What is a simpler way to phrase?: In Chapters Seven and Eight, the author effectively structures the narrative through character revelations and escalating tension. The interaction between Luke and Rick Glenfield sheds light on institutional failures and sets up Glenfield as a figure of suspicion, while also hinting at broader themes of competence and redemption. The emotional breakdown of Olivia Pang after Crispin's death serves as a catalyst for Luke’s investigation, grounding the mystery in personal stakes and foreshadowing potential complications in his quest for answers. The sudden violence inflicted on Ms. Kee unexpectedly shifts the trajectory of the plot, intertwining Luke’s investigative duties with urgent concerns for personal safety, thereby heightening tension. As Luke navigates these interpersonal dynamics, the author illustrates how past relationships complicate the present, making it increasingly challenging for him to distinguish friends from foes. This multifaceted structure of character interactions and revealing dialogue amplifies the narrative's suspense while establishing a complex web of motives. Each event not only propels the investigation forward but also deepens the reader's investment in the characters’ fates. Ultimately, the structural choices in these chapters create an intricate layering of intrigue, making Luke’s pursuit of justice both thrilling and perilous.
What is a simpler way to phrase?: At the beginning of Chapter 7, Luke encounters Rick Glenfield, a former information technology instructor who has been relegated to caretaker duties due to doubts about his competence. During their conversation, Luke seeks information about any missing weapons at the school, and Glenfield expresses his grievances over being unjustly blamed for the problems caused by students. While Glenfield shares details about his past failures and the disciplinary troubles he faced, Luke feels emotionally drained but determined to continue his investigation into Crispin Addley's murder. Their dialogue reveals Glenfield’s frustration with The Authorities and his acknowledgment of having witnessed students after school, including Mr. Bromley, around the time of Crispin's death.
In Chapter 8, Luke interviews Olivia Pang, Crispin's devastated girlfriend, hoping to learn about their plans for the day he was killed. He empathizes with her pain and attempts to draw a connection, but Olivia reveals that they did not have a set date, catching Luke off guard. As he continues to probe for information about possible jealousy or motives, it becomes clear that Olivia is overwhelmed with grief. Luke also discovers that a telescreen message had directed Crispin to a meeting at the firing range, which implies someone else may have lured him there. Eventually, he learns of Ms. Kee's sudden death under suspicious circumstances, intensifying the investigation and leaving Luke to ponder the motives behind both murders as he realizes the complexity of the case continues to deepen.
Write a five sentence summary for Chapter 1; Chapter One
He sees me.
Charlie dropped to her hands and knees. She was wedged behind a row of arcade games, cramped in the crawl space between the consoles and the wall, tangled electrical cords and useless plugs strewn beneath her. She was cornered; the only way out was past the thing, and she wasn’t fast enough to make it. She could see him stalking back and forth, catching flickers of movement through the gaps between the games. There was scarcely enough room to move, but she tried to crawl backward. Her foot caught on a cord. She stopped, contorting herself to carefully dislodge it.
She heard the clash of metal on metal, and the farthest console rocked back against the wall. He hit it again, shattering the display, then attacked the next, crashing against them almost rhythmically, tearing through the machinery, coming closer.
I have to get out, I have to! The panicked thought was of no help; there was no way out. Her arm ached, and she wanted to sob aloud. Blood soaked through the tattered bandage, and it seemed as though she could feel it draining out of her.
The console a few feet away crashed against the wall, and Charlie flinched. He was getting closer; she could hear the grinding of gears and the clicking of servos, ever louder. Eyes closed, she could still see the way he looked at her, see the matted fur and the exposed metal beneath the synthetic flesh.
Suddenly the console in front of her was wrenched away. It toppled over, thrown down like a toy. The power cords beneath her hands and knees were yanked away, and Charlie slipped, almost falling. She caught herself and looked up just in time to see the downward swing of a hook
WELCOME TO HURRICANE, UTAH.
Charlie smiled wryly at the sign and kept driving. The world didn’t look any different from one side of the sign to the other, but she felt a nervous anticipation as she passed it. She didn’t recognize anything. Then again, she hadn’t really expected to, not this far at the edge of town where it was all highway and empty space.
She wondered what the others would look like, who they were now. Ten years ago they’d been best friends. And then it happened, and everything ended, at least for Charlie. She hadn’t seen any of them since she was seven years old. They had written all the time as kids, especially Marla, who wrote like she talked: fast and incoherent. But as they got older they had grown apart, the letters had grown fewer and further between, and the conversations leading up to this trip had been perfunctory and full of awkward pauses. Charlie repeated their names as though to reassure herself that she still remembered them: Marla. Jessica. Lamar. Carlton. John. And Michael Michael was the reason for this trip, after all. It was ten years since he’d died, ten years since it happened, and now his parents wanted them all together for the dedication ceremony. They wanted all his old friends there when they announced the scholarship they were creating in his name. Charlie knew it was a good thing to do, but the gathering still felt slightly macabre. She shivered and turned down the air-conditioning, even though she knew it was not the cold.
As she drove into the town center, Charlie began to recognize things: a few stores and the movie theater, which was now advertising the summer’s blockbuster hit. She felt a brief moment of surprise, then smiled at herself. What did you expect, that the whole place would be unchanged? A monument to the moment of your departure, frozen forever in July 1985? Well, that was exactly what she had expected. She looked at her watch. Still a few hours to kill before they all met up. She thought about going to the movie, but she knew what she really wanted to do. Charlie made a left turn and headed out of town.
Ten minutes later, she pulled to a stop and got out.
The house loomed up before her, its dark outline a wound in the bright-blue sky. Charlie leaned back against the car, slightly dizzy. She took a moment to steady herself with deep breaths. She had known it would be here. An illicit look through her aunt’s bank books a few years before had told her that the mortgage was paid off and that Aunt Jen was still paying property taxes. It had only been ten years; there was no reason it should have changed at all. Charlie climbed the steps slowly, taking in the peeling paint. The third stair still had a loose board, and the rosebushes had taken over one side of the porch, their thorns biting hungrily into the wood. The door was locked, but Charlie still had her key. She had never actually used it. As she took it from around her neck and slid it into the lock, she remembered her father putting its chain around her neck. In case you ever need it, Well, she needed it now.
The door opened easily, and Charlie looked around. She didn’t remember much about the first couple of years here. She had been only three years old, and all the memories had faded together in the blur of a child’s grief and loss, of not understanding why her mother had to go away, clinging to her father every moment, not trusting the world around her unless he was there, unless she was holding tightly to him, burying herself in his flannel shirts and the smell of grease and hot metal and him.
