CHAPTER 9

Dogs! Dogs in the pool!” the lifeguards yelled, blowing their whistles.

It was utter chaos! There was yelling and splashing all around them as the dogs washed themselves off in the deep end. The pool was surrounded by a concrete deck, and beyond that, a grassy area with some tables and lawn chairs. Hugo hadn’t looked around much before they dove in, but now that he did, he could tell there was some kind of summer camp in session today, and the dogs had splashed right into the middle of it! Some kids scrambled out of the pool, while others jumped in and swam toward the dogs. Everyone was making a lot of noise, but Hugo hardly noticed the commotion because he was having so much fun.

He had forgotten that he could swim! Hugo was anxious jumping into the pool, but as soon as he hit the water, the memories came flooding back. Mom, Dad, and Enrique used to take him to the lake when he and Sofia were both little. It had been a while, but now he was swimming again like no time had passed, and he was loving every minute of it.

“This feels amazing!” Hugo called out to the others as he freestyled around the cool, refreshing water of the deep end. “Nice doggy paddle, Lulu!”

“I call this a ME paddle!” Lulu replied. With her wet fur clinging to her body, Lulu looked about a quarter of her normal size, but she didn’t seem to care. She looked like she was having the time of her life.

Most of the kids in the pool had human-paddled away from them now, leaving them more room to swim and have fun. In fact, Hugo noticed, they had the whole pool to themselves! One camp counselor tried to shoo them out but gave up, and the others were on the grass, trying to stop the campers from jumping back in. The lifeguards were all talking on their cell phones. One thing was clear: Everyone was watching them. The attention felt good. Hugo heard a few kids standing on the deck, pointing at them and laughing.

That’s nice! Hugo thought. We’re making them laugh! Normally Hugo wouldn’t have just jumped into a pool full of people he didn’t know, but he was starting to think that sometimes, maybe, acting wild and spontaneous could pay off. After all, those teens in the bakery had loved it when he’d run around and jumped up onto the chairs. Maybe humans like it when I give in to my doggiest instincts . . .

“You guys wanna play Barko Polo?” Lulu asked.

“What’s that?” King said.

“I close my eyes and you three swim around. When I bark, you bark back, and I try to find you and tag you!”

“That sounds fun,” Napoleon said. “Let’s play.”

Lulu closed her eyes and barked loudly.

Hugo, King, and Napoleon barked in response. The dogs splashed around in the pool, playing their fun game until, suddenly, Hugo fell silent.

“Hold up. Does anyone else smell that?” Hugo asked with his snout up in the air, sniffing around for the source of a delicious scent. “It smells like . . .”

“SNACKS!” all the dogs barked in unison. Lulu’s eyes popped open.

“There it is!” Napoleon said. He directed their attention to a table in the shady area of the grass, where an adult was putting out all kinds of treats—chips, candy, cookies, sandwiches, a stack of pizza boxes, and FRENCH FRIES!

“French fries!” Napoleon shouted. “The food of my people!”

Sure, Hugo had just filled up on amazing pastries from the trash, but when he thought about it, all the running around and chasing and breaking the thing and swimming had made him hungrier than usual.

So just like that, all four dogs climbed out of the pool, ran across the deck and onto the grass, and headed straight for the table.

“These are some of my favorite smells!!!” King cried out as they ran toward the snacks. “Did these humans know I was coming??”

“I don’t think so, buddy,” Hugo replied. “But they do now.”

“Look out!” one of the humans yelled. “Here they come!”

“Really, Jason?” another one shouted. “You couldn’t wait until after the dogs were gone to put out the food?!”

“I like Jason!” King yelled, his mouth watering.

The children and teenaged camp counselors dove out of the way as Hugo, Lulu, King, and Napoleon jumped onto the table and grabbed as many snacks as they could.

In the pandemonium, one of them—or maybe it was all of them, Hugo couldn’t be sure—knocked over the table completely.

“The dogs are eating our snacks!”

