Lulu woke up at 6:25, and for the first five minutes her plan worked perfectly. Dressed and washed and tooth-brushed in exactly, EXACTLY, three minutes and fifteen seconds? Check. Ate a bowl of cereal in precisely, PRECISELY, forty-five seconds? Check. Arrived at Brutus’s house in one minute flat and rang the bell at 6:30 sharp? Check, and double-check, and for good measure check again. This girl was GOLDEN.

Brutus was happy to see her, so happy he knocked her flat down on the rug, slobbered all over her face, and thumped his tail. Brutus’s owner was proud. “Is that cute or what?”

Lulu, who most definitely did not think it was cute, replied, “It’s what.” And then she stood up, wiped off, attached the leash to Brutus’s collar, and—she was running a little bit late—was out the door, heading to Pookie’s house.

I mean, she was TRYING to head to Pookie’s house. Brutus was heading in a different direction. She pulled. He pulled. She pulled. He pulled. She pulled. He pulled harder, making Lulu bang into a tree.

Which gave her, along with a bump on her knee, an idea.

Lulu began to wrap the long leash around the trunk of the tree, wrapping it so tightly around and around and around the trunk that Brutus, two houses down, couldn’t pull her anymore or go any farther. Dog and girl had stopped moving, and—across the space between them—they were glaring at each other most ferociously.

“We’re doing it my way, Brutus,” Lulu announced in her bossiest voice.

“That won’t happen,” came the instant reply. But in case you’re thinking that Brutus was speaking, you can think again. The voice Lulu heard belonged—big surprise!—to Fleischman.

Just the person she didn’t want to see.

“You’re just the person I didn’t want to see,” said Lulu.

“Dog biscuits,” Fleischman mysteriously replied.

“Dog biscuits yourself,” said Lulu, and went back to staring ferociously at Brutus: girl and dog still standing still—girl under a tree, holding on to one end of the leash, and dog, two houses down, attached to the other end—in a situation grown-ups call an impasse. (A complicated word that means neither one’s going to do what the other one wants him to do.)

“If you’re wanting Brutus to walk with you nicely to Pookie’s house,” said Fleischman, “you need a dog-biscuit trail for him to follow. And since I’m thinking you don’t have any dog biscuits in your pockets, we’ll use mine.”

Fleischman walked over to Brutus and dropped a biscuit in front of his nose, which Brutus gladly and instantly gulped down. Then Fleischman turned around and walked back toward Lulu, dropping biscuit after biscuit on the ground, creating a tasty dog-biscuit trail that Brutus eagerly followed, gulping down biscuits. Soon thereafter, Fleischman and Brutus were standing next to Lulu under the tree.

“And now if you’ll just unwind the leash from that tree trunk,” Fleischman told Lulu, “we can get going.”

Lulu, with Brutus on the leash and Fleischman walking ahead of them dropping biscuits, arrived without further fuss at Pookie’s house. Lulu waited for Fleischman to leave. He didn’t. Instead he said, “If you let me hold Brutus’s leash while you go inside and pick up Pookie, we’ll save some time.”

“We’re not saving time,” said Lulu. “I am saving time. So wait out here with Brutus, if you want to, but I’m warning you, Fleischman, don’t get any ideas.”

“I’m not getting any ideas,” said Fleischman. “I’m just happy to help. Happy and pleased and proud and delighted and honored and . . .”

“Quiet, Fleischman!” said Lulu in a voice that could shut up a city. “And stop being so happy.”