Where the Wild Flowers Grow

I lived in a small log cabin with my Grandma and my pregnant cat Pussy-Pussy. The cabin was in a big field full of flowers. There were all kinds of flowers: roses, pansies, violets, lilacs, you name it. I loved that house.

Well, that is, I lived there until one day in September. I was playing in the field with Pussy-Pussy. Suddenly there was a huge explosion, like a firework. I looked up to see a helicopter getting ready to drop a bomb. I ran inside.

“Grandma, a bomb!” I shouted. She pushed me into the basement. Then she gave me Pussy-Pussy. She was about to climb in herself, when BOOM! The bomb exploded.

“Grandma?” I called. No answer. “Grandma!” still no answer. I climbed out of the basement through the trap door. The house was burned down, and there was still a fire.

“Stay there.” I told Pussy-Pussy. Then I grabbed two buckets from the basement and ran to the stream by our house. After five trips the fire was out. But half the flowers were dead. And so was my grandma. I pulled Pussy-Pussy out and we sat there, not sure what to do. We sat there for about four hours, until our neighbor, Mrs. Toddle, who lives about a mile away, came over.

“No need to tell me, Lila,” she said. “I saw the explosion. Now where’s your grandma?”

“Dead,” I answered quietly.

“Oh,” said Mrs. Toddle. “Then get in my car.”

“Where are you taking me?”

“To the orphanage, where else?”

To your house, I thought. But instead I said, “then I have to get something.” I bent to pick up some of the few flowers that were left. I would press them when I got to the orphanage.
The car pulled up on the orphanage driveway. “Go on,” Mrs. Toddle said, pushing me towards the door. Then I watched as she drove away.

A lady came out. Her name tag said Tonia. She looked at me, holding Pussy-Pussy, very disapprovingly. “That cat will have to go,” she said.

“What?!” I shouted. “She’s the only thing I have left.” Tonia ignored me.

“Now you give her to me and we’ll take her to the animal shelter, or we’ll have her put to sleep.”

I realized I had no choice. “Okay, but I get to go with you,” I said. We got in her car.

When we got to the animal shelter I told the person who works there, “She’s going to have kittens soon. And make sure nobody adopts her unless I don’t come back by February.”

It was almost dinner time. I was at the dump, looking for a box to put my flowers in. After 10 more minutes of searching I found the perfect box. The person who threw this away must be very picky, I thought. The box only had a few cracks in its glass top. I looked at the sun. It looked like it was sitting on top of a mountain. Dinner time. And I ran off to dinner with the box in my hand.

At dinner I was sitting by three girls. Their name tags said Rayla, Ranay, and Rubi. Sitting across from me were twins, Ben and Zack. We sat there in silence for a minute. Then Ranay looked at her plate. “Eww!” she said, pointing to her potato.

“I want it!” said Rayla. So Ranay threw her potato to Rayla, but she missed and it landed on Rubi’s head.

“Meanie-pooh,” Rubi said, throwing the potato back at Ranay. She missed and it hit one of the boys without a name tag. Pretty soon food was flying all over the place.

“Ugly alien.”
“Picky eater.”
“Squash is so disgusting.”
“Is not.”
“Is too.”
“You are such a bad aimer. You can’t hit me! Ouch!!”

Everybody was throwing food and fighting, except for me. I sat there eating quietly, while food flew all around me, sometimes hitting me. “Um, could you stop it?” I said, peeling green beans off my head. They didn’t pay any attention, so I got up and left. When I got to the room I would be sleeping in, I was disappointed to see I was with Rayla, Ranay, Rubi, and two other girls. Oh well.

I lived at the orphanage for a month. Then a family came and adopted me as a servant. I must have had a very sad face at dinner one night, after I had worked there for three months, because Mrs. Merry, the mother of the family I worked for, asked me if something was wrong.

“Is anything wrong?!” I repeated angrily. “My house got bombed, my grandma is dead, my cat is still at the animal shelter, and you ask if anything’s wrong!”

“Ungrateful child!” Mr. Merry snapped. And I was sent back to the orphanage, where I was immediately adopted by another family. But not as a servant.

It was a week until Christmas, and the lonely little girl in the family wanted a big sister for Christmas, so they adopted me. The first day after I was adopted we made wish lists. It was a complete mess. The four boys acted like I didn’t even exist, and I did the same, because I didn’t know anybody’s name. I didn’t even know my full name until they told me it was Lila Lunders.

“Lila, is something wrong? Isn’t there anything you want?” my new mom asked.

“Well, there is one thing,” I said, “but first I have to know if anyone’s allergic to cats.”
“No, and what a dumb question. It’s not like you’re going to get a cat,” the oldest boy said.

“Now, Matt, be nice to Lila,” my new mom said.
I wrote something on my wish list. One of the boys looked over my shoulder.

“Who’s Pussy-Pussy?” he asked.

“My cat,” I said.

“Are the kittens yours too?” the little girl asked.

But before I could answer my new dad asked, “Where does your cat live?” They asked me question after question until it was time to go to bed.

On Christmas morning even the adults were excited. My mom handed me a huge present. “Open it!” she shouted. Inside were four kittens, and they all looked like Pussy-Pussy.

“But where’s Pussy-Pussy?” I asked.

Mom and Dad stopped bouncing. “She died giving birth to the kittens,” they said.

“But you still have her kittens,” dad pointed out.

And it’s true. Even though I’m old now, and the kittens have died, I still have their kittens and their kittens and their kittens, and now my house is pretty much overrun by cats. But that’s okay, because they all remind me of my best friend Pussy-Pussy.

THE END