It is the twelfth of October. It is four o’clock in the afternoon.
Mia Delgado is nine years old. She is in a car with her mother and her father. The car is small and green. There are two suitcases in the car, and one of them is Mia’s suitcase. It is red.
The car is on a long road. On the left there is the sea. The sea is grey today. On the right there are trees. The trees are red, orange and yellow, because it is October.
—Are you happy, Mia? —her mother says.
—I don’t know, —Mia says.
—It is only one month, —her father says—. Our new house is not ready. In November you are with us again.
—I know, —Mia says.
Mia is not sad. She is not happy. She is tired, and she is a little bit nervous.
The car stops. They are in a small town. The name of the town is Harbor Point. It is a very small town in Maine. There is one school, one shop, one bakery and one library. There are about six hundred people in Harbor Point.
The car is on a street. The name of the street is Bell Street.
Bell Street is not long. There are nineteen houses on Bell Street. Some houses are white, some houses are yellow, and one house is blue.
The blue house is number seven.
—Here we are, —Mia’s father says.
The blue house is old. It is one hundred years old. There is a big porch in front of the house, and there are three stairs to the porch. There is a green door and there are eight windows.
In front of the house there is a garden. In the garden there are flowers, but they are not big now, because it is October. There is a tree in the garden. It is an apple tree. There are apples on the tree, and there are apples on the grass.
Mia’s grandmother is on the porch.
Her name is Rosa Delgado. She is sixty-nine years old. She is not very tall. She has got white hair and brown eyes. Today she is in a green dress and a brown coat.
—Mia! —Grandma Rosa says.
Mia opens the door of the car. She runs to the porch. Her grandmother is warm and she smells of apples and soup.
—You are very big now, —Grandma Rosa says.
—I am nine, —Mia says.
—Nine is very big.
Mia’s mother and father are in the house for twenty minutes. They drink tea in the kitchen. Then they are in the car again.
