I frown at her. Last fall, when my early application to Stanford was deferred, Aunt Sofia had encouraged me to apply to a range of other schools. But I always thought this was just in case I didn’t ultimately get in. Now that I have, how could she think I might pass up the chance to go to Stanford? After all these years of hoping and planning, how could she imagine I’d choose anywhere else?
“Fine,” I say impatiently, suddenly anxious to escape the living room, which feels too small and too warm right now. “But it’s not gonna make a difference.”
“That’s okay,” she says. “I just want to make sure you consider everything. Maybe it would even help to go spend a few hours at Northwestern this weekend—”
“I’m going to Stanford,” I say, not bothering to hide my exasperation.
“I know that. But just humor me, okay? It can’t hurt to check it out before you commit to anything. At least think about it.”
I sigh. “Fine. But can we finish talking about this later? I’ve got to go, or I’m gonna be late for tutoring.”
“With Caleb?” Aunt Sofia asks, glancing at the clock. “It’s not even nine a.m.”
“Spring break,” I say, and Uncle Jake laughs.
“You party animal, you.”
On the bus I try calling Teddy twice. I’m eager to tell him about Stanford, but more than that I’m dying to know how it went with his dad this morning. He doesn’t pick up, so I text him, just to make sure he knows he’s supposed to call me back.
When I get to the library I head straight to the children’s section, where Caleb is waiting for me like always, hunched over a table that’s shaped like a cloud, beneath the watchful eye of the children’s librarian. He’s in second grade, but he’s small for his age, and he looks much younger, his feet still dangling off the tiny blue chair.
“Hi, buddy,” I say, sliding into the miniature seat next to him, where my knees come up halfway to my chin. “How’s it going?”
His round eyes are very serious as he considers the question. “Okay.”
“Just okay?”
This gets a little smile out of him. He fidgets with the drawstring of his hoodie, then shrugs. “Good.”
“C’mon,” I say. “You can do better than that.”
He scratches at his forehead. “Excited to read?”
“Bingo,” I say with a grin. “Me too.”
When I decided to volunteer with the program, which pairs foster kids with reading buddies, Caleb’s was the first profile I considered. As soon as I saw that his parents had recently been killed in a car accident, I moved on to the next one. The wordorphanstill unnerves me more than it probably should, and the prospect of working with a kid in a similar situation to mine seemed an awful lot like holding my hand against a flame.
But as I was scrolling through the next profile, I couldn’t stop thinking about the way my dad used to read Harry Potter to me before bed and how my mom would lean against the doorway, laughing as he did all the voices.
I’ve now spent the past couple of months reading story after story with Caleb. But I haven’t told him my own yet, or how much I can relate to his. This hour we have, it’s his escape. It’s a time for wizards and mice, spies and magicians. A time when the only orphans are the ones between the pages, and they usually end up being the heroes.
Now he pulls a copy ofCharlotte’s Webout of his backpack.
“One of my favorites,” I tell him. “Do you know the story already?”
Caleb shakes his head.
“You’re gonna like it,” I say, but even as I do, it occurs to me that this is a book about death as much as about talking pigs and spiders. Although so is everything, I guess, once you’ve been through what Caleb’s been through.
We open to page one, and he places his finger beside the first line. “ ‘Where’s Papa going with that ax?” he reads, then turns to look at me from beneath his dark lashes.
“That was great,” I say, giving him an encouraging nod.
“Why does he have an ax?” he whispers, alarmed.
“It’s okay,” I tell him, because it will be in a few pages. At least for a little while.
We keep going, both of us breathing out when Fern manages to talk her father into rescuing the tiny runt of a pig. Caleb even offers up a smile when Mr. Arable announces that he only gives pigs to early risers.
