Hope surged through Red, hot and bright. She looked at Marvin, who was grinning at her.
“We’ll definitely find him now!” he said.
Marvin’s grandparents offered to clean up lunch while Jackson and the man, Bill, organized three groups out on the front drive. Red, Marvin, and Celine headed out in the third group. Afternoon sunlight illuminated everything in deep gold, and the sky was clear and blue and wide. The cold winds that had been spinning around Red for the last few days had warmed, but only a little.
“Still not talking?” Marvin asked her as they walked.
She sank her fingers into Gandalf’s fur and bit her lip.
Marvin nodded, as if he understood. “That’s okay.”
Ahead of them, someone was shouting, “Tuck! Where are you? Tuck!”
Marvin shook his head. “Can you believe all these people came because of that article? It’s so cool.”
She’d read the newspaper article three times that morning. It told Tuck’s entire story. How he’d been found in the desert of Arizona by some college students at CU Boulder. That they’d kept him in their frat house for several months, and Jackson had been called in because Tuck was so badly wounded.
“This tortoise is a fighter,” says Jackson Groove, the tortoise’s rescuer and now caretaker. “He’s a survivor. But he’s family, and we miss him. My little girl especially misses him. I want to bring him home as soon as possible.”
The Grooves’ foster daughter, Ruby, is pictured above with the hundred-year-old tortoise. Groove says the two share a special bond, and that Ruby has been looking for the tortoise since he disappeared on Saturday night, when an unexpected windstorm saw gusts of seventy miles per hour in parts of Bramble.
Red stared at the picture for a long time. Jackson must have taken it on his phone the day she met Marvin and later fell asleep with her cheek pressed against Tuck’s shell. She hadn’t known the picture existed.
The article proved that Celine meant what she’d said. They weren’t giving up on Tuck. And now, dozens of people were fanned out across the fields behind the Grooves’ farm, searching for him.
“We’ll find him,” Celine murmured to Red, as if she’d read her mind.
“Let’s take a spin-eo!” Marvin said, grabbing Red’s hand.
They were in a small grove of trees near the back of the Grooves’ property. Rays of light angled through the bare tree branches and birds sang above them.
“A what?” Celine asked.
“A spin-eo! It’s when you take a video selfie and spin in a circle to show people where you are. I made it up.”
Celine laughed. “Is this for your YouTube?”
Marvin nodded. He was bouncing on his toes. “Can we use your phone, Mrs. G.?”
Celine pulled her cell out of her back pocket. “It’s kind of old. I don’t think the camera’s very good.”
“That’s okay. Everybody! Stand together for a sec. Let’s show the world Tuck’s search party! Maybe we’ll make the news,” he said to Red.
Everyone gathered together, smiling and shaking their heads at Marvin. Marvin fiddled with Celine’s phone and made a face.
“It doesn’t have a forward-facing camera.” He sounded appalled.
Mr. Kapule laughed and stepped away from the crowd. He traded his phone for Celine’s and handed hers back to her. “Sorry my kid is such a tech snob.”
Celine winked at Red as Marvin held up his dad’s phone. He held it high, spinning in a slow circle. “Here we are! The fearless tortoise search party!” he said. “Everyone wave!”
The crowd obeyed, laughing and cheering as the camera panned by them.
“We’re gonna find him, Red!” Marvin shouted.
“Yeah!” they all agreed.
Red’s heart surged with hope.
They were going to find him.
They had to find him.
After Marvin’s spin-eo, the crowd got down to the business of serious searching. More than thirty people looked for Tuck in knee-high grasses, behind rocks, under bushes, and around all the buildings on the property. Some people went past the fence line, others walked miles down the dirt road, scouring the ditch on either side. Marvin talked the entire time, filling the space around Red’s silence. Her footsteps fell to the rhythm of his voice, and she felt the logjam of words in her throat start to loosen.
We’re coming, Tuck. We’ll find you.
But one hour turned into two, and no sign of him.
