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Farenhight 454

Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury

Guy Montag is a fireman in the future in charge of burning books. On his way home from work one evening, he meets his new neighbor, an inquisitive 17-year-old girl named Clarisse McClellan.
She asks him about his job and tells him she comes from a strange family that does such peculiar things as talk to each other and walk places (being a pedestrian is, like reading, against the law). She asks
him if he is happy and then disappears into her house. The meeting disturbs Montag, who is not used to talking with people. He goes home and realizes he is not happy, that his appearance of happiness up
to this point has been just a mask. He finds his wife, Mildred, in bed listening to earplug radios, just as he has found her every night for the past two years. He finds an empty bottle of sleeping pills by her bed
and calls the emergency hospital just as a sonic boom from a squadron of jet bombers shakes the house. The hospital sends out two workers with machines that pump Mildred's stomach and replace all her blood
with fresh blood. Montag goes outside and listens to the laughter and the voices coming from the McClellan house. Montag goes in again and considers all that has happened to him that night and feels terribly disoriented as he takes a sleep lozenge and dozes off.

The next day, Mildred remembers nothing about her attempted suicide and denies it when Montag tries to tell her about it. He leaves for work and finds Clarisse outside walking in the rain, catching it in her mouth. She rubs a dandelion under her chin and says it means she's in love when the pollen rubs off on her. She rubs it under his chin, but no pollen rubs off. She asks him why he chose to be a fireman and says he is unlike the others she has met, who will not talk to her or listen to what she says to them. He tells her to get along to her appointment with her psychiatrist. After she is gone, he tilts his
head back and catches the rain in his mouth...