OTHER DELL YEARLING BOOKS YOU WILL ENJOY
ALL THE WAY HOME, Patricia Reilly Giff
LILY'S CROSSING, Patricia Reilly Giff
NORY RYAN'S SONG, Patricia Reilly Giff
ALIDA'S SONG, Gary Paulsen
GIRL COMING IN FOR A LANDING, April Halprin Wayland
WHEN MY NAME WAS KEOKO, Linda Sue Park
CHARLOTTE'S ROSE, A. E. Cannon
QUIT IT, Marcia Byalick
SONG OF SAMPO LAKE, William Durbin
EARTHBORN, Sylvia Waugh
DELL YEARLING BOOKS are designed especially to entertain and enlighten young people. Patricia Reilly Giff, consultant to this series, received her bachelor's degree from Marymount College and a master's degree in history from St. John's University. She holds a Professional Diploma in Reading and a Doctorate of Humane Letters from Hofstra University. She was a teacher and reading consultant for many years, and is the author of numerous books for young readers.
For Alice Tiernan,
who fishes in the Delaware River
And for Bill Reilly,
who fishes with her
MY THANKS TO CRAIG VIRDEN,
WHOSE ADVICE, ENCOURAGEMENT, AND SUPPORT
HAVE MEANT SO MUCH TO ME,
AND ESPECIALLY FOR HIS FRIENDSHIP
This picture has a dollop of peanut butter on one edge, a smear of grape jelly on the other, and an X across the whole thing. I cut it out of a magazine for homework when I was six years old. “Look for words that begin with W,” my teacher, Mrs. Evans, had said.
She was the one who marked in the X, spoiling my picture. She pointed. “This is a picture of a family, Hollis. A mother, M, a father, F, a brother, B, a sister, S. They're standing in front of their house, H. I don't see one W word here.”
I opened my mouth to say: How about W for wish, or W for want, or W for “Wouldn't it be loverly,” like the song the music teacher had taught us?
But Mrs. Evans was at the next table by that time, shushing me over her shoulder.
“Whoo-ee!” said the kid with dirty nails who sat next to me. “You don't know anything, Hollis Woods.”
I reached for my crayon and dug an X into her picture of a snow-white washing machine. “Too bad you can't use it to get your hands clean,” I said.
When I think of my W picture deep inside my backpack under all the other pictures I've drawn, I think of that poor washing machine kid who cried over her ruined picture, and the frowning Mrs. Evans, who told me to sit in the hall with a timeout T letter for the rest of that long afternoon. “You don't deserve to be with the rest of us today,” she said.
I sat for a while looking at a picture of a pointy mountain. Someday I would climb a mountain like that. I'd build a little house and maybe I'd have a horse that would live right in the house with me, and a dog and a cat.
When I saw the principal coming down the hall, I picked myself up and walked out the door. The woman I was staying with—I called her the lemon lady because of the way her mouth caved in—made me stay in the yard all weekend for that. “You think you're so tough,” she said. “I'll show you tough.”
That foolish woman forgot that as long as I had a pencil and paper, I'd get along. I drew her with her pursed-up lips, then tied her picture to the tree for target practice with gravel from the path.
But when I think of my W picture, mostly I think of the Regans' house in Branches. I think of the Old Man, and Izzy, and their son, Steven. All they needed to match my picture was a girl, G.
And that's what I thought the morning I ran away from them, touching the great holly bushes, feeling their sharpness, and the sticky evergreen branches that hung over the dirt road leading to town. I stopped to look up at the mountain, and then at the house half hidden in the trees, the gray porch tacked on the front, screens bellying out, the chimney leaning, the two windows upstairs that had been in my bedroom, and the river in front.
My river, the Delaware.
That day I thought I'd never see any of it again. N, never, and in my mind I drew an X over all of them, and over me, too.
The house was falling apart. I could see that from the car window. But it didn't bother me. After a while the houses ran together, four now—no, five.
There was the green house where the door didn't quite close; the wind blew in and up the stairs, rattling the window panes. The white house: crumbs on the table, kids fighting over a bag of Wonder bread. The yellow house: sooty, a long-haired woman with braids, no rugs on the stairs, the loud sound of feet going up and down.
Ah, and the house in Branches. Steven's house. But that house was different. I'd never forget that one.
Don't think about it, Steven said in my head.
I did that a lot; I pretended Steven was right there next to me when I knew he was miles away in upstate New York. I wondered if he ever said to himself, “What is Hollis Woods doing right this minute?” And did he put my words in his head?
The driver turned off the motor. For a moment we looked out at the trees, the leaves with just a tinge of red this October afternoon. “We're here, Hollis,” she said, a woman in sweats, a mustard stain on the front from the hot dogs we had eaten on the side of the road. Those hot dogs were a mean lump in the middle of my stomach, sloshing around with a Mountain Dew.
She'd tried to talk all the way, but I hadn't answered. I slumped in my seat, feet up on the glove compartment, wearing an A&S baseball hat with the brim yanked low over my forehead. If someone looks into your eyes, I read in a book one time, he'll see right into your soul.
