Lulu and the Hedgehog in the Rain Page 4
“I thought you said the garbage men wouldn’t take it,” said Lulu.
“I bought them some doughnuts,” said the Bossy Man. “Then they did.”
“Oh,” said Lulu, and then she said, “I think the hedgehog is lost.”
“Ah,” said the Bossy Man. “A pity.”
“You couldn’t have shoveled him up with your garbage?”
“No,” said the Bossy Man.
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely. Almost absolutely.”
“Almost?”
“Yes, almost.”
No hedgehog ate the saucers of cat food anymore. No small round shape hurried out into the dusk. One evening, the New Old Lady discovered Suzy the cat gobbling bread and milk.
“Was it you all the time?” cried the New Old Lady.
Suzy licked her milky jaws and smiled.
“Shoo!” cried the New Old Lady angrily. “I’m not feeding cats!”
So that was that.
Still Lulu did not give up. One morning, when the air was so still and frosty you could hear the leaves as they fell one by one from the trees, she spent a long time listening beside the hedgehog house.
Mellie found her there.
“It’s almost tumbled down,” Mellie said, looking at the little house. “If you didn’t know what it was, you wouldn’t know what it was! Can you hear anything?”
“I’m not sure,” said Lulu. “Perhaps hedgehogs don’t always snore. Perhaps some-times they just do very quiet breathing.”
“Couldn’t you reach inside and see if you could feel him?”
“No! Because what if I woke him up? You shouldn’t wake up hibernating animals. Sometimes they can’t go to sleep again. Then they die.”
“Anyway, I don’t think he’s there,” said Mellie, after bending down to listen for herself. “I can’t hear a thing. And where else could he be?”
Lulu didn’t answer, but she thought of the Bossy Man’s trash-bagged leaves. She thought of the pond with the ramp out of place and she thought of Charlie’s gate.
But also she remembered Henry’s purple palace.
Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps, thought Lulu, Sonic-for-Short was safely tucked up in Henry’s purple palace.
Chapter Six
Spring
One day Lulu’s two bouncy dogs bounced on the nearly tumbled-down hedgehog house and it collapsed completely. There was no hedgehog inside.
Mellie hugged Lulu and did not say “I told you so.”
Lulu thought, It might still be all right. There is still Henry’s.
She did not dare say this thought out loud. She didn’t want Henry taking off the roof of the palace to check. She just hoped.
Lulu hoped all winter. All through the exciting days coming up to Christmas. All through the dark of January. All through the snow that followed. All through the long wet thaw.
Everyone else forgot the hedgehog, but Lulu kept waiting and hoping until spring.
One day in early spring Lulu’s father took a long look at his garden and he said, “It’s the worst in the street!”
It was. Several horrible-looking cat-food saucers. The Bossy Man’s sticks, all blown around. The Bossy Man’s leaves, a great dark slimy heap. The hedgehog house all tumbled down.
“Time to tidy up!” said Lulu’s father.
The saucers were washed.
The sticks were gathered.
A roll of garden trash bags appeared, and a shovel and a rake.
“The Bossy Man said if you give the garbage men doughnuts they will take it away,” said Lulu.
“I don’t think I could afford all the doughnuts they would want to take this,” said Lulu’s father. “I’ll drive it down to the recycling center.”
He shoveled for ages while Lulu and Mellie held open the bags and raked the scattered leaves back into heaps. While they were busy Arthur and Charlie and Henry arrived.
Then at last Lulu said what she had been hoping all winter.
“Do you think Sonic-for-Short could be at your garden, Henry?”
“Who?” asked Henry, staring. “Oh, I remember! No.”
“Not in that house you made?”
“Definitely not!”
“Are you sure?”
“’Course I’m sure,” said Henry. “Me and Charlie took that house apart ages ago to make jumps for our skateboard park.”
Then everybody saw Lulu’s face.
Lulu’s father took charge. He got the boys out of the way by making them help him carry the filled-up bags up to his car. He gave Mellie the shovel and Lulu a hug and said, “You two rake up those last few leaves! I’ll take it all away and come back by the pizza place. We’ll have a pizza party because … because … Help me out here, Mellie! Why do we need a party just now?”
An early bee flew across the garden.
“Because it’s spring,” said Mellie, and she began to hurry with her raking to get the job done.
But Lulu watched the bee. She watched the bee and sniffed a lot and rubbed her eyes and felt a warmth in the sunshine that she hadn’t felt for months, and then she heard Mellie say, “Lulu!”
“I’m all right,” said Lulu. “I’m not crying if that’s what you thi—”
“No! No! Lulu, look! First I thought it was an old brush or something … Lulu, please look!”
So Lulu gave one last sniff and one last rub and turned to look and it was Sonic-for-Short.
Under the last of the leaves, deep in a hollow, as if he had melted into the ground.
Sonic-for-Short.
And they could see him breathing.
Lulu and Mellie fell to their knees. They stared. They thought of the winter that the hedgehog had survived. Winds so strong they blew Charlie off his bike. Christmas all alone. Freezing cold and frost and snow.
They fetched the boys and the New Old Lady and the Bossy Man. They telephoned Nan.
“Wonderful!” said Nan.
“Excellent!” said the Bossy Man.
“Amazing!” said the New Old Lady. “They usually disappear!”
Lulu thought of the times to come. More snail collecting, more worrying, more battles. Then she looked up and she thought, Perhaps not so many battles.
The Hedgehog Club was back in action.
Charlie had run to close his gate.
Arthur had dashed away to check the ramp in the pond.
Henry was staggering back from the car with a sack of leaves. The Bossy Man helped him to tip them out. Mellie and the New Old Lady began sorting out the driest.
Gently Lulu began to tuck up the sleeping hedgehog with handfuls of leaves. The boys fetched a second bag, and then a third. They piled them around her. Then they told each other Shush! and tiptoed away.
And after that the Hedgehog Club had a pizza party, because it was spring!
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this book or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2012 by Hilary McKay
Illustrations © 2012 by Priscilla Lamont
978-1-4976-9886-4
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