by Alan Cumyn
“Maybe you don’t realize how dangerous this room is,” Andy said.
Owen found Sylvia’s present and slipped down to the basement to Lorne’s cot. He opened the wrapping carefully.
It was a box of special paper, with envelopes to match, and she had included a large sheet of stamps and another piece of paper with her name on it, Sylvia Tull, and her complete address, which he knew already.
Owen stared at the box with the blank paper. Then he turned it over. Dear Owen, she had written. I miss your stories. Tell me what is happening.
A pen fell out of the box then and bounced on the basement floor.
That night, as Owen was staring at the living-room ceiling in the blackness, with the stiff floor beneath him, the phone rang in the kitchen. Sylvester didn’t bark, but made a muffled noise, as one would with a mouth happily full of rock.
Owen ran in the dark and got to the phone first.
“Hello!” he said breathlessly.
“Who’s that?” a woman’s voice, asked. It was his mother—it had to be her—and yet Owen wasn’t sure. He had never spoken to Margaret on the phone before, and she sounded different.
“It’s Owen Skye,” he said.
“Well, Owen Skye,” Margaret said, “you can tell the others that there’s now a Phyllis Skye as well. Your new cousin. She’s six pounds, eleven ounces and she screams like a banshee. Mother and child are doing well. Tell the others, all right? You can all come visit in the morning.”
Owen looked through the gloom at the kitchen clock, whose hands glowed in the dark. It wasn’t quite midnight yet.
“She has the same birthday as me,” he said.
“Yes, she does. Happy birthday, Owen.”
Owen put down the phone. Andy and Leonard were standing beside him now, and Eleanor and Sadie had come down the stairs in their huge nightgowns, muffled forms in the shadows. Horace was still asleep. Owen could hear the snuffle and drone of his snores in the background.
“Well?” Eleanor said.
For just a moment Owen was seized with the desire to run past them, to gather Sylvia’s special present and write it all down for her first.
But he couldn’t stay quiet now, of course.
“There’s more of us,” he said to them simply, “and her name is Phyllis, and we’ll meet her tomorrow.”
Later, in the darkness once again, Owen resumed staring at the ceiling. Occasionally headlights from the highway carved a path across the window, which they never did in the attic bedroom. The whole house seemed different. Owen wondered if, when he woke up in the morning, he would be different, too. He was older now, after all. It felt like so much had changed.
Slowly, he took out all the morsels of the day and turned them over in his mind. The moments with Sylvia, especially, he let linger, until they became too much to hold. His eyes got heavy and he felt himself easing into sleep.
He would write her first thing in the morning, he thought. And he would meet Phyllis and write her about that, and there would be other things he couldn’t even imagine, filling up tomorrow the way they filled up today.
Then sleep took him over and pulled him, in its steady and unfailing way, toward the great long river of tomorrows.
In the Same Series
The Secret Life of Owen Skye
For Owen Skye every day is full of danger and mystery — going on adventures with his brothers, observing the crazy world of adults, exploring the vast planet of the surrounding countryside, and pondering the secrets of death, life and love.
Dear Sylvia
Owen Skye labors to write a series of letters to Sylvia. But will he ever find the courage to send them? Readers of all ages will easily identify with Owen as he wrestles with his poor spelling, his writer’s insecurity and his deep desire to tell Sylvia the truth about what is going on in his life, and in his hear
About the Publisher
GROUNDWOOD BOOKS, established in 1978, is dedicated to the production of children’s books for all ages, including fiction, picture books and non-fiction. We publish in Canada, the United States and Latin America. Our books aim to be of the highest possible quality in both language and illustration. Our primary focus has been on works by Canadians, though we sometimes also buy outstanding books from other countries.
Many of our books tell the stories of people whose voices are not always heard in this age of global publishing by media conglomerates. Books by the First Peoples of this hemisphere have always been a special interest, as have those of others who through circumstance have been marginalized and whose contribution to our society is not always visible. Since 1998 we have been publishing works by people of Latin American origin living in the Americas both in English and in Spanish under our Libros Tigrillo imprint.
We believe that by reflecting intensely individual experiences, our books are of universal interest. The fact that our authors are published around the world attests to this and to their quality. Even more important, our books are read and loved by children all over the globe.