The Dragon in the Volcano (2 page)

“If I were you, I wouldn’t believe everything I read in those junky magazines,” Daisy said.

“Daisy is right, Emmy. Chad and Amanda are TLFEE,” Jesse said.

“What?” Daisy squawked. It was bad enough when Emmy carried on this way, but when Jesse
joined in, it was almost more than she could stand.

Jesse explained. “TLFEE. You know, ‘true lovers for ever and ever.’ Chad and Amanda are America’s sweethearts, the Marvelous Two of Malibu. They even go by one name: Chamanda! They’re more in love today than they were when romance first sparked on the beach on Maui where they were filming
Blue Rush
.”

“Then why is Chad rekindling his old flame, Cindy Curtis, on location in Rome?” Emmy wanted to know.

“Everyone knows they’re just good friends,” said Jesse. “Besides, Chad’s been on the best-dressed list two years running, and Cindy has zero fashion sense. When Joan and Melissa saw her on the red carpet, they said Cindy was a bowwow, not a wow-wow.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Emmy said. “There was one tier too many of ruffles on that gown of hers. And the color! Puleease!”

“Was that supposed to be pink?” Jesse said. “It looked more like
puke
to me.”

“You are so right, Jesse Tiger,” Emmy said fervently.

Daisy’s small shriek struck them both silent. “Would you two stop talking
tripe
?” she said from between her teeth.

“Sorry,” Jesse said sheepishly.

Emmy shrugged. “Actually, tripe can be quite tasty.”

Daisy wagged her head. As far as she was concerned, Emmy had become far too wrapped up in the lives of the rich and famous since she had begun reading the movie and gossip magazines from the recycling bin of their neighbor across the street. Because he had grown up so far from the United States, Jesse was more than ready to share this fascination. Luckily, Jesse only talked this way with Emmy, but even that was too much for Daisy.

“How was school today?” Emmy asked sweetly.

Daisy said, “You know how school was. You were there—causing trouble, I might add.”

“I wasn’t causing trouble,” Emmy said. “I was helping. There was a fire, so I fetched the hose.”

“It was a fire
drill
,” Daisy said.

Emmy looked puzzled. “What is a fire drill?” she asked. “Is it a special tool to drill down through the earth’s crust?”

“No. It’s when you
pretend
there is a fire so that you can practice getting out of the building in a safe and orderly fashion,” Jesse explained patiently.

“Well, in that case, I was
practicing
fetching the hose to put the pretend fire out,” Emmy said breezily. “I don’t see what the big whoop is. Cool
your jets, Daisy Flower. Besides, it gave me a chance to set eyes on that dreamy Dewey Forbes again.”

Jesse and Daisy exchanged a look of utter bewilderment:
Dewey Forbes
?

“Dewey Forbes is
not
dreamy,” Jesse said.

“Dewey Forbes is a bossy know-it-all,” Daisy said.

“Well, maybe I like bossy know-it-alls,” Emmy said primly. “Maybe that’s why I think Dewey is such a little hottie.”

“You know what your problem is, Emmy? You’ve been reading too much junk,” Daisy said as she snatched the magazine from Emmy’s talons.

Emmy’s eyes took on a cunning gleam. “Well, if you let me go to school with you, maybe I would read
good
things instead.”

“No dogs allowed,” Daisy reminded her, a little sadly, “and definitely no dragons.”

“You just want to be in the same reading group as Dewey Forbes,” Jesse teased as he opened his notebook on the picnic table and started his math homework. Dewey was the fastest reader in the class, so fast he had a reading group all to himself. Daisy and Jesse were in the next fastest group, which was fine with both of them. As Uncle Joe always said, “Reading isn’t a race; it’s an adventure.”

“I’m certainly smart enough to be in your class. I can add, subtract, multiply, and do fractions and decimals in my head,” said Emmy, peering over Jesse’s shoulder. “By the way, Jesse Tiger, the answer to problem number three is twenty-five and a half. Not thirty.”

“Don’t tell me the answer, Em!” he said. “I’m supposed to figure it out for myself.”

“If you get your homework done fast enough, maybe we can go up to the barn and play before dinner,” Emmy said eagerly.

