Excerpt of SCATTERGOOD by Holiday House

H.M. Bouwman

NEAL PORTER BOOKS

HOLIDAY HOUSE / NEW YORK

Neal Porter Books

An imprint of Holiday House Publishing, Inc. Edited by Taylor Norman

HOLIDAY HOUSE is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Printed and bound in November 2024 at Sheridan, Chelsea, MI, USA. Book design by Jennifer Browne www.holidayhouse.com

First Edition

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Bouwman, H. M., author. Title: Scattergood / H.M. Bouwman.

Summary: “In 1941 rural Iowa, thirteen-year-old Peggy’s quiet life is turned upside down by refugee arrivals, first love, and a heartbreaking diagnosis”— Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2024007088 | ISBN 9780823457755 (hardcover)

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024007088

ISBN: 978-0-8234-5775-5 (hardcover)

EU Authorized Representative: HackettFlynn Ltd, 36 Cloch Choirneal, Balrothery, Co. Dublin, K32 C942, Ireland. EU@walkerpublishinggroup.com

For G and R. Always. No matter what, no matter what.

And for Tricia Lawrence and Taylor Norman. For believing in me and in this book. Thank you.

CHAPTER ONE

Something thrilling.

A barn is almost the best place in the world to think, if you live on a farm and have nowhere else to go.

Everything in a barn has a use; everywhere you look there is a job to do— or just done: stalls mucked out, straw scattered thin and even, shovels hung on their hooks. Cows shrug at flies, patiently waiting for whatever end of the world might come. Nothing in a barn worries, not about dust storms that might return someday, or wars in Europe that might spread to America, or best friends who might be sick.

I sat milking, back-to-back with my dad, each of us leaning a shoulder into a cow’s greasy side, clipping through chores before we headed over to my cousin Delia’s for her late birthday party. And then my dad told me, over the hissing in our respective buckets, that Delia had leukemia.

The three barn cats hunched at our feet hoping for a squirt, but I didn’t help them out.

“What do you mean, leukemia?”

Everyone had been upheaved about Delia lying in the hospital in Iowa City, but now she was home, and things would be

back to normal. Delia and I would help our dads in the fields and our moms in the kitchens, and we’d swim in the creek, and we’d avoid our annoying neighbor Ida Jean as much as we could, and Delia would read me long passages from books about girls who wanted to be authors, and she’d write poetry that didn’t make sense, and I’d pretend to appreciate it even though we both knew I did not. It would be a good summer.

“What do you mean?” I said again, finishing with my cow and turning all the way around.

Dad took his time to answer. The cats mewed impatiently. “Means she’s pretty darn sick.”

“How sick? On a scale of one to ten, ten being the sickest?” It didn’t make sense. The hospital wouldn’t have sent Delia home if she wasn’t improved.

Silence. Then he looked over his shoulder at me, one hand on the cow’s flank. Harriet lowed; she didn’t like pauses in her routine. He started the rhythmic pulling again.

He cleared his throat and pressed his forehead into Harriet’s side, squeezing her teats repeatedly until the milk slowed down.

“Leukemia’s pretty serious.”

He didn’t look over at me, not even when he finished with Harriet.

Leukemia.

I’d heard the word but didn’t know much of what it meant, except that it meant serious. I’d never known anyone who got it.

But I couldn’t think of how to ask everything I wanted to know. And my dad had moved on to the next cow.

tWhen I got to Delia’s house, early, to help set up the party, Uncle Ed waved from outside the barn, shovel in hand. Instead of going inside, which was busy with women, I wished I could join him in some quiet cleaning of the pigpens. But I veered toward the house, carrying warm bread and old sheets. And by the time I slipped into the side door and stood in the washroom, I knew I couldn’t just waltz into the kitchen and start working like nothing was wrong. I had to see Delia, to see how sick she really was.

In the kitchen on the other side of the door, Ida Jean murmured something, and the women laughed and clucked, and her mother said, “That girl draws boys like honey!”; and that decided me. I laid the bread and the sheets on the sill and took the other door—up the stairs in sock feet.

Upstairs was hotter than down. I don’t know why the Bible says hell is below.

Delia was lying on top of the covers in her thin nightgown, a glisten of sweat on her bare arms. She must have felt good enough to read, because she had a book propped up in front of her face. But the book was Little Women, which she’d already read about a dozen times, so she must not have felt too good. When I had the flu, I reviewed old pages in my math book, and I’m guessing Little Women was like that for Delia. Reading, but with the brain turned off.

She lowered the novel as soon as I came in the room, and her eyes, bigger than life-size through her thick glasses, crinkled up at the corners.

“Peggy! I thought I wouldn’t see you so soon!” She grinned and laid down the book, still open to her page. “You sneaked. Jo March would approve.”

I’d never read Little Women, but Delia had told me all about Jo March—who sounded like the only decent one of all the sisters—two summers earlier when I was almost eleven and she was twelve and she decided to become a writer. It was the summer our mothers taught us to sew, something the March girls also did in their book. Delia insisted that during sewing time, I had to call her “Jo.” I was expected to play the other three sisters—which was hard since I couldn’t keep them apart—all while Delia carefully ruined her stitches and discussed the astounding wealth of a boy named “Laurie,” even though in real life the only boy near us is our neighbor and schoolmate Joe Clark. It was a long and confusing summer, filled with crooked hems; and it was followed by the autumn of Anne of Green Gables, difficult in its own way since it involved me pushing Delia down the creek in a raft while she recited poetry and Joe and Ida Jean laughed on the bank. At least crooked hems took place in private.

“Peggy?” Delia said, and I realized I’d been daydreaming. The silence had stretched out too far.

“Um. Happy birthday.”

“That was two weeks ago.”

“Welcome back, then. How are you?” I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to say.

“Hot.” She waved a zigzag paper. “Sammy made me a fan.”

“It’s probably cooler outside.”

She kept fanning. “I’m not allowed downstairs until the party. The doctors say I’m ‘susceptible to infection,’ so Mom’s treating me like I’m John Keats.”

“Is that from Anne of Green Gables?”

She sighed. “Like I’m an invalid. She says I have to stay in bed and away from germs. Honestly. I’m better now.”

“You are?”

“I’m just a little anemic,” she said. “When you’re older you’ll know what I mean. It sometimes happens to women.”

“Women?” She was fourteen, as of three weeks ago. Also, my dad had said leukemia, and anemia didn’t sound bad enough for the way he talked in the barn.

Delia folded the fan inside Little Women like a bookmark and closed the novel. “Tell me everything that’s happened while I’ve been away.”