Hugo was so busy eating that he didn’t pay much attention to the humans for a few minutes. But when he came up from a bowl of barbecue potato chips, he noticed that something had changed. Now only a few of the kids were laughing. The others were yelling, running away, and he was stunned to see that some of them were even crying.

“What are we going to eat now?” one little girl whimpered. “When are these dogs going to stop?”

Hugo tried to lick the barbecue powder off his jowls as a horrible thought occurred to him: Maybe we aren’t making them happy after all. It seems like we’re making some of them mad. Or worse, scared!

“Guys?” he called out to the others. “Maybe we should settle down? I don’t think these kids are very happy with us . . .”

Hugo noticed one boy in particular who had been laughing earlier, when the dogs were swimming in the pool. Now the boy had tears in his eyes and looked terrified.

Oh no, Hugo thought. We’ve gone too far.

King and Lulu both looked up from the pile of food, slowly noticing the same thing Hugo did. More kids were crying now, and the counselors were doing their best to comfort them. Lulu dropped the slice of pizza that was dangling from her mouth. She looked ashamed. Napoleon just shrugged them off and kept eating.

Then King noticed something, and his ears stood up on alert. “Look!” he yelped. “There’s a humongous green dog over there!”

Hugo turned to see a huge alligator in the shallow end of the pool. It looked like it was frozen in place, and it was grinning right at them.

“King, that’s not a dog. It’s an alligator,” Hugo pointed out. He loved to watch nature shows with his family on their shiny, flickering, funny rectangle, and he considered himself a bit of an expert on the different types of creatures in the world. If Zoe was here, Hugo thought, she’d probably point at it and say, “Gatorgator!” The thought made him miss snuggling up next to her on the couch.

But Hugo had never seen an alligator quite like this before. It was poofy, and colorful, and floating perfectly still in the pool with a big smile on its face.

Must be native to this part of the city, Hugo thought.

“An alligator?” King asked. “Is that a kind of cat? Sounds dangerous. Should we get out of here?”

“Wait!” Lulu barked excitedly. She looked like she had an idea. “Maybe it’s not us making the humans upset . . . Maybe it’s the alligator!”

Hugo thought about this. It made sense. “And if we scare the alligator away,” he added, “that makes us heroes! They can’t be mad at us anymore.” If the campers were scared of some dogs, they were probably even more scared of an alligator! If they frightened the alligator away, they’d be protecting the humans, and that was always a good thing to do.

“Let’s do it,” Hugo said. Napoleon dropped his snacks and joined them, sensing a new adventure in the works.

“Are alligators afraid of dogs?” King asked.

“Only one way to find out,” Napoleon said.

So they ran back toward the pool and splashed into the shallow end.

“Please leave the pool, alligator!” Lulu yelped sternly.

“Yeah, scram!” King called out. “This pool’s for people and sometimes dogs!”

“Stop scaring these kids!” Hugo barked. “Or else!”

The alligator didn’t move. It just kept floating there, with that annoying smirk on its face. The dogs gave one another a look. If they wanted to protect these kids, they were going to have to use force.

King jumped on the gator first, then Hugo, then Lulu, then Napoleon. They clawed at it with their paws until—POP!

“Uh-oh. What was that sound?” Hugo asked.

The pop sound was sudden and short, but followed by a long, slow HISS. The dogs shared looks of confusion as the alligator started to shrink underneath them. Pretty soon, they were standing in the water of the shallow end, on top of a wrinkled, flattened alligator.

One of the children began whining again. “Oh nooooo . . .”

“Guys . . . ,” Lulu said. “I’m starting to think this wasn’t a real alligator.”

“It was a balloon! A toy,” Hugo said, realizing they’d just made a giant mistake.

“A toy?” King said excitedly. “I LOVE toys!!! Maybe these humans DID know I was coming!” He wagged his tail as he dug into what was left of the alligator with his paws and teeth. Napoleon joined in.

