by Nikki Steep

Created on: April 22, 2008

If I could live within any book, I would travel in time to Macomb, Georgia and move in with Jem and Scout and their father, Atticus Finch. I would be a poor cousin who had been sent to stay for the summer of 1932, but unlike Dill, who came to stay with his aunt next door, I would get to live right in the Finch household.

I would have a room in the attic; it would be hot, but on sultry summer evenings I would join the rest of the family on the porch, and Scout and I would run around the yard catching fireflies. Atticus would bring out the peach cobbler Calpurnia had left for us, and we would sit on the porch steps and over-fill our stomachs while we listened to Atticus explain his latest case to Jem, who wasn't sure whether or not he was proud of a father who was something as tame as a lawyer.

I would be there with Jem and Scout when they found the treasures left in the hole in the tree by Boo Radley, and instead of two carved figures, there would be three. One would be me. I would get swatted by Calpurnia, along with Dill and Scout, for trying to get Boo Radley to come out.

I would spend long, lazy summer days building inventions and making up plays and digging enormous holes. I would be there when the rabid dog came walking up the road, and I would be as impressed as Jem that Atticus would shoot a gun. I would touch the gun and say I wanted to one, but Atticus would say that no child of his would ever have his own gun until he knew how to handle it. I would be proud that he considered me one of his children. I would pretend he was really my father.

And I would be there when Atticus defended Tom Robinson; I would be in the balcony with all of Tom's friends and family, and when the trial was over, I would be sitting next to her when they said, "Stand up, Scout. Your father's passing." I would stand up, too, and later that night I would be right behind Jem when we snuck down to the jail to make sure Atticus, who was guarding Tom, was all right.

I would cry when it was the end of the summer and I had to go home, and I would be amazed when I got a real letter in the mail from Jem telling how Boo Radley had finally come out, just to save him and Scout. And then I finally understood why Atticus had told us all that it was a crime To Kill a Mockingbird.

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