Bear

BEAR

For Wayne, who loves winter (and dogs) as much as I do.

“Look — look — look!” The Bean was pointing and shouting.
“B!
I see a
B! B
is for Bean!”

Lizzie had to smile. Her little brother was getting really good at his letters. He could always spot
A
for Adam (his real name, not that anyone ever called him that),
B
for Bean,
C
for Charles (Lizzie’s middle brother), and, of course,
L
for Lizzie, who was the oldest. “That’s good!” she said, noting that the car passing them also had a
D
and a
Y
in its license plate. Excellent! The Bean wasn’t so good at those letters yet, but Lizzie needed both of them for her bingo card.

The Petersons were piled into the family van, and they were driving north. Lizzie liked the sound of that: It was adventurous, like an
expedition. So what if they weren’t going all the way to the North Pole, or even as far north as Canada? “Will there still be snow, even though it’s March?” she had asked when she first heard they were going to Vermont. Lizzie loved being outside, even in winter.
Especially
in winter! She loved sledding, building snow forts and snowmen, and even helping Dad shovel the driveway. The only thing she wasn’t so sure about was whether she would enjoy cross-country skiing as much as Dad thought she would.

Lizzie had gone to a ski resort once with her best friend, Maria, and Maria’s father. She had been scared of riding the chairlift, a million miles above the snowy hill. She had worried about getting
off
the chairlift (how exactly did that work?). And she had been
terrified
of zooming downhill on the two planks that felt stapled to her feet.

Lizzie was strong. She could do twenty pull-ups and she could run fast, but sports that took a lot of coordination were not exactly her specialty.

Thankfully, Mom and Dad said that the resort type of skiing was way too expensive for a family vacation. And Dad kept telling her that cross-country skiing was a lot less scary. “It’s just like you’re walking through the woods, only on skis,” he said again now, as they drove north.

That sounded easier — but it also sounded like a lot of work, trudging through the deep snow. Oh, well. Lizzie was willing to give it a try.

Dad also kept promising that there would be lots of snow in Vermont. “In fact, I heard they had a big snowstorm last week, and there might be another while we’re there!” He sounded excited.

“Snow? Where?” The Bean stared out the window.

Lizzie looked too, hoping to see snow on the ground. But all she saw were rocks and dead-looking grass. “We still have two hours to go!” she told her brother. The Bean groaned, but Lizzie
didn’t mind. She actually liked car trips, the longer the better.

She liked to watch out the window. She liked the special snacks Mom packed, like cheesy crackers and baby carrots. And she liked how her family played games like Twenty Questions, I Spy, or — her new favorite — Dog Breed Bingo, which she had made up. She and Charles were playing it right now.

After a while, Lizzie looked back at the card in her lap.
PEKINGESE, BULLDOG, POODLE, HUSKY, SHAR-PEI,
it said. Lizzie had crossed off all the letters she had seen as they drove: the E’s, the S’s, and the O’s. She had spotted a
K
at a gas station, an
H
on a hotel sign, and an
R
at a railroad crossing, and crossed those off, too. She glanced at Charles’s card. His read:
DACHSHUND, ST. BERNARD, LABRADOR, DALMATIAN, BEAGLE.
He had a lot of letters crossed off, but not as many as she did. She had a good feeling that she was going to be
the first to cross off all the letters in one of her breeds. Yay!

As she watched, Charles crossed off all three of his B’s. Eek! Thanks to the Bean’s help, he was getting closer. Lizzie crossed off her B, too, then stared out the window, concentrating hard. All she needed was a
U
and she’d win.

Then a big truck rumbled by.
LABORATORY SUPPLY
said a big sign on its side.

“Husky!” yelled Lizzie, one second before Charles yelled, “Labrador!”

“I win!” Lizzie threw her fists in the air. “Whoo-hoo!”

“It was a tie.” Charles stared at her in disbelief.

“No way!” Lizzie wasn’t about to give up her big victory. “I said my breed first.”

Charles shook his head. “I said ‘Lab’ at the same time,” he insisted.

