by Jean Little
Scholastic Canada Ltd.
604 King Street West, Toronto, Ontario M5V 1E1, Canada
Scholastic Inc.
557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012, USA
Scholastic Australia Pty Limited
PO Box 579, Gosford, NSW 2250, Australia
Scholastic New Zealand Limited
Private Bag 94407, Botany, Manukau 2163, New Zealand
Scholastic Children’s Books
Euston House, 24 Eversholt Street, London NW1 1DB, UK
ISBN: 978-1-4431-1987-0
Text copyright © 2007 by Jean Little.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read this e-book on-screen. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher, Scholastic Canada Ltd., 604 King Street West, Toronto, Ontario M5V 1E1, Canada.
first eBook edition September 2012
This book is dedicated to Jan Feduck, the Children’s Aid worker who read it in manuscript and told me she loved it, and to all those caseworkers and foster parents who work to help children like Min go dancing through the snow.
— J. L.
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Sing Till Sundown
1. In the Recycle Bin
2. Kidnapped
3. Sanctuary
4. A Cry for Help
5. Throwaway Dog
6. Toby Again
7. Visiting Emily
8. Trinkets and Treasures
9. The Mysterious “Her”
10. Lost Fathers
11. Bringing Emily Home
12. Walking into Danger
13. Telling Toby
14. A New School
15. Life Story
16. Bully Run
17. Rock-a-Bye, Baby
18. The Trouble with Eavesdropping
19. Dancing Through the Snow
About the Author
Sing Till Sundown
Sing till sundown, hum your joy,
Dress in starlight, girl and boy.
Man and woman climb the hill,
Warmed beyond December’s chill,
Reeling, clapping, touch the air:
Is that fragrant music there?
Come the glory, gone the gloom:
In a wondrous huddled room.
Christ the Word we’ve longed to know
Calls us dancing through the snow.
Gladness deepens into grace,
Weaves its light on every face.
Let us wake the sleeping earth,
Celebrate the sweetest birth,
Pierce the night with festive cry,
Bloom in colours of the sky.
Bring the flute, the tambourine,
Wave the branch of evergreen.
Lost we were a grief ago,
Now we’re dancing through the snow.
Eileen Spinelli
1
In the Recycle Bin
MIN RANDALL SAT ON THE BENCH next to the Royal Bank parking lot and wondered how much longer Enid Bangs, her foster mother, would spend in the bank.
“Don’t you move a muscle until I get back,” she had said as she bustled away.
But Min was cold. She hugged herself and wondered why old Enid had not let her come inside as she usually did. Trying to distract herself, she looked around the square. New snow was floating down in great, cottony flakes, just right for a December afternoon. A breeze set some of them spinning in a momentary dance and she began to smile. Then a cold finger of wind slid deep inside her coat collar and touched her neck. It made her shiver and blew out her smile. She huddled deeper into her jacket, but it was too thin to help.
The snowflakes were blowing onto the happy-family statue that rose up from the middle of the fountain across the street. The water had been turned off for the winter, but the statue still stood in its place.
As usual, the stone father supported the mother and she, in turn, held the baby high above her. All three were stark naked. Min, who was growing colder by the minute, felt sorry for them.
Maybe nude statues looked fine in Italy where Michelangelo’s David stood. The Art teacher had shown them a photo of him and he looked fine. Tall, bare and beautiful. But here in mid-winter in Ontario, Min felt, even a stone family needed some protection from the biting wind.
In her mind, she dressed the grown-ups in ski outfits and put a snug snowsuit on the baby. They looked much less miserable.
But that was not all that was wrong. The mother had the child perched high up on her hands but was not holding onto him properly. If he were made of flesh and blood, he would have given one wriggle and hurtled head over bare heels into the fountain beneath. Even if he sensed his danger and stayed absolutely still, a blast of wind would surely have toppled him to his death.
“Get a grip, lady,” Min whispered to the mother. Then she grinned, catching the double meaning in her own words.
If the three of them were alive, Min knew the Children’s Aid would have rescued that poor little kid and placed him in foster care. She should know. In her own years as a ward of the Children’s Aid, she’d met plenty of babies taken from parents who hadn’t looked after them properly.
The stone parents never abandoned their baby, though. There were always the three of them, sticking together, belonging. Even though the little guy didn’t have a stitch on, he’d probably fight to stay with his mum and dad regardless of the gusts that buffeted his small body.
Despite her winter clothing, Min felt frozen to the bone by now.
She glanced over at the bank, wishing Enid Bangs would move it. At this rate, Min would be an ice sculpture before the woman reappeared.
Then a piercing shriek ripped through the quiet of the winter afternoon.
“Catch her, Tobias!” she heard a woman’s voice shout.
Min jerked around just in time to see a small girl in a scarlet snowsuit pelting past her down the sidewalk. She was heading straight for the busy street that cut across the square at the end of the block. Then the traffic light facing the oncoming cars turned green. People bent on last-minute shopping were driving bumper to bumper — searching for parking spaces, not watching out for runaway children. This one was so short that her head might not show above the hood of a car.
