All Paws on Deck Read online

  Dedication

  For Julia

  Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Excerpt from Roxbury Park Dog Club #5: A New Leash on Life

  Back Ad

  About the Author

  Books by Daphne Maple

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  1

  “I’ve graded your tests,” my English teacher, Mrs. Benson, said crisply. The bell for first period had barely finished ringing but she was already starting class and everyone, even Dennis Cartwright, class troublemaker, was sitting down quietly. Mrs. Benson had that effect on people. It wasn’t like she yelled or made scary threats. She just had this look that made you want to do your very best for her.

  Which was why I was biting my lip as she began passing back our papers. I really had done the best I could. But we’d just finished a biography of Marie Curie and even though it was pretty interesting, I’d gotten a little confused during Mrs. Benson’s lectures about it. I’d try to take notes but she talked so fast that I’d still be writing down the first thing she said while she was already onto a whole other subject. And then I’d be so lost I wouldn’t know what to write. My notebook was a mess of scribbles that didn’t even make sense. Plus sometimes the book got a little confusing. Which was why I’d probably done pretty badly on this test. And that was not going to make my parents happy at all.

  Mrs. Benson set a paper in front of my best friend Sasha, who looked at it and grinned. It wasn’t so long ago that Sasha was the one having trouble with her homework, but not because she didn’t understand it. She’d just gotten so busy with the Dog Club we’d started, and the dance classes she took after school—plus the new dog she’d adopted from the shelter where we had the club. But Taylor, our other best friend, and I had helped Sasha figure out how to manage her time a little better and judging from the expression on Sasha’s face, it was definitely working.

  I saw Taylor give Sasha a small thumbs-up, so she must have noticed too. Then both of them looked at me just as Mrs. Benson put my paper on my desk. She’d set it facedown and just seeing that made my stomach twist. Good grades came face up. I took a breath and turned the paper over slowly. A bright red 68 was scrawled at the top.

  My face felt hot and my eyes prickled. My parents had told me how important that test was and I’d promised them I’d study every night. And I had. But I’d still done terribly.

  “It’s okay, Kim,” Sasha whispered sympathetically. Only the best of friends would risk a Mrs. Benson look by talking in class.

  I tried to smile at Sasha but the corners of my mouth wouldn’t cooperate. The red 68 made smiling impossible.

  “So that concludes our unit on biographies,” Mrs. Benson said. She was back at the front of the room, her hand resting on the pile of books on her desk. “And now we move on to one of my very favorite books, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Kwan, Danny, and Taylor, would you please help me pass these out?”

  When Taylor set the book on my desk she reached over and squeezed my arm. The beads at the ends of her braids clinked gently as she moved down the aisle, and my skin still felt warm where she’d touched me. The 68 still ate at me but it helped to have Taylor and Sasha.

  So I did the only thing I could. I opened my notebook and got ready to write down everything Mrs. Benson had to say about Tom Sawyer.

  As soon as the bell rang Taylor and Sasha came over to me.

  “Don’t worry, you’ll do better on the next one,” Sasha said, pushing a dark brown curl out of her face. Sasha usually wore her hair back in a ballet bun or braid, but curls were always springing free as if they had a life of their own.

  “Yeah, it’s just one test,” Taylor added. She was wearing a bright pink T-shirt that made her dark brown skin glow.

  “I wish my parents thought that,” I said as we headed into the crowded hallway. It was our first year at Roxbury Park Middle School and so far it had been going well, at least the part that didn’t involve English. Or math, another subject where I was barely keeping up. But at least we had our community service project. At the beginning of seventh grade, we all had to sign up for an after-school volunteer job, and the three of us worked at the Roxbury Park Dog Shelter. That was how we’d come up with the idea for our Dog Club. It was also where Taylor and I had become friends. When she first moved to town at the start of the year, after her family spent a month of vacation with Sasha and her mom, I wasn’t exactly happy to see her. Not that she wasn’t nice, but she and Sasha had all these inside jokes and I felt like a third wheel. Sasha did everything she could to bring us together, but in the end it was a big dog named Boxer who made me see what Sasha had always known: Taylor was awesome. It had been the three of us ever since.

