How to Steal a Dog Read Online Free PDF

at me when Mr. Deeter kicked us out. “One bag,” she had said in a mean voice. “That’s it.”
    Just when I was starting to feel a good cry coming on, I heard Mama hurrying toward the car. I sat up and rolled down the window.
    â€œGeorgina,” she whispered real excited-like. “Guess what?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œI found us a place!”
    â€œReally?” I felt my heavy heart start to lift.
    Mama put both hands against the car door and grinned down at me. Her hair was damp and frizzy from working her second job in the steamy back room of the Regal Dry Cleaners. She took her shoes off and climbed into the front seat.
    â€œYep! We’re moving into a house!”
    We had only ever lived in apartments before. Never in a house. I could already see my bedroom. White furniture with gold on the edges, like Luanne’s. Maybe even pink carpet.
    â€œWhen?” I said.
    â€œFriday.” Mama examined herself in the rear-view mirror.
    â€œI look as beat as I feel, don’t I?” she said.
    â€œYou look all right,” I said, but I was lying. She did look beat. Dark circles under her eyes. Her skin all creased and greasy-looking.

    I lay back against the seat and felt about a hundred pounds lighter than I had just minutes before. I’d known in my heart that stealing a dog was a bad thing to do, and now I didn’t have to. I couldn’t believe everything had turned out so good.

6
    M y stomach was flopping around like crazy as we made our way through the neighborhoods of Darby. I couldn’t hardly wait to see which house would be ours.
    But when Mama turned onto a dirt and gravel road, I started to get a bad feeling. The car squeaked and bounced up the narrow, winding road, deeper and deeper into the woods. When we passed a faded, handwritten sign nailed to a tree, my bad feeling got worse.
    KEEP OUT. PRIVATE PROPERTY.
    â€œAre you sure this is right?” I said to Mama.
    She clutched the steering wheel and sat up straight and tense. “Yes, Georgina,” she said. “I know what I’m doing, okay?”
    Then, just as I thought my bad feeling couldn’t get any worse, we rounded a curve and I saw a house just ahead of us. A ramshackle old house with boarded-up windows and the front door hanging all cockeyed on its rusty hinges.
    Mama stopped the car and we all three stared in silence
at the wreck of a house. The tar paper roof was caved in and covered with rotting leaves and pine needles. Prickly-looking bushes grew thick and dense across the front, while kudzu vines snaked their way up the chimney and across the roof.
    â€œWell,” Mama said, “It ain’t Shangri-la, but it’s better than nothing.”
    I couldn’t believe my ears.
    â€œThat’s the house we’re gonna live in?” I said.
    â€œIt’s just temporary.” Mama turned the engine off and started throwing stuff into a cardboard box on the seat beside her. “Beverly Jenkins over at the Handy Pantry knows the owner, and she said he won’t care if we stay here for a while.”
    Toby started crying. “I don’t want to,” he whined.
    â€œHush up, Toby,” Mama said. She got out and tried to push through the bushes that grew across the front of the house. “Come on, y’all,” she said. “Let’s check it out.”
    I crossed my arms and slumped down in the seat. This just beat all. First I had to go and get a daddy who acted mean all the time and then just up and left us. Now I had a mama who had gone plumb crazy.
    â€œCome on, Georgina,” Mama called. “It’s not that bad.”
    She had managed to get to the front door and had pushed it open to peer inside.

    â€œReally, y’all,” she said. “We can clean it up and make it nice.”
    Toby was sniffling, and I knew he was waiting on me to make the first move.
    â€œI bet there’s snakes in there,” I called out