Giant Girl Rampages Through Town

I took the name of this journal from a newspaper clipping on my wall. The headline is "Giant girl rampages through town". Embarrassing, right? Dr. Crisp says the media like to take a small story and blow it up into something big. Like how they keep saying I'm 18 feet tall. Puh-leeze!!! I'm 17 feet 10 and one half inches so stop exaggerating!!! Dr. Crisp thinks I might hit 18 feet by my sixteenth birthday (November 22nd if you want to buy me a gift) but I'm not there yet so don't go around saying Melly Mills is 18 feet tall until Melly Mills damn well says you can!!!

And if Melly Mills wanted to rampage through a town, believe me, that town would never be the same again. What really happened was, I walked calmly into town and people freeeeeeaked out. But that was just cuz they never met anyone like me before. And I'd never met anyone at all, really, except Ma and Pa. I'd never left our farm, or the middle acres of our farm, cuz Ma and Pa said folks on the outside would try to hurt me. But it was hard to stay there all on my own after Pa died and I buried his body next to Ma's in the plot beside their house.

I had well water and enough food to get me through the winter, plenty of milking and egg collecting to keep me busy, wood to chop for the stove, and my big pile of hay to sleep on in the barn. I didn't need nothing from outside the farm until Spring. That's when the fields needed planting and Pa wasn't around to buy the seed anymore. I figured he would have wanted me to look after the crops like I was already looking after the animals and myself.

So I squeezed into Ma and Pa's house, where the door is normal sized and I hadn't been able to fit through since I was seven. I got stuck, of course, and had to break the frame to get free. I broke a whole lot of furniture and other stuff too, crawling through the house on my hands and knees. If Ma or Pa were still around to see what a mess I'd made, they would have hollered at me good!!!

Ma and Pa kept their money in a cookie jar in the kitchen. I guess that's safe to say now, since it's not there anymore. I grabbed the jar off the refrigerator, stuffed it into the side pocket of my blouse, and backed out the way I'd come in. It's just a good thing they didn't keep their money up in their bedroom cuz that rickety old staircase would have never held my weight.

That's when I calmly strolled into town and, well, you know the rest. Helicopters, sharpshooters, tranquilizer guns, and I woke up in the town square with all my limbs chained to different lamp posts and little people running all around me. It was like that book, Gulliver's Travels, that Ma used to read to me.

The state said I couldn't live on my own anymore cuz I'm not 18 yet, no matter how big I am. And the state is represented by the person of shrill Mrs. Johansson, She Who Will Not Be Ignored. So the Appletons are my temporary guardians for now. They're strange but nice, and they have a son named Jay who is about my age. Jay doesn't talk much or at least not to me. I think he's shy.

The Appletons own an orchard on the west side of my family's farm, so I can stay here in my barn and just let them look in on me when they want. Mr. Appleton says I can help with the fruit picking in the Fall. I think he's just glad for somebody who can reach the tall branches. Being taller than everybody else is finally going to be good for something!!!