The stairs stretched straight up in front of her, but she did not move directly to them. Instead she went into the living room, where all the furniture was still in place. She had not really noticed it as a child, but the house was a little too large for the furniture they had. Things were spread out too widely in order to fill the space: The coffee table was too far from the couch to reach, the easy chair too far across the room to calry on a conversation. There was a dark stain in the wooden floorboards near the center of the room. Charlie stepped around it quickly and went to the kitchen, where the cupboards held only a few pots, pans, and dishes. Charlie had never felt a lack of anything as a child, but it seemed now that the unnecessary enormity of the house was a sort of apology, the attempt of a man who had lost so much to give his daughter what he could. He’d always had a way of overdoing whatever he did.
The last time she was here the house had been dark and everything felt wrong. She was carried up the stairs to her bedroom although she was seven years old and could have gone quicker on her own two feet. But Aunt Jen had stopped on the front porch, picked her up, and carried her, shielding her face as though she were a baby in the glaring sun.
In her room, Aunt Jen set Charlie down and closed the bedroom door behind them. She told her to pack her suitcase, and Charlie had cried because all her things could never fit into that small case.
“We can come back for the rest later,” Aunt Jen said, her impatience leaking through as Charlie hovered indecisively at her dresser, trying to decide which T-shirts to bring along. They had never come back for the rest.
Charlie mounted the stairs, heading to her old bedroom. The door was partially cracked, and as she opened it she had a giddy feeling of displacement, as though her younger self might be sitting there among her toys, might look up and ask Charlie, Who are you? Charlie went in.
Like the rest of the house, her bedroom was untouched. The walls were pale pink, and the ceiling, which sloped dramatically on one side to follow the line of the roof, was painted to match. Her old bed still stood against the wall beneath a large window; the mattress was still intact, though the sheets were gone. The window was cracked slightly open, and rotting lace curtains wavered in the gentle breeze from outside. There was a dark water stain in the paint beneath the window where the weather had gotten in over the years, betraying the house’s neglect. Charlie climbed onto the bed and forced the window shut. It obeyed with a screech, and Charlie stepped back and turned her attention to the rest of the room, to her father’s creations.
Their first night in the house, Charlie had been afraid to sleep alone. She did not remember the night, but her father had told her about it often enough that the story had taken on the quality of memory. She sat up and wailed until her father came to find her, until he scooped her up and held her and promised her he would make sure she was never alone again. The next morning, he took her by the hand and led her to the garage, where he set to work keeping that promise.
The first of his inventions was a purple rabbit, now gray with age from years of sitting in the sunlight. Her father had named him Theodore. He was the size of a three-year-old child—her size at the time—and he had plush fur, shining eyes, and a dapper red bow tie. He didn’t do much, only waved a hand, tilted his head to the side, and said in her father’s voice, “I love you, Charlie.” But it was enough to give her a night watcher, someone to keep her company when she could not sleep. Right now Theodore sat in a white wicker chair in the far corner of the room. Charlie waved at him, but, not activated, he did not wave back.
After Theodore, the toys got more complex. Some worked and some did not; some seemed to have permanent glitches, while others simply did not appeal to Charlie’s childish imagination. She knew her father took those back to his workshop and recycled them for parts, though she did not like to watch them be dismantled. But the ones that were kept, those she loved, they were here now, looking at her expectantly. Smiling, Charlie pushed a button beside her bed. It gave way stiffly, but nothing happened. She pushed it again, holding it down longer, and this time, across the room and with the weary creak of metal on metal, the unicorn began to move.
The unicorn (Charlie had named him Stanley for some reason she could no longer remember) was made of metal and had been painted glossy white. He trundled around the room on a circular track, bobbing his head stiffly up and down. The track squealed as Stanley rounded the corner and came to a stop beside the bed. Charlie knelt beside him on the floor and patted his flank. His glossy paint was chipped and peeling, and his face had given over to rust. His eyes were lively, gazing out of the decay.
“You need a new coat of paint, Stanley,” Charlie said. The unicorn stared ahead, unresponsive.
At the foot of the bed, there was a wheel. Made of patched-together metal, it had always reminded her of something she might find on a submarine. Charlie turned it. It stuck for a moment, then gave way, rotating as it always did, and across the room the smallest closet door swung open. Out sailed Ella on her track, a child-size doll bearing a teacup and saucer in her tiny hands like an offering. Ella’s plaid dress was still crisp, and her patent leather shoes still shone; perhaps the closet had protected her from the damage of the damp. Charlie had had an identical outfit, back when she and Ella were the same height.
“Hi, Ella,” she said softly. As the wheel unwound, Ella retreated to the closet again, the door closing behind her. Charlie followed her. The closets had been built to align with the slant of the ceiling, and there were three of them. Ella lived in the short one, which was about three and a half feet tall. Next to it was one a foot or so taller, and a third, closest to the bedroom door, was the same height as the rest of the room. She smiled, remembering.
“Why do you have three closets?” John had demanded the first time he came over. She looked at him blankly, confused by the question.
“ *Cause that’s how many there are,” she said finally. She pointed defensively to the littlest one. “That one’s Ella’s anyway,” she added. John nodded, satisfied.
Charlie shook her head and opened the door to the middle closet—or tried to. The knob stopped with a jolt: It was locked. She rattled it a few times but gave up without much conviction. She stayed crouched low to the floor and glanced up at the tallest closet, her big-girl closet that she would someday grow into. “You won’t need it until you’re bigger,” her father would say, but that day never came. The door now hung open slightly, but Charlie didn’t disturb it. It hadn’t opened for her; it had only given way to time.
As she moved to stand, she noticed something shiny, half-hidden under the rim of the locked middle door. She leaned forward to pick it up. It looked like a broken-off piece of a circuit board. She smiled slightly. Nuts, bolts, scraps, and parts had turned up all over the place, once upon a time. Her father always had stray parts in his pockets. He would carry around something he was working on, set it down, and forget where it was, or worse, put something aside “for safekeeping,” never to be seen again. There was also a strand of her hair clinging to it; she unwound it carefully from the tiny lip of metal it was stuck on.
Finally, as though she had been putting it off, Charlie crossed the room and picked up Theodore. His back had not faded in the sun like the front of his body, and it was the same rich, dark purple she remembered. She pressed the button at the base of his neck, but he remained lifeless. His fur was threadbare, one ear hanging loose by a single rotting thread, and through the hole she could see the green plastic of his circuit board. Charlie held her breath, listening fearfully for something.
“I—ou—lie—” the rabbit said with a barely audible halting noise, and Charlie set him down, her face hot and her chest pinched tight. She had not really expected to hear her father’s voice again. I love you, too.
Charlie looked around the room. When she was a child it had been her own magical world, and she was possessive of it. Only a few chosen friends were ever even allowed inside. She went to her bed and set Stanley moving on his track again. She left, closing the door behind her before the little unicorn came to a halt.
