The green thing was so close we could hear it crackle like fire, and it was bright as a sky rocket on fourth of July. Then, smash, it hit the ground near the back fence, and it sizzled like when Mommy puts hot pans in the sink.

    Tommy had stopped crying, and Janice stuck her head out the door, and she was madder 'n Dad when a dog stole his glove once.

    'What are you doing out there?' she said. I stuck out my tongue and pretended she wasn't there.

    She yelled at me some more, so I said, 'Wait, there's a green thing that fell in the yard, and it's near the fence, and Jamsey and I want to see what it is.'

'Annie! Get in here this minute. Tell Jamsey to go home.' 'I'm not going, stupid, until I can look at the green thing.' Jamsey and I jumped off the porch and ran so Janice couldn't catch me and make me go to bed. She always makes me go to bed.

    Where the green thing had smashed up, there was a pile of shiny stuff and something was moving near it. It was hard to see in the dark. It looked like the weasel I saw in the zoo, kind of, but it had big, big eyes. Bigger than my silver dollar and its skin was smooth like the cloth the sofa is made of.

    And it was hurting. I knew it was hurting and I asked Jamsey and he said he knew it too, and we both felt it was hurting, but we didn't know why. We wanted to help it very much, but it felt to us that we couldn't, but we wanted to anyway.

    Then Janice came up. She was mad because I had disobeyed her by not going to bed. When she saw the weasel-thing that was hurting, she got real scared. She told me and Jamsey to take a stick and hit it.

    We didn't want to, because it wasn't bad, and besides, it felt to us that we had better not. Janice said that she would make me go to bed without a drink of water if I didn't hit the thing with a stick, and I told her I didn't care.

    Then Janice came closer, and she said she would step on it herself. I told her that the thing didn't like her. She was making it mad. It felt that to me, and I told her but she said I was fibbing.

    The thing felt to me to tell her to stop, and I did, but she wouldn't. She went to step on it, and suddenly she was gone. Honest.

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