I glanced at Holly. She always told me and Katie, “There are two syllables in my name. If you don’t have the time or energy to enunciate both, then you need a stress management class.” Yet here she was, driving this dusty barn of a camper through the streets of LA letting a D-list celebrity, who we just met, hold her phone and call her Hol. I’d never been more interested in life than at that very moment.

“Take a left up here. There’s a Juice Bar and a real hippy-dippy market on the left. Sometimes Gwyneth herself sells her Goop stuff there. Everyone shows up for Gwynnie,” she said with a snide tone. “The perfect Gwyn Gwyn.” She exhaled and squinted at the phone. “We’re just going to make it. While you guys go in and get Peanut, I’ll air this camper out, try to clean it up.”

The camper smelled of damp dog, balls of white fur rolled with every bump in the road, and an old fleece blanket I recognized as Katie’s lay in a lump in a grimy corner. The cracked caramel-colored seats spoke of a different era, and every surface had a fine layer of dust. It may have been the height of modern in the seventies, but the bus had seen better days.

I remembered when Katie and Tom bought it for Peanut. They’d searched for an inexpensive vehicle for carting the nervous dog around, and they’d found someone on Craigslist who was willing to give it to them for hauling it away. Tom hated the thing, but Katie had insisted. The vehicle had to be big enough so that Peanut would voluntarily walk into it without falling into a heap of anxiety, but not so big Katie couldn’t parallel park it. She had anticipated needing it for small trips like the vet and dog park but never a cross-country drive without her. For a second I was flooded with sadness for Katie, her broken marriage, her bitter divorce, the loss of her darling dog, and now more cancer. All this happening in the last few years. As if she knew what I was feeling, Summer touched my knee and squeezed.

“Turn here!” Summer hollered, and we skidded to a stop in front of a one-story storefront decorated with an enormous mural of cats and dogs. “Let’s get Peanut, team!”

“Let’s go get the dog,” Holly said like a bookworm forced onto a cheerleading squad who would rather thumb through her Kindle.

“Here we come, Peanut!” I said with enthusiasm that fell below Summer’s but was several notches above Holly’s. I noticed that Holly rarely called Peanut by name, and I didn’t know if it was a thing or just a Holly-ism.

Summer wiped her hand over the dashboard and grimaced. “This chariot is not worthy of this noble mission.”

Holly ignored her as we pushed our way through the heavy glass doors of the Found Animals Stop and Shop. A short woman in a T-shirt that read My dog is smarter than you lifted her head and said, “Are you looking for a furry buddy today?”

Still jazzed from Summer’s enthusiasm I shouted, “Yes!”

Holly scowled at me. To the woman at the desk she said, “We are looking for a Great Pyrenees with diabetes that was dropped here a few days ago.”

“Peanut. His name is Peanut.” I tucked myself in next to Holly and the wall. A tabby cat, curled in a plaid fleece bed on the desk, stared unblinking at me.

A startled woman with overplucked eyebrows was ready for our energy. “I know exactly who you mean. A darling doggo. He left earlier today for the Best Friends Sanctuary.” She reached into the neck of her royal-blue T-shirt and gave her bra strap a yank as if she were just getting started. “His size and diabetic status make him a low adoption choice.”

“What do you mean ‘left’?” I said so abruptly that the cat stood, lifted her back, and resettled away from my drama.

“We are a no-kill shelter, and when the Best Friends Sanctuary people are making a pickup, we hand over hard-to-adopt dogs, and they go to the sanctuary.” The woman pushed her black plastic glasses up her nose. “No offense to Peanut, but big dogs with diabetes are super hard to find homes for. Plus, he’s not a puppy. People want puppies.”

“That’s fine. What’s the address? We’ll go get him,” Holly said.

I was grateful for Holly’s determination. I couldn’t see myself texting Beautiful Drew or Katie to say that we didn’t have Peanut.

“Hang on.” The woman clicked through computer screens. “Okay. I’ve got it. Five hundred Angel Canyon Drive, Kanab, Utah.”

“Utah?” I blurted. “We’ll never make it by five.”

Holly gave me another unfriendly look.