She went out the back door to the driveway and stopped in front of the garage that had been her father’s workshop. Half-buried in the gravel a few feet away was a piece of metal, and Charlie went to pick it up. It was jointed in the middle, and she held it in her hands, smiling a little as she bent it back and forth. An elbow joint, she thought. J wonder who that was going to belong to?
She had stood in this exact spot many times before. She closed her eyes, and the memory overwhelmed her. She was a little girl again, sitting on the floor of her father’s workshop, playing with scraps of wood and metal as though they were toy blocks, trying to build a tower with the uneven pieces. The shop was hot, and she was sweaty, grime sticking to her legs as she sat in her shorts and sneakers. She could almost smell the sharp, metallic odor of the soldering iron. Her father was nearby, never out of sight, working on Stanley the unicorn.
Stanley’s face was still unfinished: one side white and shining and friendly, with a gleaming brown eye that seemed almost to see. The other half of the toy’s face was all exposed circuit boards and metal parts. Charlie’s father looked at her and smiled, and she smiled back, beloved. In a darkened corner behind her father, barely visible, hung a jumble of metal limbs, a twisted skeleton with burning silver eyes. Every once in a while, it gave an uncanny twitch. Charlie tried never to look at it, but as her father worked, as she played with her makeshift toys, her eye was drawn back to it again and again. The limbs, contorted, seemed almost mocking, the thing a ghastly jester, and yet there was something about it that suggested enormous pain.
“Daddy?” Charlie said, and her father did not look up from his work. “Daddy?” she said again, more urgently, and this time he turned to her slowly, as though not fully present in the world.
“What do you need, sweetie?”
She pointed at the metal skeleton. Does it hurt? She wanted to ask the question, but when she looked into her father’s eyes she found she could not. She shook her head.
“Nothing.”
He nodded at her with an absent smile and went back to his work. Behind him, the creature gave another awful twitch, and its eyes still burned.
Charlie shivered and drew herself back to the present. She glanced behind her, feeling exposed. She looked down, and her gaze fixed on something: three widely spaced grooves in the ground. She knelt, thoughtful, and ran her finger over one of them. The gravel was scattered away, the marks worn heavily into the dirt. A camera tripod of some sort? It was the first unfamiliar thing she’d seen. The door to the workshop was cracked open slightly, inviting, but she felt no desire to go inside. Quickly, she headed back to her car, but she stopped as soon as she settled into the driver’s seat. Her keys were gone, having probably fallen out of her pocket somewhere inside the house.
She retraced her steps, merely glancing into the living room and kitchen before heading up to her bedroom. The keys were on the wicker chair, beside Theodore the rabbit. She picked them up and jangled them for a moment, not quite ready to leave the room behind. She sat down on the bed. Stanley the unicorn had stopped beside the bed as he always did, and as she sat, she patted him absently on the head. It had grown dark while she was outside, and the room was now cast in shadows. Somehow, without the bright sunlight, the toys’ flaws and deterioration were thrown into sharp relief. Theodore’s eyes no longer shone, and his thin fur and hanging ear made him look like a sickly vagabond. When she looked down at Stanley, the rust around his eyes made them look like hollow sockets, and his bared teeth, which she had always thought of as a smile, became the awful, knowing grin of a skull. Charlie stood up, careful not to touch him, and hurried toward the door, but her foot caught on the wheel beside the bed. She tripped on the tracks and fell sprawling to the floor. There was a whir of spinning metal, and as she raised her head, a small pair of feet appeared under her nose, clad in shining patent leather. She looked up.
There above her was Ella, staring down at her, silent and uninvited, her glassy eyes almost appearing to see. The teacup and saucer were held out before her with a military stiffness. Charlie got up cautiously, taking care not to disturb the doll. She left the room, stepping carefully to avoid accidentally activating any other toys. As Charlie went, Ella retreated to her closet, almost matching her pace.
Charlie hurried down the stairs, seized by an urgency to get away. In the car, she fumbled the key three times before sliding it into place. She backed too fast down the driveway, running recklessly over the grass of the front yard, and sped away. After about a mile, Charlie pulled over on the shoulder and turned the car off, staring straight ahead through the windshield, her eyes focused on nothing. She forced herself to breathe slowly. She reached up and adjusted the rearview mirror so she could see herself.
She always expected to see pain, anger, and sorrow written on her face, but they never were. Her cheeks were pink, and her round face looked almost cheerful, like always. Her first weeks living with Aunt Jen, she heard the same things over and over when Aunt Jen introduced her: “What a pretty child. What a happy-looking child she is.” Charlie always looked like she was about to smile, her brown eyes wide and sparkling, her thin mouth ready to curve up, even when she wanted to sob. The incongruity was a mild betrayal. She ran her fingers through her light brown hair as though that would magically fix its slight frizziness and put the mirror back into position.
She turned the car back on and searched for a radio station, hoping music might bring her fully back to reality. She flipped from station to station, not really hearing what any of them were playing, and finally settled on an AM broadcast with a host who seemed to be yelling condescendingly at his audience. She had no idea what he was talking about, but the brash and annoying sound was enough to jar her back into the present. The clock in the car was always wrong, so she checked her watch. It was almost time to meet her friends at the diner they had chosen, near the center of town.
Charlie pulled back onto the road and drove, letting the sound of the angry talk radio host soothe her mind.
When she reached the restaurant, Charlie pulled into the lot and stopped, but did not park. The front of the diner had a long picture window all across it, and she could see right inside. Though she had not seen them for years, it took her only a moment to spot her friends through the glass.
Jessica was easiest to pick out from the crowd. She always enclosed pictures with her letters, and right now she looked exactly like her last photo. Even seated, she was clearly taller than either of the boys, and very thin. Though Charlie could not see her whole outfit, she was wearing a loose white shirt with an embroidered vest, and she had a brimmed hat perched on her glossy, shoulder-length brown hair, with an enormous flower threatening to tip it off her head. She was gesturing excitedly about something as she spoke.
The two boys were sitting next to each other, facing her. Carlton looked like an older version of his red-headed childhood self. He still had a bit of a baby face, but his features had refined, and his hair was carefully tousled and held in place by some alchemical hair product. He was almost pretty, for a boy, and he wore a black workout shirt, though she doubted he’d ever worked out a day in his life. He slouched forward on the table, resting his chin in his hands. Beside him, John sat closest to the window. John had been the kind of child who got dirty before he even went outside: There would be paint on his shirt before the teacher handed out the watercolors, grass stains on his knees before they came near a playground, and dirt under his fingernails just after he washed his hands. Charlie knew it was him because it had to be, but he looked completely different. The grubbiness of childhood had been replaced by something crisp and clean. He was wearing a neatly pressed, light-green button-down shirt, the sleeves rolled up and the collar open, preventing him from looking too uptight. He was leaning back confidently in the booth, nodding enthusiastically, apparently absorbed in whatever Jessica was saying. The only concession to his former self was his hair, sticking up all over his head, and he had a five-o’clock shadow, a smug, adult version of the dirt he was always covered in as a kid.