I didn't want anyone to see into my soul.
I knew she was dying to tell me to get my sneakers off her dashboard, but she didn't. She was waiting to deliver her speech.
I could hear her getting ready for it with a puff of breath. “This can be a new start, Hollis. A new place.” She licked her finger and scratched at the mustard stain. “No one knows you. You can be different, you can be good, know what I mean?”
Maybe she gave that speech to every foster kid in every driveway as she dumped them off like the UPS guy dumping off packages on a busy day, but I didn't think so. I had looked into her eyes once, just the quickest look, and I had seen that she felt sorry for me, that she didn't know what to do with me. Too bad for you, mustard woman.
I hummed a little of “The Worms Crawl In, the Worms Crawl Out.”
“She was an art teacher,” the mustard woman said, pointing to the house. “Retired now. I've never met her, but everyone at the agency says she's wonderful with kids …” Her voice trailed off, but I knew she had meant to say “kids like you.”
I walked my feet up the dashboard so my knees came close to my chin.
“No one's been here with her for a while, but Emmy said it would be a good place for you.”
Emmy, the agency hotshot. She had probably said, “What have we got to lose?”
“A good place for an artist like you, Hollis,” the mustard woman said. “Mr. Regan …”
I drew in my breath. The Old Man. I closed my eyes as if I were ready to doze off.
“He wanted you to have a chance to work at your drawings. He said it would be a crime if you didn't.”
I tried to yawn, but then the front door opened, and a woman came out on the porch with a mangy orange cat one step behind her. I didn't bother to give them more than a glance. What did I care what the woman looked like?
But next to me, the mustard woman took a deep breath. I cut my eyes in the direction of the house. I was good at that, seeing everything without turning my head, without looking up, without blinking.
I did blink then, of course I did. Anyone getting a first look at Josie Cahill would do the same. It wasn't just that she was movie-star beau
tiful, or that she was wearing a blue dress made of filmy stuff that floated around her, and rings on eight of her fingers. It was this: She had a knife in one hand. She held it in front of her so it caught the glint of late-afternoon sunshine and became a silvery light itself.
“Lordy,” the mustard woman breathed.
I sat up straight, wondering if I should open the car door and run, or reach out to push the button down, locking myself in.
The knife woman came close enough for me to see that the movie-star face had dozens of tiny crisscross lines on its cheeks and across its forehead.
But then she smiled, and the lines around her mouth rearranged themselves. She leaned forward and put one hand on the car window. “Hollis,” she said. “Are you here, then?”
I couldn't take my eyes off her. I could feel a pencil in my hand, moving across the paper, drawing her face, her eyes, the knife. I reached over the seat, grabbed my backpack, and was out the door, slamming it behind me.
On the other side of the car the mustard woman was out too.
“Tea?” the movie star asked the mustard woman as if she were reading her grocery list. “Coffee? Lemonade? Orange juice?”
The mustard woman shook her head. She was still thinking about the knife. “I just want to get Hollis settled,” she said uneasily.
“I'm settled,” I said.
We all stood there for another few minutes, the mustard woman trying to fill the space around us with talk. Then at last she opened the car door again and was gone.
“Want to call me Josie?” The movie star rubbed her forehead absently with the knife handle. “If you want to do the Cahill part you say it ‘Kale,' you know, like that vegetable.” She jerked her head toward the cat. “That's Henry. He's a little irritable sometimes.”
I followed her up the path and around to the back of the house. Henry came too, reaching out to stab my leg with one irritable claw.
Josie looked back over her shoulder. “Hungry?”
I shook my head; the hot dogs were just settling in. “Drop your things,” she said, waving the knife. “We'll get them later.”
In back of the house was a different world: a garden on the edge of the woods, woods so small I could see around them to houses on the next street.
“I've lived here”—Josie raised one eyebrow— “since they invented the spoon.”
“Who did that, anyway?” I asked, trying her out. Her other eyebrow shot up. “The knife and fork people, who else?”
I could feel a laugh coming as she waved her hand. “This is my place.”
Carved tree branches were stuck in the dirt in front of the woods, some of them thicker than my arm, others almost pencilthin. All of them had faces, and bits of grass or wreaths of flowers circled their wooden heads.
I touched this one and that, using two fingers, the ones I used to shadow in my own drawings. One of the figures had a filmy scarf around its neck and held a bird's nest in its bent arms. “You?” I asked.
She patted the scarf and turned to look at me, head tilted.
I pulled my hat down over my eyes and stared at her figures. She really was an artist.
“I'll make one of you,” Josie Cahill said. “We'll have to find the right piece of wood. I think there's one in the back. The shape of the head is there already, the nose sharp, and the eyes …” She stopped. “But only if you stay. It will take weeks for me to do. Months, maybe.”
I tried to think of what to say. I never stayed anywhere for long before I ran. One morning I'd wake up and I'd have had enough. I'd grab my backpack and go. I'd hang out in the city, see a couple of movies, or if the weather was nice, I'd head over to Jones Beach and sleep under the boardwalk. Sometimes it took them days to find me. But they never sent me back to the same place. The people in their houses had probably had enough of me, too.
