Found Things

by Marilyn Hilton

  She held out the bowl to me. “I’m Honor. Want some?”

  I slid my collage out from my shirt and leaned it behind a chair on the porch. It would be safer there than inside, close to Daniel Bunch.

  “Take one,” she say again.

  I shook my head. “No, thanks.” There was no telling where those cherries had been.

  Then she stuck the bowl right under my nose. “You have to. It’s the law.”

  I took two and closed my hand around them. She kept looking at me, so I say, “I just ate, so I’ll save them. Is your brother home?”

  “Well . . . ,” she say, looking behind her. “Are you a tutor?”

  “Tutor? . . . N-no.”

  “My brother wants a tutor,” she whispered.

  Then she pointed to the living room. “He’s in there trying to do homework.”

  I took a deep breath and went into the living room. It smelled like overripe fruit.

  Daniel Bunch sat slumped into the sofa in a rumpled-up T-shirt and shorts, his feet flat on the coffee table, with a book open in his lap. His left arm rested on a rolled-up blanket beside him. Daniel Bunch looked like a skeleton in clothes, his shoulder bones poking through his shirt.

  He glared at me as I come in, then looked back down at his book. “What are you here for?” he asked. “To finish the job?”

  I took another breath, then exhaled the quivers. Tucked into the sofa with the back of his T-shirt pushed up his neck, Daniel Bunch looked like a curled-over old man. And if Meadow Lark was right and the only reason he come home from the hospital from the edge of the death was because of us, he should have been grateful.

  “I just come to see you,” I say in a voice I hoped sounded confident.

  “Well, you saw me,” he say. “Now get out.”

  My heartbeat sped up and my leg muscles twitched. I wanted to run, but instead I stumbled back into a big, soft chair across from Daniel.

  He tossed his book on the table with a clap and asked, “Why did you come? Did my sister check you for weapons first?”

  “I wasn’t trying to kill you in the hospital. I was—”

  “I wake up and you’re holding a knife in my face, and that’s not trying to kill me?”

  “—trying to see if you were breathing. You looked dead. Even Benjamin say so.”

  “Benjamin? What are you talking about?”

  “That boy across the hall from you.”

  “Never met him,” he say.

  “Really? Because he seemed to know you.”

  “Whatever,” he say, and waved Benjamin away. “As you can see, I’m not dead.”

  Daniel shut his eyes and threw his head back against the sofa. My heartbeat returned to normal. Daniel looked too skinny and weak to scare me the way he did at school, and today he didn’t even want to try.

  “School’s almost over. Are you coming back?” I asked.

  He let out a big sigh that sounded like, Why must I put up with you?

  “Are you going to graduate sixth grade?”

  Then Daniel Bunch shocked me because instead of glaring or telling me to mind my own business, he looked down at his book and shrugged, and wriggled his bony-white toes on his bony-white feet and say, “I don’t know.”

  “Really? They might not graduate you from sixth?” I almost added “either,” but at the moment, he looked too pitiful.

  “Maybe,” he mumbled.

  I watched his toes wriggle for a few seconds, and then my gaze drifted to the notebook beside his feet and some words written there in his rat-scratch scrawl:

  I wish I had a tutor.

  So, Honor had told the truth when she say that Daniel wanted a tutor.

  I knew his secret, and, feeling bold, I asked, “What are you flunking?”

  He flattened the book on his legs and pushed his head back against the sofa and sighed. But his toes kept wriggling, and finally he say, “Just name it.”

  One of Mama’s sayings come to me at that moment, the one about being kind to your enemies. I crossed my legs and draped my elbows on the arms of the big chair. “You could go to summer school . . . or you could get a tutor, right?”

  For a moment he looked surprised, but the old Daniel Bunch come right back when he looked at me like I was stupid. “Too late,” he say, as he slid the notebook off the table with his foot.

  “Well, it’s too bad my brother’s not here to help,” I say, to uncover his secret wish.

