They listened to the whole symphony together while Red ate her cereal. It was a long symphony, but Red had always liked it. The rhythm of the violins, the hum of the cellos and bass, the climb and fall of the flutes. She liked how it sounded angry one moment, then happy or sad or calm the next. Gamma was right. Beethoven really did give feelings somewhere to go.
When it was over, a hush settled around them for a few moments, and Gamma closed her eyes. Then she told Red to hurry and get dressed, and they went to the dollar store. Gamma said she needed to buy something special, something new and fresh. She marched Red to the office supply aisle, and they picked out the notebook together. Red chose green because green seemed like the freshest color of all.
When they got home, Gamma sat Red down at the kitchen table. Her cheeks were flushed and her voice shook a little when she spoke.
“We’re gonna start us a project, Ruby.” She opened the notebook and wrote the word IMPOSSIBLE in big letters across the top of a page. “We’re gonna start collecting impossible things.”
“Why?”
Gamma bit her lip, shaking her head a little. “Because knowing the difference between hard and impossible is important, baby girl. Lots of things in life are hard. But nothing is impossible. Remember: It always seems impossible…” Her voice trailed off and she looked at Red expectantly.
Red knew her line. “Until it’s done!”
Gamma smiled. It was her favorite quote. “Right. So we’re gonna make ourselves a list of all the things the world thought were impossible, until someone came along and got it done. That way you won’t ever forget when—”
Red frowned. “When what?”
“Just … never. So you’ll never forget,” Gamma said.
After Gamma made the list, she and Red started learning about some of the things on it. Gamma taught her about the Wright brothers, who were credited with flying the first airplane. She also taught her about a woman named Jeanne Genevieve Labrosse, who was the first woman to pilot a hot-air balloon, in 1798, and the first woman to parachute, in 1799. Gamma was especially eager to talk about her.
“There’s always a woman hidden in history who did as much or more than any man,” Gamma said. “All you gotta do is look for her.”
Together, they’d filled several pages of the notebook with what they discovered, the ways impossible things weren’t impossible at all. But they’d only made it partway through the list. There were still so many impossible things left.
They just hadn’t had time to find them all before everything changed.
Still, Red kept the notebook, even after her mom was arrested and Red was sent into foster care. Over the years, she’d lost things. Clothes, books, toys. Misplaced. Left behind during a sudden transition. Stolen, sometimes. Or thrown away by a new set of foster parents or the social workers.
But not the impossible notebook.
It was Red’s most valued possession. Often, it was her only possession. The only thing that was really, truly hers.
Gandalf lifted her head, snuffled Red’s knees. Red scratched the dog’s ears.
Something clattered against the window behind her. Red turned around and nearly fell off the bed in surprise.
A boy was sitting in the tree, grinning at her.
Chapter
7
Red leaped off the bed. The boy was smiling and waving, like it wasn’t weird at all that he was looking into a stranger’s room. Gandalf sat up, her bulk making the bed sag, and wuffed.
“What are you doing?” Red asked.
The boy tipped his head to one side and cupped a hand behind his ear. She shoved the notebook into the nightstand drawer and unlatched the window, raising it just enough to talk through.
“What are you doing?” she said again.
Two fingertip-deep dimples punctuated the beginning and end of his grin. His glossy black hair was standing up in every direction.
“I’m saying hi.” He adjusted his seat on the branch, glancing down like he’d just realized how high up he was. “But now I’m also thinking about plummeting to my death.” He made a face of exaggerated fear. “Holy bananas, this is high!”
Red crossed her arms, frowning at him.
“I’m Marvin,” he said, as if his name explained everything.
She raised her eyebrows and said nothing.
He knuckled his nose, then wiped his hand on his pant leg. “I’m Marvin,” he said again. “I live down the road. Didn’t they tell you about me?”
He looked genuinely hurt at the possibility that Celine and Jackson hadn’t mentioned him. Gandalf clumped up the length of the bed in two bouncing strides and stuck her nose out the open gap of the window. Her tail began to wag.
