“Can someone explain to me what’s going on?” Deja asked.
“Puddin’ and Duchess were caught canoodling on the doggy cam and it went viral,” Kara said.
“No way!” Deja came farther into the office.
“Yep!” Kara shoved the phone at her. Ashanti could tell the moment the canoodling was revealed by Deja’s delighted squeal.
“If you asked me, you should make a silhouette of this shot the label for Duchess Delights,” Deja said.
“Yes! Oh em gee, that is genius!” Kara hopped out of the chair. She covered her eyes with her fingers, opening and closing them like she was playing peekaboo. “Wait, no. No, I don’t… Yeah, I can see it. Yes, I love that idea.”
Ashanti rolled her eyes at her sister’s dramatics.
“Get back to school,” she told her.
“Do you really expect me to be able to concentrate on calculus when the Duchess and Puddin’ Show has just hit the mainstream?”
“Yes, I do,” Ashanti said. “And tell your sister that I expect her to be home for dinner. It’s po’ boy night.”
“Fried catfish with no lettuce and extra pickles for me,” Kara said, as if she had not been ordering the same po’ boy every week for the past six years. “And Kendra has cheerleading practice, even though she is the grouchiest cheerleader I have ever seen.”
“What’s going on with her?” Ashanti asked.
Kara hunched her shoulders. “I would say PMS, but that doesn’t last weeks.” She picked up her backpack and pulled the strap over her shoulder. “Don’t worry about Kendra. She’ll snap out of whatever is going on with her.” She held up hercell phone. “If I were you, I’d get to making more treats—specifically the I Woof You chew sticks. People are already blowing up our DMs asking where they can buy them.”
“How many?” Ashanti asked, but Kara had already left the room. Ashanti picked up her phone and clicked on the Instagram app. She tried to sign in but she couldn’t access the daycare’s account.
She hopped up from her desk and rushed out of the office, catching Kara in the lobby.
“Hey, what’s going on with the Barkingham Palace Instagram account?” Ashanti asked.
“Oh, I changed the password. Can’t have you doing rogue IG lives the way you did the other morning.”
“What is the password, Kara?”
“Sorry, calculus awaits,” her sister said in the singsongy voice she used when she wanted to annoy Ashanti. It was working.
“Kara!”
“Fine,” she said. She took Ashanti’s phone and started typing on it. “I’ll let you in, but don’t touch anything. And, by all means, donotpost or reply to anyone.”
“You do realize this ismybusiness, right?”
“Oh yeah? Log into your YouTube channel,” Kara said.
Ashanti snatched the phone from her hand. “Get back to school.”
12
Thad added a tablespoon of dried basil to the ground turkey crumbles sizzling in the skillet his grandmother had owned since before he was born. The fact that he was using this skillet to cook a poodle’s breakfast made him roll his eyes. There was probably someone Dumpster diving in this city at this very moment, yet here he was using high-quality ingredients because Puddin’ had a sensitive stomach. When had his grandmother lost her good sense?
“Probably when you came to live with her,” he said to Puddin’, who stood watch next to him. Judging his cooking skills, no doubt.
“You’d better be glad I love that woman, because you would be eating table scraps if it were up to me.”
Thad could only imagine the uproar it would cause if he even uttered those words in his grandmother’s presence, or around Ashanti Wright. She treated Puddin’ as if he wereherdog.
Thad glanced down at him. “She ever kiss you on the mouth?”
