Bigger than a Bread Box

by Laurel Snyder

  I found some dishes and more clothes. On every windowsill, and attached to the underside of most of the furniture, I found soft white spider eggs.

  Finally, after I’d looked through each box and bucket in that dirty, dusty attic, I came back to the bread boxes. There were only three I hadn’t looked inside of yet, and I opened them now. The first two, a plain tin box and a rusted yellow box, were empty. Then I reached for the door of the last box, a red one with roses painted on it. On the lid, a flowery cursive read, “Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread.” As bread boxes went, it was pretty nice. The door opened smoothly.

  And inside it was a book! I took it out and shut the box with a smooth click.

  The book in my hand was hardly one I’d have chosen if I’d been at the library, where I usually spent Saturday mornings with Mary Kate, but it was something to read. It was called The Secret Adversary, by Agatha Christie. The cover was falling apart.

  I settled back down into the tub of linens and got lost reading.

  I didn’t notice when the door at the bottom of the stairs opened. I didn’t notice anyone on the steps. I didn’t notice anything until Gran was standing above me, flicking a switch. The attic flooded with light.

  I jumped. I was at a pretty intense part of the book.

  “Here you are, you goose,” she said, sitting down on the box of clothes beside my washtub. “I had a feeling you’d be up here! Find something good to read?”

  I folded down the corner of the page I was on and nodded. “Hi, Gran.”

  “Hi, yourself!”

  “I’m sorry I ran off. It’s nice to see you.”

  Gran raised an eyebrow. “Nice?”

  I shrugged.

  Gran said, “Kiddo, let’s be honest with each other, shall we?”

  I shrugged again. I really didn’t want to talk talk. Not even to Gran. I’d been fine up here reading my book. Alone.

  Gran rumpled my hair and said, “While it’s nice to see you too, Rebecca, and while you are always welcome here, these circumstances are hardly ideal, are they?”

  I shook my head. I shook it again so that my hair would unrumple itself. My eyes felt itchy. From the dust, I told myself.

  Gran sighed. “Yeah, this just plain old sucks, doesn’t it?”

  I nodded, but I still didn’t open my mouth. My eyes wanted to water. I could tell.

  Gran reached out and brushed something off my cheek. “Can’t say I blame you, running off like that, but can you do me a favor?”

  “I’m not talking to Mom. Not until she takes me home.”

  “Fair enough. Fair enough,” said Gran. “I’m not trying to get in the middle of what’s between you and your mom. I only want you to promise you’ll turn the lights on if you come up here to read. You’re welcome to anything in this house. You can hang out anywhere you like, and ignore your mother for weeks on end like I do.” Gran paused after she said that, waiting for me to laugh at her joke.

  I made myself smile.

  She finished by saying, “Heck, you can start a family feud if you like, but I don’t want you ruining your eyesight under my roof. Understand?”

  I couldn’t help smiling for real then. It was a very Gran thing to say. “Okay,” I said. “I promise.”

  “Good.” She stood up and leaned over to kiss me on the head. “Now that we’ve got that important matter settled,” she said, dusting off the seat of her jeans, “I wonder if you’d like to walk with us to the zoo after all? You don’t have to, mind you, and I’ll understand if you need more time alone. You’re a big girl, and I trust you here by yourself if that’s what you want. But there’s a new baby panda, and we’re going to stop for dinner after at my favorite Mexican place. So maybe you want to join us?” She winked at me and added, “I’ll let you have a sip of my sangria when your mom isn’t looking.”

  “Well …,” I said, groaning and standing up from the washtub. “Okay, but I’m not promising to talk to everyone.”

  “Of course not! Nobody expects you to talk to everyone,” said Gran. “To be honest, as far as I’m concerned, everyone is overrated.”

  When she said that, I laughed out loud for the first time in days. A for-real laugh, like, “Ha-ha-ha!” It felt like stretching.

  CHAPTER 4

  Gran clomped down the stairs. “She’s coming with us, Annie!” she yelled ahead of her. “But you’d better behave yourself, and remember that I’m on her side!”