Marvin brightened. “See! Gandalf knows me!”
Red tried to push back the dog’s enormous head. “Why are you in my tree?”
“Your tree?” Marvin laughed. “I’ve climbed this tree, like, a million times! Have you?”
“I’ve climbed it,” Red said, bristling.
He met her scowl with a grin. “So are you coming out or what?”
Gandalf was crushing into Red now, trying to push her nose farther out the window. She whimpered, then sprayed a sneeze that splattered across the glass.
“Gross.” Red grimaced.
The sound of Fezzik the donkey heehawing floated up from the petting zoo, followed by the squeals of delighted little girls.
“You should come outside! Jackson’s gonna let Fezzik feed the chickens. Have you seen that yet?”
Red shook her head. A prickling heat stung her cheeks. Fezzik could feed the chickens? Why hadn’t Jackson told her?
Marvin laughed, making the tree branch shake. He grabbed hold of it with both hands, his laughter screeching to a halt for a moment. His dimples reappeared as he steadied himself. “Well, come outside, then! You have to see it. It’s hil-ar-ious.”
Gandalf jumped off the bed, stumbling when she hit the floor, then shook her head, blowing little half sneezes of excitement.
Marvin started to climb down the tree. “Come outside!” he said again. “Hurry!”
Red watched him until he reached the ground and walked toward the arena. She didn’t want to follow this weird, nosy boy to watch a donkey feed chickens.
Gandalf whined at the door.
Red sighed. “Fine.”
She opened the door and the dog bounded out, booming a happy bark. Red paused, then followed Gandalf down the stairs and out to the backyard.
Marvin stood on the bottom rung of the arena’s metal fence with his arms draped over the top. Red stepped up onto the fence next to him.
“See those beanbags?”
She looked to where he was pointing at the far side of the arena. “Those have chicken feed in them,” he said. “Watch!”
Jackson took one of the small bags over to Fezzik, who was munching hay from a bale in the center of the circle. The Brownies were seated on surrounding hay bales, and the feather-explosion chickens were wandering aimlessly in the space around Fezzik’s hooves. Off to one side, the two horses and three goats were happily chowing down, ignoring everything else. Celine held one of the rabbits in her lap and the other two were cuddled near her feet.
Jackson patted Fezzik’s shaggy neck, then held the beanbag out to him like it was an apple. The donkey picked it up, his lips twitching.
“He got it! Watch this!” Marvin whisper-shouted.
Fezzik started nodding his head up and down, making the beanbag flop and shake. He dropped it on the ground, cuffed it with his hoof, then picked it up again. His ears were forward and he pranced a few paces, clearly having fun. He didn’t look anything like the donkey who’d head-butted Jackson that morning. This was a game, and Fezzik loved it. A high, screeching donkey-laugh erupted out of him as he played with the bag, shaking it. Each shake sent chicken feed raining down. The chickens clucked and darted for the food, nimbly avoiding Fezzik’s hooves.
Fezzik shook the bag until it was empty
, then dropped it and returned to his own hay. The discarded cloth landed on the head of one of the birds. The chicken took off running, its head still covered, bumping into the hay bales and other chickens until Jackson caught hold of it and snatched the fabric off. The crowd of little girls laughed at the spectacle.
Marvin turned to Red, beaming. “Fezzik always drops the empty bag on a chicken! He makes it look like an accident, but I swear he does it on purpose.”
“You came!” Celine appeared on the other side of the arena fence. “And you’ve met Marvin, I see.”
Red wanted to say, He climbed my tree. But it wasn’t her tree.
“Can I show Red how to feed Tuck?” Marvin asked.
Celine looked delighted. “Of course! If Red wants to.”
Red frowned. She hadn’t wanted to help Celine feed the tortoise that morning. His sharp, snapping beak made her nervous. But Marvin was already heading toward the barn. Gandalf and the other dogs yapped and chased one another, following him.
