A Dog's Life (Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Book 9) - Softcover

West, Cathy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0671019791 ISBN 13: 9780671019792

Publisher: Simon Spotlight Entertainment, 1998

Synopsis

When Harvey stops by Sabrina's house with Macdougal, the dog he's pet-sitting, he finds Sabrina elbow-deep in brownie batter. She's trying to bake like a normal teenager -- without using her powers. But with some of her ingredients missing and her electric mixer on the blink, Sabrina decides to conjure up a little magical help. Suddenly, Sabrina's mixing spell goes horribly haywire, bouncing into the dining room and zapping Harvey and Macdougal. Now Harvey's in canine chaos and his voice is coming out of the golden retriever's drooling jaws! With the Quizmaster on her case and her best friend chasing cats, Sabrina's in the doghouse -- unless she can find the trick that will get rid of Harvey's dog days for good!

About this title

About the Author:

Cathy East Dubowski has known and loved many dogs in her lifetime, including Sleepy, who wasn't; Lady, who wasn't, either; Neil, named after Neil Armstrong, the, first man on the moon; and Falstaff, a country dog who took a big bite out of the Big Apple. But her favorite of all is the real Macdougal, who was the inspiration for the dog in this story (and whose picture appears on the cover). A reddish-brown golden retriever, Macdougal bravely guards the Dubowski household against dangerous FedEx and UPS employees and other stray strangers, who don't know his secret: that he's actually the most affectionate dog that was ever born. Macdougal asked the author to say that if more people could switch places with dogs for a few days -- the way Harvey Kinkle does in this story -- the world might be a better place. Cathy has written many books for kids, including another Sabrina the Teenage Witch book, Santa's Little Helper, the Secret World of Alex Mack books Cleanup Catastrophe! Take a Hike!, Bonjour, Alex! and Truth Trap!, published by Archway Paperbacks; plus several in the Full House/Michelle series, published by Minstrel Books. One of her original books for younger readers, Cave Boy, a collaboration with her husband, Mark Dubowski, a cartoonist and illustrator, was named an International Reading Association Children's Choice. Cathy and Macdougal live in North Carolina, where he enjoys chasing squirrels and begging table scraps from the Dubowski daughters, Lauren and Megan. Cathy is currently collaborating with her husband, Mark, on another Alex Mack book plus a story for The Mystery Files of Shelby Woo.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Whack!
Splat!

"Darn!" Sabrina Spellman glared at the busted egg yolk staring back at her from the mixing bowl. Her grandmother's recipe for black walnut fudge brownies called for three eggs -- but that didn't include chunks of the shell.

She flipped her blond hair over her shoulder and leaned over the bowl to pick out the little white shards.

Maybe I'm trying too hard, she thought. After all, she was trying to make these brownies the old-fashioned way, just the way her mortal grandmother used to do.

By hand.

But trying to pick eggshell out of gooey egg was too hard, and a little icky, and besides, hadn't their consumer's education teacher just warned them that you could get sick from raw eggs if they were contaminated with the bacteria salmonella?

"Sorry, Granny," Sabrina said aloud. "Gotta do this part the Spellman way."

She stared at the egg.

"Bits of shell and goo, I beg --
Please gather back into an uncracked egg.

Magic sparkles shot from Sabrina's pointed fingertip and swirled round the bowl. A sound like the strumming of a tiny fairy's harp danced through the air.

Instantly the egg yolk and all the broken pieces of shell rose from the bowl and hovered before Sabrina's face. Like a video running backward, the broken yolk re-formed into a perfect yellow circle. The fragments of eggshell revolved around it like the planets round the sun. The magic sparkles twinkled like miniature stars.

Sabrina made a little scooting motion with her fingers, and the egg tucked itself into the largest piece of shell. The broken pieces came together like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. And then all the cracks healed.

"Very nice, Sabrina," Aunt Zelda called out as she hurried into the kitchen. Sabrina's slender blond aunt snapped her fingers and instantly changed her casual shirt and pants into an elegant turquoise business suit.