Daisy felt a twinge of guilt. It had rained most of last weekend, and they hadn’t been up to the barn in almost two weeks. No wonder Emmy was bored. Daisy resolved then and there to try to make quality time for Emmy. Emmy picked up another magazine while the cousins did their homework until Uncle Joe called them in to dinner.

“We’re having meat loaf with Krispees, Emmy,” Daisy said. “Can I tempt you with leftovers?”

Emmy didn’t look up from the pages of
Shimmer, the Magazine for Young Women in the Glow
. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll just hang out here and calculate my Mating Dating Rating. I’m going to take the quiz and figure out whether I’m ‘hot to trot’ or ‘too cool for school.’ I’ll nip out later and pick myself up a little something.”

“Yeah, a little bunny or a squirrel,” Daisy muttered as she and Jesse packed up their books and left the garage.

“I wonder what my Mating Dating Rating is,” Jesse wondered aloud.

“Jesse Tiger, stop talking tripe and think! What are we going to do with her? Her head is getting filled up with
junk
!” Daisy said.

“Kids these days,” Jesse said with a wag of his shaggy brown head. Daisy punched him on the arm.

“She’s fine, Daze, stop worrying,” Jesse said, rubbing his arm. “It’s just that she has time to burn.”

“We’d better get to the library soon and get her some
wholesome
stuff to read,” Daisy said.

At dinner, Uncle Joe pounded the bottom of the ketchup bottle over the slab of meat loaf on his plate. “You know, guys, Ms. Goodman is a very nice lady, but I’m not sure I want to be getting phone calls from her every other day.”

The cousins sagged against each other.

“We’re sorry,” said Jesse.

“We’re going to try to spend more quality time with Emmy,” said Daisy.

Aunt Maggie took the ketchup bottle gently away from her husband and coaxed the ketchup out
of the bottle with a butter knife. “I wonder whether we should contact those farmers.”

“What farmers?” Jesse asked.

“The farmers whose daughter went away to college,” Aunt Maggie said. “You know … Emmy’s former owners?”

“Oh!” said Jesse. That was a cover story they had made up about how Emmy had come to stay with them. The problem with making up cover stories is that you have to remember them in great detail in case anyone brings them up. Daisy was great at this. Jesse, not so much. He looked to Daisy for an answer.

“They moved someplace far, far away,” Daisy said mysteriously.

“Maybe we can find out where they moved—far, far away,” Aunt Maggie said, not managing to hide a smile. “I was thinking perhaps they might take Emmy back … at least until the school year is over.”

Daisy and Jesse both said “NO!” so loudly that Uncle Joe looked up from his meat loaf.

“She’s bored, kids. There’s nothing for her to do here while you’re at school,” Uncle Joe said. “And every time we tie her up in the yard, she gets loose and runs off.”

“It’s really not fair to Emmy to make her stay
cooped up in the garage all day long,” Aunt Maggie said.

It was a good thing that the phone rang just then, because Jesse and Daisy were fresh out of arguments. The cousins exchanged a helpless look. Of course it was unfair to keep Emmy cooped up in the garage, but what were they supposed to do? She was their dragon and they were her Keepers. There was no giving her away to someone else, even if they wanted to, which they didn’t.

They heard Aunt Maggie in the next room talking on the phone. She sounded excited. A few minutes later, she returned to the kitchen, her face flushed and happy.

“Guess what?” she said. “Sherie just gave birth to twins—a boy and a girl!”

“Twins?” Daisy said. “I thought they were just having a girl!”

Sherie was Daisy’s brother Aaron’s wife. They already had a two-year-old named Paul, Daisy’s first nephew and Jesse’s first second cousin.

“That’s what they thought, too,” said Aunt Maggie giddily. “Apparently, the little boy was hiding behind the little girl, so the sonogram didn’t pick him up.”

“Yeah,” said Daisy with a smug look at Jesse, “boys are always hiding behind girls.”

“Very funny,” said Jesse, kicking Daisy beneath the table.

“I told Aaron we’d fly out and give them a hand. Little Paul’s barely out of diapers. I think they’re going to need all the help they can get.”

“Who’s going to look after us?” Daisy said.

“Miss Alodie,” said Aunt Maggie.