  Taylor put her arm around me. “We’ll help you study for the next one,” she said.

  “Oh, that’s okay,” I said automatically. I knew they wanted to help but they were both super busy, plus this was something I needed to figure out on my own. If everyone else in my class could do well on these tests, I could too. I just needed to try harder. “But thanks.”

  “We’re here if you need us,” Sasha said, patting my shoulder. “Oh, and I got an email this morning from another family interested in the Dog Club.”

  That was good news. Not so long ago we’d been struggling to find enough clients to make money to help the shelter—and that was the whole reason we’d started the club in the first place. When we’d first begun volunteering there, we’d quickly realized that the shelter had real financial problems. In fact, Alice, who ran it, had been forced to consider closing down. At the same time my neighbors, the Cronins, had been asking me about walking their dog, a sweet basset hound named Humphrey, after school. I couldn’t help them because of my work at the shelter on top of my homework, but then I came up with a solution to both problems: the Roxbury Park Dog Club. It was simple, really. Dogs whose owners were busy at work could come to the shelter in the afternoon to play with the dogs there, and of course with us and the other shelter volunteers. The Cronins were our first clients but others soon followed and the club took off. There had been a few bumps along the way, like Clarabelle, the poodle who got muddy in the shelter yard right after an expensive grooming. And Sierra, a dog too wild for us to control. But we’d handled those problems and we, or to be more exact, Taylor, had found a way to fix things when we didn’t have enough clients.

  “Mrs. Halifax said she and her husband saw your pictures in the paper,” Sasha said, grinning at Taylor. “As soon they saw them they wanted to sign their dog up for the club.” Two weeks ago there had been a photo spread of our Dog Club in the Sunday magazine, with some of the gorgeous shots Taylor had taken for our club blog. Our phone hadn’t stopped ringing since! Well, Sasha’s phone really. She was the one who handled new clients so Alice sent all messages straight to her. My job was to write the blog and Taylor made it beautiful with her doggy pictures. Together we really were an unbeatable team.

  “Did you make an appointment for them to bring their dog by?” Taylor asked.

  “They said they’d call back to schedule a time,” Sasha said. “Which is good because we’re pretty booked up.” Before we accepted any new dogs into the club, we made an appointment for them to come in, along with their owners, to get a sense of what we did. That way we could make sure the dog and Dog
Club were a good fit.

  “What kind of dog do they have?” Taylor asked.

  Sasha grinned. “A Saint Bernard,” she said. “And apparently she’s still a puppy.”

  “Whoa,” Taylor said. “That’s a big puppy.”

  “I know,” Sasha agreed. “But we have our secret weapon if she gets wild.”

  They both looked at me and I felt my cheeks get warm, this time in a good way. My friends and family called me a dog whisperer. I wasn’t sure if I really was, but I did understand dogs in a way that I couldn’t fully explain. I knew what they wanted or needed just by looking at them and listening to the sounds they made. It was like I spoke their doggy language. Maybe it was just because they could tell I loved them so much, but whatever it was, it made me happy to be able to help dogs when they needed it. And puppies, especially the big ones, usually needed a little assistance staying calm.

  The warning bell rang.

  “See you guys later,” Taylor said, giving me one last squeeze before heading off down the hall.

  I waved to her and Sasha, then headed to my second-period class. The 68 still had my stomach in knots but my friends helped a lot and so did thinking about Dog Club. Because at least that was something I was good at.

  2

  The next day when the final bell rang I headed to my locker and began stuffing books into my backpack. Sasha came over just as I was zipping it up. She’d had a dentist appointment this morning and missed lunch, so this was the first time I’d seen her all day.