She’d been in the hospital in Iowa City for two whole weeks; you’d think something would have occurred during that time. But it hadn’t. Even though West Branch, Iowa, is the birthplace of a president, nothing happens here.

“Well, we harvested alfalfa.”

“Peggy.” Delia’s voice had a dangerous corn-tassel-silk quality to it that meant I was being stupid. “Tell me something I don’t already know. Something exciting.”

But that was the problem. Harvest was good this spring—we managed to make hay in pure sunshine, and we beat most of the leafhoppers—but it wasn’t anything new.

I thought hard.

“That was really it until your party today. Oh—I started writing my essay for English next fall.”

“What?” She gaped and I knew I’d grabbed a good topic.

“I want to do well in high school.” I was the youngest person in our grade by more than a year. “So I need a good grade in English, which I can do if I perfect my essay over the summer. I read that autobiography—”

“Stop. You mean Benjamin Franklin?”

I nodded. “Our summer reading assignment. Mr. Laughlin said. Remember?”

“I remember. I started the book before I went to the hospital.” She wrinkled her nose. “Boring and unpoetic. But how do you know the writing assignment will be Franklin?”

“It’s been the ninth grade fall essay topic for the past six years.” What I didn’t tell her was that I’d already written the essay once; this was my second try. In May, I gave my draft to Mr. Laughlin— our junior high English teacher— so that he could tell me what to fix and I could get a good grade in the fall in my high school class. And Mr. Laughlin read it and sighed. When he finished, he handed the paper back and told me that, because I was so much younger than my classmates and really should be going into eighth grade or maybe even seventh grade rather than ninth grade (he tells me this every opportunity he can), I didn’t yet understand Franklin.

I told Delia that Mr. Laughlin said that replicating Franklin’s experiment to produce a perfect life (which I had done—a thirteen-day run through each of his thirteen virtues,

documented with charts and graphs, and repeated to validate the test) was not, he said, the point of reading the great man’s autobiography, because “life can’t be quantified.”

First of all, I’m only a year younger than my classmates. Maybe a little more than a year for some of them, but not two years. Second, I’m smart. I can understand Franklin.

But Delia liked what the teacher’d said. “Life,” she repeated, “can’t be quantified.” Nodding in agreement, she took off her glasses. “That’s right, Peggy. Life is so much better than any prediction we can make. And we ourselves are constantly expanding. Not like graphs or charts,” she said. “Like flowers.” She twirled her glasses in her fingers, and her eyes lit up like they always do when she says things that don’t make sense.

Delia wanted to be a poet, which made her talk funny.

“Do you understand?” she said.

I said yes mostly to make her stop staring. Her eyes were bright blue, and they could burn a hole right through you. Like me, Delia had mousy brown hair and a body that hadn’t yet figured out how to curve, even though she was older; unlike me, she actually had a best feature: those eyes. She knew it, too, which is why when she wanted to look authorly and make pronouncements, she removed her glasses.

“I’m speaking metaphorically,” she said.

“I need to get downstairs before I get in trouble for not helping.”

“You need to understand metaphor,” said Delia, still twirling her spectacles.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“Hey,” she said. “Here’s a better assignment for you this summer, especially since I’m stuck in bed. Experience something thrilling—and then tell me about it.” She pushed her glasses back on her nose, retrieved her writer’s notebook from under her pillow, and started scribbling. Sitting there, she was like a picture—a picture of herself, happy and in good health.

But my stomach refused to unknot.

tI understand graphs and charts, and even though she doesn’t think so, I know what a metaphor is, too; but I had no idea what Delia meant by us expanding like flowers. This is why she and I were never “kindred spirits” (as Delia would say), but merely cousins and friends.

And even though she sometimes thought I was a baby, we really were friends. Unlike our neighbor Ida Jean, Delia wasn’t always talking about boys and being cute. And if I said something that didn’t make sense to her, she didn’t make fun. Sometimes she even wrote down things I said in her writer’s notebook, as if I was interesting.

Also, there was always something new happening in her head. And she had the best laugh. Like church bells but more screechy; like church bells if church bells were wicked. She hadn’t laughed at all today. I wanted her to laugh again.

tWhen I walked into the kitchen, Ida Jean waved from the table, where she was forming a ball of pie dough. Around her

heart-shaped face, her golden hair curled in the kitchen’s heat. I nodded back and placed the bread and sheets on the counter like I had just come in from outside. Already I could see the writing on the wall: I’d be rolling crusts with Ida Jean. And when you work with Ida Jean, you generally listen to her jabber about the boys we know and other uninteresting things.

So I quickly volunteered to set up tables for lunch. I like lonely work; it gets a person away from Ida Jean and gives them time to think. My mom, opening a jar of last year’s apples for the pie filling, tilted her head at me. She knew what I was doing. Then she said, “Peggy likes her solitude sometimes, like me.”

“Don’t we all,” said Ida Jean’s mother. As I put my shoes back on, she launched into a story about how Ida Jean was always talking, even in her sleep. I left.

Everyone was coming to the party, all the close neighbors. This wasn’t normal—usually it was just me and my parents for any birthdays at Delia’s house, and Delia and her little brother and Aunt Clare and Uncle Ed for any birthdays at my house. But Delia had missed all kinds of spring events, including the eighth-grade graduation picnic, so we were going to recreate them today.

Out near the driveway I started building tables in the shade of the willow tree. My dress was already dark with sweat, and even the willow didn’t offer much relief, sagging in the still air. The day sulked.

I built three tables out of sawhorses and old doors that my uncle had dragged out of the barn. It took some shifting to get

everything level. Then I spread tablecloths—the sheets I’d carried over, long ago demoted to threshing day service, and now repurposed for this party. After much wear on the beds, the linens were still white, but so thin that you could see the wood grain right through, and they were dotted with pin-prick holes from an accident I once had with too much bleach in the wash basin.

Here, in short, was the problem: Delia was fourteen and I was almost thirteen, and we wanted something interesting to happen to us, and nothing interesting ever happened— except now, Delia taking sick. And that wasn’t a fair kind of interesting.

Something thrilling. Delia had given me an assignment, so I was going to think about that, not about illness. It was a special day; surely I could find something exciting.

Meanwhile, the sheets—tablecloths—weren’t cooperating. They were so thin that every whisper of breeze, every hint, drew them up sighing. And when they drifted to stillness, the wood grain showed through like the lines in feathers, so that each time they lifted up, they looked like fragile somethings trying to fly. Or like the airy robes angels wear in paintings. Only frayed and holey.

At any rate, they wouldn’t stay on the table without help. I pinned down the corners of each one with a rock.

I was so curled into my thoughts, and so driven to trap those sheets, that I didn’t hear Someone New come up the drive. Didn’t see him until he was right there, under the willow tree

with me. Which is why I dropped the biggest of the rocks on my foot. Because of surprise.

