“Danny loved to play tag,” I say when we’re all out of breath but determined to keep running.
Elsa and Levi stop. I almost never talk to them about Danny. I keep all my feelings and memories locked up inside, like I’ll lose them if they get out.
It feels okay, though, talking about it now. It doesn’t make me feel any further away from him. But it does make Elsa and Levi feel closer to me. I’m so surprised, sometimes, by how things feel now that Danny’s gone.
“Well, we better keep playing then,” Elsa says. Rachel doesn’t stay outside with us, but she watches from the window and it’s nice, being watched by her. I don’t know who’s winning at tag, but we’re getting sloppier and sloppier and chillier and chillier. My shoulders keep shimmying all on their own, without any direction from me. They shimmy and shake, and my legs too.
The cold is giving me an excited feeling, like something wonderful might happen. I’m nervous-excited, and my heart beats harder than usual.
“Break!” Levi says. He sits down. Elsa sits down too.
I stay standing. I jump up and down a little, bounce on my toes to stay warm. But I don’t want to go inside.
I get a warm feeling in my chest and all over. My outsides are still shivering and numb, but my insides are heating up.
I know this feeling. It’s my old Danny feeling, the one I’ve been searching for. I can’t explain it to Levi and Elsa, but I smile at them and they smile back and don’t bug me about sitting down or ask me what I’m doing, staring at the sky and grinning.
It happens.
It starts to snow.
I take a deep breath, and my lungs are cold with the air and warm with the connected-to-Danny feeling at the same time. It’s wondrous.
The snow lands on my hair and my eyelashes and my neck. It’s cold and wet and white and everything Danny and I imagined it would be.
It’s snow, in Florida.
It’s never snowed here, not in my whole life and probably not in my parents’ whole lives either. I can’t stop looking up. It’s coming down faster than I imagined, and more softly. It’s magical. It doesn’t seem possible that the world creates this for us. Danny would have loved it.
Maybe Danny’s the one who created it. I don’t know. Even with all that science, I don’t know every single thing about how the world works.
I smile, like Danny and I have a brand-new secret. I didn’t think we’d ever have a secret together again.
“So beautiful,” Elsa says.
“Ridiculous,” Levi says, and that’s true too.
I don’t say anything. But I feel the tiniest bit less sad, the littlest bit healed.
The magic, the thing between me and Danny, isn’t gone forever. And snow isn’t impossible, even here. I stick out my tongue. The snow tastes a lot like water, but more delicious because it is unexpected and gentle and rare.
No one predicted snow would happen today. Not even the weather forecasters. It will be all over the news for the next week at least. They’ll tell us all the times it’s snowed in Florida and talk about cold fronts and air pressure and condensation and other fancy science words that I’ll like to learn about, but those words won’t be enough to explain the swirly, twirly patterns the flakes make on their way to earth.
Some things don’t make any sense, no matter how much research you do. Some things just are.
No one knows why it’s snowing.
No one but me.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Sometimes it takes time to find the heart of a book, and with this book it took the thoughtful, wise, inspiring feedback of my editors, Katherine Tegen and Alex Arnold. Katherine and Alex, thank you for giving me the guidance I needed to tell the story I wanted to tell. You added so much depth to this book, and I’m incredibly grateful we got to work on it together.
Thank you always to my agent, Victoria Marini. You’re there in every book I write, adding clarity and love and layers.
I’ve been so lucky to work with the incredible team at Katherine Tegen Books. Thank you for the support you’ve given my work and the time and love you’ve put into helping my books find readers. Thank you especially to Rosanne Romanello, Alana Whitman, Amy Ryan, Aurora Parlagreco, Bethany Reis, and Valerie Shea. And thank you to Emma Yarlett for your beautiful illustration.
Very special thank-yous to my writer friends who gave feedback along the way. Danny and Clover needed a lot of love and insight, from the first few pages to its final revision, and this author needed a lot of encouragement and focus. Kristen Kittscher, Claire Legrand, Caroline Carlson, Elisabeth Dahl, Brandy Colbert, and Jess Verdi: thank you for the time you gave and the words you said. Your thoughts were invaluable and your encouragement is priceless.
Thank you, Kaitlin Ward, Brandon Millett, and Sandy Chisholm for helping me with some research aspects of the book. Thank you for sharing little bits of your life with me.
As always, thank you to my family, old and new, and my friends who are like family.
As this is a book about a boy and a girl who are best friends, a special shout-out to two guys who taught me a little about the magic of boy-girl friendships: Mike Mraz and Mark Souza.
And thank you, Frank Scallon, for always being there.
BACK AD
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo by Jessie Weinberg
COREY ANN HAYDU is the author of Rules for Stealing Stars and four acclaimed books for teens. She grew up in the Boston area, earned her MFA at the New School, and now lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her dog, Oscar. Find out more at www.coreyannhaydu.com.
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BOOKS BY COREY ANN HAYDU
Rules for Stealing Stars
CREDITS
Cover art © 2017 by EMMA YARLETT
Cover design by AURORA PARLAGRECO
COPYRIGHT
Katherine Tegen Books is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
THE SOMEDAY SUITCASE. Copyright © 2017 by Corey Ann Haydu. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2016949691
ISBN 978-0-06-235275-0
EPub Edition © June 2017 ISBN 9780062352774
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FIRST EDITION
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