The Girl in the Garden Shed

Hey, this is Felicity. :-)

So after our last post, we decided we needed more information. For example: Why is there a girl living in our garden shed? Who is she? How come she doesn't live in a house? Doesn't she mind that it's still chilly and damp here this time of year?

Instead of telling our guardian right away (um... we still kind of haven't...) we decided to go get more information. Because here's the thing, you wouldn't live in our garden shed unless you were pretty desperate and had nowhere else to go. It's a fine shed... for a shed... but it's more suited as a place to store a lawnmower than as a bedroom. If she was in that much trouble, we wanted to be careful not to make it worse for her.

Our yard is very small because we live in the city. The shed takes up, like, a quarter of it. (The deck takes up another half.) The whole yard has a tall privacy fence so it's pretty secure, but the fence is climb-able, as we've discovered when we forgot our front door keys. I'm not sure why the shed was even built, because we don't really use it much, but we're renters, so you just have to accept what you get. Our dog, April, has been kind of weird about going near the shed for about a week, so we think that's how long the girl has been there. For the past couple of days, we've caught a few glimpses, but she's pretty good at hiding.

So this evening, we decided to go try to talk to her. We waited till our guardian was out getting groceries, then we all trooped out into the yard. Then we stood awkwardly. How were we supposed to proceed? Bree knocked on the shed door. Nothing. It felt weird to just open the door. I mean, it's someone else's house now. Sort of. But eventually we did.

We saw movement at the back of the shed. She was trying to hide, but there are only so many places you can go in a small area. She'd set up a sleeping bag and a little lantern, and had a stack of books. I guess reading is how she's been occupying her time during the day until the neighbourhood goes to sleep. That way no one will see her.

She was very reluctant to talk. But we found out a few things. 1.) It's not our imagination, there is a girl in our shed. 2.) Her name is Clare. 3.) She is hiding from someone.

That's about it so far. Then she got jumpy and said we needed to leave. We asked if we could come back tomorrow, and she said yes. Maybe we'll find out more then...

Love,
Felicity