Jack

Jack by Ellen Miles Page A

Book: Jack by Ellen Miles Read Free Book Online
Authors: Ellen Miles
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    Yours sinserely, Lizzie Peterson, your #1 fan
    She did spell-check and found a few mistakes, which she corrected. Then she printed out the letter. It filled a whole page! There wasn’t much room for horse drawings, so she drew dog paw prints and flowers all around the edges, using every color of marker she had. At the bottom, near where she signed her name, Lizzie drew a picture of Sunny, the main character in
Mountain Girl.
It came out so well she almost wanted to keep it, but then she thought of how impressed Kit Smithers would be.
    She found an envelope in a drawer and wrote
Kit Smithers, author
on it. Then Lizzie realized that she did not know Kit Smithers’s address.
    When she stood up, Buddy jumped up, too. His tail wagged, his eyes shone, and his ears were all perky. What a happy dog. Lizzie loved that about Buddy. He was always excited to see what would happen next. “We’re only going down to Mom’s study, that’s all,” she told him. Buddy didn’t care.It was still an adventure. He charged down the hall in front of her.
    Mom liked to work on her newspaper articles in the evening, while Lizzie and Charles did their homework and the Bean was in bed. Right now Mom was writing a long article about a man who ran a green building business. She had talked about it at dinner the night before. At first Lizzie and Charles had both thought that meant that the man built greenhouses. Or green houses. But it turned out to mean that he built houses that did not use as much energy as regular houses. Lizzie paused in the doorway to watch Mom tap away on her computer. How could anybody type so fast?
    “Mom?”
    Mom spun around on her chair and smiled at Lizzie. “Hi, sweetie! What have you got there?”
    Lizzie held up the envelope. “I wrote a letter to Kit Smithers, but I don’t know her address.”
    “I bet she’ll love getting a letter from you.” Momleaned back and stretched. “Bring me one of her books and we’ll see who the publisher is. We can send your letter to her publisher, and they’ll send it on to her.”
    Lizzie ran to her room and found one of her other Kit Smithers favorites,
The Long Valley,
on her bookshelf. When she brought it back, Mom showed her the name and address of Kit Smithers’s publisher, right on one of the front pages. Lizzie was copying it onto the envelope when the phone rang.
    Mom picked it up. “Hello? Oh, hello, Amanda. How are you?” She listened.
    Lizzie waved. “Tell Aunt Amanda I said hi!”
    Mom held up a finger. “What’s that? You have a puppy you want us to foster?”
    Lizzie stopped writing. “A puppy? What kind? Where did it come from? Can we foster it? Please? Please?”
    Mom frowned at Lizzie and made a “zip-the-lip” motion. “Tonight? Amanda, are you serious?”
    Lizzie jumped up and down. “Say yes! Say yes! I’ll do all the work, I promise! A new puppy! Yay!”
    Mom sighed. “Okay, Amanda. I guess if you’re that desperate, we can help you out. But only for tonight.”

CHAPTER TWO
    “What kind of puppy? How old? Boy or girl? Why does it need a new home?” Lizzie peppered her mother with questions.
    “Lizzie, Lizzie. Easy, there! I don’t know the answers to any of those questions, but we’ll both know soon. Aunt Amanda is on her way over right now. All she said was to get the crate ready, and to make sure Buddy is shut up in your room —”
    “What? Why does Buddy have to get shut up in Lizzie’s room? And did I hear something about a puppy?” Charles appeared in the doorway. Buddy ran over to greet him.
    “We’re getting a new foster puppy!” Lizzie couldn’t wait to tell her brother the news.
    “We’re not necessarily fostering the puppy,” Mom told Charles. “Your aunt Amanda’s in a pinch because she has a homeless puppy on her hands and an obedience class to teach tonight. And as for Buddy, he only has to be shut up for a little while, when the new puppy first comes over.”
    “Did you hear that, Buddy?”

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