"How are you liking it at Buster's?" asked Pal.
"It's nice and warmy," replied Amazon Puppy in a squeaky girl's voice. "The food is yummy, and my human likes to scratch me under the chinny-chin-chin."
Pal smiled contentedly as he recalled his own puppy days.
"My human has another puppy," Amazon added.
"Another puppy?" Pal's ears perked up. "Where is it?"
"He keeps her in the closet," his sister explained. "I guess she did something bad like make pee-pee on the carpet. I can see her through the window. Whenever I try to talk to her, she just copies what I say."
"It's not a window," Pal pointed out to her. "It's a mirror. The other puppy is your reflection."
"Re-flec-tion?" Amazon widened her eyes in confusion.
"Reflection," Pal repeated. "That's a word meaning..." The dog racked his brain for a definition that a six-week-old puppy would understand, but gave up. "Friend. It means friend."
"Oh, goody," Amazon gushed. "My very firstest friend. I got a friend, I got a friend..."
Exasperated by his sister's limited intellect, Pal turned his attention to the kids in the park. Arthur was coaching D.W. in the finer points of kite flying, and she was making rapid progress.
"Try running into the wind," he instructed her. "And don't let out all the line at once."
Before long, D.W. was floating her Princess Peach kite over a hundred feet off the ground. It wasn't as high as Arthur's or Buster's kites, but she was still proud of her accomplishment. "Not bad for a first grader," she remarked.
When they tired of flying kites, they started to walk their dogs around the neighborhood. "Arthur," asked D.W. at one point, "why are you being so nice to me?"
"I'm your big brother," Arthur answered. "I'm supposed to be nice to you. It's my job."
"But you're being nicer to me than usual," D.W. pointed out. "The last time we flew kites, you got mad at me because I kept getting my kite stuck in a tree. But this time you helped me and helped me until I learned how to do it right."
"He's been replaced by an alien," Buster joked.
"You're right," Arthur admitted. "I'm trying to be nicer to you, and there's a reason. It's because...it's because we may not have much more time together."
"Why?" D.W. inquired. "Did you eat a green potato chip?"
"No," said Arthur glumly. "It's because of the bad lady who's coming to blow up the Earth."
D.W.'s tone became somber as well. "I know. Nadine told me all about it."
Arthur stopped, and his sister and dog stopped with him. "I haven't always been a very good big brother," he confessed.
"That's for sure," said D.W. Buster watched the tender exchange between the two siblings with impatience.
"If there's anything I can do to be a better big brother," said Arthur, "just tell me."
"Okay," said D.W. "There's one thing you can do."
"What's that?"
D.W. stretched out her arms. "Give me a hug."
Relieved that his sister hadn't demanded something more difficult, Arthur knelt and wrapped his arms around the girl.
"I won't let you die," he vowed as his nose pressed against the fabric of D.W.'s dress. "No matter what happens, I'll find a way to save you."
"I know you will," said D.W. confidently.
"Guys, I'm still here," said Buster.
----
The lively, brassy sounds of the Shirim Klezmer Orchestra filled Elwood City's downtown plaza, where hundreds of music lovers had laid out blankets and seated themselves on the grass of the central park. Muffy and Fern were finding the music to be rather odd compared to their usual fare, but Prunella was happily drinking it in. The girls had no inkling that Alan had temporarily taken possession of Prunella's body, for no other reason but to experience new sensations.
"My sister introduced me to klezmer music," the rat girl told her friends.
"Rubella likes this stuff?" said Muffy with a bit of a grimace.
Whoops, Prunella/Alan thought. I forgot that I'm not myself.
"I happen to like it," said Mickie Chanel arrogantly. "If you can't appreciate the musical heritage of another culture, that's not the fault of the culture."
Sitting cross-legged reminded Prunella/Alan of how lanky her new legs were, so she sat with them stretched ahead of her, which was uncomfortable for her back. Still, the rhythmic music managed to distract her mind from such physical concerns.
The klezmer band launched into another number, and Prunella idly gazed about the audience. One person especially caught her attention—a teenage bear girl with short, purple-dyed hair, dark sunglasses, and a ragged heavy metal shirt (which advertised the group Spiders from Jars). She sat on the border of the park, with only naked grass underneath her. She didn't look at all like the type of person who would attend a klezmer festival.
Then Prunella noticed something intriguing about the girl. She was wearing a barette. A silver barette, identical to the one Tegan wore. Alan had never paid much attention to barettes, until he had borrowed Prunella's body and started to wear one. Putnam had claimed to recognize Tegan's barette as something he had invented, which suggested that the barette's appearance was very uncommon.
As Prunella gazed at the teenage girl, a startling possibility occurred to her. What if this person was Tegan in disguise?
The clues tended to support the theory. The shape of the girl's face resembled that of Tegan's. Her hair was much too short to warrant the use of a barette. And surely, as big a klezmer fan as Tegan was (she had dozens of klezmer recordings in her room at the Ballford school), she wouldn't pass up a chance to hear a live performance from three premier klezmer bands.
She had to get a closer look. "Excuse me, girls," she said to her friends.
As she walked casually closer to the girl in shades, the similarities became more obvious. There were only two ways to know for sure—ask her (she would lie), or yank off the barette and check for mind-merging powers. I can do it, Prunella/Alan thought. She's only met Prunella once—she shouldn't recognize me.
She was standing directly behind the purple-haired girl, who briefly glanced up at her but seemed disinterested. "Excuse me," said Prunella politely. "Where did you get that nice barette?"
"Quiet, please," replied the girl, also in a polite manner. "I'm listening to the music."
The voice was a giveaway. Prunella quickly reached forward, stuck her fingers into the girl's stubby hair, and ripped the barette from her head. The girl leaped to her feet and whirled, her expression one of shock and outrage.
As she advanced toward the backwards-retreating Prunella, the sharing of thoughts commenced. It was most definitely Tegan, and she was astonished beyond belief by what she was sensing.
"Alan...? Is that you? How is it possible? You're a girl!"
Prunella/Alan fought to hide her thoughts, but to no avail—they were now Tegan's thoughts as well. "Opticron...Putnam...body-switching...Beat Simon..." As the bear girl examined each detail, her fascination grew until Prunella could see nothing in her mind but a ruthless determination to learn more. She would learn it from Beat.
Before Prunella/Alan had a chance to wonder if allowing Tegan and Beat to come together was a good idea, Tegan had forcibly snatched the barette from her hands and scurried away, fastening it to her head as she ran. Determined to find out where she was going, Prunella pursued.
Her new body was a year older and had longer legs, granting her more speed, but it still wasn't enough to keep up with the 14-year-old Tegan. The gap between them widened as the bear girl rushed diagonally across a busy street. Her legs moving faster than her brain, Prunella made it halfway across the same street before she abruptly stopped and realized how foolish she was to have neglected to look both ways.
"I wonder where Prunella's run off to," said Fern as a city bus, its brakes squealing, slammed into the rat girl's back.
----
to be continued