Charlie smiled to herself. John had been something like her childhood crush, before either of them really understood what that meant. He gave her cookies from his Transformers lunchbox, and once in kindergarten he took the blame when she broke the glass jar that held colored beads for arts and crafts. She remembered the moment when it slipped from her hands, and she watched it fall. She could not have moved fast enough to catch it, but she would not have tried. She wanted to see it break. The glass hit the wood floor and shattered into a thousand pieces, and the beads scattered, many colored, among the shards. She thought it was beautiful, and then she started to cry. John had a note sent home to his parents, and when she told him “thank you” he had winked at her with an irony beyond his years and simply said, “For what?”
After that, John was allowed to come to her room. She let him play with Stanley and Theodore, watching anxiously the first time he learned to press the buttons and make them move. She would be crushed if he didn’t like them, knowing instinctively that it would make her think less of him. They were her family. But John was fascinated as soon as he saw them; he loved her mechanical toys, and so she loved him. Two years later, behind a tree beside her father’s workshop, she almost let him kiss her. And then it happened, and everything ended, at least for Charlie.
Charlie shook herself, forcing her mind back to the present. Looking again at Jessica’s polished appearance, she glanced down at herself. Purple T-shirt, denim jacket, black jeans, and combat boots. It had felt like a good choice this morning, but now she wished she had chosen something else. This is all you ever wear, she reminded herself. She parked and locked the car behind her, even though people in Hurricane did not usually lock their cars. Then she went into the diner to meet her friends for the first time in ten years.
The warmth, noise, and light of the restaurant hit her in a wave as she entered. For a moment she was overwhelmed, but Jessica saw her pause in the doorway and shouted her name. Charlie smiled and went over.
“Hi,” she said awkwardly, flicking her eyes at each of them but not fully making contact. Jessica scooted over on the red vinyl bench and patted the seat beside her.
“Here, sit,” she said. “I was just telling John and Carlton about my glamorous life.” She rolled her eyes as she said it, managing to convey both self-deprecation and the sense that her life was truly something exciting.
“Did you know Jessica lives in New York?” Carlton said. There was something careful about the way he spoke, like he was thinking about his words before he formed them. John was silent, but he smiled at Charlie anxiously.
Jessica rolled her eyes again, and with a flash of déja vu Charlie suddenly recalled that this had been a habit even when they were children. “Eight million people live in New York, Carlton. It’s not exactly an achievement,” Jessica said. Carlton shrugged.
“T’ve never been anywhere,” he said.
“T didn’t know you still lived in town,” Charlie said.
“Where else am I going to live? My family has been here since 1896,” he added, deepening his voice to mimic his father.
“Ts that even true?” Charlie asked.
“T don’t know,” Carlton said in his own register. “Could be. Dad ran for mayor two years ago. I mean, he lost, but still, who runs for mayor?” He made a face. “I swear, the day I turn eighteen I am out of here.”
“Where are you going to go?” John asked, looking seriously at Carlton.
Carlton met his eyes, just as serious for a moment. Abruptly, he broke away and pointed out the window, closing one eye as if to get his aim true. John raised an eyebrow as he looked out the window, trying to follow the line Carlton was pointing to. Charlie looked, too. Carlton wasn’t pointing at anything. John opened his mouth to say something, but Carlton interrupted.
“Or,” he said as he smoothly pointed in the opposite direction.
“Okay.” John scratched his head, looking slightly embarrassed. “Anywhere, right?” he added with a laugh.
“Where’s everyone else?” Charlie asked, peering out the window and searching the parking lot for new arrivals.
“Tomorrow,” John said.
“They’re coming tomorrow moming,” Jessica jumped in to clarify. “Marla’s bringing her little brother. Can you believe it?”
“Jason?” Charlie smiled. She remembered Jason as a little bundle of blankets with a tiny red face peeking out.
“T mean, who wants a baby around?” Jessica adjusted her hat primly.
“T’m pretty sure he’s not a baby anymore,” Charlie said, stifling a laugh.
“Practically a baby,” Jessica said. “Anyway, I booked us a room at the motel down by the highway. It was all I could find. The boys are staying with Carlton.” “Okay,” Charlie said. She was vaguely impressed by Jessica’s organization, but she wasn’t happy about the plan. She was loath to share a room with Jessica, who now seemed like a stranger. Jessica had become the kind of girl who intimidated her: polished and immaculate, speaking as though she had everything in life figured out. For a moment Charlie considered going back to her old house for the night, but as soon as she thought it, the idea repelled her. That house, at night, was no longer the province of the living. Don’t be dramatic, she scolded herself, but now John was speaking. He had a way of commanding attention with his voice, probably because he spoke less often than everyone else. He spent most of his time listening, but not out of reticence. He was gathering information, speaking only when he had wisdom or sarcasm to dispense. Often it was both at once.
“Does anyone know what’s happening tomorrow?”
They were all silent for a moment, and the waitress took the opportunity to come over for their order. Charlie flipped quickly through the menu, her eyes not really focusing on the words. Her turn to order came much faster than she was expecting, and she froze.
“Um, eggs,” she said at last. The woman’s hard expression was still fixed on her, and she realized she had not finished. “Scrambled. Wheat toast,” she added, and the woman went away. Charlie looked back down at the menu. She hated this about herself. When she was caught off guard she seemed to lose all ability to act or process what was going on around her. People were incomprehensible, their demands alien. Ordering dinner shouldn’t be hard, she thought. The others had begun their conversation again, and she turned her attention to them, feeling like she had fallen behind.
“What do we even say to his parents?” Jessica was saying.
“Carlton, do you ever see them?” Charlie asked.
“Not really,” he said. “Around, I guess. Sometimes.”
“I’m surprised they stayed in Hurricane,” Jessica said with a note of worldly disapproval in her voice.
Charlie said nothing, but she thought, How could they not?
His body had never been found. How could they not have secretly hoped he might come home, no matter how impossible they knew it was? How could they leave the only home Michael knew? It would mean really, finally giving up on him. Maybe that was what this scholarship was: an admission that he was never coming home.
Charlie was acutely aware that they were in a public place, where talking about Michael felt inappropriate. They were, in a sense, both insiders and outsiders. They had been closer to Michael, probably more than anyone in this restaurant, but, with the exception of Carlton, they were no longer from Hurricane. They did not belong.
She saw the tears falling on her paper placemat before she felt them, and she hurriedly wiped her eyes, looking down and hoping no one had noticed. When she looked up, John appeared to be studying his silverware, but she knew he had seen. She was grateful to him for not trying to offer comfort.
“John, do you still write?” Charlie asked.
