Chipper now realized this wasn’t the best place to hide after all. It was dawning on him that if he stayed in here much longer, he would die.
Cough cough cough.
He rose on all fours and started working his way over to the closed door. There were a lot of suitcases in his way, but there was about a foot of space between the top of the bags and the roof of the luggage compartment. Chipper, his head and back rubbing up against the top of the hold, crawled awkwardly over them until he was up against the door.
He sniffed around, rubbed his nose up against the metal, looking for a button or a lever or anything that would make the door lift up, but found nothing. The only way to open it was on the outside, he figured.
More coughing.
Chipper’s head throbbed. And even though, in total darkness, he had no visual sense of up or down or left and right, he was feeling dizzy.
The dog was losing consciousness.
He didn’t know how long it would take for the bus to reach Canfield. A couple of hours, he figured, and he had been on the bus for the better part of an hour. He checked his built-in software: exactly seventy-two minutes to go. Could he last another hour?
Chipper did not believe he could.
He gave his head a shake and kept running his nose along the edge of the door. He managed to push one bag about six inches away from it, dropped his nose down, and saw a sliver of light at the bottom of the door, a crack to the outside.
Chipper pressed his nose up against the crack, getting whiffs of fresh air from outside.
He sniffed and sniffed and sniffed.
The dizziness held off slightly, but the headache was unrelenting. And the coughing wasn’t letting up, either.
This tiny sliver of fresh air was only going to buy Chipper a bit of time, but it was not going to save him. He dared not move away from it, worried that as soon as he did, the exhaust fumes would overwhelm him.
Sniff sniff sniff.
The headache was getting worse. Chipper was starting to feel sleepy.
Sniff sniff.
He began to feel less concerned about his situation. He was starting to think maybe he didn’t feel that bad after all.
He began to dream that he was back at the farm.
There was his mother, herding the sheep. Looking his way, encouraging him to follow. Chipper stumbling along after her on his short, puppy legs.
I’m coming, Mom! Wait for me!
What a lovely place to be. No worries, no cares. All you had to do was run around and play and chase the sheep.
Sni—
Ten
The next day, Jeff was standing on the end of the dock when a small aluminum boat, no bigger than his own twelve-footer, came speeding towards him from the east. The outboard bolted to the back was going full throttle, which brought the bow up and kept Jeff from seeing who was sitting in the back, driving it.
It got closer and closer without slowing down and Jeff feared the boat was going to crash into the dock.
He took a cautious step back.
A couple of seconds before it would have hit the dock, the boat veered sharply, throwing a large wave over the end and soaking Jeff’s running shoes. That was when he saw that the person sitting in the back of the boat, one hand gripped to the outboard’s throttle, was Emily Winslow. She was in white shorts and a red T-shirt and, on top of this, an orange life jacket.
“Hey!” Jeff shouted. “You got my shoes wet!”
She didn’t hear him over the sound of the motor, and he couldn’t hear her either, but he could see that she was laughing.
“Hey!” Jeff shouted again.
Emily spun the boat around sharply, and Jeff wondered if she was going to try to dowse him a second time, but before she reached the dock she cut the throttle back to a soft put-put-put.
“Look what you did to my shoes!” Jeff said.
She made a sad face. “You live on a lake and you’re afraid to get your shoes wet?”
“You drive like a maniac,” he told her.
“I’ve been driving this boat since I was five,” she said.
“You’d think by now you’d be good at it.”
She scowled at Jeff briefly, then asked, “You wanna go for a ride?”
“With you?”
Her eyes rolled. “No, with Captain Nemo. Of course, with me.”
Jeff glanced back towards the cabins, wondering whether Aunt Flo was spying on him. Just because he didn’t see her didn’t mean she wasn’t lurking behind a tree.
He decided to risk it and said to Emily, “Okay, but I can’t be gone long. I’ve got like five acres of grass to cut.” At least Aunt Flo had a riding mower and he didn’t have to do it all by hand.
“Then get in,” she said. “But you have to put on the life preserver thingy.” There was a second vest on the floor of the boat near the middle seat.
Jeff stepped in, slipping slightly as his wet soles met the metal hull, and threw on the life vest. The second he put his butt on the middle seat Emily twisted the throttle full blast. The boat shot forward, nearly knocking Jeff off his seat. He planted his wet shoes hard against the metal bottom to maintain his position. The metal vibrated on the choppy water as they skimmed across the surface of the lake. The way he was sitting, he was looking at where they’d been, but Emily had her eyes fixed forward, and she had those eyes on something.
Jeff lifted his legs and spun around on the bench-like seat so that he was looking the same way. They were headed towards a huge cabin cruiser that was leaving a large wake behind it.
“Hang on!” Emily said, aiming for the waves.
“What are you doing?” Jeff shouted, but Emily either couldn’t hear him over the roar of the outboard, or wasn’t interested in answering his question.
The tiny boat hit the first wave and it felt like they were in the air! Then there was a huge WHOMP! as the boat came back down on the water. Then there was another wave, and another WHOMP!
Jeff felt his butt lift off the seat, then drop back down. He reached out with both hands and gripped the edges — or gunnels — of the boat to keep his balance.
Emily shouted something he couldn’t hear, so he turned around and said, “What?”
She pointed. “Here comes a huge one!”
By the time he’d turned around, they’d hit a third wave — and she was right. It was a doozy. Jeff’s butt went a full six inches off the seat before it came back down hard.
“Ouch!” he cried.
He noticed that Emily had lifted her own butt off the seat just before they came down. She’d known what was coming and prepared for it, but hadn’t bothered to tell Jeff.
“Sore butt?” she asked, and laughed without waiting for an answer.
She throttled back on the motor, which brought the bow down. She stood, still straddling her seat, reached for a handle on the back of the outboard and pulled hard, exposing the shaft and the propeller. Things had suddenly gone wonderfully quiet.
“Just checking to see if I picked up some weeds on the prop,” she said. “Looks okay.”
Jeff noticed, off to his left about thirty feet away, a red buoy. Basically a metal post, about six to eight feet tall, which marked the route boaters should take through this part of the lake. Much further off was a similar buoy, but that one was black.
“What are we doing here?” he asked.
Emily, still standing, was looking into the water as they slowly glided along.
“I think I’ve had enough of hanging out with you,” she said. “I’m out of here.”
And just like that, she stepped out of the boat as casually as if she were stepping out onto a dock.