Lightning

he often popped in on Laura when she was doing chores or in those rare moments when she was given time for homework, and he insisted on reading aloud the more bizarre articles.
    She thought these stories were stupid, illogical, pointless, but she could not tell him so. She had learned that he would not be offended if she said his newspapers were rubbish. Instead he'd regard her pityingly; then with maddening patience, with an infuriating know-it-all manner found only in the overeducated and totally ignorant, he would proceed to explain how the world worked. At length. Repeatedly. "Laura, you've got a lot to learn. The big shots who run things in Washington,
they
know about the aliens and the secrets of Atlantis…"
    As different as Flora was from Mike, they shared one belief: that the purpose of sheltering a foster child was to obtain a free servant. Laura was expected to clean, do laundry, iron clothes, and cook.
    Their own daughter—Hazel, an only child—was two years older than Laura and thoroughly spoiled. Hazel never cooked, washed dishes, did laundry, or cleaned house. Though she was just fourteen, she had perfectly manicured, painted fingernails and toenails. If you had deducted from her age the number of hours she had spent primping in front of a mirror, she would have been only five years old.
    "On laundry day," she explained on Laura's first day in the Teagel house, "you must press
my
clothes first. And always be sure that you hang them in my closet arranged according to color."
    I've read this book and seen this movie, Laura thought. Gad, I've got the lead in
Cinderella!
    "I'm going to be a major movie star or a model," Hazel said. "So my face, hands, and body are my future. I've got to protect them."
    When Mrs. Ince—the wire-thin, whippet-faced child-welfare worker assigned to the case—paid a scheduled visit to the Teagel house on Saturday morning, September 16, Laura intended to demand to be returned to Mcilroy Home. The threat posed by Willy Sheener had come to seem less of a problem than everyday life with the Teagels.
    Mrs. Ince arrived on schedule to find Flora washing the first dishes she had washed in two weeks. Laura was sitting at the kitchen table, apparently working a crossword puzzle that in fact had been shoved into her hands only when the doorbell had rung.
    In that portion of the visit devoted to a private interview with Laura in her bedroom, Mrs. Ince refused to believe what she was told about Laura's load of housework. "But dear, Mr. and Mrs. Teagel are exemplary foster parents. You don't look to me as if you've been worked to the bone. You've even gained a few pounds."
    "I didn't accuse them of starving me," Laura said. "But I never have time for schoolwork. I go to bed every night exhausted—"
    "Besides," Mrs. Ince interrupted, "foster parents are expected not merely to house children but to
raise
them, which means teaching manners and deportment, instilling good values and good work habits."
    Mrs. Ince was hopeless.
    Laura resorted to the Ackersons' plan for shedding an unwanted foster family. She began to clean haphazardly. When she was done with the dishes, they were spotted and streaked. She ironed wrinkles
into
Hazel's clothes.
    Because the destruction of most of her book collection had taught her a profound respect for property, Laura could not break dishes or anything else that belonged to the Teagels, but for that part of the Ackerson Plan she substituted scorn and disrespect. Working a puzzle, Flora asked for a six-letter word meaning "a species of ox," and Laura said, "Teagel." When Mike began to recount a flying-saucer story he had read in the
Enquirer
, she interrupted to spin a tale about mutated mole men living secretly in the local supermarket. To Hazel, Laura suggested that her big break in show business might best be achieved by applying to serve as Ernest Borgnine's stand-in: "You're a dead-ringer for him, Hazel. They've
got
to hire you!"
    Her scorn led swiftly to a spanking. With his big, callused hands Mike had no need of a paddle. He thumped her across the bottom, but she bit her lip and refused to give him the satisfaction of her tears. Watching from the kitchen doorway, Flora said, "Mike, that's enough. Don't mark her." He quit reluctantly only when his wife entered the room and stayed his hand.
    That night Laura had difficulty sleeping. For the first time she had employed her love of words, the power of language, to achieve a desired effect, and the