John had declared himself “an author” when they were about six, having learned to read and write when he was four, a year ahead of the rest of them. At the age of seven, he completed his first “novel” and pressed his poorly spelled, inscrutably illustrated creation on his friends and family, demanding reviews. Charlie remembered that she had given him only two stars.
John laughed at the question. “I actually do my Ess the right way these days,” he said. “I can’t believe you remember that. But I do actually, yeah.” He stopped, clearly wanting to say more.
“What do you write?” Carlton obliged, and John looked down at his placemat, speaking mostly to the table.
“Um, short stories, mostly. I actually had one published last year. I mean, it was just in a magazine, nothing big.” They all made suitable noises of being impressed, and he looked up again, embarrassed but pleased.
“What was the story about?” Charlie asked.
John hesitated, but before he could speak or decide not to, the waitress returned with their food. They had all ordered from the breakfast menu: coffee, eggs, and bacon; blueberry pancakes for Carlton. The brightly colored food looked hopeful, like a fresh start to the day. Charlie took a bite of her toast, and they all ate silently for a moment.
“Hey, Carlton,’ John said suddenly. “What ever happened to Freddy’s anyway?”
There was a brief hush. Carlton looked nervously at Charlie, and Jessica stared up at the ceiling. John flushed red, and Charlie spoke hastily.
“Tt’s okay, Carlton. I’d like to know, too.”
Carlton shrugged, stabbing at his pancakes nervously with his fork.
“They built over it,” he said.
“What did they build?” Jessica asked.
“Ts there something else there now? Was it built over, or just torn down?” John asked. Carlton shrugged again, quick, like a nervous tic.
“Like I said, I don’t know. It’s too far back from the road to see, and I haven’t exactly investigated. It might have been leased to someone, but I don’t know what they did. It’s all been blocked off for years, under construction. You can’t even tell if the building is still there.”
“So it could still be there?” Jessica asked with a spark of excitement breaking through.
“Like I said, I don’t know,” Carlton answered.
Charlie felt the diner’s fluorescent lights glaring down on her face, suddenly too bright. She felt exposed. She had barely eaten, but she found herself rising from the booth, pulling a few crumpled bills from her pocket, and dropping them on the table.
“T’m going to go outside for a minute,” she said. “Smoke break,” she added hastily. You don’t smoke. She chided herself for the clumsy lie as she made her way to the door, jostling past a family of four without saying “excuse me,” and stepped out into the cool evening. She walked to her car and sat on the hood, the metal denting slightly under her weight. She took in breaths of the cool air as if it were water and closed her eyes. You knew it would come up. You knew you would have to talk about it, she reminded herself. She had practiced on the drive here, had forced herself to think back to happy memories, to smile and say, “Remember when?” She thought she was prepared for this. But of course she had been wrong. Why else would she have run out of the restaurant like a child?
“Charlie?”
She opened her eyes and saw John standing next to the car, holding her jacket out in front of him like an offering.
“You forgot your jacket,” he said, and she made herself smile at him.
“Thanks,” she said. She took it and draped it over her shoulders, then slid over on the car’s hood for him to sit.
“Sorry about that,” she said. In the dim lights of the parking lot she could still see him blush to the ears. He joined her on the car’s hood, leaving a deliberate space between them.
“T haven’t learned to think before I talk. I’m sorry.” John watched the sky as a plane passed overhead.
Charlie smiled, this time unforced.
“Tt’s okay. I knew it was going to come up; it had to. I just—it sounds stupid, but I never think about it. I don’t let myself. No one knows what happened except my aunt, and we never talk about it. Then I come here, and suddenly it’s everywhere. I was just surprised, that’s all.”
“Uh-oh.” John pointed, and Charlie saw Jessica and Carlton hesitating in the doorway of the diner. She waved them over, and they came.
“Remember that time at Freddy’s when the merry-go-round got stuck, and Marla and that mean kid Billy had to keep riding it until their parents plucked them off?” Charlie said.
John laughed, and the sound made her smile.
“Their faces were bright red, crying like babies.” She covered her face, guilty that it was so funny to her.
There was a brief, surprised silence, then Carlton started laughing. “Then Marla puked all over him!”
“Sweet justice!” Charlie said.
“Actually, I think it was nachos,” John added.
Jessica wrinkled her nose. “So gross. I never rode it again, not after that.”
“Oh, come on, Jessica, they cleaned it,” said Carlton. “I’m pretty sure kids puked all over that place; those wet floor signs weren’t there for nothing. Right, Charlie?”
“Don’t look at me,” she said. “I never puked.”
“We used to spend so much time there! Privileges of knowing the owner’s daughter,” Jessica said, looking at Charlie with mock accusation.
“T couldn’t help who my dad was!” Charlie said, laughing.
Jessica looked thoughtful for a moment before she continued. “I mean, how could you have a better childhood than spending all day at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza?”
“T dunno,” said Carlton. “I think that music got to me over the years.” He hummed a few bars of the familiar song. Charlie dipped her head to it, recalling the tune.
“T loved those animals so much,” Jessica said suddenly. “What’s the proper term for them? Animals, robots, mascots?”
“T think those are all accurate.” Charlie leaned back.
“Well, anyway, I used to go and talk to the bunny, what was his name?”
“Bonnie,” Charlie said.
“Yeah,” said Jessica. “I used to complain to him about my parents. | always thought he had an understanding look about him.”
Carlton laughed. “Animatronic therapy! Recommended by six out of seven crazy people.”
“Shut up,” Jessica retorted. “I knew he wasn’t real. I just liked talking to him.”
Charlie smiled a little. “I remember that,” she said. Jessica in her prim little dresses, her brown hair in two tight braids like a little kid out of an old book, walking up to the stage when the show was over, whispering earnestly to the life-size animatronic rabbit. If anyone came up beside her, she went instantly silent and still, waiting for them to go away so she could resume her one-sided conversations. Charlie had never talked to the animals at her father’s restaurant or felt close to them like some kids seemed to; although she liked them, they belonged to the public. She had her own toys, mechanical friends waiting for her at home, that belonged only to her.
“T liked Freddy,” said John. “He always seemed the most relatable.”
“You know, there are a lot of things about my childhood that I can’t remember at all,” Carlton said, “but I swear I can close my eyes and see every last detail of that place. Even the gum I used to stick under the tables.”
“Gum? Yeah, right; those were boogers.” Jessica took a tiny step away from Carlton.
He grinned. “I was seven; what do you want? You all picked on me back then. Remember when Marla wrote ‘Carlton smells like feet’ on the wall outside?”
“You did smell like feet.” Jessica laughed with a sudden outburst.
Carlton shrugged, unperturbed. “I used to try to hide when it was time to go home. I wanted to be stuck in there overnight so I could have the whole place to myself.”
