“Look,” Mama said, pointing out the window. “Yard sale. Think we oughta stop in and check it out?”
I nodded and wiped the tears of my face with the back of my hand.
“All right,” she said. “Maybe we can find some cool stuff for the new house.”
I saw the trampoline as soon as Mama stopped the car. It was the exact same as Teddy Ryan’s, only this one had a For Sale sign sitting right on top of it. I went straight over to it while Mama wandered around the yard checking out the other things up for grabs.
“We can deliver that, too.”
I turned and saw a man sitting in a lawn chair. He gave me a big smile.
“My kids loved that trampoline. Ain’t used it in years, though. Guess they outgrew it. If y’all want to buy it, I can take it wherever you want in my truck. Delivery free of charge.”
“Really?”
He nodded.
“Trampoline, huh?” Mama said, coming back over to me. She looked at the price on the For Sale sign. “Well, you do have all that money you saved up this summer if you want to buy it.”
That’s when the idea hit me. I’d been putting off using most of that saved money, holding out on the hope of going to the circus. Now that it had passed, I had to find something just as good to spend the money on. I remembered Teddy’s parents fixing the broken board in the fence, closing up mine and the boys’ secret place.
“I’ll take it,” I said.
“Great,” the man in the lawn chair said. He got to his feet. “Let me get a notebook and you can write down where I oughta take it to.”
Mama smiled at me. “This will be great in the backyard at the new house,” she said.
“It ain’t for me,” I told her.
She raised an eyebrow. “No?”
I shook my head, and when the man came back with the notebook, I wrote down the address of the duplex. The Swifts’ address. This was for them.
* * *
I was putting stuff away in my new room a few hours later when Mama knocked on the door. “Hey,” she said. “I was going through the wedding gifts and I found this. Pretty sure it’s for you.” She held out a small wooden figurine.
“Oh! Mr. Briggs!” I grabbed it from her. “He told me he’d left something for me at the wedding, but I forgot.”
“Well, take a look,” she said. “I think you’ll like it.”
I held up the wooden statue so I could see it a little better. This one was bigger than most I’d seen, and I realized that’s because it was a carving of four different people, all standing real close to each other.
There was a tall boy with glasses. A short, tiny boy with lots of hair. Then, in the middle, a boy and girl. The girl was a little chubby with a curly ponytail, and the boy had a friendly arm thrown around her.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” Mama said. “It’s you and Canaan and Brian and Kevin. That is the best I’ve ever seen Mr. Briggs do on one of these. You oughta send him a thank-you note.”
“I will,” I said. “Definitely.”
“He’s the sweetest man,” she said. “That was so nice of him.”
I nodded.
Richard hollered for her from the living room. “Can you help me carry the entertainment center in?”
“Coming!” Mama called.
She left me alone in my new room, still staring at the little statue Mr. Briggs had given me. I ran my fingers over all the tiny wooden faces. They were all smiling.
I put it on the table next to my bed, a place I’d always be able to see it.
No matter what happened with me and the Swift boys after that summer — whether we stayed friends or drifted further apart, no matter who I ended up married to or who lived next door to them — at least this version of us would always be together.
I could have never written this book without many helpful hands, and, as Nola would say, it’d be awful rude not to thank them.
Thank you to Joanna Volpe, who has always offered outstanding advice and encouragement, even when I might have seemed a little crazy. Thanks for always having faith. And to Jody Corbett, who brought out the best parts of Nola and the boys and who made me see Teddy in a completely new way. Thanks for that, Jody. And also for letting me babble about my dog sometimes (all the time) when you were helping me brainstorm.
A huge thanks must go to everyone at New Leaf Literary and Scholastic. There are far too many of you to name here, but I appreciate each and every one of you and the ways you’ve helped to make Nola’s story come alive.
Thanks to Phoebe North and Lisa Desrochers — two of the best friends and writers I’ve ever known. Thank you for the endless support and advice. I’d be lost without you both.
Thanks to Molly and Shana, my real-life best friends. No matter how we drift apart, we’ll always come back together in the end.
Thanks to my parents, my siblings, my grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins — I could never do this without your love and support. I’m lucky to have each and every one of you in my life.
And thanks to McLean County, my hometown, and all the stories it has given me. I can’t imagine the person I’d be if I’d grown up anywhere else. No matter where I go, I’ll never forget where I came from. There would be no Nola, no Swift boys, no story here without that little town in western Kentucky.
Kody Keplinger was born and raised in rural western Kentucky. She always enjoyed writing and began working on “novels” when she was eleven. She wrote her first published young-adult work during her senior year of high school and hasn’t stopped writing novels ever since. The Swift Boys & Me is Kody’s middle-grade debut. She currently lives in New York City and writes full-time.
Copyright © 2014 by Kody Keplinger
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Press, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC, SCHOLASTIC PRESS, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Keplinger, Kody, author.
The Swift boys & me / Kody Keplinger. — First edition.
pages cm
Summary: Nola Sutton has always been friends with the Swift boys, Canaan, Brian, and Kevin, but when their father leaves them without saying good-bye the boys start to change, and her long-time friends begin to pull away from her at a time when she needs them more than ever.
ISBN 978-0-545-56200-3
1. Best friends — Juvenile fiction. 2. Desertion and non-support — Juvenile fiction. 3. Dysfunctional families — Juvenile fiction. 4. Brothers — Juvenile fiction. [1. Best friends — Fiction. 2. Friendship — Fiction. 3. Family problems — Fiction. 4. Family life — Fiction. 5. Brothers — Fiction.] I. Title. II. Title: Swift boys and me.
PZ7.K439Sw 2014
813.6 — dc23
2013034049
First edition, June 2014
COVER PHOTOGRAPH © 2014 BY MICHAEL FROST
COVER DESIGN BY YAFFA JASKOLL
e-ISBN 978-0-545-56202-7
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication 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 the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
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