My Diary from the Edge of the World Read Free

what our world would have been like too, if it had turned out—once the great explorers did their great exploring in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries—that dragons and mermaids and things like that didn’t exist. Without the beasts and monsters and wilderness that populate so much of our planet, they claim, life would be easier, more orderly . . . safe . Also it’s supposedly full of all sorts of amazing technology: thingsfloating around space called satellites, all sorts of flying machines, highways and travel networks all over the world, and cities without number.
    My dad’s outspokenness on the subject means we get heckled pretty often. People call him La La Land Lockwood. I’ve seen the way people look at us when we’re out shopping or at one of Millie’s piano recitals, and I can’t say I blame them. Not that Dad ever notices.
    His hero is an astronomer named Prospero, who lives somewhere out west. People are constantly quoting him and citing his studies in their scientific papers. His newest book, An Atlas of the Cosmos , is a bestseller, and sometimes (rarely, because he’s a bit of a hermit) he gets interviewed on 60 Minutes . My dad reads everything he publishes. Apparently they went to college together, and while Prospero soared to the top of their class and became wildly popular, Dad worked diligently and got okay grades and graduated unnoticed by anyone but my mom, who was studying music theory, whatever that is.
    Mostly Dad just contents himself with studying the weather and appearing on the local weather station every morning. I don’t think it’s so great to study something that always changes and always disappears, and then to spend your free time studying something that doesn’texist. It’s like he’s spent his life concentrating on thin air. I wish he worked on something more permanent and interesting. Anything would be better: rocks, bugs, volcanoes . . . anything.
    *  *  *
    I’m watching a bird swoop in the distance over Bear Mountain. Then again it may be a dragon and farther away than I think. I just put this journal down and squinted to see, but I still couldn’t tell.
    Mom and Sam just got home, but I ducked behind the church stone so they wouldn’t see me. I’m sure Mom’s in the kitchen putting groceries away. Usually she sings at the top of her lungs while she does it, but today it’s quiet in there. I hope everything went okay at Sam’s appointment.
    Now the bird across the valley is doing something weird. I’m going to stand at the edge of the lawn to look.

September 8th
(After Midnight)
    We just got home from the hospital and my arm is in a cast. I’ve survived a near death experience!
    Millie says I’m being dramatic, but I can tell she’s dying of envy because I’m the center of attention for once. Apparently she and Mouse made potato candy for me (my favorite) while we were at the hospital, but it turns out they ate most of it while they were waiting for us to get back. I hate Millie more than ever. No one ever hates Sam the Mouse.
    Anyway, I’ll try to get down what happened, as realistically as I can.
    I was up on my hill just finishing my last entry, when I saw the baby dragon flying across the valley. At first, like I wrote earlier, I thought he was a bird, but thenwhen I stood to get a closer look I noticed the little puffs of smoke wafting behind him and the blue glint of his scales. I know that blue scales mean it’s a male dragon and orange scales mean it’s a female, but the strange thing was, he wasn’t behaving like a bird or a dragon at all—he flew crookedly, as if he didn’t quite know how to keep himself in the air. With every few strokes of his wings, he dipped farther and farther toward the valley and the busy streets below.
    I figured he might be the smallest of his litter and maybe not strong enough to migrate