The Summer of Riley by Eve Bunting Page A

went “Run, rabbit, run, run, run.”
    Mom and Stephen were in front of us. The red ribbon that held her hair back had come loose, and Stephen pulled it all the way off. He lifted her hair from her neck and tied the ribbon back on. The way she turned to smile at him over her shoulder gave mesome kind of pang. I thought his fingers brushed her cheek, but I wasn’t sure. Did I want this? What about Dad? Of course, he had Phoebe now. What was it Mom had said? “Your dad and I parted for good reasons. And for those good reasons we won’t be getting back together.” What was it Peachie had said? “Sometimes you can’t go back.”
    It was close to noon now.
    Mom and Stephen and Grace’s parents went across to the picnic table where we’d left our stuff. They called us over. “We’re getting ready to eat,” Mom said. “William, we forgot to bring the extra blanket from Stephen’s truck. Will you run and get it?”
    Grace’s dad was taking hot dog packages from the freezer chest. “Can you corral your brothers, Gracie? They’re over there in the Flying Dutchman circle.”
    I caught the keys Stephen threw to me and raced toward the cars to get the blanket. A white station wagon had parked itself beside us, and as I ran past, something scrabbled loud and hard at the back window.
Yip, yip, yip.
The yipping was so loud it made me leap backward, and I bumped my elbow on the jutting-out mirror of the truck.
    There was a tempest raging inside the stationwagon, and the tiny barking was as ferocious as tiny barking could ever be. A little terrier was glaring out at me from the inch-wide crack in the rear window. The dog was so small and the window so high that it had to stand on the back of the driver’s seat, sliding off every couple of seconds, scrambling up again. Its nose was button-sized, black, wet as licked licorice. Its little teeth were baby doll teeth. I couldn’t help laughing.
    “Whoa! Whoa!” I held my hands out in front of me as if I were surrendering. “You’re awful tough for such a puny guy. Relax, will you? I’m not going to steal your car!”
    I rubbed my elbow. “And I dropped the keys. See what you made me do?”
    There was another faint sound coming from somewhere close. What was it? A kind of snuffling. Another dog, maybe in the next-door van?
    I saw the shine of Stephen’s keys in the dirt and bent to pick them up, and that was when I saw the feet in black cowboy boots, the thick legs in strained- tight jeans, and realized there was someone crouched behind the truck, almost beneath the hedge. Whoever it was had his arm across his face, and it was from under the arm that the strange snuffling sound came.
    “What …?” I began, and I took another step forward. Though I still couldn’t see his face, I recognized Ellis Porter. For a terrible second I thought maybe he was lying in ambush to jump me. But there was no way. He was hunched over, crying or something.
    He lowered his arm. His face was twisted like a little hurt kid’s.
    “Ellis,” I stammered. “What are you doing?”
    “Dog,” he whispered.
    “Dog?” I repeated and pointed at the station wagon. “You mean the little guy back there?”
    He jammed his knuckles into his mouth, gnawing at them. I could see he was terrified. Could this be supercool, supermean, superscary Ellis Porter? I’d never seen him like this.
    How could I be sorry for him? But for a minute I was.
    “It’s okay,” I said, and before I could think about it, I got down and crawled under the hedge with him.

Chapter 18

    W ho would have believed that I would have been sitting under a dripping hedge with supercool, supermean, superscary Ellis Porter and that he would have been jabbering at me, nonstop?
    “I don’t tell … I don’t say.” His voice jerked in bursts and stops.
    “Was it the little dog that … that …” I began. Impossible to say the words “that scared you” to this guy! Instead I said, “That surprised you? He can’t get out, you