Sunlight blinded them as the day slipped away. People held their hands to their eyes and checked behind rocks they’d checked twice before. Nobody shouted Tuck’s name anymore. Slowly, the mood of the search party shifted, quieted. The knots in Red’s chest tightened as the sky began to darken. Holes opened in Marvin’s chatter. A few people shook Jackson’s hand and went back to their cars. Then a few more.
Three and a half hours after it had begun, the search slowed and finally stalled. Darkness was closing in around them. Darkness was closing in around Red, too.
The Kapules stayed another hour, helping them search with flashlights in hand. But eventually, even they had had enough.
“We’ll look again tomorrow,” Marvin said. He gave Red a stiff hug before climbing into their car.
“I’m sorry, kiddo,” Mr. Kapule said, a hand on her shoulder.
“Don’t lose heart, Red.” Mrs. Kapule brushed her fingers against Red’s cheek.
Red stood on the porch, watching a pale cloud of steam rise around the Kapules’ car when Mr. Kapule started the engine. A frosty wind shivered from her fingers and stirred through her hair.
Marvin rolled down the back window and waved. “We’ll find him, Red!” he shouted. “I know we will!”
Red watched them go, and said nothing.
Chapter
21
Long after the Kapules’ taillights faded into the night, Celine joined Red on the porch and set a hand on her shoulder.
“Let’s go for a walk,” she said.
For the last few weeks, Red had seen Celine head out for her nightly walk, with Gandalf and the other dogs at her heels. Red didn’t understand why, but every time she watched Celine leave, she felt a sense of loss. Celine hadn’t invited Red to join her since that night during Red’s first weekend, though.
Celine touched Red’s hair lightly. “Come on. I want to show you something.”
Even bundled in their coats, the night air stung. White, misty clouds slithered around their faces with each breath. The cold made worry for Tuck gnaw at Red’s heart.
Celine carried a solar camping lantern that cast a pale yellow glow on the ground in an arc before their feet. Spindly shadows stretched out behind the dried stalks of grass as they passed.
“Here we are.” Celine paused, waiting for Red to catch up, and held the lantern higher.
A large flat slab of stone jutted out of the ground at an angle. Red had seen this rock during their search. From a distance, she thought it looked like a misshapen Frisbee caught in a gutter. Now she could see it was as big as a table.
Three of the dogs kept wandering around, sniffing the grass and playing together, but Gandalf hopped onto the rock like she’d been there a hundred times. Celine put the lantern down and spread out one of the fleece blankets she’d been carrying. The dog lay across the top portion of it.
Celine lowered herself onto the blanket, propping her head against Gandalf’s ribs, and patted the space next to her. Red stretched out beside her foster mother, and Celine covered them both in the second fleece blanket. Red squirmed, opening a gap of cool air between her arm and Celine’s. She closed her eyes, trying to push back the emotions still twisting inside her. Gandalf, however, sighed, as if this rocky cuddle puddle was all she’d ever wanted in life.
Red let out her breath and opened her eyes.
Above them, the galaxy shimmered. The Milky Way curved through space with such clarity, Red could see the blue and purple and green and yellow of it, like flecks of crystal in candlel
ight. The moonless sky was inky, and stars burst through the velvety blackness with a kind of recklessness. A wildness so bold, Red could hear it.
She could hear the stars.
The night was alive, humming with the deep thrum of orchestral strings and the soaring trill of sopranos. It sounded like one of Gamma’s symphonies, but bigger and even more full of emotion than Beethoven. A shooting star dripped from the top of the sky toward the horizon, its song spinning out of it as it fell.
“Can you hear them?” Celine asked.
This wasn’t possible. The stars didn’t sing. Did they? Red shook her head in disbelief.
Celine tilted her head toward Red’s. “I asked them to sing for you.”
Red felt a familiar tickle on her skin. It was the same tickle she felt when she made the wind play tricks with leaves for the dogs. The same tickle that came whenever she and Gamma had written in the notebook.
It was the tickle of impossible things.
She sat up, scooting away from Celine. How was she doing this? How did someone ask the sky to sing?
She didn’t. She can’t, Red thought. It’s impossible.
