Patches by Ellen Miles

CHAPTER ONE
    “Bored, bored, bored out of my gourd. Bored, bored, bored out of my gourd . . .” Sammy sang as he bounced a tennis ball against the wall of the garage.
    Charles was bored, too. It was a hot Saturday in May, and he and his best friend had nothing to do.
    Well, that wasn’t exactly true. There was always
something
to do, if you asked Charles’s mom. “Help me clean out the basement,” she’d suggest. Or, “Offer to weed Mrs. Schneider’s garden.” Or, “Take Buddy on a long walk.”
    The first idea was out of the question. Charles figured that ninety-nine percent of the stuff in the basement had been stored there since long before he was born, so he wasn’t responsible for it.
    As for Mrs. Schneider’s weeds, he and Sammy had pulled plenty of them last weekend to make up for the living room window they’d broken. Not on purpose, of course. How could they help it if the Schneiders’ house was
exactly
where left field would be if there were a left field in their imaginary baseball diamond? Anyway, it had almost been worth it. That inside-the-park home run was the best hit of Charles’s career so far.
    And Buddy? He was the adorable puppy that Charles Peterson and his family had adopted. Charles loved Buddy more than anything. He was the perfect puppy. Buddy had big brown eyes, soft, toast-colored fur, floppy ears, and a little white heart on his chest. His breath smelled sweet and his tiny baby teeth were so white (and sharp!). He was always happy and always ready for a game or a snuggle.
    Buddy was growing up fast. Sometimes Charles still couldn’t believe that Buddy would belong to him
forever
! The Petersons had been the fosterfamily for lots of puppies, giving each one a safe place to live while they found it the perfect home. But Buddy was different. Buddy had come to stay.
    Buddy got lots and lots of attention from everybody in the family. He’d already been on
two
long walks that day, once with Lizzie, Charles’s older sister, and once with Charles and Dad and the Bean.
    Charles’s little brother, the Bean, did have a real name — Adam — but nobody ever called him that. The Bean was a toddler, and the funny thing about him was that he liked to pretend he was a dog. Some people might think that was weird, but the Petersons were used to it. And it was easiest just to play along.
    So that morning, when Charles had gotten out Buddy’s red leash, the Bean brought over his green leash, too. He sat up straight and eager while Charles clipped it onto a little green harness Mom had made for him. You could practically imagine the Bean’s tail wagging. Dad took hold ofthe Bean’s leash while Charles held Buddy’s, and they walked all the way down to the playground and back. The Bean hardly barked at all, so Charles and Dad gave him a cookie when they got home. Buddy got a dog biscuit.
    Now Buddy and the Bean were both inside, taking a nap together on Buddy’s red-plaid dog bed. That was the Bean’s favorite place to sleep, curled up with Buddy and a stuffed dog toy.
    “We could walk Buddy again, I guess,” Charles said to Sammy. He knew the puppy was always happy to be taken out. For Buddy, every walk was an adventure.
    “Goldie and Rufus would probably like another walk, too.” Sammy and his parents lived next door with two golden retrievers, an older one, Rufus, and a puppy, Goldie. Goldie was the first puppy the Petersons ever fostered. “Only . . .”
    “Only — what?” Charles was suspicious. He had noticed that Sammy had a certain gleam inhis eye, the one that meant he had a capital P Plan. And Sammy’s Plans often led to trouble.
    “Only . . . the dogs might get scared if we go where I think we should go.”
    Now Charles was curious. “Where’s that?”
    “To the haunted house.” Sammy let the ball bounce away down the driveway. Then he told Charles a story he had heard from an older boy at school. “Harry Bremer says there’s a ghost in this house near his, over by