The rock stung like the dickens. Delia flew out of my head right then and there. Because here was a stranger. And my brain, for the past almost-thirteen years so reliable and reasonable, took a vacation and left me stranded. Also, my foot really hurt.

“Are you okay?” the stranger asked. I hopped on one leg and stared.

He was what Ida Jean would call swoony: dark curly hair, thick eyebrows, and a face of chiseled symmetry. Definitely not from West Branch, Iowa. He even had a handsome accent. Deep, with thick consonants in the back of his throat. And a lot older than me. Maybe fifteen?

“Miss. Are you hurt?” he asked.

I took one last bounce and shook my head. All my words were gone, packed away in the rucksack my brain took on its trip.

“Are you sure? That was a big stone.”

All I could do was shake my head.

“Let me help you,” he said. And he took the other rocks out of my hand and pinned down the remaining tablecloth. The sheets shuddered and were still.

The boy was tall. He was wearing an old shirt that was too wide for him and new dungarees that had not seen the inside of any barn, ever. The shirt I recognized—it was one of Joe’s dad’s three work shirts: the tan one. Unlike Joe’s dad—and Joe—this young man had soft, uncalloused hands. And just the slightest

darkness on his chin that said he’d maybe shaved sometime last week.

“Yes?” he said, his voice rising politely.

I was staring. I closed my mouth and looked off to the horizon, just beyond his left ear.

“Miss?” he said, talking slowly, like I was not very bright. “Could you tell me—this is the Jasper farm?”

I looked back at him. Nodded. Tried to smile.

“You are in pain,” he said.

“No,” I finally gasped. “I mean, yes, this is the Jasper farm. I’m Jasper. I mean, I’m their niece. Their cousin. Peggy. Me.”

His eyes were soft and deep, like brown velvet, and I considered telling him how perfectly proportional he was—and then exiling myself to Siberia.

“Are you also a Friend?”

What? A friend of who? Is he asking to be my friend? I couldn’t think. “Yes, I’m Delia’s friend—but also her cousin. Both.”

The young man shook his head, smiling. “I mean, are you a Quaker, like everyone else?”

“Oh.” The Quakers called each other Friends—and there were a lot of them in West Branch. Even our one famous citizen (President Herbert Hoover) had been a Friend. “No. I’m not that kind of Friend.”

“Nor me.” He held out his hand. “Gunther. Friend of Joe Clark’s. Not Quaker Friend; the other kind.”

He hovered his hand in the air between us until I stuck out my arm. We shook. His hand was warm and dry and surprisingly

strong for someone who didn’t look like he worked. It was the hand of a boy who shaved.

I tried to think of something clever and Ida Jean-ish. “Joe’s a Quaker.”

He smiled encouragingly. “Can you tell me where I can find him? He invited me to the party.”

Oh. Suddenly I knew where he belonged. “You’re from the hostel,” I said. “Aren’t you? Scattergood. That’s how you know Joe, because he volunteers there.” Everything clicked into place, and meanwhile my mouth kept talking. “You’re a war refugee. A Jew. Wow.”

I’d never met a real refugee before. Or a real Jew, for that matter. We didn’t read about the Jewish refugees much in the newspaper or hear about them on the radio; big names like Hitler and Churchill got the war headlines. But now they were living right near us: Jewish refugees and other European war refugees as well, at the hostel. There was a column in our West Branch newspaper every week—“The News from Scattergood”—and when Joe’s dad passed along the paper to us (after getting it from the neighbors on the other side), I always read the column in hopes that it would be something interesting. It never was. Mostly it listed the Quakers who were visiting from out of town and helping run the hostel, and it told where they’d gone for a recent outing (last week: to the quarry to swim) or who had a birthday that week. According to the paper, the refugees did boring stuff just like anyone who lived in West Branch all their lives would do.

But a real live foreigner, especially one so handsome and close to my own age. Now that was interesting. “Wow,” I said again.

Gunther pressed his lips together and looked toward the house. “You could tell me how to find Joe?”

It occurred to me that maybe I should stop saying wow.

“Oh,” I said. “I don’t know if he’s here yet, but if he is, he’ll be helping my uncle Ed in the barn.” I pointed, then realized he probably could identify the barn without my help.

“Many thanks”—he thought for a moment—“Peggy.” He walked toward the barn.

“Sure,” I said. I rearranged the stones on the tablecloths to make them look more balanced. I would never talk to anyone again; that way, I couldn’t embarrass myself. But as I walked back to the house to help get lunch on the tables, I thought, A boy from Scattergood. Something thrilling to tell Delia.

And then I thought, She’ll see him at lunch. Something thrilling for both of us.

CHAPTER TWO

Up to six months.

4When I got back to the kitchen, I set to work with Ida Jean—who appeared to be my lot in life, at least until Delia was better—helping my mom and Ida Jean’s mom and Joe’s mom ready lunch before all the men arrived.

The women had all gone upstairs to say hi to the invalid, and when they came down, Aunt Clare had remained with Delia. Mom told Ida Jean and me that we could visit Dee tomorrow; today, she was only going to come down for a few minutes for the party. I felt guilty for sneaking up the stairs earlier, but when I asked how Delia was feeling, Ida Jean’s mom said, “Fine, considering,” and sniffed and dabbed her eyes with the back of her hand, and my mom said, “Tired, but otherwise she feels fine.” So I guess I hadn’t harmed her.

I deduced over the course of the morning, though, that all the adults—not just my parents and Ida Jean’s mom—thought Delia was desperately ill. First, Delia’s eight-year-old brother Sam was allowed to drink endless cups of coffee with the men out at the barn. I know because he poked his head in the kitchen door

and announced it, and no one scolded him. Ida Jean’s mom just patted him on the head before he yanked himself back outside.

Too, Mrs. Norton kept saying cryptic things— or, rather, things that pass for cryptic with her. She bustled around the kitchen, tsk-tsking and saying, “That poor child,” and “I pray for Clare and Ed,” and “Sweet Jesus, what did they do to deserve this?” until finally, when Ida Jean stepped out to get the beans Aunt Clare had picked that morning, Mrs. Norton said, “Three months! Dear Lord.”

“Up to six,” said my mom. “Up to six.” Then she looked at me like she just realized I was there, and she sent me to join Ida Jean out on the stoop.

Ida Jean immediately asked me what they were talking about in the kitchen.

I told her it was about Delia. “Home from the hospital is good,” I said.

“Not if you’re home because the doctors don’t know how to fix you.”

“It’s a university hospital. They’ll figure it out.”