Jesse and Daisy got up from the table and did their Happy Prospector’s Dance. Miss Alodie was their neighbor down the street, a little old garden gnome of a lady who knew that Emmy was a dragon. Having Miss Alodie for a sitter was going to be like having a fairy godmother come over for a slumber party.

The next day at school, Daisy made a card in art class for her new niece and nephew. Jesse made a card for his second cousin Paul, who, he guessed, might be feeling a little left out, not to mention overwhelmed. Throughout the day, Jesse kept looking out the window, expecting to see Emmy out in the schoolyard, romping and clowning around, bringing all the kids over to the window to egg her on the way she often did. But Emmy never showed up. This made Jesse feel both oddly disappointed and very anxious.

He and Daisy were even more disappointed and anxious when they got home after soccer
practice to find that Emmy was not waiting for them in the garage. Thinking she might have gone up to the old dairy barn in the meadow behind the house, they went there. But she wasn’t in the barn, so they came back and did their homework in the garage, just in case she happened to come home.

At dinner, Uncle Joe and Aunt Maggie kept talking about the new babies, and Jesse and Daisy didn’t want to spoil their excitement by mentioning the wayward sheepdog.

“She’ll be back by morning” was the last thing Jesse said to Daisy that night before bedtime.

In the morning, when they went out to the garage after breakfast, Emmy still wasn’t there. They went back into the house to find that Uncle Joe was on the laptop in the kitchen, getting plane tickets to Boston. Aunt Maggie was leaning over Uncle Joe’s shoulder, and they were disagreeing about which box to select next.

“Emmy ran away,” Daisy announced.

Uncle Joe’s eyes never left the computer screen. “She’ll come home when she’s ready. She always has before.”

“She’s never been gone this long,” Jesse said. “It’s overnight!”

“If she’s not home after school today, check the
dog pound,” Aunt Maggie said. “It’s the blue box, honey. See? It’s blinking.”

“If all else fails,” Uncle Joe said, “you can always put up signs. Isn’t that what you guys did when you found that strange lizard that time?”

That strange lizard had been the baby dragon, Emmy, and the signs they had posted had resulted in St. George the Dragon Slayer coming to claim Emmy so that he could drink her blood. Understandably, the cousins were in no hurry to put up any signs this time.

That day at school, they told Ms. Lasky about Emmy running away. Ms. Lasky looked so sad that they thought she might burst into tears. In the afternoon, Ms. Lasky went around the classroom and asked each student what he or she had picked for a science project. Dewey Forbes picked the internal combustion engine. Daisy picked gems and crystals. When Ms. Lasky got to Jesse, he said, “Lost sheepdogs?”

The other kids giggled, but Ms. Lasky smiled gently. “It’s not an appropriate topic for a science project, Jesse. But I’ll tell you what. Owing to special circumstances, I’m going to give you an extension. Take the long weekend to mull it over.”

“Thanks, Ms. Lasky,” Jesse said with a grateful sigh.

After school, Jesse and Daisy stopped off at the pound. They searched the cages filled with barking, yapping dogs, but Emmy wasn’t there. Ms. Mindy, the dogcatcher, said, “I told you I didn’t have any sheepdogs. But don’t worry. I’ll call if and when Emmy shows.”

The cousins continued home in grim silence. Even before they opened the garage door, they could tell Emmy wasn’t going to be there: the garage was cold and dark and had a bleak air of abandonment about it. Jesse felt a lump in his throat, and Daisy had the bright-eyed look she got when she was holding tears back. Daisy groped for Jesse’s hand, and together they made their way over to the far left corner.

“Whoa!” said Jesse, dropping Daisy’s hand.

“Holy moly!” said Daisy.

Emmy’s nest was normally overflowing with rolled-up socks. But the socks were gone—every last tube sock, kneesock, and anklet.

“Where did they go?” Jesse asked.

“I have no idea!” said Daisy. Then she said in a determined voice, “But I think it’s high time we called in the professor.”

Jesse sat down at the computer in his bedroom and keyed in
www.foundadragon.org
, and the familiar white-bearded face of their online dragon consultant appeared on the screen. He was lighting a pipe. Jesse and Daisy were both a little surprised,
because they had never seen him smoking a pipe before. He held up one finger as he puffed away to get the fire started in the pipe’s bowl. The cousins waited patiently.