popular_books-prefix_length_25.json

{
    "data": {
        "In more than 25 years of working with people in business, university, and marriage and family settings, I have come in contact": "In more than 25 years of working with people in business, university, and marriage and family settings, I have come in contact with many individuals who have achieved an incredible degree of outward success, but have found themselves struggling with an inner hunger, a deep need for personal congruency and effectiveness and for healthy, growing relationships with other people. I suspect some of the problems they have shared with me may be familiar to you. _I've set and met my career goals and I'm having tremendous professional success. But it's cost me my personal and family life. I don't know my wife and children anymore. I'm not even sure I know myself and what's really important to me. I've had to ask myself\u2014is it worth it? _ _I've started a new diet\u2014for the fifth time this year. I know I'm overweight, and I really want to change. I read all the new information, I set goals, I get myself all psyched up with a positive mental attitude and tell myself I can do it. But I don't. After a few weeks, I fizzle. I just can't seem to keep a promise I make to myself_. _I've taken course after course on effective management training. I expect a lot out of my employees and I work hard to be friendly toward them and to treat them right. But I don't feel any loyalty from them. I think if I were home sick for a day, they'd spend most of their time gabbing at the water fountain. Why can't I train them to be independent and responsible\u2014or find employees who can be? _ _My teenage son is rebellious and on drugs. No matter what I try, he won't listen to me. What can I do? _ _There's so much to do. And there's never enough time. I feel pressured and hassled all day, every day, seven days a week. I've attended time management seminars and I've tried half a dozen different planning systems. They've helped some, but I still don't feel I'm living the happy, productive, peaceful life I want to live_. _I want to teach my children the value of work. But to get them to do anything, I have to supervise every move...and put up with complaining every step of the way. It's so much easier to do it myself. Why can't children do their work cheerfully and without being reminded? _ _I'm busy\u2014really busy. But sometimes I wonder if what I'm doing will make any difference in the long run. I'd really like to think there was meaning in my life, that somehow things were different because I was here_. _I see my friends or relatives achieve some degree of success or receive some recognition, and I smile and congratulate them enthusiastically. But inside, I'm eating my heart out. Why do I feel this way? _ _I have a forceful personality. I know, in almost any interaction, I can control the outcome. Most of the time, I can even do it by influencing others to come up with the solution I want. I think through each situation and I really feel the ideas I come up with are usually the best for everyone. But I feel uneasy. I always wonder what other people really think of me and my ideas_. _My marriage has gone flat. We don't fight or anything; we just don't love each other anymore. We've gone to counseling; we've tried a number of things, but we just can't seem to rekindle the feeling we used to have_. These are deep problems, painful problems\u2014problems that quick fix approaches can't solve. A few years ago, my wife Sandra and I were struggling with this kind of concern. One of our sons was having a very difficult time in school. He was doing poorly academically; he didn't even know how to follow the instructions on the tests, let alone do well on them. Socially he was immature, often embarrassing those closest to him. Athletically, he was small, skinny, and uncoordinated\u2014swinging his baseball bat, for example, almost before the ball was even pitched. Others would laugh at him. Sandra and I were consumed with a desire to help him. We felt that if \"success\" were important in any area of life, it was supremely important in our role as parents. So we worked on our attitudes and behavior toward him and we tried to work on his. We attempted to psych him up using positive mental attitude techniques. \"Come on, son! You can do it! We know you can. Put your hands a little higher on the bat and keep your eye on the ball. Don't swing till it gets close to you.\" And if he did a little better, we would go to great lengths to reinforce him. \"That's good, son, keep it up.\" When others laughed, we reprimanded them. \"Leave him alone. Get off his back. He's just learning.\" And our son would cry and insist that he'd never be any good and that he didn't like baseball anyway. Nothing we did seemed to help, and we were really worried. We could see the effect this was having on his self-esteem. We tried to be encouraging and helpful and positive, but after repeated failure, we finally drew back and tried to look at the situation on a different level. At this time in my professional role I was involved in leadership development work with various clients throughout the country. In that capacity I was preparing bimonthly programs on the subject of communication and perception for IBM's Executive Development Program participants. As I researched and prepared these presentations, I became particularly interested in how perceptions are formed, how they govern the way we see, and how the way we see governs how we behave. This led me to a study of expectancy theory and self-fulfilling prophecies or the \"Pygmalion effect,\" and to a realization of how deeply imbedded our perceptions are. It taught me that we must look _at_ the lens through which we see the world, as well as at the world we see, and that the lens itself shapes how we interpret the world. As Sandra and I talked about the concepts I was teaching at IBM and about our own situation, we began to realize that what we were doing to help our son was not in harmony with the way we really _saw_ him. When we honestly examined our deepest feelings, we realized that our perception was that he was basically inadequate, somehow \"behind.\" No matter how much we worked on our attitude and behavior, our efforts were ineffective because, despite our actions and our words, what we really communicated to him was, \"You aren't capable. You have to be protected.\" We began to realize that if we wanted to change the situation, we first had to change ourselves. And to change ourselves effectively, we first had to change our perceptions. **T HE PERSONALITY AND CHARACTER ETHICS** At the same time, in addition to my research on perception, I was also deeply immersed in an in-depth study of the success literature published in the United States since 1776. I was reading or scanning literally hundreds of books, articles, and essays in fields such as self-improvement, popular psychology, and self-help. At my fingertips was the sum and substance of what a free and democratic people considered to be the keys to successful living. As my study took me back through 200 years of writing about success, I noticed a startling pattern emerging in the content of the literature. Because of our own pain, and because of similar pain I had seen in the lives and relationships of many people I had worked with through the years, I began to feel more and more that much of the success literature of the past 50 years was superficial. It was filled with social image consciousness, techniques and quick fixes\u2014with social Band-Aids and aspirin that addressed acute problems and sometimes even appeared to solve them temporarily, but left the underlying chronic problems untouched to fester and resurface time and again. In stark contrast, almost all the literature in the first 150 years or so focused on what could be called the _Character Ethic_ as the foundation of success\u2014things like integrity, humility, fidelity, temperance, courage, justice, patience, industry, simplicity, modesty, and the Golden Rule. Benjamin Franklin's autobiography is representative of that literature. It is, basically, the story of one man's effort to integrate certain principles and habits deep within his nature. The Character Ethic taught that there are basic principles of effective living, and that people can only experience true success and enduring happiness as they learn and integrate these principles into their basic character. But shortly after World War I the basic view of success shifted from the Character Ethic to what we might call the _PersonalityEthic_. Success became more a function of personality, of public image, of attitudes and behaviors, skills and techniques, that lubricate the processes of human interaction. This Personality Ethic essentially took two paths: one was human and public relations techniques, and the other was positive mental attitude (PMA). Some of this philosophy was expressed in inspiring and sometimes valid maxims such as \"Your attitude determines your altitude,\" \"Smiling wins more friends than frowning,\" and \"Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe it can achieve.\" Other parts of the personality approach were clearly manipulative, even deceptive, encouraging people to use techniques to get other people to like them, or to fake interest in the hobbies of others to get out of them what they wanted, or to use the \"power look,\" or to intimidate their way through life. Some of this literature acknowledged character as an ingredient of success, but tended to compartmentalize it rather than recognize it as foundational and catalytic. Reference to the Character Ethic became mostly lip service; the basic thrust was quick-fix influence techniques, power strategies, communication skills, and positive attitudes. This Personality Ethic, I began to realize, was the subconscious source of the solutions Sandra and I were attempting to use with our son. As I thought more deeply about the difference between the Personality and Character Ethics, I realized that Sandra and I had been getting social mileage out of our children's good behavior, and, in our eyes, this son simply didn't measure up. Our _image_ of ourselves, and our role as good, caring parents, was even deeper than our _image_ of our son and perhaps influenced it. There was a lot more wrapped up in _the way we were seeing_ and handling the problem than our concern for our son's welfare. As Sandra and I talked, we became painfully aware of the powerful influence of our own character and motives and of our perception of him. We knew that social comparison",
        "It was nearing midnight and the Prime Minister was sitting alone in his office, reading a long memo that was slipping through his brain": "It was nearing midnight and the Prime Minister was sitting alone in his office, reading a long memo that was slipping through his brain without leaving the slightest trace of meaning behind. He was waiting for a call from the president of a far-distant country, and between wondering when the wretched man would telephone, and trying to suppress unpleasant memories of what had been a very long, tiring and difficult week, there was not much space in his head for anything else. The more he attempted to focus on the print on the page before him, the more clearly the Prime Minister could see the gloating face of one of his political opponents. This particular opponent had appeared on the news that very day, not only to enumerate all the terrible things that had happened in the last week (as though anyone needed reminding) but also to explain why each and every one of them was the government's fault. The Prime Minister's pulse quickened at the very thought of these accusations, for they were neither fair nor true. How on earth was his government supposed to have stopped that bridge collapsing? It was outrageous for anybody to suggest that they were not spending enough on bridges. The bridge was less than ten years old, and the best experts were at a loss to explain why it had snapped cleanly in two, sending a dozen cars into the watery depths of the river below. And how dared anyone suggest that it was lack of policemen that had resulted in those two very nasty and well-publicised murders? Or that the government should have somehow foreseen the freak hurricane in the West Country that had caused so much damage to both people and property? And was it _his_ fault that one of his Junior Ministers, Herbert Chorley, had chosen this week to act so peculiarly that he was now going to be spending a lot more time with his family? 'A grim mood has gripped the country,' the opponent had concluded, barely concealing his own broad grin. And unfortunately, this was perfectly true. The Prime Minister felt it himself; people really did seem more miserable than usual. Even the weather was dismal; all this chilly mist in the middle of July...it wasn't right, it wasn't normal...He turned over the second page of the memo, saw how much longer it went on, and gave it up as a bad job. Stretching his arms above his head he looked around his office mournfully. It was a handsome room, with a fine marble fireplace facing the long sash windows, firmly closed against the unseasonable chill. With a slight shiver, the Prime Minister got up and moved over to the windows, looking out at the thin mist that was pressing itself against the glass. It was then, as he stood with his back to the room, that he heard a soft cough behind him. He froze, nose-to-nose with his own scared-looking reflection in the dark glass. He knew that cough. He had heard it before. He turned, very slowly, to face the empty room. 'Hello?' he said, trying to sound braver than he felt. For a brief moment he allowed himself the impossible hope that nobody would answer him. However, a voice responded at once, a crisp, decisive voice that sounded as though it were reading a prepared statement. It was coming \u2013 as the Prime Minister had known at the first cough \u2013 from the froglike little man wearing a long silver wig who was depicted in a small and dirty oil-painting in the far corner of the room. 'To the Prime Minister of Muggles. Urgent we meet. Kindly respond immediately. Sincerely, Fudge.' The man in the painting looked enquiringly at the Prime Minister. 'Er,' said the Prime Minister, 'listen...it's not a very good time for me...I'm waiting for a telephone call, you see...from the president of \u2013' 'That can be rearranged,' said the portrait at once. The Prime Minister's heart sank. He had been afraid of that. 'But I really was rather hoping to speak \u2013' 'We shall arrange for the president to forget to call. He will telephone tomorrow night instead,' said the little man. 'Kindly respond immediately to Mr Fudge.' 'I...oh...very well,' said the Prime Minister weakly. 'Yes, I'll see Fudge.' He hurried back to his desk, straightening his tie as he went. He had barely resumed his seat, and arranged his face into what he hoped was a relaxed and unfazed expression, when bright green flames burst into life in the empty grate beneath his marble mantelpiece. He watched, trying not to betray a flicker of surprise or alarm, as a portly man appeared within the flames, spinning as fast as a top. Seconds later, he had climbed out on to a rather fine antique rug, brushing ash from the sleeves of his long pinstriped cloak, a lime-green bowler hat in his hand. 'Ah...Prime Minister,' said Cornelius Fudge, striding forwards with his hand outstretched. 'Good to see you again.' The Prime Minister could not honestly return this compliment, so said nothing at all. He was not remotely pleased to see Fudge, whose occasional appearances, apart from being downright alarming in themselves, generally meant that he was about to hear some very bad news. Furthermore, Fudge was looking distinctly careworn. He was thinner, balder and greyer, and his face had a crumpled look. The Prime Minister had seen that kind of look in politicians before, and it never boded well. 'How can I help you?' he said, shaking Fudge's hand very briefly and gesturing towards the hardest of the chairs in front of the desk. 'Difficult to know where to begin,' muttered Fudge, pulling up the chair, sitting down and placing his green bowler upon his knees. 'What a week, what a week ...' 'Had a bad one too, have you?' asked the Prime Minister stiffly, hoping to convey by this that he had quite enough on his plate already without any extra helpings from Fudge. 'Yes, of course,' said Fudge, rubbing his eyes wearily and looking morosely at the Prime Minister. 'I've been having the same week you have, Prime Minister. The Brockdale bridge...the Bones and Vance murders...not to mention the ruckus in the West Country ...' 'You \u2013 er \u2013 your \u2013 I mean to say, some of your people were \u2013 were involved in those \u2013 those things, were they?' Fudge fixed the Prime Minister with a rather stern look. 'Of course they were,' he said. 'Surely you've realised what's going on?' 'I ...' hesitated the Prime Minister. It was precisely this sort of behaviour that made him dislike Fudge's visits so much. He was, after all, the Prime Minister, and did not appreciate being made to feel like an ignorant schoolboy. But of course, it had been like this from his very first meeting with Fudge on his very first evening as Prime Minister. He remembered it as though it were yesterday and knew it would haunt him until his dying day. He had been standing alone in this very office, savouring the triumph that was his after so many years of dreaming and scheming, when he had heard a cough behind him, just like tonight, and turned to find that ugly little portrait talking to him, announcing that the Minister for Magic was about to arrive and introduce himself. Naturally, he had thought that the long campaign and the strain of the election had caused him to go mad. He had been utterly terrified to find a portrait talking to him, though this had been nothing to how he had felt when a self-proclaimed wizard had bounced out of the fireplace and shaken his hand. He had remained speechless throughout Fudge's kindly explanation that there were witches and wizards still living in secret all over the world, and his reassurances that he was not to bother his head about them as the Ministry of Magic took responsibility for the whole wizarding community and prevented the non-magical population from getting wind of them. It was, said Fudge, a difficult job that encompassed everything from regulations on responsible use of broomsticks to keeping the dragon population under control (the Prime Minister remembered clutching the desk for support at this point). Fudge had then patted the shoulder of the still-dumbstruck Prime Minister in a fatherly sort of way. 'Not to worry,' he had said, 'it's odds on you'll never see me again. I'll only bother you if there's something really serious going on our end, something that's likely to affect the Muggles \u2013 the non-magical population, I should say. Otherwise it's live and let live. And I must say, you're taking it a lot better than your predecessor. _He_ tried to throw me out of the window, thought I was a hoax planned by the opposition.' At this, the Prime Minister had found his voice at last. 'You're \u2013 you're _not_ a hoax, then?' It had been his last, desperate hope. 'No,' said Fudge gently. 'No, I'm afraid I'm not. Look.' And he had turned the Prime Minister's teacup into a gerbil. 'But,' said the Prime Minister breathlessly, watching his teacup chewing on the corner of his next speech, 'but why \u2013 why has nobody told me \u2013?' 'The Minister for Magic only reveals him or herself to the Muggle Prime Minister of the day,' said Fudge, poking his wand back inside his jacket. 'We find it the best way to maintain secrecy.' 'But then,' bleated the Prime Minister, 'why hasn't a former Prime Minister warned me \u2013?' At this, Fudge had actually laughed. 'My dear Prime Minister, are _you_ ever going to tell anybody?' Still chortling, Fudge had thrown some powder into the fireplace, stepped into the emerald flames and vanished with a whooshing sound. The Prime Minister had stood there, quite motionless, and realised that he would never, as long as he lived, dare mention this encounter to a living soul, for who in the wide world would believe him? The shock had taken a little while to wear off. For a time he had tried to convince himself that Fudge had indeed been a hallucination brought on by lack of sleep during his gruelling election campaign. In a vain attempt to rid himself of all reminders of this uncomfortable encounter, he had given the gerbil to his delighted niece and instructed his Private Secretary to take down the portrait of the ugly little man who had announced Fudge's arrival. To the Prime Minister's dismay, however, the portrait had proved impossible to remove. When several carpenters, a builder or two, an art historian and the Chancellor of the Exchequer had all tried unsuccessfully to",
        "The hottest day of the summer so far was drawing to a close and a drowsy silence lay over the large, square houses of": "The hottest day of the summer so far was drawing to a close and a drowsy silence lay over the large, square houses of Privet Drive. Cars that were usually gleaming stood dusty in their drives and lawns that were once emerald green lay parched and yellowing \u2013 for the use of hosepipes had been banned due to drought. Deprived of their usual car-washing and lawn-mowing pursuits, the inhabitants of Privet Drive had retreated into the shade of their cool houses, windows thrown wide in the hope of tempting in a non-existent breeze. The only person left outdoors was a teenage boy who was lying flat on his back in a flowerbed outside number four. He was a skinny, black-haired, bespectacled boy who had the pinched, slightly unhealthy look of someone who has grown a lot in a short space of time. His jeans were torn and dirty, his T-shirt baggy and faded, and the soles of his trainers were peeling away from the uppers. Harry Potter's appearance did not endear him to the neighbours, who were the sort of people who thought scruffiness ought to be punishable by law, but as he had hidden himself behind a large hydrangea bush this evening he was quite invisible to passers-by. In fact, the only way he would be spotted was if his Uncle Vernon or Aunt Petunia stuck their heads out of the living-room window and looked straight down into the flowerbed below. On the whole, Harry thought he was to be congratulated on his idea of hiding here. He was not, perhaps, very comfortable lying on the hot, hard earth but, on the other hand, nobody was glaring at him, grinding their teeth so loudly that he could not hear the news, or shooting nasty questions at him, as had happened every time he had tried sitting down in the living room to watch television with his aunt and uncle. Almost as though this thought had fluttered through the open window, Vernon Dursley, Harry's uncle, suddenly spoke. 'Glad to see the boy's stopped trying to butt in. Where is he, anyway?' 'I don't know,' said Aunt Petunia, unconcerned. 'Not in the house.' Uncle Vernon grunted.' _Watching the news..._' he said scathingly. 'I'd like to know what he's really up to. As if a normal boy cares what's on the news \u2013 Dudley hasn't got a clue what's going on; doubt he knows who the Prime Minister is! Anyway, it's not as if there'd be anything about _his lot_ on _our_ news \u2013' 'Vernon, _shh_!' said Aunt Petunia. 'The window's open!' 'Oh \u2013 yes \u2013 sorry, dear.' The Dursleys fell silent. Harry listened to a jingle about Fruit 'n' Bran breakfast cereal while he watched Mrs Figg, a batty cat-loving old lady from nearby Wisteria Walk, amble slowly past. She was frowning and muttering to herself. Harry was very pleased he was concealed behind the bush, as Mrs Figg had recently taken to asking him round for tea whenever she met him in the street. She had rounded the corner and vanished from view before Uncle Vernon's voice floated out of the window again. 'Dudders out for tea?' 'At the Polkisses',' said Aunt Petunia fondly. 