When she reached the cafeteria door, she paused. Was she ready to meet Alfie? Nope, at least not out of the blue like this. But how could she meet him in a natural way? Then she smiled. She’d use new school rule number eight: Join a club to meet people. She was about to learn how to debate.
ALI’S PLAN TO END THE SLOANE FAMILY FEUD
Find out what started it.
Meet Alfie Sloane.
To be continued.
Four
Ali might not be ready to meet Alfie yet, but she did want to see him. She scanned every face she passed in the hallway for the rest of the day. But she was out of luck: no one looked like they could be her cousin. Based on the photograph, she imagined Alfie as a mirror image of herself—short, with dark frizzy hair and pale gray eyes like Digger’s that reminded you of tarnished silver. She was pleased to see interstellar boy and girl in her science class; it was like they connected her to Alfie. Had they found him at lunch? Based on the grumpy expression on interstellar girl’s face and the happy one on interstellar boy’s, she guessed yes. When the dismissal bell rang, she bolted, anxious to get home and tell Gigi and Digger about Alfie.
Unlike previous days, the fog hadn’t burned off. Some of it floated past her like wispy magic carpets, while fatter tufts settled into the trees. Its frigid tendrils wrapped her in a foggy coat, but she was too excited about her news to mind the cold. Half a block ahead, she spied the same boy she’d seen on the way to school. He still swung his knapsack and, like her, was surrounded by the creeping mist.
Digger was asleep when she arrived, stretched out on the Oriental carpet in front of the fireplace in the parlor. Except he wasn’t Digger; he was Digger’s favorite thing to change into: a black collie-Labrador retriever mix. Ali knew she was the only kid to arrive home from school to find her father’s tail wagging from a happy dream. She didn’t mind that he spent so much time as a dog. In fact, sometimes she preferred Digger the dog to the real Digger, because he was always cheerful when he was a dog.
She gave him a gentle nudge with her foot and he started, his dog eyes wild until he realized it was Ali. The wolfish grin he flashed her was cute, but she needed to share her momentous news with human Digger. She dropped into a comfy wingback chair and waited for him to change back.
“Good day?” he asked when he was capable of human speech.
Ali pointed to his furry left ear. “You missed a spot.”
“Whoops!” Then he was all Digger, though he continued to lounge on the carpet. Digger wasn’t much for furniture. “How was school?”
Ali gave him a sassy smile. “I was myself all day long, which was super easy, because I didn’t talk to anyone.”
Digger chuckled. “You win. I won’t bug you about being yourself anymore. Maybe the fog is getting to me. It makes me squirrelly and anxious for some reason.”
“As in, you want to chase a squirrel?”
He grinned. “Maybe.”
“Gigi will kill you if you start chasing her squirrels.” Her Alfie news was so stupendous she wasn’t sure how to share it, so instead she asked, “How was your day?”
Her question was met with a dramatic sigh. “I spent half my day doing laundry. Gigi spilled every mug of hot chocolate I gave her. The spilled drinks and constant bird and squirrel visits are driving me round the bend. I didn’t get to my art at all today.”
Ali thought of her mother working twelve-hour shifts at the nursing home. She hoped Digger was smart enough not to complain to her. Time to change the subject and share her news. “Guess who goes to my school?”
“Who?”
“Alfie Sloane.”
Digger sat up. “They came back,” he said, more to himself than to Ali. “Did you meet him?”
“Not yet. Someone said he’s joining the debate team, so I am too.”
Digger cocked his head. “You hate public speaking. You were going to join the swim team at the aquatic center.”
It was a valid point, but Ali brushed it aside. “Nope. Debate team. It’s the easiest way for me to meet Alfie.”
“Huh,” said Digger, which bugged Ali because he always said “huh” when he didn’t agree with something but didn’t want to be confrontational. The idea of public speaking already worried her; she didn’t need him to make it worse.
“It’ll be fun.” She tried to sound cheery, but it came out flat, like she’d said, “It’ll be like sucking on a lemon” instead.
“I bet he looks like you. People used to think his father and I were twins.” According to Ali’s mom, Digger and Teddy were like brothers, not cousins, which was one of the reasons Ali was so desperate to meet Alfie. She just knew that if they met, they’d be friends for life too.
“Teddy.”
Teddy’s name made Digger wince. Ali didn’t know much about the rest of the Sloane family, but she knew Teddy had died three months before Alfie was born and four months before she was. His death was the reason the Sloanes didn’t speak. Alfie’s mom had moved back home to England right after the funeral, where she gave birth to Alfie, and Ali’s parents had left Saint John. In fact, Ali knew so little about the Other Sloanes—the name she used to refer to the Sloanes she’d never met—that they’d become characters from a fairy tale in her mind, a family separated by an ancient curse or a wicked spell.
Digger stood up. “I’ve got to get supper ready.” He patted her on the head like she was a puppy and disappeared into the kitchen.
Ali wasn’t surprised by Digger’s escape; when he didn’t want to talk about something, he disappeared. The thing about Digger was that he was always home, and yet his mind was often somewhere else. Still, she’d seen his excitement when she’d mentioned Alfie. Her plan to end the Sloane Family Feud would work. Digger didn’t know it yet, but she was going to fix everything.
ALI’S DIGGER RULES
Don’t tell anyone that Digger is a Copycat.
Don’t mention Teddy Sloane.
Don’t force Digger to talk when he doesn’t want to.
Don’t complain. It won’t change things.
Five
Gigi’s great joy was feeding the neighborhood’s critters. When she stopped in to share her news, Ali wasn’t shocked to find a chubby red squirrel nose-deep in a pile of sunflower seeds on Gigi’s outstretched palm. Digger wasn’t a fan of the practice, probably because it was hard for him to control the urge to chase them. He called them rats with bushy tails. Ali worried that they’d bring strange germs inside with them. But it was Gigi’s house, and the family lived with her rent-free. She could do what she liked. To placate Digger and Ali, Gigi kept her bedroom door closed. So far, no pesky creature had tried to move in, but why would they when there was so much food in Gigi’s room?
Gigi’s room was magical, so different from the cruddy apartments Ali had grown up in, with their secondhand couches, torn upholstery, wobbly chairs, and mattresses of questionable origin. There were no scratched tabletops here; Gigi’s tables were covered with colorful scarves collected during her travels to Istanbul and Morocco. Oriental rugs overlapped on the floor, and the Oz-green walls were covered with paintings and photographs from the places Gigi had visited. One wall was a shrine to Gigi’s favorite old-time movie star, Walter Pidgeon, who was born in Saint John and was one of the biggest movie stars of the 1940s.