The Dog that Dumped on my Doona Read Online Free

my first question might have been slightly more … relevant, I suppose. I sighed.
    â€˜It’s not his real name,’ I said. ‘He wouldn’t tell me his real name. But Blacky is what he was called when he lived with a human for a while. He said the human called him that because he had this problem with his guts. The dog, I mean. So he was dropping smells all over the place and they were foul. And the human would yell at him and threaten him with a frying pan, so the dog would make a bolt for the door. That’s when he called him Blacksmith, Blacky for short. Geddit? Made a bolt for the door? Blacksmith? Geddit?’
    â€˜No,’ said Dylan.
    â€˜Never mind,’ I said. ‘The important thing is, will you help me?’
    â€˜What have we got to do?’
    â€˜Simple,’ I said. ‘We have to kidnap God.’
    I couldn’t get to sleep that night. It seemed to me that snatching God was something that was going to take planning and research. I was also hoping Blacky would show up but he didn’t. That was a pity. I still had about ten million questions to ask him. And not just about the practical stuff that would help me fulfil my mission. He’d started me thinking about the bigger picture, the world and what we were doing to it.
    For some reason, Rose’s comment about the butterfly effect fluttered around in my head.
    Saturday morning and it was raining.
    This was no surprise, since on Saturday morning I play soccer for the local under-thirteens. I wasn’t in the mood, partly because I was keen to get on with the God mission but mainly because I’m never in the mood. Dad, however, forces me. He was a goalkeeper when he was young, far back in the mists of time, and I think he likes to relive former glories through me.
    Not that there is much glory involved in my play.
    I am a hopeless goalkeeper.
    It doesn’t help that I am short for my age. It doesn’t help that most of the other players are two years older than me and built like road trains. If they kick the ball just a little off the ground it goes over my head. The only reason I get picked for the team is that no one else wants to be goalkeeper.
    There’s a reason for that.
    It’s dangerous.
    At every game you risk becoming eligible for the next Paralympics.

    So I stood in front of the goal, soaking wet, taking up very little space and sizing up the opposition. They were big. And mean. You could see it in their eyes, which glowed red when the light struck them just right. Their very first attack was a one-on-one. A giant charged towards me. I could feel the ground shake. But I didn’t have a choice. I had to advance, narrow down the angles. As it turned out I didn’t get near him, which, to be honest, was a relief. It would have been like getting in the way of a tank. He belted the ball from about twenty metres and it fizzed past me into the roof of the net. Lucky I wasn’t in the way. The net would have bulged twice. Once with the ball, once with my head.
    As I picked the ball out, I noticed Blacky sitting by the touchline, looking amused.
    â€˜Your balance is all wrong,’ he said. ‘If you’d had your feet planted right, you could have got to that.’
    â€˜What?’ I said. ‘Now you’re a football coach?’
    â€˜I am a student of the game,’ he replied in this snotty voice.
    I kicked the ball back towards the centre circle. It isn’t a good idea , I thought, to be seen talking to a dog on the sidelines . It was this kind of behaviour that earned you the reputation of a fruitcake. I already had the reputation of a short goalkeeping disaster area and didn’t need any others.
    A soccer game lasts ninety minutes. This one seemed to take three days. Every time I picked the ball out of the net – which was often – Blacky would point out exactly where I went wrong.
    â€˜You are not dominating the area.’
    The ball whizzed past