The truck drove slowly down the highway as others vehicles around it slowed the traffic down. Apparently, nobody bothered to notice that the bulky truck was the only thing different among the small cars in were rushing to go somewhere but were stuck in this traffic jam.

"Aunt Clara, are we there yet?" Alice asked as she sat in the front seat of the truck on a booster chair.

"No, Alice, but we'll be there soon. Just wait." Clara replied. After a few more minutes of idleness, Clara groaned and leaned back into her seat. Today's traffic the unluckiest of all bad luck. Why did I even accept the request for help with the house in the first place? "Alice, you can eat the cookies that I put in the glove department."

Alice scooted forward and opened the glove box. There was a pack of chocolate chip cookies, and Alice took them out. "Do you have water?"

This drive will take longer than I expected. Clara reached for the mesh pocket on the back of her seat for something to drink. "Here you go. Open it slowly, or else you'll spill everything." Clara looked out her car window to see the sun shining beautifully. "Then again, maybe it's not so much of a bad place after all. Except for the horrible traffic, you can get really get a great view of here. Oh look, the cars are moving. Sit tightly, Alice." Alice put her food down as Clara stepped on the gas pedal.

"How long do we have to wait?" Alice asked.

Clara had a bright smile on her face. "Well, if traffic's going to speed up, I think that we'll be there by an hour." Eventually, Clara drove down the exit lane of the highway and saw familiar houses in the distance.

Within an hour, Clara stopped the truck in front of periwinkle house. A man came out of the front door and waited for Clara and Alice to get out. Clara put the car in the parking position, applied the brakes and took her keys out of the ignition. "Dad, we're here! We need help with carrying the stuff."

"Oh okay!" Dr. Gehabich yelled back. "Everyone, we need your help with carrying the stuff." More people came out the front door and took the furniture and stuff off the truck and into the house. "Thank you so much for coming, Clara. I don't know what would've happened if it wasn't for you."

"Don't worry, Dad. I promised to help you, so here I am. Alice, come over here. Say hi to Grandfather."

"Hi Grandfather." Alice greeted. Dr. Gehabich smiled as he patted her on the head. "Cookies?" she offered.

"No thanks, dear. I see that you've grown a lot. Why don't you step aside while we fix everything?" Alice nodded to her grandfather's request and stood by the door.

Everyone inside was as busy as a colony of ants. Furniture moved in and out, carpets and rugs shifted often to people's footsteps, and the shelves relocated quite often due to insufficient planning. This was certainly a very busy moving in process, for the work seemed like it was never getting done.

"Alice, can you step aside? We need to apply the wallpaper." Clara requested. Alice nodded again and walked away to an empty space.

"Move over, dear. The TV needs to go here," a neighbor asked. Alice moved away once more, but then someone else would always tell her to step aside. Alice got tired of moving here and there in the house, so she stepped outside to the front of the house. Everyone was so busy that nobody noticed she wandered off into the street.

~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~

The clerk scanned the items on the conveyor belt as she put them into bags. When she finished scanning the last item, the clerk pushed a few buttons on the screen. "Your final price is on the computer screen."

"Prices seem to have went up recently," muttered the teenage girl under her breath. She took out money bills and coins, and handed them all to the cashier. "Here's exact change." After putting the bags of gardening supplies that she just bought into the shopping cart and then grabbing the receipt, the girl grabbed the hand of a young boy next to her and walked outside together. "Shun, I promise buy you something next time. I don't have enough money left on me right now. Besides, we're not shopping for fun today. I have to work later."

"Fine." Shun followed her as she pushed the cart away and took the bags of supplies. "Unei-nee, what's all this for? Let me help you."

"Shun, even one bag is too heavy for you to carry. I promised a neighbor that I'd help her buy gardening supplies to help with today's park beautification. Besides, it's a sunny day. Great for gardening!" Unei replied. Soon, they arrived at the park, where people were putting gloves on and getting ready. "Good morning, everyone. Here are the supplies and the flowers that we're planting."

Some people took a trowel while others took spades and shovels. Unei took a map of the park out and assigned which plants were going to be planted where.

"Gardenias go near the front gate. Peonies should be over at the back gate. A ring of marigolds will circle around the fountain. Daisies belong near these picnic tables. Jasmines belong near those picnic tables..." Once Unei finished giving out orders, everyone went to their designated stations.

Shun went over to the flowers and poked them. "They're all so different. Why can't we buy just one kind and make the problem easier to solve?"

Unei knelt next to Shun. "Because a variety of different things look much better. It would very boring if all the flowers were the same everywhere. People get tired of seeing the same thing over and over, so I chose a lot of flowers. Now step aside, and don't touch them."

Unei handed the designated flowers and flower seeds to each person. Soon, all the flowers were gone, and someone yelled to Unei, "We need watering cans and hedge clippers!"

"Hedge clippers? Well, I hope you guys brought them today because I certainly didn't buy them." Luckily, there were hedge clippers in the storage box. "Shun, could you please fill some watering cans with water? Then go to each station and water the flowers for them."

"Oh." Shun took the watering cans and went to the nearest water faucet and turned on the water. He managed to fill every watering can when he just realized that he didn't know where he was. "Unei-nee? Where are you?"

No one else was around, and Shun realized that he was lost.

~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~X~

At Dr. Gehabich's house, all the work was finally finished. "Finally, a break." Clara sighed, but then realized something. "Alice? Where's Alice?" Everyone looked around the house, but she was nowhere to be seen.

"Could she have gone outside?" the doctor asked.

"If so, then that's bad." someone replied. "It's starting to rain again." The woman was right. The sky became a patch of soft gray now.

Meanwhile, Unei paced around as she waited for Shun to come back. "People, we have bad news. I told Shun to fill some watering cans for us, but he hasn't come back."

"Well, the good news is that the upcoming rain will do the watering. The bad news is that Shun's going to catch a cold." someone commented. Unei fainted when she heard about the rain. "Help! Unei fainted!"

As people rushed over to help Unei, Shun looked up to the sky and saw that it was going to rain. I should stay under a tree for now. While carrying the heavy watering cans, Shun sat under a nearby tree to stay dry.

Alice also wandered her way to the park and noticed the cloudy sky as well. I thought Aunt Clara said it would be sunny today. Alice ran to the first tree she saw and sat next to the tree trunk. Raindrops descended to the ground and soon made puddles on the sidewalk. Alice trembled, for she wasn't used to wet, rainy weather. She became scared and went to see the other side of the tree.

Shun, hearing some rustling sounds behind him, stood up. He turned around, face to face with another girl. Alice also looked back at him.

"Who are you?"