Free Pet Disasters by Claudia Mills Page B

thought Albert would be okay now until his full feeding in the morning.
    Weak with relief, Mason would have hugged Albert if he could, to thank him for still being alive. It was the most thankful Mason had ever felt for anything.
    Monday began the second and final week of art camp. Mrs. Gong was apparently trying to cram in as many projects as possible in preparation for the art show to be held on Friday, the last day of camp. On Monday they did printmaking, using cut-up vegetables dipped in tempera paint.
    Mason decided to stick with cut-up cauliflower. Probably Monet would have stuck with one kind of vegetable as well. Mason also stuck with brown paint, to match his socks. Brown cauliflower prints marched across his page in dutiful rows.
    Nora used cut-up carrots and orange paint, pressing her carrot stamps on the page to form a perfect representation of a carrot. She used green paint on slivers of carrot to resemble a bunch of carrot greens on top. When she was done, her carrot made from carrots looked exactly like a real carrot. Mason thoughtit was cleverly done, but it did make him wonder what the point of art was. Nora could have been content with a real carrot in the first place.
    Brody’s print was a dragon. He used every single kind of vegetable to make it, with his trademark vibrant hues. If Mason were going to pick one of their prints to display in the citywide art contest, he would pick Brody’s dragon.
    Dunk got into a broccoli-throwing fight with another kid.
    “Really, Dunk!” Mrs. Gong said. “I want you to go sit outside in the hall until you can remember proper printmaking behavior.”
    Dunk was outside in the hall for a pleasantly long time.
    “I can’t come over today to see Dog,” Nora told Mason and Brody. “I’m going with my father to get our vacuum cleaner repaired, and they might let me watch while they repair it. I’ve always wanted to see what a vacuum cleaner looks like inside. Would tomorrow be okay? Did you talk to your mom?”
    “Sure,” Brody said. “Mason forgot to ask her, but I’ll ask her today, and I know she’ll say yes because she always says yes to everything. Right, Mason?”
    Mason nodded. He forced a smile. He knew it wasn’t a completely convincing smile.
    So that was that. Tomorrow a real live girl who wasn’t Brody’s sister would be coming over to Mason’s house.
    That afternoon, after Brody asked Mason’s mother about Nora, and she gave the answer Mason had known she would give, Mason and Brody ran in the sprinkler with Dog again, this time changing into swimsuits first. When they were tired of the sprinkler, it was only two o’clock.
    “What should we do now?” Brody asked Mason once they were back inside with dry clothes on.
    “I don’t know. What do you think we should do now?” Mason asked Brody.
    “Let’s play a game with Dog.”
    Mason tried to think of games that Dog would like playing. He couldn’t think of any.
    “Wait,” Brody said. “I remember a game I heard about once. It’s called go get.”
    “Go get?”
    “We tell Dog to go get things, and he goes and gets them.”
    “But—Dog doesn’t speak English,” Mason pointed out.
    Brody paused for a moment to consider Mason’s comment.
    “Well, I saw it on TV, and the dogs on TV could go get anything. ‘Go get ball.’ ‘Go get leash.’ ‘Go get newspaper.’ ”
    “We can try it,” Mason said doubtfully.
    “Dog!” Brody said in a commanding voice, to get Dog’s attention. “Go get ball!”
    Dog jumped up, as if he knew something was supposed to be happening, but then he just stood there, panting with happiness, grinning his doggy grin, but doing absolutely nothing toward getting the ball. Did Dog even know where the ball was? Did he even know
what
a “ball” was?
    “I think,” Brody said, “that we have to give the thing to him to smell first. That’s right. I’ll take something like my hat, and rub my hands all over it.”
    Brody removed his baseball cap and