'He's got so many little friends, he's so popular ...' Harry suppressed a snort with difficulty. The Dursleys really were astonishingly stupid about their son, Dudley. They had swallowed all his dim-witted lies about having tea with a different member of his gang every night of the summer holidays. Harry knew perfectly well that Dudley had not been to tea anywhere; he and his gang spent every evening vandalising the play park, smoking on street corners and throwing stones at passing cars and children. Harry had seen them at it during his evening walks around Little Whinging; he had spent most of the holidays wandering the streets, scavenging newspapers from bins along the way. The opening notes of the music that heralded the seven o'clock news reached Harry's ears and his stomach turned over. Perhaps tonight \u2013 after a month of waiting \u2013 would be the night. _'Record numbers of stranded holidaymakers fill airports as the Spanish baggage-handlers' strike reaches its second week \u2013'_ 'Give 'em a lifelong siesta, I would,' snarled Uncle Vernon over the end of the newsreader's sentence, but no matter: outside in the flowerbed, Harry's stomach seemed to unclench. If anything had happened, it would surely have been the first item on the news; death and destruction were more important than stranded holidaymakers. He let out a long, slow breath and stared up at the brilliant blue sky. Every day this summer had been the same: the tension, the expectation, the temporary relief, and then mounting tension again...and always, growing more insistent all the time, the question of _why_ nothing had happened yet. He kept listening, just in case there was some small clue, not recognised for what it really was by the Muggles \u2013 an unexplained disappearance, perhaps, or some strange accident...but the baggage-handlers' strike was followed by news about the drought in the Southeast ('I hope he's listening next door!' bellowed Uncle Vernon. 'Him with his sprinklers on at three in the morning!'), then a helicopter that had almost crashed in a field in Surrey, then a famous actress's divorce from her famous husband ('As if we're interested in their sordid affairs,' sniffed Aunt Petunia, who had followed the case obsessively in every magazine she could lay her bony hands on). Harry closed his eyes against the now blazing evening sky as the newsreader said, _'\u2013 and finally, Bungy the budgie has found a novel way of keeping cool this summer. Bungy, who lives at the Five Feathers in Barnsley, has learned to water ski! Mary Dorkins went to find out more.'_ Harry opened his eyes. If they had reached water-skiing budgerigars, there would be nothing else worth hearing. He rolled cautiously on to his front and raised himself on to his knees and elbows, preparing to crawl out from under the window. He had moved about two inches when several things happened in very quick succession. A loud, echoing _crack_ broke the sleepy silence like a gunshot; a cat streaked out from under a parked car and flew out of sight; a shriek, a bellowed oath and the sound of breaking china came from the Dursleys' living room, and as though this was the signal Harry had been waiting for he jumped to his feet, at the same time pulling from the waistband of his jeans a thin wooden wand as if he were unsheathing a sword \u2013 but before he could draw himself up to full height, the top of his head collided with the Dursleys' open window. The resultant _crash_ made Aunt Petunia scream even louder. Harry felt as though his head had been split in two. Eyes streaming, he swayed, trying to focus on the street to spot the source of the noise, but he had barely staggered upright when two large purple hands reached through the open window and closed tightly around his throat. _'Put \u2013 it \u2013 away! '_ Uncle Vernon snarled into Harry's ear. _'Now! Before \u2013 anyone \u2013 sees! '_ 'Get \u2013 off \u2013 me!' Harry gasped. For a few seconds they struggled, Harry pulling at his uncle's sausage-like fingers with his left hand, his right maintaining a firm grip on his raised wand; then, as the pain in the top of Harry's head gave a particularly nasty throb, Uncle Vernon yelped and released Harry as though he had received an electric shock. Some invisible force seemed to have surged through his nephew, making him impossible to hold. Panting, Harry fell forwards over the hydrangea bush, straightened up and stared around. There was no sign of what had caused the loud cracking noise, but there were several faces peering through various nearby windows. Harry stuffed his wand hastily back into his jeans and tried to look innocent. 'Lovely evening!' shouted Uncle Vernon, waving at Mrs Number Seven opposite, who was glaring from behind her net curtains. 'Did you hear that car backfire just now? Gave Petunia and me quite a turn!' He continued to grin in a horrible, manic way until all the curious neighbours had disappeared from their various windows, then the grin became a grimace of rage as he beckoned Harry back towards him. Harry moved a few steps closer, taking care to stop just short of the point at which Uncle Vernon's outstretched hands could resume their strangling. 'What the _devil_ do you mean by it, boy?' asked Uncle Vernon in a croaky voice that trembled with fury. 'What do I mean by what?' said Harry coldly. He kept looking left and right up the street, still hoping to see the person who had made the cracking noise. 'Making a racket like a starting pistol right outside our \u2013' 'I didn't make that noise,' said Harry firmly. Aunt Petunia's thin, horsy face now appeared beside Uncle Vernon's wide, purple one. She looked livid. 'Why were you lurking under our window?' 'Yes \u2013 yes, good point, Petunia! _What were you doing under our window, boy? _' 'Listening to the news,' said Harry in a resigned voice. His aunt and uncle exchanged looks of outrage. 'Listening to the news! _Again? _' 'Well, it changes every day, you see,' said Harry. 'Don't you be clever with me, boy! I want to know what you're really up to \u2013 and don't give me any more of this _listening to the news_ tosh! You know perfectly well that _your lot_ \u2013' 'Careful, Vernon!' breathed Aunt Petunia, and Uncle Vernon lowered his voice so that Harry could barely hear him, '\u2013 that _your lot_ don't get on _our_ news!' 'That's all you know,' said Harry. The Dursleys goggled at him for a few seconds, then Aunt Petunia said, 'You're a nasty little liar. What are all those \u2013' she, too, lowered her voice so that Harry had to lip-read the next word, '\u2013 _owls_ doing if they're not bringing you news?' 'Aha!' said Uncle Vernon in a triumphant whisper. 'Get out of that one, boy! As if we didn't know you get all your news from those pestilential birds!' Harry hesitated for a moment. It cost him something to tell the truth this time, even though his aunt and uncle could not possibly know how bad he felt at admitting it. 'The owls...aren't bringing me news,' he said tonelessly. 'I don't believe it,' said Aunt Petunia at once. 'No more do I,' said Uncle Vernon",
        "The two men appeared out of nowhere, a few yards apart in the narrow, moonlit lane. For a second they stood quite still": "The two men appeared out of nowhere, a few yards apart in the narrow, moonlit lane. For a second they stood quite still, wands directed at each other's chests; then, recognising each other, they stowed their wands beneath their cloaks and started walking briskly in the same direction. 'News?' asked the taller of the two. 'The best,' replied Severus Snape. The lane was bordered on the left by wild, low-growing brambles, on the right by a high, neatly manicured hedge. The men's long cloaks flapped around their ankles as they marched. 'Thought I might be late,' said Yaxley, his blunt features sliding in and out of sight as the branches of overhanging trees broke the moonlight. 'It was a little trickier than I expected. But I hope he will be satisfied. You sound confident that your reception will be good?' Snape nodded, but did not elaborate. They turned right, into a wide driveway that led off the lane. The high hedge curved with them, running off into the distance beyond the pair of impressive wrought-iron gates barring the men's way. Neither of them broke step: in silence both raised their left arms in a kind of salute and passed straight through as though the dark metal were smoke. The yew hedges muffled the sound of the men's footsteps. There was a rustle somewhere to their right: Yaxley drew his wand again, pointing it over his companion's head, but the source of the noise proved to be nothing more than a pure white peacock, strutting majestically along the top of the hedge. 'He always did himself well, Lucius. _Peacocks..._' Yaxley thrust his wand back under his cloak with a snort. A handsome manor house grew out of the darkness at the end of the straight drive, lights glinting in the diamond-paned downstairs windows. Somewhere in the dark garden beyond the hedge, a fountain was playing. Gravel crackled beneath their feet as Snape and Yaxley sped towards the front door, which swung inwards at their approach, though nobody had visibly opened it. The hallway was large, dimly lit and sumptuously decorated, with a magnificent carpet covering most of the stone floor. The eyes of the pale-faced portraits on the walls followed Snape and Yaxley as they strode past. The two men halted at a heavy wooden door leading into the next room, hesitated for the space of a heartbeat, then Snape turned the bronze handle. The drawing room was full of silent people, sitting at a long and ornate table. The room's usual furniture had been pushed carelessly up against the walls. Illumination came from a roaring fire beneath a handsome marble mantelpiece surmounted by a gilded mirror. Snape and Yaxley lingered for a moment on the threshold. As their eyes grew accustomed to the lack of light they were drawn upwards to the strangest feature of the scene: an apparently unconscious human figure hanging upside down over the table, revolving slowly as if suspended by an invisible rope, and reflected in the mirror and in the bare, polished surface of the table below. None of the people seated underneath this singular sight was looking at it except for a pale young man sitting almost directly below it. He seemed unable to prevent himself from glancing upwards every minute or so. 'Yaxley. Snape,' said a high, clear voice from the head of the table. 'You are very nearly late.' The speaker was seated directly in front of the fireplace, so that it was difficult, at first, for the new arrivals to make out more than his silhouette. As they drew nearer, however, his face shone through the gloom, hairless, snake-like, with slits for nostrils and gleaming red eyes whose pupils were vertical. He was so pale that he seemed to emit a pearly glow. 'Severus, here,' said Voldemort, indicating the seat on his immediate right. 'Yaxley \u2013 beside Dolohov.' The two men took their allotted places. Most of the eyes around the table followed Snape and it was to him that Voldemort spoke first. 'So?' 'My Lord, the Order of the Phoenix intends to move Harry Potter from his current place of safety on Saturday next, at nightfall.' The interest around the table sharpened palpably: some stiffened, others fidgeted, all gazing at Snape and Voldemort. 'Saturday...at nightfall,' repeated Voldemort. His red eyes fastened upon Snape's black ones with such intensity that some of the watchers looked away, apparently fearful that they themselves would be scorched by the ferocity of the gaze. Snape, however, looked calmly back into Voldemort's face and, after a moment or two, Voldemort's lipless mouth curved into something like a smile. 'Good. Very good. And this information comes \u2013' 'From the source we discussed,' said Snape. 'My Lord.' Yaxley had leaned forward to look down the long table at Voldemort and Snape. All faces turned to him. 'My Lord, I have heard differently.' Yaxley waited, but Voldemort did not speak, so he went on, 'Dawlish, the Auror, let slip that Potter will not be moved until the thirtieth, the night before the boy turns seventeen.' Snape was smiling. 'My source told me that there are plans to lay a false trail; this must be it. No doubt a Confundus Charm has been placed upon Dawlish. It would not be the first time, he is known to be susceptible.' 'I assure you, my Lord, Dawlish seemed quite certain,' said Yaxley. 'If he has been Confunded, naturally he is certain,' said Snape. 'I assure _you_, Yaxley, the Auror Office will play no further part in the protection of Harry Potter. The Order believes that we have infiltrated the Ministry.' 'The Order's got one thing right, then, eh?' said a squat man sitting a short distance from Yaxley; he gave a wheezy giggle that was echoed here and there along the table. Voldemort did not laugh. His gaze had wandered upwards, to the body revolving slowly overhead, and he seemed to be lost in thought. 'My Lord,' Yaxley went on, 'Dawlish believes an entire party of Aurors will be used to transfer the boy \u2013' Voldemort held up a large, white hand and Yaxley subsided at once, watching resentfully as Voldemort turned back to Snape. 'Where are they going to hide the boy next?' 'At the home of one of the Order,' said Snape. 'The place, according to the source, has been given every protection that the Order and Ministry together could provide. I think that there is little chance of taking him once he is there, my Lord, unless, of course, the Ministry has fallen before next Saturday, which might give us the opportunity to discover and undo enough of the enchantments to break through the rest.' 'Well, Yaxley?' Voldemort called down the table, the firelight glinting strangely in his red eyes.' _Will_ the Ministry have fallen by next Saturday?' Once again, all heads turned. Yaxley squared his shoulders. 'My Lord, I have good news on that score. I have \u2013 with difficulty, and after great effort \u2013 succeeded in placing an Imperius Curse upon Pius Thicknesse.' Many of those sitting around Yaxley looked impressed; his neighbour, Dolohov, a man with a long, twisted face, clapped him on the back. 'It is a start,' said Voldemort. 'But Thicknesse is only one man. Scrimgeour must be surrounded by our people before I act. One failed attempt on the Minister's life will set me back a long way.' 'Yes \u2013 my Lord, that is true \u2013 but you know, as Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, Thicknesse has regular contact not only with the Minister himself, but also with the Heads of all the other Ministry departments. It will, I think, be easy, now that we have such a high-ranking official under our control, to subjugate the others, and then they can all work together to bring Scrimgeour down.' 'As long as our friend Thicknesse is not discovered before he has converted the rest,' said Voldemort. 'At any rate, it remains unlikely that the Ministry will be mine before next Saturday. If we cannot touch the boy at his destination, then it must be done while he travels.' 'We are at an advantage there, my Lord,' said Yaxley, who seemed determined to receive some portion of approval. 'We now have several people planted within the Department of Magical Transport. If Potter Apparates or uses the Floo Network, we shall know immediately.' 'He will not do either,' said Snape. 'The Order is eschewing any form of transport that is controlled or regulated by the Ministry; they mistrust everything to do with the place.' 'All the better,' said Voldemort. 'He will have to move in the open. Easier to take, by far.' Again, Voldemort looked up at the slowly revolving body as he went on, 'I shall attend to the boy in person. There have been too many mistakes where Harry Potter is concerned. Some of them have been my own. That Potter lives is due more to my errors, than to his triumphs.' The company round the table watched Voldemort apprehensively, each of them, by his or her expression, afraid that they might be blamed for Harry Potter's continued existence. Voldemort, however, seemed to be speaking more to himself than to any of them, still addressing the unconscious body above him. 'I have been careless, and so have been thwarted by luck and chance, those wreckers of all but the best laid plans. But I know better now. I understand those things that I did not understand before. I must be the one to kill Harry Potter, and I shall be.' At these words, seemingly in response to them, a sudden wail sounded, a terrible, drawn-out cry of misery and pain. Many of those at the table looked downwards, startled, for the sound had seemed to issue from below their feet. 'Wormtail,' said Voldemort, with no change in his quiet, thoughtful tone, and without removing his eyes from the revolving body above, 'have I not spoken to you about keeping our prisoner quiet?' 'Yes m \u2013 my Lord,' gasped a small man halfway down the table, who had been sitting so low in his chair that it had appeared, at first glance, to be unoccupied. Now he scrambled from his seat and scurried from the room, leaving nothing behind him but a curious gleam of silver. 'As I was saying,' continued Voldemort, looking again at the tense faces of his followers, 'I understand better now. I shall need, for instance, to borrow a wand from one of you before I go to kill Potter.' The faces around him displayed nothing but shock; he might have announced that he wanted to borrow one of their arms. 'No volunteers?' said Voldemort. 'Let",
        "Harry Potter was a highly unusual boy in many ways. For one thing, he hated the summer holidays more than any other time of": "Harry Potter was a highly unusual boy in many ways. For one thing, he hated the summer holidays more than any other time of year. For another, he really wanted to do his homework, but was forced to do it in secret, in the dead of night. And he also happened to be a wizard. It was nearly midnight, and he was lying on his front in bed, the blankets drawn right over his head like a tent, a torch in one hand and a large leather-bound book (_A History of Magic, _ by Bathilda Bagshot) propped open against the pillow. Harry moved the tip of his eagle-feather quill down the page, frowning as he looked for something that would help him write his essay, 'Witch-Burning in the Fourteenth Century Was Completely Pointless \u2013 discuss'. The quill paused at the top of a likely-looking paragraph. Harry pushed his round glasses up his nose, moved his torch closer to the book and read: _Non-magic people (more commonly known as Muggles) were particularly afraid of magic in medieval times, but not very good at recognising it. On the rare occasion that they did catch a real witch or wizard, burning had no effect whatsoever. The witch or wizard would perform a basic Flame-Freezing Charm and then pretend to shriek with pain while enjoying a gentle, tickling sensation. Indeed, Wendelin the Weird enjoyed being burnt so much that she allowed herself to be caught no fewer than forty-seven times in various disguises._ Harry put his quill between his teeth and reached underneath his pillow for his ink bottle and a roll of parchment. Slowly and very carefully he unscrewed the ink bottle, dipped his quill into it and began to write, pausing every now and then to listen, because if any of the Dursleys heard the scratching of his quill on their way to the bathroom, he'd probably find himself locked in the cupboard under the stairs for the rest of the summer. The Dursley family of number four, Privet Drive, was the reason that Harry never enjoyed his summer holidays. Uncle Vernon, Aunt Petunia and their son, Dudley, were Harry's only living relatives. They were Muggles, and they had a very medieval attitude towards magic. Harry's dead parents, who had been a witch and wizard themselves, were never mentioned under the Dursleys' roof. For years, Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon had hoped that if they kept Harry as downtrodden as possible, they would be able to squash the magic out of him. To their fury, they had been unsuccessful, and now lived in terror of anyone finding out that Harry had spent most of the last two years at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The most the Dursleys could do these days was to lock away Harry's spellbooks, wand, cauldron and broomstick at the start of the summer holidays, and forbid him to talk to the neighbours. This separation from his spellbooks had been a real problem for Harry, because his teachers at Hogwarts had given him a lot of holiday work. One of the essays, a particularly nasty one about Shrinking Potions, was for Harry's least favourite teacher, Professor Snape, who would be delighted to have an excuse to give Harry detention for a month. Harry had therefore seized his chance in the first week of the holidays. While Uncle Vernon, Aunt Petunia and Dudley had gone out into the front garden to admire Uncle Vernon's new company car (in very loud voices, so that the rest of the street would notice it too), Harry had crept downstairs, picked the lock on the cupboard under the stairs, grabbed some of his books and hidden them in his bedroom. As long as he didn't leave spots of ink on the sheets, the Dursleys need never know that he was studying magic by night. Harry was keen to avoid trouble with his aunt and uncle at the moment, as they were already in a bad mood with him, all because he'd received a telephone call from a fellow wizard one week into the school holidays. Ron Weasley, who was one of Harry's best friends at Hogwarts, came from a whole family of wizards. This meant that he knew a lot of things Harry didn't, but had never used a telephone before. Most unluckily, it had been Uncle Vernon who had answered the call. 'Vernon Dursley speaking.' Harry, who happened to be in the room at the time, froze as he heard Ron's voice answer. 'HELLO? HELLO? CAN YOU HEAR ME? I \u2013 WANT \u2013 TO \u2013 TALK \u2013 TO \u2013 HARRY \u2013 POTTER!' Ron was yelling so loudly that Uncle Vernon jumped and held the receiver a foot away from his ear, staring at it with an expression of mingled fury and alarm. 'WHO IS THIS?' he roared in the direction of the mouthpiece. 'WHO ARE YOU?' 'RON \u2013 WEASLEY!' Ron bellowed back, as though he and Uncle Vernon were speaking from opposite ends of a football pitch. 'I'M \u2013 A \u2013 FRIEND \u2013 OF \u2013 HARRY'S \u2013 FROM \u2013 SCHOOL \u2013' Uncle Vernon's small eyes swivelled around to Harry, who was rooted to the spot. 'THERE IS NO HARRY POTTER HERE!' he roared, now holding the receiver at arm's length, as though frightened it might explode. 'I DON'T KNOW WHAT SCHOOL YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT! NEVER CONTACT ME AGAIN! DON'T YOU COME NEAR MY FAMILY!' And he threw the receiver back onto the telephone as if dropping a poisonous spider. The row that had followed had been one of the worst ever. 'HOW DARE YOU GIVE THIS NUMBER TO PEOPLE LIKE \u2013 PEOPLE LIKE _YOU_!' Uncle Vernon had roared, spraying Harry with spit. Ron obviously realised that he'd got Harry into trouble, because he hadn't called again. Harry's other best friend from Hogwarts, Hermione Granger, hadn't been in touch either. Harry suspected that Ron had warned Hermione not to call, which was a pity, because Hermione, the cleverest witch in Harry's year, had Muggle parents, knew perfectly well how to use a telephone, and would probably have had enough sense not to say that she went to Hogwarts. So Harry had had no word from any of his wizarding friends for five long weeks, and this summer was turning out to be almost as bad as the last one. There was just one, very small improvement: after swearing that he wouldn't use her to send letters to any of his friends, Harry had been allowed to let his owl, Hedwig, out at night. Uncle Vernon had given in because of the racket Hedwig made if she was locked in her cage all the time. Harry finished writing about Wendelin the Weird and paused to listen again. The silence in the dark house was broken only by the distant, grunting snores of his enormous cousin, Dudley. It must be very late. Harry's eyes were itching with tiredness. Perhaps he'd finish this essay tomorrow night...He replaced the top of the ink bottle, pulled an old pillowcase from under his bed, put the torch, _A History of Magic, _ his essay, quill and ink inside it, got out of bed and hid the lot under a loose floorboard under his bed. Then he stood up, stretched, and checked the time on the luminous alarm clock on his bedside table. It was one o'clock in the morning. Harry's stomach gave a funny jolt. He had been thirteen years old, without realising it, for a whole hour. Yet another unusual thing about Harry was how little he looked forward to his birthdays. He had never received a birthday card in his life. The Dursleys had completely ignored his last two birthdays, and he had no reason to suppose they would remember this one. Harry walked across the dark room, past Hedwig's large, empty cage, to the open window. He leant on the sill, the cool night air pleasant on his face after a long time under the blankets. Hedwig had been absent for two nights now. Harry wasn't worried about her \u2013 she'd been gone this long before \u2013 but he hoped she'd be back soon. She was the only living creature in this house who didn't flinch at the sight of him. Harry, though still rather small and skinny for his age, had grown a few inches over the last year. His jet-black hair, however, was just as it always had been: stubbornly untidy, whatever he did to it. The eyes behind his glasses were bright green, and on his forehead, clearly visible through his hair, was a thin scar, shaped like a bolt of lightning. Of all the unusual things about Harry, this scar was the most extraordinary of all. It was not, as the Dursleys had pretended for ten years, a souvenir of the car crash that had killed Harry's parents, because Lily and James Potter had not died in a car crash. They had been murdered, murdered by the most feared Dark wizard for a hundred years, Lord Voldemort. Harry had escaped from the same attack with nothing more than a scar on his forehead, when Voldemort's curse, instead of killing him, had rebounded upon its originator. Barely alive, Voldemort had fled...But Harry had come face to face with him since at Hogwarts. Remembering their last meeting as he stood at the dark window, Harry had to admit he was lucky even to have reached his thirteenth birthday. He scanned the starry sky for a sign of Hedwig, perhaps soaring back to him with a dead mouse dangling from her beak, expecting praise. Gazing absently over the rooftops, it was a few seconds before Harry realised what he was seeing. Silhouetted against the golden moon, and growing larger every moment, was a large, strangely lop-sided creature, and it was flapping in Harry's direction. He stood quite still, watching it sink lower and lower. For a split second, he hesitated, his hand on the window-latch, wondering whether to slam it shut, but then the bizarre creature soared over one of the streetlamps of Privet Drive, and Harry, realising what it was, leapt aside. Through the window soared three owls, two of them holding up the third, which appeared to be unconscious. They landed with a soft _flump_ on Harry's bed, and the middle owl, which was large and grey, keeled right over and lay motionless. There was a large package tied to its legs. Harry recognised the unconscious owl at once \u2013 his name was Errol, and he belonged to the Weasley family. Harry dashed to the bed at once, untied the cords around Errol's legs, took off the parcel and then carried Errol to Hedwig's cage. Errol opened one bleary eye, gave a feeble hoot of thanks,",