“King, buddy, not all toys are for dogs—” Hugo started, trying to stop his friend from tearing up the alligator. But he was too late. The whole thing was already in shreds. Hugo watched with dismay as the torn gator pieces floated away to different parts of the pool.

Kids were screaming and pointing at the torn-up alligator and at Hugo, Lulu, King, and Napoleon. Everyone was staring at them. Most of the kids were huddled on the deck, watching them with sad, suspicious eyes. If the adults had looked mad before, they were even madder now. And the kids were definitely afraid. Not of the alligator. Of the dogs.

No way, thought Hugo. I’m not a scary dog! Kids love me! I’m such a good dog . . . or at least . . . I was . . .

Some of the counselors were frantically trying to clean up the mess. Hugo could hear some others talking loudly into their phones.

“They just came in and starting running around! We don’t know what to do.”

“None of them are wearing collars. Must be strays.”

“They might be dangerous! I mean, who knows if they’ve had their shots?”

“Yeah, it’s a golden retriever, and a bulldog, and that one might be a collie . . . and a terrier. Actually, that one kind of looks like a dog I follow on Instagram.”

“We have no more lunch left for the kids! They ruined it!”

Scanning the expressions on the faces of the humans around the pool, Hugo couldn’t help but feel like he’d seen these looks before. These were the same expressions that had been on the faces of the bakers in the pastry shop. The boy whose ice cream they’d stolen. Erin, after Napoleon had stolen her scarf yesterday. And all those people who had surrounded Napoleon after he’d run off into the fountain. They looked so upset, like Mom used to look when Hugo pooped on the kitchen floor. He hadn’t done that since he was a puppy, since he’d learned that for some reason, humans don’t like poop on their floors.

He started to realize something. People don’t always like it when dogs act funny and wild, Hugo thought. Some of them might be amused and entertained for a little bit, and that attention felt great. But just because you made some people laugh, it didn’t mean others weren’t getting angry. And it was definitely possible to go too far. Like stealing their lunch or breaking their big weird toy, Hugo realized.

Humans, Hugo thought. I love you, you complicated creatures.

Hugo started to feel embarrassed. Sure, he’d had a great time at the pool and eaten some really delicious barbecue potato chips . . . but at what cost? He was having a great day, but had he ruined the days of all these people? Had he made kids upset?

“Time to go!” Napoleon announced as he walked back onto the dry pavement of the deck. “But first, I’m grabbing another sandwich.”

Napoleon stopped by the toppled-over snack table, but Hugo had no appetite. He looked around at the trouble and destruction they had caused, and he felt terrible. What he longed for more than anything else was to be back at home, on his favorite part of the couch, watching his family watch their shiny, flickering, funny rectangle. Even if they had gotten too busy for him, he still loved them, and they loved him. And he felt comfortable there.

“Napoleon’s right,” Lulu said. “We should get out of here. I think that teenaged human recognizes me from the internet. What if Jasmine finds out I was here?”

The angry voices around the pool were growing louder. And then Hugo heard one in particular that made his ears perk up.

“That one looks like Hugo!” a little girl shouted from across the pool. Hugo recognized it immediately—he would know that voice anywhere.

Zoe.

He shook some wet hair out of his eyes and turned to look. It was Zoe.

“But it can’t be Hugo,” Zoe said to her friend. “Hugo’s a good dog! He would never do something like this.”

Hugo stared at her, stunned. He suddenly felt like his favorite ball in the world had just rolled off a cliff.

King gave him a nudge. “You okay? Me and Lulu are getting out of here. Let’s go!”

Hugo didn’t answer.

“Hugo?” King said urgently. “Come on!”

“Let’s go before I get recognized again!” Lulu added. “My followers would not be cool with this behavior.”

Hugo snapped out of it and followed Lulu and King out of the water. They ran across the deck and out to the sidewalk. But Zoe’s words kept ringing in Hugo’s head.

Hugo’s a good dog. He would never . . .

He would never . . .