It took about three
seconds for what Doni said to sink through my gotta-hurry-for-the-last-day-of-school
panic. I had an excuse. The fuzzy-headed, awkward kid in front of me was not
the little girl in a Minnie Mouse costume in the frame on Gram's mantle. Aunt
Lenore wasn't real big on photos. She wasn't real big on writing home, either.
"You're London? My
cousin? Lenore and Thad's daughter?"
My first thought was
to ask where her parents were, because obviously they weren't anywhere in
sight. I liked Aunt Lenore and Uncle Thad, although I had never seen them
face-to-face. They called whenever they were in the States, going from one
investigative assignment to another, and sent pictures maybe once every twenty
months or so. Usually those were pictures someone else took. They had an
aversion to cameras that weren't used for their research. They sent cool
presents from places no tourist ever visited, and books by the ton. All of us
learned to read at least two languages besides English so we could make use of
those books.
I had the sense not
to ask Doni where her folks were, while my brain skidded through questions and
possibilities and discarded most of them in the space of a few seconds. I'm not
bragging when I say that. Gram claims I got electrocuted by a computer when I
was a baby, crawling all over Granddad's desk and teething on the mouse cord. I've
had an affinity for the frustrating, fascinating gizmos ever since. Part of
that affinity meant my brain wanted to process a dozen different tracks at the
same time, searching for information. Unlike computers, I had a tendency to get
sidetracked by anything that caught my attention. Call it ADHD if you want, but
I always preferred calling it the Neighborlee Effect.
(See how distracted I just got, telling you about me, when this is Doni's story?)
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