        "Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very": "Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you'd expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn't hold with such nonsense. Mr Dursley was the director of a firm called Grunnings, which made drills. He was a big, beefy man with hardly any neck, although he did have a very large moustache. Mrs Dursley was thin and blonde and had nearly twice the usual amount of neck, which came in very useful as she spent so much of her time craning over garden fences, spying on the neighbours. The Dursleys had a small son called Dudley and in their opinion there was no finer boy anywhere. The Dursleys had everything they wanted, but they also had a secret, and their greatest fear was that somebody would discover it. They didn't think they could bear it if anyone found out about the Potters. Mrs Potter was Mrs Dursley's sister, but they hadn't met for several years; in fact, Mrs Dursley pretended she didn't have a sister, because her sister and her good-for-nothing husband were as unDursleyish as it was possible to be. The Dursleys shuddered to think what the neighbours would say if the Potters arrived in the street. The Dursleys knew that the Potters had a small son, too, but they had never even seen him. This boy was another good reason for keeping the Potters away; they didn't want Dudley mixing with a child like that. When Mr and Mrs Dursley woke up on the dull, grey Tuesday our story starts, there was nothing about the cloudy sky outside to suggest that strange and mysterious things would soon be happening all over the country. Mr Dursley hummed as he picked out his most boring tie for work and Mrs Dursley gossiped away happily as she wrestled a screaming Dudley into his high chair. None of them noticed a large tawny owl flutter past the window. At half past eight, Mr Dursley picked up his briefcase, pecked Mrs Dursley on the cheek and tried to kiss Dudley goodbye but missed, because Dudley was now having a tantrum and throwing his cereal at the walls. 'Little tyke,' chortled Mr Dursley as he left the house. He got into his car and backed out of number four's drive. It was on the corner of the street that he noticed the first sign of something peculiar \u2013 a cat reading a map. For a second, Mr Dursley didn't realise what he had seen \u2013 then he jerked his head around to look again. There was a tabby cat standing on the corner of Privet Drive, but there wasn't a map in sight. What could he have been thinking of? It must have been a trick of the light. Mr Dursley blinked and stared at the cat. It stared back. As Mr Dursley drove around the corner and up the road, he watched the cat in his mirror. It was now reading the sign that said _Privet Drive_ \u2013 no, _looking_ at the sign; cats couldn't read maps _or_ signs. Mr Dursley gave himself a little shake and put the cat out of his mind. As he drove towards town he thought of nothing except a large order of drills he was hoping to get that day. But on the edge of town, drills were driven out of his mind by something else. As he sat in the usual morning traffic jam, he couldn't help noticing that there seemed to be a lot of strangely dressed people about. People in cloaks. Mr Dursley couldn't bear people who dressed in funny clothes \u2013 the get-ups you saw on young people! He supposed this was some stupid new fashion. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and his eyes fell on a huddle of these weirdos standing quite close by. They were whispering excitedly together. Mr Dursley was enraged to see that a couple of them weren't young at all; why, that man had to be older than he was, and wearing an emerald-green cloak! The nerve of him! But then it struck Mr Dursley that this was probably some silly stunt \u2013 these people were obviously collecting for something...yes, that would be it. The traffic moved on, and a few minutes later, Mr Dursley arrived in the Grunnings car park, his mind back on drills. Mr Dursley always sat with his back to the window in his office on the ninth floor. If he hadn't, he might have found it harder to concentrate on drills that morning. _He_ didn't see the owls swooping past in broad daylight, though people down in the street did; they pointed and gazed open-mouthed as owl after owl sped overhead. Most of them had never seen an owl even at night-time. Mr Dursley, however, had a perfectly normal, owl-free morning. He yelled at five different people. He made several important telephone calls and shouted a bit more. He was in a very good mood until lunch-time, when he thought he'd stretch his legs and walk across the road to buy himself a bun from the baker's opposite. He'd forgotten all about the people in cloaks until he passed a group of them next to the baker's. He eyed them angrily as he passed. He didn't know why, but they made him uneasy. This lot were whispering excitedly, too, and he couldn't see a single collecting tin. It was on his way back past them, clutching a large doughnut in a bag, that he caught a few words of what they were saying. 'The Potters, that's right, that's what I heard \u2013' '\u2013 yes, their son, Harry \u2013' Mr Dursley stopped dead. Fear flooded him. He looked back at the whisperers as if he wanted to say something to them, but thought better of it. He dashed back across the road, hurried up to his office, snapped at his secretary not to disturb him, seized his telephone and had almost finished dialling his home number when he changed his mind. He put the receiver back down and stroked his moustache, thinking...no, he was being stupid. Potter wasn't such an unusual name. He was sure there were lots of people called Potter who had a son called Harry. Come to think of it, he wasn't even sure his nephew _was_ called Harry. He'd never even seen the boy. It might have been Harvey. Or Harold. There was no point in worrying Mrs Dursley, she always got so upset at any mention of her sister. He didn't blame her \u2013 if _he'd_ had a sister like that...but all the same, those people in cloaks...He found it a lot harder to concentrate on drills that afternoon, and when he left the building at five o'clock, he was still so worried that he walked straight into someone just outside the door. 'Sorry,' he grunted, as the tiny old man stumbled and almost fell. It was a few seconds before Mr Dursley realised that the man was wearing a violet cloak. He didn't seem at all upset at being almost knocked to the ground. On the contrary, his face split into a wide smile and he said in a squeaky voice that made passers-by stare: 'Don't be sorry, my dear sir, for nothing could upset me today! Rejoice, for You-Know-Who has gone at last! Even Muggles like yourself should be celebrating, this happy, happy day!' And the old man hugged Mr Dursley around the middle and walked off. Mr Dursley stood rooted to the spot. He had been hugged by a complete stranger. He also thought he had been called a Muggle, whatever that was. He was rattled. He hurried to his car and set off home, hoping he was imagining things, which he had never hoped before, because he didn't approve of imagination. As he pulled into the driveway of number four, the first thing he saw \u2013 and it didn't improve his mood \u2013 was the tabby cat he'd spotted that morning. It was now sitting on his garden wall. He was sure it was the same one; it had the same markings around its eyes. 'Shoo!' said Mr Dursley loudly. The cat didn't move. It just gave him a stern look. Was this normal cat behaviour, Mr Dursley wondered. Trying to pull himself together, he let himself into the house. He was still determined not to mention anything to his wife. Mrs Dursley had had a nice, normal day. She told him over dinner all about Mrs Next Door's problems with her daughter and how Dudley had learnt a new word ('Shan't!'). Mr Dursley tried to act normally. When Dudley had been put to bed, he went into the living-room in time to catch the last report on the evening news: 'And finally, bird-watchers everywhere have reported that the nation's owls have been behaving very unusually today. Although owls normally hunt at night and are hardly ever seen in daylight, there have been hundreds of sightings of these birds flying in every direction since sunrise. Experts are unable to explain why the owls have suddenly changed their sleeping pattern.' The news reader allowed himself a grin. 'Most mysterious. And now, over to Jim McGuffin with the weather. Going to be any more showers of owls tonight, Jim?' 'Well, Ted,' said the weatherman, 'I don't know about that, but it's not only the owls that have been acting oddly today. Viewers as far apart as Kent, Yorkshire and Dundee have been phoning in to tell me that instead of the rain I promised yesterday, they've had a downpour of shooting stars! Perhaps people have been celebrating Bonfire Night early \u2013 it's not until next week, folks! But I can promise a wet night tonight.' Mr Dursley sat frozen in his armchair. Shooting stars all over Britain? Owls flying by daylight? Mysterious people in cloaks all over the place? And a whisper, a whisper about the Potters...Mrs Dursley came into the living-room carrying two cups of tea. It was no good. He'd have to say something to her. He cleared his throat nervously. 'Er \u2013 Petunia, dear \u2013 you haven't heard from your sister lately, have you?' As he had expected, Mrs Dursley looked shocked and angry. After all, they normally pretended she didn't have a sister. 'No,' she said sharply. 'Why?' 'Funny stuff on the news,' Mr Dursley mumbled. 'Owls...shooting stars...and there were a lot of funny-looking people in town today ...' _'So? '_ snapped Mrs Dursley. 'Well, I just thought...maybe...it was something to do with...you know..._her lot._' Mrs Dursley sipped her tea through pursed lips. Mr Dursley wondered whether he dared tell her",
        "The villagers of Little Hangleton still called it 'the Riddle House', even though it had been many years since the Riddle family had": "The villagers of Little Hangleton still called it 'the Riddle House', even though it had been many years since the Riddle family had lived there. It stood on a hill overlooking the village, some of its windows boarded, tiles missing from its roof, and ivy spreading unchecked over its face. Once a fine-looking manor, and easily the largest and grandest building for miles around, the Riddle House was now damp, derelict and unoccupied. The Little Hangletons all agreed that the old house was 'creepy'. Half a century ago, something strange and horrible had happened there, something that the older inhabitants of the village still liked to discuss when topics for gossip were scarce. The story had been picked over so many times, and had been embroidered in so many places, that nobody was quite sure what the truth was any more. Every version of the tale, however, started in the same place: fifty years before, at daybreak on a fine summer's morning, when the Riddle House had still been well kept and impressive, and a maid had entered the drawing room to find all three Riddles dead. The maid had run screaming down the hill into the village, and roused as many people as she could. 'Lying there with their eyes wide open! Cold as ice! Still in their dinner things!' The police were summoned, and the whole of Little Hangleton had seethed with shocked curiosity and ill-disguised excitement. Nobody wasted their breath pretending to feel very sad about the Riddles, for they had been most unpopular. Elderly Mr and Mrs Riddle had been rich, snobbish and rude, and their grown-up son, Tom, had been even more so. All the villagers cared about was the identity of their murderer \u2013 plainly, three apparently healthy people did not all drop dead of natural causes on the same night. The Hanged Man, the village pub, did a roaring trade that night; the whole village had turned out to discuss the murders. They were rewarded for leaving their firesides when the Riddles' cook arrived dramatically in their midst, and announced to the suddenly silent pub that a man called Frank Bryce had just been arrested. 'Frank!' cried several people. 'Never!' Frank Bryce was the Riddles' gardener. He lived alone in a run-down cottage in the Riddle House grounds. Frank had come back from the war with a very stiff leg and a great dislike of crowds and loud noises, and had been working for the Riddles ever since. There was a rush to buy the cook drinks, and hear more details. 'Always thought he was odd,' she told the eagerly listening villagers, after her fourth sherry. 'Unfriendly, like. I'm sure if I've offered him a cuppa once, I've offered it a hundred times. Never wanted to mix, he didn't.' 'Ah, now,' said a woman at the bar, 'he had a hard war, Frank, he likes the quiet life. That's no reason to \u2013' 'Who else had a key to the back door, then?' barked the cook. 'There's been a spare key hanging in the gardener's cottage far back as I can remember! Nobody forced the door last night! No broken windows! All Frank had to do was creep up to the big house while we was all sleeping ...' The villagers exchanged dark looks. 'I always thought he had a nasty look about him, right enough,' grunted a man at the bar. 'War turned him funny, if you ask me,' said the landlord. 'Told you I wouldn't like to get on the wrong side of Frank, didn't I, Dot?' said an excited woman in the corner. 'Horrible temper,' said Dot, nodding fervently, 'I remember, when he was a kid ...' By the following morning, hardly anyone in Little Hangleton doubted that Frank Bryce had killed the Riddles. But over in the neighbouring town of Great Hangleton, in the dark and dingy police station, Frank was stubbornly repeating, again and again, that he was innocent, and that the only person he had seen near the house on the day of the Riddles' deaths had been a teenage boy, a stranger, dark-haired and pale. Nobody else in the village had seen any such boy, and the police were quite sure that Frank had invented him. Then, just when things were looking very serious for Frank, the report on the Riddles' bodies came back and changed everything. The police had never read an odder report. A team of doctors had examined the bodies, and had concluded that none of the Riddles had been poisoned, stabbed, shot, strangled, suffocated or (as far as they could tell) harmed at all. In fact, the report continued, in a tone of unmistakable bewilderment, the Riddles all appeared to be in perfect health \u2013 apart from the fact that they were all dead. The doctors did note (as though determined to find something wrong with the bodies) that each of the Riddles had a look of terror upon his or her face \u2013 but as the frustrated police said, whoever heard of three people being _frightened_ to death? As there was no proof that the Riddles had been murdered at all, the police were forced to let Frank go. The Riddles were buried in the Little Hangleton churchyard, and their graves remained objects of curiosity for a while. To everyone's surprise, and amidst a cloud of suspicion, Frank Bryce returned to his cottage in the grounds of the Riddle House.\" S'far as I'm concerned, he killed them, and I don't care what the police say,' said Dot in the Hanged Man. 'And if he had any decency, he'd leave here, knowing as how we knows he did it.' But Frank did not leave. He stayed to tend the garden for the next family who lived in the Riddle House, and then the next \u2013 for neither family stayed long. Perhaps it was partly because of Frank that each new owner said there was a nasty feeling about the place, which, in the absence of inhabitants, started to fall into disrepair. * The wealthy man who owned the Riddle House these days neither lived there nor put it to any use; they said in the village that he kept it for 'tax reasons', though nobody was very clear what these might be. The wealthy owner continued to pay Frank to do the gardening, however. Frank was nearing his seventy-seventh birthday now, very deaf, his bad leg stiffer than ever, but could be seen pottering around the flowerbeds in fine weather, even though the weeds were starting to creep up on him. Weeds were not the only things Frank had to contend with, either. Boys from the village made a habit of throwing stones through the windows of the Riddle House. They rode their bicycles over the lawns Frank worked so hard to keep smooth. Once or twice, they broke into the old house for a dare. They knew that old Frank was devoted to the house and grounds, and it amused them to see him limping across the garden, brandishing his stick and yelling croakily at them. Frank, on his part, believed the boys tormented him because they, like their parents and grandparents, thought him a murderer. So when Frank awoke one night in August, and saw something very odd up at the old house, he merely assumed that the boys had gone one step further in their attempts to punish him. It was Frank's bad leg that woke him; it was paining him worse than ever in his old age. He got up and limped downstairs into the kitchen, with the idea of re-filling his hot-water bottle to ease the stiffness in his knee. Standing at the sink, filling the kettle, he looked up at the Riddle House and saw lights glimmering in its upper windows. Frank knew at once what was going on. The boys had broken into the house again, and judging by the flickering quality of the light, they had started a fire. Frank had no telephone, and in any case, he had deeply mistrusted the police ever since they had taken him in for questioning about the Riddles' deaths. He put down the kettle at once, hurried back upstairs as fast as his bad leg would allow, and was soon back in his kitchen, fully dressed and removing a rusty old key from its hook by the door. He picked up his walking stick, which was propped against the wall, and set off into the night. The front door of the Riddle House bore no sign of being forced, and nor did any of the windows. Frank limped around to the back of the house until he reached a door almost completely hidden by ivy, took out the old key, put it into the lock and opened the door noiselessly. He had let himself into the cavernous kitchen. Frank had not entered it for many years; nevertheless, although it was very dark, he remembered where the door into the hall was, and he groped his way towards it, his nostrils full of the smell of decay, ears pricked for any sound of footsteps or voices from overhead. He reached the hall, which was a little lighter owing to the large mullioned windows either side of the front door, and started to climb the stairs, blessing the dust which lay thick upon the stone, because it muffled the sound of his feet and stick. On the landing, Frank turned right, and saw at once where the intruders were: at the very end of the passage a door stood ajar, and a flickering light shone through the gap, casting a long sliver of gold across the black floor. Frank edged closer and closer, grasping his walking stick firmly. Several feet from the entrance, he was able to see a narrow slice of the room beyond. The fire, he now saw, had been lit in the grate. This surprised him. He stopped moving and listened intently, for a man's voice spoke within the room; it sounded timid and fearful. 'There is a little more in the bottle, my Lord, if you are still hungry.' 'Later,' said a second voice. This, too, belonged to a man \u2013 but it was strangely high-pitched, and cold as a sudden blast of icy wind. Something about that voice made the sparse hairs on the back of Frank's neck stand up. 'Move me closer to the fire, Wormtail.' Frank turned his right ear towards the door, the better to hear. There came the chink of a bottle being put down upon some hard surface, and then the dull scraping noise of a heavy chair being dragged across the floor. Frank caught a glimpse of a small man, his back to the door,",