Ida Jean gazed at me with a pitying expression on her face. She snapped her beans into the big pot and picked up another lapful from the pile. “Anyway,” she said, “we’ll visit her tomorrow.”

I didn’t mention that I’d already visited Delia. And I didn’t ask Ida Jean what she thought up to six months might mean.

tWhile we finished snapping beans, Ida Jean yammered on about Joe, who is fourteen like her and Delia, and who has been around

all our lives. After those three went to kindergarten and I stayed home and learned to read and do addition and subtraction on my own, my parents consulted the principal and our pastor, and then they sent me off to first grade with them the next fall. We four have always known each other, and we’ve always been stuck with each other. Which is to say: Joe is nothing special.

But Ida Jean started on about how Joe had a crush on her and how he had kept eyeing her all the time at our graduation picnic and had even tried to sit next to her, and he probably would today, too. I hadn’t noticed, but then, I don’t see a lot of boy things that Ida Jean sees. (She says it’s because I’m still a child. I think it’s because a lot of her boy things are wishful thinking.) But Ida Jean’s talking kept her entertained and out of my thoughts, so I snapped beans and let her rattle on.

tWhen the neighbor men began to show up for lunch, Gunther and Sam emerged from the barn, Sam gazing up at Gunther in admiration—so I wasn’t the only one who felt like he was worth staring at. As they washed their faces and hands under the pump, Sam splashed Gunther, and Gunther grinned and splashed him back. Both came to the table with wet hair and collars.

Before we sat down, Aunt Clare said, “Let’s bless the food.” She nodded to Uncle Ed, who began to pray a medium-length prayer that stumbled only over the part about please keeping us all in health. I peeked: Aunt Clare was wiping her cheeks with the back of her hand. Everyone—including Aunt Clare—kept

their eyes closed and their faces serious. Everyone except Gunther, that is, who stared at Uncle Ed like he’d never seen such a thing as a prayer before. Like he was at a movie and Uncle Ed was tap-dancing. As Uncle Ed told Jesus Christ how much we appreciate being surrounded by friends and family, especially in tough times, Gunther’s jaw tightened and a little muscle pulsed at the bottom of it.

He was more handsome than ever.

Then Gunther glanced my way before I could snap my eyes shut. And his face did two things, one after the other, so fast it was hard to catch. First he flushed, right in the center of his cheeks, like he knew he’d been rude and he was ashamed of himself; and then, quick as quick, he turned up one side of his mouth in a half smile, aimed right at me. My stomach flipped over. He looked at me just like he and I were in on something together.

Layered under all my thinking how handsome he was, I was also a little upset—well, angry, just a little—that he would stand there in judgment of us.

But I could get past that and forgive him. It’s not like he would be Christian-praying anyhow, him being Jewish and all. Maybe standing with eyes open was okay for him.

And really, my eyes were open too.

tWhen the prayer was over, we all sat down on the benches under the willow tree, and Joe introduced Gunther around again, to help him remember names. The contrast between Joe

and Gunther stood out plain for anyone to see. Gunther was taller than Joe and more city looking—thinner, less muscular, with smoother hands. His hair curled in a sophisticated way, and he had that hint of shadow on his jaw. I decided I liked that look. Joe’s face was freckled like a boy’s, and his thick brown hair flopped almost over his eyes. He needed a haircut. His nose was sunburnt—and unfashionably crooked from when he’d broken it falling off their old plow horse when he was six. He had a quick smile that lit up his whole face—which was a nice feature, of course, but it didn’t hold a candle to Gunther’s melting dark eyes.

Then Joe gave me a funny look, and I realized I was staring at them both. I passed the buns.

As we ate, my dad, who was sitting next to Gunther, made small talk, and I eavesdropped. I learned that Gunther was from Germany and that he was sixteen and that he had a mom and a dad and a little brother, and that his dad had been a banker before the war began.

“Is your family at Scattergood, too?” I asked.

I kind of knew it was the wrong question, but by the time my brain told me to shut up, it was too late. The words slipped out. Ida Jean kicked me under the table, and Joe glared.

Gunther’s face grew tight, and he suddenly looked a lot older than sixteen. “My family is all disappeared.”

Even I knew what disappeared meant: Hitler. The war. Bad news.

After a pause, during which I stared at the ground and

vowed (once again) not to talk, Mr. Norton cleared his throat and asked how Gunther came to Iowa, and Gunther cleared his throat and answered.

He said, “I stowed away on a boat.” After a pause while he chewed bread and everyone else politely took bites too, he added, “A professor—also escaping, but as a paying passenger, not a stowaway—found me and got me permission to come with him and be sponsored by the Society of Friends. I’m grateful to him for all he’s done. And to the Quakers.” But his mouth looked tight.

The only time he truly smiled was when my little cousin talked to him. Sam told him things—about the alfalfa we’d just harvested, and the farm animals, and the food, and how he wanted to fly airplanes when he grew up. He even offered to show Gunther his secret fort after lunch—which he’d banned his own sister from entering after she decorated it as a fairy lair last summer during her Arthur Ransome phase, and which I have never been invited to enter because of my association with Delia. Gunther smiled at everything Sam said, and he showed Sam how to do a V for Victory with his fingers. Maybe Gunther liked Sam because Gunther’d had a little brother who’d disappeared, or maybe because Sam didn’t ask terrible questions about his family or the war.

Then, as I was quietly daydreaming and eating and trying not to stare, Gunther suddenly said my name out of the blue. Peggy. I’d just bitten off a hunk of bread, and in surprise I started

choking. Mrs. Norton thumped me on the back, and I coughed and swallowed. My mom gave me a quizzical look.

“I’m fine,” I said.

Gunther said, “Joe tells me that you are a brilliant chess player.” I jerked, my fork clattered from my plate to the ground, and I stared at Joe in disbelief. Chess?

Joe shook his head like he’d been misunderstood.

Gunther leaned toward me. “Someone who could go up against the Professor in a game.”

“I don’t know how to play chess,” I said. “I’ve never—” Then I bit my tongue. Ida Jean would have said something clever and cute. Delia would have said something poetic and deep.

Gunther said, “Joe?”

Joe talked to his plate. “You could if you learned, Peggy. That’s all I meant. That you’d be good at it.”

My dad said, “The Professor is the one who brought you over to America?”

“So to speak,” said Gunther.

Joe finally looked up, at my dad. “The Professor’s family is missing, too. He loves chess, and no one at Scattergood can give him a challenge. I thought Peggy, since she’s so good at math . . .”

“Ah, it’s a math game, is it?” My dad turned to me. “You ought to go and give this old man some company. Don’t you think, Maureen?”

