Chapter 27

On the last day of school, flowers of many colors spilled over Ms. Zucchero’s desk, and each one of them had come from Mr. Sievers.

“I know someone who got a lot of cake today,” Sonya say at the art table. She looked over to me, bouncing her ponytail. “River, is your family going on vacation?”

I was still getting used to Sonya talking to me like a normal person, so I answered her quietly. “Just to Utica for a week.”

“Maybe we can do something together?” she asked shyly.

“We can’t go anywhere,” Kevin say. “All of a sudden my dad’s got too many patients.” He looked at me. “It all started with Mr. Clapton. Dad’s letting him pay in eggs.”

I smiled at all the wishes that had come true.

There was more to smile about when Ms. Zucchero asked me to stay after class. “River, I’d like you to think about joining the art class I’m teaching this summer. It’s for students who show special creativity, and it will be fun. Would you like that?”

Special creativity, me? I thought. “Yes,” I say, feeling so much happiness.

She wrote the information on a piece of paper. “Give this to your parents. They can talk to me about it anytime.”

“This was fun,” Meadow Lark say as she put the last of her clothes in her duffel bag. Her daddy was back, she say, and she was going home.

Meadow Lark seemed to have forgotten about the night she almost drowned in the river. I wanted her to think it was all a dream, so I never mentioned it to her.

I was sitting crisscross on my bed. Theron told me I was walking crooked from sitting W, so I was trying to change how I sat. “It was fun,” I say, pushing down on my knees. “We have the whole summer to do it again,” I say.

She sank onto her bed, and bent down to feed carrots to Mr. Tricks on the floor. “Well . . . not really,” she say.

“What do you mean?”

“I got a letter from my dad last week, and we’re moving again.”

“No,” I say. “You can’t move, Meadow Lark. We’re best friends.”

“We can still be best friends far away. And maybe I can come back to visit.”

“I hope you can. Let’s make a wish!” I say. “But, where are you . . . ?”

“South Carolina. My dad found a teaching job there.”

A burst of sunlight grew and then faded in the room as clouds cleared from the sky. The rain had stopped a week ago and everything was drying out. The river had sunk to its normal height, and Daddy say the Quincely town council was talking about rebuilding the covered bridge.

Meadow Lark zipped up her backpack and slung it over her shoulder.

“I’ll walk with you.”

“You don’t have to, you know.”

“I want to. Mama say it’s hospitable.”

“Your mama and her rules,” Meadow Lark say, and tossed her pumpkin-colored hair behind her shoulders.

I smiled about Mama and her rules. It meant we were cared-about girls.

“Okay,” she say, “but just to the library. I want to look up South Carolina and learn about my next home.”

I looked out the window just as Mama was backing the car out of the driveway. Daddy in the passenger seat was clutching the dashboard. Just before they drove off, she looked up at me and waved.

When Meadow Lark and I went outside, Theron come from the garage on his Giant, with his backpack hitched over his shoulders. “See ya,” he say as he passed.

“Where’s he going?” Meadow Lark asked.

“Tutoring . . . his old student.”

Meadow Lark’s eyes got huge. “Daniel?”

I nodded, and then remembered something. “Wait here. I’ll be right back,” I say, and ran back up to our room and took the collage out of my closet. It had been there since the day I’d come home and found Mama and Meadow Lark making the cake together. All that time, the collage was supposed to be for Mama, but now Mama didn’t need it.

Meadow Lark and I say good-bye in front of the library. “For now,” she say, “because I’ll come back.”

“Okay,” I say, hardly able to believe she was really going away. “You’re my best friend.”

She nodded and hitched her hair behind her ear. “And you’ll always be mine.”

We hugged, and after she went inside, I carried the collage down the path to the river. I kicked off my sandals and walked out to my ankles. And then I walked out farther, until the river reached my calves, where the current ran free.

I looked at the collage one more time, touching each thing glued to it—the glass pieces brushed soft, the place on the porcelain doll head where the nose once was, the piece of wood that looked like a hand, the R typewriter key, the watch face, the black bear’s tooth, the peach-colored leaf that was still soft, the stone that looked like a face, the gold beads, which I now believed were real gold.

Then, one by one, I picked off each thing I’d found and tossed it as far as I could into the river, and watched the ripples slide along the surface.

At one time I’d needed those things that the river gave me, but they weren’t mine to keep. Theron was back, Mama and Daddy were happy, I had a best friend, I’d found my other mama, and the song in me was starting to sound just right. They were all I needed and all I wanted.

The last thing left on the collage was the bald plastic baby with arms and legs and head that moved. I picked it gently off the poster board. Then I found an old shingle near the forest and gently laid the baby on it.

Setting it on the surface of the river, I made a wish that the next person who found that baby doll would treasure it as much as I had. Then I say, “Good-bye,” and let it go, and watched until it disappeared into the ripples and sparkles.

I wished I’d had Mama’s faith from the beginning, the faith that believes even when there’s no reason to. Angels are everywhere, I discovered. You just have to look for them.

After I returned all those gifts to the river, I remembered my three lucky feathers. I didn’t need lucky feathers anymore. But when I reached into my pocket for them, my fingers touched something stiff, like paper.

I pulled it out. And smiled at what I saw—a folded-up napkin with a little red heart.