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thing.”
    Arlene and I rolled our eyes at Julie Bauer, the cheerful admissions director in the equally cheerful foyer full of silk claw-foot sofas, knick-knack cabinets and paisley carpet.
    "She said, 'Go ahead. It's your cow,'" Harold chortled. It had to be his wild eyebrows and crazy samurai look that made the girls laugh. He'd been quite a comedian with all the girls, starting way back in his Valley Oak High School volleyball coaching days.
    "Thanks for taking Dad so last minute," I said to Julie.
    Julie said, "I know your mother wanted Harold to stay in our main building, but unfortunately, our other facility had a flood today, so we're full inside."
    "Oh. Should I take Music Man home?" My shoulder bunched up in a knot.
    "Music Man?"
    I explained. "I only call him 'Dad' to his face. He taught high school for years and played Harold Hill in a school production of the Music Man. Imagine him dancing and singing in his warbly baritone about trouble in River City. And he always claimed that the main function of his job, keeping kids busy until their hormones calmed down, could just as easily have been accomplished in a pool hall.”
    Julie's smile dimmed a fraction. "Well, I'm sure the Music Man will get along fine in one of the apartments outside. We'll send someone out with his medicines three times a day. Don't you worry. He seems like a big, cuddly teddy bear."
    Teddy bear? Sure. One that could make a kid jump a foot with a single roar. I still had a dent in my head from hitting the underside of our big kitchen table when Dad had exploded at Hank for "borrowing" forty dollars from Dad's wallet in 1977. I turned to go.
    "Rhonda," Dad stopped at the hall door, a girl on either side of him, a little pang in his voice. "You coming to eat breakfast with me?"
    "Sorry, Dad. Gotta work."
    "But where's the cafeteria? I need a big breakfast, you know. Ever since my farm days."
    "Don't worry, Dad. I'll tell them to kill a pig for you.”
    *        *        *
    Headed towards home and bed, I passed by a Roams and Rambles Bookstore and made a U-turn. It galled me to think of spending money on the evil Reynard Jackson book, but I had to see the damage for myself. I reached the door at 11:02, just as an iPod-zoned-out clerk turned the sign to CLOSED . I banged on the glass, to no avail.
    At home in my tiny condo, I checked Amazon online and found the depressing truth that Memory Wars really had an identical synopsis, plotline, and first page as my book. Except for the character names. And they were temporarily sold out of copies, as were my other go-to book sellers.
    Then I googled Reynard Jackson and found the usual stuff about his books and where to buy them, and a couple of sites run by fans: ReynardtheMysteryFox.com and Everything You Need to Know about Mr. Foxy Jackson.net. Both of them spouted the same paragraph of useless information, in different fonts. Even Wikipedia had the same inane blurb. No one had a picture of the author or contact information.
    There was no further biographic information about him anywhere in cyberspace. And there was no proof of his gender. In fact, other than the press referring to "his" books in book reviews, Reynard could have been a man, a woman or a Labrador retriever. There were, however, millions of speculations on blogs and websites about these very things, as well as his whereabouts, favorite corn chips and sexual orientation. Tabloid articles claimed Reynard sightings galore.
    Then there were the book reviews on Amazon and other bookseller websites. The glowing New York Times book review of his latest book—no, my book attributed to that snake—made my blood boil. But what could I do? Write the publisher? And say what? Pretty please hand back my plot line and characters? Pay me instead of him? Right.
    I checked my email. Two agents and an editor said my practical jokesending them my full MS had cost them precious reading time. One asked if I had a good lawyer. My blog was worse.