  Then he picked up his book again and pretended to read. I could tell because his eyes moved across the same place over and over. “What are you talking about?”

  “My brother is a good tutor,” I say, remembering the jobs he did to buy his Giant.

  Daniel touched his wrist cast. “Was,” he say.

  “How do you . . . ?”

  “He used to tutor me.”

  Theron—tutored Daniel? “Theron never told—” I started to say, but Daniel interrupted me.

  “But he can’t anymore because now he’s a fugitive.”

  It could have been a real conversation with Daniel. We might have been able to figure out the problem between us, but he destroyed that moment, just like he destroyed my collage. “You need to get your facts straight, Daniel Bunch,” I say, sitting straight in the chair. “He wasn’t even arrested.”

  “Then why did he run away?”

  “People run away for lots of reasons. . . . They’re mad or scared or . . . they feel bad,” I say, remembering what Theron say just before he left us.

  I’m leaving. But I’m never coming back, so don’t look for me.

  I continued. “No wonder you’re flunking everything. You don’t even know the difference between getting convicted and being accused—falsely accused!” I say, and realized my foot was jiggling.

  “Get out of here!” Daniel yelled. “No one asked you here.”

  He looked so weak in his rumpled-up, torn clothes and his bony-white feet on the coffee table. Don’t be scared of him, I kept telling myself as I stood up to leave.

  Just then Honor come into the living room holding my collage. She still had that bowl of cherries in the other hand. “Is this yours?” she asked. “It might get wet outside.”

  Great, I thought. Now Daniel will see it.

  “Thanks,” I say, and took it from her.

  “Let’s see that,” Daniel say. “Come on—what is it?”

  “You know, Daniel.”

  “I thought I destroyed that . . . in an accident.”

  “Well, you didn’t,” I say, and thrust it in front of him so he could get a good look.

  Daniel Bunch sat back against the cushions and folded his arms in front of him and studied the collage. Then he put his hand to his chin and a little smile come to his mouth. “Yup, it stinks.”

  Daniel still had the power to make me feel like a crushed-up soda can, but I looked down so he wouldn’t see.

  “No it doesn’t,” Honor say.

  I smiled at her, at her dirty neck and her stained shirt, for keeping me from crying in front of Daniel.

  “You just don’t have any taste,” she say.

  “And you’re stupid, stupid,” he say back.

  “He calls me that all the time because he doesn’t know many other words,” Honor whispered to me. Then she held out the cherry bowl, and this time I took a handful.

  “Daniel,” I asked, “why do you hate me so much?”

  “Now what are you talking about?” he say, and turned back to his book.

  I waited for his answer. And waited some more, and then I asked, “Well, why?”

  “Well, nothing. Now get out—or I’ll kick you out.”

  I whirled around toward the front door and started to leave. Then Daniel did something surprising. He actually say my name, “River,” and when I turned around
, Daniel looked at me, his face so red and wide-eyed that it was hard to believe it belonged to Daniel. “Ask your brother. That’s why.”

  Theron. What did Theron have to do with why Daniel hated me? For a second, Daniel made me think that it could be that easy—that I could go home and ask Theron why. But just as fast, a sadness thick as mud pressed on my heart, and I say, “I only wish I could.”

  Chapter 17

  It was still sprinkling when I left Daniel’s house, and I tucked my collage under my shirt to keep it dry. Even though the rain was soft and warm, I shivered. Daniel say that Theron tutored him. What else didn’t I know about my brother? What else didn’t I know about Daniel?

  I wish I had a tutor, Daniel had scrawled in his notebook. Everyone has a wish, even Daniel, and knowing that made my heart a little softer for him. Caring about other people hurts, I discovered, because your heart breaks with theirs.

  I could try being nicer to Daniel and he’d never need to know. He wanted a tutor. I could make that wish for him. Meadow Lark would say she had convinced me that those wishes we floated down the river come true, but she hadn’t. I just wanted to do for Daniel what he couldn’t do for himself right now. That is, if he even knew about floating wishes down the river.

