Chương 2: “Mr. Grumpy Goes To Breakfast”

Grumpy Goes To Breakfast" In the morning she woke up, checked that he was still there, and smiled. She had not imagined any of it. He was placed in the pocket of her school jumper and brought downstairs to the kitchen, where her mother was already dressed and already holding coffee. Her mother's name was Lauren. She was not much past thirty and moved like someone much older.

"Morning, bug." June climbed onto her chair.

"Morning, Mom. This is Mr. Grumpy." She pulled him from her pocket and set him on the table. Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation. Lauren looked at him. He looked back, because he looked at everything in the eyes.

"Pretty rock," Lauren said. He noted fourteen things about her in the following thirty seconds. The bags under her eyes. The coffee held with both hands. The stack of letters on the counter, face-down. The way she moved to the toaster and cut the crusts off June's toast before she'd been asked, without looking. June told him about school. He didn't care.

She told him anyway: the names of her classmates, the layout of the classroom, the teacher's habit of losing her pen and finding it behind her own ear, the fluorescent light above the third row that flickered when the heating came on. He catalogued all of it. For tactical purposes. System: Bond Strength: 5%. You listened to twenty-two minutes of information about a classroom. You know the name of the flickering light's third-row position. Don't pretend you weren't listening.