The woman hesitated. “Um. No. It’s far. But, it’s an amazing place. I went there earlier this year and volunteered in the Bunny House. It was life changing. I adored Mr. Piddles and Catmando.” She pointed to the grumpy tabby on the desk. “When you go to get your dog, be careful. Almost no one comes out without a few best friends.”

My screen lit up with a text from Beautiful Drew: Is Peanut in hand?

I cringed and closed my phone. “How far is Utah?” I asked the woman.

“Past Vegas, on top of Arizona. I think it took me something like six hours to get there. That’s why I’ve only been the one time.”

Holly seemed to kick into gear. “Six hours?” She turned to the receptionist. “You sent a big ol’ dog that wasn’t yours six hours into the desert?”

The woman frowned and said, “Hey now. That dog was abandoned, and we took care of it.”

“You got rid of it, you mean.”

“No. It’s, he’s, in a better place. He’ll love it out there. So many other dogs and open spaces to run.”

Holly slammed her flat hand on the counter and said, “We came for the dog, and now he’s not here.” The tabby on the counter lifted her tail like a big middle finger and turned her butt around to face Holly.

“Easy, tiger.” I’d seen Holly mad before, but I was surprised at this outburst. I smiled apologetically to the woman and said, “Come on, Holly. We have to make a plan B.”

“Can’t we go in the back and get another dog? You know Katie—she’ll fall in love with any dog.”

The woman behind the counter gasped.

I yanked Holly toward the door and said, “Are you kidding me right now? Asking a dog owner if their dog is interchangeable is like asking a mother if she could take a different kid home from day care.”

“Don’t be dramatic. That’s not the same thing.”

“It is to dog owners. What is your deal with Peanut anyway?”

“It’s not just Peanut. It’s people with pets in general. We spend so much time and money on animals: rescuing them, saving them with expensive surgery and meds. What’s the point?”

The woman behind the desk called out, “We don’t save them. They save us!”

The second we stepped out of the glass doors, I heard the dead bolt slide into place behind us. With Holly, you either made friends or enemies quickly.

I looked over my shoulder, sending the woman apology-eyebrows, when I heard Holly say, “Where is the camper?”

CHAPTER NINE

PEACE-OUT GIRL

A navy Ford Fiesta sat at the curb outside of the animal shelter where our shitty camper should have been. No ugly bus took up two spaces anywhere on the block, and my mind was doing that squirrel thing: What should I do? Where should I go? Who should I call? Holly’s going to be mad. I sat with a slap onto a metal bench just outside the shelter. Even though Holly had been in favor of getting into the limo with Summer, it was I who’d sat next to her on the plane. Ultimately Holly would fault me.

“I left my phone in the camper. She has my phone!” Holly paced, training her neck right and left.

Oh God. Holly would not tolerate being separated from her phone. If I could slip into a micro-sleep I would be able to process this. I closed my eyes.

“Don’t you dare fall asleep on me.”

Holly’s voice was so loud and so close, I shrank away from the force of her frustration. With a calm I didn’t feel, I said, “Holly, sometimes people other than you need things. I need a minute.”

“This is a ridiculous thing we’re doing. It’s like this whole mission has changed into an episode of Game of Thrones.”

“That’s dramatic.”

“She’s got our camper, our luggage, my phone, and your purse. This seems like a high-drama situation. Call 911.”

“And say what, Holly? ‘Hello, Officer, we think a TV star drove off with our camper.’” I shook myself and took three deep breaths—sometimes hyperventilation brought me clarity. “I’ll call your phone.”

Holly didn’t sneer at me, so I felt a spark of triumph. I dialed and waited. When Holly’s voice mail answered, without thinking I said, “Summer, please come back with the camper, no questions asked.”

“No questions asked,” Holly said with disgust. “I have some questions for her.” She paced, and a semitruck whizzed by and coughed up a cloud of dust that floated toward us on the sidewalk. Holly said, “She can’t get into my phone. It’s password protected.”

I switched to texting, knowing the texts would show up on the locked screen.

ME: Summer. Please come back. Or call me. 608-554-4242

I was about to write, You can’t leave me here with Holly but stopped myself in time, remembering that I was texting Holly’s phone and that if she returned, Holly would see my incriminating plea for help.