Sabrina smiled proudly and plucked the perfect white egg from the air. "Thanks."

She hadn't always been able to uncrack eggs. Up until her sixteenth birthday she'd been as average as the next girl.

That's when she'd come to live with her dad's sisters -- Aunt Zelda and Aunt Hilda -- in Westbridge, Massachusetts.

And that's when she'd learned that there was something different about her. Something special.

Something magical.

Sabrina Spellman was a witch.

Well, half witch anyway. Her dad and her aunts and everyone on their side of the family were witches. But her mother was mortal. And doing things the mortal way sometimes made her feel closer to her mom.

"Now," she said, holding the egg over the bowl. "Let's try this again."

"But, why bother at all?" asked Aunt Hilda, bouncing down the stairs. She wound up her arm like a baseball pitcher and pointed toward the kitchen bar.

Ka-BOOM! No one jumped at the tiny explosion that sounded like an oven blowing up. And when the purplish-black smoke cleared, a huge platter of double fudge brownies appeared on the counter.

"Chocolate attacks can't wait." Hilda's dimples showed as she stuffed a huge gooey brownie into her mouth. "Ohhh! They are absolutely the best I've ever made. Want one, Zelda?"

"Well...maybe just a teensy one," her sister replied. But first she zapped a china dessert plate and a linen napkin into her hand.

Hilda floated the platter of brownies over to her niece. "Here you go, Sabrina -- fresh baked with no waiting."

"But that's not the point," Sabrina insisted. "I want to make these on my own."

Hilda frowned, puzzled. "I made these on my own. You can, too. It's in the recipe section of your Discovery of Magic book. Page 505."

"But I mean with my whole hands," Sabrina explained. "Not just my finger. And with bowls and pans and ovens and stuff."

"But why?" both aunts wanted to know.

"Perhaps it's a school project," Zelda guessed.

"No, it's not for school," Sabrina said as she tried to get up the nerve to crack the egg again. "You know I love being a witch. I love having magic powers, and I'm glad I'm finally learning all these things I never knew about Dad's side of the family. And I'm proud to carry on the Spellman tradition of learning how to use my magic. But sometimes...well, I am half-mortal. And I feel I owe it to my mom to keep up some of her family's traditions, too. Like cooking the old-fashioned way."

Hilda folded her arms and gave Sabrina a look. "I don't remember your mother cooking," she said. "Do you, Zelda?"

"Anyone can learn how to cook," Zelda said diplomatically. "Sabrina, your mother has many other fine talents."

"True," Sabrina admitted.

Her mother was a brilliant, passionate archaeologist who had never really been into the Martha Stewart-beautiful-living kind of stuff. Right now she was somewhere in Peru crawling around in the dirt, digging up remnants of some lost civilization -- and, Sabrina was certain, loving every minute of it.

Sabrina hadn't seen her in ages because of this weird witch rule: If Sabrina laid eyes on her mother anytime during the two years following her sixteenth birthday, something bad would happen to her mother.

She'd instantly turn into a ball of wax. Definitely not a way to get on your mother's good side! Sabrina's aunts had explained it was the way the Witches' Council discouraged marriages between witches and mortals.

And that's why she was here, now, living with her aunts in Westbridge. They were entrusted with the dubious honor of training her to use her new magical powers during these two very important years.

"But I haven't seen her since before I turned into a witch," Sabrina argued. "And when I see her again, well...I want her to know I'm still her daughter -- the same old me. I don't want her to think I'm weird."

"Listen, Sabrina, if your mother thought witches were weird, she never would have married your father," Hilda pointed out.

That was true. But Sabrina worried that maybe it was the differences between the mortal world and the witch world that had led to her parents' divorce. And she didn't want those differences to come between her and her mother.

"You guys can understand, can't you?" Sabrina asked wistfully. "I'm not like most witches. I'm half-mortal. I belong to both worlds."

