All Alone in the Universe by Lynne Rae Perkins

tippy-tapped over and lowered herself into a desk. She twirled some strands of hair around a finger and raised the corners of her mouth in an uncertain smile.
    “Well, here we all are,” said Miss Epler brightly. Then, as if she had just remembered something, she checked her watch and said, “Oh, my. Listen, I have to go make a very quick phone call. Do you mind? Can you hang on for a few minutes? I‧ll be right back. You girls chat.”
    She whirled out of the room and clip-clopped down the hall. There was the thud of a heavy door falling shut, then quiet.
    The room was still. Afternoon sunlight poured in silently under the yellowed shades. It gave an intricate golden edge to the hunched- over shape of Alice examining her split ends.

     
    “So,” I said, “what was your story about?”
    “A nuclear war,” she said.
    “Does everybody die?” I asked her.
    “All except the mutants,” she said.
    “We were supposed to leave a shred of hope,” I said. “For contrast.”
    Alice seemed surprised. “Mutants can be hopeful,” she said. “Mutation is a way of surviving.”
    “That might be true for viruses, but I‧m not sure it‧s exactly true for people,” I said. “Although maybe if you explain the scientific part…” Suddenly I had a realization. “Did you use this same story for science?”
    Alice nodded.
    “You creep! Why didn‧t I think of that?”
    Alice smiled one of her huge smiles. (Here is how Alice‧s outside appearance is like her insides: untidy and murky, with bright and dazzling flashes, which are her smiles on the outside—almost embarrassing in their wideness and joyfulness—and her understanding of subjects like math and science on the inside. Under her mousy brown strings of hair lives a great intelligence. Geometry is candy for Alice, but everyday life is a foreign country to her. Sometimes even walking looks like something she is trying out for the first time.)
    We sat there for a few minutes, waiting. I hummed and looked around the room. Alice held herself tensely, as if she would love to drum her fingers or jiggle her foot if only she could remember to do that.
    “So,” I said.
    I didn‧t know what I was going to say next but it seemed we might as well talk. I tried to think of something Alice and I had in common. I had to go pretty far back “Do you remember that time in Girl Scouts when we went horseback riding?” I asked.
    “Yes,” said Alice.
    “That was fun, wasn‧t it?” I said.
    Alice smiled, but she didn‧t say anything. I had expected to get at least two or three minutes out of this topic. Where was Miss Epler anyway? I tried again. “I wish there were horses around here,” I said. “I love horses.”
    “There‧s a horse farm in West Bird Township,” said Alice.
    “You‧re kidding,” I said. “Where?”
    Alice furrowed her dusky brow in thought and pulled the tips of hair she was sucking on from the corner of her mouth. “Somewhere out by that greenhouse on Walters Road. We‧ve driven by it in the car.”

     
    This piece of information pierced me like an arrow. I had spent whole years of my life, in grade school, reading over and over again about the Godolphin Arabian, Black Beauty, National Velvet, and all those ponies out on Chincoteague. I had dreamed of riding bareback over the dark moors or through the pounding surf at sunrise, but except for that one long-ago Girl Scout field trip, which was pretty short and pretty tame, I had hardly even been near a horse. How could I not have known that there were horses right in West Bird Township? Why hadn‧t anyone ever told me?
    At first I felt cheated. But then a different feeling, like putting on old clothes and finding money in the pockets, took over, and I was filled with a desire to see those horses.
    “Do you think you could find it?” I asked Alice. “Do you want to go there, on a hike?”
    And that is how I found myself, one Saturday in October, hiking to West Bird Township with Alice