[15. Write about the last time you splashed through mud puddles.]

Sama hushed for a moment. 

“Can I tell you something?”

“Of course!” 

Sama kept her whisper. “Someone came today to talk about where to go after the hospital. She said I don’t have to go back to Uncle Ram.”

“Where would you go?”

“There’s houses to go live in, and they make sure you get a meal and have a room, and make sure you come home at night and are safe.”

“Do you want to live there?”

“I don’t want to go back to Uncle Ram’s. It’s nowhere, and I don’t have any friends, and he’s horrible to both of us, and it just makes me want to be anywhere, or nowhere. I hate it!”

“He tries really hard! He wants us to do well.”

“He’s mean. He doesn’t care what I want. He just wants me to do all the school I can and more.”

“I suppose that doesn’t sound so bad to me. But I like school.”

“I only liked art class. And English, since the teacher was boring and let me draw when she talked. And everyone picked on me. Just because I didn’t wear the school uniform right.”

“Where are these houses?”

“There’s one up in the village, and three here in the town. One of the nurses here helps run the one in the village. I like her. She’s nice.”

“All the nurses here are nice, aren’t they?”

“Not most of the ones at night. That’s when they’re mean.  But she’s nice, even though she works nights most of the time.”

“What do you want to do there?”

“I like art. I love to draw and paint.”

“Why not do it at home?”

“Uncle Ram thinks it’s silly. That’s why he’s so mean to me and not to you. You’re good at math and science and things. He used to slap me if he caught me drawing on my papers when I was reading.”

“Oh no! He didn’t!” 

Meera realized how much she didn’t know about Uncle Ram. His distant listlessness of late just rubbed it in, how much he cared and how much it bothered him when things didn’t work his way. She felt like he was becoming a mean and bitter old man, not the fearsome figure he had made himself when they first came to live with him.