“I do,” said Mom. My parents rarely disagreed, at least not publicly. “It would be the kind thing to do.” She stood up and

stacked some of the empty serving bowls in her arms. Ida Jean and I stood, too, and started clearing the leftover food.

“You could come later this week,” said Joe. “The Professor would love it.”

My dad grinned at me. “Well then, you’d better learn how to play chess.” He turned to Joe. “If she’s out at dark, though, I expect you’ll walk her home?”

Joe nodded.

Ida Jean said, “Maybe I’ll go along as well. To be company.”

She smoothed her dress over her hips. Her dress was made from flour sacking, just like mine. It was even the same cloth: delft blue flowers on a white background. But unlike mine, her dress looked like it fit her— except for being a little tight in just the right places.

Ida Jean’s dad snorted. “And what would you do at Scattergood? Flirt with an old man? I don’t think so.”

Ida Jean flushed for about one millisecond. Then she smiled down at the table. “I would never.”

Mr. Norton laughed. “Ida Jean would sweet-talk the fur off a gopher,” he said. “Then she’d throw a party and tell everyone all about it.” He handed her the pickle bowl. “No, you stay home, missy, and help your mother out. You could learn to make pies start to finish! If you turn out as good a baker as your mom, you’ll really be something.”

Mrs. Norton whapped him on the side of his head with her napkin. But gently, like she didn’t mind that he was bragging about her cooking.

Ida Jean smiled, but this time, I could tell she didn’t really want to. She did this thing with her teeth— showing too many of them, and too much of each one—when she was smiling just to be nice. She did that a lot: smiled just to be nice. Annoying. “Well,” she said, batting her eyelashes, “I will surely learn to make good pies. And when I do, I might give you people a taste.” She swayed off to the kitchen, carrying the pickle bowl and the empty coffee carafe, to general laughter.

I followed her with more leftovers, and as I walked off, I heard her father say, “That girl!” But not angry. Amused.

I thought, I don’t understand people.

tAs we cleared up the food, Uncle Ed went upstairs and got Delia, carrying her out to the table in his arms like she was a princess. She was still in her nightgown, but now with Aunt Clare’s robe tied over top, and her hair was newly combed.

My mom had brought out the cake, so we sang “Happy Birthday” while Uncle Ed set Delia down gently in a chair that Aunt Clare had brought out from the kitchen table. Outside in the dappled shade, Delia looked even thinner and more tired than she had upstairs in her room. Purple smudges under her eyes.

But she smiled, her eyes crinkling at the corners, and that was always a good sign. “Thank you,” she said. “I’ve never had such a big party. I’ll never forget this.” Her glance flicked down to her hands, and I knew—because I know her better than anyone—that she was thinking about writing it all down.

“Want me to run up and get your notebook?”

“Not now,” said Aunt Clare. “Delia’s only allowed up for ten minutes.”

“Barely enough time to eat cake,” said my dad. “You’d best hurry.”

And everyone smiled as she was given the biggest piece.

She didn’t eat more than a few bites of cake. She waved a quick goodbye to me when Uncle Ed carried her away again.

tAs the women and girls cleaned up the kitchen, Mrs. Norton turned to my mom and said, “Maureen, that refugee boy—you know I only speak out of concern . . .”

My mom, filling the dishpan with water, paused to weave a strand of loose hair back into her bun, and I could sense her tabulating the emotional benefits of rolling her eyes and deciding against it. Her face stayed clear. “Yes?”

“I would never tell you what to do, but I do not recommend letting a daughter of yours go over to that hostel and socialize with Jews.”

My mom’s lips compressed and her nostrils flared a tiny bit, which meant she was irritated but trying to hide it. “The Bible says the Jews are God’s chosen people.”

“And yet,” said Mrs. Norton, “the Bible doesn’t say we should send our daughters to them as burnt offerings.”

Then my mom did roll her eyes, while turned away from Mrs. Norton. And then she sent me and Ida Jean outside—again—to pick more beans in the garden for Aunt Clare. So we didn’t get to hear the rest of the conversation, even though we both

wanted to. But as we walked out, I heard Mom say, tightly, “I never worry about Peggy,” and Mrs. Norton reply, in a contrite and flustered voice, “Oh, goodness, she’s just a baby. I didn’t mean that.”

tLate that afternoon, after I’d dismantled the tables back into doors and planks, Mom and I walked home. She held my hand, which was not normal for her. But it was nice. Mom is a quiet person, so when she suddenly grabs your hand and says you’re growing up so fast, it means something.

After my dad and I milked the cows and fed the chickens and washed up, we all ate sandwiches for supper, half sliding out of our chairs in exhaustion.

Before I fell asleep, my dad came in my room. Though he’d scrubbed his face, a ring of dirt still encircled his neck, and his eyebrows were almost white from the sun. He folded himself onto the edge of my bed and said, “Your aunt wants you to visit Delia.”

“Ida Jean and I are going tomorrow.”

“Good. Delia needs her family and friends around now.”

I nodded.

He slid my math book over and sat on the edge of the bed. “You sleep with this thing?”

I sat up and laid the book on my dresser. My eighth-grade math teacher—Mr. Laughlin, who taught math and English but was clearly more comfortable in the English part of his job—had loaned me next year’s book unasked for, saying that I was the

only student likely to crack it open during the summer, and even though he thought I shouldn’t be starting high school at my age, he also wanted me to do well and maybe even to fit in with my classmates.

I’m not good at things like fitting in, but even I knew that reading a math book was not going to help me gain social skills. However, I do love math, so I said thank you and took it home with me. I’d gotten halfway through it already. Generally, I did keep the text next to me in bed, though it seemed wisest not to admit this to Dad.

But what’s so strange about it, anyway? Mrs. Norton sleeps with her Bible under her pillow—Ida Jean told me so—and I don’t think that keeping an arithmetic text next to you is really any worse. After all, God made the world out of equations. Seven days, each one subdivided into particular tasks. And it’s a kind of comfort, to have all those numbers near you all night long.

Dad said, “Go visit Delia, sweetie, and talk to her about girl things. Or—whatever you two usually talk about. She needs to take her mind off being sick.”

“Okay.”

“And . . .” He traced the ring pattern in the bedspread. “Your mom talk to you about it?”

“About what?”

He paused and thought about the word. “Leukemia? She tell you what it means?”

“No.” She hadn’t said much when we walked home, just the

hand-holding and the part about me growing up. Which meant she probably wasn’t going to tell me about Delia’s illness.

