I’M MAKING DO WITH LESS. AND THEN LESS AND LESS AND LESS. I’m even eating less. But I don’t know if it’s better to eat a lot so as to live off my fat later on, or eat less so as to be in practice for not having enough food. I’ve heard, though, that if you’re fat you stretch your stomach, so you need more food to feel satisfied, so I’ve decided it’s better to shrink mine.
I’m practicing for getting out of here.
I won’t be able to take anything but the clothes I’ll be wearing and what I can stuff in my pockets.
Also I’m hardening myself up for the cold. Sometimes I sleep with the window open no matter what the temperature. I live in the attic. Nobody notices what I do up here. I even have a book though I don’t know how to read it.
If I keep quiet and do my jobs I’m practically invisible. Just like Mother said: “It’s always good to behave yourself so as not to get noticed.” She also said, “Stand up straight, say thank you and please.” I don’t. I keep quiet and hunch over so as not to be seen.
I was sold for quite a respectable sum. Or so Mother told me, and proudly. I don’t blame her. I presume she had to do it.
And these are not the worst people to be sold to. I’ve heard some get beaten. These people don’t do that.
Trouble is, now that I’m getting breasts, I can tell that they’re beginning to see me no matter how quiet I keep.
I tried to leave before but I didn’t get far. I was too young. I didn’t realize how hard it would be and how I’d have to be tired and hungry—how I’d have to maybe be freezing or wet. That’s part of running away. This time I’ll be ready. That time I came back by myself. They didn’t even know I had gone.
When they took me, they promised they’d let me go to school so I was glad to go with them, but they never did let me. They kept saying, “Next year,” and when it was next year they still said it. Pretty soon even they stopped saying it because it was clear there wasn’t going to be a “next year” for me.
There are lots of books around. More than anybody would ever need. I thought maybe I could teach myself to read. I looked at captions under pictures, but there aren’t very many pictures and that hasn’t helped much. If I waited till the baby was a bit older, surely there would be some simpler books, but I’m not going to wait.
When they first took me, it was just great. I couldn’t believe my luck. Plane rides and hotels. Wonderful food—though some of it so odd I didn’t dare eat it, and I was homesick every now and then for lentils. They got me the first frilly blouse I ever had…and that was the last, too. It was tan and silky. I did all sorts of things I’d never have had a chance to do except for them—as they kept telling me. That’s when I thought I really would get to go to school.
They kept telling me I should be grateful—and I was. Actually I’m still grateful, but I think I’ve paid them back enough by now. I don’t know how long I’ve been here. I wish I’d had the sense to mark off the years.
The one good thing is, they never whip me. That’s what they used to do back home and it’s one of the reasons I wanted to get out of there. They always talk sweetly. My so-called father calls me a hundred different things. They all sound good. “Madam, if you’d be so kind…Miss, by your leave.” Talking that way is his joke. Like, “My dear, clean the toilet and be quick about it. Sweetheart, change the bed and wash the sheets.” (He doesn’t even say “sweetheart” or “my dear” to his wife.) Now and then he says, “Miss Whatever-your-name-is…” He really does forget my name and that’s why he says “madam” and “my dear.” That’s odd, too, because they’re the ones named me what they wanted me to be. My real name was much too long and complicated for them to remember. They never even tried.
Now that I’m getting breasts my so-called father is looking at me in a different way. All that fancy language he talks, all those “madam”s and “sweetheart”s, “dear lady”s, and “by your leave”s might turn into something entirely different. He pinched my breasts as though to see how much they’d grown.
My so-called mother (“Call me Mother in front of people.” Though people hardly ever come here), she was the one decided what to name me when they took me. She wanted something simple and easy to say. She calls me B. I do know that letter. She spells it Bee. I know A and C, and E, and some others, too. I like O.
Here, I have to do what I don’t want to all the time. I mean all the time. Easier to list what I don’t do than what I do do. And I can’t think of a thing I don’t do.
They’ll miss me when I’m gone. I’m going to have to be careful, though I don’t think they can risk setting the cops on me since I’m here illegally. I didn’t realize that until recently. I’m a secret. They bought me when I was ten. To get me in the country they pretended I was their daughter and got some sort of phony passport.
I don’t want to do anything to put the baby in danger. I’ll leave at night when they’re home. I’m sorry for the houseplants. I don’t think my so-called parents will remember that they’ll need to water them. Maybe they’ll forget about the baby, too. At least it’ll make a fuss.