        "Not for the first time, an argument had broken out over breakfast at number four, Privet Drive. Mr Vernon Dursley had been woken": "Not for the first time, an argument had broken out over breakfast at number four, Privet Drive. Mr Vernon Dursley had been woken in the early hours of the morning by a loud, hooting noise from his nephew Harry's room. 'Third time this week!' he roared across the table. 'If you can't control that owl, it'll have to go!' Harry tried, yet again, to explain. 'She's _bored, _' he said. 'She's used to flying around outside. If I could just let her out at night ...' 'Do I look stupid?' snarled Uncle Vernon, a bit of fried egg dangling from his bushy moustache. 'I know what'll happen if that owl's let out.' He exchanged dark looks with his wife, Petunia. Harry tried to argue back but his words were drowned by a long, loud belch from the Dursleys' son, Dudley. 'I want more bacon.' 'There's more in the frying pan, sweetums,' said Aunt Petunia, turning misty eyes on her massive son. 'We must feed you up while we've got the chance...I don't like the sound of that school food ...' 'Nonsense, Petunia, I never went hungry when I was at Smeltings,' said Uncle Vernon heartily. 'Dudley gets enough, don't you, son?' Dudley, who was so large his bottom drooped over either side of the kitchen chair, grinned and turned to Harry. 'Pass the frying pan.' 'You've forgotten the magic word,' said Harry irritably. The effect of this simple sentence on the rest of the family was incredible: Dudley gasped and fell off his chair with a crash that shook the whole kitchen; Mrs Dursley gave a small scream and clapped her hands to her mouth; Mr Dursley jumped to his feet, veins throbbing in his temples. 'I meant \"please\"!' said Harry quickly. 'I didn't mean \u2013' 'WHAT HAVE I TOLD YOU,' thundered his uncle, spraying spit over the table, 'ABOUT SAYING THE M WORD IN OUR HOUSE?' 'But I \u2013' 'HOW DARE YOU THREATEN DUDLEY!' roared Uncle Vernon, pounding the table with his fist. 'I just \u2013' 'I WARNED YOU! I WILL NOT TOLERATE MENTION OF YOUR ABNORMALITY UNDER THIS ROOF!' Harry stared from his purple-faced uncle to his pale aunt, who was trying to heave Dudley to his feet. 'All right,' said Harry, _'all right...'_ Uncle Vernon sat back down, breathing like a winded rhinoceros and watching Harry closely out of the corners of his small, sharp eyes. Ever since Harry had come home for the summer holidays, Uncle Vernon had been treating him like a bomb that might go off at any moment, because Harry _wasn't_ a normal boy. As a matter of fact, he was as not normal as it is possible to be. Harry Potter was a wizard \u2013 a wizard fresh from his first year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. And if the Dursleys were unhappy to have him back for the holidays, it was nothing to how Harry felt. He missed Hogwarts so much it was like having a constant stomach ache. He missed the castle, with its secret passageways and ghosts, his lessons (though perhaps not Snape, the Potions master), the post arriving by owl, eating banquets in the Great Hall, sleeping in his four-poster bed in the tower dormitory, visiting the gamekeeper, Hagrid, in his cabin in the grounds next to the Forbidden Forest and, especially, Quidditch, the most popular sport in the wizarding world (six tall goalposts, four flying balls and fourteen players on broomsticks). All Harry's spellbooks, his wand, robes, cauldron and top-of-the-range Nimbus Two Thousand broomstick had been locked in a cupboard under the stairs by Uncle Vernon the instant Harry had come home. What did the Dursleys care if Harry lost his place in the house Quidditch team because he hadn't practised all summer? What was it to the Dursleys if Harry went back to school without any of his homework done? The Dursleys were what wizards called Muggles (not a drop of magical blood in their veins) and as far as they were concerned, having a wizard in the family was a matter of deepest shame. Uncle Vernon had even padlocked Harry's owl, Hedwig, inside her cage, to stop her carrying messages to anyone in the wizarding world. Harry looked nothing like the rest of the family. Uncle Vernon was large and neckless, with an enormous black moustache; Aunt Petunia was horse-faced and bony; Dudley was blond, pink and porky. Harry, on the other hand, was small and skinny, with brilliant green eyes and jet-black hair that was always untidy. He wore round glasses, and on his forehead was a thin, lightning-shaped scar. It was this scar that made Harry so particularly unusual, even for a wizard. This scar was the only hint of Harry's very mysterious past, of the reason he had been left on the Dursleys' doorstep eleven years before. At the age of one, Harry had somehow survived a curse from the greatest dark sorcerer of all time, Lord Voldemort, whose name most witches and wizards still feared to speak. Harry's parents had died in Voldemort's attack, but Harry had escaped with his lightning scar, and somehow \u2013 nobody understood why \u2013 Voldemort's powers had been destroyed the instant he had failed to kill Harry. So Harry had been brought up by his dead mother's sister and her husband. He had spent ten years with the Dursleys, never understanding why he kept making odd things happen without meaning to, believing the Dursleys' story that he had got his scar in the car crash which had killed his parents. And then, exactly a year ago, Hogwarts had written to Harry, and the whole story had come out. Harry had taken up his place at wizard school, where he and his scar were famous...but now the school year was over, and he was back with the Dursleys for the summer, back to being treated like a dog that had rolled in something smelly. The Dursleys hadn't even remembered that today happened to be Harry's twelfth birthday. Of course, his hopes hadn't been high; they'd never given him a proper present, let alone a cake \u2013 but to ignore it completely...At that moment, Uncle Vernon cleared his throat importantly and said, 'Now, as we all know, today is a very important day.' Harry looked up, hardly daring to believe it. 'This could well be the day I make the biggest deal of my career,' said Uncle Vernon. Harry went back to his toast. Of course, he thought bitterly, Uncle Vernon was talking about the stupid dinner party. He'd been talking of nothing else for a fortnight. Some rich builder and his wife were coming to dinner and Uncle Vernon was hoping to get a huge order from him (Uncle Vernon's company made drills). 'I think we should run through the schedule one more time,' said Uncle Vernon. 'We should all be in position at eight o'clock. Petunia, you will be \u2013?' 'In the lounge,' said Aunt Petunia promptly, 'waiting to welcome them graciously to our home.' 'Good, good. And Dudley?' 'I'll be waiting to open the door.' Dudley put on a foul, simpering smile. 'May I take your coats, Mr and Mrs Mason?' 'They'll _love_ him!' cried Aunt Petunia rapturously. 'Excellent, Dudley,' said Uncle Vernon. Then he rounded on Harry. 'And _you? _' 'I'll be in my bedroom, making no noise and pretending I'm not there,' said Harry tonelessly. 'Exactly,' said Uncle Vernon nastily. 'I will lead them into the lounge, introduce you, Petunia, and pour them drinks. At eight fifteen \u2013' 'I'll announce dinner,' said Aunt Petunia. 'And Dudley, you'll say \u2013' 'May I take you through to the dining room, Mrs Mason?' said Dudley, offering his fat arm to an invisible woman. 'My perfect little gentleman!' sniffed Aunt Petunia. 'And _you? _' said Uncle Vernon viciously to Harry. 'I'll be in my room, making no noise and pretending I'm not there,' said Harry dully. 'Precisely. Now, we should aim to get in a few good compliments at dinner. Petunia, any ideas?' 'Vernon tells me you're a _wonderful_ golfer, Mr Mason..._Do_ tell me where you bought your dress, Mrs Mason ...' 'Perfect...Dudley?' 'How about: \"We had to write an essay about our hero at school, Mr Mason, and _I_ wrote about _you._ \"' This was too much for both Aunt Petunia and Harry. Aunt Petunia burst into tears and hugged her son, while Harry ducked under the table so they wouldn't see him laughing. 'And you, boy?' Harry fought to keep his face straight as he emerged. 'I'll be in my room, making no noise and pretending I'm not there,' he said. 'Too right you will,' said Uncle Vernon forcefully. 'The Masons don't know anything about you and it's going to stay that way. When dinner's over, you take Mrs Mason back to the lounge for coffee, Petunia, and I'll bring the subject round to drills. With any luck, I'll have the deal signed and sealed before the _News at Ten._ We'll be shopping for a holiday home in Majorca this time tomorrow.' Harry couldn't feel too excited about this. He didn't think the Dursleys would like him any better in Majorca than they did in Privet Drive. 'Right \u2013 I'm off into town to pick up the dinner jackets for Dudley and me. And _you, _' he snarled at Harry, 'you stay out of your aunt's way while she's cleaning.' Harry left through the back door. It was a brilliant, sunny day. He crossed the lawn, slumped down on the garden bench and sang under his breath, 'Happy birthday to me...happy birthday to me ...' No cards, no presents, and he would be spending the evening pretending not to exist. He gazed miserably into the hedge. He had never felt so lonely. More than anything else at Hogwarts, more even than playing Quidditch, Harry missed his best friends, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. They, however, didn't seem to be missing him at all. Neither of them had written to him all summer, even though Ron had said he was going to ask Harry to come and stay. Countless times, Harry had been on the point of unlocking Hedwig's cage by magic and sending her to Ron and Hermione with a letter,",
        "It is so appropriate to color hope yellow, like that sun we seldom saw. And as I begin to copy from the old memorandum": "It is so appropriate to color hope yellow, like that sun we seldom saw. And as I begin to copy from the old memorandum journals that I kept for so long, a title comes as if inspired. Open the Window and Stand in the Sunshine. Yet, I hesitate to name our story that. For I think of us more as flowers in the attic. Paper flowers. Born so brightly colored, and fading duller through all those long, grim, dreary, nightmarish days when we were held prisoners of hope, and kept captives by greed. But, we were never to color even one of our paper blossoms yellow. Charles Dickens would often start his novels with the birth of the protagonist and, being a favorite author of both mine and Chris's, I would duplicate his style\u2014if I could. But he was a genius born to write without difficulty while I find every word I put down, I put down with tears, with bitter blood, with sour gall, well mixed and blended with shame and guilt. I thought I would never feel ashamed or guilty, that these were burdens for others to bear. Years have passed and I am older and wiser now, accepting, too. The tempest of rage that once stormed within me has simmered down so I can write, I hope, with truth and with less hatred and prejudice than would have been the case a few years ago. So, like Charles Dickens, in this work of \"fiction\" I will hide myself away behind a false name, and live in fake places, and I will pray to God that those who should will hurt when they read what I have to say. Certainly God in his infinite mercy will see that some understanding publisher will put my words in a book, and help grind the knife that I hope to wield. ###Good-bye, Daddy Truly, when I was very young, way back in the Fifties, I believed all of life would be like one long and perfect summer day. After all, it did start out that way. There's not much I can say about our earliest childhood except that it was very good, and for that, I should be everlastingly grateful. We weren't rich, we weren't poor. If we lacked some necessity, I couldn't name it; if we had luxuries, I couldn't name those, either, without comparing what we had to what others had, and nobody had more or less in our middleclass neighborhood. In other words, short and simple, we were just ordinary, run-of-the-mill children. Our daddy was a P.R. man for a large computer manufacturing firm located in Gladstone, Pennsylvania: population, 12,602. He was a huge success, our father, for often his boss dined with us, and bragged about the job Daddy seemed to perform so well. \"It's that all-American, wholesome, devastatingly good-looking face and charming manner that does them in. Great God in heaven, Chris, what sensible person could resist a fella like you?\" Heartily, I agreed with that. Our father was perfect. He stood six feet two, weighed 180 pounds, and his hair was thick and flaxen blond, and waved just enough to be perfect; his eyes were cerulean blue and they sparkled with laughter, with his great zest for living and having fun. His nose was straight and neither too long nor too narrow, nor too thick. He played tennis and golf like a pro and swam so much he kept a suntan all through the year. He was always dashing off on airplanes to California, to Florida, to Arizona, or to Hawaii, or even abroad on business, while we were left at home in the care of our mother. When he came through the front door late on Friday afternoons\u2014every Friday afternoon (he said he couldn't bear to be separated from us for longer than five days) \u2014even if it were raining or snowing, the sun shone when he beamed his broad, happy smile on us. His booming greeting rang out as soon as he put down his suitcase and briefcase: \"Come greet me with kisses if you love me!\" Somewhere near the front door, my brother and I would be hiding, and after he'd called out his greeting, we'd dash out from behind a chair or the sofa to crash into his wide open arms, which seized us up at once and held us close, and he warmed our lips with his kisses. Fridays\u2014they were the best days of all, for they brought Daddy home to us again. In his suit pockets he carried small gifts for us; in his suitcases he stored the larger ones to dole out after he greeted our mother, who would hang back and wait patiently until he had done with us. And after we had our little gifts from his pockets, Christopher and I would back off to watch Momma drift slowly forward, her lips curved in a welcoming smile that lit up our father's eyes, and he'd take her in his arms, and stare down into her face as if he hadn't seen her for at least a year. On Fridays, Momma spent half the day in the beauty parlor having her hair shampooed and set and her fingernails polished, and then she'd come home to take a long bath in perfumed-oiled water. I'd perch in her dressing room, and wait to watch her emerge in a filmy negligee. She'd sit at her dressing table to meticulously apply makeup. And I, so eager to learn, drank in everything she did to turn herself from just a pretty woman into a creature so ravishingly beautiful she didn't look real. The most amazing part of this was our father thought she didn't wear makeup! He believed she was naturally a striking beauty. Love was a word lavished about in our home. \"Do you love me? \u2014For I most certainly love you; did you miss me? \u2014Are you glad I'm home? \u2014Did you think about me when I was gone? Every night? Did you toss and turn and wish I were beside you, holding you close? For if you didn't, Corrine, I might want to die.\" Momma knew exactly how to answer questions like these\u2014with her eyes, with soft whispers and with kisses. * * * One day Christopher and I came speeding home from school with the wintery wind blowing us through the front door. \"Take off your boots in the foyer,\" Momma called out from the living room, where I could see her sitting before the fireplace knitting a little white sweater fit for a doll to wear. I thought it was a Christmas gift for me, for one of my dolls.\" And kick off your shoes before you come in here,\" she added. We shed our boots and heavy coats and hoods in the foyer, then raced in stockinged feet into the living room, with its plush white carpet. That pastel room, decorated to flatter our mother's fair beauty, was off limits for us most of the time. This was our company room, our mother's room, and never could we feel really comfortable on the apricot brocade sofa or the cut-velvet chairs. We preferred Daddy's room, with its dark paneled walls and tough plaid sofa, where we could wallow and fight and never fear we were damaging anything.\" It's freezing outside, Momma!\" I said breathlessly as I fell at her feet, thrusting my legs toward the fire. \"But the ride home on our bikes was just beautiful. All the trees are sparkled with diamond icicles, and crystal prisms on the shrubs. It's a fairyland out there, Momma. I wouldn't live down south where it never snows, for anything!\" Christopher did not talk about the weather and its freezing beauty. He was two years and five months my senior and he was far wiser than I; I know that now. He warmed his icy feet as I did, but he stared up at Momma's face, a worried frown drawing his dark brows together. I glanced up at her, too, wondering what he saw that made him show such concern. She was knitting at a fast and skilled pace, glancing from time to time at instructions.\" Momma, are you feeling all right?\" he asked.\" Yes, of course,\" she answered, giving him a soft, sweet smile.\" You look tired to me.\" She laid aside the tiny sweater. \"I visited my doctor today,\" she said, leaning forward to caress Christopher's rosy cold cheek.\" Momma!\" he cried, taking alarm. \"Are you sick?\" She chuckled softly, then ran her long, slim fingers through his tousled blond curls. \"Christopher Dollanganger, you know better than that. I've seen you looking at me with suspicious thoughts in your head.\" She caught his hand, and one of mine, and placed them both on her bulging middle.\" Do you feel anything?\" she asked, that secret, pleased look on her face again. Quickly, Christopher snatched his hand away as his face turned blood-red. But I left my hand where it was, wondering, waiting.\" What do you feel, Cathy?\" Beneath my hand, under her clothes, something weird was going on. Little faint movements quivered her flesh. I lifted my head and stared up in her face, and to this day, I can still recall how lovely she looked, like a Raphael madonna.\" Momma, your lunch is moving around, or else you have gas.\" Laughter made her blue eyes sparkle, and she told me to guess again. Her voice was sweet and concerned as she told us her news. \"Darlings, I'm going to have a baby in early May. In fact when I visited my doctor today, he said he heard two heartbeats. So that means I am going to have twins . . . or, God forbid, triplets. Not even your father knows this yet, so don't tell him until I have a chance.\" Stunned, I threw Christopher a look to see how he was taking this. He seemed bemused, and still embarrassed. I looked again at her lovely firelit face. Then I jumped up, and raced for my room! I hurled myself face down on my bed, and bawled, really let go! Babies\u2014two or more! I was the baby! I didn't want any little whining, crying babies coming along to take my place! I sobbed and beat at the pillows, wanting to hurt something, if not someone. Then I sat up and thought about running away. Someone rapped softly on my closed and locked door. \"Cathy,\" said my mother",
        "At dusk they pour from the sky. They blow across the ramparts, turn cartwheels over rooftops, flutter into the ravines between houses. Entire": "At dusk they pour from the sky. They blow across the ramparts, turn cartwheels over rooftops, flutter into the ravines between houses. Entire streets swirl with them, flashing white against the cobbles. Urgent message to the inhabitants of this town, they say. Depart immediately to open country. The tide climbs. The moon hangs small and yellow and gibbous. On the rooftops of beachfront hotels to the east, and in the gardens behind them, a half-dozen American artillery units drop incendiary rounds into the mouths of mortars. ##Bombers They cross the Channel at midnight. There are twelve and they are named for songs: Stardust and Stormy Weather and In the Mood and Pistol-Packin' Mama. The sea glides along far below, spattered with the countless chevrons of whitecaps. Soon enough, the navigators can discern the low moonlit lumps of islands ranged along the horizon. France. Intercoms crackle. Deliberately, almost lazily, the bombers shed altitude. Threads of red light ascend from anti-air emplacements up and down the coast. Dark, ruined ships appear, scuttled or destroyed, one with its bow shorn away, a second flickering as it burns. On an outermost island, panicked sheep run zigzagging between rocks. Inside each airplane, a bombardier peers through an aiming window and counts to twenty. Four five six seven. To the bombardiers, the walled city on its granite headland, drawing ever closer, looks like an unholy tooth, something black and dangerous, a final abscess to be lanced away. ##The Girl In a corner of the city, inside a tall, narrow house at Number 4 rue Vauborel, on the sixth and highest floor, a sightless sixteen-year-old named Marie-Laure LeBlanc kneels over a low table covered entirely with a model. The model is a miniature of the city she kneels within, and contains scale replicas of the hundreds of houses and shops and hotels within its walls. There's the cathedral with its perforated spire, and the bulky old Ch\u00e2teau de Saint-Malo, and row after row of seaside mansions studded with chimneys. A slender wooden jetty arcs out from a beach called the Plage du M\u00f4le; a delicate, reticulated atrium vaults over the seafood market; minute benches, the smallest no larger than apple seeds, dot the tiny public squares. Marie-Laure runs her fingertips along the centimeter-wide parapet crowning the ramparts, drawing an uneven star shape around the entire model. She finds the opening atop the walls where four ceremonial cannons point to sea. \"Bastion de la Hollande,\" she whispers, and her fingers walk down a little staircase. \"Rue des Cordiers. Rue Jacques Cartier.\" In a corner of the room stand two galvanized buckets filled to the rim with water. Fill them up, her great-uncle has taught her, whenever you can. The bathtub on the third floor too. Who knows when the water will go out again. Her fingers travel back to the cathedral spire. South to the Gate of Dinan. All evening she has been marching her fingers around the model, waiting for her great-uncle Etienne, who owns this house, who went out the previous night while she slept, and who has not returned. And now it is night again, another revolution of the clock, and the whole block is quiet, and she cannot sleep. She can hear the bombers when they are three miles away. A mounting static. The hum inside a seashell. When she opens the bedroom window, the noise of the airplanes becomes louder. Otherwise, the night is dreadfully silent: no engines, no voices, no clatter. No sirens. No footfalls on the cobbles. Not even gulls. Just a high tide, one block away and six stories below, lapping at the base of the city walls. And something else. Something rattling softly, very close. She eases open the left-hand shutter and runs her fingers up the slats of the right. A sheet of paper has lodged there. She holds it to her nose. It smells of fresh ink. Gasoline, maybe. The paper is crisp; it has not been outside long. Marie-Laure hesitates at the window in her stocking feet, her bedroom behind her, seashells arranged along the top of the armoire, pebbles along the baseboards. Her cane stands in the corner; her big Braille novel waits facedown on the bed. The drone of the airplanes grows. ##The Boy Five streets to the north, a white-haired eighteen-year-old German private named Werner Pfennig wakes to a faint staccato hum. Little more than a purr. Flies tapping at a far-off windowpane. Where is he? The sweet, slightly chemical scent of gun oil; the raw wood of newly constructed shell crates; the mothballed odor of old bedspreads\u2014he's in the hotel. Of course. L'h\u00f4tel des Abeilles, the Hotel of Bees. Still night. Still early. From the direction of the sea come whistles and booms; flak is going up. An anti-air corporal hurries down the corridor, heading for the stairwell. \"Get to the cellar,\" he calls over his shoulder, and Werner switches on his field light, rolls his blanket into his duffel, and starts down the hall. Not so long ago, the Hotel of Bees was a cheerful address, with bright blue shutters on its facade and oysters on ice in its caf\u00e9 and Breton waiters in bow ties polishing glasses behind its bar. It offered twenty-one guest rooms, commanding sea views, and a lobby fireplace as big as a truck. Parisians on weekend holidays would drink aperitifs here, and before them the occasional emissary from the republic\u2014ministers and vice ministers and abbots and admirals\u2014and in the centuries before them, windburned corsairs: killers, plunderers, raiders, seamen. Before that, before it was ever a hotel at all, five full centuries ago, it was the home of a wealthy privateer who gave up raiding ships to study bees in the pastures outside Saint-Malo, scribbling in notebooks and eating honey straight from combs. The crests above the door lintels still have bumblebees carved into the oak; the ivy-covered fountain in the courtyard is shaped like a hive. Werner's favorites are five faded frescoes on the ceilings of the grandest upper rooms, where bees as big as children float against blue backdrops, big lazy drones and workers with diaphanous wings\u2014where, above a hexagonal bathtub, a single nine-foot-long queen, with multiple eyes and a golden-furred abdomen, curls across the ceiling. Over the past four weeks, the hotel has become something else: a fortress. A detachment of Austrian anti-airmen has boarded up every window, overturned every bed. They've reinforced the entrance, packed the stairwells with crates of artillery shells. The hotel's fourth floor, where garden rooms with French balconies open directly onto the ramparts, has become home to an aging high-velocity anti-air gun called an 88 that can fire twenty-one-and-a-half-pound shells nine miles. Her Majesty, the Austrians call their cannon, and for the past week these men have tended to it the way worker bees might tend to a queen. They've fed her oils, repainted her barrels, lubricated her wheels; they've arranged sandbags at her feet like offerings. The royal acht acht, a deathly monarch meant to protect them all. Werner is in the stairwell, halfway to the ground floor, when the 88 fires twice in quick succession. It's the first time he's heard the gun at such close range, and it sounds as if the top half of the hotel has torn off. He stumbles and throws his arms over his ears. The walls reverberate all the way down into the foundation, then back up. Werner can hear the Austrians two floors up scrambling, reloading, and the receding screams of both shells as they hurtle above the ocean, already two or three miles away. One of the soldiers, he realizes, is singing. Or maybe it is more than one. Maybe they are all singing. Eight Luftwaffe men, none of whom will survive the hour, singing a love song to their queen. Werner chases the beam of his field light through the lobby. The big gun detonates a third time, and glass shatters somewhere close by, and torrents of soot rattle down the chimney, and the walls of the hotel toll like a struck bell. Werner worries that the sound will knock the teeth from his gums. He drags open the cellar door and pauses a moment, vision swimming. \"This is it?\" he asks. \"They're really coming?\" But who is there to answer? ##Saint-Malo Up and down the lanes, the last unevacuated townspeople wake, groan, sigh. Spinsters, prostitutes, men over sixty. Procrastinators, collaborators, disbelievers, drunks. Nuns of every order. The poor. The stubborn. The blind. Some hurry to bomb shelters. Some tell themselves it is merely a drill. Some linger to grab a blanket or a prayer book or a deck of playing cards. D-day was two months ago. Cherbourg has been liberated, Caen liberated, Rennes too. Half of western France is free. In the east, the Soviets have retaken Minsk; the Polish Home Army is revolting in Warsaw; a few newspapers have become bold enough to suggest that the tide has turned. But not here. Not this last citadel at the edge of the continent, this final German strongpoint on the Breton coast. Here, people whisper, the Germans have renovated two kilometers of subterranean corridors under the medieval walls; they have built new defenses, new conduits, new escape routes, underground complexes of bewildering intricacy. Beneath the peninsular fort of La Cit\u00e9, across the river from the old city, there are rooms of bandages, rooms of ammunition, even an underground hospital, or so it is believed. There is air-conditioning, a two-hundred-thousand-liter water tank, a direct line to Berlin. There are flame-throwing booby traps, a net of pillboxes with periscopic sights; they have stockpiled enough ordnance to spray shells into the sea all day, every day, for a year. Here, they whisper, are a thousand Germans ready to die. Or five thousand. Maybe more. Saint-Malo: Water surrounds the city on four sides. Its link to the rest of France is tenuous: a causeway, a bridge, a spit of sand. We are Malouins first, say the people of Saint-Malo. Bretons next. French if there's anything left over. In stormy light, its granite glows blue. At the highest tides, the sea creeps into basements at the very center of town. At the lowest tides, the barnacled ribs of a thousand shipwrecks stick out above the sea. For three thousand years, this little promontory has known sieges. But never like this. A grandmother lifts a fussy toddler to her chest. A drunk, urinating in an alley outside Saint-Servan, a mile away, plucks a sheet of paper from a hedge. Urgent message to the inhabitants of this town, it says. Depart immediately to open country. Anti-air batteries flash on the outer islands, and the big German guns inside the old city send another round of shells howling over the sea, and three hundred",
