Found Things (4 page)

“There,” Mama say, and brushed off her hands. We were done for the month. She gathered up the spades and her gloves and pushed herself up. “Pick up the extra one, honey.”

I lifted the box with the last daffodil pot in it and followed Mama a few yards to June R. Wadleigh's stone. June R. Wadleigh was a family friend, and her stone sat far enough away to respect the family boundaries but close enough to peek in its windows.

Mama got to work digging up last month's flower and putting in the daffodil. As always, after she dropped the new flower in the hole, she say to me, “Now you fill in the dirt and pat it down.”

When I finished, Mama sprinkled the last of the water on June R. Wadleigh's daffodil. Then she handed me the spades and gloves. “Take these back to the car. I'll be there soon.”

That's what usually happened every time we went to the family. Mama told me to go on to the car, and then Daddy and I packed up while Mama stayed behind a few minutes, tidying up everything one last time before we left.

Daddy stepped out of the car. I followed him to the trunk, and as he took the box from me, I glanced beyond him and saw Mama with her hand on June R. Wadleigh's stone. What she did look so familiar, but also so new. It seemed like I noticed for the very first time that Mama always spent the last moments of each visit with June R. Wadleigh.

“Move that for me, will you?” Daddy say, pointing his chin at a bag of books inside the trunk. I knew a distraction when I heard one.

“Daddy, why does Mama always touch that stone before we go?” I asked, clearing a space for the watering can.

“That stone? Well, your mama felt very close to June.”

Mama pushed her hair off her face and started walking back to the car, so I had to talk as fast as possible. “You mean close like best friends?”

He looked over his shoulder, in Mama's direction, and then back at me. “River, you're almost in high school, right?” he asked and winked, though there was no smile on his face. I didn't know why he was pretending to move things around in the trunk when everything already fit. Then he leaned against the taillight and his eyes looked very sad.

“They were close like sisters.”

That was all Daddy say, but from that little bit I learned something new about Mama. That she, too, have a secret.

We got into the car. Daddy turned down the volume on the baseball game before Mama had to tell him to, and we left until next month. All the way home I thought about what Daddy had told me about Mama's friend June. Mama once had a best friend as close to her as a sister.

Meadow Lark was becoming my friend. We both had something to be afraid of and we both sat W and we both liked Cheetos. She gave me a yellow flower bead, and we floated that perfect feather with our wishes down the river. I hoped that she and I, like Mama and June, could become best friends just like sisters.

Chapter 5

“This came out of my
grampa's mouth,” Daniel Bunch say, as he waved his hand right in front of my face. I knew what it was—a molar with a silver filling in it—but I made a point of not looking at it.

We sat at big butcher-block tables in art class, eight kids at a table, on stools that teetered and thudded. The tables were big enough that we could spread out our collages. I set mine longways in front of me so it wouldn't touch anyone else's, especially Daniel Bunch's. Daniel sat across from me. I don't know why Ms. Zucchero sat us at the same table, because she had to know that something with one eye open slept between us.

“That's so
interesting
,” Sonya Mittell say. Sonya had worn a bra in fourth grade, and she needed to. Then kids started calling her Sonya Barbie, but not for long, because she liked it.

“Brave guy, nerves of steel,” Kevin Kale say, sitting kitty-corner to me.

Normally, when kids talk too much, Ms. Zucchero gave a warning. But maybe because it was Friday, or art was last period today, or the school year was almost over, she only say, “When your collage is done, please tack it to the wall.”

Ms. Zucchero's hands were always holding something—carrots or paintbrushes or fabric. Today she held a crochet hook that went in and out of a green square speckled white. She wound the yarn around her finger and plunged the needle back into the square. She usually finished one square during each class. Ms. Zucchero told us that when all the squares were done, she was going sew them all together to make a blanket for next winter.

“My grampa hated dentists,” Daniel say, because he knew Kevin's daddy was a dentist. The air coming from Daniel's way smelled like bacon grease.

I squeezed a blob of glue onto my collage, next to the porcelain doll head with no nose, and set the bottle in front of me.

Daniel snapped his fingers. “Glue,” he say, and I slid the bottle to the center of the table. As I did, I saw what else he had on his collage. A stick with a dirty string wound around it, a Twinkie wrapper, some coins, and a jagged chunk of rock that he say come from a meteor.

If our collages were supposed to tell a story, the story Daniel Bunch's told was “What I Picked Up on My Way to School This Morning.” That rock looked no different from one you'd find balancing on a sewer grate after a storm. Nobody at our table told Daniel it was everyday cement from the curb, though that's what everybody was thinking.

