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  “So once upon a time there was a castle in the middle of a forest,” she began, pulling a picture of a castle made of crumbling stone out of the envelope. She handed the picture to Ricky Ray, who ran a glue stick over its back, then stuck it into the book. She shook the envelope onto her lap and out fluttered a few trees. “That’s the forest,” she told Ricky Ray. “Paste it in next to the castle.”

  She plucked a paper chair from the pile of pictures on her lap. “This is the throne upon which sat the queen. The queen was a sad queen, and a mean one, too. Her husband the king had died only a few months before. Ever since his death the queen had been a cruel ruler. She never listened to the king’s wisest advisor, a young woman named . . . ”

  And here Murphy looked up and grinned. “A young woman named Bonita.”

  Donita shook her head, like she couldn’t believe such foolishness, but a smile broke through to her lips all the same.

  “Nor would the queen let the king’s court jester, Logarth, keep the court amused anymore. She had no time for silly jokes.”

  “Oh, man,” Logan groaned, and Ricky Ray giggled.

  “Even worse, the queen no longer allowed the court artist, Maddelina, to come paint magic pictures for the court’s delight, and she had banned everyone’s favorite puppy, Micky May, from the castle.”

  “I’m a puppy?” Ricky Ray asked gleefully. He barked a few times for good measure, but Donita shushed him.

  “Go on,” she told Murphy, pulling her chair a little closer to where Murphy sat.

  Murphy handed Ricky Ray a picture of a wall with a small window placed in the upper right-hand corner. “One morning, a red bird appeared at the window next to the queen’s throne. ‘I will bring you three gifts,’ the bird told the queen. ‘One each morning for the next three mornings. Each gift will last into forever, and you will never feel lonely or sad again.’ ”

  Ricky Ray had finished pasting the picture of the wall into the book. When he turned the page, he let out a gasp. “This is the last page! The book is almost over!”

  “We can get a new book,” Logan assured him. “I’ll get my mom to buy me one.”

  Murphy leaned over and looked at the book, then looked down at the pictures that remained in her lap. “I think we have enough room for the rest of the story,” she said.

  “Well, keep telling it then,” I said. It was like I was caught in a spell, like I was sitting right next to the queen waiting for the bird to return.

  Murphy smiled. “Okay, okay. Let’s see,” she said, then pulled out a picture of a piano. “The next morning the bird came to the window and whistled a beautiful song to the queen. ‘This song is now yours,’ the bird said. ‘Whenever you hum it, you will feel great happiness.’ The queen hummed a few notes, and sure enough, she felt wonderful. She couldn’t wait until the bird came back the next morning.”

  “I hope the bird brings her some candy,” Ricky Ray said, taking the piano from Murphy and pasting it into the book.

  “No, the bird brought the queen something even better,” Murphy said. “When he came back the next day, he whispered a beautiful poem into her ear. She memorized it immediately, and whenever she felt the least bit sad, she said a few lines of the poem under her breath, and she immediately felt as though she were running along a beautiful beach, blue skies stretching over her head.”

  Murphy handed Ricky Ray a picture of a bookcase. She looked up and smiled. “That was the closest thing I could figure out for a poem,” she said. “Poems come in books, right?”

  “So what did the bird bring the third day?” I asked, impatient for Murphy to get on with it.

  Murphy looked down at her hands and shook her head. “I still haven’t figured that part out yet,” she admitted. Everybody groaned.

  “Girl, you can’t be starting a story and not have the end to it,” Donita complained. “You better think hard tonight and come back tomorrow with something good.”

  We packed up our stuff, and Donita, Murphy, Ricky Ray, and I began our hike back to the Home. I was quiet, thinking about Murphy’s story: what it meant, how it would end.

  “Hey, Murphy,” Ricky Ray said, as we turned down Dewey Payne Road, “are you the queen in your story? Is that supposed to be you?”

  “No way,” she said. “I’m not the queen type.”

  I looked at her, wondering about that. She was bossy enough sometimes to be a queen, and she was pretty like a queen in a fairy tale would be. But I knew Murphy well enough by then to know she wasn’t the queen in her story.

  No, Murphy could fly. Murphy was the red bird.

  Chapter 18

  I thought about Murphy’s story all the next morning, trying to come up with a good ending for it. I knew that the third gift wouldn’t be the end. There had to be something that came after, something that made you think everything was ruined until something or someone appeared to make everything right again.

  I wasn’t very good at fairy tales, though. Granny Lane never told me any. She liked her stories real-funny or real-sad. She never much went in for make-believe.