  “Ready for Dog Club?” I asked. My locker was between hers and Taylor’s, so we always met up here and then headed out together.

  “Yes, and I have some interesting news about our new client, the one who signed up last week,” Sasha said, her cheeks pink. Sasha had pale skin, so whenever she was excited her cheeks got all rosy. “I’ll tell you as soon as Taylor gets here.”

  “Sounds good,” I said, heaving my bag onto my shoulders. After the test yesterday I was being extra careful in all my classes, so I was bringing most of my books home. It was a heavy load, but with an afternoon of doggy love to look forward to, I barely felt it.

  “I wonder what’s keeping Taylor,” Sasha said, glancing at her phone to check the time. Now that school was over we could have cell phones out.

  “It’s not like her to be late,” I said. “Should we text her?”

  Just then Taylor rounded the corner and when I saw who had kept her, I felt a prickle of anxiety. Taylor was walking with Brianna Chen. Not so long ago Brianna had been mean to Taylor, mocking her clothes and making snide remarks about Taylor being the new girl. To make matters worse, Brianna’s mom’s dog grooming salon, the Pampered Puppy, opened a new doggy day care and tried to put our Dog Club out of business. At least that was how it felt when they started posting negative ads about our club and we began losing clients to them. But Taylor’s older sister Anna helped Taylor realize that Brianna was bothering Taylor because she was jealous of her. Brianna had been the new girl the year before and she had not had an easy time settling in. So Taylor, who is kind and generous, reached out to Brianna, telling her that she understood how hard things were for her. Brianna apologized for the mean things she had done and even got her mom to back off her ad campaign. Taylor had forgiven her but I wasn’t so sure we could trust her. And by the way Sasha stiffened up next to me, I could tell she felt the same way.

  “Hey,” Taylor said, smiling happily when she saw us. She looked relaxed and cheerful.

  Brianna smiled at us shyly. “Hi,” she said, brushing back a lock of long black hair. Brianna was Asian, with tanned skin and thick black hair that fell nearly to her waist. Today she had it held back with a braided purple headband that went perfectly with her turquoise sweater and black leggings. “Are you guys going to the shelter?”

  “Yeah,” Sasha said, twisting a curl around her finger.

  “It sounds really great there,” Brianna said a little wistfully. “Taylor was telling me you guys play dog basketball. I have no idea what that is but it sounds fun.”

  That made me laugh. “Yeah, Tim, one of the high school volunteers, invented it,” I said.

  “It’s very high tech,” Taylor joked. “We have a laundry basket for the hoop.”

  “My mom would never do something like that at the Pampered Puppy,” Brianna said.

  I tensed up, not liking the way it sounded like she thought the game wasn’t good enough for her mom’s doggy day care.

  But Taylor just laughed. “That’s why it’s so great our town has two doggy day cares,” she said. “That way owners can get exactly what they want.”

  Brianna was nodding and I realized she hadn’t been putting down our club at all. “Totally,” she said.

  “You’ll have to come by and see it sometime,” Taylor said.

  “That would be really cool,” Brianna said. “Now I should get to the library, not that anyone will notice if I’m late.”

  She must have been doing her volunteer work there, like a lot of other kids I knew.

  “See you tomorrow,” Taylor called as Brianna headed down the hall and the rest of us walked toward the big front doors of the school.

  “Bri is going to sit with us at lunch tomorrow,” Taylor announced cheerfully.

  Sasha glanced at me, one brow raised, and I raised mine right back.

  “Are you sure that’s such a great idea?” Sasha asked as we walked down the steps. The sun was bright and a brisk wind perfumed with the smell of fall leaves was blowing.

  “Of course,” Taylor said, like it was no big deal.

  “She seems nice and everything,” I said. “But it wasn’t so long ago that she was being pretty mean to you.”

  Taylor linked arms with both of us. “I know you guys are just looking out for me, but honestly, Bri is great. She’s sorry for how she acted before and that’s not who she is, not really.”

