Chapter 21

At lunch, Alder did have a brief flash of hope that maybe Cynthia would have forgotten her mom’s knitting stuff.

She had not.

In fact, by the time Alder had made his way over to the girls’ lunch table, Cynthia had taken everything out of her bag: five sets of needles, ranging from thick to thin, and a half dozen skeins of yarn in various sizes and thicknesses. And Cameron had her sweater, the red one with the hole in the arm near the elbow. They were really going to do this, then.

“Okay,” said Alder by way of greeting. “One thing at a time. Repairing a sweater is a whole different thing than starting a new knitting project. What should we do first?”

“Let’s fix Cameron’s sweater,” said Oak, “since that’s what got us started down this road in the first place.”

Alder appraised the thickness of the yarn in Cameron’s sweater. It was medium, probably wool, and tomato red.

There was no perfect match among the yarn selections Cynthia had brought; in fact, none of the skeins were even close. Alder unzipped his backpack.

“I brought some yarn from home,” he said. “It’s probably not exactly right, but I thought it would be better than nothing . . .” He extracted a small paper bag from the bottom of his backpack and turned it upside down. A ball of dark-red yarn spilled out. It was more burgundy than tomato, but the thickness was almost perfectly matched.

“Hey!” said, Cameron, pleased. “That’s great!”

From the smaller pocket of his backpack, Alder fished out a little leather pouch that held a set of oversize sewing needles. “Fixing a hole,” he explained, “is really more about sewing than knitting. It’s actually called darning.” He wet the end of the yarn in his mouth, then lined it up with the eye of the needle. He felt a little flutter of pride when it went through on the very first try. “Knitting is really just a series of fancy knots,” he went on, “but darning is more about weaving back and forth.”

He set aside the yarn and the needle and picked up Cameron’s sweater. He pulled the sleeve inside out.

“Oak,” he said, “can I borrow your water bottle?”

She had one of the cylindrical metal reusable bottles, which she passed to him. Alder made sure the lid was on tight and then put it in the sweater sleeve to brace it.

“Okay,” he said, “here we go.”

The hole was the size of a quarter. Alder made his first stitch about half an inch to the left of it. “You want to leave a tail,” he said, indicating the extra yarn he had left hanging, “so that you have something to tie off with at the end.”

He looked up. All of them—Oak and Cynthia, Miriam and Cameron and Carmen—were watching as if he were doing something really cool instead of just darning up an old sweater.

He cleared his throat. “Then you just pick up every other stitch, like this.” He wove the needle over one stitch, under the next, and over the one after that, then pulled the yarn through. “What I’m doing is starting to make a sort of an anchor, for when I go over the hole.” He stitched about a two-inch line, then wove back in the other direction. “When you get to the hole,” he said, “you just stretch the yarn straight across it, like this, and then pick up your stitches again.”

He went on like that, back and forth, and then did a few more rows on the other side, to anchor it down again. “Then you’ve got to do the same thing in the other direction,” he said as he worked, “except this time, when you get to the hole, you weave over and under the new stitches across the hole, just like you do with the other stitches, see?”

Someone—one of the twins, maybe, gasped a little when the weaving across the hole was complete.

“It’s not perfect,” Alder admitted. “The color is a little off, and you can see where the new stitches are, but it’s better than a hole. And the repair will keep it from getting worse.” He tied off each tail of the yarn and took a small pair of silver scissors from his leather pouch, snipping off the remainders.

Then he extracted Oak’s water bottle and turned the sleeve right side out. “And, voilà!” he said, grinning and feeling sort of shy. “Not quite as good as new, but better than before.”

All the girls clapped, and Cameron took back her sweater and clutched it close. “Alder, thank you,” she said.

“Now,” said Oak, “show us how to make fancy knots.”

By the time the bell rang, each of the girls had the beginning a very short, skinny scarf.

“Not bad, not bad,” Alder said as they packed up their yarn and needles.

“Let’s bring our scarves back tomorrow,” Cynthia suggested, and everyone nodded.

Alder walked to class and slid into his seat with a warm, full feeling in his chest.

“So, you knit?”

Alder looked up. It was Beck, looming over him. The warm, full feeling turned to a block of ice.

“Um,” said Alder.

“I saw you knitting in the cafeteria,” Beck said.

Alder wasn’t quite sure how to respond. Why had Beck asked him if he knit if he already knew the answer? Actually, why had Beck asked him if he could knit at all? Alder hadn’t ever seen Beck acting mean to anyone, but in Alder’s experience with Marcus, being a knitter was a pretty solid reason to get teased.

“What does it matter if I knit?” Alder asked. He folded his arms and did his best to look tough. As he did, he considered if the fact that he was defending a knitting hobby was undercutting his toughness.

Beck put his hands on Alder’s desk and leaned forward, about to say something, but then Mr. Rivera said, “All right, everyone, settle down and take your seats. We need to get started.”

Never had Alder been so relieved to hear the royal we.

“Wait for me after school, okay?” Beck said, and he rapped his knuckles on Alder’s desk.

When the final bell rang three hours later, Alder was out of his seat and down the hallway like a shot. He didn’t wait for Beck; he didn’t wait for anyone. And for the first time all year, Alder was glad that there was such a thing as cross-country club. It meant that Marcus wouldn’t be on the bus, but it meant that Beck wouldn’t be either.

He was the first kid aboard, and he saved a seat for Oak, who slid comfortably beside him.

“What was that about?” she asked. “I’ve never seen you move so fast.”

“Beck wanted to talk to me about knitting,” Alder said, “and I didn’t much feel like having that conversation.”

