Chapter Two

Two days later, the excitement of the new house has worn off.

“Why did we have to move?” Morgan asks Abby. “I miss my friends.” All she can think about as she sits on the porch of the tree house is how she wishes her best friend, Sara, could be there to play. If she still lived in Phoenix, they would have been together, as they always were, finding an adventure.

Of course, if she still lived in Phoenix, she would not have this huge backyard. There, everybody had the same small backyard. Some of them might have a little bit of prickly grass and a short tree. Some might have a small pool. But most of them were just dirt and rocks—what was known as “desert-scaping”. Her backyard was one of the ones that looked like the desert. She loved playing with the big, flat rocks and the smaller rocks that were every color of the rainbow. She and Sara would build things out of them for their toys, create art with them, and mark territories for the elaborate games they would make up. They would often pretend they were characters in one of their favorite books, exploring new worlds and fighting off dangerous enemies.

Her new backyard is just so different. Morgan looks around the yard from her perch. It is five times the size of her old backyard, and it feels squishy. There are no rocks, except the occasional small, boring rock. It has green grass that is really soft compared to the grass in Phoenix, but when Morgan sits on it, a little water seeps into her clothes, which is a weird feeling. That might be because she now lives on an island, so there is more water in the ground.

Morgan throws her head back, letting her long brown hair hang down, and looks up through the branches of the live oak tree. She has to admit that it is kind of cool to have such huge trees in her yard. The trees here in Savannah are so big. The tall, skinny pine trees are at least twice the size of the ones in Phoenix. In the back corner of the yard, there is a sprawling Magnolia tree with broad, deep green leaves where Morgan likes to hide and pretend she has found a secret door to another world. Her dad says that the Magnolia will bloom next spring with white blossoms so big, she will barely be able to hold one in both hands. Closer to the house is a bushy red maple tree with bright green leaves that look like three fingers spread apart.

As she looks around, she realizes how green everything is in July here, making her miss the desert and its variety of colors more. While it is not as hot here as it is in Phoenix, there is so much water in the air, she sometimes feels like it is hard to breathe. Morgan grows increasingly mad about all of the changes in her life recently. “I want to go back home, Abby,” she tells her dog, who is lying beneath the tree house. “I’m so glad you are here with me.” Finally, overwhelmed by sadness and anger, she climbs down from the tree house to hug Abby before running into the house and upstairs to her room.

At first, Morgan tries to distract herself by reading a new book that her parents bought her when they moved to Savannah. She loves reading and imagining herself as part of the story. Her favorite stories are ones that are funny or set in a different world. She props herself up with a few pillows and settles back onto her bed. But no matter how hard she tries, she just can’t read more than a couple of pages without thinking about Sara.

It is really frustrating because she really likes that the main character, Jessica, is an eight-year-old mixed girl like her, although Jessica is half Indian and half Caucasian, while Morgan is half Native American and half Scottish. Her dad is Cherokee, while her mother is from Scotland. They met in college in North Carolina, and her mother became a U.S. citizen once they got married. In the book, Jessica is on a train trip across England, which sounds like the best kind of trip to Morgan, but the train in the story just reminds her of how much she wishes she could take a train back to Phoenix. She sighs. Reading is not working.

Maybe if she plays with some of her toys, she won’t think about Phoenix so much. She grabs a few of her ponies to play with and starts to imagine the island her cousins told her about in North Carolina where there are still wild horses who live away from people. She pretends her ponies are on the island, exploring a cave, swimming in the ocean, and on the beach enjoying the warmth of the sun. Wait a minute—one of her ponies seems to be missing! Then Morgan remembers that she gave it as a going-away present to her best friend. A tear wells up in her eye, but she refuses to let it fall. “Fine,” she sighs, “I will play with something else.”

She picks up her Nintendo DS, determined not to cry. It doesn’t work. She scrubs at her eyes. She can’t stop thinking about how much she misses her old life and how mad she is that she had to move here. “UGH!” she sighs loudly.

Her dad pokes his head in her room, “Are you ok?”

“No,” Morgan replies defiantly. “I’m mad. I’m mad at you and Mum because I don’t want to live here. I miss Sara. I miss my friends. I miss my backyard and my soccer team and our trips and all the stuff we used to do. Why can’t we just go back?”

“I’m sorry you’re upset, honey,” Dad says. “Camp is next week, and school will start again soon, and then you will make new friends, I promise. And we will definitely take lots of day trips, just like we used to do in Arizona, and we will go back to visit our friends in Phoenix in a couple of months. We will also go up to North Carolina to see all your cousins there. Remember how much fun you had last year when we went to visit for the family reunion?”

“Yeah, I did have a lot of fun at the reunion with my cousins, and we went hiking in the mountains. I really enjoyed Uncle Bobby’s stories by the campfire, and when Grandmother showed me how to pinch a pot and paint it once it is dry. But none of them are here, and I don’t know anybody here!” Morgan complains.

Dad hugs her and replies, “I know that you have had a hard time with the move, but I also know that you will make new friends at camp and once school starts. I got you something in honor of your new camp. Maybe it will cheer you up.” He hands Morgan a plastic bag. She tears it open. Inside is a stuffed sea turtle and a book about sea turtles.

“Thanks, Dad!” Morgan exclaims, suddenly more excited. She loves sea turtles. Ever since she and her dad saw a sea turtle nest the last time they went to the beach, she has wanted to learn more about them. After all, she wants to be a veterinarian when she grows up, and who knows what kind of animals she will need to know about then?

“Do you think we will get to see any sea turtles at the Nature Center camp?” Morgan asks her dad. She knows there are lots of animals at the Nature Center, but since they have not been there yet, she doesn’t know what kinds she will get to see next week.

“I don’t know for sure,” Dad says, “but they are pretty important around here, so it’s definitely a possibility.”

“Well, I better start reading about them just in case,” Morgan responds. She climbs into her chair, cuddles her new stuffed animal, and starts reading her book on sea turtles.