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Chapter One

I got my dog, Riley, exactly two months after my grandpa died. Grandpa lived with us and he was my best pal. To tell the truth, I think Mom let me get a dog so I'd start feeling better.

She drove Grace and me into Portland because it's good to get an animal from the pound. You could be saving its life. I picked mine out from all the other dogs right away. A Lab, not quite purebred, but great-looking anyway. His coat was the color of a lion's, but smooth and shiny.

"I'd say he's got some collie in him, too," the pound man told us.

"I thought you wanted a middle-sized dog," Grace said.

I thought I did." I hugged Riley around his middle. "I changed."

Grace nodded. "Cool!"

Grace is my best friend, even if she is a girl. I guess boys, or at least boys my age, which is eleven, are not supposed to even like girls. But I like Grace, and I don't care what anybody thinks.

"Was he a stray?" Mom asked the pound man.

He shook his head. "He was turned in by his owners. That's how come he has a name already." He looked at me. "You can change it if you like."

"Uh-uh," I said. "Riley's just fine."

Mom was frowning. "Why did his owners turn him in? He's not a biter, is he?"

"No way." The pound man put his hand under Riley's chin. "Is this the face of a biter? I can spot one of those right away. They even smell bad tempered."

He rubbed his knuckles up and down on Riley's forehead, and Riley squirmed with joy.

Soon as he stopped rubbing, I started. "I'll do this for you every day when we get home, Riley," I whispered. "Okay?"

"I think his owners had to move and couldn't take him," thepound man told us. "It wasn't that they didn't want him."

"I think we want him. Right, William?" Mom smiled at me.

The pound man looked at Mom. Grace gave me a nudge. We always think it's funny the way guys about drop dead over Mom.

"He likes her," Grace whispered to me.

"At least he didn't ask her if she's my sister," I whispered back.

While we were signing the papers and paying for all the things you have to pay for before you adopt a dog, we told everyone how Riley was going to love being with us, how we were going to take great care of him, and how we have a nice fenced yard that runs all the way round our house for him to play in. The yard's a field, really, since where we live is almost the country. Grace's house is a half mile or so down the road, toward Monk's Hill where we go to school, and there's only Mrs. Peachwood's little ranch in between.

"Sounds great," the pound man said.

"He wishes he was coming with us," Grace whispered.

Riley sat in the back of the station wagon with Grace and me. "You can tell he's really smart," Grace said. "Look at the way he sits up straight and looks out the window. Most dogs would be freaking all over the place."

I patted his head. I knew he was smart the minute I saw him." Actually I'd never thought about his smarts. I just loved his face, his velvety ears, the way he licked my face with slobbery kisses-the dog smell of him. I buried my nose in his neck and took a good sniff now.

Mom grinned at me in the rearview mirror. "I think it was love at first sight, right, William?"

I rolled my eyes. "Oh, Mom!"

We let Grace off at her driveway because she goes to her flute lesson on Tuesdays.

"That's Mrs. Peachwood's house," I told Riley, as we passed our next-door neighbor's. "We usually call her Peachie. Most of the time she's out in the front field there with her horse. His name is the Sultan of Kaboor. You'll like him a lot. Right now the two of them have gone to Peachie's sister's up in Washington. They go every July. And over there is our house. Do you like it, Riley? It's your house too now." And I felt this great rush of happiness, the kind I hadn't had since Grandpa died.

But when we turned into our long, dusty driveway, I couldn't help thinking how great it would have been if Grandpa had been in the house, waiting for us. Close by the porch was the big hole he and I'd dug for the fishpond-and the humongous pile of earth...

The Summer of Riley. Copyright © by Eve Bunting. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.