Bingo Brown and the Language of Love Read Online Free

you know, Melissa? She wants a picture of him.”
    “What for?”
    “I don’t know. What does anybody want a picture for? To look at. Smile, Bingo.”
    Bingo pulled his lips back into a smile.
    “Not like that. Smile like you mean it.”
    Bingo suddenly remembered how natural it had been to smile at Melissa. Sometimes, at night in the darkness, he had smiled just thinking of smiling at her.
    “Perfect!” Cici said. “She’ll love it!”
    The camera clicked and Bingo started gratefully for the hedge. Without meeting Wentworth’s eyes, he took Misty and her suitcase.
    Cici followed. She said, “Oh, let me get one of you with the dog. This will be so precious. Hold the dog up! Oh, its face is so sweet. Could I pat it?”
    Wentworth said, “Be my guest.”
    Cici rushed forward and scratched Misty’s head with what Bingo now realized were Lee Press-on Nails, some of which needed repressing.
    “Oh, and it has a little suitcase for its things. Can I look in it?”
    Bingo surrendered the handle of the suitcase and stood stiffly, looking over the roof of his garage.
    Cici knelt and unzipped the bag—another awkward move with the Lee Press-ons. She reached inside and pulled out a squeaky rubber newspaper.
    “Oh, isn’t that precious? It has its own newspaper. And I can tell that it really plays with it. And dog food—oh, it eats Mighty Dog! Why, it’s too little for Mighty Dog, or maybe that’s why it’s eating it.” She looked into Misty’s damp eyes. “Are you trying to become mighty?”
    Yes, Bingo thought, big blonds do not always have brains to match.
    Cici browsed through the rest of the suitcase. “Oh, vitamins and a chew stick, and what’s this in the bottom?”
    “Her blanket,” Billy Wentworth said.
    Bingo turned in astonishment. He stared at Billy Wentworth. Billy’s voice had actually deepened on those two words, “her blanket.”
    What was happening here?
    “It’s like a real baby blanket.”
    “It is a real baby blanket,” Wentworth said. His voice was almost purring with pleasure now, like a well-tuned engine. “It was mine.”
    Bingo’s mouth dropped open as he gaped at the faded blue square. Billy Wentworth had once been a baby!
    “She doesn’t have, like, you know, a basket or bed or something?”
    “No, she just drags her blanket around and sleeps where she wants to.”
    “That’s what a little neighbor of mine does! I baby-sit her. Bingo, is this darling little dog yours or”—she nodded to the face above the hedge—“his?”
    “His.”
    “And I,” the deep voice from the hedge said, “am Willy Bentworth.”

Chicken Chests
    B INGO SAID, “WELL, I’LL be going now.”
    He held out his hand for Misty. “The dog, please.” He said this in the formal way someone on TV asks for the official envelope.
    Cici hugged Misty to her. “I’ll carry her inside for you.”
    “That will not be necessary,” Bingo said.
    “I can’t give her up yet. Please! I just love this little animal.” Billy Wentworth cleared his throat in a menacing enemy-sighted way. Bingo shrugged helplessly.
    With a flick of her blond hair, a flash of Lee Press-on Nails, Cici turned. Bingo followed her to the steps and went up reluctantly.
    In the kitchen Cici. spun around and said, “Who was that nerd?”
    “Billy Wentworth. You don’t know Billy Wentworth?” Then Bingo remembered the deep-throated voice describing the dog blanket and added kindly, “He makes a bad first impression, but you get used to him.”
    “Ugh, I can’t stand jocks.”
    “Actually, he’s not a jock. He’s more into army stuff, ammo. He led our T-shirt rebellion last year. Perhaps you saw him standing on the garbage can at recess, or on the school steps, waiting for a face-off with the principal.”
    “I must have been sick that day. Anyway, I know a jock when I see one. My mom married three of them.”
    Bingo stood awkwardly in the center of the kitchen. He waited; then, when it became obvious that Cici was not