Orwell's Luck Read Online Free Page B

from supper, plus a brown-spotted apple that Orwell had declined. Then I went back to my room to read the paper.
    Saturday's horoscope was the strangest one yet:
BRONCOS TRAMPLE FALCONS 3419
GRAB SECOND RING.
    By now, of course, I was expecting it to be a surprise. But I wasn't expecting it to be a code within a code. This one had me stumped. I got up from my desk and sat down on my bed to noodle it over.
    My room is on the second floor at the end of the hall. It is the only room in the house that is L-shaped. My desk is in the short part of the L. My bed is in the long part. Along the walls of the long part are bookcases filled with my collections, souvenirs, science equipment, and books. Above the bookcases hangs a framed poster of lightning flashing over the prairie. I don't know where the picture was taken, but it looks a lot like where I live.
    In the corner of my room are two windows that meet at right angles. When I sit on the edge of my bed, I can see everything in the backyard—the new addition, the concrete patio, the dog dishes, the goldfish pond, the woodpile, and the hedgeapple tree with the tree house that my father built a long time ago. I can even see over the bushes into the neighborhood park. That corner of my room is my own private watchtower.
    It hadn't taken the neighborhood animals long to discover the stash I'd set out. The scavenger birds and half-tame squirrels were already at it. They're always the first to arrive. Soon, however, the shy ones began poking their faces out from the thick honeysuckle hedge. Chipmunks came to the party, darting and dashing across the ground like minnows in a stream. A flock of purple finches, seeing that the braver birds were having a good time, decided it was safe for them to join in. Species by species, a crowd began to form.
    Then, fashionably late, a rabbit appeared, a brown rabbit, moving ever so carefully, its radar turned on high beam, listening for warnings from the starlings and jays and sparrows, cautiously waiting for an opportunity to inspect the bounty. It was smaller than Orwell, and not as picky either, because it soon began nibbling the soft, spotted apple that no one else wanted.
    Sitting still as a winter tree, I watched the rabbit eat its breakfast. It was darker than Orwell, but maybe that was because it was wet. I tried to get a look at its face, but its back was turned to me.
    Suddenly, the rude raspy bark of a neighbor's dog out for a forced walk caused the timid little visitor to leap up, zigzagging across the yard, through the honeysuckle, into the park, and on to some distant hideout far beyond my field of vision.
    "
Allez-y!
" I whispered in encouragement. "Go there!"
    On Orwell's behalf, I envied this stranger's superb hopping skills. The little creature sure did make it look easy.
    I lay back on my bed and closed my eyes. Even though I tried not to think about them, the week's weird horoscope messages flashed on and off in my mind, like insistent little neon signs.
    I also thought about giving up my plans for becoming a detective. Figuring things out was becoming too hard. It occurred to me to become a weather forecaster instead. I really like weather. Weather is one of those things that's always on the move.

A goal realized
    The rain that fell on Saturday turned the world into ice on Sunday. The streets and the rooftops were white. If you took a picture of it, it would look like snow. But if you touched it, you could see that it was really tiny pebbles of ice.
    This was the kind of morning when most people figure the best thing to do is stay inside. But not us. After my father lost his job, Sundays changed around our house. Among other things, the whole family started going to church every week.
    "I can sleep late any day of the week now," he explained. "It doesn't have to be Sunday."
    "But what about the people who have to go to school?" I asked. "When do they get a day off?"
    "I can't help that," he said.
    My father, my mother, my