“Sam!” Nipper shouted as he slammed the door behind him. “I still lost my— Oh, never mind.”
Samantha looked up from the couch. She saw the front door opening again behind Nipper.
“Mission accomplished,” said Dr. Spinner, walking through the door and putting down her suitcase.
Both kids rushed to give their mother a big hug.
“Hello, Suzette,” Samantha’s father called as he entered from the kitchen. “I’ve been working on something while you’ve been gone.”
“Just a minute, George,” said Dr. Spinner.
She handed something shiny to Samantha. It was a sparkling pink envelope with handwritten letters in gold ink.
“Buffy gave this to me when I left her at the airport,” said Dr. Spinner. “It’s for you. She made me promise not to open it before I got home.”
Samantha opened the envelope. Glitter spilled out onto the carpet. She unfolded a single sparkling page and read it out loud.
“ ‘Dearest Mother, Father, Sammy, and little baby Nipper. I have wonderful news.’ ”
“I’m not a baby,” said Nipper.
“ ‘It looked like I was going to have to abandon my dreams and go back to being a dreary high school student in California,’ ” Samantha continued. “ ‘Thank goodness I listened to my amazing mother’s advice…forget school, make a movie.’ ”
Samantha glanced at her mother, who looked alarmed.
“ ‘And then I remembered,’ ” Samantha kept reading. “ ‘Sometimes people make movies in California!’ ”
“Isn’t that why she went there in the first place?” asked Mr. Spinner.
“ ‘Scarlett Hydrangea’s Wild, Wild Secret of the Nile,’ ” Samantha read. “ ‘I’m going to turn my show into a fabulous musical nature documentary!’ ”
“A musical nature documentary?” Samantha repeated.
Bzzt! Zzzzzzzzzzzt!
Bzzt! Zzzzzzzzzzzt!
On the floor by the sofa, both dog clogs shook.
“Whoops,” said Mr. Spinner. “I forgot to deactivate my clogs.”
Dr. Spinner picked up one of the shoes.
“Look,” she said, holding it so everyone could see the heel.
The display screen lit up with one word:
_B_U_T_T_O_N_
“How is this even possible?” said Mr. Spinner. “The oldest dog ever lived to be only twenty-nine years and five—”
“That’s a cool shoe, Dad,” Nipper interrupted. “Did you use it to try to find me?”
“Wait,” her mother snapped. “Find you?”
“Yeah,” said Nipper. “I was lost all over the place.”
Samantha watched her mother’s face turn bubble-gum pink.
“Did you know there’s an elephant building in Margate City?” Nipper continued. “There’s a big coffee pot there, too. Or maybe that was in Bedford.”
“New Jersey, George?” asked Dr. Spinner. “Pennsylvania, George?”
“I can explain,” said her father.
“Nobody can explain Pennsylvania!” her mother shouted.
Samantha knew that if her mother was saying ridiculous things like that, she must be really, really mad at her dad! She waved to Nipper to give their parents some time by themselves. She waved for Dennis to follow, and they retreated to the kitchen.
“Hey, Sam,” said Nipper. “I meant to thank you for finding me and rescuing me.”
Samantha smiled.
“Even though the CLOUD mostly just wanted to give me candy and get me to do dumb things,” he added.
Samantha still smiled, but not quite as much. She noticed her brother was holding a manila envelope.
“What’s that you’re holding?” she asked him.
“What? Oh…that. I almost forgot,” he answered. “This was outside the front door. I found it when I came home from not getting my Yankees back again.”
Nipper raised the envelope and read the address on the front.
“It’s addressed to Camp Pythagoras,” he said.
He looked at the letter again.
“It was sent by the Parents of Nipper Spinner,” he said.
He looked at the letter once more. There were no stamps!
“There aren’t any stamps on it,” he said, realizing what that meant. “This letter was returned. It wasn’t delivered.”
His eyes grew wide.
“Sam! My application never made it to Camp Pythagoras!” he shouted.
“What?” asked Samantha.
“I was never signed up for calculus camp!” he said, so gleefully that it sounded like he was singing. “I’m free, I’m free!”
Nipper threw the letter on the ground and started dancing, swinging his arms and legs back and forth, waggling his fingers and tapping his toes.
Samantha couldn’t decide if her brother was doing a weird version of the hokey-pokey or an imitation of a chicken.
“Waitaminute, waitaminute!” she shouted.
Nipper stopped dancing.
“If you weren’t signed up for math camp, then who took Uncle Paul?” she asked.
Nipper shrugged.
“I don’t know,” he said. “They had numbers, so I thought they were from math camp.”
“You lost Uncle Paul!” Samantha blurted.
She put her head in her hands and looked down and spotted the annoying, sparkly invitation from Buffy on the counter.
Samantha picked it up and turned it over. There was writing on the back of the invitation, too:
P.S.: I met a cute boy at the airport. He’s going to meet me in California and help me make my movie! I’m in love!
Buffy had taped a shiny two-by-two print from a photo booth to the back of the invitation. In each of the four pictures, Buffy sat next to a boy, grinning and waving. He wore a big smile and a yellow cap with the words Pacific Pandemonium on the front.
Seydou!
She froze.
She tried to say something, but no air came out.
Samantha stared at the photo of her sister next to Seydou in a photo booth. Her vision became blurry. The room started to spin.
“Wruf!” she heard Dennis bark.
The floor zoomed up and hit Samantha…or maybe it was the other way around.
Everything went black.