THWARTED!

 Fiorella is bed-bound because her left knee, the one she tried to crack a branch on last winter, is acting up again, which means that she is going crazy because she has seen all the TV shows and not only doesn't have anything to read, but can't work on her bedroom or art studio. To make it worse, she has no local friends to sympathize with and her current literary efforts are hidden in bundles and boxes God-only-knows-where. Like the Ancient Mariner, she is alone--alone on a wide, wide sea.

Okay, Fio will admit she's taken a few hobbling daytime steps into the kitchen for grapes and cookies, but she paid for her dinner with her knee twinging like a creaking door the whole time. Not that she hasn't had other, non-recorded ventures at night when there's no one around to rat her out--like the time she had to walk backwards to and from the bathroom so she wouldn't wet the bed, and the time she ended up on the floor and had to crawl back to her room.

But asking your girl to sit back in bed and stare at the ceiling is like asking a shooting star to stop in its tracks. Fiorella's not an athlete, but she was born for action, and right now, she should be working on her new home. Then, after she gets it in decent shape, she has to rip into her own special talents--art, writing, music, and languages.

And then there's the world in general, which Fio hopes to make a kinder place for her having been a resident thereof.