Leeva at Last: Chapters 1–10

Why did people always do this, as if avoiding an invisible barbed wire fence? Crestfallen, Leeva watched the woman hurry past on the far sidewalk, the little boy jouncing on her hip, until she was out of sight.

Better luck next week, she told herself as she plodded back to pick up the paper.

“Wait, that’s silly,” she chided herself out loud as she ducked through the briars and went inside.

Leeva solved the bookkeeping problem her father had left for her and signed it with a flourish.

Then she threw herself into the exercises on Vim and Vigor at Any Age with extra vim and vigor and turned on The Winds of Our Tides with a new, warm sense of connection—those twin Cleverton daughters attended school and now so would she.

Before turning to stare at the miraculous announcement again, she hunted down the “Improve Your Vocabulary” word: Deluxe—Notably luxurious or sumptuous; of a superior kind. The word was good enough to produce a tingle, which only happened with the best of them.

Didn’t a night like this call for a celebratory dinner, maybe even a meal for herself? But no, all she saw now was the same grim stuff she’d seen every day since her parents had decreed her big enough to prepare their food.

Leeva’s father bought only from the Cheap-O Depot Grocery Warehouse and only what was moldering on their Rock-Bottom Sale shelf.

She had managed to subsist on the leftovers from her parents’ meals, but she was hungry all the time.

The stiletto heels, specially crafted with crystal beads at the bottoms, went clink-clink-clink when she tottered around and scritch-scritch-scritch when she ground them in fury.

“A baby is a fashion accessory that adds to one’s signature look,” Mrs. Thornblossom mused, checking the mirror she had hung beside her chair and patting her hair-stack.

Still, she did exist. How, then, could her parents act as if they didn’t see her or hear her? It was a question she asked herself every time she tried to talk with them. Tonight, with the exciting news hanging in the air, it was especially vexing.

“I’ve commissioned a statue of myself,” she told him. At his look of alarm, she flapped calm-down hands and added, “Paid for by the townspeople, of course.”

“You’re not going,” Mayor Thornblossom said with breathtaking finality. She had a lot of practice decreeing that people couldn’t do things, and it showed.

One evening, three years before, her father had been stewing away, trying to solve a simple 3 percent dividend yield out loud, when Leeva had grown impatient and supplied the answer.

Since then, Mr. Thornblossom did his own adding and subtracting—he could handle those with his calculator—but anything more difficult he turned over to Leeva, and each morning, he left her a bookkeeping problem to solve.

Her mother zeroed in on “Famous in a Flash,” the final segment of Celebrities Tonight!, during which an ordinary person was plucked from obscurity and given a ten-year contract to live in Hollywood as a reality star.

“How long?” Leeva’s voice quavered. “For how long has there been a school in Nutsmore?”

But at the same time, like a rabbit sensing a wolf, she felt all of her senses quicken. Her eyes and ears crackled with new acuity.

“School teaches those subjects...Human, human...Human Inanities. Music, la-di-la, literature-shmiterature, poetry-shmoetry, art. All that nonsense.”

“But what is the money for? What are you going to do with it?”
“Do with it?” Mr. Thornblossom’s brow furrowed. “If I do something with it, I won’t have it.”

Episode after episode, they burst into rooms, careened through towns, and flew across continents in search of other people.

She’d left the premises exactly twice before, for the two exceptions allowed.

Mr. Thornblossom attempted to lift Leeva into the manager’s view. Never having held his daughter before, he searched in vain for a handle.

Finally, Leeva clambered onto the desk herself.

What are people for?
The question galvanized her already-crackling curiosity.

And Leeva had often seen books displayed behind the celebrities on her mother’s programs. But she’d never seen anything like the abundance in front of her.

“Your armchair is commodious,” she commented.
Commodious—both roomy and comfortable—was a word she’d learned two years before and had been trying to use since.

He drew out a chart titled, “Determining Reading Level.” “Starting at the top, read the sentences aloud until you get to one you can’t.”

“I guess you can read just fine. How much can you carry?”
“I don’t know. I exercise with Vim and Vigor at Any Age every day, so I’m pretty strong.”

Reader, that last one also shows the incredible, courageous, somber, hilarious, steadfast value of dogs, and after she read it, Leeva resolved to read seventy books about that someday.

Reader, that last one also shows the incredible, courageous, somber, hilarious, steadfast value of dogs, and after she read it, Leeva resolved to read seventy books about that someday.

“People are not just for getting money from and being famous to. People are for helping you find your dog who’s afraid of lightning, and for eating pickles with. They are for saving your life if you are going to be killed just because you’re a runt. For pretending to be the family of a hungry runaway boy so he can get a meal. People keep you from feeling lonely or scared or—”
“Where did you get that malarkey?” her mother asked.

He tapped the side of his head, as if he was about to impart something very wise.

Words had true power, Leeva realized. No wonder she searched the Nutsmore Weekly each Friday to learn a new one.
Before she could pursue this revelation, her mother snapped off her television.

Its heroine, Meg, had endured many trials trying to rescue the people she loved.

Friday’s vocabulary word had been Persist—to continue firmly in a course of action in spite of difficulty, opposition, or failure. The way Meg had persisted inspired Leeva now.

A few minutes later, her father struggled in, laden with bags.

I am infuriated. I am seething with rage. I am on fire with righteous indignation!

“Well, indignation is a kind of outrage, and the righteous part means the outrage is about something unfair.”