Carmella was an unusual girl. By unusual, one might think of a girl with green hair and perhaps a tattoo of a tiger on her forehead. That was not our Carmella. She did not have green hair. And the tattoo on her forehead was only a birthmark that looked like three tiger stripes. No, our Carmella was not unusual because of the way she looked. She was unusual because she was not afraid of anything in a world where most people are afraid of everything. As an infant, she had survived abandonment beneath a dart board at Sweaty Nell’s Harmonic Taphouse. Maybe that was why she was unafraid. As a grade-school student, she had survived the jeers and taunts that her tiger-like stripes had inspired among children who were consumed by social standing, as many children must be. Maybe that was why. Maybe it was just because she survived her name, Carmella Dellabella, written in heavy marker on green painter’s tape, and stuck to the arm she was waving beneath the dart board where she was found.

Young Carmella Dellabella, maybe Italian, maybe Australian, showed outward signs of both. She had Mediterranean coloring: dark eyes shaped like candle flames; dark, deep hair that reflected the colors of earth metals; smooth, olive-colored skin that resisted sunburn, minor abrasions, and the calumny of catty teenage girls. She had the temperament of an outback crocodile hunter: impatient, fiery, brave, irrepressible.

Carmella Maybe Dellabella. Her three tiger stripes were heavier in their middles, tapered towards their ends. The first two stripes started from almost the same point on her right temple and followed the curve above her eyebrow, slowly parting ways as they drifted from right to left – like the opening mouth of a tiger. The third stripe started midway within the first two and extended about an inch beyond them, as though the tiger were sticking out its tongue (which self-respecting tigers would not do). With some, the tattoo evoked empathy. Among others, disdain. For most, it shouted: just try me. The Big Green Eye seemed to trip, unwittingly, into the latter camp. And to this, we will return in a moment.

First, you must meet Trusty (Jonathan) Boylan, who was to play a vital role in Carmella’s unexpected adventure. Everything that Carmella was, Trusty wasn’t. Carmella was the passion; Trusty was the reason. Trusty was average height; Carmella was above average height with two additional years of having added to it. Trusty’s appearance was average (trim, brown hair, standard brown eyes, comparatively pale skin, nondescript nose, fullish lips, but not overly so), and he wore round, wire-framed spectacles. But what Trusty had all to himself was how he interacted with the world through his keyboard. Trusty could tease the algorithm out of a search engine in an afternoon, just for fun, while soaking up YouTube videos on time, space, dark matter, and quantum anything ‒ his all-time favorite subjects. Despite the stereotype which his abilities usually implied, Trusty could have an engaging conversation with pretty much anyone. He was a normal guy who just happened to possess the skills to bend the universe to his will – that is to say, a handy guy to have around, as you shall see.

Our team is now nearly complete, but we need to introduce you to one more member who was important to the telling of this story and who was the reason that Carmella and Trusty had met a few years earlier. This character is a dog who looked a like a wolf, except that his mostly white coloring and black button eyes sometimes gave him the appearance of being a baby polar bear. Context would determine which he was, when. The large notch on his pointed right ear gave him the further appearance of being a dog who had many tales to tell, if only you had time to listen, and he were able to talk.

The day the sometime wolf, sometime polar bear, sometime dog wandered out of a field and into their town, Trusty and Carmella happened to be walking on opposite sides of the same street. This was the street that Yogi, his name not yet given, chose to walk down the middle of, oblivious to the cars which had to slow and go around him. No one honked at Yogi, despite his navigational impertinence. They just made way for him. Perhaps that was because he was a sorry picture of gray-matted fur with a pronounced limp in his front leg. Or maybe it was because Yogi looked like he was smiling despite his circumstances. Whatever the reason, both Trusty and Carmella found themselves running out into the street at the same time, and together coaxing Yogi to the improved safety of the sidewalk. There, Yogi sat down, opened his very large mouth into a surprising enlargement of his existing smile, and let his long, eraser-pink tongue drape out over his imposing canines in an easy pant.

I could tell you the story of how the teenagers brought Yogi to the animal shelter down the street, second light on the right; how they helped wash him and, after three tubfuls of water, that he changed colors; how nobody wanted to adopt Yogi because his growing wolf dog reputation limited the inquiries on his suitability as a companion for baby; and how Carmella’s adoptive family finally took him into their home because, even though they had a houseful of cats, it turned out that Yogi liked cats, and you never really know how cats feel about anything, so that was good enough.

But I won’t. Instead, I will tell you how Carmella Dellabella, Trusty Boylan, and Yogi the Wolf Dog set out to save the world.

Merde de chat!” screamed Carmella at sixteen years old. She didn’t exactly sound like a smoke detector, but you might be forgiven if the thought crossed your mind. It crossed her adoptive father Frank’s mind, as he sat in the living room below, reading the sports scores on his tablet. Frank Jones of Boston, though he preferred to point out that he was from Cambridge, ever the gentleman bank employee, was today at rest. Frank adjusted his black, horn-rimmed glasses, and look up at the ceiling where Carmella’s bedroom was, and he listened.

Quiet now.

He smiled, then looked back at his tablet and frowned because he had inadvertently tapped or swiped or something, because the page he was on was no longer there. Before he could start his very limited tablet diagnostics, the front door swung open, slammed shut, and Trusty Boylan went shooting by him, cell phone in hand.

“Hello Mr. Jones,” Trusty tossed out like a water balloon from a moving car.

“She’s in her room,” Frank offered rhetorically as Trusty ran up the stairs, two steps at a time.

Carmella Maybe Dellabella Jones was standing on her bed in her red pajamas, hair wild, cell phone in one hand, tennis racquet in the other. Yogi the Wolf Dog was next to her, lying on the bed, ears up, paws curled over the edge, and his snout sniffing something below. Carmella mouthed something indistinct to Trusty and was gesturing frantically beneath her bed with the tennis racquet.

“I got your text,” Trusty said, realizing that he was being obvious.

Carmella quickly tapped her phone screen with one thumb and Trusty’s phone buzzed in his hand: “we hv sumthg trapd under bed,” the text said.

“want me 2 get help?” he texted back, going with the silence for the moment.

Buzz: “no help catch it”

Buzz: “ideas?”

Buzz: “you lure it we jump it”

Buzz: “gd plan,” knowing better than to argue.

Trusty looked at the tennis racquet in motion above Carmella’s head and Yogi’s round, black, amused eyes watching him wholly. He approached the bed and slowly got down on his hands and knees to peer beneath it. Then, chaos erupted. A slippery-looking, green tendril shot out from under the bed, wrapped itself under Trusty’s arms and around his shoulders, and before the racquet could swing or a bark could bark, Trusty was pulled beneath the bed, his feet disappearing from sight.

“Trou du cul de tortue!” Carmella cried out as she and Yogi jumped off the bed and scrambled to look beneath it… grabbing, reaching. But there was nothing there.

Nothing.

“Oops,” she whispered.

Yogi tilted his head and added: “mrruh,” where the “uh” part lilted up, as though he were asking a question.