Chapter 2
In the morning, I felt a gentle hand on my shoulder, shaking me. I woke up and walked to the bathroom to brush my teeth. “Good morning, dear,” the orphanage lady said to me in a dainty voice. Her long brown hair dangled like Tarzan on top of me. I could see kindness in her hazel eyes.
“Good morning, mademoiselle,” I replied, admiring her kindness towards me. How could someone be so kind yet wake someone up at six o’ clock in the morning? Very soon, a line of children snaked its way around the hallway and into the bathroom.
“Hurry! Hurry!” they cried. I spat all the toothpaste out of my mouth and into the sink. “Move it! Move it!” they shouted. I rinsed my mouth with water. “Faster! Faster!” they yelled.
“Stop,” a deep voice bellowed. I looked all the way to the end of the line. A man, or rather a boy, was carrying and mop in one hand and a broom in the other. He looked rather awkward because he was wearing an apron smothered with jam and whipped cream. He also had a lot of paintbrushes in the pockets of his apron. His name tag said, “Alfred”.
Ms. Odette, the lady, sent a me off to school with a few girls. I stared
at the map she had given me, but I couldn’t seem to find Rue du Theatre.
At school, I raised my hand to answer every question but a snobby
rich girl shouted out all of the answers. The girl’s name was Anastasie. She
wore a different dress everyday, according to my new friend, Charlotte. Today she wore a pretty pink dress with bows and ruffles and ribbons. The girls from the orphanage were looked down upon. We wore the same blue dress every single day. They were just plain blue, but in the orphanage, it was a luxury to even have clothes to wear. The babies were naked, but they were covered in blankets all day.
Anastasie boasted to us about her pretty dresses and notebooks. One day, she made Charlotte cry by saying that the plain blue dress was very ugly. Why did she pick on Charlotte? Why didn’t she insult someone else? I comforted her and brought to the teacher, Ms. Cecile. She told us that no matter what we wore, it wouldn’t matter because our hearts were pure, and that was what really mattered.

When Charlotte, Aimee, Valentina, Diane, Juliette, and I walked home together, I found a franc on the ground. I picked it up and put it in my pocket. On the other side of the street, I could see stylish women and men in formal suits walking together. A few children, giggling and laughing, skipped alongside their rich parents. I longed to be one of those
children.
“I’m tired,” Aimee announced, sitting down on a bench next to a
young boy. He was dressed in a plaid shirt and was eating his bread, while
reading the news. VALUBLE DIAMOND STOLEN FROM LOUVRE was the headline. I asked him if I could read it after him, and he said that I could.
“Hey, isn’t that Alfred from the orphanage?” she asked. We all ignored her. When I read the news, I read about what I had spectacled last night. They described Acorn as a haze of white and they had detected me as some movement. WAIT. ACORN!!!!!! Where was he, and what was he doing? After truckloads of worrying, I finally decided that he could fend for himself and that he could rob the garbage cans by himself.
When we got to Fifth Ave., the richest street in Paris, we stopped walking. We gazed up at the tall buildings in silence, but we were interrupted by a shout and a howl. I heard a very familiar bark in the air. “Look! A dog!” Charlotte pointed. I stumbled this way and that, and before you could say Help, Acorn was in my arms, thanks to Gravity.
“Great catch!” a few boys shouted at me. Pretty soon, all of my friends and the boys were clapping. “Do you want to play ball?” one of the boys asked me. To them, I bet that I was hardly any different from them except for the fact that they were boys, but I was a girl.
Back at the orphanage, all the boys organized a game of baseball, and the girls braided each other’s hair. I played baseball with the boys because braiding hair was one of my really, really, weak spots. I might
have accidentally pulled out Charlotte’s hair doing it! I did not want to play baseball after a while, although I was the best player on one of the teams. I opened the old, dusty toy box in the corner. I found a Rubik’s Cube, which I brought to the lady, Ms. Odette, who was in charge of the girls.
I asked her what it was, and she told me the story of it: I was a young girl back when I got this for my ninth birthday. It was my last birthday present from my parents, and it was the last birthday present I ever got. After that, I lost my parents, and I was sent here to live. I saw how cruelly the people in charge of the orphanage were treating the children, and I made it my goal to help children. That is why I am talking to you right now.
I gasped in wonder. I never knew that this, of all things could lay behind someone as joyful as Ms. Odette. I jumped off of her lap and sat in a corner with the Rubik’s Cube. A few minutes later, I gave her the Rubik’s Cube. Now it was her turn to gasp. “Wow!” she yelped. “I’ve been waiting to solve this in about twenty years! And a little girl named Marie solves it instead!”
“Ms. Odette, are you mad at me?” I said, in my most innocent voice. I even put on my kitty eyes.
“Mad? Mad??” she exclaimed. “How could I be mad??? In fact, I
am overjoyed!!!”
Suddenly, a loud whacking interrupted the other girls. They shrieked and screamed. Alfred cried, “Dog on the lose! Everyone out of the way!”
I stepped between him and the dog and said, “Please don’t hurt him, he is my friend.” Carrying Acorn in my arms, Alfred and I argued for a long, long, time.
I eventually won the debate and the other girls began to put to work on Acorn. They put little pink bows into his hair, but I didn’t see the point of doing it. All he did was shake them out anyway. That night, Acorn slept at my feet. I slept soundly because Acorn added an extra sense of security. I vowed that the next day I would buy a birthday gift for Ms. Odette with the franc I found on the ground.