“Because your Babushka taught me so much. What a wonderful person.”
Ana didn’t even argue.
When they got to the pond, Mikey started stuffing his face with candy bar pie. It only took a few minutes before Katie stepped out of her back door.
“There she is,” Mikey said. “Your pair.” He sighed. “I sure wish mine hadn’t moved to Detroit.”
Ana wrinkled her nose. “You think Dad’s your pair?”
Mikey shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Oh, buddy. That’s like pairing a chocolate chip with a glop of mud.”
Mikey laughed. “So who’s my pair?”
Ana reached over and swiped some whipped cream with her finger. As it melted on her tongue, she thought about Mikey’s question.
“I don’t think it’s about pairs. Pairs are good, but you need more than two. You need a whole family.”
Mikey crushed a crumb in the bottom of the pie tin. “We don’t have that anymore either.”
“Of course we do! Whole doesn’t mean two or four, and it’s not just the people who live in your house.” Katie’s parents appeared on the porch, and Ana thought she saw the glint of skates in their hands too. “It’s like your paper chain, maybe. Except it’s going in all directions, and growing all the time.”
“But those can break,” Mikey said.
Ana wished he wasn’t right about that. “Yeah, they can. You have to protect them. But they can be fixed too. You can make them stronger.”
“Happy New Year!” Katie’s dad called as he approached the pond. “We’ve missed you two at our house. Mrs. Burton keeps buying food, and when I go to the pantry, it’s still there!”
“We’ll fix that,” Ana said. “But let me work up an appetite first.”
Katie sat next to Mikey and handed him a little bag of red paper strips. “A new chain for Valentine’s Day,” she said. “If you pinch the top like this, and the bottom like that, and put another little dot of glue right there, they’re hearts!”
Mikey started folding and gluing right away.
Ana and Katie skated the rest of the morning, and Ana couldn’t believe how much longer Katie could go already before she got out of breath. Gradually, the rest of the neighborhood kids joined them.
Ana had worried that Mikey would get bored or cold and want to go back to bed. But every time she looked over, his chain had grown a little longer, and somebody new was there to talk to him. First Katie’s dad, showing him how to make tiny snowmen from his spot on the sled. Then Katie’s mom, sneaking him a cookie from her coat pocket. Even Jarek—Ana watched that one closely, but he was only there for a few seconds. Long enough to say sorry, Ana suspected.
Ana tipped her face to the sun and counted all the planes, their trails crisscrossing the sky. Maybe Babushka was in one of them; maybe she was looking down right now.
“Thank you,” Ana whispered, just in case.
“Thank you,” she whispered again, to Mikey and Katie and her mom and even her dad, to the Burtons and her hockey friends and all the people who had been like family to her, who had caught her and lifted her and made her life better.
Katie came up and handed Ana a hockey stick. “Thank you,” Katie said.
Ana dropped the old puck she’d taken from under her mattress. She tapped it with one side of her stick, then the other, just getting the feel of it back into her fingers as Katie got into position for another non-contact hockey lesson.
Then, from across the pond, Ana heard the sound of Mikey’s laugh. She looked over to see her mom pulling him onto her lap, teasing and trying to steal the very last of the candy bar pie.
He was going to be okay. And so was her mom, and Katie. So was she, really.
They were all going to be okay.
A great miracle happened here.
Author’s Note
THE VERY FIRST seeds of this story came from a book my grandmother read to me when I was young: The Snow Child by Freya Littledale. I was lucky to have parents, grandparents, teachers, and librarians who surrounded me with stories as I was growing up, and those stories became part of me. It was that idea of a broad mix of stories shaping each of us—with The Snow Child at its center—that became the heart of this book.
It takes a leap of faith and a lot of research to write about cultures and experiences beyond one’s own, and I’m grateful for the chance to do so. I grew up hearing stories of my own ancestors and feeling part of a larger family and heritage. However, one quarter of my own ancestry is Eastern European, and it is those ancestors my family has always known the least about, in spite of my aunt’s years of searching. This book is primarily an attempt to tell a story that spoke to me—but in a small way, I think it’s also an attempt to make a connection with a part of myself I still know very little about.
As I drafted this book, two groups came to my hometown and brought pieces of Russia with them: the Moscow Ballet and Nikolai Massenkoff & the Russian Folk Festival. It was such an honor to be immersed in their stories, told through music and dance and spoken words.
Throughout the writing process, I was fortunate to have the cultural, religious, and even medical expertise of so many friends and expert readers, who are listed in the acknowledgments. Any mistakes are my own.
Finally, I turned to many resources, both in print and online as I tried to get this one just right. Here are a few books that I found particularly helpful.
Russian Fairy Tales by Aleksandr Afanasev, Alexander Alexeieff, Norbert Guterman, Roman Jakobson
Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History of Russia by Orlando Figes
Living Judaism by Wayne D. Dosick
All About Hanukkah by Madeline Wikler and Judyth Groner
Twenty Things Adoptive Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew by Sherrie Eldridge
How It Feels to Be Adopted by Jill Krementz
Acknowledgments
THIS BOOK IS dedicated to my family, and I mean that by every possible definition of the word.
Thank you to Lucy, Halle, Jack, and Robbie. It’s my greatest joy to fall asleep and wake up under the same roof with you, and to spend so many happy hours together in between.
Thank you to my parents and siblings and nieces and nephews of both the Braithwaite and Vickers varieties. What a lucky thing to have you all in my life and to so fully be a part of two incredible families.
Thanks to my writing family: Helen Boswell, Tasha Seegmiller, Rosalyn Eves, and especially Erin Shakespear, who joined me on a journey to Boston to research this book and made the whole thing absolutely delightful.
Thanks to the eclectic family of helpers who loaned their expertise in all sorts of things so I could get this right: Ann Braden, Jeannie Mobley, Jennifer Stewart, Chris Hayes, Elly Swartz, Jed Montgomery, Franny Ilany, Gia Miller, Jenny Call, Elsie Call, Ryan Decker, Alice Crandall, Ariana Fuller, Hannah Olsen, and Anastasia Randall. Any mistakes are my own.
Thanks to my publishing family: Emilia Rhodes for bringing out the best in this story, and Ammi-Joan Paquette for making me believe I can write any of the stories in my heart. Thank you to Jen Klonsky, Alice Jerman, Maya Myers, Alison Klapthor, Jessica Berg, Gina Rizzo, Molly Motch, Megan Barlog, and the entire team at Harper. A huge and heartfelt thank you to Sara Not for creating the most beautiful book covers I’ve ever seen.
Finally, thank you to all the readers. I’m claiming you as family too.
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About the Author
Photo credit Brooke MacNaughtan
ELAINE VICKERS lives with her husband and three kids in Southern Utah, where she writes books and teaches college chemistry. She always wanted to be a writer and a teacher, except when she wanted to be an architect, an artist, a pediatrician, a judge, or a famous actress. Visit her at www.elainevickers.com for book recommendations, science activities, and ideas for starting your own backyard book club.
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Credits
Cover art by Sara Not
Cover design by Alison Klapthor
Copyright
PAPER CHAINS. Copyright © 2017 by Elaine Vickers. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, 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 hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2017938988
ISBN 978-0-06-241434-2 (trade bdg.)
EPub Edition © September 2017 ISBN 9780062414366
Version 10112017
Illustration by Sara Not
17 18 19 20 21 PC/LSCH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
FIRST EDITION
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