        "These two very old people are the father and mother of Mr Bucket. Their names are Grandpa Joe and Grandma Josephine. And _these_ two very": "These two very old people are the father and mother of Mr Bucket. Their names are Grandpa Joe and Grandma Josephine. And _these_ two very old people are the father and mother of Mrs Bucket. Their names are Grandpa George and Grandma Georgina. This is Mr Bucket. This is Mrs Bucket. Mr and Mrs Bucket have a small boy whose name is Charlie Bucket. This is Charlie. How d'you do? And how d'you do? And how d'you do again? He is pleased to meet you. The whole of this family \u2013 the six grown-ups (count them) and little Charlie Bucket \u2013 live together in a small wooden house on the edge of a great town. The house wasn't nearly large enough for so many people, and life was extremely uncomfortable for them all. There were only two rooms in the place altogether, and there was only one bed. The bed was given to the four old grandparents because they were so old and tired. They were so tired, they never got out of it. Grandpa Joe and Grandma Josephine on this side, Grandpa George and Grandma Georgina on this side. Mr and Mrs Bucket and little Charlie Bucket slept in the other room, upon mattresses on the floor. In the summertime, this wasn't too bad, but in the winter, freezing cold draughts blew across the floor all night long, and it was awful. There wasn't any question of them being able to buy a better house \u2013 or even one more bed to sleep in. They were far too poor for that. Mr Bucket was the only person in the family with a job. He worked in a toothpaste factory, where he sat all day long at a bench and screwed the little caps on to the tops of the tubes of toothpaste after the tubes had been filled. But a toothpaste cap-screwer is never paid very much money, and poor Mr Bucket, however hard he worked, and however fast he screwed on the caps, was never able to make enough to buy one half of the things that so large a family needed. There wasn't even enough money to buy proper food for them all. The only meals they could afford were bread and margarine for breakfast, boiled potatoes and cabbage for lunch, and cabbage soup for supper. Sundays were a bit better. They all looked forward to Sundays because then, although they had exactly the same, everyone was allowed a second helping. The Buckets, of course, didn't starve, but every one of them \u2013 the two old grandfathers, the two old grandmothers, Charlie's father, Charlie's mother, and especially little Charlie himself \u2013 went about from morning till night with a horrible empty feeling in their tummies. Charlie felt it worst of all. And although his father and mother often went without their own share of lunch or supper so that they could give it to him, it still wasn't nearly enough for a growing boy. He desperately wanted something more filling and satisfying than cabbage and cabbage soup. The one thing he longed for more than anything else was...CHOCOLATE. Walking to school in the mornings, Charlie could see great slabs of chocolate piled up high in the shop windows, and he would stop and stare and press his nose against the glass, his mouth watering like mad. Many times a day, he would see other children taking bars of creamy chocolate out of their pockets and munching them greedily, and _that, _ of course, was _pure_ torture. Only once a year, on his birthday, did Charlie Bucket ever get to taste a bit of chocolate. The whole family saved up their money for that special occasion, and when the great day arrived, Charlie was always presented with one small chocolate bar to eat all by himself. And each time he received it, on those marvellous birthday mornings, he would place it carefully in a small wooden box that he owned, and treasure it as though it were a bar of solid gold; and for the next few days, he would allow himself only to look at it, but never to touch it. Then at last, when he could stand it no longer, he would peel back a _tiny_ bit of the paper wrapping at one corner to expose a _tiny_ bit of chocolate, and then he would take a _tiny_ nibble \u2013 just enough to allow the lovely sweet taste to spread out slowly over his tongue. The next day, he would take another tiny nibble, and so on, and so on. And in this way, Charlie would make his sixpenny bar of birthday chocolate last him for more than a month. But I haven't yet told you about the one awful thing that tortured little Charlie, the lover of chocolate, more than _anything_ else. This thing, for him, was far, far worse than seeing slabs of chocolate in the shop windows or watching other children munching bars of creamy chocolate right in front of him. It was the most terrible torturing thing you could imagine, and it was this: In the town itself, actually within _sight_ of the house in which Charlie lived, there was an ENORMOUS CHOCOLATE FACTORY! Just imagine that! And it wasn't simply an ordinary enormous chocolate factory, either. It was the largest and most famous in the whole world! It was WONKA'S FACTORY, owned by a man called Mr Willy Wonka, the greatest inventor and maker of chocolates that there has ever been. And what a tremendous, marvellous place it was! It had huge iron gates leading into it, and a high wall surrounding it, and smoke belching from its chimneys, and strange whizzing sounds coming from deep inside it. And outside the walls, for half a mile around in every direction, the air was scented with the heavy rich smell of melting chocolate! Twice a day, on his way to and from school, little Charlie Bucket had to walk right past the gates of the factory. And every time he went by, he would begin to walk very, very slowly, and he would hold his nose high in the air and take long deep sniffs of the gorgeous chocolatey smell all around him. Oh, how he loved that smell! And oh, how he wished he could go inside the factory and see what it was like! ##2 ##Mr Willy Wonka's Factory In the evenings, after he had finished his supper of watery cabbage soup, Charlie always went into the room of his four grandparents to listen to their stories, and then afterwards to say good night. Every one of these old people was over ninety. They were as shrivelled as prunes, and as bony as skeletons, and throughout the day, until Charlie made his appearance, they lay huddled in their one bed, two at either end, with nightcaps on to keep their heads warm, dozing the time away with nothing to do. But as soon as they heard the door opening, and heard Charlie's voice saying, 'Good evening, Grandpa Joe and Grandma Josephine, and Grandpa George and Grandma Georgina,' then all four of them would suddenly sit up, and their old wrinkled faces would light up with smiles of pleasure \u2013 and the talking would begin. For they loved this little boy. He was the only bright thing in their lives, and his evening visits were something that they looked forward to all day long. Often, Charlie's mother and father would come in as well, and stand by the door, listening to the stories that the old people told; and thus, for perhaps half an hour every night, this room would become a happy place, and the whole family would forget that it was hungry and poor. One evening, when Charlie went in to see his grandparents, he said to them, 'Is it _really_ true that Wonka's Chocolate Factory is the biggest in the world?' ' _True_?' cried all four of them at once. 'Of course it's true! Good heavens, didn't you know _that_? It's about _fifty_ times as big as any other!' 'And is Mr Willy Wonka _really_ the cleverest chocolate maker in the world?' 'My _dear_ boy,' said Grandpa Joe, raising himself up a little higher on his pillow, 'Mr Willy Wonka is the most _amazing, _ the most _fantastic, _ the most _extraordinary_ chocolate maker the world has ever seen! I thought _everybody_ knew that!' 'I knew he was famous, Grandpa Joe, and I knew he was very clever ...' ' _Clever! _' cried the old man. 'He's more than that! He's a _magician_ with chocolate! He can make _anything_ \u2013 anything he wants! Isn't that a fact, my dears?' The other three old people nodded their heads slowly up and down, and said,' _Absolutely_ true. _Just_ as true as can be.' And Grandpa Joe said, 'You mean to say I've never _told_ you about Mr Willy Wonka and his factory?' 'Never,' answered little Charlie. 'Good heavens above! I don't know what's the matter with me!' 'Will you tell me now, Grandpa Joe, please?' 'I certainly will. Sit down beside me on the bed, my dear, and listen carefully.' Grandpa Joe was the oldest of the four grandparents. He was ninety-six and a half, and that is just about as old as anybody can be. Like all extremely old people, he was delicate and weak, and throughout the day he spoke very little. But in the evenings, when Charlie, his beloved grandson, was in the room, he seemed in some marvellous way to grow quite young again. All his tiredness fell away from him, and he became as eager and excited as a young boy. 'Oh, what a man he is, this Mr Willy Wonka!' cried Grandpa Joe. 'Did you know, for example, that he has himself invented more than two hundred new kinds of chocolate bars, each with a different centre, each far sweeter and creamier and more delicious than anything the other chocolate factories can make!' 'Perfectly true!' cried Grandma Josephine. 'And he sends them to _all_ the four corners of the earth! Isn't that so, Grandpa Joe?' 'It is, my dear, it is. And to all the kings and presidents of the world as well. But it isn't only chocolate bars that he makes. Oh, dear me, no! He has some really _fantastic_ inventions up his sleeve, Mr Willy Wonka has! Did you know that he's invented a way of making chocolate ice cream so that it stays cold for hours and hours without being in the refrigerator? You can even leave it lying in the sun all",
        "WHERE'S Papa going with that ax?\" said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast.\" Out to": "WHERE'S Papa going with that ax?\" said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast.\" Out to the hoghouse,\" replied Mrs. Arable. \"Some pigs were born last night.\" \" I don't see why he needs an ax,\" continued Fern, who was only eight.\" Well,\" said her mother, \"one of the pigs is a runt. It's very small and weak, and it will never amount to anything. So your father has decided to do away with it.\" \" Do _away_ with it?\" shrieked Fern. \"You mean _kill_ it? Just because it's smaller than the others?\" Mrs. Arable put a pitcher of cream on the table. \"Don't yell, Fern!\" she said. \"Your father is right. The pig would probably die anyway.\" Fern pushed a chair out of the way and ran outdoors. The grass was wet and the earth smelled of springtime. Fern's sneakers were sopping by the time she caught up with her father.\" Please don't kill it!\" she sobbed. \"It's unfair.\" Mr. Arable stopped walking.\" Fern,\" he said gently, \"you will have to learn to control yourself.\" \" Control myself?\" yelled Fern. \"This is a matter of life and death, and you talk about _controlling_ myself.\" Tears ran down her cheeks and she took hold of the ax and tried to pull it out of her father's hand.\" Fern,\" said Mr. Arable, \"I know more about raising a litter of pigs than you do. A weakling makes trouble. Now run along!\" \" But it's unfair,\" cried Fern. \"The pig couldn't help being born small, could it? If _I_ had been very small at birth, would you have killed _me_?\" Mr. Arable smiled. \"Certainly not,\" he said, looking down at his daughter with love. \"But this is different. A little girl is one thing, a little runty pig is another.\" \" I see no difference,\" replied Fern, still hanging on to the ax. \"This is the most terrible case of injustice I ever heard of.\" A queer look came over John Arable's face. He seemed almost ready to cry himself.\" All right,\" he said. \"You go back to the house and I will bring the runt when I come in. I'll let you start it on a bottle, like a baby. Then you'll see what trouble a pig can be.\" When Mr. Arable returned to the house half an hour later, he carried a carton under his arm. Fern was upstairs changing her sneakers. The kitchen table was set for breakfast, and the room smelled of coffee, bacon, damp plaster, and wood smoke from the stove.\" Put it on her chair!\" said Mrs. Arable. Mr. Arable set the carton down at Fern's place. Then he walked to the sink and washed his hands and dried them on the roller towel. Fern came slowly down the stairs. Her eyes were red from crying. As she approached her chair, the carton wobbled, and there was a scratching noise. Fern looked at her father. Then she lifted the lid of the carton. There, inside, looking up at her, was the newborn pig. It was a white one. The morning light shone through its ears, turning them pink.\" He's yours,\" said Mr. Arable. \"Saved from an untimely death. And may the good Lord forgive me for this foolishness.\" Fern couldn't take her eyes off the tiny pig. \"Oh,\" she whispered. \"Oh, _look_ at him! He's absolutely perfect.\" She closed the carton carefully. First she kissed her father, then she kissed her mother. Then she opened the lid again, lifted the pig out, and held it against her cheek. At this moment her brother Avery came into the room. Avery was ten. He was heavily armed\u2014an air rifle in one hand, a wooden dagger in the other.\" What's that?\" he demanded. \"What's Fern got?\" \" She's got a guest for breakfast,\" said Mrs. Arable. \"Wash your hands and face, Avery!\" \" Let's see it!\" said Avery, setting his gun down. \"You call that miserable thing a pig? That's a _fine_ specimen of a pig\u2014it's no bigger than a white rat.\" \" Wash up and eat your breakfast, Avery!\" said his mother. \"The school bus will be along in half an hour.\" \" Can I have a pig, too, Pop?\" asked Avery.\" No, I only distribute pigs to early risers,\" said Mr. Arable. \"Fern was up at daylight, trying to rid the world of injustice. As a result, she now has a pig. A small one, to be sure, but nevertheless a pig. It just shows what can happen if a person gets out of bed promptly. Let's eat!\" But Fern couldn't eat until her pig had had a drink of milk. Mrs. Arable found a baby's nursing bottle and a rubber nipple. She poured warm milk into the bottle, fitted the nipple over the top, and handed it to Fern. \"Give him his breakfast!\" she said. A minute later, Fern was seated on the floor in the corner of the kitchen with her infant between her knees, teaching it to suck from the bottle. The pig, although tiny, had a good appetite and caught on quickly. The school bus honked from the road.\" Run!\" commanded Mrs. Arable, taking the pig from Fern and slipping a doughnut into her hand. Avery grabbed his gun and another doughnut. The children ran out to the road and climbed into the bus. Fern took no notice of the others in the bus. She just sat and stared out of the window, thinking what a blissful world it was and how lucky she was to have entire charge of a pig. By the time the bus reached school, Fern had named her pet, selecting the most beautiful name she could think of.\" Its name is Wilbur,\" she whispered to herself. She was still thinking about the pig when the teacher said: \"Fern, what is the capital of Pennsylvania?\" \" Wilbur,\" replied Fern, dreamily. The pupils giggled. Fern blushed. ##II. Wilbur FERN loved Wilbur more than anything. She loved to stroke him, to feed him, to put him to bed. Every morning, as soon as she got up, she warmed his milk, tied his bib on, and held the bottle for him. Every afternoon, when the school bus stopped in front of her house, she jumped out and ran to the kitchen to fix another bottle for him. She fed him again at suppertime, and again just before going to bed. Mrs. Arable gave him a feeding around noontime each day, when Fern was away in school. Wilbur loved his milk, and he was never happier than when Fern was warming up a bottle for him. He would stand and gaze up at her with adoring eyes. For the first few days of his life, Wilbur was allowed to live in a box near the stove in the kitchen. Then, when Mrs. Arable complained, he was moved to a bigger box in the woodshed. At two weeks of age, he was moved outdoors. It was apple-blossom time, and the days were getting warmer. Mr. Arable fixed a small yard specially for Wilbur under an apple tree, and gave him a large wooden box full of straw, with a doorway cut in it so he could walk in and out as he pleased.\" Won't he be cold at night?\" asked Fern.\" No,\" said her father. \"You watch and see what he does.\" Carrying a bottle of milk, Fern sat down under the apple tree inside the yard. Wilbur ran to her and she held the bottle for him while he sucked. When he had finished the last drop, he grunted and walked sleepily into the box. Fern peered through the door. Wilbur was poking the straw with his snout. In a short time he had dug a tunnel in the straw. He crawled into the tunnel and disappeared from sight, completely covered with straw. Fern was enchanted. It relieved her mind to know that her baby would sleep covered up, and would stay warm. Every morning after breakfast, Wilbur walked out to the road with Fern and waited with her till the bus came. She would wave good-bye to him, and he would stand and watch the bus until it vanished around a turn. While Fern was in school, Wilbur was shut up inside his yard. But as soon as she got home in the afternoon, she would take him out and he would follow her around the place. If she went into the house, Wilbur went, too. If she went upstairs, Wilbur would wait at the bottom step until she came down again. If she took her doll for a walk in the doll carriage, Wilbur followed along. Sometimes, on these journeys, Wilbur would get tired, and Fern would pick him up and put him in the carriage alongside the doll. He liked this. And if he was _very_ tired, he would close his eyes and go to sleep under the doll's blanket. He looked cute when his eyes were closed, because his lashes were so long. The doll would close her eyes, too, and Fern would wheel the carriage very slowly and smoothly so as not to wake her infants. One warm afternoon, Fern and Avery put on bathing suits and went down to the brook for a swim. Wilbur tagged along at Fern's heels. When she waded into the brook, Wilbur waded in with her. He found the water quite cold\u2014too cold for his liking. So while the children swam and played and splashed water at each other, Wilbur amused himself in the mud along the edge of the brook, where it was warm and moist and delightfully sticky and oozy. Every day was a happy day, and every night was peaceful. Wilbur was what farmers call a spring pig, which simply means that he was born in springtime. When he was five weeks old, Mr. Arable said he was now big enough to sell, and would have to be sold. Fern broke down and wept. But her father was firm about it. Wilbur's appetite had increased; he was beginning to eat scraps of food in addition to milk. Mr. Arable was not willing to provide for him any longer. He had already sold Wilbur's ten brothers and sisters.\" He's got to go, Fern,\" he said. \"You have had your fun raising a baby pig, but Wilbur is",
        "SO YOU'VE MADE THE DECISION TO start a family (or to grow that family you've already started). That's a": "SO YOU'VE MADE THE DECISION TO start a family (or to grow that family you've already started). That's a great\u2014and exciting\u2014first step. But before sperm meets egg to create the baby of your dreams, take this preconception opportunity to prepare for the healthiest pregnancy\u2014and baby\u2014possible. The next steps outlined in this chapter will help you (and dad-to-be) get into tip-top baby-making shape, give you a leg up on conception, and get you to the pregnancy starting gate with all systems go. If you don't get pregnant right away, relax and keep trying (and don't forget to keep having fun while you're trying!). If you're already pregnant\u2014and didn't have a chance to follow these steps before you conceived\u2014not to worry. Conception often sneaks up on a couple, cutting out that preconception period altogether and making those preconception pointers pointless. If your pregnancy test has already given you the good news, simply start this book at Chapter 2, and make the very best of every day of pregnancy you have ahead of you. ###**Preconception Prep for Moms** Ready to board that cute little passenger on the mother ship? Here are some preconception steps you can take to make sure that ship is in shape. **Get a preconception checkup.** You don't have to choose a prenatal practitioner yet (though this is a great time to do so; see facing page), but it would be a good idea to see your regular gynecologist or internist for a thorough physical. An exam will pick up any medical problems that need to be corrected beforehand or that will need to be monitored during pregnancy. Plus, your doctor will be able to steer you away from medications that are pregnancy (or preconception) no-no's, make sure your immunizations are up to date, and talk to you about your weight, your diet, your drinking and other lifestyle habits, and similar preconception issues. **Start looking for a prenatal practitioner.** It's easier to start looking for an obstetrician or midwife now, when the pregnancy meter's not already running, than when that first prenatal checkup is hanging over your head. If you're going to stick with your regular ob-gyn, then you've got a head start. Otherwise, ask around, scout around, and take your time in picking the practitioner who's right for you (see page 21 for tips on choosing one). Then schedule an interview and a prepregnancy exam. **Smile for the dentist.** A visit to the dentist before you get pregnant is almost as important as a visit to the doctor. That's because your future pregnancy can affect your mouth\u2014and your mouth can possibly affect your future pregnancy. Pregnancy hormones can actually aggravate gum and tooth problems, making a mess of a mouth that's not well taken care of to begin with. What's more, research shows that gum disease may be associated with some pregnancy complications. So before you get busy making a baby, get busy getting your mouth into shape. Be sure, too, to have any necessary work, including X-rays, fillings, and dental surgery, completed now so that it won't have to be done during pregnancy. **Check your family tree**. Get the scoop on the health history on both sides of the family tree (yours and your spouse's). It's especially important to find out if there's a history of any medical issues and genetic or chromosomal disorders such as Down syndrome, Tay-Sachs disease, sickle cell anemia, thalassemia, hemophilia, cystic fibrosis, muscular dystrophy, or fragile X syndrome. **Take a look at your pregnancy history.