Livvie Owen Lived Here by Sarah Dooley Page A

behind it, it felt cold and distant like it was staring at me, like maybe just this one window didn’t recognize me now. Something about the windowpane made me worried, and I clenched and unclenched my shoulders a few times, then started walking a little faster toward the factory.
    As I stepped through the gate, hobbling a little on my sore foot that was making me wish I hadn’t walked so far, it occurred to me that I really didn’t actually have much of a plan. Sometimes I thought ideas and plans were the same thing, and it turned out they were different and now it was too late, almost five according to the light. I was pretty sure the light was accurate, because the clouds had finally started to thin and drift their separate ways.
    That’s why it scared me so much when it started to rain, and I made a squeaking sound like Bentley and looked straight up into the sky.
    Fat raindrops plopped onto my face and onehad the nerve to go straight into my eye. The rest hammered into the soft dirt at my feet, making it sticky. I knew now that I had made the wrong choice. Slippers were not for rain. Slippers were for inside only; there was that rule I had forgotten. Now my slippers would be wet and so would my sleep clothes.
    I had really messed up this time.
    I started to run, covering my head with my hands like I saw people do in movies. I knew it was silly because a hand is nowhere near as effective as an umbrella. I got mad at myself even for trying, but my hands didn’t listen and stayed in the air. My slippered feet shuffled and tripped on the slick, wet dirt and I could feel wet blades of grass tickling up into the back of my slippers. It made me feel like I had swallowed something slimy.
    â€œThis was a stupid idea, Olivia!” I shouted as I ran for cover under the nearest roof I saw. My hand dropped from my head to cover Orange Cat’s collar in my pocket, hoping I could manage to keep it dry. Cats didn’t like wet. “You do not have very good ideas sometimes, young lady! Slippers are not for rain! They are to stay inside! Don’t you dare go outside in your slippers, Livvie Owen!”
    My voice cranked up a little louder, but the roof I had found was empty and no one would hear. It was the oddest thing, my roof. It was standing byitself on stilts, with no walls. It seemed to be there solely to protect a bench.
    The bench stirred something in the back of my memory and I shivered hard and did not sit, even though my foot was throbbing and my slippers were soggy. The night air cold but familiar on my face, I thought maybe I remembered this bench.
    I smelled the paper. That was the strongest part, once the memory took hold. Somehow after all these years, the paper mill smell never quite faded from the streets and the trees and the sidewalks of Nabor, but back then it was different. More solid. Everyone hated it, talked about how awful it smelled, but to me it smelled like home.
    We sat on the bench—all four of us, and that was the whole family then, although from the look of Karen, that was going to change soon—while we waited for the bus, back when there was a reason for Neighbor’s bus to run to Nabor. When the bus came, a big, smelly contraption blowing smoke and darkness all over the sky and scaring me with its round, staring headlights, Natasha grabbed my hand on one side and Karen on the other and we all climbed aboard.
    â€œDon’t, don’t, don’t,” I said to Karen. I wasn’t very good at words back then, usually using the same one over again instead of finding a second or a third. “Livvie, don’t.”
    â€œYou’re okay, Livvie-bug,” Karen said. “We’re going to the city, that’s all.”
    It was the simplest, briefest memory, but it felt so warm and so familiar that I wanted to crawl under it like a blanket. Inching my wet self down onto the bench, I shivered in the darkness that was getting darker as the clouds