“Hey, honey,” my mother said as she came into the living room. It was a week or so after we moved here. I had seen Sophie in the front yard now and then, but she didn’t come across the street like I did the first day. Sometimes she was outside when I was walking home from the bus stop or looking through my binoculars at the sparrow family next door, and we’d wave to each other.
My mother named me Sophie because she isn’t a creative person. Everybody is named Sophie. I had four of them in my class last year. Why did she have to add me to the family of Sophies with uncreative mothers? “Its a lovely name,” she tells me when I complain.
I walked to the door of our new house and looked behind me, hand resting on the unfamiliar doorknob. It wasn’t a sight I was used to seeing, or even anything I was all that comfortable looking at, a scene that anybody who moves will know. The floors were bare and empty, as the carpets were still rolled up in another room waiting to be placed. The few cabinets and shelves around the various rooms were in their proper places, but had yet to be filled. Boxes were stacked here and there, pots and pans bulging from one, my stuffed animals spilling from another. Only the kitchen, with its strange faucet with the handles and knobs in a different place than the faucet I knew, and the dishwasher which my parents had yet to figure out how to run, had its dishes and utensils stored in its proper place. My mother had been working in there all morning.
I wandered over to the water, passing shells planted on their faces, bits of driftwood, dirty feathers half-buried in the sand. The sky arched in a flawless blue dome above me, curving down in front of me to met the water at the horizon far away. Gulls winged their way down the beach, searching for handouts and mischief.
I was already alone, of course. But it wasn’t until I unzipped my tent and looked out at the still, quiet world around me did I feel alone. But then, who wouldn’t when there’s nobody to keep me company for miles around and my relatives and friends probably think I’m dead? I got out of my sleeping bag and stepped out of my tent, and then it was suddenly like the tent wasn’t part of me anymore, wasn’t there to protect me, and I was shoved into this much harsher, more wild world.
He was a sleek and shiny cat,
With eyes of vibrant green
And fur that was a brilliant black,
No prettier cat was seen.
“Spin,” said the sun to the earth
“Cry,” said the earth to the rain
“Grow,” said the rain to the plants
Last night, I sat down on my bed
And thought, as thinking is habit for me,
Of all the books that I had read
And all the stitches that were worked by me.
Katie, whose father is in the hospital due to an undetermined illness, is excited about some new pieces her school choir has been working on, until a girl named Mia starts making fun of her. After being assigned a solo, Katie excitedly comes home to find that her mother has forgotten her.
Read part one of this story here.
Read part two of this story here.
I went to the only person I knew who could possibly be of any help. I walked all that long ways back to the place I had just left that afternoon. The janitors were still there, the after-school activities were in full swing, and Miss Whitley was standing next to her piano, reading something aloud.
My parents came home with pizza the evening of Saturday, February 9th. I am lactose intolerant but I had two slices anyways. “Do you want to go to the thing at the bookstore?” my mother asked.
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