** If you've had a previous pregnancy with any complications or one that ended with a premature delivery or late pregnancy loss, or if you've had multiple miscarriages, talk to your practitioner about any measures that can be taken to head off a repeat. * * * **Putting It All Together** Does looking at this list of to-do's make you realize there's a lot to do even before sperm meets egg? Having a hard time knowing where to start? For a list of questions to ask when choosing a prenatal practitioner, a complete personal medical and obstetrical health history, a family health history chart, and plenty of other helpful information to help you get organized for your baby-making journey, see _The What to Expect Pregnancy Journal and Organizer_ and whattoexpect.com. * * * **Seek genetic screening, if necessary**. Also ask your practitioner about being tested for any genetic disease common to your ethnic background: cystic fibrosis if either of you is Caucasian; Tay-Sachs disease if either of you is of Jewish-European (Ashkenazi), French Canadian, or Louisiana Cajun descent; sickle cell trait if you are of African descent; one of the thalassemias if you are of Greek, Italian, Southeast Asian, or Filipino origin. Previous obstetrical difficulties (such as two or more miscarriages, a stillbirth, a long period of infertility, or a child with a birth defect) or being married to a cousin or other blood relative are also reasons to seek genetic counseling. **Get tested.** While you're seeing all your doctors and checking out all your histories, ask if you can get a head start on some of the tests and health workups every pregnant woman receives. Most are as easy as getting a blood test to look for: \u2022 Hemoglobin or hematocrit, to test for anemia. \u2022 Rh factor, to see if you are positive or negative. If you are negative, your partner should be tested to see if he is positive. (If you're both negative, there is no need to give Rh another thought.) \u2022 Rubella titer, to check for immunity to rubella. \u2022 Varicella titer, to check for immunity to varicella (chicken pox). \u2022 Tuberculosis (if you live in a high- incidence area). \u2022 Hepatitis B (if you're in a high-risk category, such as health-care worker, and have not been immunized). \u2022 Cytomegalovirus (CMV) antibodies, to determine whether or not you are immune to CMV (see page 503). If you have been diagnosed with CMV, it's generally recommended you wait six months before trying to conceive. \u2022 Toxoplasmosis titer, if you have an outdoor cat, regularly eat raw or rare meat, or garden without gloves. If you turn out to be immune, you don't have to worry about toxoplasmosis now or ever. If you're not, start taking the precautions on page 80 now. \u2022 Thyroid function. Thyroid function can affect pregnancy. So if you have or ever had thyroid problems, or if you have a family history of thyroid disease, or if you have symptoms of a thyroid condition (see pages 174 and), this is an important test to have. \u2022 Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). All pregnant women are routinely tested for all STDs, including syphilis, gonorrhea, chlamydia, herpes, human papilloma virus (HPV), and HIV. Having these tests before conception is even better (or in the case of HPV, getting the vaccine; see next page). Even if you're sure you couldn't have an STD, ask to be tested, just to be on the safe side. **Get treated.** If any test turns up a condition that requires treatment, make sure you take care of it before trying to conceive. Also consider attending to minor elective surgery and anything else medical\u2014major or minor\u2014that you've been putting off. Now is the time, too, to be treated for any gynecological conditions that might interfere with fertility or pregnancy, including: \u2022 Uterine polyps, fibroids, cysts, or benign tumors. \u2022 Endometriosis (when the cells that ordinarily line the uterus spread elsewhere in the body). \u2022 Pelvic inflammatory disease. \u2022 Recurrent urinary tract infections or other infections, such as bacterial vaginosis. \u2022 An STD. **Update your immunizations.** If you haven't had a tetanus-diphtheria-pertussis booster in the past 10 years, have one now. If you know you've never had rubella or been immunized against it, or if testing showed you are not immune to it, get vaccinated now with the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine, and then wait one month before attempting to conceive (but don't worry if you accidentally conceive earlier). If testing shows you've never had chicken pox or are at high risk for hepatitis B, immunization for these diseases is also recommended now, before conception. If you're under 26, also consider getting vaccinated against HPV, but you'd need to get the full series of three before trying to conceive, so plan accordingly. **Get chronic illnesses under control.** If you have diabetes, asthma, a heart condition, epilepsy, or any other chronic illness, be sure you have your doctor's okay to become pregnant, your condition is under control before you conceive, and you start taking optimum care of yourself now (if you aren't already). If you were born with phenylketonuria (PKU), begin a strict phenylalanine-free diet before conceiving and continue it through pregnancy. As unappealing as it is, it's essential to your baby-to-be's well-being. If you need allergy shots, take care of them now. (If you start allergy desensitization now, you will probably be able to continue once you conceive.) Because depression can interfere with conception\u2014and with a happy, healthy pregnancy\u2014it should also be treated before you begin your big adventure. **Get ready to toss your birth control.** Ditch that last package of condoms and throw out your diaphragm (you'll have to be refitted after pregnancy anyway). If you're using birth control pills, the vaginal ring, or the patch, talk your game plan over with your practitioner. Some recommend holding off on baby-making efforts for several months after quitting hormonal birth control, if possible, to allow your reproductive system to go through at least two normal cycles (use condoms while you're waiting). Others say it's okay to start trying as soon as you want. Be aware, though, that it may take a few months or even longer for your cycles to become normal and for you to begin ovulating again. If you use an IUD, have it removed before you begin trying. Wait three to six months after stopping Depo-Provera shots to try to conceive (many women aren't fertile for an average of 10 months after stopping Depo, so time accordingly). **Improve your diet.** You may not be eating for two yet, but it's never too early to start eating well for the baby you're planning to make. Most important is to make sure you're getting your folic acid. Not only does getting enough folic acid appear to boost fertility, but studies show that adequate intake of this vitamin in a woman's diet before she conceives and early in her pregnancy",
        "If we had such a thing as a national bumper-sticker for our cars, the bumper-sticker of the year would be: \"I 'm": "If we had such a thing as a national bumper-sticker for our cars, the bumper-sticker of the year would be: \"I'm out of work, I can't find a job, and I've tried everything.\" Of course not everyone would display it; some 139,000,000 people in the U.S. have jobs, after all. But some 15,000,000 do not. And 6,000,000 of them would display it for longer than twenty-seven months. That's how many have currently been out of work that long. Just here in the U.S. Beyond these shores, well, tragically high unemployment is a worldwide problem, as we have seen throughout the Middle East this year, and other restless nations of the world. Everywhere we go, these days, we hear this cry: \"I've been out of work forever, and I can't find a job, no matter how hard I try.\" And we do try hard. Often in vain. We are thrown out of work, we go looking for work the way we always used to, but this time we come up empty. This is a brand new experience for many of us. And one that we didn't see coming. Nothing works. Unemployment drags on. This shakes us emotionally to our core, and often leads to a plunge in our self-esteem. Those twins, depression and despair, frequently follow hard on its heels. Life feels like it is never going to get any better. This feels like _forever_. (I know. Like any normal American, I've been thrown out of work twice in my life. It was not fun.) What do we need? Well, we desperately need a job. Of course. But more than that, while we are out of work we desperately, desperately, need Hope. ##THE KEY TO FINDING HOPE Experts have discovered, over the years, what is the key to Hope. And it is just this: Hope requires that, in every situation, we have at least two alternatives. Not just one way to describe ourselves, but two ways, at least. Not just one way to hunt for a job, but two ways, at least. Not just one kind of job to hunt for, but two kinds of jobs, at least. Not just one size company to go after, but two sizes, at least. Not just one place we really would like to work at, but two places, at least. And so on. And so forth. In order to have Hope while you are out of work, you have to make sure that in every situation you find yourself, you're not putting all your eggs in just one basket. To have only one plan, one option, is a sure recipe for despair. I'll give you a simple example. In a study of 100 job-hunters who were using only one method to hunt for a job, typically 51 abandoned their search by the second month. That's more than half of them. They lost Hope. On the other hand, of 100 job-hunters who were using _two or more_ different ways of hunting for a job, typically only 31 of them abandoned their search by the second month. That's less than one-third of them. The latter kept going because they had Hope. And so this truth should always be on your mind: If you are to hold on to Hope you must determine to always have at least two alternatives, in everything that you are doing while looking for work. ##A LIST OF JOB-FINDING ALTERNATIVES Just to be sure we're \"choosing cards from a full deck,\" let's rehearse what _are_ the alternative options we have, when we're out of work. There are eighteen different ways of looking for work. You probably know many of them, but just for the sake of completeness, let's list them all. They are: 1. **Self-Inventory**. You do a thorough self-inventory of the transferable skills and knowledges that you most enjoy using, so you can define to yourself just exactly what it is you have to offer the world, and _exactly what job_ (_s_) you would most like to find. 2. **The Internet**. 82 percent of Americans now go online, for an average of nineteen hours _per week_ apiece. If you're among them, and your goal is to work for someone else, you use the Internet to post your resume and/or to look for employers' \"job-postings\" (vacancies) on the employer's own website or elsewhere (with omnibus job-search sites such as Indeed or SimplyHired, and of course specific \"job-boards\" such as CareerBuilder, Yahoo/Hot Jobs, Monster, LinkUp, Hound, \"niche sites\" for particular industries see **_ [www.internetinc.com/job-search-websites_** _for a directory_], and non-job sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, or the immensely popular Craigslist). If, on the contrary, you're considering working for yourself, you use the Internet to learn how to do this, how to establish your brand, and how to get the word out to a wider audience as to just what you have to offer. 3. **Networking**. You ask friends, family, or people in the community for \"job-leads\" (_rhymes with \"Bob reads\" _). There are two ways of doing this, one sort of _blah_, one really useful. In the first case, you use the lame \"I lost my job; if you hear of anything, let me know,\" which leaves your network completely baffled as to what you're looking for, unless it's same old same old of what you've always done. Far better way: after using method #1 above, you tell them in specific detail what you mean by \"anything.\" And then see how close they can come to _that_. 4. **School**. School means high school, trade schools, online schools, community colleges, four-year colleges, or universities. You ask a former professor or teacher or your career/alumni office at schools that you attended if they have any job-leads. 5. **The Feds**. You go to your local federal/state unemployment service office, or to their OneStop career centers (directory at **www.careeronestop.org**) to get instruction on how to better job-hunt, and also to find job-leads. 6. **Private employment agencies**. You go to the private analog to the federal/state agencies (directory of such agencies can be found at **www.usa.gov/Agencies/State_and_Territories.shtml**). 7. **Civil Service**. You take a civil service exam to compete for a government job ** (http: //federaljobs.net/exams.htm** and/or **http: //tinyurl.com/9vyfqe**). 8. **Newspapers**. You answer local \"want-ads\" (in newspapers, assuming your city or town still has a newspaper, online or in print, or both). The Sunday editions usually prove most useful. See **http: //tinyurl.com/d58l8z** for how to use them; for a directory of their online versions, see **www.newslink.org**. There is also a site that lets you see current news about any industry that is of interest to you (_where vacancies have just opened up?? _), at **http: //www.congoo.com/Industry**. 9. **Journals**. You look at professional journals in your profession or field, and answer any ads there that intrigue you (directory at **http: //tinyurl.com/dlfsdz**). 10. **Temp Agencies**. You go to temp agencies (agencies that get you short-term contracts in places that need your time and skills temporarily) and see if the agency/agencies can place you, in one place after another, until some place that you really like says, \"Could you stay on, permanently?\" At the very least you'll pick up experience that you can later cite on your resume (directory of such agencies, and people's ratings of them, at **www.rateatemp.com/temp-agency-list**). 11. **Day Laborers**. You go to places where employers pick up day workers: well-known street corners in your town (ask around), or union halls, etc., in order for you to get short-term work, for now, which may lead to more permanent work, eventually. It may initially be yard work, or work that requires you to use your hands; but no job should be \"beneath you\" when you're desperate. 12. **Job Clubs**. You join or form a \"support group\" or \"job club,\" where you meet weekly for job-leads and emotional support. Check with your local chamber of commerce, and local churches, mosques, or synagogues, to find out if such groups exist in your community. There is an excellent directory at Susan Joyce's **job-hunt.org** (**http: //tinyurl.com/7a9xbb**). 13. **Resumes**. You mail out resumes blindly to anyone and everyone, blanketing the area. Or you target particular places that interest you, and send them both digital and snail-mail copies of your resume, targeted specifically to them. Ah, but you already knew this method, didn't you? 14. **Choose Places That Interest You**. You knock on doors of any employer, factory, store, organization, or office that interests you, whether they are known to have a vacancy or not. This works best, as you might have guessed, with smaller employers (those having 25 or fewer employees; then, if nothing turns up there, those places that have 50 or fewer employees; or, if nothing turns up there, then those with 100 or fewer employees, etc.). 15. **The Phone Book**. You use the index to your phone book's Yellow Pages, to identify five to ten _entries_ or _categories_ (subjects, fields, or industries) that intrigue you\u2014that are located in the city or town where you are, or want to be\u2014and then phone or, better yet, visit the individual organizations listed under these headings (_again, smaller is better_) whether they are known to have a vacancy or not. Incidentally, the Personnel Manager (**http: //tinyurl.com/3jnjewo**) or Human Resources office there\u2014 _if_ they have one\u2014is that employer's friend, not yours. Their basic function is to screen you out, so avoid them if possible. Sometimes, to be sure, you will stumble across an HR person who likes you and is willing to become your advocate, there. If so, you're one lucky woman (or man). 16. **Volunteering**. If you're okay financially for a while, but can't find work, you volunteer to work for nothing, short-term, at a place that has a \"cause\" or mission that interests you (directory of such places can be found at **www.volunteermatch.org**). Your goal is not only to feel useful, even while you haven't yet found a job, but your hope is also that down the line maybe they'll want to actually hire you for pay. The odds of that happening in these hard times aren't great, so don't count on it and don't push it; but sometimes you'll be surprised that they ask you to stay, for pay. 17. **Work for",
        "Granddad says all the Milbourn women are extraordinary. Amelia, the Shakespeare professor up at the college, says cursed. Judy, the bookseller down": "Granddad says all the Milbourn women are extraordinary. Amelia, the Shakespeare professor up at the college, says cursed. Judy, the bookseller down at the Book Addict, says crazy. Here in Cecil, girls are still expected to be nice. Quiet. All sugar. Maybe a little spice. But not us. We Milbourn women are a complicated lot. The Milbourn legacy goes back four generations. Folks were just starting to drive over from Baltimore and Washington, DC, to buy my great-great-grandmother's portraits when she tried outracing a train in her new roadster. It stalled on the tracks and she and her two youngest were killed instantly. My great-grandmother Dorothea survived and went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for her love poems\u2014but she was murdered by the woman whose husband she'd been sleeping with for inspiration. Grandmother painted famous, haunting landscapes of the Bay, but the year before I was born, she walked out the back door and down to the water and drowned herself. My mother had a voice like a siren, but she ran away from home the second time she got knocked up, and we haven't seen her since. And me? I don't feel crazy or cursed. But I've grown up in this house, haven't I? So I don't know. Maybe there's no escaping it. I'm home alone tonight, and a storm is sweeping up the Bay. Through the open french doors I can hear the waves crashing against the shore. They make a frantic shh-shh, like a desperate mama rocking a colicky baby. I hear mothers do things like that, anyhow. I wouldn't know. I've been reading Jane Eyre for about the twelfth time, but I set it down on the coffee table and leave the warm lamplight to go stand in the doorway. The wind catches at my hair and flings it back in my face. I push it away and squint down at the beach. Lightning hasn't split the sky yet, but I can taste it coming. The air's so thick I could swim through it. Jesus, but a swim right now would be delicious. I imagine tearing off my blue sundress, running down the sandy path, and diving right into the cool waves of the Chesapeake. I could swim almost before I could walk. Part fish, Granddad says. But he doesn't like me to swim by myself. Says it isn't safe, especially for a girl, alone and at night. That's one of his rules. He's got about a million. Some of them I fight; some I just let be. Given how his wife killed herself, it seems reasonable enough to humor him on this. Behind me, something rattles in the wind and I startle. Goose bumps prickle my shoulders in spite of the heat. Lately it feels like a storm's coming even when the sky's blue. Like spiders crawling through my veins. My friend Abby tells me I need to quit worrying and relax. It's going to be golden, this summer before our senior year. There will be barbecues and bonfires and lazy days volunteering at the town library. She doesn't believe in family curses or premonitions of doom. Her family has its own troubles, but they're not town lore. My friend Claire says \"fuck the family curse; you're your own woman.\" Claire's all rebellion and razor-sharp edges\u2014especially since her dad had an affair with his secretary and moved out (such a clich\u00e9). Claire doesn't believe in fate; she believes in making choices and owning them. But she's not a Milbourn girl. The rain starts with a fury. It pelts the windowpanes and drums against the flagstones out on the patio. The wind picks up too, sending the gray curtains spinning into the room like ghosts. I pad back toward the sofa, trailing my fingers across bookshelves stacked with Great-Grandmother Dorothea's prize-winning poetry. All along the walls hang Grandmother's landscapes\u2014our pretty Eastern Shore transformed by twisting rain clouds. She only painted hurricane weather. They were all so talented. Troubled, sure. But look at their legacy. What will mine be? Granddad's had me in all kinds of classes: piano, flute, ballet, gymnastics, oil painting, watercolors, landscapes, portraits, creative writing...I threw myself into every new subject, only to be crushed when I didn't show a natural aptitude for any of it. I'm on the swim team, but I'm never going to be an Olympic athlete. I'm an honors student, but I won't be valedictorian. Sometimes I write poems, but that's just to get the restless thoughts out of my head; my poems have never won any awards. I am completely, utterly ordinary. Granddad won't give up; he thinks there's some bit of genius hiding in me somewhere. But over the last couple months...Well, I'm getting tired of trying so hard only to end up a disappointment. Maybe that's not how this works. Maybe whatever spark blessed or cursed the other Milbourn girls skipped a generation. To hear people in town talk, the women in my family weren't just gifted; they were obsessed. And those obsessions killed them, three generations in a row. Maybe four. For all I know, my mother could be dead now too. Do I really want to continue that tradition? Outside, thunder growls. Inside, something rattles. I stare up at the portrait of Dorothea as it twitches against the exposed brick wall. Just the wind, I reassure myself. There's no such thing as ghosts. Dorothea was fifteen when her mother painted her. She wears a royal-blue shirtdress and matching gloves, and her hair falls in short brown curls around her face. She wasn't what you'd call pretty\u2014too sharp featured for that\u2014but there's something captivating about her. She stands tall in the portrait, shoulders back, lips quirked. It's not quite a smile. More like a smirk. A year later, she'd survive the collision that killed her mother and sisters. Her broken leg never healed quite right, Granddad says; she walked with a limp the rest of her life. Lightning flashes. The lamp flickers. Rain is puddling on the wooden floor. I should close the doors, but Dorothea's eyes catch mine and somehow I don't want to turn my back on her portrait. There's no such thing as ghosts, I remind myself. Then the room plunges into darkness. I run for the french doors, but before I can get there, I slam into something. Someone. My heart stutter-stops and I shriek, scrambling away, slipping on the wet wooden floor.\" Ivy!\" Alex grabs my arm. His fingers are warm against my skin. \"It's just me. Chill.\" \" Jesus! I thought you were a ghost!\" I take a deep breath, inhaling the salty breeze off the Bay. My pulse is racing.\" Nope, just me.\" He waves a flashlight. \"Soon as the lights started flickering, Ma told me to bring you this. She knows how you get about the dark.\" I fold my arms across my chest. \"Shut up. I'm not scared of the dark anymore.\" \" Uh-huh. Sure.\" Alex shines the flashlight up over his face like a movie monster. I should have known better than to mention ghosts. He'll tease me about it forever. Remind me how he used to sneak over and scare Claire and me during sleepovers, how I used to sleep in my closet during thunderstorms, how I had a night-light till I turned thirteen.\" Gimme that.\" I reach for the flashlight.\" If you're not scared, why do you need it?\" He holds it above his head. I'm tall\u2014five ten\u2014but the summer we were fourteen, Alex got taller, and he still hasn't stopped lording it over me. As he stretches, his shirt lifts to reveal taut, tanned abs. I drag my eyes back to his face, but sort of leisurely like. He got soaked on his sprint from the carriage house, and his red T-shirt is molded to his muscled shoulders. The summer we were fifteen, he started lifting for baseball, and the girls at school went all swoony over him. I am not immune to a nice set of abs myself\u2014but Alex is my best friend. Has been since we were babies, since my mother ran off and Granddad hired Alex's mom, Luisa, to be our housekeeper. There's nothing romantic between Alex and me. That's what we decided after prom. What I decided. Alex and Luisa and Granddad are the only family I've got. What would happen if Alex and I started dating and it didn't work out? It would be awkward and awful, and I don't want to risk that. And if it did work? The baseball coach up at the college has already scouted Alex, all but promised him a scholarship if he keeps his grades up this year. If we were dating, Alex would be one more thing tying me to Cecil.\" I hate you,\" I mutter.\" No you don't.\" He gives me a cocky grin. Sometimes I think he's waiting for me to change my mind about us, but I'm not going to. Once I make a decision, I stick with it. But the house presses around us, cold and quiet and more than a little spooky, and I fight the urge to snuggle up against him. The front door slams. \"Ivy!\" Granddad hollers. Just in time to save me from myself. Alex relinquishes the flashlight. \"I better go.\" Granddad gets a little skittish about Alex being here when I'm home alone. Alex and I have never given him any reason not to trust us, but when your only daughter goes and gets herself pregnant twice before the age of twenty, you maybe have reason to be a little overprotective. Like I said, I pick my battles.\" You going to be okay now that the Professor's home? No more ghosts?\" Alex licks a raindrop from his upper lip and smiles. It's his placating-Ivy smile, the one that says I let my imagination run away with me. The one he uses when I get all dreamy over a boy in a book or want to watch an old black-and-white movie or point out shapes in the clouds. The one that makes me feel like maybe I am a Milbourn girl after all\u2014sensitive and selfish and bound for a bad end. I grit my teeth, but the worry in his brown eyes is genuine. \"Yep. I'll be fine.\" \" Okay. See you.\" He jogs off through the rainy backyard.\" Ivy?\" Granddad cusses as he knocks into something out in the hall.\" In here!\" I pull the french doors shut. He limps into the room, tossing his battered briefcase onto the sofa. He nods at me and the flashlight. \"How long has the power been off",