It always seems impossible …
Gamma’s words whispered in her mind. Red closed her eyes and shook her head. No. She didn’t want to believe in impossible things anymore! A sharp wind sliced through her ribs, making the fleece blanket flap. Celine caught it easily and held it down.
“I love coming out here. I’ve wanted to bring you with me, but I knew you needed time,” Celine said.
Red frowned, watching Celine’s easy movements. She glanced back up at the sky, goose bumps rising on her arms as the music crescendoed.
Celine pointed to a small shimmering patch of stars. “That’s my favorite. Pleiades. Also called the Seven Sisters. In Greek mythology, they were seven beautiful sisters that Zeus turned into stars.”
Red glanced at her foster mother, uneasiness still coiling its breath between her fingers. She asked the stars to sing.
“The sisters’ father, Atlas, was punished for rebelling against the gods. He was sentenced to hold the heavens on his back for all eternity, and could never return to his children. The sisters’ grief was so terrible, it destroyed them.”
Red looked at Pleiades winking above her. The stars were small compared to other constellations, clustered together like a tiny version of the Big Dipper. One of the Sisters was dimmer than the others, barely a whisper of starlight.
Celine continued, “Their death was mourned by all the gods. But Zeus wanted the sisters’ beauty—not their grief—to define them, and so he turned them into stars.”
The music pulsing in the night air seemed sad now. Lonely. As her eyes grew more accustomed to the darkness, Red thought she could see the loneliness. There, twining between the stars. A blackness, deeper than the night sky, like a scar across the heavens. It looked as if someone had carved out a ribbon of starlight, leaving a gaping emptiness behind.
The ache between Red’s ribs throbbed with each heartbeat.
Celine said, “I like Pleiades because I understand them. I understand loss. How the hurt of losing someone can feel like it’s swallowing you up.”
Red shivered and hugged her knees to her chest.
After a brief silence, Celine said, “I lost my son.” Her voice was quiet but steady. Surprise snaked through Red.
The celestial symphony softened as Celine spoke. “Roan. He—he passed away when he was six. He got sick. One day he was fine, and the next…” Her lips pressed together and she swallowed hard. “Meningitis.” She cleared her throat. “It was a long time ago, but it still hurts. I miss him. Every day.”
Silent tears sparkled on Celine’s cheeks.
The sadness on her face reminded Red of the way Gamma had looked sometimes, after Red’s mom left. It was a raw, wide-open kind of sadness. A sadness too big to look at. Red turned back to the stars and listened to their music. Something loosened inside of her.
“I miss Gamma.”
Celine closed her eyes at the sound of Red’s voice. Red was a little surprised by it herself.
“Your grandmother?”
Suddenly, tears were in Red’s eyes, too, and she couldn’t blink them away. “Yeah.”
Celine turned her face toward Red. “What happened?”
Red closed her eyes against the memories. Gamma’s skin turning gray like ash. Her arms so thin that her bones were sharp. The bruises that bloomed like flowers at even the lightest touch. There were other memories, too. Of her mother. Of the pills Gamma tried to hide, but her mother always found, always took for herself. Of the way her mother disappeared when Gamma needed her most.
“She got sick, too.”
Celine shifted, rolling onto her side. Her voice was soft, warm. “Remembering can hurt sometimes.”
Red kept her eyes on the stars. The music was faint now, barely audible above the gathering wind.
“It still hurts me, too. But not like it used to. It used to feel like I was caught in a hurricane. Like I couldn’t move or breathe without being bowled over by the hurt.” Celine let out a slow breath, and the star-music faded even more.
“Grief changes us. It can turn us into something we don’t recognize. But this—” She gestured toward the sky. “The music reminds me I’m loved. It brings me into life.”
Red’s throat tightened. Gamma used to say something similar about dancing. If the toaster was burning everything, she would shake her rear end and jump with her arms held high. When the car died, Gamma would waltz around it, touching the hood with each pass.
“I’m dancing it into life!” she’d say, twirling, her hands in the air.
And it worked.