“Yeah, you always kept everyone waiting,” said John, “and you always hid under the same table.”
Charlie spoke slowly, and when she did everyone turned to her, as though they had been waiting.
“Sometimes I feel like I remember every inch of it, like Carlton,” she said. “But sometimes it’s like I hardly remember it at all. It’s all in pieces. Like, I remember the carousel, and that time it got stuck. I remember drawing on the placemats. I remember little things: eating that greasy pizza, hugging Freddy in the summer and his yellow fur getting stuck all over my clothes. But a lot of it is like pictures, like it happened to someone else.”
They were all looking at her oddly.
“Freddy was brown, right?” Jessica looked to the others for confirmation.
“T guess you really don’t remember it that well after all,” Carlton teased Charlie, and she laughed briefly.
“Right. I meant brown,” she said. Brown, Freddy was brown. Of course he was; she could see him in her mind now. But somewhere in the depths of her recall, there was a flash of something else. Carlton launched into another story, and Charlie tried to turn her attention to him, but there was something disturbing, worrisome, about that lapse in memory. It was ten years ago; it’s not like you’ve got dementia at seventeen, she told herself, but it was such a basic detail to have misremembered. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught John looking at her, a pensive expression on his face, as though she had said something important.
“You really don’t know what happened to it?” she asked Carlton with more urgency in her voice than she intended. He stopped talking, surprised. “Sorry,” she said. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt you.”
“Tt’s okay,” he said. “But yeah—or no, I really don’t know what happened.”
“How can you not know? You live here.”
“Charlie, come on,” said John.
“It’s not like I hang around that part of town. Things are different; the town has grown,” Carlton said mildly, seeming unruffled by her outburst. “And I honestly don’t look for reasons to go around there, you know? Why would I? There isn’t any reason, not anymore.”
“We could go there,” John said suddenly, and Charlie’s heart skipped.
Carlton looked nervously at Charlie. “What? Seriously, it’s a mess. I don’t know if you can even get to it.”
Charlie found herself nodding. She felt as though she had spent the whole day weighed down by memory, seeing everything through a filter of years, and now she felt suddenly alert, her mind fully present. She wanted to go.
“Let’s do it,” she said. “Even if there’s nothing there. I want to see.” They were all silent. Suddenly, John smiled with a reckless confidence.
“Yeah. Let’s do it.” For Chapter 1: Go beyond the summary and show me an analytical and/or critical response. Analyze how authors structure texts to advance the plot, explaining how each event gives rise to the next or foreshadows a future event. Write as few sentences as possible, maximum of nine sentences.
Write a (combined) five sentence summary for Chapter 1 & 2; 1 “It’s very foolish to laugh if you don’t know what’s funny in the first place.”
My best friend, Tracy Wu, says I’m really tough on people. She says she wonders sometimes how I can like her. But we both know that’s a big joke. Tracy’s the best friend I’ll ever have. I just wish we were in the same fifth-grade class. My teacher is Mrs. Minish. I’m not crazy about her. She hardly ever opens the windows in our room because she’s afraid of getting a stiff neck. I never heard anything so dumb. Somedays our room gets hot and stuffy and it smells—like this afternoon. We’d been listening to individual reports on The Mammal for almost an hour. Donna Davidson was standing at the front of the room reading hers. It was on the horse. Donna has this thing about horses. I tried hard not to fall asleep but it wasn’t easy. For a while I watched Michael and Irwin as they passed a National Geographic back and forth. It was open to a page full of naked people. Wendy and Caroline played Tic Tac Toe behind Wendy’s notebook. Wendy won three games in a row. I wasn’t surprised. Wendy is a very clever person. Besides being class president, she is also group science leader, recess captain and head of the goldfish committee. Did Mrs. Minish notice anything that was going on or was she just concentrating on Donna’s boring report? I couldn’t tell from looking at her. She had a kind of half-smile on her face and sometimes she kept her eyes closed for longer than a blink. To make the time go faster I thought about Halloween. It’s just two days away. I love to dress up and go Trick-or-Treating, but I’m definitely
not going to be a dumb old witch again this year. Donna will probably be a horse. She dresses up like one every Halloween. Last year she said when she grows up she is going to marry a horse. She has him all picked out and everything. His name is San Salvador. Most of the time Donna smells like a horse but I wouldn’t tell her that because she might think it’s a compliment. I yawned and wiggled around in my chair. “In closing,” Donna said, “I would like you to remember that even though some people say horses are stupid that is a big lie! I personally happen to know some very smart horses. And that’s the end of my report.” The whole class clapped, not because Donna’s report was great, but because it was finally over. Mrs. Minish opened her eyes and said, “Very nice, Donna.” Earlier, when I had finished my report on the lion, Mrs. Minish said the same thing to me. Very nice, Jill. Just like that. Now I couldn’t be sure if she really meant it. My report wasn’t as dull as Donna’s but it wasn’t as long either. Maybe the longer you talk the better grade you get. That wouldn’t be fair though. Either way, I’m glad Mrs. Minish calls on us alphabetically and that my last name is Brenner. I come right after Bruce Bonaventura. Mrs. Minish cleared her throat. “Linda Fischer will give the last report for today,” she said. “We’ll hear five more tomorrow and by the middle of next week everyone will have had a turn.” I didn’t think I’d be able to live through another report. “Are you ready, Linda?” Mrs. Minish asked. “Yes,” Linda said, as she walked to the front of the room. “My report is uh … on the whale.” Caroline and Wendy started another game of Tic Tac Toe while Bruce went to work on his nose. He has a very interesting way of picking it. First he works one nostril and then the other and whatever he gets out he sticks on a piece of yellow paper inside his desk. The hand on the wall clock jumped. Only ten minutes till the bell. I took a piece of paper out of my desk to keep a record of how many times Linda said And uh … while she gave her report. So far I’d counted seven. Linda’s head is shaped like a potato and sits right on her shoulders, as if she hasn’t got any neck. She’s also the pudgiest girl in our class, but not
in our grade. Ruthellen Stark and Elizabeth Ryan are about ten times fatter than Linda, but even they can’t compare to Bruce. If we had a school fat contest he would definitely win. He’s a regular butterball. “Blubber is a thick layer of fat that lies under the skin and over the muscles of whales,” Linda said. “And uh … it protects them and keeps them warm even in cold water. Blubber is very important. Removing the blubber from a whale is a job done by men called flensers. They peel off the blubber with long knives and uh … cut it into strips.” Linda held up a picture. “This is what blubber looks like,” she said. Wendy passed a note to Caroline. Caroline read it, then turned around in her seat and passed it to me. I unfolded it. It said: Blubber is a good name for her! I smiled, not because I thought the note was funny, but because Wendy was watching me. When she turned away I crumpled it up and left it in the corner of my desk. The next thing I knew, Robby Winters, who sits next to me, reached out and grabbed it. Linda kept talking. “And uh … whale oil is obtained by heating the blubber of the whale. European margarine companies are the chief users of whale oil and uh … it also goes into glycerine and some laundry soaps and has other minor uses. Sometimes Eskimos and Japanese eat blubber …” When Linda said that Wendy laughed out loud and once she started she couldn’t stop. Probably the reason she got the hiccups was she laughed too hard. They were very loud hiccups. The kind you can’t do anything about. Pretty soon Robby Winters was laughing too. He doesn’t laugh like an ordinary person—that is, no noise comes out. But his whole body shakes and tears run out of his eyes and just watching him is enough to make anybody start in, so the next minute we were all roaring—all except Linda and Mrs. Minish. She clapped her hands and said, “Exactly what is going on here?” Wendy let out a loud hiccup. Mrs. Minish said, “Wendy, you are excused. Go and get a drink of water.” Wendy stood up and ran out of the room. By then Wendy’s note about Blubber had travelled halfway around the class and I couldn’t stop laughing, even when Mrs. Minish looked right at me and said, “Jill Brenner, will you please explain the joke.”