        "IF YOU REALLY WANT TO HEAR about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and": "IF YOU REALLY WANT TO HEAR about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have about two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them. They're quite touchy about anything like that, especially my father. They're _nice_ and all\u2014I'm not saying that\u2014but they're also touchy as hell. Besides, I'm not going to tell you my whole goddam autobiography or anything. I'll just tell you about this madman stuff that happened to me around last Christmas just before I got pretty run-down and had to come out here and take it easy. I mean that's all I told D.B. about, and he's my _brother_ and all. He's in Hollywood. That isn't too far from this crumby place, and he comes over and visits me practically every week end. He's going to drive me home when I go home next month maybe. He just got a Jaguar. One of those little English jobs that can do around two hundred miles an hour. It cost him damn near four thousand bucks. He's got a lot of dough, now. He didn't _use_ to. He used to be just a regular writer, when he was home. He wrote this terrific book of short stories, _The Secret Goldfish, _ in case you never heard of him. The best one in it was \"The Secret Goldfish.\" It was about this little kid that wouldn't let anybody look at his goldfish because he'd bought it with his own money. It killed me. Now he's out in Hollywood, D.B., being a prostitute. If there's one thing I hate, it's the movies. Don't even mention them to me. Where I want to start telling is the day I left Pencey Prep. Pencey Prep is this school that's in Agerstown, Pennsylvania. You probably heard of it. You've probably seen the ads, anyway. They advertise in about a thousand magazines, always showing some hot-shot guy on a horse jumping over a fence. Like as if all you ever did at Pencey was play polo all the time. I never even once saw a horse anywhere _near_ the place. And underneath the guy on the horse's picture, it always says: \"Since 1888 we have been molding boys into splendid, clear-thinking young men.\" Strictly for the birds. They don't do any damn more _mold_ ing at Pencey than they do at any other school. And I didn't know anybody there that was splendid and clear-thinking and all. Maybe two guys. If that many. And they probably _came_ to Pencey that way. Anyway, it was the Saturday of the football game with Saxon Hall. The game with Saxon Hall was supposed to be a very big deal around Pencey. It was the last game of the year, and you were supposed to commit suicide or something if old Pencey didn't win. I remember around three o'clock that afternoon I was standing way the hell up on top of Thomsen Hill, right next to this crazy cannon that was in the Revolutionary War and all. You could see the whole field from there, and you could see the two teams bashing each other all over the place. You couldn't see the grandstand too hot, but you could hear them all yelling, deep and terrific on the Pencey side, because practically the whole school except me was there, and scrawny and faggy on the Saxon Hall side, because the visiting team hardly ever brought many people with them. There were never many girls at all at the football games. Only seniors were allowed to bring girls with them. It was a terrible school, no matter how you looked at it. I like to be somewhere at least where you can see a few girls around once in a while, even if they're only scratching their arms or blowing their noses or even just giggling or something. Old Selma Thurmer\u2014she was the headmaster's daughter\u2014showed up at the games quite often, but she wasn't exactly the type that drove you mad with desire. She was a pretty nice girl, though. I sat next to her once in the bus from Agerstown and we sort of struck up a conversation. I liked her. She had a big nose and her nails were all bitten down and bleedy-looking and she had on those damn falsies that point all over the place, but you felt sort of sorry for her. What I liked about her, she didn't give you a lot of horse manure about what a great guy her father was. She probably knew what a phony slob he was. The reason I was standing way up on Thomsen Hill, instead of down at the game, was because I'd just got back from New York with the fencing team. I was the goddam manager of the fencing team. Very big deal. We'd gone in to New York that morning for this fencing meet with McBurney School. Only, we didn't have the meet. I left all the foils and equipment and stuff on the goddam subway. It wasn't all my fault. I had to keep getting up to look at this map, so we'd know where to get off. So we got back to Pencey around two-thirty instead of around dinnertime. The whole team ostracized me the whole way back on the train. It was pretty funny, in a way. The other reason I wasn't down at the game was because I was on my way to say good-by to old Spencer, my history teacher. He had the grippe, and I figured I probably wouldn't see him again till Christmas vacation started. He wrote me this note saying he wanted to see me before I went home. He knew I wasn't coming back to Pencey. I forgot to tell you about that. They kicked me out. I wasn't supposed to come back after Christmas vacation, on account of I was flunking four subjects and not applying myself and all. They gave me frequent warning to start applying myself\u2014especially around mid-terms, when my parents came up for a conference with old Thurmer\u2014but I didn't do it. So I got the ax. They give guys the ax quite frequently at Pencey. It has a very good academic rating, Pencey. It really does. Anyway, it was December and all, and it was cold as a witch's teat, especially on top of that stupid hill. I only had on my reversible and no gloves or anything. The week before that, somebody'd stolen my camel's-hair coat right out of my room, with my fur-lined gloves right in the pocket and all. Pencey was full of crooks. Quite a few guys came from these very wealthy families, but it was full of crooks anyway. The more expensive a school is, the more crooks it has\u2014I'm not kidding. Anyway, I kept standing next to that crazy cannon, looking down at the game and freezing my ass off. Only, I wasn't watching the game too much. What I was really hanging around for, I was trying to feel some kind of a good-by. I mean I've left schools and places I didn't even know I was leaving them. I hate that. I don't care if it's a sad good-by or a bad good-by, but when I leave a place I like to _know_ I'm leaving it. If you don't, you feel even worse. I was lucky. All of a sudden I thought of something that helped make me know I was getting the hell out. I suddenly remembered this time, in around October, that I and Robert Tichener and Paul Campbell were chucking a football around, in front of the academic building. They were nice guys, especially Tichener. It was just before dinner and it was getting pretty dark out, but we kept chucking the ball around anyway. It kept getting darker and darker, and we could hardly _see_ the ball any more, but we didn't want to stop doing what we were doing. Finally we had to. This teacher that taught biology, Mr. Zambesi, stuck his head out of this window in the academic building and told us to go back to the dorm and get ready for dinner. If I get a chance to remember that kind of stuff, I can get a good-by when I need one\u2014at least, most of the time I can. As soon as I got it, I turned around and started running down the other side of the hill, toward old Spencer's house. He didn't live on the campus. He lived on Anthony Wayne Avenue. I ran all the way to the main gate, and then I waited a second till I got my breath. I have no wind, if you want to know the truth. I'm quite a heavy smoker, for one thing\u2014that is, I used to be. They made me cut it out. Another thing, I _grew_ six and a half inches last year. That's also how I practically got t.b. and came out here for all these goddam checkups and stuff. I'm pretty healthy, though. Anyway, as soon as I got my breath back I ran across Route 204. It was icy as hell and I damn near fell down. I don't even know what I was running for\u2014I guess I just felt like it. After I got across the road, I felt like I was sort of disappearing. It was that kind of a crazy afternoon, terrifically cold, and no sun out or anything, and you felt like you were disappearing every time you crossed a road. Boy, I rang that doorbell fast when I got to old Spencer's house. I was really frozen. My ears were hurting and I could hardly move my fingers at all. \"C'mon, c'mon,\" I said right out loud, almost, \"somebody open the _door_.\" Finally old Mrs. Spencer opened it. They didn't have a maid or anything, and they always opened the door themselves. They didn't have too much dough.\" Holden!\" Mrs. Spencer said. \"How lovely to see you! Come in, dear! Are you frozen to death?\" I think she was glad to see me. She liked me. At least, I think she did. Boy, did I get in that house fast. \"How are you, Mrs. Spencer?\" I said. \"How's Mr. Spencer?\" \" Let me take your coat, dear,\" she said. She didn't hear me ask her how Mr. Spencer was. She was sort of deaf. She hung up my coat in the hall closet, and I sort of",
        "I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975. I remember the": "I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975. I remember the precise moment, crouching behind a crumbling mud wall, peeking into the alley near the frozen creek. That was a long time ago, but it's wrong what they say about the past, I've learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out. Looking back now, I realize I have been peeking into that deserted alley for the last twenty-six years. One day last summer, my friend Rahim Khan called from Pakistan. He asked me to come see him. Standing in the kitchen with the receiver to my ear, I knew it wasn't just Rahim Khan on the line. It was my past of unatoned sins. After I hung up, I went for a walk along Spreckels Lake on the northern edge of Golden Gate Park. The early-afternoon sun sparkled on the water where dozens of miniature boats sailed, propelled by a crisp breeze. Then I glanced up and saw a pair of kites, red with long blue tails, soaring in the sky. They danced high above the trees on the west end of the park, over the windmills, floating side by side like a pair of eyes looking down on San Francisco, the city I now call home. And suddenly Hassan's voice whispered in my head: _For you, _ _a thousand times over._ Hassan the harelipped kite runner. I sat on a park bench near a willow tree. I thought about something Rahim Khan said just before he hung up, almost as an afterthought. _There is a way to be good again._ I looked up at those twin kites. I thought about Hassan. Thought about Baba. Ali. Kabul. I thought of the life I had lived until the winter of 1975 came along and changed everything. And made me what I am today. TWO When we were children, Hassan and I used to climb the poplar trees in the driveway of my father's house and annoy our neighbors by reflecting sunlight into their homes with a shard of mirror. We would sit across from each other on a pair of high branches, our naked feet dangling, our trouser pockets filled with dried mulberries and walnuts. We took turns with the mirror as we ate mulberries, pelted each other with them, giggling, laughing. I can still see Hassan up on that tree, sunlight flickering through the leaves on his almost perfectly round face, a face like a Chinese doll chiseled from hardwood: his flat, broad nose and slanting, narrow eyes like bamboo leaves, eyes that looked, depending on the light, gold, green, even sapphire. I can still see his tiny low-set ears and that pointed stub of a chin, a meaty appendage that looked like it was added as a mere afterthought. And the cleft lip, just left of midline, where the Chinese doll maker's instrument may have slipped, or perhaps he had simply grown tired and careless. Sometimes, up in those trees, I talked Hassan into firing walnuts with his slingshot at the neighbor's one-eyed German shepherd. Hassan never wanted to, but if I asked, _really_ asked, he wouldn't deny me. Hassan never denied me anything. And he was deadly with his slingshot. Hassan's father, Ali, used to catch us and get mad, or as mad as someone as gentle as Ali could ever get. He would wag his finger and wave us down from the tree. He would take the mirror and tell us what his mother had told him, that the devil shone mirrors too, shone them to distract Muslims during prayer. \"And he laughs while he does it,\" he always added, scowling at his son.\" Yes, Father,\" Hassan would mumble, looking down at his feet. But he never told on me. Never told that the mirror, like shooting walnuts at the neighbor's dog, was always my idea. The poplar trees lined the redbrick driveway, which led to a pair of wrought-iron gates. They in turn opened into an extension of the driveway into my father's estate. The house sat on the left side of the brick path, the backyard at the end of it. Everyone agreed that my father, my Baba, had built the most beautiful house in the Wazir Akbar Khan district, a new and affluent neighborhood in the northern part of Kabul. Some thought it was the prettiest house in all of Kabul. A broad entryway flanked by rosebushes led to the sprawling house of marble floors and wide windows. Intricate mosaic tiles, handpicked by Baba in Isfahan, covered the floors of the four bathrooms. Gold-stitched tapestries, which Baba had bought in Calcutta, lined the walls; a crystal chandelier hung from the vaulted ceiling. Upstairs was my bedroom, Baba's room, and his study, also known as \"the smoking room,\" which perpetually smelled of tobacco and cinnamon. Baba and his friends reclined on black leather chairs there after Ali had served dinner. They stuffed their pipes\u2014except Baba always called it \"fattening the pipe\" \u2014and discussed their favorite three topics: politics, business, soccer. Sometimes I asked Baba if I could sit with them, but Baba would stand in the doorway. \"Go on, now,\" he'd say. \"This is grown-ups' time. Why don't you go read one of those books of yours?\" He'd close the door, leave me to wonder why it was _always_ grown-ups' time with him. I'd sit by the door, knees drawn to my chest. Sometimes I sat there for an hour, sometimes two, listening to their laughter, their chatter. The living room downstairs had a curved wall with custom-built cabinets. Inside sat framed family pictures: an old, grainy photo of my grandfather and King Nadir Shah taken in 1931, two years before the king's assassination; they are standing over a dead deer, dressed in knee-high boots, rifles slung over their shoulders. There was a picture of my parents' wedding night, Baba dashing in his black suit and my mother a smiling young princess in white. Here was Baba and his best friend and business partner, Rahim Khan, standing outside our house, neither one smiling\u2014I am a baby in that photograph and Baba is holding me, looking tired and grim. I'm in his arms, but it's Rahim Khan's pinky my fingers are curled around. The curved wall led into the dining room, at the center of which was a mahogany table that could easily sit thirty guests\u2014and, given my father's taste for extravagant parties, it did just that almost every week. On the other end of the dining room was a tall marble fireplace, always lit by the orange glow of a fire in the wintertime. A large sliding glass door opened into a semicircular terrace that overlooked two acres of backyard and rows of cherry trees. Baba and Ali had planted a small vegetable garden along the eastern wall: tomatoes, mint, peppers, and a row of corn that never really took. Hassan and I used to call it \"the Wall of Ailing Corn.\" On the south end of the garden, in the shadows of a loquat tree, was the servants' home, a modest little mud hut where Hassan lived with his father. It was there, in that little shack, that Hassan was born in the winter of 1964, just one year after my mother died giving birth to me. In the eighteen years that I lived in that house, I stepped into Hassan and Ali's quarters only a handful of times. When the sun dropped low behind the hills and we were done playing for the day, Hassan and I parted ways. I went past the rosebushes to Baba's mansion, Hassan to the mud shack where he had been born, where he'd lived his entire life. I remember it was spare, clean, dimly lit by a pair of kerosene lamps. There were two mattresses on opposite sides of the room, a worn Herati rug with frayed edges in between, a three-legged stool, and a wooden table in the corner where Hassan did his drawings. The walls stood bare, save for a single tapestry with sewn-in beads forming the words _Allah-u-akbar._ Baba had bought it for Ali on one of his trips to Mashad. It was in that small shack that Hassan's mother, Sanaubar, gave birth to him one cold winter day in 1964. While my mother hemorrhaged to death during childbirth, Hassan lost his less than a week after he was born. Lost her to a fate most Afghans considered far worse than death: She ran off with a clan of traveling singers and dancers. Hassan never talked about his mother, as if she'd never existed. I always wondered if he dreamed about her, about what she looked like, where she was. I wondered if he longed to meet her. Did he ache for her, the way I ached for the mother I had never met? One day, we were walking from my father's house to Cinema Zainab for a new Iranian movie, taking the shortcut through the military barracks near Istiqlal Middle School\u2014Baba had forbidden us to take that shortcut, but he was in Pakistan with Rahim Khan at the time. We hopped the fence that surrounded the barracks, skipped over a little creek, and broke into the open dirt field where old, abandoned tanks collected dust. A group of soldiers huddled in the shade of one of those tanks, smoking cigarettes and playing cards. One of them saw us, elbowed the guy next to him, and called Hassan.\" Hey, you!\" he said. \"I know you.\" We had never seen him before. He was a squatty man with a shaved head and black stubble on his face. The way he grinned at us, leered, scared me. \"Just keep walking,\" I muttered to Hassan.\" You! The Hazara! Look at me when I'm talking to you!\" the soldier barked. He handed his cigarette to the guy next to him, made a circle with the thumb and index finger of one hand. Poked the middle finger of his other hand through the circle. Poked it in and out. In and out. \"I knew your mother, did you know that? I knew her real good. I took her from behind by that creek over there.\" The soldiers laughed. One of them made a squealing sound. I told Hassan to keep walking, keep walking.\" What a tight little sugary cunt she had!\" the soldier was saying, shaking hands with the others, grinning. Later, in the dark, after the movie had started, I heard Hassan next to me, croaking. Tears were sliding down his cheeks. I reached across my seat, slung my arm around him, pulled him",
        "WHEN I STEPPED out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind:": "WHEN I STEPPED out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home. I was wishing I looked like Paul Newman\u2014he looks tough and I don't\u2014but I guess my own looks aren't so bad. I have light-brown, almost-red hair and greenish-gray eyes. I wish they were more gray, because I hate most guys that have green eyes, but I have to be content with what I have. My hair is longer than a lot of boys wear theirs, squared off in back and long at the front and sides, but I am a greaser and most of my neighborhood rarely bothers to get a haircut. Besides, I look better with long hair. I had a long walk home and no company, but I usually lone it anyway, for no reason except that I like to watch movies undisturbed so I can get into them and live them with the actors. When I see a movie with someone it's kind of uncomfortable, like having someone read your book over your shoulder. I'm different that way. I mean, my second-oldest brother, Soda, who is sixteen-going-on-seventeen, never cracks a book at all, and my oldest brother, Darrel, who we call Darry, works too long and hard to be interested in a story or drawing a picture, so I'm not like them. And nobody in our gang digs movies and books the way I do. For a while there, I thought I was the only person in the world that did. So I loned it. Soda tries to understand, at least, which is more than Darry does. But then, Soda is different from anybody; he understands everything, almost. Like he's never hollering at me all the time the way Darry is, or treating me as if I was six instead of fourteen. I love Soda more than I've ever loved anyone, even Mom and Dad. He's always happy-go-lucky and grinning, while Darry's hard and firm and rarely grins at all. But then, Darry's gone through a lot in his twenty years, grown up too fast. Sodapop'll never grow up at all. I don't know which way's the best. I'll find out one of these days. Anyway, I went on walking home, thinking about the movie, and then suddenly wishing I had some company. Greasers can't walk alone too much or they'll get jumped, or someone will come by and scream \"Greaser!