McGraw©Hill/Focus/Dorp Dead p.567////R7N34/ ***** This is the account that was found after it was all over.

The very confused spelling had been corrected out of respect for

the young writer, Gilly Ground. This story starts and middles and ends with me. I guess I

was always what is called different, or way out, or a little

nuts. Like me or not, that's how it is. Oh, I look like any

other eleven©year©old with a thatch of roughly cut brown hair,

the correct number of fingers and toes, green eyes that can open

or shut with sun or sleep, and a sort of over©all foxy face,

narrow at the chin. But I have a secret that nobody, not my dead

grandmother or Mrs. Heister at the orphanage or my various

unfortunate teachers, ever guessed. I am ferociously intelligent

for my age and at ten I hide this. It is a weapon for defense as

comforting as a very sharp knife worn between the skin and the

shirt. When a person hasn't money in the pocket, good leather to

walk around in, clothes that are his own, and a home address to

back him up, I figure he ahs to have something else©©anything.

And I'm lucky. I'm not just bright, I'm brilliant, the way the

sun is at noon. This is not a boast. It's the truth. It's my

gold, my shelter, and my pride. It's completely my possession

and I save it like an old miser to spend later. I purposely

never learn to spell, which for the simple indicates stupidity.