I didn’t say anything. “Well, Jill … I’m waiting …” “I don’t know the joke,” I finally said, finding it hard to talk at all. “You don’t know why you’re laughing?” Mrs. Minish asked. I shook my head. “It’s very foolish to laugh if you don’t know what’s funny in the first place.” I nodded. “If you can’t control yourself you can march straight to Mr. Nichols’ office and explain the situation to him.” I nodded again. “I’m waiting for your answer, Jill.” “I forgot the question, Mrs. Minish.” “The question is, can you control yourself?” “Oh … yes, Mrs. Minish … I can.” “I hope so. Linda, you may continue,” Mrs. Minish said. “I’m done,” Linda told her. “Well … that was a very nice report.” The bell rang then. We pushed back our chairs and ran for the row of lockers behind our desks. Mrs. Minish has to dismiss us at exactly two thirty-five. Otherwise we’d miss our buses. It’s very important to get on the right one. On the first day of school my brother, Kenny, got on the wrong bus and wound up all the way across town. Since my mother and father were both at work the principal of Longmeadow School had to drive Kenny home. I would never make such a mistake. My bus is H-4. That means Hillside School, route number four. I’m glad Kenny doesn’t go to my school. Next year he will, but right now he is just in fourth grade and only fifth and sixth graders go to Hillside. When I got on the bus Tracy was saving me a seat. Caroline and Wendy found two seats across from us. Before this year I’d never been in either one of their classes but this is my second time with Linda Fischer and I’ve been with Donna, Bruce and Robby since kindergarten. “We had the best afternoon,” Tracy said. “Mr. Vandenburg invented this game to help us get our multiplication facts straight and I was fortyeight and every time he called out six times eight or four times twelve I had to jump up and yell Here! It was so much fun.”
“You’re lucky to be in his class,” I said. “I wish he’d give Mrs. Minish some ideas.” “She’s the wrong type.” “You’re telling me!” As Linda climbed onto the bus Wendy shouted, “Here comes Blubber!” And a bunch of kids called out, “Hi, Blubber.” Our bus pulled out of the driveway and as soon as we turned the corner and got going Robby Winters sailed a paper airplane down the aisle. It landed on my head. “Pass it here, Jill,” Wendy called. When I did, she whipped out a magic marker and wrote I’m Blubber—Fly Me on the wing. Then she stood up and aimed the plane at Linda. The group of girls who always sit in the last row of seats started singing to the tune of “Beautiful Dreamer,” Blubbery blubber … blub, blub, blub, blub … At the same time, the airplane landed on two sixth-grade boys who ripped it up to make spit balls. They shot them at Linda. Then Irwin grabbed her jacket off her lap. “She won’t need a coat this winter,” he said. “She’s got her blubber to keep her warm.” He tossed the jacket up front and we played Keep-Away with it. “Some people even eat blubber!” Caroline shrieked, catching Linda’s jacket. “She said so herself.” “Ohhh … disgusting!” Ruthellen Stark moaned, clutching her stomach. “Sick!” The girls in the back started their song again. Blubbery blubber … blub, blub, blub, blub … The bus driver yelled, “Shut up or I’ll put you all off!” Nobody paid any attention. Linda picked the spit balls out of her hair but she still didn’t say anything. She just sat there, looking out the window. When we reached the first stop Wendy threw Linda’s jacket to me. She and Caroline ran down the aisle and as Linda stood up, Wendy called back, “Bye, Blubber!” Linda stopped at my row. I could tell she was close to crying because last year, when Robby stepped on her finger by mistake, she got the same look on her face, right before the tears started rolling. “Oh, here,” I said and I tossed her the jacket. She got off and I saw her
race down the street away from Wendy and Caroline. They were still laughing.
2 “That’s what you’re going to be for Halloween?”
Linda lives in Hidden Valley. So do Wendy, Caroline, Robby and a bunch of other kids. It’s a big group of houses with a low brick wall around it and a sign that says WELCOME TO HIDDEN VALLEY—SPEED LIMIT 25 MILES PER HOUR. Across the street there is another sign saying WATCH OUR CHILDREN. It’s called Hidden Valley because there are a million trees and in the summer you can’t see any of the houses. Nobody told me this. It’s something I figured out by myself. My stop is next. Me and Tracy are the only ones who get off there. The Wu family lives across the road from us. They have a lot of animals. All of this doesn’t mean we live in the country. It’s kind of pretend country. That is, it looks like country because of all the woods but just about everyone who lives here works in the city, like my mother and father. I don’t know one single farmer unless you count the woman who sells us vegetables in the summer. “Can you come over?” Tracy asked, as we collected the mail from our mailboxes. “As soon as I change,” I told her. “Bring your stamps,” Tracy said. “I will.” Me and Tracy are practically professional stamp collectors. We both have the Master Global Album. And I have this deal going with my father—if I let my nails grow between now and Christmas he will give me $25 to spend in Gimbels, which has the best stamp department in the whole world. So even though it is just about killing me, I’m not going to bite my nails. Sometimes I have to sit on my fingers to keep from doing it.
