<< Go Back

The Case of the Four-Legged Friend

By Becca Wierwille

Order Now!

Scout Grace Bell’s biggest regret in life was that her first name had only one syllable.
And her middle name. And her last one too.
It wasn’t that she needed a fancy four-syllable name, but her beloved book characters had exciting names and exciting lives. Take Evangeline Eggwhistle, Detective Extraordinaire, for example. The hedgehog detective spent her days finding clues and solving mysteries. Meanwhile, ten-year-old Scout brushed cobwebs from picnic tables and rearranged stones around firepits.
Okay, she didn’t do that every day. June brought extra work. Blueberry Creek Wilderness Camp started in four days. As the daughter of the wilderness camp director and the program manager, Scout loved to help.
But this morning, Scout was on her belly in the big meadow they called the rec field. She was reading the latest Evangeline Eggwhistle novel and looking up words in her pocket dictionary. She couldn’t complain about that.
Blueberry Creek came alive in the summer. The birds chirped, the creek bubbled, the leaves rustled. Delicious smells, like Marco Marino’s famous mint brownies, wafted from the kitchen. In about a month, the wild blueberries would ripen in the forest.
Soon, the rec field would morph into camper stomping grounds. Campers would kick soccer balls, play frisbee, and sometimes sleep under the stars, if they spent a night away from their cozy canvas tents.
No, the rec field would not be the place for Scout to read during the summer. Luckily, between the wilderness camp and the retreat center, Blueberry Creek had plenty of space.
“There’s the lake and the pool and the tubing hill too,” she sang to herself. “There’s the snack shop and the lodge and—”
Before she could finish her song, a brown blur sprung from the forest. It snatched her dictionary from beside her.
“Hey!” Scout’s heart leapt in her chest.
A bear.
No, not a bear.
A dog the size of a bear. With long brown-and-white hair.
He stared at her with deep brown eyes. His front legs rested low to the ground. His butt raised in the air. His hairy tail whipped back and forth.
In his giant mouth, he held her precious dictionary.
“Give me that!” Scout lunged for the Merriam-Webster. Her glasses almost fell from her face.
The dog dodged her. His tail wagged harder.
The pages of her dictionary were no match for his large teeth—or his slobber.
Scout lunged again.
The dog dodged again.
She looked for a collar, but couldn’t see much with the hair around his neck. What was he doing at Blueberry Creek?
Mr. Pierce, the all-camp director and her parents’ boss, made a big deal about the no-pet rule. “We can’t have dogs running around, making messes and scaring campers,” he’d say, tapping his clipboard with his pen.
Scout frowned at the dog.
He grinned back.
Scout knew how to deal with this sort of behavior. She had two older brothers. Fletcher was fourteen. Lennox was twelve, and he could be particularly bothersome.
Scout turned her back on the dog and pushed her glasses up her nose. “I’m ignoring you. You might as well drop the dictionary.”
She glanced over her shoulder. He hadn’t moved.
She looked toward the trail that led down to the pavilion. Dad, Mom, Fletcher, and Lennox were probably there. She could run for help, but the dog might escape with her dictionary.
Scout avoided looking at the dog as she brainstormed the perfect word to describe his actions. “You’re being abominable. Do you know what that means? Very, very bad. Horrendous. Loathsome, even. You don’t want—”
Rip.
Scout whirled back toward him, her two brown braids smacking against her cheeks.
She gasped.
He had pinned the dictionary to the ground, one front paw on the front cover and the other on the back. Tail wagging, he tore pages from the dictionary.
The A’s.
The B’s.
The C’s.
He flung the pages into the air, then seized them in his mouth again.
“My dictionary!” Scout screeched, then gave chase.
He zoomed away and continued his destruction.
No, he wasn’t just destroying the dictionary.
He was eating the pages.
Scout caught up to him, tackled him, and tried to pry open his jaws.
He licked her face.
She pushed away his tongue. It was covered in tiny flecks of soggy paper.
 “Oh, pumpernickel!” Scout said—a catchphrase she’d formed out of her love of the word and absolute disdain of the bread.
Scout wrenched the dictionary from the dog’s mouth. She gaped down at the book.
Only the leather cover and the spine remained.
The dictionary had been small.
But not midmorning-snack small.
Scout’s face burned. She closed her eyes. Could she be dreaming?
She opened her eyes. The dog was still there.
“Abominable,” she whispered under her breath.
Other than that, no words came out. And Scout Grace Bell was rarely at a loss for words.

Order Now!

<< Go Back