Dragonhaven by Robin McKinley Page A

cleaning and cooking. Although we’d shared it when Mom was still around Dad and I stopped doing any about a month after she didn’t show up at her checkpoint. We had started to try to do it again but if it weren’t for eating with the Rangers sometimes I might have forgotten food ever came in any shape but microwave pouches or that cooking ever involved anything but punching buttons. And cleaning? Forget it. I can run the dishwasher—hey, I can run the washing machine, are you impressed?—but my expertise ends there.
    Dad rearranged one of the coffee mugs on the pile of papers it had already left smeary brown rings on. “I’ve been talking to Billy. You did really well in your last standardized tests, did I tell you?”
    He hadn’t. I’d thought he should’ve had the results by now and had begun to worry. I’d been trying to be extra careful since Mom died because I knew social services was just aching to take me out of my weird life at the Institute, but I could have missed something important because since Mom died I just did miss stuff, and sometimes it was important.
    â€œAnd I know”—he hesitated—“I know you’ve been keeping up with your woodcraft.” The one thing he would let me out of his sight to do without a huge argument was go out for a day with one of the Rangers—as long as we were back the same night. And it was the one thing that would turn the telescope I was looking through around too. For a few hours. “You’re fourteen and a half.”
    Fourteen years, nine months and three days, I wanted to say, but I didn’t.
    â€œAnd—well—Billy says you’re more than ready to—uh—”
    Tie my shoes without someone supervising? I thought, but I didn’t say that either, not only because my shoes have Velcro straps. I knew Dad was doing the best he could. So was I.
    â€œWell, I wondered, would you like to take your overnight solo? I know you were—we were—” He hesitated again. “Your first solo is overdue, I know. And Billy says you’ll be fine. And the weather looks like holding. So—”
    â€œYes,” I said. “I’d love to.” I tried not to sound sarcastic. I almost forgot to say thanks. Almost. But I did say it.
    If I’d been twelve I’d’ve gone whooping out of the Institute offices to the Ranger offices which are right across the tourist center lobby and reception area, and probably telling everyone on the way, Nate in the ticket booth, Amanda in the gift shop, poor Bob doing detention in the café, Jo and Nancy answering questions as they shepherded gangs of tourists to and from the bus stop, and anybody else I recognized, but I was nearer fifteen than fourteen and it had been a long almost-three years in a lot of ways. I walked slowly through Nancy’s busload (ID-ing the f.l.s among them at first glance), waved at Nate, and told Dan, at the front Ranger desk, that whenever Billy had a moment I’d like to talk to him.
    â€œHe’s hiding down at the caves,” said Dan. “You could go find him.”
    I’ve forgotten to tell you about the caves. As soon as the first geologist set foot near Smokehill they knew there had to be caves here. The Native Americans had known for a long time, but after a bad beginning they’d kind of stopped telling the European pillagers anything they didn’t have to, so Old Pete may be the first whiteface to have done more than guess. The caves near the Institute aren’t very good ones compared to what there is farther in, like under the Bonelands, but these little ones near the front door were busy being developed for tourists, so they weren’t going to be much use for hiding in much longer.
    Getting the work done was a huge nuisance and everybody who lived here hated it, but we are always desperate for money (I should just make an acronym of it: WAADFM, like some new