Moving Day by Meg Cabot

no choice but to follow the other girls. I had to make sure they didn’t catch the poor cat and put her back in that suitcase.
    “She’s in the den,” I heard Brittany yelling from somewhere in the Hausers’ enormous house.
    “I thought I saw her go into the living room,” Courtney yelled back.
    “I think she went into the laundry room,” Mary Kay cried.
    But they were all wrong. Because I found Lady Serena Archibald trembling beside a closed door off the kitchen, looking up at me with her big, sad eyes, begging me to open the door and allow her to escape.
    And so I did…
    Just as Brittany came rushing in.
    “Allie, no!” she shouted.
    But it was too late. Lady Serena, hearing the voice of her mortal enemy, streaked through that door and to freedom.
    “You IDIOT!” Brittany yelled at me.
    “Too bad,” I said, closing the door behind Lady Serena Archibald. Suddenly, I didn’t care that Brittany was standing really close to another one of her mother’s ceramic cat figurines. Let her throw it at me. So what if I had to getstitches? Maybe then I’d get to go home. “But you know, Brittany, cruelty to animals is a serious crime. You can go to jail for it. Besides, Lady Serena will be fine in the basement.”
    “That isn’t the basement door, stupid,” Brittany raged. “That’s the door to the garage, and my sister is out there making her posters with the garage door open ! You just let Lady Serena Archibald out, and she’s NEVER BEEN OUTSIDE BEFORE!”

RULE #9
When You Do Something Wrong, Always Apologize (Even If It’s Not Entirely Your Fault)
    We spent the whole rest of the afternoon looking for Lady Serena Archibald in the Hausers’ neighborhood.
    Unfortunately, she was nowhere to be found.
    I thought maybe she’d still be hiding in the garage. Neither Becca nor any of Becca’s friends had actually seen her leave the garage.
    And there were lots of ski boots and coolers and old models of volcanoes (ancient science projects of Brittany’s sisters) out there on shelves that she could have been hiding behind.
    But we looked in and around and even under all that stuff, and she wasn’t there.
    There was really only one conclusion to be drawn. And that’s that she had gotten out.
    Lady Serena Archibald, champion Persian show cat, was wandering around in the wilds of Walnut Knolls. Who even knew if she’d ever come home? I mean, after the way Brittany had treated her, if I’d been her, I wouldn’t have.
    But of course, when Mrs. Hauser got back from her errands (with pizza and cheesy breadsticks for us for lunch, because my mom had warned her about how I wouldn’t eat anything red), we couldn’t tell that part to her. I mean, the part about why I’d let her cat out. I just said that I’d made a mistake. I said that Lady Serena Archibald had been sitting by the door meowing (which was not even a lie), and I thought it was the door to where they kept her litter box or something, and so I’d opened it and let her out without looking.
    The whole thing, I’d told Mrs. Hauser, without being able to look her in the eye, was my fault.
    And that I was really, really sorry.
    Mrs. Hauser was nice about it. She was more worried about Lady Serena Archibald than anything else. Shecalled the police and everything (even though I guess they sort of laughed at her because she hung up very fast afterward and said, “Well, Lady Serena may be just a cat to them, but she’s like a child to ME!”).
    She also called animal control and the neighborhood association to ask them to keep an eye out for any stray long-haired blue colorpoint Persian cats who might be roaming around.
    Then we all put our jackets on and started walking around the yard, calling, “Here, Lady Serena Archibald. Here, kitty, kitty,” and shaking bags of Lady Serena’s favorite dry food, and tapping spoons on cans of her favorite wet food.
    None of it worked, though. Lady Serena Archibald didn’t come home. The people at animal control said