After class, Mom came inside with Violet to ask Alicia if we could rent some of the agility stuff for the weekend. Alicia was thrilled to hear that I wanted to practice more at home.

“I think you two could be great at this,” she said, crouching to pat Jeopardy’s head. “Let’s see what’s easiest to transport.” She showed me how to break down the hurdles and gave me three of those. The tunnel squished up into a flat round hoop, so I could take that, too, plus the chute to attach to it. The A-frame folded in half so it could slide flat into the trunk of our car. And she gave me a short board to use to practice the seesaw trick by putting a rolled-up towel under it.

Heidi and Yeti had been waiting for her mom in the office, but they came back in when she saw us breaking down the equipment and stacking it by the door.

“Whatcha doing?” she asked. Yeti tilted his head curiously at the pile of hurdle poles. He poked the folded A-frame with his nose and Jeopardy went “RUFF!” like, Hey! That’s mine!

“Well, uh,” I said, rubbing my head. “I thought maybe we’d … practice at home.” That sounded super-dorky now that I was saying it out loud.

Heidi’s face lit up. “That’s the best idea ever!” she said. “Oh my gosh, do you have space for all this stuff in your house?”

“Well, the basement —” I started to say, but she kept talking.

“I wanted to practice at home but I tried to get Yeti to jump over a book on the floor and he got so excited that he kept running and knocked this crazy fancy-looking clock off the table with his tail and then he had to go hide under my bed for half an hour because we were afraid my mom would be really mad but it ended up OK because apparently she never liked it anyway and it wasn’t as expensive as it looked but she still said we shouldn’t practice inside the house except it’s getting kind of cold for practicing outside and anyway it’s more fun with the right equipment, right?”

“Uh,” I said. “Sure.”

“So you can put all this in your basement? Oh my gosh, you guys are going to be so much better than the rest of us by Monday! I mean, you are already, so I guess you’ll be, like, practically ready for competition after practicing.”

“Oh, I don’t —” I started to say, but then Parker came back inside with Eric.

“My dad’s not here yet,” Parker said, rubbing his arms. “We figured we’d wait in here.” Meatball flopped down on the floor and made his snoozing snort noises.

“Guess what?” Heidi said. “Noah’s taking some of the stuff home to practice over the weekend!”

Now I was really embarrassed. It was like I’d signed up to do extra credit for no reason or something.

But Parker looked as interested as Heidi. “I didn’t know you could do that!” he said. Merlin wagged his tail and came over to see what Yeti was sniffing inside the scrunched-up tunnel.

“Well,” I said, “I mean, if you guys want to come over and practice, too …”

“Really?” Heidi yelped. “Are you serious? You wouldn’t mind?”

“I have to ask my dad, but I could probably come over tomorrow around noon,” Parker said.

“Can Danny come, too?” Heidi asked. “Ella would, but she has her cousin’s bat mitzvah.”

“Uh — sure,” I said, realizing I should probably run this by my mom first. I looked over my shoulder and saw her talking to Alicia. Violet sat on one end of the seesaw, bellowing about how someone should sit on the other end for her.

“What about you?” Parker asked Eric.

Eric hunched his shoulders and looked down at the floor. “Um,” he said. “Well, like, I — I kind of have plans.”

Parker lifted his eyebrows. “Plans? You never have plans.”

“I do sometimes!” Eric said. “I’m, uh — going to the movies.”

“OOOOOOOHHHHHHH,” Parker and Heidi said at the same time.

Heidi started laughing. “Bet I can guess with who!” she said. Eric rubbed his hand through his hair and squirmed.

“Meatball’s terrible at this anyway,” he said. “All the practice in the world isn’t going to help him.”

SNOOOOOORGH, agreed Meatball without opening his eyes.

Eric sighed. “I don’t know why I have to have the most embarrassing dog in the world.”

I couldn’t believe it. Those were almost the exact words I’d thought about Jeopardy! I’d never guessed that Eric was embarrassed. I was too busy thinking about how crazy my dog was. His dog was just funny, and besides, he already had lots of friends. He had nothing to be embarrassed about.

It was kind of weird … I felt like the story of my life had been flipped around and recast with someone else in my part.

“So I guess Rebekah’s busy, too,” Heidi said, grinning mischievously. “So it’d just be me and Parker and Danny. Is that OK, Noah?”

“Uh — let me check with my mom,” I said.

To my relief, Mom said yes. I gave them all my phone number and address, and they said they’d be there around noon.

“Great!” Mom said, smiling from ear to ear. “I’ll make lunch!”

I herded her out the door before she had a heart attack from how excited she was. The only bad part was this totally made her feel like she was right to sign me up for the agility class. I hate it when she’s right about stuff like that, but at least she didn’t rub it in on the way home.

We spent the rest of the night getting the house ready for visitors. While Mom and Dad tidied up the living room, I finished unpacking my room. There were a lot of things that still didn’t have a place, so I shoved them all in one box and hid that in the closet. But I found some of my favorite T-shirts stuffed around a couple of photo frames in a bag of nice clothes that I wouldn’t otherwise have unpacked for months, so that made me pretty happy.

Dad helped me set up the agility equipment in the basement. We built a whole obstacle course down there. It looked even cooler than I expected. I made a table out of an enormous red, white, and blue square pillow, and I printed out photos of dogs that looked like Yeti, Buttons, Merlin, Meatball, Noodles, Trumpet, and Jeopardy to pin up on the walls.

Jeopardy followed us around while we put everything together. She poked the hurdles with her nose and jumped back in surprise when the bar fell down. She ran through the tunnel about six times. She put her front paws up on the A-frame and leaned up to sniff the top of it, checking for overlooked treats. She walked over the mini seesaw board and barked at it when it tipped underneath her.

Finally she settled down on the table-cushion and fell fast asleep.

I sat down next to her and stroked her long, soft fur. She opened her eyes and turned her head to rest it on my knee, and then fell asleep again. After a moment, she wriggled onto her back so all four little white paws were in the air and I could rub her chest and belly.

Her long nose and alert ears looked extra cute when she was asleep. A genius and cute — who knew?

I just hoped that Saturday would go OK. I hoped Jeopardy would be good, and everyone would have fun, and nothing terrible would happen. My stomach jumped nervously as I looked around the room. I was having new people over for the first time.

What if it was a total disaster?