Free All Fall Down by Annie Reed Page A

balance. The not-so-nice man was standing in the doorway
peering out of his house into the garage.
    Had he seen her? She ducked her head down
and tried to keep quiet, but her heart was beating so hard, he had
to hear it.
    She shouldn't be here.
She'd forgotten the rest of Mommy's rules, like don't touch things that don't belong to you. Missy was doing more than touching things that
didn't belong to her. She was in someone else's garage, and she
didn't think the not-so-nice man would be okay with her being here
even if all she wanted to do was look at the kittens.
    The overhead light in the garage came on.
This time Missy couldn't help the little cry that escaped her
lips.
    "Who's in here?" the not-so-nice man
asked.
    Missy kept quiet. So did the kittens. Where
was their momma? Had something happened to her like to Daddy's
cat?
    "I'm gonna find you," the man said. "Whoever
you are, you got no right to be in here."
    Missy heard him scuff down the steps from
the house to the garage. He sounded angry, but his words sounded
funny, too, like they were all blurred together.
    She wished she could just run out of the
garage and through the fence into her own backyard, but the
not-so-nice man was between her and the back door. The only thing
she could do was stay quiet and hope that he wouldn't find her.
    One of the kittens inside the box cried,
then another.
    "What the hell?" the man said.
    No, no, no. Missy wanted to tell the kittens
to be quiet, but they were all crying now, scared little yelps,
like they were as afraid of the not-so-nice many as Missy was.
    The not-so-nice man stomped toward the front
of the garage where she was hiding, pushing things out of his way
and saying bad words over and over again. Missy wanted to run away,
run and keep on running, but she couldn't leave the kittens alone
with someone who sounded so angry.
    The man rounded a stack of boxes and glared
down at Missy. He looked twice as big as her daddy. He was sweaty
with mean little eyes, and he smelled bad, like the rotten smell in
the garage only worse. He wore dirty overalls with no shirt on
underneath, and his arms and shoulders were hairy. Somehow all that
dark, dirty hair on all that bare skin scared Missy more than
anything, and she knew she'd been right to think he was a
not-so-nice man.
    His eyes narrowed. "You're the little girl
from next door. What the hell you doing in my garage?"
    Missy didn't say anything, just held onto
the box with the kittens.
    "Answer me!"
    Missy's daddy never shouted at her. She felt
tears well up in her eyes. Her legs were shaking so bad she almost
fell down. She didn't think she'd be able to speak, but somehow she
managed. "I just wanted to see the kittens," she said.
    "See the kittens," the man repeated. "What,
are you stupid or something? Your parents didn't teach you better
than to break into someone else's house?"
    "I didn't break anything." It wasn't exactly
a lie. She did plan to put his fence back together to make it
better than it had been before, just like her daddy made other
people's furniture better than before.
    "Damn cat."
    The man grabbed the box from her, and this
time Missy did fall down. She watched helplessly as the man reached
one fat had inside the opening and hauled out a kitten.
    It was the smallest kitten Missy had ever
seen. No bigger than the man's palm, it had little itty-bitty legs.
Its eyes were open but it didn't look like it could see very well.
It was orange and white, and when it opened its mouth to yelp, it
had sharp little teeth inside no bigger than a splinter.
    "Here," the man said. "Now you seen a
kitten. Go home."
    The kitten looked so scared. Where was its
momma?
    "What are you going to do with it?" Missy
asked.
    "Whatever the hell I want to," the man said.
"Damn strays. Don't need no more strays in the world."
    Missy understood then what the man would do
to the kitten. His hand was so big and the kitten was so small. He
could crush it just like Missy could crush the grasshoppers