  I was just about to follow Gran down the stairs with my book when I noticed the red bread box again, its letters shining silver. I could see them better now. The roses gleamed in the light. I couldn’t stop looking at it.

  “Gran!” I called down the stairs. “Hey, Gran! Can I bring this box downstairs with me? The red one?” I wasn’t sure why I wanted the box, but suddenly I did. I had no clue what I’d do with it. Maybe I’d just store things in it, like books or snacks. I liked that it wasn’t pink.

  Gran stopped at the bottom of the stairs and looked back up, over her shoulder. She paused for a minute, like she was thinking about it. “The red one?” she asked. “Why that one?”

  “I just like it,” I said. “I think it’s pretty.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Well, sure, darlin’. I haven’t set foot up here in months. I guess anything you want from this old attic is yours. I’ve a mind to burn the whole place down for insurance money.”

  I carried the red bread box down the stairs and set it on the desk in the pink room I was sleeping in, which I was sure would never feel like my room. Though someone, probably Mom, had laid a suitcase full of my clothes on the bed, so I was able to at least put on clean jeans and a fresh shirt.

  I brushed my teeth and hair, which felt weird to do, since the day was half over. After that I walked for what felt like miles with Gran, Mom, and Lew. We hiked to the zoo, through a neighborhood of tall trees and very few people. We walked past big houses, most of them with enormous, wide porches and picket fences around their little front yards. Some of the houses were beautiful, with gingerbread-looking cutouts on the roofs, and some were falling-down dumps. Many had broken stained glass in them. The sidewalks were cracked and uneven, made of little concrete hexagons instead of big squares, with grass growing through the cracks. I played a kind of hopscotch on the way, trying to jump from hexagon to hexagon without tripping.

  Later—after the pandas and the elephants, a long walk to a place called Holy Taco, two brisket tacos, some chips, a fizzy limeade, and churros with chocolate sauce, all of which I inhaled because I’d missed lunch while I was holed up reading—I found myself thinking about my afternoon in the attic. Why hadn’t the red bread box been dirty and rusted over like everything else?

  I sat in the restaurant, staring at Lew, who was covered in guacamole, and thought about that. It hit me that the red box had looked totally new, shiny. How could that be?

  When we got back to the house, I headed straight for my room. The bread box was still there, glowing on the desk, as clean and shiny as I remembered. It was such a rich red color, with the silver letters so bright and the painted roses so lush, but besides being clean and pretty, there wasn’t much else to it. It was a bread box. There wasn’t much to say about a bread box.

  I opened it up, and it was clean on the inside too, and empty. I decided that maybe it was just made of some special kind of metal or covered in some fancy dust-deflecting paint, so I headed back to the living room to watch TV with Gran, a special about the Civil War on PBS, which was the only channel she ever seemed to watch.

  Eventually I got bored with listening to someone read dead people’s letters over old-timey music, and went to my room. I burrowed under the covers with my Agatha Christie book, returning to the story of two young detectives in London. Much better! When Gran came in to say good night, I blew her a kiss and kept reading. I thought I’d already figured out who the villain was, but just to be sure, I read and read until the clock said it was 2:00 a.m. and I was done. Then I set the paperback down, flipped ove
r on my side, and closed my eyes. I could feel myself starting to drift to sleep.

  I had that nice done feeling of having finished a book, and I could still taste the chocolate from the churros on my lips because I’d forgotten to brush my teeth. It was very late at night. The window was open because it wasn’t too cold out, just right for snuggling under a quilt. It almost felt like an actual vacation. Until I closed my eyes and began to drift off to sleep. Then memory hit me like a train—whoomp—and I saw Dad in the street, calling for us to come back.

  I opened my eyes fast, but the feeling didn’t go away. The sheets felt like his flannel shirt, soft against my skin. Sadness swallowed me like a bubble. It made my throat hurt. Dad was probably curled up in a ball right now, crying of loneliness, or at least asleep in his clothes on the couch. I could imagine it. He was lying there with the TV turned to nothing in particular, the remote falling out of his hand.

