Where the Forest Meets the Stars

Jo works for 15 hours the next day. She feels the need to prove to herself that she’s not sick. She worries about Ursa all day. When she returns home, there’s no sign of Ursa or Little Bear. Shortly thereafter, Gabriel Nash comes over and confronts her. He claims Jo dumped the alien girl and dog on him, but Jo denies it. He also tells her to fix the streetlamp in front of her house to ward off “hooligans.”

Ursa is still at Gabriel’s house, reading War and Peace. Gabriel lives with and cares for his sick mother, who also considers Ursa smart for her age. Gabriel has gone through the same process as Jo, searching the missing children’s websites and considering how to delicately call the police. Jo tells Gabriel how Ursa ran away when she called the police and how the encounter with the deputy went.

Gabriel tells Jo about Ursa’s day on the farm. She got to see newborn kittens, which she declared as her second miracle. She read Shakespeare to find names for the kittens. Jo tells him about Ursa reading her ornithology textbook. They speculate that high-level reading is her way of “[surviving] her screwed-up family” (63).