Alpacas! I don’t want alpacas. I want a horse like you promised.” Feet braced apart, hands jammed in my pockets, I faced Mom and Dr. Ferguson. I still thought of him as Dr. Ferguson even though he and my mom had been married nearly three months, and I was supposed to call him Ted.

      “Lisa!” My mother cut in sharply. “I never promised you a horse. I said maybe we could get a horse after Ted and I got married.” She smiled at him, “But we’ve decided to raise alpacas now. Starting a business like that is expensive. I’m afraid the horse will have to wait for a few years. Besides, you’ll like the alpacas.”

      I stamped my foot. “A few years! I’ll be grown up by then. I won’t like alpacas. I’ll hate them.” I stopped for a moment. “What is an alpaca anyway?”

      Dr. Ferguson grinned. “Lisa, isn’t it a bit hasty to hate something when you don’t even know what it is? “I do know,” I blurted out. “I just remembered. They’re a big ugly bird like an ostrich, aren’t they?” I was sure that’s what I’d seen in the school encyclopedia.

      Dr. Ferguson winked at Mom. “Let’s hope they can’t fly over those fences we’re putting up.” Mom smiled and was about to say something, but stopped.

      Yesterday, when I had come home from school, workmen had been enclosing one of our pastures with a closely knit wire fence. I’d thought it was just something to do with Dr. Ferguson’s veterinary practice, which he was now running from the farm.

      So much had changed around our place since Dr. Ferguson had married my mother. Some changes, I had to admit, were for the better. For one thing, we weren’t always having to count our pennies to see if we could make it to the end of the month. Sometimes we even went out for dinner now. That was unheard of when Mom and I were on our own after Dad left. Mom worked at home now, helping Dr. Ferguson in his clinic. Even I had been given a job after school and on the weekends, so I could earn some spending money.

      But some changes were definitely for the worse. My mother acted like a teenager in love. It was embarrassing! I tried to keep my friends away. How do you explain grownups who are always holding hands and smiling at each other with googly eyes? The magic floating between them made me feel like an intruder. They hardly knew I existed anymore.

      My cousin, Paul, thinks they’re neat. He must be getting to the romantic stage too. Even though he’s just my age, nearly twelve, he’s suddenly started slicking his hair back with some sort of goo. He sure talks about girls a lot. Last week he asked Diane, another girl in our class, to a show. She wouldn’t go though, because she’d just gotten braces and was scared she’d end up with popcorn stuck in them. That would be embarrassing!

      I was sitting at the kitchen table, staring out the window and daydreaming as usual. I glanced at Mom and Dr. Ferguson out of the corner of my eye. They were at it again, their heads together, smiling and talking in low voices. Yes, I really didn’t matter to Mom anymore, except when she needed to remind me of something.

      She looked over at me. “Hurry up, Lisa, you’ll be late for your baby-sitting course,” she reminded me, as if reading my thoughts.

      As I trudged slowly upstairs to get my jacket, my dog Roper trotted behind me, hopeful that a jacket for me meant a walk for him.

      “Later, Roper,” I promised, patting his head.

      Ever since Tiffy, the big, gray, hairy cat, had arrived with Dr. Ferguson, Roper had been sticking to me like glue. One of Roper’s favorite pastimes had been chasing cats—that is, until Tiffy arrived. Tiffy’s favorite pastime was chasing dogs. After the first painful encounter left Roper’s nose scratched, he’d stayed out of her way.

      I sat on my bed, absently stroking the golden grasshopper on the chain around my neck. I always found a strange comfort in running my fingers over the glowing golden metal insect that Gagar had left me last year. Though its power had long since disappeared, the grasshopper held a lot of wonderful memories.

      My other hand fondled one of Roper’s silky ears. “You and I could have gone back to the planet Ylepithon with Gagar. Mom probably wouldn’t even miss us.”

      Roper banged his tail on the floor, but I’m not so sure he really would have enjoyed going to Ylepithon with Gagar. Roper had suffered badly when Paul and I had used him as the chief food source for the fleas we had collected for Gagar.

      That adventure had happened last summer, when Gagar, from the planet Ylepithon, had visited Paul and me one night when we were sleeping in our farmyard under the stars.

      Gager had asked us to collect fleas for his planet, where fleas were used to generate flying power. He had explained that Ylepithon’s flea colonies were dying off. Then Gagar had given us the golden grasshopper to enable us to fly and promised that if we collected all the fleas he needed, he would re-charge the golden grasshopper for us permanently.

      I should say “me”. Paul never would try flying with the golden grasshopper. But my memories of flying with the golden grasshopper were wonderful, except for the last time, when the flea capacitor had abruptly run out of power. I had plummeted into a haystack a few kilometers away and had had to walk home in the dark.

      “Li . . . sa,” my mother’s voice floated up through the heat register, our effective if old-fashioned intercom. “You’re late! What’s keeping you?” Then more insistently, “Have you done your chores?”

      Omigosh, the chores! I’d forgotten all about them. Yanking my jacket out of the closet, I ran downstairs with Roper at my heels.

      “I’ll do the chores as soon as I get back. I’ll be home by five o’clock,” I promised, running for the door.

      “Lisa!”