  “Maybe the bird’s going to give the queen a bottle filled with water from the fountain of youth,” I told Logan and Donita at lunch. “So that she’ll live forever.”

  “Too boring,” Donita said, tearing the crust off her grilled cheese sandwich. “It’s got to be something with a little more spark to it than that.”

  “Why don’t you ask her yourself,” Logan said, nodding toward the cafeteria entrance. Murphy hurried through the doors, holding something close to her chest. I waved to her, but she was headed for Olivia Woods’ table and didn’t notice.

  Donita shook her head. “Murphy’s going to be sorry she ever got mixed up with that crowd, that’s my prediction,” she said, taking a bite of her sandwich. “They’re mean as a pack of jackals.”

  I watched as Murphy sat down next to Olivia Woods. She smiled at everyone and chatted for a minute, leaning over once to touch Olivia on the arm. Katha Coleman and Jaycee Laws gave her some sniffy looks, but Murphy ignored them. She said something to Olivia and placed a black and white–speckled notebook on the table.

  That’s when I knew what happened next in Murphy’s story.

  “The bird brings the queen a magic book,” I said, standing up slowly.

  “Are you okay, Maddie?” Logan asked. “Maybe you ought to sit down and eat something.”

  By the time I reached Olivia’s table, she was gingerly fingering the speckled cover as though it might have something contagious on it. Cautiously, she began to leaf through the pages.

  Then, to my everlasting surprise, Olivia Woods smiled.

  It was an honest-to-goodness smile, not a smirk, not a sneer, not a grimace. I suddenly saw how she must have looked when she was six or seven, before she became the sort of person who made kids miserable because they’d bought the wrong brand of tennis shoes. It was like everything good that had gone into the Book of Houses—the afternoons spent in the fort making jokes and cutting up, the dreams of the day we’d have houses of our own with real families in them, the feeling that maybe we were a real family, just sitting there and telling each other stories—it was like all of that got under Olivia Woods’ skin for a minute and made her soft and new as a spring morning.

  But only for a minute.

  “What is this, Murphy?” Katha Coleman exclaimed, squinching up her nose as she looked over Olivia’s shoulder. “It’s really weird.”

  “It’s something I’ve been doing with some friends,” Murphy said. “It’s like a story we’ve written, a story made up of a hundred tiny stories.”

  “I don’t get it,” Olivia said, her face gone blank, like a switch had been flipped off inside her. “You cut out pictures of houses? I mean, why?”

  “They’re houses we might want to live in someday.” Murphy was talking fast, like she was trying to run after the other Olivia, the one who, for a shining moment, had understood exactly what the books were about. “We talk about them and make up
stories about them. It’s wonderful.”

  “Sure, if you’re, like, eight years old or something.” Olivia looked over at Katha and shook her head, like she couldn’t believe what a baby Murphy was. “I mean, isn’t this a little . . . immature or something? Cutting pictures out of magazines?”

  “I don’t know,” Murphy said, her cheeks reddening. “I don’t really think so. Actually, I thought you might like to do it too, sometime. It’s like making wishes, if you think about it.”

  A small ringing sound in my ears was growing louder by the second. I wanted so bad to snatch that book from the table and run as far away as I could, but I stood there, frozen as winter, not able to budge an inch.

  “Oh, come on, Murphy! What’s next? You’re going to invite me over to play paper dolls?” Olivia said.

  Katha leaned over to pull the book closer so she could find something to make fun of too, and her arm knocked over someone’s Coke. The dark liquid seeped into the pages, turning the edges black.

  “Oops!” she said cheerfully. “Sorry about that, Murphy!”

  Two seconds later, Brandon Sparks swooped down on the table and grabbed the book. “I’ll save it!” he cried. “I’ll save Murphy’s book!” Then he tossed it to Jason Breem, yelling, “Speed dry!”

  Jason shook the book out over his head so that a few of the pictures came unstuck and rained down on his hair. “What is this thing?” he yelled out so loud everyone in the cafeteria could hear him. “A recycling bin?”

  Hands were waving in the air. “Here! Throw it here!” voices called. Olivia and Katha held their stomachs, like it hurt to laugh as hard as they were laughing. I looked around at Logan and Donita. They were both standing, yelling for everyone to put the Book of Houses down, to give it back, but one of Brandon’s friends stood in front of them, his arms out like a guard who wouldn’t let them pass.

