Chasing Orion Read Free

just this monster machine thumping away. I didn’t even connect it with a person. I couldn’t imagine that the voice I’d been listening to could have been coming from inside the machine.
    The sprinkler turned back on with a loud sputtering and then the hissing sweep. The grove was flooded with new noise, and I forgot about being quiet. I think to hide my shame, or to distract from what I said, I turned the hose and sprayed Emmett. But Emmett was quick and tall. He played center forward on the Westridge varsity basketball team. That was no small potatoes, as my dad would say, because this was Indiana basketball we were talking about. Indiana produced the best basketball players in the country. Emmett quickly blocked the hose nozzle and turned it back on me. I chased him out of the woods. By the time we were in our yard, I was screaming and trying to tackle him.
    Soon enough we were tussling on the ground and water was spraying all over the place and we were laughing our heads off. By the time we finished, we were drenched.

 
    “So I guess you got cooled off,” my mother said, laughing at us, when we came up to the house.
    “Not the way I like to,” I replied.
    “As I said before, you can always go to the library. It’s air-conditioned, and when we go to Grandma and Grandpa’s, you can swim in their pond. Now, go up and dry off.” There were no humans, of course, in Grandma and Grandpa’s pond. They lived on a farm. Just cows came to drink, and I guessed that there wasn’t any chance of catching polio from a cow. But there were zillions of mosquitoes and worst of all, snakes. I might be a goat person, but I was definitely not a snake person.
    “There’s a surprise in your bedroom,” Mom called out after me.
    When I walked into my room, I saw it immediately. A brand-new princess vanity dressing table with the heart-shaped mirror! I couldn’t believe it. I knew how much it cost: fifty dollars! It had been advertised in the newspaper from Block’s department store. And it came with this pouffy pink tulle skirt with silvery dots on it that hung down to the floor. There were two little built-in compartments on either side of the mirror, lined with purple velvet, that you could put jewelry or barrettes in. I had a million barrettes, but fat lot of good they did me. Terminal cowlicks was my problem. You could hardly figure out which way to put a barrette in. If I parted my hair in the middle — a near impossibility — and put them on either side of the part, the barrettes sort of looked like warring troops lined up on a battlefield. The battlefield being my hair. But still it was something that Mom and Dad had bought the vanity for me.
    “What do you think of it?” My mom was leaning against the door to my bedroom.
    “It’s great, Mom. I can’t believe you and Dad bought this for me.”
    “It’s not like we’ve never bought you a present.”
    “I know, but still.” I was thinking that they must really feel sorry for me.
    “We had to take down the Thing and
Revolt of the Zombies
posters because the mirror got in the way.”
    “Oh, don’t worry. I can move them over to the left side,” I said.
    Mom did her little crooked smile, which meant she was perplexed.
    “Somehow it seems funny — horror movie posters with the princess vanity.”
    “Bride of Frankenstein!” Emmett called in as he went past my door down to his own bedroom. Mom and I both laughed at this. Emmett was so quick. He didn’t talk all that much, but he really got off some funny ones.
    “And maybe we’ll think about the daisy wallpaper.”
    “The daisy wallpaper!” I was so excited. My friend Carol’s teenage sister had daisy wallpaper. In fact a lot of girls had it, or the forget-me-not wallpaper. It was beautiful and made your room look like a spring garden all year round. It was made by an Indianapolis wallpaper company, the Victor Franken Company, and it was sort of expensive. But it was so beautiful.
    “Well, you have a