When I saw all those ordinary things Daniel had on his collage, it made me think he wasn't the wolf he wanted me to believe he was. He was more like a rat hiding from the wolf. A dirty stick with a string wrapped around it and a Twinkie wrapper, a tarnished nickel, and a rock from the street wouldn't catch a wolf's eye. Those were things a rat would stuff in its nest. Then he labeled everything with that rat-scratch scrawl of his that looked like it was written with a claw.

“My grampa's tough. He didn't even use anestesia,” Daniel say.

Anes-
thee
-sia
, I thought, spreading the glue with my finger. Then, before I could stop myself, I asked him, “You mean, he pull that tooth out himself?”

Daniel stopped talking. Everyone stopped talking. Stopped cutting, gluing, pressing, breathing.

He stared at me. “You eavesdropping?” he say very normal so that Ms. Zucchero wouldn't hear, but I felt his threat closing around my throat.

I shook my head.

“You better not. Not listening, not looking.”

“Eavesdropping is
rude
,” Sonya say in that voice of hers as thin as plastic wrap, and she looked at Daniel like
Now do you like me?

Daniel say, “Now she'll whine to big brother that I was mean to her,” and then bumped his head with his fist. “Forgot—big brother isn't here. Because he couldn't keep his car on the road.”

That was the hardest part to hear about that night—that Theron was drunk when he drove into the river with Daniel in the car.

“And if he ever comes back, they'll electrocute him,” Sonya say.

“Zzzap-Zap!”
Daniel say, and clutched his hand over his heart, like he was shocked.

Kevin laughed. He was afraid of Daniel. In fourth grade Daniel punched him every morning before school started, because Daniel didn't like that Kevin got all As.

My eyes stung, but I blinked back the tears and say, “My brother didn't do anything wrong. He leave because—”

“He's a wimp,” Daniel say.

“What kind of accent is that, anyway?” Sonya asked. “I can't sleep trying to figure it out.”

“It's called fake,” Daniel say, and blew on his collage. His bacon-grease smell drifted across the table at me. “Don't let her fool you.”

“It's funny she never used to talk like that. She used to talk like us,” Sonya say.

My face felt so hot and my neck prickled. The clock above Ms. Zucchero's desk say almost two-fifteen. Then the bell would ring, and school would be over, and I could leave. I dropped the yellow flower bead that Meadow Lark gave me into the glue on my collage. The bead was the last thing I wanted to put on it. Grains of sand had tucked deep among the flower petals, and when I stopped pressing, the petals left a pink-and-white imprint on my fingertip. In a few minutes the glue would be dry.

“River reminds me of the way my grandfather from the low country talked,” Ms. Zucchero say. “I haven't heard my granddaddy's voice for a long, long time.”

I blew on my collage to hide my smile. Ms. Zucchero had come as a replacement teacher in April, a few weeks after Theron left. I wondered—would she be as nice to me if she knew what Theron did? If she knew what they say he did—that he was drunk and drove Daniel into the river?

The glue was almost clear now, making the collage almost done. No one at my table was talking anymore, because nobody wanted to tell a better story than the one about Daniel's molar or the rock from a meteor. When I tapped the glue once more around the flower bead, it felt dry. So I hopped off the chair and started to pick my collage off the table, being careful that it didn't touch anyone else's, especially Daniel's.

“Wait,” Sonya say, and looked around the table. “What does everyone think of her collage? She worked so hard on it.”

I thought Sonya was trying to be nice after what Ms. Zucchero say, so I held up my collage.

Daniel looked at it like he was inspecting a gold ring, and then he say, “It stinks.”

I held my collage in both hands, and suddenly what I had found in the river wasn't all that special anymore. It just looked like a bunch of junk dumped onto the shore. That collage for Mama stunk, Daniel say, but I didn't have enough time to change it.

I took some tacks from the Maxwell House coffee can on the bookshelf and pinned my collage to the wall. When Daniel Bunch come up beside me and tacked up his collage, the muscles in my back tightened up.

“Something's missing,” he muttered, “Something . . .”

He must be talking about his sad collage,
I thought, and went back to the table to clean up. I brushed the scraps of colored paper and tape into my hand. I wet a paper towel and rubbed off the glue where I'd sat at the table. And just as I threw the paper towel into the big trash bin, Meadow Lark come into the room carrying a vase with a grip of pink carnations in it.

“The office sent me,” she say.

“How pretty,” Ms. Zucchero say, and smiled. “Who are they from?” There was a rumor that she had a crush on Mr. Sievers, the music teacher, and maybe she hoped they were from him. I hoped they were.

“There's a card,” Meadow Lark told her.

Maybe the rumor was true, because when she read the card, Ms. Zucchero say, “Oh, they're from my brother,” in a voice plain as chewed gum.

