Kris giggled and stepped out of the gushing water. Water spouted from the open fire hydrant like a waterfall. The concrete was hot and burned her feet. She wanted to get back into the cool water, but she couldn’t. It was time to go home for supper.
Kris loved summer. Splashing in the water. Games of kick the can. Made up adventures with knights, princes, and princesses from the books she loved to read.
Of course, the boys always wanted her to be a princess instead of a knight. Kris hated being teased and challenged the biggest boy around to a sword fight. Her pretend sword knocked his legs out from under him and he fell to the ground with a thump. After that they let her play baseball with them too, even though she won all the time.
It was a beautiful day. A great day for baseball. Her reading would have to wait until after the game. The game would have to wait until after dinner. Kris hopped across the hot sidewalk to the grassy strip that ran around her building. She shoved her feet into her worn out tennis shoes and sprinted up the stairs. The two-bedroom apartment she shared with her father was on the third floor.
There was just the two of them, so she had her own room, but in the summertime, she spent most of her nights on the sofa. It was too hot to sleep in her room since they only had two air conditioners. There was one in her father’s bedroom, and one in the living room. Her father kept promising to get one for her room, but it hadn’t happened yet.
On rainy days she would lie on the sofa under the air conditioner and read. She loved to read. Any kind of book. When she started reading, she would forget about anything else. Often, she wouldn’t even hear her father coming to fetch her for dinner until his large soft hands reached down and pulled the pages from her fingers.
She climbed the stairs and crept down the hallway. Dragons and wolves hid in the shadows. She stalked slowly down the hallway swinging her imaginary sword in front of her to scare them away. With one last rush she leapt over the welcome mat moat, through the wooden gates, and into the safety of the castle.
It was dark inside the castle. She carefully closed and locked the gates and walked through the empty ball room towards the kitchen. Her father, the king, was cooking dinner. He wasn’t really a very good cook. Not compared to her mother. Mom died last year. Kris missed her mother and wished she could see her again. Thinking of her mom brought a tear to her eye. Angrily, she wiped it away. “If the boys don’t cry, I won’t either!” She told herself silently.
“Kris! Dinner is ready!” Her dad roared like a lion. Not a mean scary lion that a good knight should slice with her sword, but the big friendly furry lion that she wanted to tickle and cuddle with.
“I’m right here, dad!” she yelled back. She liked sneaking up on her dad and scaring him like that. She skipped her way around the table to the cupboard and began setting the table. “Hamburger Helper again?”
“Sorry, Princess. I had to work late and didn’t have time to cook anything else.”
“Don’t call me Princess! I’m a Knight!” She hated it when people called her a princess.
It was the fourth day in a row for Hamburger Helper, but she was hungry. A minute later was wiping the rest of the sauce off her plate with a piece of bread folded in half. When she was done, there wasn’t enough left on her plate to feed a starving mouse.
“May I be excused? I have to get ready for baseball!” She jumped up from the table before her father could answer. She ran to the sink, rinsed her plate, and set it on the counter next to the dish washer. Then she ran into her room.
It took her a minute to sort through her baseball caps. She picked just the right one to fit over her curly brown hair. The important part done, she grabbed a wrinkled t-shirt from the back of her desk chair, an old pair of blue jeans on the floor in the corner and peeled off her swimsuit to change clothes.
It was difficult to pull her t-shirt over the baseball cap, but a moment later she bounded from the room, her wet swimsuit now forgotten on her bed. She raced through the living room towards the door. Her baseball-glove-shield in one hand and the wooden bat-sword in the other.
“Princess!” Her father called as she rushed by. “We need to talk about something before you go running off again.”
Drat! She thought to herself, her escape had been foiled and now she was held captive by the tyrant king. With her head held high, the proud prisoner marched back into the throne room to receive her sentence.
“I got some news today at work.”
She heard the something wrong in his voice and forgot all about being a prisoner. “What’s wrong, dad?”
“Oh, nothing’s wrong, really.” It didn’t sound like nothing was wrong. “They just want me to do a special project for them. I’ll get a big bonus for doing it. Enough to get that air conditioner for you.” He paused and looked at her before he went on. “The problem is that the project is in St. Louis.”
“St. Louis!” She thought about the far away kingdom. “I don’t know anyone in St. Louis!”
“I’m afraid they won’t let me take you. There will be nobody to watch you. I already called Grandma Mable. She said that you could stay with her until I get back.”
“How long, dad?”
“I don’t know. Maybe a month?”
Grandma Mable was her mom’s mom. She had a farm near the mountains. It was almost all the way to West Virginia. Kris loved visiting the farm. She loved the animals, she loved swimming in the pond, and there were always lots of adventures. But a whole month? No friends around. No baseball games. No fair!
She knew it wasn’t fair to be angry at her father. She knew it wasn’t his fault. Still, she had to be angry at somebody. A moment later the door to her room slammed shut and Kris forgot all about her rule against crying.
