Free Kira-Kira by Cynthia Kadohata

like such a horrible thing. I'd known many children who had gotten the measles. From what I'd heard, anemia was not so terrible either. Auntie Fumi had been anemic once. And yet my parents were very worried. I decided that was because they loved us so much, even though we weren't always good. Lynn was better behaved than I was, of course, and so was Sam. But even if I got sick, I knew my parents would be very worried about me.
    I was sleepy, but at the plant I tried to stay awake so that I could watch out for the thug. My mother hadn't said anything else about him. She hurried inside for her shower. A short time later the laundry girl's mother parked across the lot. I remembered that my mother had said not to talk to the girl. But she waved at me, so I had to wave back. Then she walked over, so I had to lower the window. She peered into the car at Sam. "I have a brother too, but he's older," she said.
    I had to talk to her now, because it would have been rude not to. "His name is Sam. I'm Katie Takeshima."
    "I'm Silly Kilgore."
    "What kind of name is Silly?"
    "It's short for Sylvia." Silly was pale, with kind of messy pale hair and pale eyes. Very skinny, like me.
    "Oh. My name is short for Katarina." Actually, it was short for Katherine. I wasn't exactly precisely telling a lie, because even though my birth certificate said Katherine, Lynn had always told me that my real name was Katarina.
    "Are you going to come here every day?"
    "Just for a week. Then I have to go to summer school because my grades aren't so good. I'm going to go to Africa and study animals when I get big."
    "I'm going to be a doctor."
    "Can girls be doctors?"
    "I can."
    "Really?" I paused. That was news to me. I had never seen a girl doctor. I looked around. "Where's the thug?"
    "They had some trouble at the other plant. He had to go there." She added proudly, "My mother backs having a union."
    I didn't answer.
    "I'd better get to work," Silly said. She ran off.
    I slept for a while, woke up and fed Sammy a little rice, slept awhile more, and then woke up for good as the sun rose over the fields. I decided to walk through the gate and explore the plant.
    The plant was a long rectangular building with a few windows high up the walls. On one side of the plant a garbage can lay in the dirt. I set it up and climbed on it. If I stood on my tippytoes, I could just see into one of the narrow windows. Everyone inside was dressed in white. At first I couldn't pick out my mother, but then I saw her small back. She was the tiniest worker in the factory She expertly sliced a couple of legs off the body of a chicken. Then she sliced the drumsticks from the thighs and sent the drumsticks down one conveyor belt and the thighs down another. At the exact moment that she finished, another chicken arrived and she cut the legs off it. Over and over. I couldn't see her face, but the faces of the workers I could see were blank, perfectly so. Most of the workers were women.
    I could just make out a sign titled the three rules of meat processing . Underneath the title it said: 1. Hygiene. 2. Hygiene. 3. Hygiene . My mother sometimes said proudly that this plant was the cleanest in Georgia. Some of the poultry plants were supposed to be filthy. She said that the chickens at this plant were special gourmet chickens that Mr. Lyndon's wife served guests at the mansion. We'd never eaten any of these special gourmet chickens. Every Christmas there was a lottery and an employee won two chickens. But my mother had never won.
    I heard a cracking sound, and the next thing I knew, the corroded metal of the garbage can began to collapse and I fell to the ground. I lay on the ground for a moment, the way my father had taught me to do when I fell. "Make sure you're not hurt before you move," he had told me. When I sat up, I saw my legs were bloody. The thug was standing over me frowning. He had permanent frown lines between his eyes, and he was taller even than my father.
    He looked behind me,