Lucy's Tricks and Treats

T
he leaves were turning colors—red, orange, yellow, and brown. The air was getting chilly. It was autumn for sure. That meant one thing to Bobby Quinn and his friends Shawn and Candy. Halloween!

“I’m going to be a pirate!” Bobby said as they walked home from school.

“I might be an astronaut,” Shawn said. “What about you, Candy?”

“Well, I thought about being a fairy,” Candy said. “Then I thought lots of the girls might be fairies. So maybe I’ll be a queen. My mother has one of those sparkly crowns somewhere. But she probably won’t be able to find it. A witch! A witch would be good. Don’t forget we get to wear our costumes twice on Halloween. Trick-or-treating and at the school parade!”

Candy was a talker. Bobby and Shawn were shy. Not as shy as they used to be, though.

“Are you going to make your costume? Or are you going to buy it?” Shawn asked Bobby.

Bobby shrugged. He wasn’t sure. But he had a reason for being a pirate. He didn’t want to talk about it yet. If his idea worked out, it would make being a pirate extra-special.
“I’m hoping there’s going to be a pirate surprise” was all he would say.

The three kids stopped at Bobby’s house. Shawn lived across the street. Candy’s house was a few blocks away.

“Hey, Lucy’s waiting for you,” Shawn said, pointing at the Quinns’ living-room window.

Lucy was Bobby’s dog. She was a little brown-and-white beagle. She had a few black spots and chocolate-colored eyes.

Lucy
was
waiting for Bobby, but she wasn’t waiting patiently.

She stood at the window with her paws on the glass. Small howls interrupted short barks. She wiggled around.

“Lucy’s doing her happy dance,” Candy said. “I wish Butch did a happy dance when I came home.”

Bobby and Shawn looked at each other.
They tried not to laugh. Butch, Candy’s dog, was maybe the laziest dog they had ever met. It was hard to picture him getting off the couch when Candy came home. A happy dance? Absolutely not!

Bobby said goodbye to his friends. He was barely inside the house when Lucy dashed over to him. She leapt into his arms. She licked his face. Bobby smiled. Lucy acted as if he had been gone for a month.

“Hey, girl,” Bobby said, “calm down.”

Lucy got the message. She wriggled to the floor. Then she looked up at him. She seemed to be saying,
Let’s have some fun
.

“Okay, Lucy. Maybe we’ll go for a walk,” Bobby said.

Walk!
Lucy knew that word.

Before Bobby could get Lucy’s leash, his mother came into the hallway.

“Hi, Mom. I’m taking Lucy out,” Bobby told her.

Mrs. Quinn smiled, but she looked tired. “That’s a very good idea. Do you want to say hello to your father first?”

“Dad’s home?” Bobby asked, surprised.

“He came home early,” his mother answered. “We’re getting started on the nursery.”

Up until that day, the “nursery” had been Mr. Quinn’s office. Now the Quinn family was waiting for the adoption agency to bring them a baby. Bobby’s parents weren’t sure when that would be. It could be tomorrow. It could be months from now. Mrs. Quinn wanted to be ready.

Thinking about the baby made Bobby feel funny. It had been just the three of them for eight years. Mom, Dad, and Bobby. Then Lucy had joined them last summer. She had
changed everything for Bobby. He had been very shy. But Lucy was so friendly and so much fun. Everyone liked being around her. She helped him make lots of new friends.

Bobby hoped the baby would work out half as well as Lucy had.

“We need to keep Lucy out of the office,” his mother said. “She wants to get in the middle of things.”

Bobby nodded. If there was one place Lucy liked to be, it was in the middle of things. “I’ll try,” he said.

Mr. Quinn came into the hall. “Hi, Bobby,” he said. He ruffled Bobby’s hair.

“How’s it going?” Bobby asked.

“Well, the desk is in the middle of the room, and the stuff from that closet is on the floor. But I guess we’re making progress,” Mr. Quinn said. He didn’t look all that sure.

“Do you want to have a look?” Mrs. Quinn asked. “I can show you the new wallpaper. It’s yellow with rainbows. Good for a boy or a girl.”

“Oh, it’s going to be a boy,” Bobby said.

“Why do you think so?” his father asked.

“Because boys are more fun,” Bobby replied promptly.

“Lucy is a girl,” his mother pointed out.

Before Bobby could say, “But she’s a dog,” Mrs. Quinn turned to her husband. “You closed the office door, didn’t you?”

Mr. Quinn made a face. “I think so.”

A loud crash came from the office.

“Lucy!” everyone said together.

They hurried down the hallway to the office.

Mr. Quinn had not remembered to close the door.

The room didn’t look like an office now. And it certainly didn’t look like a nursery. It looked like a big mess.

The stuff from the closet was scattered across the floor. A cup of coffee had been knocked over. A small river of the dark liquid headed for the door. Next to the coffee cup, two half-chewed doughnuts lay on the paper bag Lucy had pulled them from.

Lucy had managed to do a lot in very little time.

“Where is she?” Mrs. Quinn asked.

Mr. Quinn pointed under the desk at a mounded white sheet.

At first Bobby was confused. But then the sheet started rustling. From under it came a spooky howl.

“Looks like Lucy wants to dress up for
Halloween, too,” Mrs. Quinn said. “As a ghost.”

Bobby kneeled by the desk and lifted the sheet. Lucy barely looked up when the sheet came off. Something was between her paws—a piece of yellow wallpaper dotted with rainbows. She was busy shredding it with her teeth.

“She had been doing so well,” Mrs. Quinn said with a sigh.

“She’s hardly caused any trouble in weeks,” Bobby said, trying to defend his dog.

“You can’t really blame her,” Mr. Quinn said. “How could she help herself? A room like this, with stuff everywhere, must have looked like an amusement park to Lucy.”

Bobby shook his head. “And she went on all the rides.”