  Suddenly the chocolate in my mouth tasted sour, not sweet. Like old food and spit.

  I wondered if he’d gone to sleep clutching his phone. Two nights in a row I hadn’t called him! I’d been busy laughing and reading and eating tacos. I was a terrible daughter.

  It was too late to call now. I groaned. I rolled over again, burying my face in the pillow, and asked myself if this was how it would be forever: waves of feeling okay, or at least distracted, followed by waves of wanting to disappear into a hole. I promised myself I’d call him first thing in the morning, no matter what. I would call him.

  I lifted my head and looked out the window, at the curtain blowing faintly in the dark room. It felt impossible and wrong. An open window in November might be nice, but it wasn’t home. I missed home. Suddenly I was so tired, beyond tired, and I couldn’t help it anymore. I wanted to be strong, I did, but the tears just came. Quietly. Rolling down my cheeks slowly. I was dripping. I dripped into my pillow so nobody would hear me. I dripped and dripped and held my locket in my hand, tugging it so that the chain bit into my neck. It hurt a little. It felt right that something should hurt a little.

  I buried my face deeper into the pillow and mumbled into it, so that nobody would hear me, “I wish I were home. I wish I were home. I wish I were home.” But of course wishing wouldn’t make it so.

  I dripped some more and said softly, “I wish this had never happened. I wish Dad were here.” My soft pillow tasted like slobber and soap.

  I choked through a face full of tears and snot. “I wish this was just vacation. I wish it was summer and we were at the beach, listening to the waves and watching the kites.” My pillow was gross and I didn’t care. I cried and dripped, and it felt good to say these things, to cry and miss. “I wish there were gulls.”

  And then—

  I heard the noise!

  From across the room, from inside the bread box on the desk, came a rumpled, ruffled, banging noise, followed by a skrreeee!

  I jerked my head from my pillow and sat up. I pushed back the covers and jumped out of bed. I ran over to the desk and stared at the box.

  It was moving slightly. The skrreeee came again. It was a weird noise, but I recognized it, so I reached out. I tugged on the door.

  It burst open and out popped two dirty, angry seagulls, sort of tangled together. They pulled apart, unruffled themselves, glanced over at me, and then one of them screamed again. They were mad! They flew at my head, and I held up my arms and ducked.

  Stiff feathers brushed my hair as both birds flew to the top of the bookshelf. They glared down at me with their little beady eyes.

  Never taking my eyes off them, I inched over to the window, my heart pounding out of my chest. With both hands, I slid open the screen. Then I stood very still. “I wished for gulls,” I said softly.

  Then I remembered something—that The Secret Adversary had appeared in the red box too, right after I’d wished out loud for a book to read.

  Wow. Was it possible? It wasn’t possible … was it?

  I watched the gulls watching me from the bookshelf, and thought about things. After a minute, the birds flapped their wings and shot out into the soft Atlanta night, one after the other. I listened to them fly up into the dark sky with another skrreeee. I stared out the window after them. What would happen to them in this big unwatery city, stranded?

  But the gulls had wings. They could fly home. I figured they’d work it out.

  I turned back to the open bread box.

  “I wish I had one hundred wishes!” I said, the words bursting out before I could decide if I actually believed in what was happening. Then my hand flew up to cover my mouth.

  I’d spent years preparing for this moment. In fact, I’d kept a list in elementary school, when I was young enough to really believe in magic, a list of wishes I’d hoped to make someday, if I ever found magic. I’d wanted to make sure I got in lots of good wishes before my wishes ran out. Especially the more-wishes wish. I guess that little-girl list was still inside me somewhere, because when I saw the gulls, I wished right away.

  Only I wasn’t sure if it had worked or not. It was hard to know. Nothing happened. I didn’t feel tingly or magical or anything. The bread box just sat there with its mouth open. How could I know if it had worked? Maybe the door to the box had to be closed for it to work. Both the seagulls and the book had appeared when the box was closed.

