Sammy Keyes and the Runaway Elf by Wendelin Van Draanen Page A

Sammy?”
    I looked down. “She’s … uh … kind of mad at me.”
    “Lilia is?”
    I nodded.
    “In heaven’s name why?”
    I eyed Marissa, who just shrugged and shook her head, so I said, “To make a long story short, I was in charge of her dog and it ran away.”
    For a second there I thought Mrs. McKenze was going to drop the veal. “Well, then you know exactly what I mean.”
    “I
do?
”
    “Sure. That’s the same reason she was mad at Tina!”
    All of a sudden I felt dizzy. “Wait a minute—
Tina
lost their dog?”
    “That’s right. Lilia said she left the gate open and it ran away.”
    “Was it a Pomeranian?”
    “I don’t even know, to tell you the truth.”
    “Was it named Marique?”
    She flipped the veal over in the frying pan. “Is that the name of the dog you were taking care of?”
    I nodded.
    “Well, then it couldn’t have been. The dog I’m talking about was found a few blocks down Jasmine.” She wiped her hands on a dishtowel. “It had been run over by a car.”

TWELVE

    I couldn’t go straight home. Not with everything I had swimming around in my brain. I mean, talking the whole thing over with Marissa helped some, but I was miles from a solution. Miles and miles.
    So I went to Hudson’s. And I don’t think I went there to actually
talk
to him. I just wanted to kind of sit around on his porch and wait for things to make sense to me.
    Trouble is, Hudson wasn’t on the porch. He was in the house. Cooking. And as I followed him back to the kitchen I knew right away—he wasn’t making
costolette di vitello alla milanese
. He was making waffles.
    He popped a plate out of the drainer and put it next to another, already waiting on the counter. “Why don’t you call your grandmother—tell her you’re staying for supper.” He grinned at me. “Or dessert, if that’s how you fancy dressing your waffle.”
    He didn’t have to ask me twice. I called Grams, and before you know it I was sitting down at Hudson’s table pouring syrup on my waffle.
    Hudson put a fried egg on his. He smeared the yolk around and then put a slice of ham on top and poured syrup over the whole mess. He grinned like a five-year-old. “Nothing quite like it in the whole wide world.”
    I laughed. “What is it?”
    He took a great big bite. “Delicious.”
    So I had my dinner-dessert and he had his mega-mess, and our tummies were both happy by the time the batter ran out. I was helping clear the table when he asked, “So how are things with Elyssa?”
    “Great! I’ve been taking her over to the nursing home where her mother works after school. She tells me stories about her teacher and this troublemaker kid named Shane—she’s really funny.”
    He grinned at me. “Imagine that.” He sprayed up some suds in the sink and asked, “And Heather? Any progress there?”
    So I told him what I’d been doing at school and how Heather was acting so nervous, and when I got to the part about Kris Kringles and how she’d thrown away her cupcake, he laughed and said, “This is perfect!”
    I shrugged. “I can’t see her actually confessing.”
    “Don’t underestimate the power of a guilty mind.”
    He scrubbed dishes and I dried, and when we were about done he microwaved some cocoa and said, “What about the rest of your life? You still don’t want to talk about it?”
    I just sighed. “I can’t, Hudson.”
    We went onto the porch and sat there, looking at the sky. The stars were out and there was a little cloud like a feather pillow moving across the bottom of the moon. Finally Hudson said, “You’re afraid I’ll tell your grandmother, aren’t you?”
    I just watched the cloud puff along the moon.
    “Have I ever done that in the past?”
    I shook my head a little.
    “Sometimes it helps to let these things out.”
    I wanted to tell him. All about Mrs. Landvogt and the way she was blackmailing me. All about Paula Nook and Mr. Petersen and Hero, the Preposterous Peeing Machine. But what came out