If I hadn’t had Reggie, I would have taken the bus to BeeBee’s. This way, it was a long walk. But when we arrived, I was glad he was there. BeeBee was a Wallet, and I would have felt uncomfortable walking up to her doorman without purebred Reggie at the end of a leash.
Her apartment was on the top floor, the thirty-fourth. I made Reggie sit while I rang the bell.
The three of them—Ardis, Nina, and BeeBee—answered the door. I was wearing the wrong clothes. They were in shorts and cotton shirts. Worse, BeeBee and Nina looked like they’d never seen a dog before. Ardis’s head was down, so I couldn’t see her face. It was the end of my popularity. I’d blown it with Reggie.
But then BeeBee squatted in front of him. “What a sweet baby. What a good boy. I love you too.” She scratched under Reggie’s chin and behind his ears. He tried to lick her face, and his tail wagged frantically.
“This may be the first time a dog came to a sleepover,” Nina said.
“Hear that, Reggie? You’re making history.” I grinned at Nina.
She didn’t smile back. “It’s pretty weird, Wilma. Five points off for strange behavior.”
Had the spell ended?
BeeBee said, “That’s Nina’s way of saying she’s glad you’re here.”
“Is it okay, BeeBee?” I asked. “Do you mind, Nina? Ardis?”
Ardis wasn’t there. She must have gone back into the apartment.
“My brother’s allergic to dogs,” BeeBee said. “Of course, he won’t be in the room with us . . .”
“Should I take him home?”
“Would you come back?”
This was great! “Sure I’d come back. It’s just that Reggie didn’t want me to leave before.”
“Oh . . . let’s try it. Mom can’t kill me. Right? Besides, nobody has to know.”
How could they not know? Our apartment was so small you couldn’t bring in a caterpillar undetected.
She went on. “Dad said we could sleep upstairs in his studio. Hold the pooch.” She led me in.
I stepped into a small circular vestibule with doors to the left and right and a spiral staircase straight ahead. Reggie’s toenails sounded like a hailstorm as he rushed across.
There was no door at the top of the stairs, just space—a loft as big and almost as tall as the auditorium at school, with floor-to-ceiling windows all the way around.
I let go of Reggie. We were in a forest of sculptures. They were elongated stick figures made of metal. The arms and legs were long cylinders. The heads were ovals with triangles for noses. The figures were about sixteen feet tall, and they were in athletic poses—stretching, bending, standing on one foot with the other leg high in the air.
“Your dad is a sculptor,” I said idiotically.
“He says he was Degas in a previous life.”
“BeeBee paints,” Nina said. “She’s very talented.”
“I’m a colorist,” BeeBee said, “and I use a lot of impasto.”
Whatever that was. I nodded enthusiastically.
“Show her—”
“Wiiilmaaa!”
It was a strangled scream, coming from the other end of the room. Ardis was pressed into a corner, hands over her head, while Reggie wagged his tail and sniffed her crotch.
“Get it away from me. Hurry, before I—”
“Come, Reggie.” He came. “What a good boy! What a good doggie!” I scratched his back. “You train a dog by telling him he’s a hero when he does something right. They like praise better than dog biscuits.”
“So do I,” Nina said.
BeeBee and I laughed.
“I can’t stay,” Ardis said, walking toward us. “I just remembered. My sister’s in a play at her school, and I promised to go.”
“You’re afraid of dogs.” As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I knew I shouldn’t have said them.
“You don’t know me,” Ardis said, mad. “You have no idea what I’m afraid of and what I’m not afraid of.” Then she calmed down and sort of smiled. “And I’m really afraid of what Shanara will do to me if I miss her play.”
She was leaving because of Reggie, and she was the main reason I wanted to come in the first place.
“Can’t you call her?” BeeBee said. “You could say I’m going through an emo—”
“Reggie won’t—Reggie?” I said. I looked around for him.
There he was, halfway across the room, sniffing around the statues. He was especially interested in one.
“No, Reggie! No!”
I was too late. He had lifted his leg on one of the stretching figures. Pee was running down the metal.