Free Eyes in the Fishbowl by Zilpha Keatley Snyder Page B

do right then, so I started down the Mall towards the west entrance. But somewhere along the way, I drifted into the indoor garden. There was still a quarter of an hour until closing time, and I guess I was thinking that if I waited around there was a chance I might see Sara again.
    The indoor garden, or the Garden Court as it was called, was one of the most unusual things about Alcott-Simpson’s. It was a large area in the middle of the street floor that looked so much like a real garden you could almost believe it was, unless you looked up and saw the ceiling instead of the sky. The walks were made of something that looked like stone. There were stretches of green carpeting that looked a lot like grass, and dozens of potted shrubs and bushes and even small trees. Here and there there were singing birds in cages and hanging baskets full of fancy flowers like orchids and begonias. The smaller plantings were always being changed to fit the seasons, and at Christmas time it was always made into a winter garden with artificial ice and snow. All through the garden there were little alcoves with benches for shoppers to sit down for a few minutes and catch their breath. Right in the middle of the garden there was a big fountain.
    The center part of the fountain was a pyramid of stone cupids and dolphins. The water came out of the dolphins’ mouths and arched down into a large pool. Around the pool was a stone wall about two feet high and wide enough to make a comfortable place to sit. It was always a good place to kill a few extra minutes.
    I sat down on the stone wall and wiggled my fingers in the water to make the goldfish curious. I hadn’t seen anyone near the fountain as I came up, but I’d only been sitting there for a few minutes when a toy ship came bobbing into sight from the other side of the pyramid. It was a typical Alcott-Simpson toy, a beautiful scale model of an old Spanish galleon, with three masts full of tiny sails, and ropes and rigging in all the right places. For a second I wondered if someone had left it there, but then I realized that it was moving too fast to be only drifting. Someone on the other side of the stone pyramid had given it a push or else blown into its sails, probably some little kid whose mother had just bought it for him on the fourth floor and who couldn’t wait until he got home to try it out. I started listening then, and sure enough, in a minute I heard something—little kids’ voices whispering right on the other side of the fountain. Because of the noise of the splashing water, I couldn’t make out what they were saying; but I thought I could tell that they were giggling a little, as if they thought they were playing a trick on me—maybe making me think the ship was sailing around under its own power. I decided to go along with the gag, so when the ship got clear around to my side I leaned way out, caught it, turned it around and blew it back the way it had come. It went bobbing back around the fountain, and in a minute I heard giggling again, and in another minute it came sailing back. I was waiting for it to come alongside, and thinking that this time I’d pick it up and carry it back to them just to keep the game from getting monotonous, when I heard the closing bell begin to ring. So I left the game unfinished and hurried off to take a last look through the homeward bound crowds. I didn’t even think much more about it at the time.

Chapter 8
    T HAT NIGHT WHILE I was trying to translate some French sentences, I kept thinking about Sara. I’d translate a few words and then just sit there for several minutes staring into space. After a while I began to realize that I was thinking about Sara all the time, even when I was looking up words and practicing pronunciations. I could be right in the middle of some word, with all the old brain cells clicking away normally, but in some strange sort of way, Sara was there, too, like a shadow hovering right there in the back of my mind.