Pounding on the front door woke me up. My clock said 6:15. I put on my bathrobe, wobbled down the stairs. My father was long gone to work. My mother creaked from her doorway: "Who this early?" I opened the door. For a half moment all I saw was the house across the street. Then I looked down. It was Dootsie. "Where's Cimmamum?" I called back to my mother, "It's the little girl I told you about. Dootsie." I brought her in. She wore pajamas under her coat. Her slippers were Miss Piggys. "Where's Cimmamum?" "Cinnamon's sleeping," I said. "Like you should be." My mother came down, stared at the slippers. "Dootsie? Where are your parents?" "Are you Stargirl's mummy?" said Dootsie. "I am." "Are you Starmummy?" We laughed. The doorbell rang. It was Mrs Pringle, eyes wild. "I'm so sorry. Dootsie's gone. Did she—" Then, looking past me: "Dootsie! Thank God!" She scooped up her daughter and breathlessly told us she had been listening to talk about Cinnamon for days, and when she found the empty bed this morning, the first place she thought of was her brother Fred's old house. Dootsie reached out and tugged on my mother's sleeve. "I want pancakes." Five minutes later Mrs Pringle, Dootsie, Cinnamon, and I were at the dining room table while my mother mixed pancake batter in the kitchen. "She's getting worse," Mrs Pringle was telling us. "I'm getting worse," said Dootsie. She was playing with Cinnamon, standing him up by his paws and making him dance. "It started with climbing out of her playpen," said Mrs Pringle. "Then getting lost at the mall. At the beach." She shuddered at a memory. "Now" – she looked at her daughter, wagged her head, smiled four parts love, one part exasperation – "she's learned how to unlock the front door." "Does she cry when she gets lost?" I said. "Never." "So she doesn't think she's lost." "Far as she's concerned, she's never been lost in her life. And there's nothing she can't do. She thinks she's thirty-five." Dootsie was in her own world. She lifted Cinnamon's feet off the table and let him swing. "Whee!" She twitched her nose against his. She giggled as he climbed to her shoulder and nosed into her ear, then sat on her head. Suddenly she yelped, "Wait! Let me!" She bolted for the oven as Cinnamon flew into my lap. My mother held her at the skillet while she poured batter onto the sputtering griddle. Mrs Pringle looked at the ceiling. "Help!"
