"I had a monumental idea this morning, but I didn't like it."

-Samuel Goldwyn

It was still dark outside when the little girl’s eyes popped open. She flung the leather jacket off of her. It smelled like peanuts and cigarettes. After only two seconds of shivering and goose bumps rapidly dotting her twiggy arms, she snatched it back and wrapped it around her again, whatever the smell. This house was freezing.
She looked up. There was a fly stuck in the blinds of the window above her. It sounded kind of like a cell phone on vibrate. The girl blew out her cheeks. This was boring. She sat up on the sofa that was more or less blue. The carpet was grey. Tentatively, she stuck her foot out and reached it to the floor. How weird! She’d slept with her socks and shoes on! And her day clothes! Funny!
The room she’d woken up in looked like halves of two separate rooms glued to each other. The half she was in was like a living room, while the other looked like a diminutive form of a kitchen that didn’t even have a dish washer! The idea!
Bored again. With the jacket still wrapped around her like a leather blanket, she crept off the couch and to the empty doorway that was h. She went through. To the left was a hallway, and the right was a door. She’d thought she’d try the door first. She turned the tarnished handle and—hooray!—a bathroom. It was tiny. The sink, toilet, and shower were crammed together; a person wouldn’t have to even walk to get from one to another. But right now, that did not matter. She was just relieved to find the bathroom first.
Next order of business: find the rest of the house. Off she scampered, no longer worried about noise. She had warmed up plenty with energizing curiosity, but still towed the jacket like the wake of discovery. She was disappointed, though, when she came to the end of the short hallway.
It was another door, which in of itself was promising enough, but the room behind it was a let-down. Same grey carpet, same white walls, all of which were bare, and the only furniture was a cross between a bed and couch. It was a table with one drawer beside it. The bed/couch had a bare mattress and no pillow. Dull.
The hallway went nowhere else, so she went back to the kitchen/living room hybrid. In one of the walls of the living room half, next to the sofa she’d slept on was a door she’d overlooked. It was only an empty closet. Bored again.
Then, before her, was the most incredible contraption. A little box with two wires coming out of the top was sitting on a table like the one in the bedroom she‘d found. The box had a screen, and definitely looked like a TV, but it was far too thick and not long enough. She sot out the remote and discovered it sitting on top of the TV-like box. She was experienced enough to turn it on—she could tell because the little red light came on—but she couldn’t find the channel buttons on the remote. So she turned it off.
The broken TV made a blip noise that was louder than she expected. A snort came from the direction of the kitchen. She turned around, her eyes wide with a mix of curiosity and terrible fear. It was the big man from last night. She remembered him giving her that hotdog and the peanut butter.

Jason woke up to two little fingers poking his nose. His eyes flickered open and followed the fingers till he saw those enormous green eyes. Surprised, he yelped and reeled back in the kitchen chair he fell asleep in last night. He crashed to the floor and the girl flew off. She dashed to the couch and clutched the ugly rabbit she’d abandoned there earlier.
Grumbling, Jason got up and righted the chair.
“I…er…sorry, I just…” he mumbled, “You got up early…” Jason added, noticing the timer on the oven read six-forty-five. “Really early.”
There was a pause. Unable to take it anymore, the little girl finally blurted, “I’m hungry.”
Jason perked at this. At first he thought, She can talk, and then, Breakfast. What do kids like for breakfast? He found leftover takeout, something green and smelling of eggs, a Salisbury steak TV dinner, and peanut butter. Further investigation of the cupboards produced three more unopened jars of peanut butter, one-and-a-half boxes of granola bars, and, by some miracle, an unopened box of plain cornflake cereal. No milk. Oh well.
The little girl didn’t seem to notice the scanty, slap-dash manner of the meal, only that it was real. Her tiny hand reached for the cereal, but Jason, as a last-minute decision, withheld. He had to do something the only way he knew how,
“You want me to give you some corn flanks?” he asked.
The girl frantically nodded.
He said, “Then you need to do something for me.”
Her eyes grew even larger, which Jason took to mean she was listening. “I need you to answer one question for me, and then you can have some breakfast. Ok?” The girl nodded.
“Alright. What’s your name?”
She swallowed before answering in a small but clear voice, “Jenny.”
Jason smiled with success. “Ok, Jenny,” he replied while retrieving a bowl and spoon, “have some cereal.”
Jenny and Jason dug in heartily to a breakfast of plain cornflakes and granola bars and washing it down with a spoonful of peanut butter each.