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"We came from the garden in back," I answered, feeling guilty. Immediately she saw my guilt and grew suspicious. "Where were you really?"

"Just out back . . ."

"Jory, are you going to grow evasive like Bart?"

I threw my arms about her and pressed my face against the softness of her breast. I was too old to do this, but I had the sudden need to feel safe and comforted.

"Jory darling, what's wrong?"

Nothing was wrong. I didn't know what bothered me, not really. I'd seen old age before, my own grandmother Marisha, but she'd always been old.

That night Momma came in my dreams and was a lovely angel who put an enchanted spell over all the world to stop people from growing older. I saw two-hundred-year-old ladies as young and pretty as when they'd been twenty--all but one old woman in black, all alone, rocking in her chair.

Toward morning Bart slipped into my bed and cuddled up behind my back, watching with me the gray fog that obliterated the trees, erased the golden grass, smothered all signs of life and made the world out there seem dead.

Bart rattled on to himself. "Earth is full of dead people. Dead animals and plants too. Makes all that stuff Daddy calls mulch."

Death. My half-brother Bart was obsessed by death, and I pitied him. I felt him cuddle closer as we both stared out at the fog that was so much a part of our lives.

"Jory, nobody ever likes me," he complained. "Yes, they do."

"No, they don't. They like you better."

"That's because you don't like them and it shows." "Why do you like everybody?"

"I don't. But I can put on a smile and pretend even when I don't. Perhaps you'd better learn to put on a false face sometimes."

"Why? It's not Halloween."

He troubled me. Like those beds in the attic troubled me. Like that strange thing between my parents that rose up every so often, reminding me that they knew something that I didn't.

I closed my eyes and decided everything always worked out for the best.

Gone Hunting

. They looked at me, but they didn't see me. They didn't know who I was. To them I was just a thing to sit at their table and try to swallow the stuff they put on my plate. My thoughts were all around, but they didn't read my mind, couldn't figure me out at all. I was goin next door to the mansion to where I'd been invited. And when I went I'd remember to pronounce my "ings"--always they were tellin me to say the G's. I'd do it right, everything, for the old lady next door.

Gonna go alone and not tell Jory. Jory didn't need new friends anyway. He had his ole ballet classes, with pretty girls all around and that was enough. With Melodie, more than enough. Me--I didn't have nobody but parents who didn't understand. Soon as I was excused from breakfast I'd make it quickly to our garden while Jory was still inside eatin his stack of pancakes with melted maple sugar poured all over. Pig, that's what he was . . . a darn hog!

Day was hot. Sun was too bright. Shadows long on the ground. White wall rose up so dratted high-- had that wall known in advance I was comin, and I'd be clumsy, and "they" wanted to make it difficult? Tree I climbed wasn't so bad.

Yard was so big it tired my short legs. Wish I had long pretty legs like Jory. Always fallin, always hurtin myself, but never felt no pain. Daddy had been amazed when he first found that out. "Bart, because your nerve endings don't reach your skin, you will have to be doubly careful of infections. You could seriously hurt yourself and not even know it. So always wash all your cuts and scratches with soap and water, then tell your mother and me so we can put on disinfectant."

Washin with soap kept away germs. Wonder where they went?--up to heaven, down to hell? Wonder what a germ looked like? Monsters, Jory had said, ugly itty-bitty monsters. A billion of them could sit on the point of a pin. Wish I had eyes like a microscope.

I gave her yard another long-long look, then jumped, closed my eyes so I couldn't see the ground smack me. Landed square in a clump of her rose bushes. More cuts and scratches to add to my collection. More germs too. Didn't care. Crouched down low, squinted my eyes against the sun, and tried to spot all the dangerous wild animals that lurked in dark, mysterious places--like this.

Look over there. Behind that big bush --a tiger! I raised my rifle and took careful aim. It swished its long tail and sparked its yellow eyes, then licked its chops, thinkin soon it would have me for lunch. I squeezed hard on the trigger. BANG! BANG! BANG! Got yah! Dead as a doornail!

Slingin my rifle over my shoulder, I wended a careful way along all the dangerous jungle paths. Ignorin an orange and white kitten that mewed "plaintively." (Plaintively was one of the new words I had to use. One new word each day, and Daddy gave a list of seven words to both Jory and me, insistin we use today's word at least five times in our

conversation. Didn't need a bigger vocabulary. Knew how to talk good enough already.)

A tune popped into my head. Came from a movie I saw last night on TV about West Point. That song was right:

There was somethin about a soldier . . . that is fine, fine, fine . . .

Marchin to the tune in my head, I carried my rifle smartly on my shoulder, my chest out, my chin in. Straight up to her front door I marched. Then I banged hard, usin the brass knocker that was a lion's head with a loose jaw.