Free Smart Dog by Vivian Vande Velde Page A

said, blowing his nose.
    Sister Mary Grace had provided everyone with two extra eggs each, just in case of accidents. Since there would only be time to decorate one complex Ukrainian-style egg, she also provided regular dyes—and stickers, glitter, felt, and pastel-colored feathers—for people whose first eggs came out right and wanted to decorate their spare eggs.
    Jennifer's grandfather promptly dropped the container of glitter.
    While people scrambled to scoop the glitter up, which seemed to spread it farther and farther across the floor, somebody—Amy thought it was Jason's father—went ahead and opened the bag of feathers ahead of time. Suddenly there were feathers all over, too.
    Mr. Tannen sneezed, blowing out the candle once more and sending the design sheet from which Mom was trying to copy skittering to the floor. "Sorry," he said. "Must be those feathers that I'm having an allergic reaction to. I have really bad allergies."
    "Must be," Mom said. As she leaned to pick up the paper, she added in a mutter half under her breath, "...if they could affect you since before the bag was even opened."
    Amy didn't think Mr. Tannen had heard—he was too busy summoning Mrs. Pudlyk to tell her that they needed her lighter again—but she glanced at Minneh with an apologetic grimace.
    Minneh shrugged and plucked a long white dog hair off her father's sleeve while he was distracted with getting out his handkerchief.
    Amy wondered if Sister Mary Grace was having second thoughts about inviting the adults. They were not as well behaved as the children, and they kept laughing and chatting with one another, and going ahead of Mrs. Pudlyk's directions so that they got things wrong, and making silly designs—which did not amuse Mrs. Pudlyk, who took Easter egg making very seriously.
    Mr. Tannen sneezed out the candle a third time, and Mrs. Pudlyk sighed loudly before coming back to relight it.
    Amy continued to work on her design: Sherlock, surrounded by flowers, bordered by a wreath.
    "Hsst," Mom whispered. "Amy."
    Amy worried that Mom was about to make another rude comment regarding Minneh's dad, but when she turned, she saw that Mom was motioning her to move out of the way. Amy followed the direction of her gaze: beyond Amy, beyond Minneh, beyond Mr. Tannen, past two tables...
    "I can't get this," Amy said, slamming down her pencil. "Mom, can you help me draw that feather-wreath pattern?"
    Mom continued to look beyond her. "Isn't that Sean?" she asked.
    Minneh froze, but Amy—who'd had all morning to work out a clever response to just this question—came back with, "Sean who?"
    "I don't know," Mom admitted. "Sean whoever-it-was-that-used-to-own-our-dog-before-we-did."
    "Where?" Amy asked.
    "Two tables down in the blue sweater."
    "Everybody's sweaters are blue," Amy pointed out,
though Sean Gorman's was a distinctive electric blue. "It's the dress code."
    Mom sounded exasperated. "The one that's
really
blue—that doesn't match anybody else's."
    At this point Amy ran out of clever questions with which to confuse the issue.
    Minneh leaned forward and said, "Amy, I bet she means Steven."
    Since there wasn't a Steven in their class, Amy said, "Oh. Right. Steven."
    "Steven?" Mom repeated. "Don't you think he looks like Sean?"
    "No," Amy said.
    "Not at all," Minneh added.
    Mom looked at Minneh. "I hadn't realized you'd met Sean."
    Minneh got a panicked look. She said, "I ... didn't ... but..."
    Amy said, "I described him to her."
    Minneh nodded her head. "And Sean's description didn't sound at all like how Steven looks."
    Mr. Tannen sneezed and their candle went out yet again. Mrs. Pudlyk glared, and Mr. Tannen whispered loudly to the people at the next table, "Borrow a light?"
    At least it got Mom off the subject of Sean.
    Finally, after Dana's mom set the end of her scarf on fire with her table's candle, and after Jennifer's grandfather dropped the container of glitter for the second time, and after Justin's mom had to be sent to