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or rabid raccoons or skunks live here. There are probably all sorts of wild animals waiting to take a chomp out of my leg. We’ll see who the sorry one is when I wake up dead tomorrow. I hope someone sues Uncle Stretch for putting me in this situation. He’ll get arrested. He can spend some time in jail then, which isn’t much better than this.
    I stare at the moon. I have never been so bored, mad, tired, lonely, scared, trapped. I think about crying or sneaking back into the house, where I’m sure Penny and Pauly are happily snoring away. I don’t dare.
    â€œWhere am I?” I say to myself about a hundred times. I think for a while and then say, “Why am I here?” about a hundred more.
    Nobody speaks up to answer my question, not Joe Montana or Tommy Kramer, not the finger-sucking lady in the rubber swimsuit, not even me.

Chapter 4
Penny Defends Her Faith
    Dear Mom,
    I’m glad to hear that you’ve hired a good lawyer. I really don’t know what I’d do if you had to go to prison for a long, long time! Do you have any idea how embarrassing that would be!? Do you realize what that would be like for Dad and all of us? Now that I’m here, I can certainly see why Stretch couldn’t give you the money for your bail and why he offered to take us kids instead. This farm doesn’t look like it produces much money at all. Everything’s old. And Stretch doesn’t look like he has a single cent in his pocket. No wonder he couldn’t help you. Now that we’re here, he’ll probably just use us as slave labor.
    Pauly and Percy are doing all right. Actually, they both sort of act as though they don’t remember our entire family is falling apart right before our eyes! You’ll be thrilled to hear, I bet, that Pauly has taken to Stretch very well. They’re basically best pals. Stretch makes pancakes for Pauly every morning. Then Pauly follows Stretch around all day, working little jobs Stretch makes up for him, like pulling dandelions out of the potato field, picking slugs off the cabbage leaves, and digging for earthworms to put in the compost pile, the dirtiest job of all, which, of course, is Pauly’s favorite. Wrapping worms around his fingers is his idea of heaven. He’s so young and so simple. He doesn’t even realize that we’re not going to be the same old nuclear family ever again.
    Since Pauly’s adopted, he probably thinks that people get new families every now and again throughout their lives, and they just have to adjust. Do you realize how warped that is? I’m really afraid that all of this stress is going to leave him with trusting and bonding issues later in life. I’ve read about these Romanian orphans who grew up in state-run orphanages. They were never held or talked to and sat in wet diapers in crowded cribs all day, every day. They grew up not knowing how to love! Lots of families adopted these poor souls only to learn that the children couldn’t bond and had reactive attachment disorder (I printed out some information on it and included it here, so I hope you read it!), and the families had to send them back to Romania.
    I don’t want that to happen to Pauly. I think you should really consider that, Mom. Was all this business with drug pedaling (that’s what Dad called it once in an argument I overheard) really worth risking your children’s bonding capabilities? Was it worth losing your husband? Why not just take the plea deal, say you’re sorry to the court and to Dad, and get this all over with? I know Dad would forgive you and take you back. He even told me so. All you have to do is repent. Let’s get back to normal, please .
    When I get married, I am never, ever going to do anything that would make my husband want to divorce me. I might even move back to the Philippines so that my husband can never, ever divorce me, no matter what.
    What happened to Stretch’s wife? I saw a