There’s a big wall around their place and an iron gate that’s always locked. There’s broken glass along the top of the wall and sharp points on top of the gate. They say to keep robbers out, but I think it’s for keeping me in.
But I have the gate key now. They’ve turned the house upside down. They’ve frisked me and more than once. He did it. Looked everywhere on and in my body. Then, for the first time, they whipped me. I almost told them where the key was, but I managed not to. Finally they got tired and stopped. Then my so-called father scared me in another way than pinching breasts. He said I was a pretty girl but he could make it so I wasn’t if I didn’t behave myself.
But they’re not all bad. They were kind enough to give me a day to rest up after that. I guess they knew I’d need it. “Mother” even served me supper in bed. She said, “You’ll get breakfast in bed, too, if you show us where that key is.” They were extra nice all day (I got dessert. I got a heating pad on my sore spots) but I said I didn’t know, so I didn’t get breakfast in bed.
Next day I pretend I’m worse off than I am. I hobble around and sit down sideways whenever I get to sit. They’ll never think I could go off tomorrow. Weather report says rain. Perfect.
Middle of the night and I’m off—my pockets full of peanut-butter sandwiches. Now all I have to do is find a school. I’m not sure what a school looks like, even though I’ve seen pictures. I know sometimes it’s a little school and sometimes it’s a great big building school. At least it should say school on it. I can read that. It’s got two O’s.
After I let myself out, I hide the key under a big tree next to a parking lot a few blocks away. I dig it in nice and deep. That’s what I did last time I ran away and how I got back in before they found out. That time they didn’t even know the key was gone. They’d left it on the hall table.
It’s drizzling but I have a big black garbage bag over me. I walk on down the road, turn a corner, and then another corner. Walking anywhere I want. I keep turning corners just because I can.
This right now is what it’s like to be free. Sometimes I run even though I have a lot of heavy stuff in my pockets. Sometimes I hop and jump. All I know about freedom is what I know right now.
I turned so many corners, at first I don’t suppose I get far, but now I’m getting somewhere. I’ve taken smaller and smaller roads and this one is the smallest of all.
Then I hear something crying. I hold still and listen. There’s a big bush by the side of the road that would make a good place to hide. That’s got to be where the creature is. I move closer. The crying stops.
Since I don’t know what it is, I’m a little worried about reaching around in there. But I’m thinking how I know what it feels like to be wet and homeless even though I haven’t been that way very long.
I crawl under the bushes and feel around until I touch wet fur. The creature cries again. It doesn’t bite me. I pull it out and under the streetlight.
It’s nothing but skin and bones, and so dirty and matted, I hardly know what it is. But then…it’s just what I’ve always wanted and knew I’d never get to have. I even have a name all picked out. I don’t know yet if it’s a boy or girl, but I’ll call it Mr. O’Brien. There was once a man came to visit my so-called parents and that was his name. I was in the kitchen cleaning up, and he looked in at me with curiosity and kindness. I would have said something but he took me by surprise. They usually kept me hidden when people visited. If he had come again I would have been ready to say something, or I’d have made some sort of sign, but he never came back. Usually when there were guests, “Mother” locked me in the attic. I only saw that man for a few seconds, but I’ll remember him forever.
This Mr. O’Brien here is some kind of puppy, I don’t know what kind. It’s mostly brownish unless this is dirt. I hope we get to be friends and that it grows up to be big and dangerous. I’d like to see my so-called father try to come after me then.
I put Mr. O. in with me, under my big black garbage bag.
We walk until there aren’t any more streetlights. I’m looking for the real Mr. O’Brien, or a school, whichever comes first, though right now any dry warm place would do.
But no good place comes along. Then we see a big doghouse at the end of a dog run, but no dog there and it’s quite a ways from the house. At least it’s out of the rain. We crawl in. I get stiff all curled up there and have to stretch my legs out into the rain. We don’t sleep much. We leave as soon as it’s even a little bit light. I share one of my peanut-butter sandwiches with Mr. O’Brien.
That morning just about at dawn (we’ve already walked for a while), I see a school way out here in the middle of nowhere. At least it says school on it. It’s no bigger than a little house and has a big backyard with an old sand pile and a slide and two swings. I know about those from a long time ago.
I push on the doors and look in the windows. It looks abandoned. But what a nice place to hide. Two rooms. A few little chairs and tables. It would be nice if some books were still there, too, but I don’t see any.
Except I can’t get in. I try all the windows but I don’t want to break any.
We give up and go on.