Josie waited for me to answer.
I raised one shoulder. “I'm not sure.”
“Henry and I will treat you like our best company for as long as you stay,” she said.
Henry crouched at the top of the path, eyes slitted, tail switching at me. “I'm glad he's not a tiger,” I said, feeling that laughter again.
Josie's eyes danced. “Maybe we'll go back and cut that piece of wood anyway.”
A table leaned against the back of the house, an old redwood table with tools: a drill, an ax, and knives sharp enough to split hairs.
I reached for the ax, then followed Josie Cahill into the woods.
And in my head I told Steven, I may just stay for a while. What do you think of that?
This wasn't one picture, it was six, eight, ten. I never could get Steven right. I could see him in my head, though, close my eyes and there he was.
That first day, I was sick to my stomach from the smell of the bus, the dizzying mountain roads. I had been on that bus for hours. It seemed like weeks. The tag pinned to my shirt, HOLLISWOODS, LONG ISLAND, had rubbed a raw patch into my neck.
All I could think about was how thirsty I felt. I imagined ice cubes in my mouth, burning my tongue, ginger ale in a glass that was wet to the touch, root beer with two scoops of orange sherbet.
I was on my way to a place called Branches to spend the summer with a family named Regan.
“I'll be good if you don't make me go,” I had almost told the woman I was living with in thestucco house. “I won't make a sound, you'll see.” Instead, I squeezed my lips in between my teeth so hard they were hidden inside my mouth, and shot lightning rays at her out of the corners of my eyes.
“Fresh air, a place in the country,” the stucco woman said, “that's what you need.”
She didn't mean it, though. I heard her on the phone. “Two months,” she said, “two months to do what I please and not have to worry about that kid getting into everyting.”
“Everything,” I said, putting my tongue against my top teeth in front of her face.
“Fresh.” She cupped her hand over the phone. “Fresh as paint.”
And back to the phone, whispering now: “No wonder she hasn't been adopted. She's a mountain of trouble, that Hollis Woods.”
I marched up the stairs, hitting every rung with her lime green umbrella.
Anyway, I was the last one left on the bus. Up in front the driver talked with the woman from the agency. If I ducked down in back of the seat, would they forget about me? Would they turn around and go back to Long Island?
We lumbered up the main street of Hancock, passing a row of houses and a movie theater, and came to a stop in front of a diner. “Straighten up, kid,” the bus driver said, looking into the rear-view mirror. “We're here.”
I gathered up my backpack and the plastic bag they had given me: a toothbrush, a bar of soap that smelled like an old sock, a pink washcloth, and a book for drooling two-year-olds, Kelly Goes to Camp. I tossed the book in the agency woman's lap as I passed, nose in the air, pretending I wasn't dying of thirst, pretending I wasn't bursting from having to go to the bathroom.
Outside the bus window a man leaned against the wall of the diner, his hat over his eyes, and a boy played handball against a brick wall. I climbed down into the blistering hot sun, checking out the boy. A skinny mess he was, much taller than I, his socks falling down. They looked as if they didn't even match.
As the bus started up, the exhaust smelling like a sewer, the boy slammed the ball against the wall, missing it on its way back. He nearly killed himself trying to dive in front of the bus for it, then jumped back at the last moment as the ball bounced across the street.
I put down my backpack and the agency freebie bag, darted across the street in back of the bus, and scooped up the ball with one hand. I trotted back to them, tossing it over my head and catching it a couple of times just to show them what I could do.
The man pushed his hat back and grinned at me. He had a great face to draw: eyes the color of cinnamon toast, a prickly gray-black beard, deep laugh lines.
“I'm Steven Regan,” the boy said, grinning. “How'd you get a name
like that, Hollis Woods, crazy name? Do they call you Holly? We have a pile of holly bushes out in front. Touch the leaves and they draw blood. I'm going to call you Holly.”
The man shook his head. “Steven.”
“Try it,” I cut in.
“How old are you anyway?” Steven asked, his eyes caramel behind his glasses. “You look like kind of a shrimp to me.”
“Twelve,” I said, bumping it up almost a year, “and tough.”
“Baby. I'll be thirteen December twenty-sixth.” He rushed on. “We're having lunch at the diner. My mother stayed in Branches.”
“Izzy's making carrot cake,” the man said.
I thought about saying I hated carrots—not true, I ate anything. Anyting, the stucco house lady would say. Besides, they were standing there, Steven and his father, looking so pleased about having lunch in the diner and carrot cake for dinner, I didn't have the heart, and I really had to go to the bathroom.
“Bet you're thirsty.” Steven's eyes narrowed. “They've got checkers at every table. I'll play you, beat you.”
He wanted to pay me back for the ball trick.
His father frowned. He knew it too.
But I was all right with it; I was fine with it.
I skittered into the diner, straight to the rest room, and then sat with them at their table drinking root beer floats, cold and sweet, with wet napkins underneath the glasses. After I had downed half of mine, Steven ticked off the things he wanted me to know. “I call the old man Pop,” he said.