Richard Wolkomir & Joyce Rogers Wolkomir

 

 

 

CHAPTER ONE

 

 

Nosmo stared out the picture window at the driveway.

 

It ran straight, then turned and disappeared into a grove of balsams and sugar maples.

   

If you ran down the driveway, around that turn, where would you get to?

 

Nothing moved out there, not even a squirrel.

 

Mrs. Hart wouldn't come home until dark. Nosmo knew that, because that's how it always was now, every day, but he watched for her car anyway.

 

He sighed.

 

Loneliness.

 

He felt hollow inside, and heavy.

 

What if your people don't care about you anymore?

 

He sighed again.

 

Alone. All day. Every day.  

 

Not altogether alone. Three cats and five kittens lived here, too. Sometimes he barked at the cats and chased them under the sofa.

 

Fun.

 

He didn't care for cats. 

 

It was the girls who'd brought those cats home, finding them here and there. They fussed over the cats, forgetting you know who. 

Now all three girls had left—gone to whatever "college" was—but the cats remained, meowing and purring, just asking to be herded under the sofa.

 

What if you ran down the driveway? What might you find out there?

 

Nosmo got up on his hind legs, bracing his big forepaws on the window sill, staring down the driveway. 

 

He sighed again.

  

Outside the window, two cats now stalked grasshoppers on the lawn. How did they get out?

 

Cats smelled.

 

A plan formed in his mind, not clear yet, but starting with step one—see how the cats got out.

 

So he dropped back onto all fours, to search for the cats' escape route. He passed the master bedroom, with its big floor-to-ceiling mirror, and stopped to look at himself, which he liked to do.

 

That handsome dog in the mirror, looking out bright-eyed, with his perked-up ears and honey-and-white colored fur, that was him. As a puppy, he'd peered behind the mirror, where he figured that other dog stood, but he quickly realized he looked at himself in the mirror, and he looked great. Charming. That's what people said. "This corgi looks like a movie star." He didn't know what that meant, exactly, but it was good.

 

Everybody loves me.

 

That thought made him feel better, a little, and he continued on through the house, to see how the cats got out.

 

 He smelled cats everywhere. They smelled of dead mouse and kitty litter, with a hint of dead bird, and cattiness. Stinky. Even so, he followed a cat-smell trail, and it led to the cellar door, slightly ajar, an opening wide enough for a cat, but not for a robust corgi like Nosmo. Although his corgi legs were short, he regarded himself as a big guy. Too big to get past this cellar door, just slightly open.

 

Nosmo sat and studied the door, feeling aggrieved. In the before times, people filled this house, Mr. and Mrs. Hart, and the three girls, and relatives and friends always coming and going, and customers of the business Mrs. Hart used to run, in her basement office, everyone fussing over Nosmo. Now he lived mostly alone, with the cats.

 

It felt empty.

  

He decided what to do about the cellar door—stick your snout through that skinny opening, then shake your head to push the door aside. He did that, and the door edged more open, wide enough now so he could push his head in. He inhaled an aroma of fresh summer air in the basement, which seemed odd. Usually it smelled damp down there, and faintly mousy, and like old books and magazines piled up, a stale paper smell. Now it smelled like mowed grass and like the jonquils growing along the house's foundation.

 

Nosmo pushed himself forward, widening the door opening, so he could squeeze his shoulders in, and after that he pushed through altogether and jounced down the basement steps, his paws plop-plop-plopping on the wooden treads.

 

He liked that plop-plop sound. Standing now on the basement's concrete floor, he looked back up the stairs, thinking he might climb back up, then come down again, to hear his paws go plop-plop, but the thought faded.

 

He sniffed. Excitement ahead. Yes, that summery fresh-air smell came from over there, past Mrs. Hart's no-longer-used desk and filing cabinets, and Nosmo hurried to investigate.

 

Someone had left the door to the yard partly open, and the outdoor smell wafted through the opening. Nosmo barked a single sharp bark, meaning "aha!" He had a go-go-go feeling in his paws.

 

 Moments later, Nosmo stood outside, on the lawn, looking down the driveway. Those two grasshopper-stalking cats cozied up to him, but he ignored them, eyes fixed on the driveway.

 

Out there, wherever the driveway went, was …something.

 

What that something might be, he didn't know, but he wanted to find it. He had to find it.

So he started down the driveway at a trot.

 

(END OF SAMPLE)