Red sighed. She was tempted to ignore Marvin and go back to her room.
No. Not her room. The room she was staying in until her mom got back.
Three hundred ninety-five days. Just over a year. One more year wasn’t too too long. She’d already been in foster care for three years, so one year sounded easy. Kind of.
“Hey!” Marvin called, waving at her.
Red sighed again. Marvin acting like the Grooves’ house belonged to him was making little clouds of dust billow around her ankles. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter.
The mini–dust storms lurched and settled.
“Come on, Red! I wanna show you something!” Marvin’s voice was rimmed with irritation at her slowness.
She exhaled in a whoosh of renewed frustration.
“Whoa!” He gasped, stepping back as a cloud of dirt peppered him. He brushed himself off, unfazed. “Come on!” he said, and disappeared into the barn.
Chapter
8
When Red stepped into the barn it was sparkling. Actually sparkling. She stopped, gaping, as light twirled around her, dancing off every surface like a million giddy stars.
Marvin stood in the center of the space, arms held out, grinning triumphantly.
“Isn’t it cool?” His arms thwapped against his sides and he stared up at the dancing light.
Red followed his gaze and saw a silver ball hanging from the ceiling. It was about the size of a basketball and was covered in hundreds of tiny mirrors, each reflecting light from a lamp attached to the beam across from it. How had she not noticed it when the Grooves had introduced her to the animals?
“It’s a disco ball,” Marvin said. “On cold days, they have the petting zoo in here. And it’s groovy. Get it?” When she didn’t laugh, he started pumping his arms in a weird dance move. “Groovy? The Groovy Petting Zoo?”
The twirling beams of light painted his face and body with bright strokes as he danced.
She shook her head. “It’s kind of a dumb name.”
He stopped dancing. “No, it’s not.”
She felt a little buzz of satisfaction at his tone. “They should call it something else. Like the Dancing Donkey Petting Zoo.”
Marvin’s dimples reappeared and the irritation evaporated from his voice. “Nah. Fezzik’s cool, but he’s not even the best part.”
“What is?”
He motioned for her to follow him. “Tuck!” he said, stopping at the tortoise’s pen.
Tuck’s pen took up a large portion of the back corner of the barn. The barn itself was really nice, nothing like Red had first expected a barn to be. Everything was clean and organized. There were even framed photographs on one wall of Jackson’s mother as a young woman riding horses in a rodeo. Tuck’s corner was lined in plywood that was scuffed and gouged from being knocked into by his shell. There was a Tuck-size door in one wall that led to his outside habitat. Strips of thick, clear plastic hung over it, kind of like a dog door. Tuck was in the back corner under his large heat lamp. It turned his green-brown shell a molten orange. He didn’t move when Marvin opened the gate and stepped into the pen.
“You probably shouldn’t go in there,” Red said. Jackson had told her Tuck was friendly and safe, but she didn’t like Marvin marching around like he owned everything.
Marvin patted Tuck on his shiny head. The tortoise blinked and shifted slightly. “He’s fine,” Marvin said. “I hang out with him all the time.”
The loose straw on the floor around Red’s feet skittered away from her. Marvin shivered in the breeze.
“Look at this,” he said, waving her into the pen.
She stepped in, keeping some distance between her feet and the tortoise’s head.
“See that?” Marvin pointed to a deep dimple in the front of Tuck’s shell, right between where Red imagined his shoulders would be. The center of the dimple was filled with something grayish and solid, almost like cement.
Yet another thing she hadn’t noticed when Jackson and Celine showed her the animals. She frowned, the breeze from her skin calming as she concentrated on Tuck’s shell. “What is that?”
“A scar.” Marvin’s eyes were wide, like he was getting ready to tell her a ghost story. He stroked Tuck’s shell gently around the old wound. “You know how Jackson found him, right?”
Red shook her head, irritation prickling again.
“Well, you know Jackson is a veterinarian?”