  Wishes—I had so many of my own, and as I walked to the river, they all pushed one another aside in my mind, jostling for my attention:

  I wish Mr. Tricks is alive and his wing is healed.

  I wish he would come back to Meadow Lark, because she really loves that pidge.

  I wish Theron is safe and happy.

  I wish Mama would smooth my hair into a ponytail.

  I wish Daddy would go to Boston more often, instead of Chicago or Orlando or St. Louis.

  I wish Theron misses us.

  I wish for a little red heart on my napkin.

  I wish Daniel would be nicer.

  I wish Mama would like the collage.

  I wish Theron wants us to find him.

  I wish Meadow Lark would go home so Mama wouldn’t pay so much attention to her.

  I wish Meadow Lark and I could be best friends again.

  I wish Daniel would tell me more about Theron.

  I wish Theron would come home.

  I couldn’t count the number of times each day my heart made that last wish.

  By then I had reached the sandy beach. I looked at the river flowing by, imagining myself stepping out there. I remembered how it felt to wake up and feel the river curling around my legs, and I knew I couldn’t go out into the water.

  But I could go directly to the log and put his wish on it. So I picked my way through the woods to the little cove, and when I reached the log, I noticed something looked different about it. When Meadow Lark and I first found the log, it was stuck firmly into the riverbank and angled upstream. Now it stretched three or four feet farther out over the water and pointed downstream.

  Carefully I stepped to where the log met the riverbank, and crouched to get a better look. And blinked. Our three wishes had grown into thirty, all fluttering on the log. It was a collage of wishes. No one else knew about wishing on the river or about the log, so Meadow Lark must have put these wishes here.

  Shadows from the opposite bank had reached all the way across the river, calling dusk to settle. Quickly I wrote Daniel’s wish for a tutor on a scrap of paper and tossed it into the water in front of the log, and hoped that the log would catch it.

  Just as I turned to leave, I saw something floating in the air from across the river. Closer and closer it come, as if it knew my scent. It was a white feather.

  I reached out and closed my hand around it, and tucked it into my pocket.

  Wishes floated everywhere.

  Chapter 18

  Our house smelled like butter and vanilla and warm sugar when I got home from the river. I followed the scent to the kitchen, where I found two layers of yellow cake cooling on the table and Meadow Lark wearing Daddy’s Minnesota apron.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, hearing my voice flutter.

  Meadow Lark picked up a big bowl of lemon frosting. “Your mama and I made a cake,” she say, and stirred the frosting with Mama’s big spoon.

  “But Mama and I always make that cake,” I say, and turned to Mama. “Don’t we?” But she was busy pulling out the frosting spreader from the knife drawer.

  “I’m sorry, honey,” she say. “Meadow Lark wanted to make a cake. . . .”

  “And we didn’t know when you’d be home,” Meadow Lark say, staring at me and stirring.

  “You couldn’t wait for me?” I whined.

  “Meadow Lark didn’t know where you were. And I didn’t know where you were,” Mama say.

  “It’s just a cake,” Meadow Lark say.

  I felt my eyes narrow and my pulse drumbeat my neck. Mama and Meadow Lark were becoming best friends, and that hurt. “It’s not just a cake. It’s the cake Mama and I make every summer.”

  “Grab a knife, River,” Mama say cheerily. “You can help us frost it. . . . Where were you, anyway?”

  The collage under my shirt felt tight around my chest as I looked at the two of them. I didn’t want to help them frost the cake. And I didn’t want to give Mama the collage. She didn’t need it, she probably wouldn’t even want it . . . and why was Meadow Lark staring at me?

  “Never mind,” I say, and ran up the stairs, shutting the door loud enough for anyone to hear. Then I pulled the collage out and slid it in the back of my closet.