I share another peanut-butter sandwich with Mr. O.
At evening we come to another school. This one is entirely different. It’s big and it looks scary. It says school on it, but almost all the people there are grown-ups. And some look very old. They’re kind of raggedy, too. The men have beards and the women wear long skirts. There’s a big banner right under where it says school, but of course I can’t read it.
They’re all very busy, but not doing school-like things. They’ve rigged up all sorts of unschoolish tents, and there are canvas shades over what looks like a cooking place with lots of pots. In the big back field they’re building a huge shiny long thing with no windows at all. Hard to tell what it is because of the scaffolding around it. It takes up the whole field. People in neat white coveralls are working on it.
I’m going to ask somebody what’s going on, but I’d like to ask a kid, except there aren’t very many around. Odd, but all the kids I see are girls and they’re all wearing skirts.
I wait and watch a long time. Good that Mr. O’Brien seems to like being with me and that he’s a nice quiet dog. We’re both the shy type. We share another peanut-butter sandwich. We’re going to run out pretty soon.
We’re sitting behind some big bushes to eat and we’re not paying attention. All of a sudden here’s just what I wanted, a girl about my age practically right beside us. She’s wearing a long torn dirty skirt.
First thing she says is—that is, after we stare at each other for a couple of minutes—“I wish I could wear blue jeans like yours, but they won’t let me. Skirts are always in the way. Are you trying to hide? What’s your dog’s name?”
“Mr. O’Brien.”
She sits down right next to us and looks as if she’d like to share our sandwich with us, but I can smell what’s cooking in those pots under the canvas shades, so I know she’ll get food.
“Why are you hiding?”
“We’re not. We’re just having lunch. What does that say there, under where it says School ?”
“Can’t you read?”
I really am embarrassed. I almost say I can except I need glasses. But I decide not to lie.
“It says, Prepare, the end is nigh.”
“The end of what?”
“The world of course, silly.” She looks at me as if I really am dumb. “It’s in the middle of ending right now, can’t you tell? Everybody knows that. All you have to do is look around. And look how hot it is already and it isn’t even lunchtime.”
Have they kept me so isolated back home I don’t even know it’s the end of the world? I wouldn’t be surprised, though. When I was cleaning up in the kitchen, I heard the news when they listened to it and things did sound bad. Lots of wars and earthquakes and horrible toxic spills, and even right near us there was a gas truck crashed into a house and exploded and killed everybody and burned up four houses.
“You have to get ready,” she says.
“How? What should I do?”
“You can join us. We’re going to a better world. We need more young girls. It’s going to take a long time to get somewhere, and it’s the young women who’ll have to have a lot of babies on the way so we can start up the new population. We won’t need a lot of men. I’m going to have all the babies I can. I’m precious. You would be too, if you joined us.”
I’m thinking how lucky it is that I ran into these people.
“If I join can you teach me to read?”
“Sure, and I’m good at reading.”
I can’t believe my luck.
“You can’t bring a dog, though. You’ll have to get rid of him.”
“Right now?”
Maybe I’m not as lucky as I thought.
“Well, pretty soon, anyway. You can find it a good home, though I don’t suppose this world will last much longer, what with all that’s been happening, but dogs don’t live a long time anyway. He might die before the world ends, so that’s all right.”
Not so all right with me.
“Come on, they’ll be glad to have you join up. I’ll ask them if you can keep the dog till we leave. They’ll probably say yes because, like I said, they really do want more girls like us.” She says again, “We’re the most important ones of all.”
Turns out they do want me. I make them all happy, especially when I say I’m running away and my people wouldn’t dare tell the police since I was illegal in the first place. They think I’ve come to the exact right spot. “Sent by God,” they say. But they sure don’t like Mr. O’Brien. (“That’s a growing dog. He’ll eat a lot.”) I promise I won’t ever take more than my share and I’ll split my food with him. I tell them I’m used to making do with less.
Turns out Eppie…the girl…(It’s short for Hephzibah. Her mother has a funny name, too, Ziporah)…is a bit younger than I am, she’s only eleven. Turns out she and I will share a little tent behind her family’s big one. Mr. O. will sleep in there with us. (Her parents sure don’t want him around. He’s getting not so shy and is very bouncy. I have to keep an eye on him all the time. He likes to chew shoes.)