“Yes,” she said. Finally, something she did know.
“He worked with a lot of exotic animals. One day he got a call that some dumb frat boys in Boulder had a giant tortoise. Someone reported that the tortoise was hurt, so he went out there with the police to get it, and it was Tuck. There was a huge screwdriver sticking out of his shell, right here!”
Red stared, trying to imagine it. The air suddenly felt hot and thick in her lungs. “S-somebody did that to him?”
Marvin nodded gravely. “The frat boys swore it was there when they found him in Arizona. They said he was wandering around the desert and they were trying to help him, but who knows if it’s true. Jackson said Aldabras aren’t from Arizona, so he was probably a pet that somebody abandoned when he got so big. Maybe that person hurt him. I don’t know. But Jackson had to do surgery on Tuck to get it out. And he thinks whoever stabbed him in the shell also hurt his head.” Marvin pointed to a second, J-shaped scar that hooked around one of Tuck’s eyes.
The tortoise’s eye glinted up at Red as she knelt to get a closer look. Gently, she touched his cool skin, traced the scar. “Geez.”
“I know.” Marvin was kneeling, too, one arm draped over the tortoise’s back. “That’s why Tuck lives here now. He needs special care from Jackson.”
Red looked into Tuck’s eye. She wanted to tell him she understood what it was like, not being able to go home. Living with strangers.
He stared at her like, I know.
When she moved her fingers over his head, Tuck stretched out his long neck, wanting her to rub it. She bit back a smile as he leaned in to her hand, almost like a dog.
The twirling disco lights blinked over and across their faces. Marvin showed Red the refrigerator in the barn’s food storage room where fresh vegetables were kept. Tuck stood on his stumpy legs and came over to Red when she held out a cucumber for him.
“Hold it up kind of high,” Marvin instructed. “It’s good exercise for him to reach for it.”
Red obeyed, marveling at the strength in Tuck’s jaws as he crunched into it. He was a messy eater. Before long, his face was covered in chunks of soggy vegetables.
Suddenly, Tuck’s whole body jolted. For a second, Red didn’t know what had happened. Then a stream of snot came flooding out of Tuck’s nostrils in long, sticky strands. Red stepped back to avoid the river of mucus.
“He sneezed! Sick!” Marvin said, clearly delighted.
“Bless you,” Red whispered to Tuck. He stretched his neck toward the last bit of cucum
ber in her hands.
“Billie loves Tuck,” Marvin said, trying to feed the tortoise a carrot. Tuck ignored it. “They’re totally BFFs.”
“I saw her on his back this morning.”
“Yeah, she does that all the time.” He tapped the carrot against Tuck’s lips, but the tortoise turned away. “Billie is a rescue, too. All the animals are.”
Red ran her fingers down into the soft, leathery folds of Tuck’s neck skin. “How do you know so much about them?” she asked.
Marvin tried again to feed Tuck the carrot. Red wanted to swat his hand away.
“I hung out here a lot when our parents were getting certified.”
The air stilled, cooled. Red narrowed her eyes. “Our parents?”
Marvin stroked Tuck’s shell. “Yeah. My parents are Support Friends to yours. So they can take care of you, too. In case yours need help or something.”
“Jackson and Celine aren’t my parents.”
He looked up, startled by the ice in her voice. “Oh, yeah, I know. Sorry. I meant foster parents. I know your real parents—I mean, I know they aren’t around.”
“You don’t know anything about me!” Red’s hair whipped around her face, and the gate to Tuck’s pen rattled.
Marvin glanced at the gate, then back at Red, eyes wide. “Sorry, I—”
“I don’t even know who your parents are! Why would they take care of me? I’m not staying here forever.”
Marvin was stone-still now. Dry grass and shriveled leaves of lettuce from Tuck’s food bowl were spinning across the floor, swept up by the flurries of Red’s outburst and catching in his shoelaces. His cheeks turned scarlet. “I didn’t—”
All the Impossible Things Page 3