“Well, Sister, I’m not going to ask any little half-baked girls if they like what I do with my life. Here’s your mother, talk to her.” He handed the phone to my mother and she tried to calm me down. “Your father will bring a car and leave it for you. Bring some friends home if you like. You’re going to love the house, darling. It’s really a wonderful old place. We’ll have fun restoring it.”

“I have friends in Franklin, Mother. Val thinks I’m going to write for him all summer. I can’t believe you’d do this to me. It’s the end of April. You should have told me. How could you do this without telling me?”

“He did it, darling. You know how he is.”

So they had done it to me again. Uprooted me without notice. Destroyed my life. Ended everything I had worked to create. Always before I had been dragged along without complaining, but this time something snapped. I went back into my room and let Lilly finish cutting my hair. She had created a new hairstyle for me. It was very short, as short as a boy’s, a little cap of reddish gold curls that would not be in my way when I was swimming. Where would I swim in Dunleith, Alabama? Where would I go? Who would I talk to?

When Lilly finished my haircut I went back into the hall and called my parents back. “Did anyone tell Val I won’t be back to write my column? Did anyone think of that?”

“You can call him and charge it to our phone. I’m sorry you’ll be inconvenienced, darling, but this is going to be the best for everyone.”

“Sister.” It was my father again. “Our old friends the Hallidays own the paper in Dunleith. As soon as you get there we’ll go down and tell them you want a job.”

“I don’t want a job, Daddy. I want my own newspaper. I want my own desk next to Mr. Valentine’s. How could you do this to me? Why didn’t you tell me you were doing this?” But he had hung up. He always hung up if you tried to yell at him. Criticism rolled off him like water off a duck’s back, he told my brothers or me or anyone who didn’t like anything he decided to do. But then, he was the oldest son of a woman who thought she could walk on water. So maybe it wasn’t his fault either.