Chapter 17

It was still sprinkling when I left Daniel’s house, and I tucked my collage under my shirt to keep it dry. Even though the rain was soft and warm, I shivered. Daniel say that Theron tutored him. What else didn’t I know about my brother? What else didn’t I know about Daniel?

I wish I had a tutor, Daniel had scrawled in his notebook. Everyone has a wish, even Daniel, and knowing that made my heart a little softer for him. Caring about other people hurts, I discovered, because your heart breaks with theirs.

I could try being nicer to Daniel and he’d never need to know. He wanted a tutor. I could make that wish for him. Meadow Lark would say she had convinced me that those wishes we floated down the river come true, but she hadn’t. I just wanted to do for Daniel what he couldn’t do for himself right now. That is, if he even knew about floating wishes down the river.

Wishes—I had so many of my own, and as I walked to the river, they all pushed one another aside in my mind, jostling for my attention:

I wish Mr. Tricks is alive and his wing is healed.

I wish he would come back to Meadow Lark, because she really loves that pidge.

I wish Theron is safe and happy.

I wish Mama would smooth my hair into a ponytail.

I wish Daddy would go to Boston more often, instead of Chicago or Orlando or St. Louis.

I wish Theron misses us.

I wish for a little red heart on my napkin.

I wish Daniel would be nicer.

I wish Mama would like the collage.

I wish Theron wants us to find him.

I wish Meadow Lark would go home so Mama wouldn’t pay so much attention to her.

I wish Meadow Lark and I could be best friends again.

I wish Daniel would tell me more about Theron.

I wish Theron would come home.

I couldn’t count the number of times each day my heart made that last wish.

By then I had reached the sandy beach. I looked at the river flowing by, imagining myself stepping out there. I remembered how it felt to wake up and feel the river curling around my legs, and I knew I couldn’t go out into the water.

But I could go directly to the log and put his wish on it. So I picked my way through the woods to the little cove, and when I reached the log, I noticed something looked different about it. When Meadow Lark and I first found the log, it was stuck firmly into the riverbank and angled upstream. Now it stretched three or four feet farther out over the water and pointed downstream.

Carefully I stepped to where the log met the riverbank, and crouched to get a better look. And blinked. Our three wishes had grown into thirty, all fluttering on the log. It was a collage of wishes. No one else knew about wishing on the river or about the log, so Meadow Lark must have put these wishes here.

Shadows from the opposite bank had reached all the way across the river, calling dusk to settle. Quickly I wrote Daniel’s wish for a tutor on a scrap of paper and tossed it into the water in front of the log, and hoped that the log would catch it.

Just as I turned to leave, I saw something floating in the air from across the river. Closer and closer it come, as if it knew my scent. It was a white feather.

I reached out and closed my hand around it, and tucked it into my pocket.

Wishes floated everywhere.