Chapter 8

Daniel Bunch was not in art class on Monday, and he wasn’t in the quad at lunch on Tuesday to pester me. By Wednesday, the worry that had settled in me as I watched our wish slide down the river sat up and looked around.

“Where’s Daniel?” Sonya asked to the middle of the art table.

When class began, Ms. Zucchero had put a pile of things on the table—a CrimsonCrisp apple with a brown bite in it, a tube of Colgate rolled up halfway, a Slinky with kinks in it, a picture of a brown-haired girl who looked a lot like Ms. Zucchero, a paperback book with the cover half torn off, and one of Ms. Zucchero’s crocheted squares with a hook stuck through it.

“I liked your collages so much that I brought my own collection,” she say. “These are just some of the things I found in my car yesterday.”

Then she told us to draw what we saw without looking at our sketch pads—just let our pencils move across the shapes in our minds. So everyone was not looking at their sketch pads and not looking at one another, but talking to the pile in the middle of the table.

On the other side of the pile was where Daniel Bunch would be sitting if he were in school, and the gap he left was like when a tooth falls out. I kept wiggling that space with my eyes, to make sure he truly wasn’t in it. Because even if Daniel Bunch was absent, in my mind he sat there just like always, watching me and waiting to pounce.

“Daisy Crumb said he’s sick,” Kevin Kale say to the pile. “He has a hundred and four fever.”

“What’s that mean?” Sonya asked.

All the water left my mouth, and my hand holding the pencil shook so to hear about Daniel Bunch being sick. I looked down at my sketch pad, and I had just drawn something that looked like a clump of hair in the bathtub drain. And the worry in my heart nodded at me and say, Isn’t that what you asked for?

Even before Kevin answered, I knew it was bad. Theron once had a 103 fever, and Mama put him in the tub with ice water until he cooled down. Even when he called to me, I wouldn’t go into the bathroom to see him. I thought if I didn’t see him, I wouldn’t miss him as much after he died from that fever.

Kevin answered Sonya in the same voice he announced what page we were on. “Your brain can melt when you have a fever that high.”

“Which can only happen to people who have a brain,” Martin say. “So Bunch is safe.”

I wondered what Daniel would think if he knew how they talked about him when he wasn’t there.

“Oh no,” Sonya say.

All during those three days he’d been absent, no one seemed to notice or care what had happened to Daniel Bunch. And now, no one seemed scared except me. I was the only person in the room who had wished that Daniel Bunch would disappear and then floated the wish down the river.

“Focus, people,” Ms. Zucchero say from her desk, “or we’ll have quiet time.”

Everyone knew that meant no talking until the bell rang. Usually we listened to Ms. Zucchero when she had quiet time. I wished she had made quiet time before Daniel Bunch trashed my collage last Friday.

Martin slid his sketch pad across the table and stretched out his arms. “Anyway, he’s at the hospital.”

Now my sketch pad trembled so bad in my hand that I let go of it, and it clapped to the floor. When I bent to pick it up, I had to swallow hard to keep from gagging.

“How do you know that?” Sonya asked, tossing her ponytail. “Did you see him go?”

When Martin didn’t answer, she asked again, “Did you see him?” This time her voice sounded like it was flapping on a clothesline.

Fear slapped my chest and dribbled into every cell of my body. I stared at the picture of the brown-haired girl and tried to draw the smooth line down her cheek, but I felt my hand making a long squiggle on the page. If Daniel Bunch got sick before Meadow Lark and I made the wish on Friday afternoon, then we had nothing to do with Daniel’s 104 fever and his being in the hospital. But if he got sick after we made the wish, then it might have been our fault.

I swallowed again, and without thinking I asked, “When did they take him to the hospital?”

“She talks,” Kevin whispered.

Just then Ms. Zucchero shifted in her chair. It was her signal for what was to come. “Okay, people. Quiet time now.”

Then Sonya say, “The fake-accent girl talks. Why would she care what happened to Daniel?”

She was a fly in my ear, and I waved her away and asked again. “Does anyone know when they take him?”

But Sonya just kept talking to the pile. “Maybe she likes him. Or maybe she knows more than she’s telling. You gotta watch out for the quiet ones, because they’re always listening. Maybe if we listen, we’ll find out what she knows. Talk, fake-accent girl.”

My heart pounded, and I couldn’t catch my breath. “Anyone know?” I asked, looking at Martin.

“Quiet, people,” Ms. Zucchero say to our table.

When she looked back at her crocheting, Martin whispered, “They took him on Sunday.”

Sonya must really like Daniel, I thought, because she blushed deeper than that CrimsonCrisp in the middle of the table and say, “No, Martin, you’re a liar.”

The next thing I remembered was feeling dizzy like when you get to the bottom of a roller coaster, and hearing a knock on the floor—which I later realized was my head—and then Ms. Zucchero looking down at me.

“River, can you sit up?” she asked, squeezing my arm. My head was buzzing. “We need to take you to Mrs. Bertetti’s office. Someone bring her some water.”

Then Ms. Zucchero wheeled her chair over to me and helped me sit in it. I cried a little because she was being so careful with me and because everyone stared and say how pale I looked. Ms. Zucchero couldn’t have wheeled me out fast enough.

She rolled me down to Mrs. Bertetti, the school nurse. The two of them talked and Mrs. Bertetti told me to lie down on the bed with my knees up.

“I hope you feel better soon,” Ms. Zucchero say before she left to go back to class.

Mrs. Bertetti took my temperature, which was normal, and then held my wrist with her fingertips while she looked at her watch. Her lips moved as she stared at it.

Finally she put my hand back down on the bed and asked, “Can your mother drive you home?”

I shook my head. “She doesn’t drive. She stopped driving . . . a while ago.” Mrs. Bertetti didn’t have to know everything. “But I can walk home.”

“Not after that tumble. What about your father?”

“He’s in New York.” Daddy had left again almost as soon as he’d come back from Orlando.

“Your brother? Oh—” Mrs. Bertetti say, cutting herself off.

Everything today reminded me of Theron. I just wanted to go home.

Maybe she felt bad for bringing up Theron, so she went out of the nurse’s office for a few minutes and come back with a glass of water and set it on the table beside me. “I called your mother. She’ll find you a ride home.”

As she took my pulse again, I looked up at the ceiling tiles and asked, “Do you know Daniel Bunch?”

“I know all my students,” she say, and set my hand back down beside me. “Is Daniel your friend?”

“He’s in my art class.”

“Then you must know he’s sick.”

I was glad to be lying down, or I’d have probably fainted again. But I had to find out as much as I could. “Is he in the hospital?”

“Because he’s your friend, I’ll tell you that he is in the hospital. But I don’t know anything more.”

Then Mrs. Bertetti sat down at her desk and started writing on a form. “What did you eat for breakfast?” she asked.

I sat up, propping myself on my elbows. “When did Daniel go to the hospital?”

She didn’t take her eyes off her desk when she told me, almost in a whisper, “I heard it was Sunday. Now that’s it. No more information, okay?”

“Oh,” I say, and my heart pounded so strong that I thought it would fling me off the bed. I sank back down onto the mattress. And then the worry nodded at me and say, Wishes are powerful things.

Mrs. Bertetti stopped writing and looked up. “I’m sure it would make him very happy if you paid him a visit.”