Ashley arrived first with her father and eight Audubon ladies. Ware filmed her helping the oldest one settle onto the pew as gently as if the woman were a fragile bird she was tucking into a nest. He put down the camera and went over and introduced himself. “I’m almost twelve,” he told the couch jumper. “Practically twelve.”
Next up came his family. His parents guided Big Deal by the elbows, although she kept batting their hands away. Uncle Cy followed, arms outspread to catch her if she fell. Besides the streetlight halos and the light sticks, they all seemed to be glowing from inside, too.
Ware’s mother paused in front of the Audubon ladies as she squeezed by them on the pew. “Did you see the film? My son made that film. My son, Ware. I’m his mother,” she said to each.
The first time Ware heard it, he about fell into the moat. After he heard it the second time, he trained his camera on her, to preserve the extraordinary event in case she said it again. But when she did say it a third time, he put the camera down. Because it turned out he didn’t want anything between them when his mother’s face lit up with pride.
When she sat down beside Big Deal, he picked up the camera again and panned it over to Jolene. She had gone to say a final goodbye to her garden and found a ripe fruit. She twisted it off and bundled it in her sweatshirt like a baby. As she carried it up the drawbridge, he saw how special she was, too. How there wasn’t another person like her.
He stopped her as she passed him. “Do you want to get your aunt?”
Jolene shook her head and pointed to the back driveway. “Here comes my person.” She laid the papaya baby on the rim of the baptistery and ran down to take a jug of juice from Mrs. Stavros and help her up the drawbridge.
Ware fetched a stack of communion cups and doled them out. He lit candles for the holders on the pew and then filmed Mrs. Stavros passing her jug down the row, and the people filling the tiny cups as they introduced themselves. His stained-glass window reflected the candles in little jewel-y flickers.
Ware hung his camera around his neck and joined Jolene at the other end of the pew. “How come you never let me go to the Greek Market with you?”
Jolene raised her eyes to the side fence. “She’s going to leave it to me when she goes back to Greece.”
“Well, that’s great. But why couldn’t I go with you?”
Jolene looked over at Mrs. Stavros, refilling Uncle Cy’s cup. She hung her head. “Because she’s my saint. I was afraid I might lose her.”
“You could lose her if I went over there?”
“I’m her favorite person in the whole world. Nobody else likes me best. I was afraid if she met you, she might like you better.”
Ware sat a moment, searching for the words to tell her he would never have let that happen. Before he could find them, Ashley’s phone buzzed.
She looked down at it and then held up a hand. “They just flew over Tuscawilla Lake,” she announced. “They’re ten minutes away.”
Just then, Walter came hustling across the lot clutching a flashlight and a can of ChipNutz. Ware turned the camera on. Through the lens, he looked like a saint, too, but then Walter looked like a saint all the time.
Walter gave Jolene a kiss on the head and patted Ware’s shoulder. “You’ve got yourself a story now, pal,” he said.
Ashley held up her hand again. “Two minutes.”
The crowd grew still.
Ware folded his hands on his lap and looked up. The rising moon was almost full behind the clouds, the sky deep violet. He remembered a twilight like this at the beginning of the summer, when he had lain at the bottom of a pool, watching a bird carve the sky, wishing for someone to share the sight.
They heard the cranes first, trumpeting their prehistoric cries.
Ware lifted the camera to the north sky, and then there they were—a hundred, two hundred, a thousand and more. Wave after wave, printing the sky like live hieroglyphs. The air thumped with the beat of their wings and the three queen palms fluttered skyward, raising their fronds in praise.
Ware stood. He slipped out of the pew and over to the back of the foundation, still filming. He panned the camera down over the moat, and as he did, the moon emerged and the water flashed silver, reflecting the flight of the birds.
And himself.
Ware felt as if he had climbed the world’s tallest watchtower, because suddenly he could see the whole picture.
He saw that Walter was right—he had himself a story now. But it wasn’t just his story; it was the story of the cranes and the story of the lot and it was Jolene’s story, too, and Ashley’s, and the story of everyone gathered here tonight, because all their stories were one.
Suddenly Jolene was beside him. Without thinking, Ware let his free hand reach out and find hers. He held his breath.
Jolene curled her fingers around his and squeezed. And then she said exactly what he was thinking. “Now this place is holy.”
Ware squeezed back. He trained the camera on the last of the cranes. He knew how those birds felt, those birds beating their way home just as they had for millions of years, to a place that always let them land softly. Ware knew exactly how they felt, because at that moment, he had wings.
“You see that?” he asked. Not in his head, not in a whisper, but in a voice that everyone heard. “Wow.”
About the Author
Photo by Lorraine Scheppler
SARA PENNYPACKER is the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling Pax; the award-winning Clementine books and their spinoff series, Waylon!; and the acclaimed novel Summer of the Gypsy Moths. She divides her time between Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and Florida. You can visit her online at www.sarapennypacker.com.
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Books by Sara Pennypacker
Middle grade
Pax
Summer of the Gypsy Moths
The Waylon! Books
The Clementine Books
The Amazing World of Stuart:
Stuart’s Cape
and Stuart Goes to School
Picture books
Meet the Dullards
Sparrow Girl
Pierre in Love
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Copyright
Balzer + Bray is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
HERE IN THE REAL WORLD. Copyright © 2020 by Sara Pennypacker. 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.
www.harpercollinschildrens.com
Cover art © 2020 Jon Klassen
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ISBN 978-0-06-269895-7 (trade) — ISBN 978-0-06-300132-9 (int.) — ISBN 978-0-06-298381-7 (special edition)
Digital Edition JANUARY 2020 ISBN: 978-0-06-269897-1
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-269895-7
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1920212223PC/LSCH10987654321
FIRST EDITION
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Here in the Real World Page 16