Zelda's eyes misted a little as she gave Sabrina a quick hug. "You're right, sweetheart. I guess sometimes we get so caught up in our own realm, we forget. I think it's wonderful that you feel that way about your mother and her family. A lot of girls in your situation might have rejected the mortal world outright once they got a little magic in the fingertips."

Sabrina smiled. She knew Aunt Zelda would understand.

With renewed determination, she turned back to her cooking -- and that frustrating egg.

"Now, what was it that Granny used to say..." she mumbled.

"Don't be a chicken, Sabrina! Smack the egg sharply on the side of the bowl. Hold the egg with your thumbs along the crack. Then open the egg as if you were opening a book."

Do it, Sabrina! she told herself.

Crack!

Plop!

Perfect! Only egg dropped into the bowl this time. She repeated the process with the second and third eggs. "See?" she exclaimed excitedly. "I'm doing it!"

Hilda wrinkled her nose. "Yuck. Looks messy to me." She picked up the platter of brownies. "Sure you don't want these?"

"No, thanks."

Hilda shrugged. Then she shrunk the platter down to the size of a doll's plate, zapped a plastic sandwich bag around it, and tucked it into her black velvet shoulder bag. "Have it your way. I'll just take these with me."

"Why do I get the feeling you guys are leaving?" Sabrina asked, reaching over to turn down the volume on the boom box she'd brought into the kitchen. WTTW was giving away advance copies of the new Leopard Spots CD and she wanted to be the lucky thirteenth caller.

"I'm sorry, Sabrina," Zelda said. "Didn't we tell you? I've got an emergency meeting with the Witches' Council this evening, and I'm dragging Hilda along with me to take notes."

"Will you be okay by yourself?" Hilda asked.

"Sure," Sabrina said. She picked up her mixing spoon as if she were about to do battle. "I'm going to a mixer."

Hilda shrugged as she tossed a glittering shawl around her shoulders. "Whatever rings your chimes!" she said with a smile that said she definitely didn't understand. Then she headed up the polished wooden stairs to the second floor. The Spellman sisters had a shortcut to the Other Realm through the upstairs linen closet. "Hey, Zelda, we'd better get going. Want me to hold the door for you?"

"I'm coming!" Zelda called out, running toward the stairs. But suddenly she stopped and spun around. She took a few steps toward the dining room, then stopped again to zap a large antique-looking hourglass in front of her eyes. "Oh, dear!" she exclaimed, obviously torn. "Look at the time!

"Sabrina, darling, could you do me a big favor? I'm late as it is. You see, I got so involved with my latest experiment I lost track of time. Would you be a dear and clean up the Lab-Top for me? I just hate to leave such a mess till morning."

Sabrina's aunts had recently come into a huge sum of money when one of their investment bonds from the year 1660 matured. Hilda had wanted to blow it on fun stuff, but Zelda had insisted on investing most of it in a sensible Lab-Top chemistry laboratory.

Closed, the Lab-Top looked something like a large, flat, aluminum suitcase or portfolio. But opened, it looked more like the laboratory of Merlin the Magician -- if he'd worked his magic in the year 2000. Its sleek, high-tech laboratory equipment bubbled and smoked with eerie purple and toad-green liquids and mysterious powders, combining the best magic of witches' potions with the latest in modern science.

Her aunt was so proud of it. Zelda Spellman was not only a witch but also a brilliant theoretical chemical physicist with degrees from M.I.T. and Cal Tech. And she had a strong desire to use her brains for something good. With the Lab-Top she believed she might one day make her mark with a scientific discovery that would truly benefit the entire cosmos. Or at least everyone on Earth.

"Sure, Aunt Zelda, I'll take care of it," Sabrina said distractedly as she disposed of the shells.

"Thanks, dear!" With a cheery wave, she dashed up the stairs.

A moment later lightning flashed. Thunder shook the old Victorian house.

Sabrina knew that her aunts had disappeared through the linen closet's neat stack of sheets and towels. In two blinks they'd be in the Other Realm -- not bad for a trip that was ten million light-years away.

Sabrina turned back to her grandmother's worn cookbook and ran her fingertip down the instructions.

