Free The Summer of Riley by Eve Bunting Page A

we’re having a little problem here with the picture.”
    The crowd around us was getting bigger. Grace took my pile of flyers so I’d have my hands free, I wasn’t sure for what. I tucked my T-shirt tighter into my jeans.
    “She’s not Rosie or Oprah,” Grace whispered. “But this is fabulous. Too bad we don’t have the big photograph of Riley yet.”
    The man with the Thou Shalt Not Kill banner had moved so he was right behind me. He crouched to make sure he’d be in the picture.
    “Ready, William?” Trixie asked.
    I nodded.
    “Do good,” Grace whispered.
    “Well,” I began, “Riley was the most perfect dog … I mean,
is
the most perfect dog. It was just …”
    I went on and on explaining, not being meanabout Peachie, trying to be fair, just saying how much we all loved the Sultan. Trixie kept nodding and smiling, and now and then butting in with a question. Grace kept giving me thumbs up, and I was just going into how everybody could help save Riley and how if he lived, I’d never have him back here. Not ever, he’d be far away, in the middle of a city maybe, and never chase anything again …
    “Except maybe his tail,” Trixie Allen said humorously, and I nodded.
    “He liked to chase his tail. He was funny because he’d catch it and fall over himself.” I stopped. How awful if I cried on TV.
    And then I turned a little, and for the first time I saw Ellis Porter and Duane Smith on the edge of the crowd. Oh, no. Faster than fast, I moved to block them from Trixie, in case she knew who they were, and then I talked even faster to keep her attention on me.
    But, unfortunately, Trixie knew her stuff and had read up on everything before coming here. Her program wasn’t called
What’s Going On
for nothing.
    After I wound down, not able to think of a single other thing to say, she thanked me graciously, then said, “And now we will hear from Mr. Ellis Porter andMr. Duane Smith, who have taken up arms on behalf of the old racehorse, the Sultan of Kaboor. I had hoped to bring the Sultan’s owner to you this evening, too, but apparently she is too upset over what happened to make a television appearance. Here, again, to speak for her, and for her horse, are Ellis Porter and Duane Smith.”
    And the awful thing was, there was a little scattering of applause as the crowd made way for them.
    Grace said afterward the applause was for me, for how good I’d been presenting Riley’s case.
    But I didn’t think so.

Chapter 14

    T here’s a saying, “Be careful what you wish for … you might get it.” That must be among the truest sayings in the whole world. Grace and I had wished we could get our story of Riley on TV. And that had happened. But … Ellis and Duane had had a chance to tell the other side of the story, too.
    That night, Mom and Grace and Grace’s mom and dad and her two little brothers, Sam and Colin, and I watched Trixie Allen’s program. Ordinarily, if I’d been on TV, Peachie would have been on the couch beside me. Not that ordinarily I would have been on TV. But Peachie used to come over for anything important, like a space shuttle shot, or the night the magician told all the secrets of how the tricks were done. Peachie and Mom and I didn’t like him. “He’s a spoiler,” Peachie said. I tried to sort outthe muddle of my Peachie feelings. Of course I was still mad. But I couldn’t help remembering good things.
    If this had been three months ago, my grandpa would have been here next to me, too. Three years ago, my dad would have been here. Two weeks ago, Riley would have been lying next to me, one paw in my lap, though he and I would have been watching an old
Leave It to Beaver
, not watching about him maybe having to die.
    Everything was disappearing from me. It was scary. I felt emptied out.
    “Here, William, have a lemon square.” Grace passed me the plate. “You were far better than Ellis. You’ll see.”
    That’s the best thing about a best friend. She knows when you need