When I got home Kenny was waiting at the front door. He was holding his Guinness Book of World Records in one hand and with the other was shoving a cupcake into his mouth. “Did you know the oldest woman to ever give birth to a baby was fifty-seven years old?” As he talked he blew crumbs out of his mouth. “So?” I said, to show I wasn’t interested, because if Kenny gets the idea I’m interested he will tell me facts from his Book of World Records all day. “So … that means Grandma is too old to have a baby.” “Well, of course she is! She’s past sixty.” “And Mrs. Sandmeier’s too old, too.” Mrs. Sandmeier is our housekeeper. She takes care of me and Kenny after school. “Too old for what?” she asked, as we walked into the kitchen. “Too old to have a baby,” Kenny said. Mrs. Sandmeier laughed. “Who says so?” “My Book of World Records,” Kenny told her. “The oldest woman to give birth was fifty-seven and you’re fifty-eight.” “Don’t remind me!” Mrs. Sandmeier said. Mrs. Sandmeier is always telling us she’s getting old but she can still take on Kenny and his friends at basketball and beat them singlehanded. “How was your day, Jill?” Mrs. Sandmeier asked me in French, as she poured a glass of milk. I answered in English. “Pretty good.” Mrs. Sandmeier made a face. Part of her job is to teach me and Kenny to speak French. She’s from Switzerland and can speak three languages. I understand what she says when she speaks French but I always answer in English because most of the time I’m too busy to think of the right words in French. After my snack, I changed into my favorite jeans, collected my stamp equipment, and headed for Tracy’s. Kenny and Mrs. Sandmeier were already outside, practicing lay-ups. “Be back at five-thirty,” Mrs. Sandmeier called, as I walked up the driveway. “I will.” Our street isn’t big enough to have a name. There’s just a sign saying
PRIVATE ROAD, and our house and Tracy’s. Dr. Wu was outside planting tulip bulbs. Tuesday is his day off. “Hi, Dr. Wu,” I said. He is our family doctor and makes house calls only to us. I like him a lot. He’s always smiling. Also, he doesn’t gag me with a stick when he looks down my throat. “Hi, yourself,” he called to me. Tracy was in the backyard, feeding her chickens. She has ten of them and a beautiful white rooster called Friendly, who I love. Sometimes Tracy lets me hold him. His crown is red and it feels like a cat’s tongue. I know this because last year one of Tracy’s cats licked me. She has seven cats but they don’t live in the house. They come into the garage to get food and water and the rest of the time they stay outside. Tracy also has two dogs. They live in the house. When the chickens were fed we went inside to Tracy’s room to look over our latest approvals from the Winthrop Stamp Company. We decided we’d each buy two stamps. Tracy showed me the Halloween costume her mother is making for her—Big Bird from Sesame Street. It has yellow feathers and everything. “It’s beautiful!” I said. I still didn’t have an idea for my costume. We went to work on our albums, trading doubles and fastening loose stamps to the page. And then, right in the middle of licking a stamp hinge, I thought up a costume so clever I didn’t even tell Tracy. I decided it would be a surprise. That night, when my mother and father got home, they brought two big pumpkins with them. I waited until we were halfway through with dinner before I brought up the subject of my Halloween costume. “I don’t think I want to be a witch this year,” I said. I hoped I wouldn’t hurt Mom’s feelings because the witch’s costume was hers when she was a kid. It has funny, pointytoed shoes with silver buckles, a high black silk hat and a long black robe with a bow at the neck. The whole thing smells like mothballs. Besides, the shoes hurt my feet. “You can be whatever you want,” my mother said and she didn’t sound insulted. “If she doesn’t want to wear the witch’s suit, can I?” Kenny asked. “A boy witch?” I said.
“Sure. What’s wrong with that?” “Nothing,” Mom told him. “I’d love to have you wear my costume.” “And I’m going to carry a broom,” Kenny said. “And remember that fake cigar from my last year’s disguise … I’m going to use that too. I’ll bet there aren’t many witches around who smoke cigars.” “Smoking is dangerous to your health!” I said. “My cigar’s fake, stupid!” I gave him a kick under the table and was pleased to see that Mom ground out the cigarette she’d been smoking. “What about you, Jill?” my father asked. “What do you want to be?” “Oh … I’ve been thinking I might like to be a flenser.” “What’s that?” Kenny asked. “You mean you don’t know?” I said. “Never heard of it.” “With all your facts in the Book of World Records you never learned about the oldest flenser and the youngest flenser and the flenser who did the best job and all that?” “Dad …” Kenny said. “She’s starting in again.” I absolutely love to tease Kenny. “Jill, that’s enough,” my father said. “Tell Kenny what a flenser is.” “Yes,” Mom said. “I can hardly wait to hear myself.” “You mean you don’t know either?” I asked my mother. “Never heard the word. Did you, Gordon?” “Nope,” Dad said. Kenny jumped up. “I’ll be right back,” he told us, as he ran out of the room. I knew where he was going—to look up “flenser” in his dictionary. In a few minutes he was back, carrying it. “A flenser strips the blubber off whales,” he read, looking at me. “That’s what you’re going to be for Halloween?” he asked, like he couldn’t believe it. I smiled. “Where did you get that idea, Jill?” Mom asked. “From this girl in my class. She gave a report on whales.” “Well … that’s certainly original,” Dad said. “What kind of costume does a flenser wear?” Kenny asked. “A flenser suit,” I told him. “Yeah … but what’s it made of?”
“Oh … jeans and a shirt and a special kind of hat and a long knife.” “No knife,” my father said. “That’s too dangerous.” “Not a real knife,” I said. “One made out of cardboard.” “What kind of hat?” Kenny asked. “A flenser hat, naturally,” I told him. “Yeah … but what’s it look like?” “I can’t begin to describe it. You’ll just have to wait and see.” “I’d wear boots if I was a flenser,” Kenny said. “What for?” I asked him. “Because of walking around in all that yucky blubber stuff.” Kenny was right. I’d have to wear boots too. After dinner we went into the living room for our family poker game. I handed out the Monopoly money. We each get $150 from the bank. My father shuffled the cards, Mom cut them and Kenny dealt. I got a pair of kings and three junk cards. I’m careful not to give my hand away by the expression on my face. You can always tell what Kenny is holding. If it’s something good he makes all kinds of noises and he laughs a lot. Even if he doesn’t have anything good he stays in and takes three new cards. He never drops out when he should because he can’t stand not betting against the rest of us. When it comes to bluffing my father is the best. Every time he stays in and starts raising I think he has three aces and unless I have something really great I drop out. Then I’ll find out Dad didn’t even have a pair. My mother is not an experienced poker player. She can never remember which is higher—a flush or a straight. Sometimes I have to help her out. Later, when me and Kenny were in our pajamas and ready for bed, my father said we could carve our pumpkins. Mom had to go to her room because the smell of pumpkin guts makes her sick to her stomach. Last year, when I cut out my pumpkin’s face, it was all lopsided, but this time I got both eyes even and the nose in between. Dad made the teeth for me. Kenny wouldn’t let anyone touch his pumpkin, which is why it turned out looking like it had three eyes and no teeth. For Chapter 1 and 2: Go beyond the summary and show me an analytical and/or critical response. Analyze how authors structure texts to advance the plot, explaining how each event gives rise to the next or foreshadows a future event. Write as few sentences as possible, maximum of nine se