Lizzie started to say something, but Mom
turned around in her seat. “No fighting, you guys, okay? You’ve been doing great so far. Call this one a tie and move on.”

Lizzie grumbled, but she knew there was no point in arguing with Mom. Anyway, now they could both read the information on the back of their cards. That was the best part of the game. She turned her card over and started reading out loud. “‘Husky,’” she read. “‘A breed well suited for northern climates, with its thick undercoat for warmth and wide paws for good traction on snow.’” Lizzie practically knew all this by heart, even before she’d copied it off her “Dog Breeds of the World” poster. But she still loved reading it. “‘Huskies, both the Siberian and Alaskan types, are known for their stamina and are widely used as sled dogs.’”

“What’s ‘stamina’?” asked Charles.

Lizzie rolled her eyes. “It’s, you know . . .” She knew what it meant, but she couldn’t exactly put it into words.

Dad came to her rescue. “It means energy that lasts and lasts.”

“Like the Bean when he doesn’t want to take his nap and he’s acting like a
jumping
bean,” Mom added with a smile.

“Yeah!” The Bean bumped up and down in his car seat. “I’m a
jumpin’
bean!”

Charles flipped his card over. “‘Labrador retriever,’” he read. “‘A strong, athletic dog with a friendly temperament. This breed is used as a hunting dog, a guide dog, and a family pet. Labs can be black, brown (also known as chocolate), or yellow.’”

“Like Honey!” said the Bean.

“Did you hear that?” Lizzie was impressed. “The Bean really knows his dog breeds.” She beamed at her little brother. The Bean actually remembered that Honey, the last puppy the Petersons had fostered, was a yellow Lab!

The Petersons took care of puppies that needed homes, keeping each one until they could find
it the perfect forever family. That’s what fostering meant. Honey was one of their biggest success stories. She was going to learn how to be a service dog who could help a person in a wheelchair!

Buddy, the Petersons’ own puppy, was another foster puppy success story. Once, Lizzie and her family had taken care of Buddy, his two sisters, and his mother. Four dogs! That was quite a responsibility. They had found other homes for Buddy’s mom and his sisters, but they had all fallen in love with Buddy. Now Buddy was the Petersons’ forever dog!

Lizzie felt sad thinking about Buddy. That was the only bad part about this vacation: Buddy could not come. He was staying with Lizzie’s aunt Amanda, who ran a doggy day-care center and had four dogs of her own. Buddy loved Aunt Amanda, and staying with her and her dogs would be like a fun vacation for him. Lizzie knew he would be totally safe and very happy, but she
still missed him. Right at that moment she would have loved to kiss his little nose and stroke his soft brown fur. She wished she could trace the white heart-shaped patch on his chest.

Lizzie looked out the window to distract herself. Eventually Dad turned off the interstate onto a smaller road, and suddenly everything started to look different. “Hey.” Lizzie sat up straight. “Snow!” There was tons of the stuff! White, white, white, as far as her eyes could see. The sides of the road were piled high with snow. It covered the trees and the hills and even the tops of other cars that passed them.

“Yeah!” Dad said from up front. “Looks like they got walloped up here.”

“Walloped!” yelled the Bean. Lizzie was sure her little brother had no idea Dad was saying that the area had been hit hard by a snowstorm. The Bean just loved to repeat what other people said.

“Walloped.” Lizzie repeated it softly as she
looked out at all the snow. This vacation was going to be a real adventure. She could feel it in her bones.

Soon Lizzie spotted a sign, a big yellow arrow with red letters. It stood out against the white snow, pointing the way up a long dirt driveway lined with huge old trees. “Dad, look! Harris House Bed and Breakfast!” That was where they were staying.

Dad turned onto the road and pulled the van up to an old yellow farmhouse with a big red barn. The buildings looked cozy, with their roofs blanketed in thick snow. Someone must have seen them arrive, because a few seconds later the back door of the house flew open. “Wait! No! Bear, come!” a woman called.

Lizzie smiled as she watched a fluffy puppy bounce down the stairs and run straight for the van. “Look!” she said. “It’s a husky!”