Found Things by Marilyn Hilton Read Free Book Online

before I knew what they were doing or where they were taking me. They carried me out of the art room and out of the school, up the street to the library, and down the path to the river.
    Meanwhile, my mind carried me to that house. I was in the big dining room with the carved table and the desk with the adding machine and the square shelves, and the doorway that led back to the kitchen. The house was building itself in front of me, spreading its rooms in front of me. I saw a staircase in the space between the dining room and kitchen, but it turned halfway up, so I couldn’t see to the top.
    I put my foot on the first step, when I heard, “River! Come back!” It was Meadow Lark, standing on the shore. She waved, and the breeze lifted her hair around her face like she was flying.
    I was standing up to my calves in the river. “Meadow Lark!” I called, my legs paralyzed with fear and cold.
    â€œWait there,” she called, and waded out to me and grabbed my hand. “Follow me,” she say, and led me step by step all the way back to the sandy beach.
    â€œWhat were you doing out there?” she asked.
    â€œI don’t know. I was just . . . What was I doing out there?” I asked, and sank to the ground. I buried my head in my arms and breathed. The rain falling on the water sounded like a zither.
    â€œYou were walking out into the middle of the river,” she say. “That current could have swept you away.”
    I raised my head and watched the river slide by. That was the farthest I’d ever gone in there. What if I had gone even farther? What if—
    â€œIt’s a good thing you come along when you did,” I say.
    Meadow Lark was drawing in the sand with a twig. “You could have drowned—all because of Daniel Bunch.”
    She understood how I felt. “I wish Daniel Bunch was . . . I wish he would leave us alone.” But that wasn’t all I wanted to say.
    â€œThat’s what you want?” Meadow Lark asked. “You want him to go away?”
    â€œSort of . . . don’t you?” I asked, remembering how her hand shook in the art room when they called her Frankenfemme.
    Without saying a word, she reached into her backpack and pulled out a pencil and a corner of lined paper. Then she started writing something.
    â€œWhat are you doing?” I asked.
    â€œWe’re making a wish. See?” she say, and handed the paper to me.
    We wish Daniel Bunch would drop dead.
    I took a sharp breath, because Meadow Lark had written what I hadn’t say. It was just like she could read my mind. But seeing my wish on the paper made me feel like throwing up. Wishing Daniel Bunch to be dead ran a chill from my toes to my scalp.
    I pushed the paper back to her. “You have to change it to say ‘disappear’ instead.”
    Meadow Lark squinted at me through her glasses, and then crossed out drop dead .
    â€œNo,” I say, “you have to erase it, or it’ll still be in the wish.”
    â€œYou’re being really persnickety,” she say, but she erased it and wrote: We wish Daniel Bunch would disappear .
    We looked at each other and nodded. Then I found a peel of birch bark on the beach, near where the woods began, and Meadow Lark laid the wish on it.
    â€œNow you need to take it far out, so it will float a long way,” I say.
    â€œOne day you have to stop being afraid of the water.”
    â€œOne day, I know,” I say, and shivered. “But not today.”
    Meadow Lark took the birch bark and stepped into the river, out to where the current ran free and the water reached her knees, and set that wish down. That made three wishes we’d floated down the river. And I believed not one of them would come true.
    The river took it swift. I fixed my eyes on that curl of bark until it turned into a speck and then a twinkle of broken sunlight. When I realized it was too late to take back the wish, that shiver went up my