Oak laughed. “Maybe he wanted to compare techniques.”

Alder had no idea what Beck wanted. But the idea of talking about knitting with the coolest boy in fifth grade didn’t sound like fun. It sounded humiliating.

But he didn’t need to think about that now. Alder was on the bus and Beck wasn’t. With a sigh, Alder relaxed back into his seat. It was a pleasant ride home; the sky was full of big white puffy clouds, and there was that autumnal, crisp feeling in the air that promised leaf piles and jack-o’-lanterns soon.

“When we get home,” Alder said, “let’s take another look at that book.”

“Exactly what I was thinking,” Oak replied. Then she hesitated. “Will your mother be home, do you think?”

“Not until five,” Alder answered. “She’s running errands today.”

“Then let’s meet at your house,” said Oak. “My mom . . . will be working from home.”

“And you don’t want us to disturb her?”

“Sort of,” said Oak slowly. “Actually . . . remember how your mom was weird the other day, when I was over at your house?”

“Yeah,” said Alder. He felt kind of embarrassed. “I’m sorry about that.”

Oak shook her head. “Don’t worry about it,” she said, “because yesterday, after you left, and I told my mom who you were—that you’re our next-door neighbor—my mom was weird, too!”

“Huh,” said Alder. “Are you sure?”

“Positive,” Oak said, and Alder believed her. “I think there’s something strange happening with our mothers.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know,” Oak said, and she looked off into the middle distance, like she was trying to see something that was almost there but not quite. Then she snapped back into the present and looked Alder straight in the eye. “But I think we should find out.”

Alder waited outside Oak’s door as she made a brief stop inside to gather up the book and her kitten. As he waited, he looked up at the construction, at the progress being made. He could hear the workmen hammering, and the high-pitched whine of an electric saw. There was the smell of wood shavings in the air.

Then his gaze drifted to the stump, and, out of habit, he let his eyes roam loosely around the air just above it. He hadn’t seen the shimmery patch since the Sunday after he and Oak had lost their kittens and found themselves with the walking, talking Mort, but he hadn’t given up the possibility of its reappearing.

Today, he thought he saw it—a shimmery glint—just for an instant. But then he made the mistake of trying to stare right at it, to catch it with his eyes as a fishing hook snags a fish, and it slipped away, as if it were too clever to be caught. When he tried to soften his gaze to see it again, it was gone.

Oak emerged from her house, Walnut tucked under one arm, the book tucked under the other. “Okay,” she said.

They walked the short distance to Alder’s house. He pulled out his key from his backpack and wriggled it into the lock. When the door swung open, there was Fern sitting in the front hallway, her tail wrapped neatly around her paws, as if she were waiting for them.

The kittens mewed their greeting to one another. Oak set Walnut down, and the two kittens rubbed noses, and then Fern led the way into the kitchen. Probably sharing her kibble with her brother, Alder imagined, and he felt proud about what a good host she was.

“Oh,” he said, following Fern’s example, “would you like something to drink?”

“Sure,” said Oak, shrugging out of her coat.

Alder fixed two glasses of chocolate milk and returned to the front room, where he had left Oak, but she wasn’t there.

“In here,” she called from the dining room.

She was standing in front of the record player, thumbing through the records. “Do you mind if we listen to some music?” she asked.

Alder set the glasses of chocolate milk on the table. “Okay,” he said.

Oak pulled out the same album she’d chosen last time. “Alder,” she said, “we’re friends, right?”

“Yes,” said Alder.

“Friends shouldn’t have secrets,” Oak said, “and they should help each other when they’re sad.” She flipped the record sleeve over. There was the photo of Alder’s dad, strumming his banjo.

Alder cleared his throat. “That’s my dad,” he said. It felt weird to say it out loud, even though it wasn’t a secret.

“That’s what I figured,” Oak said. She looked down at the picture, then up at Alder. “You look like him.”

“You think so?” said Alder, pleased.

“Yes,” said Oak, looking back and forth between the picture and Alder, then up at the family portrait on the wall. “You have his hair and his smile. You don’t have his eyes, though. His are green.”

“Were green,” Alder corrected.

“Were green.” Oak nodded. “That’s true. And I’m sorry.”

“Thanks,” said Alder. “Me too.”

It could have been uncomfortable or terribly sad, but it wasn’t. It was sad, but not so sad that Alder couldn’t handle it. And it wasn’t uncomfortable. It was oddly comfortable, actually, to talk about his dad with Oak. It felt nice. “Do you want to hear my favorite of his songs?” Alder offered.

“Yes,” said Oak.

Alder knelt in front of the record collection and flipped through them until he found the one he was looking for.

“Here it is,” he said. It was from his father’s final album. There was no photo of him on this jacket; Alder didn’t know why.

The name of the album was Fly, Bird, Fly.

“This is the only album he made after I was born,” Alder told Oak as he pulled the record from its sleeve and set it gently on the turntable. He pressed the switch to start the record spinning. The arm lifted from its place and rotated, then dropped its needle onto the vinyl. There was a moment of scritch-scratch, and then the song began.

Little bluebird, baby guy

Sweetest bird in the big blue sky

One day you’ll spread your wings and fly

Don’t know when, but I know why

That’s what birdies do—they fly.

Bluebird boy, my sweet hatchling

Truest rhyme I’ll ever bring

Sweetest song I’ll ever sing

I’ll fly too when you spread those wings

That’s what birdies do—they sing.

Don’t know how, my bluebird boy

Don’t know why, my bluebird joy

Don’t know where, my bluebird true

All I know is I love you

That’s all this Canary bird can do—

I

Love

You.