  It was true that Brianna had been nothing but sweet since she and Taylor made up, but that didn’t mean I forgave her, not completely. And I could tell by the way Sasha was frowning that she felt the same way.

  “You’ll see,” Taylor said, squeezing our arms. “She’ll sit with us at lunch and I know you guys will learn to like her as much as I do.”

  “Okay,” I agreed. I wasn’t sure I trusted Brianna but I did trust Taylor. Plus I’d rather have Brianna around all of us together, so that Sasha and I could make sure she really was treating our friend right.

  “So what did you have to tell us?” I asked Sasha, remembering that she said there was news about the client coming in this afternoon.

  “Well, Alice told me about this client a few days ago—she asked to speak with Alice first because her dog has special circumstances,” Sasha said. We stopped and waited as a truck went by before crossing Elm Street and heading toward town. “She just adopted a dog who was rescued from a puppy mill.”

  Those two words made my stomach drop. Animals at puppy mills were treated as breeding machines and newborn dogs were trapped in small wire cages with no human contact. It was cruel and I hated even thinking about it. “It’s great this new client is giving one of those puppies a home,” I said. That was the good part of the story.

  “Yeah, and I know Alice told her about you and how you’d be able to help this puppy adapt,” Sasha said, smiling at me.

  I felt a warm glow at her words.

  “But here’s the surprise,” Sasha went on. “The new client is Mrs. Benson!”

  For a second I wasn’t sure who she meant but then I gasped. “Wait, our English teacher?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Sasha said. “Pretty wild, right?”

  “Yeah,” I agreed, my mind racing.

  “Two worlds collide when shelter life meets school life,” Taylor said in a television-announcer voice that usually made me laugh. But now I was just trying to wrap my mind around what it would be like to have crisp, intimidating Mrs. Benson at the shelter.

  “It’s pretty cool she rescued a puppy in need,”
Taylor said in her regular voice.

  It definitely was. But what would it be like to work with Mrs. Benson outside of the classroom? I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out.

  “Hey, and that reminds me, Kim,” Sasha said. “What did your parents say about the English test last night?”

  “It was weird,” I said, scuffling my feet through a small pile of leaves on the sidewalk. “They barely said anything. No pep talks or study hints or anything.”

  “That’s good, right?” Taylor said.

  “I guess,” I said. “I mean, I’m glad they didn’t say I might have to cut down on my hours at the shelter.” They had said that after my last math test. “And I did promise that I’d do better next time.”

  “It sounds like they have faith that you will,” Sasha said. We were approaching the intersection of Market and Grove, where we’d separate to get the club dogs. For a small fee we’d go pick up club dogs at their homes and walk them to the shelter for the afternoon. It was convenient for busy owners and helped us earn a little extra for the shelter.

  “Yeah, now I just have to make sure that I study hard,” I said. My stomach twisted at the thought. I’d studied hard for the last test and it hadn’t gotten me very far.

  “You’ll do great,” Sasha said encouragingly.

  “And you can always ask Mrs. Benson for tips when she comes to the shelter,” Taylor joked.

  “That is going to be really weird,” Sasha said as we reached the corner.

  I totally agreed.

  “See you in a few minutes,” I said, heading off to pick up Humphrey and Popsicle, who happened to live right next door to me.

  Popsicle, a fast-growing black and white puppy, bounced around joyfully when I let myself into their house. Humphrey waddled over to me, then threw himself down at my feet with a sigh, as though the walk from the living room to the front hall had exhausted him. Typical basset behavior that always made me smile.

  “Hey, guys,” I said, snuggling both of them before leashing them up and heading back into the sunny afternoon. “Now we’re going to go get Mr. S.” My older brother, Matt, sometimes made fun of the way I talked to dogs but I knew they understood me. Maybe not the exact words, but dogs were smart and very sensitive to tone of voice. And both Humphrey and Popsicle knew who Mr. S was.