My dad reached over to the dresser and picked up the math book, weighing it in his hand and studying its cover intently. “Dee’s pretty sick, sweetie. Her parents don’t want her to worry. Told her it was anemia. And that’s not a lie,” he added, finally looking at me. “Anemia’s tired blood. But that’s just part of what she’s got.” He put the book down on my dresser, stood up, and walked to the door. “You’d do them all a favor if you didn’t mention the other word. You know. Keep Delia from worrying too much.”

I said sure.

So, my dad wasn’t going to tell me, either.

tAfter my dad left, I picked up my math book and read a few pages. But I kept thinking about up to six months. Was that how long Delia was going to be sick? Or worse . . . how long they thought she had to live?

I couldn’t explain how I felt except to say that something sat in my stomach like bad milk about to come back up. No: more like hens scratching and pecking. Like anticipation for something you aren’t looking forward to. Even though each thing that happened that day was small, all the pieces seemed suddenly important: not only Gunther showing up, but also my mom rolling her eyes, my dad telling me leukemia, Joe saying I could play chess, Ida Jean swinging her hips, Delia looking at her hands, Sam splashing Gunther with water, cows giving milk, chickens

pecking their feed, the faraway war, the neighboring refugees, and the feeling—almost overpowerful at times— of just wanting to escape every sweltering thing. The feeling that this wasn’t the life I should be having— or Delia or Gunther or any of us. That it should be better than it was.

It felt like something big was in motion, a war about to start. All the seeds were planted, all the equations were written on the blackboard. The numbers were all there, waiting to be added to or subtracted from each other; and the unknown number was there, too, in plain sight, a great big X, and I didn’t know how to solve for it.

But I stood, pencil in hand, wanting to begin, to answer, to fix things.

CHAPTER THREE

Three secrets.

That night after supper I poured myself into bed, and the next morning, at the smell of my mom’s coffee, I pried myself out for chores.

Special as summer days are, they all begin the same—with the contentment of cows and the counterbalancing meanness of chickens. Milking is fine work. The cows lumber to their stalls and wait for you to arrive; they are full, and you empty them, and this makes them comfortable. You benefit from the addition of milk into the bucket, and they benefit from the subtraction of it from their udders. Everyone is satisfied. This is the way the world should work.

Gathering eggs from chickens, however, demonstrates the unfairness of the world. They do not like you, and they do not want you to take their eggs. And even though we’ve never kept a rooster in the yard (except the turkey rooster, not capable of dallying with chickens) and therefore had no fertilized eggs, some of the hens would nonetheless turn broody, and when I came to steal from them, they would peck my hand. And the turkey rooster would glower and shake his feathers and glide around the yard, stalking.

That every day begins with cows and progresses to chickens is probably something like a metaphor.

tWhen I went out to milk, I found my dad sitting on the stoop, hat off, soaking up the sunshine. Usually sunny mornings are like coffee to him—they wake him up and make him chipper. Today he looked sad. No: distracted. The last time he’d looked exactly this way was almost two years earlier, when Germany invaded Poland and President Roosevelt told us on the radio about it.

I sat down next to him. “Bad war news?”

He shook his head, then corrected himself. “Well, yes, if you’re Russian.”

His face worried me. “Dad . . .”

My dad turned toward me and squinted. “What is it?”

“Are we going to go to war?”

“I hope not, Pea. But . . . the government is sending weapons and supplies to the Russians and the Allies. Advertising for the Navy everywhere you look. Registering everyone for the draft. It looks an awful lot like we’re gearing up.”

“Are you a pacifist?” I heard that word a lot because of all the Quakers in West Branch—including Joe’s family.

He shook his head. “I think America probably should jump in and help, and I believe that more and more as the war drags on. But I worry about my own skin. I don’t want to get drafted.”

“They wouldn’t draft you.” It was a question, not a statement.

“Could. Up to age forty-five, they say. And I don’t want to

go.” He tilted his face up to the sunshine again and closed his eyes against the light. “It’s funny, though. When I was a kid, right before the Crash, I daydreamed about going to Europe. The Loove-ray.” He drew out the word like it tasted good. “I had some crazy ideas then.”

“The Loove-ray?”

“Big art museum. In Paris. Can you see me in a fancy French art museum?” He brushed off his overalls. “Anyway, I sure as heck don’t want to go over there as a soldier. And I know that’s selfish. But if I’m honest, I have to say I’m not hankering to go.” He stood up. “Besides, who’d take care of the pumpkins? You and your mom would let them wither.”

I rolled my eyes.

He grinned and pointed at me. “I’m telling you, pumpkins are the crop of the future. I should write President Roosevelt and tell him to put WPA pumpkin projects all across the country. Feed your family and grow something of beauty at the same time.” He reached for my hand and pulled me up.

“Swell,” I said. We headed toward the barn.

He rested his hand on my shoulder as we walked. “They can’t draft farmers. We’re essential to the war effort, remember?”

One of Ida Jean’s older brothers had heard that in a government newsreel at the movie theater in Iowa City. He told us, and we all had a good laugh. Now it didn’t seem as funny.

But I was glad to think it was maybe true.

Just as I finished my half of the milking, Ida Jean stopped by. I still had to rob the chickens of their eggs before we could visit Delia, so she offered to help.

As I swept the hen yard, Ida Jean’s company was mainly a benefit, for once. I swept and fed while she gathered, and I don’t think she noticed that I’d left her with the job I hated most. She was a hard worker and didn’t mind the chickens as much as I did.

Ida Jean, however, didn’t mind even when a broody hen would try to peck her; she just shoved the fowl back with one hand and reached under it with the other, and when her hands got messy from a slimy egg, she swiped at them with her apron and didn’t even inspect her fingers afterward to see if she’d gotten all the nastiness off.

When the turkey rooster, my deepest enemy in the hen yard, approached with loathing in his eye, I swung the broom with caution, sidling closer to Ida Jean. He ruffled himself and glided slowly after me. When he drew near to Ida Jean and me, she didn’t even look up from the eggs. “Shoo!” She flapped her hands, and he backed off to a far corner, surprised and affronted. I’d never been so forward with him, and I guess he’d come to think of humans as creatures to bully.

So in that way, Ida Jean was a help.

On the other hand, Ida Jean never stopped talking. Especially when I had my own things to think about, none of which centered on Joe and how smitten he was and how he kept trying to make eyes at her (Ida Jean’s first topic of conversation),

or Delia’s birthday and how she needed to eat more meat (Ida Jean’s second topic of conversation).

On my mind were the unfairness of God in making a world where you couldn’t bring yourself to talk to handsome older boys, and Delia’s leukemia and how, since my parents weren’t going to tell me, I needed to find out what it meant. And sitting there in front of me all the time, like a ruminating cow, was what I didn’t want to think about: how maybe God was unfair with Delia too.

Up to six months.

