Here is the fourth in my Chapter 0 series. Let’s check out what Zabby was doing right before the start of the book…

~*~

Finally, I’m allowed to leave the diner. This has been the worst waitressing shift ever. (Except not really, because we all know that’s a pretty tough category to win.)

I get outside, and I just want to go home and take a nap, but then I see them: that group of boys who were hitting on me. Fantastic. I duck behind a car like a criminal or something and slink away from the street. I’m not dealing with those guys again. Nope.

I guess taking the long way home isn’t that terrible. Chagrin Heights is so tiny it’s nearly impossible to be far away from anything. I’ll just cut through this residential block and be home in—

“Oh, hello, Zabby! How are you dear?”

Can’t catch a break today. I pull on a smile so Mrs. Fisher doesn’t think I’m rude. “I’m fine.” But then I notice that she’s walking Tucker, and I smile for real. “Hey there, good boy,” I say, kneeling down to pet him. Tucker is so small my fingers can’t reach him if I’m standing. He licks my cheek. Cute.

“What do you make of it?” Mrs. Fisher says, and I realize that she’s been trying to have a conversation with me, and I wasn’t listening.

“I’m sorry,” I say quickly. “Of what?”

“Well, the clocks!” she gushes. You’d think she was talking about the birth of a grandchild.

I absolutely don’t have the energy to meet her level of enthusiasm, and the truth is I’m sick and tired of hearing about how no one’s clock works. “I don’t know what to make of it,” I say, but then Mrs. Fisher looks crestfallen and I feel like a monster for ruining her mood. I stand up and try to make it right. “That is, it’s such a mystery I don’t know what to think. It’s really something, isn’t it? I can’t remember a clock being wrong.”

Her smile is back. Good. “You would have been in pigtails at the time,” she says. “Oh, Lord, you were a cute little kid!”

“Thank you, Mrs. Fisher.”

“Well, I won’t be keeping you, dear,” she says.

I say my goodbyes to her and Tucker, kind of wishing that I could have played with her dog a little longer. I want a dog, but Dad would never let me, and it’s his house so I really can’t do anything about it.

Someday when I move out, the first thing I’ll do is get a dog.

But that’s not going to happen for a long time. For right now, all I want is a nap, some music, and for no one to ask me about the stupid clocks ever again.

~*~

A Book Without Dragons is just barely over a month away!