The toaster quit burning things. The car started. The broken things came back to life, and Gamma would smile like she had a secret, and hug Red close.
Red shivered.
Gamma could dance things into life. Celine could make the stars sing. All of Red’s impossible hopes pulsed within her. Finding Tuck, reuniting with her mom, being a perfect fit.
Ever since Gamma died, Red had stopped looking for the impossible. She’d kept the notebook because it was all she had left of Gamma, but the impossible things she’d collected in its pages felt cold and empty. As hollow as broken promises.
Before, Red had hoped for all kinds of impossible things. She’d hoped her mom would come back. She’d hoped Gamma would get better. She’d hoped and she’d hoped.
But Gamma didn’t get better.
And her mom didn’t stop taking pills.
After Gamma died and her mother was arrested, Red lost everything. Her family, her home. Her belief.
But tonight, the sky was singing to her. All because Celine had asked it to. If the impossible—like singing stars—could happen, then maybe the things she hoped for could happen, too. If she believed.
But did she?
Her heart ached with wanting to.
She turned to her foster mother. “I want to show you something,” she said.
Chapter
22
“What’s this?” Celine righted the pages of the battered notebook gently.
Red pulled off her coat and sat on her bed. “My grandma gave it to me.” She reached out and smoothed another page, hating that they were bent and creased, and that it was her fault. “We made it together.”
Her foster mother looked awestruck. Seeing the impossible notebook in Celine’s hands made Red feel as if, for the first time in years, the world was standing right-side up. Gamma would have loved hearing the stars sing, and she would have loved Celine. Red knew it, as suddenly and as deeply as she’d ever known anything.
Celine turned to one of the creased pages labeled IMPOSSIBLE.
“Gamma really liked impossible things, so we started collecting them,” Red said.
Celine’s eyes were wide as she examined the page. “Collecting them?”
“Yeah. Gamma wrote down things that people used to think were impossible, and then we
proved how they weren’t really. See?”
She pointed to the words Climbing the world’s tallest mountain, written in Gamma’s handwriting.
“Gamma taught me about Mount Everest. It’s in Nepal. People thought it was impossible to climb because it’s so tall and cold, and there isn’t very much air at the top of it. Lots of people died trying.”
Celine was looking at Red now. Her eyes were shiny, like she was going to cry again, but she was smiling.
“But then there was this guy—”
“Sir Edmund Hillary,” Celine said, nodding.
“Yeah. He climbed it in 1953 with a guy named Ten … Ten—” Red frowned, squinting at the name she’d written so long ago.
“Tenzing Norgay,” Celine said.
“Yeah, him.” Red shrugged. “Gamma and I looked up all kinds of stuff like that. But we didn’t have time to finish it.”
Celine turned a couple of pages, reading the entries Red had written about going to the moon and climbing Mount Everest. As she read, she massaged the right side of her neck and shook her head a little, a small smile on her lips.
“This is pretty amazing,” she said. She leaned in to Red’s shoulder. “You’re pretty amazing.”
Red blushed.
Celine turned another page. “Bumblebees?”
“They say it should be impossible for bumblebees to fly because their bodies are too fat for their wings,” Red explained.
Celine nodded. “They say bumblebees defy the laws of physics.”
“Yeah. Who’s they, anyway?”
Celine laughed. “I don’t know. But they don’t sound like my kind of people at all.”
Red smiled. “Mine, either.”
Celine read the short entry and pointed to Red’s words. “A bumblebee creates its very own tornado.” She smiled. “I was actually reading an article about bumblebees the other day. It said that a bumblebee’s wings create two separate vortices, one on each side of its body. But they never join up. If they did, then bumblebees would be more aerodynamic. They could fly more easily. Instead, bumblebees have adapted to the chaos.”
Red stroked Gandalf’s head and thought about bumblebees, about two separate tornadoes spinning beneath their wings, carrying them through life. She wished her wind could be like that—controllable. Maybe bumblebees weren’t aerodynamic, but at least they could control when their tornadoes happened.
All the Impossible Things Page 8