Alice Thinks

She is angry sure with me.

By now she knows sure I’m here. When she’s looked in all the other places she always knows I’m here and this is where she looks next.

But I’m here anyway. Here is out of her wayest. Here is not under her feet, making her mad at me, always under her feet is what I am when I’m not here or in some other hiding place where she usually looks first, before she remembers here and then looks here and finds me.

I don’t have many hiding places for our apartment is so small and she knows them all by now. But sometimes she forgets to look here and then, after a while, she forgets me, too. Some of the time, not most of the time. Most of the time she finds me, even if I’m here.

It’s very quiet in here, and outside, too. I listen really hard to know when she moves so I can be ready for her when she comes. It’s best to be ready for her when she comes.

Something tickles my face. It’s a dress. It’s her long blue one, the one with the cocoa stain I think that’s tickling me. But I mustn’t move. I must be quieter than the quietest mouse and I mustn’t move. That would give me away, tell her sure I am here. Wake her up and make her come here and find me.

She’s not in her bed this time. She’s on the floor. Tired sure. Tired of me under her feet all the time. Exhausted, she told me once. That’s what I make her. It’s got something to do with wearing her out.

I have to pee, though. I really have to pee.

And now I’m too late sure to go to school. It’s the second day in a row now I’ve not gone to school. Mrs. Ferguson will wonder where I am and will call her so tired on the floor and wake her up sure, the phone rings so loud.

It hasn’t today, though, for it’s already rung two or three or four times, I don’t know I haven’t counted the times, though I know how to count, that’s one of the things I do the best is what she’s told Mom, Mrs. Ferguson. And now Mom’s on the floor outside the bathroom and I really have to pee though I can’t for she’s in the way and I’ll wake her up sure if I try to go. She can smell me, she says, when I come too near and that wakes her up, she’s told me that more than once, though I haven’t counted those times either.

I have to get this dress away from my face, it really tickles, and, oh no, I made a noise. A shoe noise. I must have tipped it. Now I must be extra stiller than a mouse, even stiller than a chair because she must have heard that. She’s got very good ears, when she wants to. Even hears what I’m thinking she said once, and that must sure take very good ears.

I’m so still I’m not even breathing, and for a little while I forget that I have to pee. I listen and listen harder for a noise from her but there is none, I can’t hear any noise come back from her, she must be really tired sure not to wake up when the shoe tipped over, she’s heard noises like that before and found me right away like a cat I saw on television once finding a mouse just like that.

And now I breathe again, and now not again. I listen with my entire head for some noise from her but there is nothing. The shoe didn’t wake her up. She’ll be mad sure if I wake her up. Really mad. And for tipping over her shoe.

I really have to pee, though. Really badly.