Chasing Orion by Kathryn Lasky Read Free Book Online Page A

numbers, and the hospitals where the nameless victims had been admitted. So far only two friends of my parents had contracted the disease. But they had recovered. And neither of them was in an iron lung. But now I knew someone who was not nameless, not just a Marion County statistic. I felt in a weird way special.
    I had to call Evelyn.
    She answered the phone on the second ring. “The Doctors Winkler residence.”
    “It’s Georgie, Evelyn. Guess what?”
    “What?”
    “I met her.”
    “Who?”
    “The girl next door. The iron lung girl! She’s beautiful. So beautiful. And you talk to her sort of through mirrors.”
    “What?” Evelyn was dumbfounded — this was not a natural state for Evelyn. So I explained all about the mirrors, and all the gizmos that stuck out, and the automatic claw that her mom put the drink in. She was impressed. She said she hoped that I would make friends with her so she could come over and visit her, too. I wasn’t altogether sure I wanted her to meet Phyllis. I mean, now that I had met Phyllis — well, she wasn’t a freak anymore. And I remembered how she had said those six little words — just to me. “If you know what I mean.” It had been so personal — like a gift, and it was one I didn’t exactly want to share. I guess it could be called selfish. Maybe it was, but on the other hand, I didn’t want Phyllis to be a sideshow for my friends either.
    Evelyn said just before we hung up that she couldn’t meet me at the library the next day because she had just found out that she had to go someplace with her mom and younger sister.
    When I went to bed, I felt a little bad about my selfishness — wanting to keep Phyllis just for me. It seemed wrong. When Phyllis winked, she had reached out to me in one of the very few ways she could, and I was hoarding that wink. The way a miser would hoard gold. Was I going to dole out Phyllis to my friend Evelyn in little small snippets told over the phone?
    I closed my eyes tight and saw the gleaming carapace of the Creature. I could hear its mechanical inhalations and exhalations. Phyllis had called it a monster, but it was a miser as well. And the realization made me shudder. It doled out the breaths to her in a monotonous rhythm. It had locked her into a single position for the rest of her life. Change it, and she’d die. Her eyes always had to look up. But the worst thing of all was that for Phyllis and any person inside of an iron lung, nothing would ever change. On the most basic level this was true. You’re not getting taller in there. If anything, you might be shrinking because you never use a muscle for anything. Phyllis’s life was totally changeless, and that to me was the most frightening thing imaginable: to know you are never going to change, ever!
    But then I thought of how Phyllis had been with Emmett, and I began wondering what would happen if maybe Emmett and Phyllis started liking each other, just a little bit. Could this make for a change in a life doomed to never change? This could be good for Emmett as well because he’d never been on a date or anything. I mean it would be like training wheels. I giggled to myself. Then I felt a little bad comparing Phyllis to training wheels. But then again I thought it could be nice for Phyllis too in a way. I mean, her life must be pretty boring.
    As I lay in bed that night, Phyllis’s voice came back to me, the six words in their pretty package of a smile and a wink. I tried to recapture that floaty feeling. But I couldn’t. I guess there are certain feelings, sensations that you only get to experience once in life and only at the time when they happen. And now I couldn’t even exactly picture Phyllis. I tried to imagine us both in the mirror, but the details of her face just kept slipping away or there would be something slightly off about the way I remembered her. It was like pieces of a puzzle that didn’t quite fit.

 
    When I got up the next morning, I began work on my