While I held my thoughts close, Ida Jean rattled on. Her information wasn’t always accurate— I’d say she got it right less than 60 percent of the time. Not for lack of trying, either. The previous spring, for example, she interrupted me when I was setting strawberries in our garden to tell me that Nancy Evans, who was only one year ahead of us in school, was PREGNANT!!!

Ida Jean tended to talk in capitals, and with lots of exclamation points. Still, in this case, the exclamation points kind of made sense— a pregnant fourteen-year-old in a little farming town is a big deal, especially since Nancy didn’t have an older boyfriend who could marry her and take her home to live, she just had Fred who was also fourteen and living on his parents’ pig farm. Ida Jean and Delia and I spent four afternoons huddling in my bedroom talking it over in low voices while I was supposed to be tutoring Ida Jean in math and Delia was darning socks and trying to figure out what

her current novel heroine, Judy Abbott, would do in such a situation.

As it turned out, Nancy was not pregnant; she had just gained a little weight because her body hadn’t yet figured out she wasn’t going to grow any taller. But as Ida Jean pointed out months later when it was obvious there was no baby on the way, she COULD HAVE BEEN pregnant, and that’s just as bad. It was then that I told myself (again) not to let Ida Jean find out anything about me or my family, because even if she was my neighbor since we were born, she was a terrible gossip.

By the time we finished with the chickens, it was fully day—and hot. There was a little V of sweat on Ida Jean’s dress that pointed directly to the hollow between her breasts, and her forehead was ringed with tiny golden curls. Summer’s heat made her glow.

I, on the other hand, dripped with huge patches of sweat under my arms and down my back, and my no-color hair skinned itself back in a limp ponytail. She glistened. I drooped. It was hard being Ida Jean’s neighbor.

tAs we washed up for breakfast, she said, “What did you think of the birthday party?”

I knew it was a loaded question, one that was meant to lead to more gossip and confidences, but I didn’t know what the correct response was. “It was hot.”

She laughed; I’d given an okay answer. “It was hot.” But then she fanned herself seductively. “Hot with intrigue.”

“You been reading those romances of your mom’s again?”

She mock-scowled. “I can be poetic, too, you know. It’s not just Delia.”

We brought the new eggs into the kitchen. My mom had just scrambled yesterday’s eggs, so we sat, and I dug in while Ida Jean nibbled a piece of toast because, she said, she was “trying to reduce.” Which made me think, for just a minute, that maybe I should reduce, too, but when I put my fork down, my dad shook his head. “Girls should have some meat on their bones.”

The eggs were good and buttery.

As we started out to Delia’s, Ida Jean said, “It’s not the end of the world. She’s just sick.” We waded through tall grass. “People get sick all the time. Remember when my brothers had polio?”

I was five that year. While all three of his boys were sick, Mr. Norton worked the farm on his own, and though the neighbors helped as much as they could, they couldn’t do everything. His crops were small. With the doctor bills on top of that, it was a bad year for the Nortons, and when they got hit with hail the following year— even though the boys were perfectly healthy by then—he couldn’t pay the mortgage on the farm.

A lot of people lost their farms in the years after the stock market crash. But not the Nortons, because my mom and dad helped them out. My dad took the money that my bank-suspicious grandparents had saved in jelly jars since before he was born—all our family’s cash—and he bought the rest of the Nortons’ mortgage from the bank, which made us as poor as everyone else. And now Mr. Norton paid Dad back whenever

he had some money, which wasn’t every month. They’d had this arrangement for going on six years now. When I asked my parents, a couple years ago, how much money Mr. Norton still owed on the mortgage, my mom gave me a look that said they weren’t going to answer, and my dad said, “Anyway, it doesn’t matter to me.”

“Then why does Mr. Norton pay, if it doesn’t matter?”

Mom said, “It matters to him.”

“Why did you buy the mortgage?” The question was for both of them.

“If a man can help out, he should,” Dad said. Then he shrugged. “Besides, Vern’s been my neighbor since before I was born. Reckon that’s worth keeping.”

And Mom, who I know is sometimes driven up the wall by Mrs. Norton’s constant talk, nodded in agreement.

tOn the way to Delia’s, Ida Jean and I crossed my dad’s pumpkin patch, in which the pumpkin vines grew thick and bright, a green that made you think they’d live forever, and the leaves were big and glossy. The yellow flowers had gone and the tiny, hopeful gourds had begun. Through everything ran the clover and grasses and dandelions. At the edge of the field, I looked back and saw my dad enter the other end with a hoe. He spread his arms like a showman, and I gave him a thumbs-up.

Though he’d never grown pumpkins before, my dad was sure he’d get a big crop this year. He had talked to a Libby’s man from Chicago who would pay good money, actual cash, for whatever

Dad could raise. Dad thought he might make enough to put toward replacing the ancient truck, and maybe even enough to save up for indoor plumbing. Every time I saw the fat vines I thought of trucks with quiet engines and toilets with flush cords. The outhouse was not fun in winter— or summer, to be honest.

Ida Jean waved back at my dad, and as we turned toward Delia’s, she said, “That’s got to be a ton of work, that field.”

“He’s there almost every day,” I said. “It’s like a new calf. You have to keep checking on it and milking it along. But it’ll be worth something, he says.”

Not much of what we grew was worth real money. We sold milk every week to the co-op, and eggs to the grocery store in West Branch for twenty-two cents per dozen. We used the egg and milk money to pay bills— electricity and gas and tractor parts and our part of the phone line—and to buy seed and a few store goods like sugar and flour and coffee. Everything else we grew ourselves or did without, just like all the farm families we knew.

Cash for pumpkins would be a big deal— especially if we did end up in the war. Then there’d be shortages and maybe even rations—like in Europe— so cash could come in handy.

By the time we reached Delia’s house, even Ida Jean was dripping with sweat. Aunt Clare came out with two glasses of lemonade. “I just set her under the maple in the shade. Why don’t you join her?”

It seemed odd to talk about Delia like she was a piece of furniture, but Ida Jean said, “That sounds lovely, Mrs. Jasper.”

We walked behind the house and found Delia reclining on a cot, propped up with pillows, eyes closed.

Sam lay on his stomach nearby, poking the dirt with a stick. When he looked up, Aunt Clare told him, “Come to the kitchen and you can have a snack with me.”

Sam tossed the stick as far as he could toward the hog pen and followed his mother back inside.

Ida Jean ahemmed, and Delia opened her eyes and sat up, smiling. “Don’t I look just like Beth March? I feel like I should be sewing rag dolls and dropping them out the window to street urchins.”

“What?” I said.

Ida Jean tilted her head at me. “Even I’ve read Little Women.” She peered at Delia worriedly.