\" at them, which doesn't make you feel too hot, if you know what I mean. We get jumped by the Socs. I'm not sure how you spell it, but it's the abbreviation for the Socials, the jet set, the West-side rich kids. It's like the term \"greaser,\" which is used to class all us boys on the East Side. We're poorer than the Socs and the middle class. I reckon we're wilder, too. Not like the Socs, who jump greasers and wreck houses and throw beer blasts for kicks, and get editorials in the paper for being a public disgrace one day and an asset to society the next. Greasers are almost like hoods; we steal things and drive old souped-up cars and hold up gas stations and have a gang fight once in a while. I don't mean I do things like that. Darry would kill me if I got into trouble with the police. Since Mom and Dad were killed in an auto wreck, the three of us get to stay together only as long as we behave. So Soda and I stay out of trouble as much as we can, and we're careful not to get caught when we can't. I only mean that most greasers do things like that, just like we wear our hair long and dress in blue jeans and T-shirts, or leave our shirttails out and wear leather jackets and tennis shoes or boots. I'm not saying that either Socs or greasers are better; that's just the way things are. I could have waited to go to the movies until Darry or Sodapop got off work. They would have gone with me, or driven me there, or walked along, although Soda just can't sit still long enough to enjoy a movie and they bore Darry to death. Darry thinks his life is enough without inspecting other people's. Or I could have gotten one of the gang to come along, one of the four boys Darry and Soda and I have grown up with and consider family. We're almost as close as brothers; when you grow up in a tight-knit neighborhood like ours you get to know each other real well. If I had thought about it, I could have called Darry and he would have come by on his way home and picked me up, or Two-Bit Mathews\u2014one of our gang\u2014would have come to get me in his car if I had asked him, but sometimes I just don't use my head. It drives my brother Darry nuts when I do stuff like that, 'cause I'm supposed to be smart; I make good grades and have a high IQ and everything, but I don't use my head. Besides, I like walking. I about decided I didn't like it so much, though, when I spotted that red Corvair trailing me. I was almost two blocks from home then, so I started walking a little faster. I had never been jumped, but I had seen Johnny after four Socs got hold of him, and it wasn't pretty. Johnny was scared of his own shadow after that. Johnny was sixteen then. I knew it wasn't any use though\u2014the fast walking, I mean\u2014even before the Corvair pulled up beside me and five Socs got out. I got pretty scared\u2014I'm kind of small for fourteen even though I have a good build, and those guys were bigger than me. I automatically hitched my thumbs in my jeans and slouched, wondering if I could get away if I made a break for it. I remembered Johnny\u2014his face all cut up and bruised, and I remembered how he had cried when we found him, half-conscious, in the corner lot. Johnny had it awful rough at home\u2014it took a lot to make him cry. I was sweating something fierce, although I was cold. I could feel my palms getting clammy and the perspiration running down my back. I get like that when I'm real scared. I glanced around for a pop bottle or a stick or something\u2014Steve Randle, Soda's best buddy, had once held off four guys with a busted pop bottle\u2014but there was nothing. So I stood there like a bump on a log while they surrounded me. I don't use my head. They walked around slowly, silently, smiling.\" Hey, grease,\" one said in an over-friendly voice. \"We're gonna do you a favor, greaser. We're gonna cut all that long greasy hair off.\" He had on a madras shirt. I can still see it. Blue madras. One of them laughed, then cussed me out in a low voice. I couldn't think of anything to say. There just isn't a whole lot you can say while waiting to get mugged, so I kept my mouth shut.\" Need a haircut, greaser?\" The medium-sized blond pulled a knife out of his back pocket and flipped the blade open. I finally thought of something to say. \"No.\" I was backing up, away from that knife. Of course I backed right into one of them. They had me down in a second. They had my arms and legs pinned down and one of them was sitting on my chest with his knees on my elbows, and if you don't think that hurts, you're crazy. I could smell English Leather shaving lotion and stale tobacco, and I wondered foolishly if I would suffocate before they did anything. I was scared so bad I was wishing I would. I fought to get loose, and almost did for a second; then they tightened up on me and the one on my chest slugged me a couple of times. So I lay still, swearing at them between gasps. A blade was held against my throat.\" How'd you like that haircut to begin just below the chin?\" It occurred to me then that they could kill me. I went wild. I started screaming for Soda, Darry, anyone. Someone put his hand over my mouth, and I bit it as hard as I could, tasting the blood running through my teeth. I heard a muttered curse and got slugged again, and they were stuffing a handkerchief in my mouth. One of them kept saying, \"Shut him up, for Pete's sake, shut him up!\" Then there were shouts and the pounding of feet, and the Socs jumped up and left me lying there, gasping. I lay there and wondered what in the world was happening\u2014people were jumping over me and running by me and I was too dazed to figure it out. Then someone had me under the armpits and was hauling me to my feet. It was Darry.\" Are you all right, Ponyboy?\" He was shaking me and I wished he'd stop. I was dizzy enough anyway. I could tell it was Darry though\u2014partly because of the voice and partly because Darry's always rough with me without meaning to be.\" I'm okay. Quit shaking me, Darry, I'm okay.\" He stopped instantly. \"I'm sorry.\" He wasn't really. Darry isn't ever sorry for anything he does. It seems funny to me that he should look just exactly like my father and act exactly the opposite from him. My father was only forty when he died and he looked twenty-five and a lot of people thought Darry and Dad were brothers instead of father and son. But they only looked alike\u2014my father was never rough with anyone without meaning to be. Darry is six-feet-two, and broad-shouldered and muscular. He has dark-brown hair that kicks out in front and a slight cowlick in the back\u2014just like Dad's\u2014but Darry's eyes are his own. He's got eyes that are like two pieces of pale blue-green ice. They've got a determined set to them, like the rest of him. He looks older than twenty\u2014tough, cool, and smart. He would be real handsome if his eyes weren't so cold. He doesn't understand anything that is not plain hard fact. But he uses his head. I sat down again, rubbing my cheek where I'd been slugged the most. Darry jammed his fists in his pockets. \"They didn't hurt you too bad, did they?\" They did. I was smarting and aching and my chest was sore and I was so nervous my hands were shaking and I wanted to start bawling, but you just do n't",
        "UNTIL HE WAS FOUR years old, James Henry Trotter had had a happy life. He lived peacefully with his mother and father in a": "UNTIL HE WAS FOUR years old, James Henry Trotter had had a happy life. He lived peacefully with his mother and father in a beautiful house beside the sea. There were always plenty of other children for him to play with, and there was the sandy beach for him to run about on, and the ocean to paddle in. It was the perfect life for a small boy. Then, one day, James's mother and father went to London to do some shopping, and there a terrible thing happened. Both of them suddenly got eaten up (in full daylight, mind you, and on a crowded street) by an enormous angry rhinoceros which had escaped from the London Zoo. Now this, as you can well imagine, was a rather nasty experience for two such gentle parents. But in the long run it was far nastier for James than it was for them. _Their_ troubles were all over in a jiffy. They were dead and gone in thirty-five seconds flat. Poor James, on the other hand, was still very much alive, and all at once he found himself alone and frightened in a vast unfriendly world. The lovely house by the seaside had to be sold immediately, and the little boy, carrying nothing but a small suitcase containing a pair of pajamas and a toothbrush, was sent away to live with his two aunts. Their names were Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker, and I am sorry to say that they were both really horrible people. They were selfish and lazy and cruel, and right from the beginning they started beating poor James for almost no reason at all. They never called him by his real name, but always referred to him as \"you disgusting little beast\" or \"you filthy nuisance\" or \"you miserable creature,\" and they certainly never gave him any toys to play with or any picture books to look at. His room was as bare as a prison cell. They lived\u2014Aunt Sponge, Aunt Spiker, and now James as well\u2014in a queer ramshackle house on the top of a high hill in the south of England. The hill was so high that from almost anywhere in the garden James could look down and see for miles and miles across a marvelous landscape of woods and fields; and on a very clear day, if he looked in the right direction, he could see a tiny gray dot far away on the horizon, which was the house that he used to live in with his beloved mother and father. And just beyond that, he could see the ocean itself\u2014a long thin streak of blackish-blue, like a line of ink, beneath the rim of the sky. But James was never allowed to go down off the top of that hill. Neither Aunt Sponge nor Aunt Spiker could ever be bothered to take him out herself, not even for a small walk or a picnic, and he certainly wasn't permitted to go alone. \"The nasty little beast will only get into mischief if he goes out of the garden,\" Aunt Spiker had said. And terrible punishments were promised him, such as being locked up in the cellar with the rats for a week, if he even so much as dared to climb over the fence. The garden, which covered the whole of the top of the hill, was large and desolate, and the only tree in the entire place (apart from a clump of dirty old laurel bushes at the far end) was an ancient peach tree that never gave any peaches. There was no swing, no seesaw, no sand pit, and no other children were ever invited to come up the hill to play with poor James. There wasn't so much as a dog or a cat around to keep him company. And as time went on, he became sadder and sadder, and more and more lonely, and he used to spend hours every day standing at the bottom of the garden, gazing wistfully at the lovely but forbidden world of woods and fields and ocean that was spread out below him like a magic carpet. #2 AFTER JAMES HENRY TROTTER had been living with his aunts for three whole years there came a morning when something rather peculiar happened to him. And this thing, which as I say was only _rather_ peculiar, soon caused a second thing to happen which was _very_ peculiar. And then the _very_ peculiar thing, in its own turn, caused a really _fantastically_ peculiar thing to occur. It all started on a blazing hot day in the middle of summer. Aunt Sponge, Aunt Spiker, and James were all out in the garden. James had been put to work, as usual. This time he was chopping wood for the kitchen stove. Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker were sitting comfortably in deckchairs nearby, sipping tall glasses of fizzy lemonade and watching him to see that he didn't stop work for one moment. Aunt Sponge was enormously fat and very short. She had small piggy eyes, a sunken mouth, and one of those white flabby faces that looked exactly as though it had been boiled. She was like a great white soggy overboiled cabbage. Aunt Spiker, on the other hand, was lean and tall and bony, and she wore steel-rimmed spectacles that fixed onto the end of her nose with a clip. She had a screeching voice and long wet narrow lips, and whenever she got angry or excited, little flecks of spit would come shooting out of her mouth as she talked. And there they sat, these two ghastly hags, sipping their drinks, and every now and again screaming at James to chop faster and faster. They also talked about themselves, each one saying how beautiful she thought she was. Aunt Sponge had a long-handled mirror on her lap, and she kept picking it up and gazing at her own hideous face. _\" I look and smell,\" Aunt Sponge declared, \"as lovely as a rose! _ _Just feast your eyes upon my face, observe my shapely nose! _ _Behold my heavenly silky locks! _ _And if I take off both my socks_ _You'll see my dainty toes.\" _ _\" But don't forget,\" Aunt Spiker cried, \"how much your tummy shows!\" _ _Aunt Sponge went red. Aunt Spiker said, \"My sweet, you cannot win, _ _Behold_ MY _gorgeous curvy shape, my teeth, my charming grin! _ _Oh, beauteous me! How I adore_ _My radiant looks! And please ignore_ _The pimple on my chin.\" _ _\" My dear old trout!\" Aunt Sponge cried out, \"You're only bones and skin!\" _ _\" Such loveliness as I possess can only truly shine_ _In Hollywood!\" Aunt Sponge declared. \"Oh, wouldn't that be fine! _ _I'd capture all the nations' hearts! _ _They'd give me all the leading parts! _ _The stars would all resign!\" _ _\" I think you'd make,\" Aunt Spiker said, \"a lovely Frankenstein.\" _ Poor James was still slaving away at the chopping-block. The heat was terrible. He was sweating all over. His arm was aching. The chopper was a large blunt thing far too heavy for a small boy to use. And as he worked, James began thinking about all the other children in the world and what they might be doing at this moment. Some would be riding tricycles in their gardens. Some would be walking in cool woods and picking bunches of wild flowers. And all the little friends whom he used to know would be down by the seaside, playing in the wet sand and splashing around in the water...Great tears began oozing out of James's eyes and rolling down his cheeks. He stopped working and leaned against the chopping-block, overwhelmed by his own unhappiness.\" What's the matter with you?\" Aunt Spiker screeched, glaring at him over the top of her steel spectacles. James began to cry.\" Stop that immediately and get on with your work, you nasty little beast!\" Aunt Sponge ordered.\" Oh, Auntie Sponge!\" James cried out. \"And Auntie Spiker! Couldn't we all\u2014 _please_ \u2014just for once\u2014go down to the seaside on the bus? It isn't very far\u2014and I feel so hot and awful and lonely ...\" \" Why, you lazy good-for-nothing brute!\" Aunt Spiker shouted.\" Beat him!\" cried Aunt Sponge.\" I certainly will!\" Aunt Spiker snapped. She glared at James, and James looked back at her with large frightened eyes. \"I shall beat you later on in the day when I don't feel so hot,\" she said. \"And now get out of my sight, you disgusting little worm, and give me some peace!\" James turned and ran. He ran off as fast as he could to the far end of the garden and hid himself behind that clump of dirty old laurel bushes that we mentioned earlier on. Then he covered his face with his hands and began to cry and cry. #3 IT WAS AT THIS POINT that the first thing of all, the _rather_ peculiar thing that led to so many other _much_ more peculiar things, happened to him. For suddenly, just behind him, James heard a rustling of leaves, and he turned around and saw an old man in a crazy dark-green suit emerging from the bushes. He was a very small old man, but he had a huge bald head and a face that was covered all over with bristly black whiskers. He stopped when he was about three yards away, and he stood there leaning on his stick and staring hard at James. When he spoke, his voice was very slow and creaky. \"Come closer to me, little boy,\" he said, beckoning to James with a finger. \"Come right up close to me and I will show you something _wonderful_.\" James was too frightened to move. The old man hobbled a step or two nearer, and then he put a hand into the pocket of his jacket and took out a small white paper bag.\" You see this?\" he whispered, waving the bag gently to and fro in front of James's face. \"You know what this is, my dear? You know what's inside this little bag?\" Then he came nearer still, leaning forward and pushing his face so close to James that James could feel breath blowing on his cheeks. The breath smelled musty and stale and slightly mildewed, like air in an old cellar.\" Take a look, my dear,\" he said, opening the bag and tilting it toward James. Inside it, James could see a mass of tiny green things that looked like little stones or crystals, each one about the size of a grain of rice. They were",
        "It was morning, and the new sun sparkled gold across the ripples of a gentle sea. A mile from shore a fishing boat chummed": "It was morning, and the new sun sparkled gold across the ripples of a gentle sea. A mile from shore a fishing boat chummed the water, and the word for Breakfast Flock flashed through the air, till a crowd of a thousand seagulls came to dodge and fight for bits of food. It was another busy day beginning. But way off alone, out by himself beyond boat and shore, Jonathan Livingston Seagull was practicing. A hundred feet in the sky he lowered his webbed feet, lifted his beak, and strained to hold a painful hard twisting curve through his wings. The curve meant that he would fly slowly, and now he slowed until the wind was a whisper in his face, until the ocean stood still beneath him. He narrowed his eyes in fierce concentration, held his breath, forced one . . . single . . . more . . . inch . . . of . . . curve. . . . Then his feathers ruffled, he stalled and fell. Seagulls, as you know, never falter, never stall. To stall in the air is for them disgrace and it is dishonor. But Jonathan Livingston Seagull, unashamed, stretching his wings again in that trembling hard curve\u2014slowing, slowing, and stalling once more\u2014was no ordinary bird. Most gulls don't bother to learn more than the simplest facts of flight\u2014how to get from shore to food and back again. For most gulls, it is not flying that matters, but eating. For this gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but flight. More than anything else, Jonathan Livingston Seagull loved to fly. This kind of thinking, he found, is not the way to make one's self popular with other birds. Even his parents were dismayed as Jonathan spent whole days alone, making hundreds of low-level glides, experimenting. He didn't know why, for instance, but when he flew at altitudes less than half his wingspan above the water, he could stay in the air longer, with less effort. His glides ended not with the usual feet-down splash into the sea, but with a long flat wake as he touched the surface with his feet tightly streamlined against his body. When he began sliding in to feet-up landings on the beach, then pacing the length of his slide in the sand, his parents were very much dismayed indeed.\" Why, Jon, why?\" his mother asked. \"Why is it so hard to be like the rest of the flock, Jon? Why can't you leave low flying to the pelicans, the albatross? Why don't you eat? Son, you're bone and feathers!\" \" I don't mind being bone and feathers, mom. I just want to know what I can do in the air and what I can't, that's all. I just want to know.\" \" See here, Jonathan,\" said his father, not unkindly. \"Winter isn't far away. Boats will be few, and the surface fish will be swimming deep. If you must study, then study food, and how to get it. This flying business is all very well, but you can't eat a glide, you know. Don't you forget that the reason you fly is to eat.\" Jonathan nodded obediently. For the next few days he tried to behave like the other gulls; he really tried, screeching and fighting with the flock around the piers and fishing boats, diving on scraps of fish and bread. But he couldn't make it work. It's all so pointless, he thought, deliberately dropping a hard-won anchovy to a hungry old gull chasing him. I could be spending all this time learning to fly. There's so much to learn! It wasn't long before Jonathan Gull was off by himself again, far out at sea, hungry, happy, learning. The subject was speed, and in a week's practice he learned more about speed than the fastest gull alive. From a thousand feet, flapping his wings as hard as he could, he pushed over into a blazing steep dive toward the waves, and learned why seagulls don't make blazing steep power-dives. In just six seconds he was moving seventy miles per hour, the speed at which one's wing goes unstable on the upstroke. Time after time it happened. Careful as he was, working at the very peak of his ability, he lost control at high speed. Climb to a thousand feet. Full power straight ahead first, then push over, flapping, to a vertical dive. Then, every time, his left wing stalled on an upstroke, he'd roll violently left, stall his right wing recovering, and flick like fire into a wild tumbling spin to the right. He couldn't be careful enough on that upstroke. Ten times he tried, and all ten times, as he passed through seventy miles per hour, he burst into a churning mass of feathers, out of control, crashing down into the water. The key, he thought at last, dripping wet, must be to hold the wings still at high speeds\u2014to flap up to fifty and then hold the wings still. From two thousand feet he tried again, rolling into his dive, beak straight down, wings full out and stable from the moment he passed fifty miles per hour. It took tremendous strength, but it worked. In ten seconds he had blurred through ninety miles per hour. Jonathan had set a world speed record for seagulls! But victory was short-lived. The instant he began his pullout, the instant he changed the angle of his wings, he snapped into that same terrible uncontrolled disaster, and at ninety miles per hour it hit him like dynamite. Jonathan Seagull exploded in midair and smashed down into a brick-hard sea. When he came to, it was well after dark, and he floated in moonlight on the surface of the ocean. His wings were ragged bars of lead, but the weight of failure was even heavier on his back. He wished, feebly, that the weight could be just enough to drag him gently down to the bottom, and end it all. As he sank low in the water, a strange hollow voice sounded within him. There's no way around it. I am a seagull. I am limited by my nature. If I were meant to learn so much about flying, I'd have charts for brains. If I were meant to fly at speed, I'd have a falcon's short wings, and live on mice instead of fish. My father was right. I must forget this foolishness. I must fly home to the Flock and be content as I am, as a poor limited seagull. The voice faded, and Jonathan agreed. The place for a seagull at night is on shore, and from this moment forth, he vowed, he would be a normal gull. It would make everyone happier. He pushed wearily away from the dark water and flew toward the land, grateful for what he had learned about work-saving low-altitude flying. But no, he thought. I am done with the way I was, I am done with everything I learned. I am a seagull like every other seagull, and I will fly like one. So he climbed painfully to a hundred feet and flapped his wings harder, pressing for shore. He felt better for his decision to be just another one of the flock. There would be no ties now to the force that had driven him to learn, there would be no more challenge and no more failure. And it was pretty, just to stop thinking, and fly through the dark, toward the lights above the beach. Dark! The hollow voice cracked in alarm. Seagulls never fly in the dark! Jonathan was not alert to listen. It's pretty, he thought. The moon and the lights twinkling on the water, throwing out little beacon-trails through the night, and all so peaceful and still. . . . Get down! Seagulls never fly in the dark! If you were meant to fly in the dark, you'd have the eyes of an owl! You'd have charts for brains! You'd have a falcon's short wings! There in the night, a hundred feet in the air, Jonathan Livingston Seagull\u2014blinked. His pain, his resolutions, vanished. Short wings. A falcon's short wings! That's the answer! What a fool I've been! All I need is a tiny little wing, all I need is to fold most of my wings and fly on just the tips alone! Short wings! He climbed two thousand feet above the black sea, and without a moment for thought of failure and death, he brought his forewings tightly in to his body, left only the narrow swept daggers of his wingtips extended into the wind, and fell into a vertical dive. The wind was a monster roar at his head. Seventy miles per hour, ninety, a hundred and twenty and faster still. The wing-strain now at a hundred and forty miles per hour wasn't nearly as hard as it had been before at seventy, and with the faintest twist of his wingtips he eased out of the dive and shot above the waves, a gray cannonball under the moon. He closed his eyes to slits against the wind and rejoiced. A hundred forty miles per hour! And under control! If I dive from five thousand feet instead of two thousand, I wonder how fast . . . His vows of a moment before were forgotten, swept away in that great swift wind. Yet he felt guiltless, breaking the promises he had made himself. Such promises are only for the gulls that accept the ordinary. One who has touched excellence in his learning has no need of that kind of promise. By sunup, Jonathan Gull was practicing again. From five thousand feet the fishing boats were specks in the flat blue water, Breakfast Flock was a faint cloud of dust motes, circling. He was alive, trembling ever so slightly with delight, proud that his fear was under control. Then without ceremony he hugged in his forewings, extended his short, angled wingtips, and plunged directly toward the sea. By the time he passed four thousand feet he had reached terminal velocity, the wind was a solid beating wall of sound against which he could move no faster. He was flying now straight down, at two hundred fourteen miles per hour. He swallowed, knowing that if his wings unfolded at that speed he'd be blown into a million tiny shreds of seagull. But the speed was power, and the speed was joy, and the speed was pure beauty. He began his pullout at a thousand feet, wingtips thudding and blurring in that gigantic wind, the boat and the crowd of gulls tilting and growing meteor-fast, directly in his path. He couldn't stop;"
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