Orwell's Luck Read Free Page B

hurried through my morning routine, getting dressed, letting the dog out, getting the paper, and pouring myself an extra-large bowl of crunchy, sweetened cereal to gulp down while figuring out my horoscope. I wanted to read it first, before I checked on Orwell, just in case it said something like NEW FRIEND PASSES AWAY QUIETLY IN NIGHT. But what it actually said was
TODAY WILL RUN SMOOTHER
THAN YOU ANTICIPATED.
    Once again, my horoscope bore the sign of the smiling moon. I was glad about this, of course, and glad, too, that this one was easy to understand, unlike the previous two. But I remained wary, since the other two hadn't exactly panned out. I wondered, Is there a limit to how many smile faces in a row a person can get? How long could my luck—and Orwell's—hold out?
    I admit it. I was afraid. I entered Orwell's hideout like I was entering the mummy's tomb. I tiptoed in, shutting my eyes when I opened the door, afraid to look. I didn't open my eyes until I was completely inside and there was no turning back.
    The first thing I saw was Orwell looking back at me. He was still alive, thank goodness, awake and alert and hungry for the apple slices I'd brought. He munched happily as I scratched his knobby little head and thought about my personal career.
    The day before, while shooting baskets in the driveway, before it got too cold and I had to come inside, I changed my mind about what I wanted to be. I was still interested in becoming a detective, but I was also thinking about being a veterinarian, one who specializes in small animals that people find in their yards, and, unlike some I could name, actually figures out how to fix them. I was also trying to work the trombone into whatever I chose, since I'd recently started playing it at my new school and sort of liked it.
    School was not really such a bad place. It just contained too many strangers and lasted too long. My father told me that for him, the worst part about his job was not being able to leave when he wanted to. That's how I feel about being at school. Once you get there, you're stuck like a bunny in a bathtub.
    But some parts of school are actually interesting. Like band and science and P.E. Math is OK. Also, I started taking French. I hadn't learned very many French words, but the few I did know made me think that one of the reasons there's more than one way of saying things is because there's more than one way of looking at things.
    For example, in English, when we decide it's time to leave, we say, "Let's go!" The French, however, say, "
Allons-y
," which means, "Let's go to the aforementioned place." This little difference between the two languages says to me that the French don't go anywhere unless they know where they're going, but Americans, on the other hand, are happy just to keep moving.
    Orwell could not keep moving, and so, I concluded, unless he is French, he must be unhappy.
    I tried to imagine what he must have been thinking when he found himself unable to hop and was forced to crawl on his belly, powered only by the strength of his underdeveloped front legs. Did he say to himself, "Let's go!" and then, through sheer luck, wind up here? Or did he think, "Let's go to the aforementioned kid's house"?
    When I found Orwell in so exhausted a state, how far had he traveled before pausing to rest, putting a rolled-up newspaper between his tender white belly and the hard, cold, frost-covered ground? Was he trying desperately to get to my door, like a doomed man delivering a newspaper-wrapped falcon to a black-and-white detective? Was Orwell delivering something to me? A message, perhaps?
    This is called deductive reasoning. All the best detectives do it. By putting my brain to work doing deductive reasoning, I was able to come up with a few plausible theories.
    Theory number one was that Orwell was an accident victim, a hapless rabbit who stepped blithely into the path of a newspaper truck driven by a careless part-time worker in a hurry to get