you?”
“You know I’m scared of dogs!” It was then that Nick caught sight of Max and Jerome. He scrubbed hurriedly at his face, as if to erase the evidence of his tears, and struggled to his feet. An old lady had come out of Agatha’s Antiques with a broom in her hand. Max saw that it was the old lady who liked Goldie so much.
“Get over it,” she said, in her high, thin voice. “Dogs are noble beasts. Better than a lot of humans.” She began to sweep up the glass from the shattered package. “I might be able to find another vase like this one,” she told Nick’s mother, who was putting the other package into the backseat of their car. “Just give me a little time.”
“Thank you, Agatha.” Nick’s mother turned back to him. “Where’s the shopping bag?”
“That stupid dog got it!” he said.
“The dog got the shopping bag? You let that dog have our dinner?”
“I’ll get it,” Max said. He kneeled down on the curb next to the delivery van. Goldie was lying on the torn bag with half a sausage between her front paws, munching happily. He pulled the bag out from under her and held it up to Nick’s mother. There were still two cheeses and a can of artichokes inside. “I’m sorry, but I think my dog ate your sausages.”
“At least sausages can be replaced,” she said, taking the bag from him. She shook her finger at him. “You ought to get that dog under control.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Max said. Jerome was grinning, and Max had to bite his lip to keep a straight face.
By the time Max managed to get Goldie out from under the delivery van, Nick and his mother had driven away and Jerome and the old woman, Agatha, had finished cleaning up the brown paper and glass. “Thank you for your help,” she told Jerome. Then she reached into her pocket and pulled out a dog biscuit. “Sit!” she said to Goldie. Goldie sat. “Good dog!” She tossed the biscuit, and Goldie caught it. Agatha smiled at Max. “Obedience school?” she asked.
Max nodded.
“Very good work, young man,” she said. “She may not be perfect, but you keep at it.” She turned and went back into her shop, muttering as she went, “Scared of dogs — a boy as big as that!”
“That was great,” Jerome said as they headed back to Max’s house. “Nick Berger, scared of dogs!”
“Nicholas Humphrey Berger,” Max said.
“You wait and see. I bet he never bothers you again!”
Max thought Jerome was probably right. He had two anti-bully weapons now — Goldie and Nick’s middle name.
Jerome had switched to his knight’s voice then. “Our trusty bomb-sniffing dog saved the day. She disabled those sticks of dynamite disguised as sausages.”
“Indeed she did, my noble friend,” Max answered. “Soon we will be able to return to our own time.”
Goldie started barking at a squirrel and dragging on the leash, and Max gave her chain collar a quick jerk to distract her attention. “Sit!” he told her in his sternest voice. She sat.
“That squirrel must have had a tiny explosive implanted in its neck,” Jerome said.
As they walked the rest of the way to Max’s house, they had imagined what other animals a terrorist might use to plant tiny bombs around the city. “Rats and pigeons,” Max said.
“Cockroaches and ants,” Jerome had added.
Now Max grinned into the darkness of his bedroom. “I think today’s adventure was the best one ever,” he said. “Don’t you?”
There was no answer. “Jerome?” he whispered.
Jerome had fallen asleep. Max looked down at the shadowy form in the camouflage sleeping bag and thought his dad had been right about one thing at least. It was good to have a friend.
He lay for a moment staring out the window at the apartment house. Every so often, the light in one of the windows blinked out. Then he imagined King, sitting next to his bed, wagging his plume of a tail. He imagined tossing him a big, juicy bone. King caught it in the air and carried it off, stepping carefully over Jerome’s sleeping body and disappearing between the bookshelf and the closet. It was good to know he could still see King any time he wanted.
“Good night, Goldie,” Max whispered, and scratched her gently behind the ears.
Goldie lifted her head, reached up, and licked him on the nose. Her breath, he thought, was just as terrible as ever.