  First, I thought as I fell on the bed, Meadow Lark took over my place at the river. Next, she took over my bedroom. All her stuff—her duffel bag, her backpack, her Arizona bag, that Tupperware that started Mama humming again, her shoes on the floor and clothes hanging from the bedposts—had started creeping over to my side. But now, worse than either of those, now she was taking over Mama.

  I gazed at the ceiling. Meadow Lark had slipped perfectly into my life, and no one seemed to notice the difference. What would she take over next?

  Footsteps thudded in the hall of that house in my mind. I stood in front of the tall bureau, my hand on the ballerina box. I had to see what was under the tray, because I knew it was important, but the footsteps got closer, louder. I would have to move fast.

  Quickly I lifted the tray and peeked inside the box. There, all by itself, was a folded-up yellow tissue. The footsteps were almost at the door.

  I grabbed the box and slipped under the bed. The bedspread hung low enough to hide me, and I slid all the way over to the wall.

  The footsteps stopped. I held my breath and peeked through the fringe of the bedspread. At the doorway stood two feet wearing fluffy blue bedroom shoes.

  My heart pounded, and a gasp worked its way up my throat. I pressed the tissue to my mouth to muffle anything that come out of my mouth.

  She walked over to the bureau, and then I heard that crunchy sound of hair brushing. Please don’t notice that the ballerina box is gone, I thought. Then she put the hairbrush down, and opened and shut a drawer. “Naptime’s over,” she say, as if to herself, and walked out of the room and down the hall.

  My heart was racing, but I sat very still until the house quieted down again. The folded-up tissue had gotten soggy from my breath, and flakes of it stuck to my hand. Something hard and round was inside. Carefully I unfolded the tissue.

  There, all by itself, lay a little gold ring with an emerald on it. It was just like the one in my ballerina box, just like the one I found at the river.

  Something so very strange happened then. That pretty little ring meant for a baby, which shouldn’t have fit on my pinkie, now slid easily onto my ring finger.

  I blinked and realized I’d been staring at the ceiling all that time. The house and the blue bedroom shoes and the little emerald ring stayed fresh in my mind.

  That ring had slipped on
my ring finger so easily. I got up to try it again, and opened my ballerina box. My ring wasn’t on top. I rummaged through the box, but my little emerald ring wasn’t in it.

  It had to be there, so I dumped the box onto my bed, and spread out all the coins and broken bracelets and bobby pins and rocks. I reached over and turned on the lamp to get a better look. There was no ring on my bed and no ring in my box.

  I went to the bathroom and pulled out drawers and shelves. No ring.

  The last time I saw the ring was when I showed it to Meadow Lark, the same day she showed me her letter from her daddy.

  Just then, she come in and flopped down on her bed. “We’re done. Your mama said the cake is for dessert. Hey, what are you doing? Are you okay?” she say all at once.

  I was sitting on my bed, surrounded by everything I’d dumped out of my drawers and my ballerina box.

  “Did you see my ring?” I asked. “My little emerald ring that I showed you. I can’t find it.”

  “No,” she say and shook her head. “I haven’t seen it. You lost that pretty ring? Did you look in your drawers? In the bathroom? Under your bed?”

  “I looked everywhere,” I say, trying so hard to keep the tears where they belonged, but two of them popped out before I could look away from Meadow Lark.

  “River?”

  I brushed at the tears. “It has to be here somewhere.”

  “I’ll help you look,” she say, getting off the bed.

  “No, I can do it. You don’t need to help.” When I say that, I realized there was more to my tears than losing the ring.

  “River, you’re not mad at me, are you—for making the cake with your mama?”

  “Why did you do that?” I asked, wiping my cheeks.

  “Well,” she say, sitting back on the bed, “I was trying to think of a way to distract her, so she wouldn’t wonder where you were.”

  I picked up my pillow and hugged it. That sounded like she just made it up, but I say, “Thanks. I didn’t think of that.”

  “Well, if anything bothers you, you have to tell me, okay? We’re best friends.”

  I nodded.