e continued now to search websites, but his mind was still half on Buelo (the
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name he’d always used for his grandfather, short for “abuelo”—his mother
hated the “childish” nickname, which was one reason Andrew continued to use
it). His grandfather was in trouble. Andrew feared the home builder guys (he’d
had nightmares in which they murdered Buelo) but also what Buelo might do.
He knew how stubborn his grandfather could be, how pissed off and nasty he
could get. At the same time, he hoped Buelo would get angry enough to stop the
builders.
ut Andrew knew what the situation was: his dad had given him the facts. The
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land on which Buelo’s house stood belonged to the city, it had only been rented,
many years ago, to the colony of “nature lovers” which his grandfather was a
member of, and now the city had sold the land to some developers. Andrew had
noticed how ugly and puny the small bungalows were compared to the huge brick
houses rising up all around them. He knew his grandfather would lose the battle.
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e looked around his spacious new bedroom, which still smelled of fresh paint.
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It didn’t feel like his own room. They’d only moved in a few months ago from an
old house near the center of town. He missed familiar things like the dark lines
along the wood floor edges, which had once been roads for his toy cars. Or the
spiderwebbed corners of windows. These new windows had no dusty, webby
corners.
ndrew turned back to the nature website. Earlier that day, following the site’s
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instructions, he’d captured a bunch of the carpenter ants and put them in a quart
bottle. He would now create an artificial habitat for the ants inside the bottle,
using some wood from their home nest. Then he’d connect this bottle to a
smaller one and put insect parts and other savory things in the second bottle for
the ants to eat. And he would observe the ants’ behavior in their new home.
eatriz dropped off some groceries and left, and Gil began to prepare for his
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evening rounds of visiting as many of the remaining colony residents as he could.
He did this to keep the protest movement going, focused now on the march to the
construction site planned for the following week. He did not go visiting for the
company--although he enjoyed it, somehow he no longer needed it.