Gurgle -- erp!

Whoooosh!

She could hear the gentle gurgling and burping of chemicals from the Lab-Top in the nearby dining room. She knew she ought to get in there now and clean up. But she really wanted to get these brownies in the oven first. "As soon as I finish this..."

"Can I lick the bowl when you're done?" an old-lady voice called out.

Sabrina turned to the old portrait hanging in an antique frame on the kitchen wall. The stern-looking woman in the painting wore her dark hair pulled back into a severe bun, and her prim black dress was topped with a lace collar fastened at her throat with a cameo pin. But this wasn't your ordinary painting of an ancestor -- this one talked back.

"But, Aunt Louisa," Sabrina warned the painting, "you'll get chocolate on your frame."

"Oh, nuts," Louisa complained. "I never have any fun." Then her eyes popped open wide. "Nuts! Don't forget the nuts! I love brownies with nuts. Brownies without nuts are like a black cat without whiskers."

Sabrina pointed -- the old-fashioned way -- at her cutting board. "Black walnuts. Will that do?"

"Awesome!" Aunt Louisa squealed.

"I'll save you a brownie," Sabrina told her.

Sabrina turned back to her cookbook. Let's see...Add one teaspoon baking powder. Now, where did her aunts keep that? She opened the secret spice cabinet that her aunts kept behind Aunt Louisa's portrait and poked around among the colored bottles, cans, and jars. No luck. Nothing but dried eye of newt, rare herbs, and a multitude of other mysterious ingredients that the Spellman sisters used to concoct potions and brews. She closed Aunt Louisa's portrait, then began to search the rest of the kitchen cabinets.

Just then the front doorbell rang. Sabrina wiped her hands on a dish towel and hurried to the foyer. When she opened the huge oak door, her heart did a funny flip-flop.

Harvey Kinkle stood in her doorway, his grin as crooked as always, and looking as adorable as a puppy.

When Sabrina was new to Westbridge, she'd immediately developed a crush on Harvey. After a while they'd started dating. In fact, Sabrina had believed he was her one true love. But relationships don't always have fairy-tale endings, even when you're a teenage witch with magic powers at your fingertips. Somehow the world had come between them: football, and parents, and algebra, and schoolwork had torn them apart. Plus all the grown-ups kept saying it was better for them not to get too serious at their age.

But they'd been through too much together -- and liked each other way too much -- not to remain good friends. Who knew? There was still plenty of time for that fairy-tale ending.

"Hey, Harvey. Whatya doing?"

Harvey grinned. "Walking the dog."

"But you don't have a dog."

Woof!

Sabrina glanced down by Harvey's feet. "You do have a dog!" A beautiful reddish golden retriever sat panting at Harvey's side.

"Oh, he's adorable," Sabrina squealed. "Did you just get him?"

"No, I wish!" Harvey bent over and gave the dog a thorough scratching along the back of its head. "You know Mr. and Mrs. Milligen who live next door to me?"

"You mean the couple who wear those matching bowling shirts wherever they go?"

Harvey nodded. "This is their dog. I'm dogsitting for them while they're away. They went to this major regional bowling tournament in Boston. They even talked my mom and dad into going with them."

"So it's just you and the dog?"

"Yeah. Pretty cool, huh?"

Sabrina bent down to look the dog in the eyes. "What's his name?"

"Macdougal," Harvey said. "It's a Scottish name. I read that golden retrievers were originally bred as Scottish hunting dogs, and they..."

Harvey stopped and sniffed the air.

Sabrina stared at him. "Uh...Harvey?"

"Something sure smells good." He sniffed again. "Smells like...chocolate. With nuts."

"Harvey Kinkle, I can't believe you!" Sabrina exclaimed. "I'm making brownies, but I haven't even put them in the oven yet. How could you tell?"

Harvey shrugged. "I dunno. I just have a good nose, I guess." He ch...

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon Spotlight Entertainment
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0671019791
• ISBN 13: 9780671019792
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 160