“Don’t fear,” Delia said. “I’m not planning to end up like Beth.”

I looked a question at Ida Jean, who reminded me: “Dead.”

We sipped our lemonade.

Then Ida Jean told Delia all about Joe and how he kept staring at her at Delia’s party. She also described what Gunther looked like, what he was wearing, how he talked— she’d even noticed his smile dimple—as if Delia hadn’t been there and seen for herself. Maybe she just liked to describe boys.

Delia wondered what had happened to his family after they disappeared. “Something romantic and tragic, I’ll bet.”

“Maybe food poisoning,” I said. “Or tuberculosis.”

Ida Jean frowned. “It’s not a romantic story any way you slice

it. I mean, it’s not like he was fleeing Hitler with his fiancée in a movie, and everything is going to be okay by the closing credits.”

Delia said, “That’s not what romantic means. Not to a poet. Romantic is—well, something you could write a poem about.”

Ida Jean rolled her eyes. “What does it matter if his family’s disappearance was romantic or exciting or whatever? They’re probably dead. Dead is dead. It’s all terrible.”

Delia pressed her lips together and glanced at me. From the embarrassment on her face, I knew what she was thinking: Ida Jean was right. Gunther’s family’s disappearance wasn’t something to make into a story or a poem. It was just something awful.

We finished our lemonade in silence. Then Delia said, “What about you, Peggy? Did you notice every little detail about Gunther, too?”

Ida Jean giggled. “Her? Not likely.”

I felt my face get hot. Whenever the subject of boys came up, Ida Jean always acted like I was a baby.

Delia said, “Peggy?”

At that moment, Aunt Clare came out and told us we’d been kind, but now Delia had to rest. Delia pouted, but when she laid back on her pillow, she looked relieved. Her face was pale.

Ida Jean helped Aunt Clare bring in the lemonade glasses. I got up to follow, but Delia said, “Wait a minute, Peggy.” She held out her hand for mine and waited for her mom and Ida Jean to get out of earshot, then grinned like her old self. “If I wasn’t so tired, I’d make you tell me all about this Gunther.

You’re blushing. There!” she said, as I flushed again. “I knew it! I think that’s swell, Peggy. Don’t let Ida Jean tease you. Just because you’re younger, and you haven’t been boy crazy like her, doesn’t mean you can’t have a crush.”

“But I don’t—”

“You do. I can tell these things. I’m going to be a writer, remember? And as soon as I’m feeling better, I’m going to fall in love, too.” She leaned back on her pillows. “Why don’t you go to that refugee hostel and see if you can find someone Byronic for me to have a crush on?”

“I don’t really know what Byronic means. I mean, no more than what you told me about him and the Greeks.”

She sighed. “Find me someone romantic. And not too old. And not from here.”

She understood the attraction of Not From Here. Which just showed that Delia— even though she was a writer and kind of odd—was more of a bosom friend than Ida Jean would ever be.

I gave Delia’s hand a squeeze and ran back to the house just as Ida Jean and Aunt Clare stepped out, Aunt Clare with her mending in hand. She grabbed me tight and whispered, “Pray for us, Peggy. Pray for us.” Her eyes brimmed, but as she let go of me, she blinked the tears away fiercely and went to sit and sew under the tree by Delia.

tIda Jean and I walked partway home together. As soon as we were out of earshot of the Jasper house, she whipped her head

to me and said, “What was that all about at the end? Your aunt asked me to pray for them.”

“Me too,” I said.

“But why? Dee’s got anemia. I mean, she’s tired, but if she just eats more meat she’ll be fine. Ain’t so?” She stopped and peered closer at me. “What?”

“It’s not just anemia,” I said before I could stop myself. I wasn’t sure, but I felt like I wasn’t supposed to talk about it.

“What is it, then?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. Because I didn’t know what leukemia was, not really. Just that it was bad. And it seemed like a bad sign that Aunt Clare was crying. And that the grown-ups hadn’t told Delia— or Ida Jean. And that the doctors sent Delia home instead of curing her.

My parents had told me the word, but they didn’t want to talk about it, or they would have explained more. The more I thought about it, the more I thought, I need to figure this out.

I don’t know if Ida Jean tried to talk to me more on the walk home. I suspect she did, and I further suspect that I didn’t reply; she veered off toward her own house at the edge of our cornfield instead of walking all the way home with me. But I was too busy thinking to care.

Besides, Ida Jean’s life was already perfect; she didn’t need my help.

tI was so inattentive to my work that evening that I tried to milk the same cow twice, which did not please her. By the next

morning, I felt as if my thoughts had reached a saturation point. I sat in the barn, just through milking my half of the cows. The bucket stood at my feet, warm and watery and full.

I was empty.

I was an unproven hypothesis, just waiting for someone to take charge.

And then I realized that if people went around saying up to six months, that meant they had given up. And if they were saying Pray for us, they weren’t planning to fix Delia themselves.

So the someone to take charge had to be me.

As I poured the milk into the cooling pan, I thought through my options. There weren’t many. I had to find out exactly how serious leukemia was and what the cures were, and I had to make sure that, even in President Hoover’s slow country town, Delia got the treatment she needed. And since I couldn’t ask Aunt Clare or Uncle Ed questions without upsetting them, and it seemed like my mom and dad had told me all they were going to, I needed to find a source for information. The only place likely to have that kind of information was the West Branch library. Surely they would have a book about leukemia. And research always led to solutions; that’s how science worked.

As for my smaller problem—talking to Gunther—I would go over to Scattergood to learn chess with the old man. I’d see Gunther there, and I’d be friendly and clever—but not too clever. Girl-clever, like Ida Jean always acted. Just smart enough to be irresistible to a boy who was old enough to shave.

We’d talk. And Ida Jean wouldn’t be able to say I didn’t know anything about boys.

And for the plan to make my life exciting: well, I figured getting a boyfriend, or even just a crush, might well take care of this. But if it didn’t, I was prepared to consider something big, something daring. Something risky. I was thinking I might do something. I just didn’t know what yet.

Meanwhile, I kept my ideas to myself. I had three secrets: Delia’s illness, my crush on Gunther, finding something exciting. Like three newborn chicks, still damp and beautiful and not yet stalking you or conspiring against you, a little girl who thinks she wants to mother something; so you put them inside your shirt to keep them warm, and you feel them scrabble, and you hope your dad doesn’t notice your shirt agitating and peeping when you come in for lunch. But of course he does notice.

My thoughts were like that. Jumbled, like baby chickens inside a shirt. Jumbled like secrets you want to keep, but you’re afraid they’re not keepable. And eventually they’ll turn on you.