The little girl looked back over her shoulder. Then she gave a triumphant laugh and sped on, straight for the street.
Min sprang up, dashed forward and caught hold of the child by one arm.
“No!” the small girl bellowed at her. “Let GO!”
Instead, Min tightened her grip. The child squirmed and fought like a tiger to free herself, but Min’s hold did not loosen, despite the painful kicks aimed at her legs.
“Cut that out, brat,” a boy’s voice roared.
Then he was there, catching hold of the child by her other arm and the flying hood of her coat.
“Thanks a million,” he panted. “Grace has no sense at all. You probably saved her life. She thinks she’s Super-baby, don’t you, Grace?”
At that, the girl looked past Min, switched off her glare, stopped kicking and smiled sweetly at a woman who came panting up to them. She was towing another little girl by the hand. Even if her clothes had not exactly matched Grace’s, Min would have known, at once, that they were identical twins.
�
��Hi, Mummy,” Grace said, innocent as an angel.
“Sweetheart, you could have been killed if Tobias hadn’t caught you,” the mother wailed, reaching her spare arm to give her daughter a shake, which became a hug.
“I’m not the hero. She is,” growled the boy, pointing at Min. “She snatched your Gracie out of the jaws of death and even managed to hang onto her until I got there.”
“Thank you so much,” the woman said, turning her wide blue eyes to gaze at Min.
Min opened her mouth to say it was nothing, and then changed her mind. She might really have saved the child. It made her shiver just thinking of that happy little girl dashing into the street and being squashed flat by one of the city buses now pulling in around the square.
“You should be careful, Grace,” she heard herself scolding like a prissy grown-up.
“Tell Maggot too,” the child ordered.
“She means Margaret — the other twin,” Tobias explained, doing his best to hide a grin. “Margaret wasn’t trying to get herself run over, Grace. Only you.”
Despite her own urge to smile, Min too kept her face straight. She said solemnly, “Of course Margaret should be careful too.”
“But I am careful.” Margaret spoke up for the first time. “I am, aren’t I, Mummy? Toby let go of Grace and she ran away, but I didn’t, did I, Mummy?”
She sounded so smug that Min decided she liked Grace much better in spite of her wickedness.
“That’ll do, Margaret,” the woman said. Then, to Min, “Thanks again, dear. I don’t think I caught your name.”
She studied Min with eyes that had lost some of their earlier warmth. Min guessed this lady did not like her darling Grace being scolded by a stranger.
“I’m Min,” she said.
“Well, Min, we are very grateful. But I think Grace has held centre stage long enough. We must go. Come, children.” The woman spoke crisply, cutting short any further conversation.
Min was startled by her tone. If Grace’s brush with danger had shaken her mother, she had sure made a speedy recovery. She was now clearly impatient and she rapped out her orders in a no-more-nonsense voice.
Min resented, on the boy’s behalf, her lumping him in with “the children.” He looked at least twelve. It was also obvious, from the way his mother frowned at him, that she accepted as a proven fact that he was somehow to blame for Grace’s escape. It was not fair. Holding onto Grace was like trying to clutch an oiled eel. She sent the boy a sympathetic glance and won a quick wink in return.
“Bye, Min,” Grace sang out, all Min’s sins forgiven.
“Bye, Houdini,” Min said softly as she watched the four of them walking away. They all had a hand to hold, even Tobias.
He had called her a hero. She wished Laird Bentham, the worst bully at school, had heard that. Laird was forever taunting her with the names “Litter-Bin Min” or “Minnie McDumpster.” His taunting kept the old story alive. He made a point of telling every new kid about her being abandoned in a washroom at the Canadian National Exhibition. And he always did it where no teacher could hear.
Just the thought of him made her stomach hurt. His family had moved somewhere else a couple of months ago but, by the time he was gone, the damage had been done. She’d be Litter-Bin Min forever.
Forget him, she told herself, and yanked her thoughts back to Grace and her family. Their closeness was what the sculptor who made the statue had been trying to catch, she thought. They were like those people — except that no carved stone could capture the picture that their live loving family made. Hearing the little girls’ laughter, she at last let her own smile out of hiding and wondered how it would feel to have relatives who cared. Did Grace ever stop to think how lucky she was? No. Lucky kids took love for granted.
She could still see them. They stood waiting for the light. Tobias had dropped Grace’s hand and taken a step away, separating himself from the other three. Maybe they weren’t quite the perfect family she had imagined. Min continued to gaze after them, entranced. The mother and her twins were beautiful with their golden hair and blue eyes. The boy was paler, so fair he made you blink. He didn’t seem to belong with the other three somehow. When the mother talked to him, she used a different voice.
She sounds more like his nanny than his mum, Min thought, puzzling over what was missing.
How would you know how loving families behave? she asked herself, mocking. So far, you have loved nobody and nobody has loved you. You weren’t even given up for adoption, you were just thrown away.