  I shut the shiny red door, took a deep breath, and tried again. “I wish I had a magic wand,” I said.

  I opened the box. There was a magic wand inside, but it was just a piece of junk, a purple plastic toy. It was the kind of glittery wand little kids play with. I picked it up and waved it around my head. It made an annoying battery-powered thrumming sound. I tossed the wand to the floor and closed the box again. Lew could have that.

  “I wish I had a real magic wand,” I said. When I opened it this time, the box was empty.

  I thought about that for a minute, closed the box door, and said carefully, “I wish I had a real unicorn horn.”

  I opened the box. No luck. Still empty.

  I thought things over some more and closed the box again.

  “I wish I had a cookie.”

  When I opened the box, I found an Oreo inside it.

  Hmmm.

  I ate the Oreo before I said, “I wish … I was home.”

  Nothing changed. Of course, home couldn’t fit into a bread box. Besides, I’d wished for that already, hadn’t I? Over and over, into my pillow. Before I’d wished for the gulls.

  I tried to lick the inside of my mouth, which was now gummy and crumby and thick with frosting as I thought about what else I should wish for. Most of the wishes I’d had on my list as a kid weren’t things I wanted anymore, not really. Or they were the kinds of things that apparently this box couldn’t manage.

  I yawned. I didn’t want to be tired, but I was suddenly zonked, as Gran would say. Not to mention baffled by the magic and light-headed and drained like you get after you cry. It was three in the morning. In a few hours, Gran and Mom would be waking me up to go register at that stupid school.

  But I couldn’t fall asleep yet. Who goes to sleep when there’s a box full of wishes?

  I decided to try one more time. Just one more. One last wish. Then I’d go to bed.

  “I wish I had,” I began cautiously, “twenty dollars.” Money is something people never wish for in books. Or if they do, they wish for too much and get buried or ruined by it.

  When I opened the box this time, there was a bill inside it, as crisp as if it had just dropped from an ATM machine, and still slightly warm. I couldn’t help grinning at the sight, because wands and unicorns aside, a girl can do a lot with an unlimited supply of money!

  I snatched the bill out. Then I stood there with my hand on the box, and I couldn’t help it. Just one more wish! Really. Just one more. I meant it this time. Then I’d go to bed.

  “I wish I had … a thousand dollars,” I said with my eyes shut and my fingers crossed. I opened my eyes, uncrossed my fingers, and opened the box very slowl
y.

  Inside the box was dark, but whatever was in it was pushing against the door. I could feel the tension in my fingers, my wrist. I opened it a little farther and peered inside. I gasped. The box was stuffed with money! Not in neat stacks like you see in the movies, but crumpled and piled and squashed—a bread box full of loose bills! Old bills and new bills, singles and fives. All jammed together and spilling out of the box. Kind of the way wads of crumpled paper overflow a trash can after you finish an art project and then squash the mess down with your foot. It was the craziest thing I’d ever seen. So much money! What would I do with it all? My head swam from everything all at once.

  I stuffed the twenty back into the box with the rest of the money, and then I took the whole bread box and tried to shove it into my suitcase. It didn’t fit beside my clothes and shoes, so I dumped everything else onto the floor. Then I put the bread box in and pushed the suitcase under the bed. After that, I yawned again, the kind of yawn that makes your jaw ache. I climbed back into bed.

  I needed to think this over. The possibilities were endless! I’d never be able to show anyone, because I’d never be able to explain it. But then, I didn’t have to. Not here, not in Atlanta. This could be my secret. Because who did I have to tell? There wasn’t anyone.

  CHAPTER 5

  I woke up to find Gran standing over me, swaying back and forth in a maroon jogging suit and singing, “Good morning to you! Good morning to you!” She was wearing earrings and lipstick, so I knew she was dressed up.

  I looked at her and realized that I felt horrible—achy and tired and sick, like after a really late slumber party or three days with the flu.