Natalia Takes the Lead
Chapter Seven
It’s been three days, and Natalia still feels ashamed of her performance at the audition. In fact, when her mom tells her that the couple getting married are arriving with their dogs that evening, Natalia intentionally doesn’t tell Zoe and Emma. She doesn’t want them to know that she feels like she needs help.
After school, Natalia trudges to Seaview House. She doesn’t want to meet people or walk the dogs, but she made a commitment, and Natalia is responsible.
When she goes inside the door, she sees people running around all over preparing for the wedding. Aunt Amy tells her the dogs are upstairs. When she asks where Emma and Zoe are, Natalia vaguely says they’re outside.
When Natalia gets upstairs, she sees Ruby is a bundle of energy. She’s running around the entire room, chewing paper and toys and shoes. And Bandit just sits lazily in the middle of the carpet. After Natalia is done cleaning up the shredded paper, and grabs the leashes and heads downstairs.
As soon as she walks around the back to get Jasper and Daisy, Ruby starts to let out a low growl. As soon as she does, Jasper starts to echo her, and Daisy scrambles to a back corner and hides under a chair. Natalia pulls the poodles around the corner, and Ruby seems to quickly forget the other dogs were there. Natalia tries again. And once again, Ruby acts strangely aggressive toward Jasper and Daisy.
Natalia doesn’t have time to take the two sets of dogs on separate walks before the sun sets. She needs help. She pulls out her phone and debates who to call. She settles on Emma—Emma doesn’t know how big Natalia screwed up the audition.
When Emma arrives, she asks Natalia why she didn’t tell them the other dogs were coming. Natalia embarrassingly says she thought she could handle it. She didn’t want to admit she needed help. Emma smiles, and tells Natalia it’s going to be okay.
That evening, Natalia is struggling to keep her eyes open as she opens her math textbook. She was already late for dinner, had to babysit her brothers, and did her English, science, and social studies homework. But after all that, she’s pooped. And there’s no way she can struggle through math as exhausted as she feels. With a sigh, she closes the book and thinks to herself “I’ll catch up tomorrow.”