Dear Holden,

I miss you.

Daddy says it's 2789 miles from New York to Los Angeles. That's far far away, and that's how much I miss you.

D.B. has written me a letter. He has a new English girlfriend. He says you might come back soon.

Guess what! The day after you left for California Bernice, Shirley and I went to the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree. There were about a million people there.

There was a sign on a fence that said the tree had come all the way from Lake Ronkonkoma.

We got real close to the tree. It's huge.

We were standing there for like 5 minutes when Shirley suddenly cried, "Look, there is a little birdie in there!" At first I thought she was kidding, but she was right. It was a tiny bird with real big eyes, an owl or something. It was sitting on one of the lower branches. I thought it was maybe scared because it didn't move at all.

There was this little fence around the tree, so I started to climb over it. This old lady next to Bernice shouted, "Hey little girl, you're not supposed to climb over that fence!", but I didn't care. I walked up to the little bird and said "Hello".

Then I tried to cup my hands around it, but I was afraid it would bite me – it had this beak that looked real sharp. But it didn't do anything. It just sat there and looked at me with these big round eyes.

So I took it back to Shirley and Bernice.

Bernice had this satchel with her, so we put it in there real careful.

Then Shirley had an idea. "Let's take Maggie to the lagoon in Central Park West. I'm sure she'll like it there."

I forgot to tell you: We didn't know whether it was a boy owl or a girl owl, so we decided it was a girl owl. We called her Maggie.

So what we did then, we went to the park. When we got there it was already getting dark. It was a bit spooky. There were 5 or 6 ducks swimming in the lake. We sat Maggie on the branch of a tree close to the water so she could watch the ducks if she wanted to.

Bernice took a photo of Maggie with the new camera she got for Christmas, but it was already pretty dark.

Then when it was getting too dark we said good-bye to Maggie. She was still sitting on that branch. Sometimes she moved a little bit to and fro, but she didn't look at us – she just kept on looking at the ducks. She didn't seem to be scared anymore.

Daddy has glued together the pieces of the "Little Shirley Beans" record you gave me. I tried to play it on our record-player, but it didn't work. I've hung it on the wall over my bed.

Your loving sister

Phoebe Weatherfield Caulfield

PS: Phyllis Margulies does not want to give me any more belching lessons. I think she is jealous.