Читать книгу The Original Ginny Moon - Benjamin Ludwig, Benjamin Ouvrier Ludwig - Страница 19

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EXACTLY 3:31 IN THE AFTERNOON, TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14TH

My Forever Parents are home. Both of them. They are in the living room talking with a police officer who is not wearing a uniform. Not the one who came to school. I know he is a police officer because my Forever Parents told me. I am standing up in my room and I will not sit down again until he leaves.

I am angry because Gloria came to school and I didn’t get to go with her. I told her to come to the Harvest Concert but she came today instead. When I wasn’t ready. I couldn’t see if my Baby Doll was in the backseat. She is completely unreliable. I wish she was like Crystal with a C. Crystal with a C knows I don’t like expressions. I’ll always tell you the truth, Ginny, she used to say to me. Even if it’s hard to hear. I believed her 100 percent and I try to always tell the truth 100 percent too. Or also which is mostly the same as too but spelled different.

At exactly 3:40 the police officer comes into my room with my Forever Parents.

I hiss.

My Forever Mom puts her hand up like she is going to touch my arm.

I snarl.

I am one of the Maine coons now. All my fur is up. If anyone touches me—

“Ginny,” my Forever Mom says, “the police officer isn’t going to hurt you. He’s here to help.”

Police officers are never here to help even though my Forever Mom doesn’t lie. If they were here to help they would bring me right to Gloria’s. The police officer talks and talks but I don’t listen. Then he says, “Do you understand?” And smiles.

His name is Officer Joel but his name doesn’t matter because all police officers are exactly the same.

The police officer says that if I see Gloria again I should tell my Forever Parents or a teacher immediately. Immediately means now, no matter what. He says that I need to stay here at the Blue House with my Forever Family because they are my family now. When I tell him that I need to see if my Baby Doll is okay he says that Gloria is not a safe person. He says it isn’t safe to go back to the apartment because she used to leave me alone too much and she hurt me. And all the strange men and the drugs. And didn’t I remember what happened to the cat? The police officer says the same thing could have happened to me. “We wouldn’t want something like that to happen to a little kid, would we?”

So I scream, “Then why won’t you let me go get my Baby Doll?”

He shakes his head and keeps talking. He talks about unsanitary conditions and abuse and the cat. Snowball. He is wrong about what happened to it but I am so upset that all I can do now is say the word wrong, wrong, wrong over and over in my brain and put my hands over my ears because he doesn’t understand. He knows only approximately what happened.

And I know exactly.