Chasing Orion Read Online Free PDF Page B

myths is that there are a lot of contradictory things, irrational parts, pieces left out and unexplained. I like reasons for stuff. There were a lot of gaps in the Orion story and a lot of things you had to take on faith. I was even thinking of a two-level diorama because Orion’s story begins in the sea. He was the son of Poseidon. Underwater filtered light — I could use an aquarium for part of it. We had two in the basement. I realized I would literally have to build this story from the seafloor up to the sky, or more accurately, from the basement up.
    I went there as soon as I got home and found the aquarium. I had been thinking about the “seascaping.” I was pretty good with clay. I knew I could model a great seafloor. But then I had a really brilliant idea. In that stand of trees between our house and the polio girl’s, the only shady place in our new neighborhood, I had seen some moss. It would be really neat if I could get some and stick it in the clay. I had once made a moss garden and kept it alive just by spritzing it twice a week. I liked the idea of having something living in this diorama. Live plants and real electricity. This might become my masterpiece — truly a small universe!

 
    The temperature had dropped ten whole degrees since I had come home. But in the shade of the grove, it was even cooler. Maybe the arctic nineties. Even from the edge of the grove I could see the shimmer of the iron lung. By the time I was right in the grove, I could hear it pumping away. Then I heard Mom calling me and Emmett’s voice much closer.
    “Mom wants to know if you want to go with her to the Hoosier Twirler thing.”
    Just at that moment there was another voice. “Is somebody there?” Emmett and I looked at each other as a woman walked through the trees. She was wearing Bermuda shorts and had gardening gloves on. She held a pair of shears in her hand. “Oh, my goodness. You must be the Mason children. I’ve been meaning to come over and introduce myself. I’m Roslyn Keller. I would love it if you would come over and meet our Phyllis. We just wheeled her out, now that it’s cooler. She loves to be outside, even on the hottest days.” She said this as if it were the most ordinary thing that people got wheeled around in iron lungs.
    “Sure,” I said. I quickly forgot my mission of collecting moss.
    “What’s your name, dear?”
    “Georgie.”
    “And yours?” she said, turning to Emmett.
    “Emmett.”
    “Oh, you look like you’re about to be a senior. Just Phyllis’s age. This will mean so much to her.”
    I ran home to tell Mom to go without me and then followed Mrs. Keller through the trees and into the long shadows of their yard, which was beautiful, with lush green grass and really big trees. We passed a flower bed thick with violets and inky green lilies of the valley. None of the lilies had their little white bells. “These lilies in May were always Phyllis’s favorite.” It made me shiver when Mrs. Keller said that. Was she talking about the flowers being dead and gone by, or Phyllis? It was as if we were being brought to meet a dead person. I was scared. I kind of wanted to hold Emmett’s hand. But I thought that would look really dumb. Suddenly a terrible thought struck me: What if Phyllis was wearing a diaper? In the newsreels and in the newspapers, they were always showing people in iron lungs, grown-up people, wearing baby diapers with their skinny ugly legs sticking out. I could not meet this girl if she was going to be in a diaper. And what about Emmett? Emmett was seventeen years old, and this girl was supposed to be a teenager. This would be so embarrassing.
Oh, good Lord!
I thought. I tried to imagine Veronica or Betty in diapers and Jughead and Archie looking at them. This was just too awful. I could hardly move my feet forward.
    There was no turning back now. The machine, huge and glinting, was just ahead. Like some monster insect in a horror movie, its arms were reaching out