Meadow Lark's face looked so solemn, as if she too had hoped the flowers were from Mr. Sievers, so I smiled at her to cheer her up. But just then someone whispered, “Frankenfemme,” and it grew—“Frankenfemme, Frankenfemme”—until the name filled the room like a hairy animal.

Meadow Lark didn't turn red or cry or even run out of the room. It was as if she didn't hear them. Instead her hands started to shake, and her good eye opened wide across her solemn face, and she say, “River, look!”

I turned around to see Daniel Bunch shaking a paintbrush at my collage, spattering black paint all over the things I'd saved, all over my gift for Mama.

“Daniel!” shouted Ms. Zucchero, as I dashed to the wall. I grabbed the paintbrush from him, but he held it tight, still shaking it at my collage. He spattered paint all over the yellow flower bead and the baby and the stone like a face and the key, the bear tooth—all over everything.

Daniel looked over his shoulder at Ms. Zucchero. “What—oh, this?” he say, with his eyebrows raised high, like he had no idea he was doing anything wrong. “It was an
accident
.” But I knew exactly what he meant—just like the accident with Theron.

At that moment the final bell rang, and my feet began moving before I knew what they were doing or where they were taking me. They carried me out of the art room and out of the school, up the street to the library, and down the path to the river.

Meanwhile, my mind carried me to that house. I was in the big dining room with the carved table and the desk with the adding machine and the square shelves, and the doorway that led back to the kitchen. The house was building itself in front of me, spreading its rooms in front of me. I saw a staircase in the space between the dining room and kitchen, but it turned halfway up, so I couldn't see to the top.

I put my foot on the first step, when I heard, “River! Come back!” It was Meadow Lark, standing on the shore. She waved, and the breeze lifted her hair around her face like she was flying.

I was standing up to my calves in the river. “Meadow Lark!” I called, my legs paralyzed with fear and cold.

“Wait there,” she called, and waded out to me and grabbed my hand. “Follow me,” she say, and led me step by step all the way back to the sandy beach.

“What were you doing out there?” she asked.

“I don't know. I was just . . . What was I doing out there?” I asked, and sank to the ground. I buried my head in my arms and breathed. The rain falling on the water sounded like a zither.

“You were walking out into the middle of the river,” she say. “That current could have swept you away.”

I raised my head and watched the river slide by. That was the farthest I'd ever gone in there. What if I had gone even farther? What if—

“It's a good thing you come along when you did,” I say.

Meadow Lark was drawing in the sand with a twig. “You could have drowned—all because of Daniel Bunch.”

She understood how I felt. “I wish Daniel Bunch was . . . I wish he would leave us alone.” But that wasn't all I wanted to say.

“That's what you want?” Meadow Lark asked. “You want him to go away?”

“Sort of . . . don't you?” I asked, remembering how her hand shook in the art room when they called her Frankenfemme.

Without saying a word, she reached into her backpack and pulled out a pencil and a corner of lined paper. Then she started writing something.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“We're making a wish. See?” she say, and handed the paper to me.

We wish Daniel Bunch would drop dead.

I took a sharp breath, because Meadow Lark had written what I hadn't say. It was just like she could read my mind. But seeing my wish on the paper made me feel like throwing up. Wishing Daniel Bunch to be dead ran a chill from my toes to my scalp.

I pushed the paper back to her. “You have to change it to say ‘disappear' instead.”

Meadow Lark squinted at me through her glasses, and then crossed out
drop dead
.

“No,” I say, “you have to erase it, or it'll still be in the wish.”

“You're being really persnickety,” she say, but she erased it and wrote:
We wish Daniel Bunch would disappear
.

We looked at each other and nodded. Then I found a peel of birch bark on the beach, near where the woods began, and Meadow Lark laid the wish on it.

“Now you need to take it far out, so it will float a long way,” I say.

“One day you have to stop being afraid of the water.”

“One day, I know,” I say, and shivered. “But not today.”

Meadow Lark took the birch bark and stepped into the river, out to where the current ran free and the water reached her knees, and set that wish down. That made three wishes we'd floated down the river. And I believed not one of them would come true.

The river took it swift. I fixed my eyes on that curl of bark until it turned into a speck and then a twinkle of broken sunlight. When I realized it was too late to take back the wish, that shiver went up my back again, and I rubbed my arms to stop shaking.

It was just a piece of paper with some writing on it, I knew, and Meadow Lark had erased part of it. The wish we'd written about Daniel Bunch, which was probably falling apart in the water that very moment, wasn't all that worried me. What worried me was the wish still in my heart, the one I didn't say. If only I could erase that one.

Meadow Lark stood in the river, looking downstream, for a few more minutes. Suddenly she pointed at something in the woods and called, “River, look over there—what is that?”