Free Fight for Life by Laurie Halse Anderson

first we have to find out where they are. Don’t rush, and make sure you call every number.”
    “What do we say?” Sunita asks. “I’m not a very good liar.”
    “You don’t have to lie. Just ask if they have puppies for sale. Say you got the number from a friend.”
    “Which is the truth,” Brenna points out.
    “Those puppies are counting on us. Start dialing!”
    We get to work. Dial, ask, and hang up. Dial, ask, and hang up. Brenna is great at this. Her voice sounds so confident. I’m having trouble. I keep getting wrong numbers. I always get wrong numbers.
    Brenna hangs up her phone and watches me dial. After a minute she says, “You’re not dialing the numbers on your sheet. You’re switching them. Instead of 463-9257, you just dialed 436- 2597.”
    “Darn. That happens a lot ... Wait. That means—oh, my gosh! I know what happened to Mitzy!”
    “What are you talking about?” Brenna asks.
    “Where’s that piece of paper I gave you, the one with the feeding instructions?”
    “Taped to the cupboard back in the kennel. Why?”
    No time to explain. I sprint to the kennel and find the chart. I take a deep breath and carefully read what I wrote.
    Yep, I was right. I switched the numbers. Brenna fed Mitzy exactly what I wrote down, but I wrote down 5.2 scoops of dry food a day instead of 2.5 scoops a day. We’re lucky it wasn’t more serious.
    I lean against the wall. Mitzy got hurt because of my mistake. I put a patient in danger—
    “Maggie, Maggie!” Sunita shouts. “David found the puppy seller!”

Chapter Fourteen
    I t only took a few minutes to explain what we found to Gran, but it took a couple of days for her to pull together “the necessary arrangements.” At first, I didn’t want to wait, but then I could sort of see her point. She wanted to do things properly so the animals would be taken care of and the authorities would go along with us.
    But Brenna grumbled about it all week. She thought we should just swoop in and rescue the pups. Sneak in at night and steal them if we had to. Even I could see that was a bad idea. David and Zoe cooked up a scheme to notify the television stations so we could be on the news, but Gran put an end to that one.
    Finally the big day is here. As we drive through the pouring rain out to Lafayette Road, Gran goes over what we might see one more time.
    “Good breeders raise animals properly. They provide them with clean cages and plenty of food and water. They vaccinate them, and they are careful to breed only animals who are strong and healthy, and have good personalities.
    “You won’t see any of that where we’re going. Chances are it’s going to be filthy. The dogs will be underfed and sick. The people who run these places don’t care about the health or happiness of the animals. They just want to make money fast.”
    “Sounds scary,” says Zoe.
    “You can stay in the van if you want,” Gran offers. “There’s nothing wrong with making that choice.”
    I look back at the others. David is anxious, Brenna outraged, Sunita worried, Zoe concerned. No one is backing out. We’re going to see this through to the end.
    We pull in a gravel driveway and drive past a hand-painted sign that says PUPPIES 4 SALE. The animal shelter van and a sheriff’s car pull in behind us. They are here to help us. Captain Thompson heads up the local shelter. He retired from the army a few years ago. His full name is Zebulon P. Thompson. Whenever I ask him what the P stands for, he always has a different answer. I mostly call him “sir.”
    His volunteers will take any healthy animals we find to the shelter. Then they’ll try to find good homes for them. The sheriff is here to make sure that everything is done legally.
    We park next to a two-story farmhouse. In front of us is a small barn missing some windows and desperate for a coat of paint. A wet cat darts past the van and hides under the front porch. I can hear a bunch of dogs barking. They are not happy barks.