They take me inside their spaceship and show me where I’ll be living after we leave. The rooms for mothers are all along the side, and the nursery is across from them. What looks like the walls will be the floors after we get going. There’s a playroom for when the babies get older. It’s full of all kinds of great toys, most I never saw before in my whole life. Well, I do know my so-called parents kept me ignorant, but I didn’t know how much I didn’t know. But now that Eppie is teaching me to read, I’ll be able to read all that. Books can tell you everything you need to know. I’ve got a really good start. Eppie says I’m going faster than she thought anybody could. I think I actually did learn something just looking at those books and thinking about the letters.
I do a lot of work here, but since I’m free, it’s entirely different. They tell me I’m one of their best helpers because I know how to do a lot of things and I’m a pretty good cook, too, and getting better.
Those people in white have better tents than the rest of us do, and the head preacher even has the whole upstairs of the school just for his offices and living space. We listen to “our” radio station all day long. They…we keep asking for more money all the time, though they seem to have a lot already. They keep saying, “God will reward you for your generosity.”
Meanwhile my breasts are getting bigger all the time. I’ll have to get a bra some way. Eppie hasn’t reached that stage yet, so I don’t think I can ask her anything. I don’t feel close to Eppie’s mother, but she’s the one, comes to me and, about another thing, too. I didn’t know anything about that either, which shows how I wasn’t told anything back at my so-called home. Eppie’s mother keeps saying, “Isn’t that nice. That means now you can have babies. We’re going to need lots.” She says, “I’ll be taking care of you. I’m the midwife.”
Things are moving right along—not only with my breasts. The scaffolding is off the spaceship and they’re about to stand it up. There’s a new kind of scaffolding for that. Also there’s been a lot more end-of-the-world disasters—floods and earthquakes, and right here a tornado that ruined a lot of houses in town and killed eight people including a baby, but it went right around us, so everybody here knows that God is in favor of what we’re doing.
There are only four young men that are supposed to be our…“husbands,” I guess you’d call them. They’re supposed to be the fathers of all the new babies. They’re only bringing a few males compared to females. They said they’re the best and the healthiest. Only one looks like the sort they’re talking about…sort of a hero type…curly yellow hair….He doesn’t appeal to me at all. Too good-looking. I think I’m sort of in love with the real Mr. O’Brien. He’s not handsome, but I could see on his face how kind he was. The other three “husbands” are young. One, like Eppie, is only eleven.
Then that oldest handsome boy, Jed (for Jedediah)…grabs me and kisses me before I hardly know what’s happening. I had been out throwing the garbage in the garbage bins, and he followed me and pushed me down behind the bins. That boy…he goes around grinning and looking us girls over. He knows he’s one of the few fathers and he’s already lording it over everybody, like he thinks he’s the most important person on the trip. I suppose most everybody picked to be one of the fathers would act that way, but I sure don’t like it. Eppie and I feel special, too, but we don’t go around as if we were queens.
Thank goodness Mr. O’Brien is with me…as he always is. I try to fight the boy off and then Mr. O’Brien actually bites him. Grabs his wrist and pulls him away. Draws blood. The boy kicks Mr. O. hard, but Mr. O. doesn’t stop. Grabs him by his pants leg and rips it.
The boy says, “Look where he bit me.”
“It’s just scratches.”
“You have to sew these pants up,” and I say, “Okay,” and he says, “Not only that, but you’re going to have to do this one of these days, why not now? We can get things started.”
He’s been boasting about exercising every day up in the ship’s gym. I could feel how strong he is. He probably was chosen for his good looks, too. I don’t want to ever have a stuck-up little baby that looks like him.
“You’re not the only boy that’s coming.”
“One of these years you’ll have to pick me. That’s the rule. We have to mix up our genes.”
“Maybe you’ll be dead before it happens. Or I will be. I hope so, anyway.”
He squeezed my breasts even harder than my so-called father did back there at home. This is the first I start thinking about what really is going on here.
Just as I wished him to, Mr. O. protected me. Even bit hard enough to draw blood. I feel safe with him around.
Eppie and her family are going to be away for a couple of days while they go say good-bye to Eppie’s grandparents. They have to leave Eppie’s little brother with them. He can’t come because of a heart murmur. Lots of others are off to say good-bye, too. People over forty aren’t allowed to come. I can see why. They wouldn’t last long enough.
I’m going out to find Mr. O’Brien a good home. (“The dog has got to go. We can’t be a Noah’s Ark. The Lord will supply the needed animals when we get there.” Actually, they’re bringing some cows and chickens, but just so as to have eggs and milk for the trip.) They’re telling us younger ones to get ready to name all the new kinds of animals we’ll find when we get there. There won’t be any need for meat, so God will leave those animals out.