Automatically, she reached for the long, thick braid that dangled down her back, and pulled it forward. Holding onto it always gave her strength. Since that day eight years before when she had been robbed of her soft curls, she had fought tooth and nail against having her hair trimmed even a little. Finally, Mrs. Willis had told her various foster parents to give up the struggle.
“As long as she takes care of it herself,” Min had heard her saying. “After all, it is her hair.”
She had learned to wash it in the shower and patiently comb out the snarls. Then she rebraided it before she left for school. That kept it from becoming a tangled bush. Its weight had long ago pulled straight the soft curls she had had when she was small. Shirl, the woman who had abandoned her, had cut them off as a final act. She now guessed the woman had been trying to change her appearance so Bruno would not be able to find her. But, at the time, she had felt terror and shame as the scissors sheared off her soft ringlets.
“Curlylocks” she had been called now and again, and the Avon lady who had come to the door had said to Shirl, “What I wouldn’t give for hair like that! Your little girl is a doll.”
“She’s not mine,” Shirl had snorted, but Min still held onto the memory of the casual compliment. The thought of anyone snipping off even the split ends had maddened her. Ever since her hair had grown long enough to braid, she had withstood all the nagging and even refused bribes.
I was as pigheaded as Grace, she thought, grinning and leaning forward to see if the child was still there. But they had vanished. Shrugging away a lost feeling, she went back to remembering the battles over her hair. Mrs. Willis had been her sole supporter. Perhaps it was because she was the only one who had seen the almost-bald little girl the day she was delivered to the Children’s Aid office eight summers before. “Here’s the kid somebody left at the Ex yesterday,” the man who had driven her had said, pushing Min ahead of him into her office. “They found an address written in her shoes. I guess that’s what made her your problem. She told them her name is Min. They said they’d let you know she was coming.”
“They did call. Thank you. But she’s not a problem, are you, Min?” Mrs. Willis had said quietly, crouching down so that their faces were on a level. “I think you and I are going to be friends.”
Min remembered that moment clearly. She had stored it away even though outwardly she had stood like a block of cement, giving no sign she had heard. She had been waiting for whatever would come next, a slap or a stream of unanswerable questions. Her short life had taught her not to trust adults. Bruno, the man with whom she had lived ever since she could remember, had often smiled at her just before “teaching her a lesson” by locking her in the dark closet. She had never been told what she had done to deserve such punishment or what she could do to keep it from happening again.
The driver had shrugged. “Rather you than me,” he had said. “I couldn’t get a word out of her.”
She knew now that Mrs. Willis remembered that meeting too. Recently she had given Min a copy of the newspaper article about the women finding her abandoned at the Exhibition. It had a picture of her, a tiny, almost bald girl with huge empty eyes. Staring at the photograph of that little Min with her cropped head and blank gaze had made Min understand, for the first time, why Mrs. Willis stuck up for her the way she had.
When the two of them had gone out for supper together that first night, Sybil Willis’s steadfast kindness had wakened a faint spark of answ
ering warmth in Min. She had found herself able, at last, to give the briefest of answers to such questions as, “Would you like ketchup, Min?” Ever since that night, Min could not remember her being unkind or impatient. Only tired sometimes.
Min slid off the bench and went to peer through the glass door of the bank to see what was keeping Enid. There she was — third from the front in a long lineup. Min slipped away, before she was spotted, and jogged back to the bench, trying in vain to warm herself. Attempting to take her mind off the cold, she called up more memories.
Mrs. Willis had also happened to be there many months later when Min’s first foster mother, Robin Randall, had said, “Would you like a pigtail, Min? I think your hair’s long enough at last for a short one.”
Delight had brimmed over inside Min and her face had lit up with it.
“That means yes,” Robin had said, smiling.
The instant Robin had finished tying the slim ribbon on the end of the stubby braid and let it go, Min’s hand had shot back and gripped the braid in her fist. She had refused to let go. Over the years, Sybil Willis had bought Min a collection of hair clips, scrunchies, barrettes and ties of every sort. Min still had them all hidden away in an old candy box she had rescued from a wastepaper basket in her second-last foster home. When she had followed Enid Bangs to the waiting van, she had silently shoved the box into the outside pocket of the backpack that held most of her clothes. Mrs. Willis has always understood, Min thought, looking back. But how would she feel about being forced to find her another placement so close to the holidays — if that was what Enid had in mind? Wouldn’t it be the last straw?
The word Christmas slammed into Min like a bulky kid on a runaway skateboard. Carols had been playing in a nearby store all the time she had been waiting on the bench, but she had been too busy with her own thoughts to take them in until now. Then a child soprano began to sing, “Away in a manger, No crib for a bed …”
Min sprang up and then sank down again. There was nowhere to go. She glared at the world around her. She longed to flee. A month ago, when the first Christmas stuff was appearing in every store, she had wondered how she and her present foster parents would survive the holidays together now that the two little Keating brothers who had been fostered along with her had been adopted at last. They had been taken to their new home ten days ago, just in time for them to adjust to having a new family at Christmas.