She didn’t talk about her call with Sam, and I kept quiet about the vet visit. Monday, as soon as the house was empty, I left to roam the neighborhood. It was time to start acting like a human and gather some clothes for myself. A pair of socks pulled from a back porch, some worn and ratty boots pulled from a garage, a t-shirt pulled from a line. I picked things I knew weren’t likely to be missed. The pants were harder, but I finally found a pair dangling from the branches of a barren tree. The tree belonged to one of the houses closer to campus, one that tended to blare music late into the night. I looked around and, hoping no one was watching, shifted my hands and limbs just enough to climb the tree. Pants in my mouth, I jogged home. By Tuesday evening, I had a set of clothes. With clothes, I could shift into my skin and get a job. I had some mechanical knowledge, thanks to the books Gabby brought me. Now, I needed to figure out who would hire me. Since Gabby found a car by reading the paper, I decided I would spend the next day looking at the paper to see if it had any information about jobs.