I don’t ever need a leash. Mr. O. sticks right by me all the time. I think he remembers that I rescued him and warmed him with my own body. I’ll bet he remembers sleeping in that doghouse.
He’s gotten pretty big now, just as I wanted, and he’d willingly die defending me if he had to. He’s exactly everything I wished for.
It’s so hot, everybody in town is just sort of waiting for it to be fall and be cooler. The town is all shut up during the heat of the day. Even lots of stores are closed from noon to three. People are at the movies or sitting next to their air conditions. Some people spend a lot of time walking up and down in the big cool grocery store and the Kmart. Eppie says, “Where we’re going it’ll be a wonderful new world like this one used to be. God will make it so.”
All around town I tell people what a great dog Mr. O. is and why I need to let him go. After a while I only try where they already have a dog. Nobody wants him, and lots of times I wouldn’t want him at some of those places either.
When people find out I’m from the end-of-the-world people, they laugh at me. Turns out they call us crazies. One lady said I looked nice and neat compared to some of them, though she said Mr. O’Brien looks like he belongs with them. Then she said why didn’t I clip him some so he’d be more comfortable in this heat. I hadn’t thought of that. She has three dogs of her own and a big fenced-in yard, and she’s really nice. She said she boarded dogs and also clipped dogs for people, and she knew I couldn’t afford it but she’d clip Mr. O. for me anyway.
We went up on her closed-in porch where it was cool, and she got water for Mr. O’Brien and ice tea for me. There was a parrot there, and she told me to hold out my hand and he flew right to me. Then she got out her clippers and showed me how he should be clipped, and even let me do some of it. Mr. O. looked a lot better after we got through with him. I asked again if she wouldn’t take him. She said she couldn’t afford the food for such a big dog, and she said she already had two cats and the parrot and her three terriers and she needed the rest of her space for boarding. Then she says, “Why don’t you take him out in the country to some farm? If I was Mr. O’Brien, I’d like to live on a farm with lots of room and work to do.”
That’s such a good idea. I say I’ll go look right away.
“But,” she says, “if I were you, I’d not go with those crazies. They really are crazies, you know. Why don’t you come over here and work for me? You’ve got a knack with animals and I could use a helper.”
I don’t know what to say, so I say, “But they taught me to read.”
She looks at me funny, then realizes she’s staring, and looks down at Mr. O. instead, as if she doesn’t know what to say either. Finally she says, “Great dog. If he were mine, I wouldn’t get rid of him for anything.”
I do find a good home for Mr. O. way out on a farm. They’re going to change his name to Buster. I’m thinking they’d like his name if they had ever met the real Mr. O’Brien. They’re going to keep him tied up until he gets used to them and to me not being there, otherwise he’d follow me back. As I leave, I hear him barking and barking, and then it changes to crying. But they said he’d get used it. They said it always takes a while. And it was cooler out there and there were other dogs and lots of other animals. I would have liked it there myself. But now I’m thinking I gave away the only thing I ever loved, and the only thing that ever loved me.
And then I worry. It was a long hot walk out of town, are they going to give him water? He needs it right away. They seemed like nice enough people, but sometimes people forget or don’t notice.
As I get back to the group, here’s Eppie. She can see that I’ve been crying. Also that Mr. O. isn’t with me.
She says, “Good. You did it. That dog was just too big. I’m glad he’s out of our pup tent. Can you picture him bouncing around in a spaceship!”
I have to admit he took up more than his share of the tent. I say, “I’m worried he’s thirsty and they won’t give him water. Maybe I should go back and check.”
“Are you going to be worrying about that dog all though the whole trip?”
She’s right, I am going to worry. I say, “Maybe I shouldn’t go with you.”
But then she gets all upset. “Oh, no.” She practically yells it, and hugs me. “You’re my best friend.”
I think I’m her best friend because I’m so ignorant about the world that she can keep telling me things. I do learn a lot from her but I know some of it’s wrong. Though I’m certainly grateful for those reading lessons. She wants to be a teacher and she’s good at it, but I’m not really her best friend, I’m just her best and most willing pupil.
