Read Online Found Things by Marilyn Hilton - Free Book Online Page B

New York.” Daddy had left again almost as soon as he’d come back from Orlando.
    â€œYour brother? Oh—” Mrs. Bertetti say, cutting herself off.
    Everything today reminded me of Theron. I just wanted to go home.
    Maybe she felt bad for bringing up Theron, so she went out of the nurse’s office for a few minutes and come back with a glass of water and set it on the table beside me. “I called your mother. She’ll find you a ride home.”
    As she took my pulse again, I looked up at the ceiling tiles and asked, “Do you know Daniel Bunch?”
    â€œI know all my students,” she say, and set my hand back down beside me. “Is Daniel your friend?”
    â€œHe’s in my art class.”
    â€œThen you must know he’s sick.”
    I was glad to be lying down, or I’d have probably fainted again. But I had to find out as much as I could. “Is he in the hospital?”
    â€œBecause he’s your friend, I’ll tell you that he is in the hospital. But I don’t know anything more.”
    Then Mrs. Bertetti sat down at her desk and started writing on a form. “What did you eat for breakfast?” she asked.
    I sat up, propping myself on my elbows. “When did Daniel go to the hospital?”
    She didn’t take her eyes off her desk when she told me, almost in a whisper, “I heard it was Sunday. Now that’s it. No more information, okay?”
    â€œOh,” I say, and my heart pounded so strong that I thought it would fling me off the bed. I sank back down onto the mattress. And then the worry nodded at me and say, Wishes are powerful things.
    Mrs. Bertetti stopped writing and looked up. “I’m sure it would make him very happy if you paid him a visit.”

Chapter 9
    â€œIt was just a coincidence,” I say to Meadow Lark. “Nothing more than that.”
    Meadow Lark was sitting W on her bed, and I was trying to sit crisscross, but it hurt the insides of my knees. I liked that she and I shared the way we sat and that, for a while at least, we shared the same room. It was like we were friends, almost like sisters.
    She had set Mr. Tricks’s cage on her bed and was making kissing noises at him. Mr. Tricks strutted headfirst over to the wires and blinked at her. “That was more than a coincidence, and you know it,” she say.
    I slid the facecloth off my forehead and tossed it on the night table, next to the glass of ginger ale Mama had brought to me. When she first laid that cool facecloth across my forehead, it felt so good. But soon it turned warm and dirty-feeling, like a tea bag on a saucer.
    â€œWe make a wish, and then Daniel Bunch goes to the hospital,” she say, and kiss-kissed close to the cage. “That’s not how coincidences work, is it, Mr. Tricks?”
    â€œThey happen all the time like that. You hear a word you’ve never heard before and the next thing you know, you hear it fifteen times. A song come into your head, and then the next person you see is singing it. Those are coincidences, just like Daniel Bunch just happened to get sick after we just happened to make a wish about it.”
    â€œThings like that happen to you?” she asked.
    â€œDon’t they happen to everyone?”
    â€œNot me. But that was no coincidence,” she say, and opened the paper lunch bag that Mama put together for her that morning. She pulled out a zipper bag of carrot sticks. “Want some?”
    I shook my head and closed my eyes. The Cheetos I ate at lunch now sat on my stomach like a brick. They tasted good when I ate them, but that was before I heard about Daniel Bunch.
    Meadow Lark kept harping. “Was it a coincidence we were put in the same homeroom?” she asked. “Or another coincidence that we went to the river at the same time? Or that we found Mr. Tricks just when he needed us?”
    â€œI think so,” I say, though she had a point. “What do you call