We’ve already packed up most of our belongings and arranged them in our staterooms. My room is next to Eppie’s, just as we wanted. The rooms are small, but they have big metal mirrors so they seem larger. We had our choice of colors. I wanted mine to be all woody colors: tans and browns. I knew it would be a long time before I saw any real wood. Eppie’s is yellow and blue and white. She put her favorite pictures on the walls. They had to be glued down tight. She couldn’t put up pictures in the pup tent but she had these all ready to go. Funny to think of those pictures of handsome men—I guess they’re movie stars—going all the way off to Paradise, where they’ll be old men or dead before we even get there. I wonder why she even has them.
I guess I’d most want a picture of Mr. O., but then I’d never stop thinking about him. Except I don’t want to ever stop. Besides,
There’s a big rally our last night on Earth. They talk about the beautiful world God will lead them to, out in Proxima Centauri. They keep calling it Paradise, but the moon is out and almost full, and I don’t see how any place can be more beautiful than right here. Besides, this world has Mr. O. in it. I do know my so-called father and mother would never find me on that new world, but even so, I’m not sure I want to go. Besides, Mr. O. would keep me safe. He did it before.
The preacher (dressed all raggedy, like we’re all supposed to be because of renouncing worldly things). He says…shouts, “And so this evil world will soon burn as if it’s hell itself. Parts that don’t burn will be covered with water. Already dozens of islands have been lost to the sea. Soon every river will be poisoned. You know it. You know it. You see it already happening. Look at Godless New Orleans. Look at voodoo-filled Haiti. How God punished them.
“I will not be among you. I’m old and I’m not the best of the best, but you are. You’re the chosen.”
The moon is so bright I wouldn’t even need a flashlight. There’s a little breeze and it’s cool for a change.
“…and there will be the winds of a hundred hurricanes and they will last a hundred years, and the earth will shake….You know it. You know it. You’ve seen it already.”
I pretend to head to the bathrooms. Eppie says, “Wait a minute. This is the best part. He’s telling about earthquakes that never stop.” But I keep going.
“…earthquakes that never stop…I say again never. Never! Imagine it. Imagine.”
I reach the farm in the middle of the night. The other dogs there bark like crazy. Luckily they still have Mr. O. tied up in the front of the house. He’s almost chewed through his rope. He’d have been free in another day or so. We hug and he cries with joy, and so do I. The lights go on in the house, and I untie him fast and we run, but not toward the end-of-the-world people. Maybe we can spend the night back in that doghouse.
In the doghouse we find a half-dead kitten. We can’t do anything about it until morning, so we all just cuddle up together.
From now on I’m going to do the opposite of the end-of-theworld people. I’m going to take in animals, and Mr. O’Brien and this kitten are the first ones.
Except the kitten dies in the night. It was just too bitten up, and I didn’t have any way to help save it. I had thought about that woman who did grooming. She’d know how to help, but it died before I could get it to her. At least it didn’t have to die alone. I told it I loved it and that it was a good kitty. I hope it understood.
The end-of-the-world people leave in the morning. We hear the great roar and see the flash of their going. It lights up the whole sky. It’s exciting, and for a minute I wish I was with them. I shout, and Mr. O. gives a howl. Then we run, as if to follow it.
We run. And run and run and don’t care where. All of a sudden, here’s that little two-room school that looks like a house. This time I don’t think twice. I break a window and we fall inside, all worn out.
We lie there the rest of the day feeling sad…about Eppie being gone, but glad we’re here together. We don’t even worry about not having anything to eat. When it gets dark, we sleep.
But in the morning, we’re hungry and thirsty. There’s no water here that works. Everything is turned off. No electricity. I find how to turn the water on under the house. I know about that from home, but I don’t know how to turn on the electricity. At least we have something to drink.
I don’t know what to do or where to go or how to get food, and then I think about that lady who said I’d be a good helper.
Mrs. Sindee feeds us and I get hired and I’m going to get paid.
Things do get worse. Everybody wonders where fall got to and if it’ll ever cool off. And there’s earthquakes where they never had them before, even one right here, and then Mrs. Sindee gets flooded out. I help her clean up after the water goes back down. Good thing is, people go on wanting their animals clipped and boarded sometimes, and it finally does cool down. In fact it gets too cold. Mr. O’Brien and I and even Mrs. Sindee…we don’t even care. We wear our long underwear and Mr. O’Brien grows a heavy coat of new fur.
Mr. O’Brien and I live in that old school, and so far nobody has found out. And whenever we find a wounded bird or cat or whatever, we rescue it. And everything we rescue turns out to be the best there is, just like Mr. O’Brien. We’re all making do with less, but we already have seven books.
I wonder if they’ll ever reach Proxima Centauri.