  Murphy sat as still as stone as the book flew from hand to outstretched hand. I couldn’t move for what seemed like years, and then I turned and walked away.

  I didn’t ever want to see that book again.

  Chapter 19

  I couldn’t bring myself to go to JM practice that afternoon. I didn’t want to see Logan or anybody else for that matter. I tucked my head down into my jacket and pushed my way to the bus line. When I felt a hand on my arm, I shrugged it off, ready to shove an elbow hard into a rib cage if I had to.

  Murphy dug her fingers into my arm and dragged me over to the end of the bus line, where the bus to Snob Hill stood hissing out gray smoke. “You know, I don’t much care to go anywhere with you right now,” I told her, trying to pry her hand from my arm.

  “I know that,” Murphy said, not turning around to look at me. “Don’t you think I know that?”

  I rolled my eyes, but I followed her up the steps and to the last row of seats. “Don’t expect me to sit with you,” I said, taking the seat in front of her, “because I sure don’t have anything to say to you.”

  After the bus let us off, I trudged behind Murphy through Logan’s backyard to the fort. The air smelled just right that afternoon, just the way the air two days before Halloween was supposed to smell, rich with leaves and dirt and smoke from the leaves people weren’t allowed to burn, but always did.

  By the time we reached the fort, the sky was already beginning to dim, and we wouldn’t have long before we needed to turn around to get back to the Home for supper. As soon as we got inside, Murphy flung herself into the armchair and let her arms and legs flop out.

  “Home sweet home!” she said, trying to sound cheerful. I gave her a long look and a big mess of silence.

  “Maddie, I’m sorry about the book. Things didn’t go the way I’d planned.”

  I’d spent the whole afternoon trying to figure out what Murphy had been thinking. Was her plan to make Olivia fall in love with the Book of Houses so she’d keep inviting Murphy over to her wonderful house, now that their math project was done? Or did she think one look at the Book of Houses would transform Olivia into a poem of air and light, an old soul, a good queen in a fairy tale?

  “I know you’re sorry, but who cares?” I said, idly picking up a pair of scissors and putting them down again. “I know I don’t.”

  Murphy unzipped her backpack and pulled out the Book of Houses. Even in the late afternoon’s half-light anyone could see it was in tatters. She lay the book in her lap and looked at it a minute without saying anything.

  “I’ve thought about it all afternoon. We have to get rid of the books, Maddie.” Murphy leaned forward and looked at me, solemn as Sunday morning. “I’m afraid their magic is gone after everything that happened this afternoon.”

  “The books aren’t magic,” I said dully. “They’re just books.”

  Murphy stood up, cradling the Book of Houses tightly to her chest. “How can you say there’s no magic in this book? Without it, the fort never would have been built. Without this book, Logan would still be halfway between this world and that one. The books brought him all the way over here to us. He’s not the same person, and that, believe it or not, is magic.”

  She began to pace. “You saw Olivia today, when she first looked at the Book of Houses. For a minute she was a different person. She was . . . ” Murphy fumbled for the right word.

  “Human?”

  “She was the real Olivia,” Murphy replied. “The good Olivia, the one who watches stars. That was magic too.”

  Then the air seemed to go right out of her. She fell back into the armchair. “My parents researched this group of Tibetan monks once. If one of their sacred objects even touched the ground, they got rid of it. That’s how they honored their special things. They believed it was better to destroy something than to keep it when it was less than perfect.”

  I walked over to the box where my curtains lay in a jumble and pulled them out. I was too mad, just flat out too hurt, to think straight. Maybe if my head had been clearer, I would have seen certain things. I would have realized Murphy had lost something too. Her dream of Olivia’s house was gone. There’d be no more visits, no more light and air and poetry, no more stars seen through a glass ceiling.

  But then, even if I’d realized it, I would have thought her loss nothing compared to mine. Because in my eyes, even if she never saw that house again, Murphy still had everything. She had the memory of parents who had loved her and taken her with them when they left for someplace new. She had tales of exotic lands and polished, blue stones hanging over her bed. She was special, a shining star for all to see.

  Me, all I had were those books, and they were no good to me now. How could I ever pick up one of them again without hearing those voices laughing and yelling across the cafeteria? How could my books ever be special to me again?

  “I don’t care what you do with the books,” I told her. “Do whatever you want.”

  And then Murphy was opening the box with the Book of People and all of our supplies in it, and then she was walking outside. “Come on,” she called, but I just stood there. She came back and grabbed my hand, and I followed her like a girl in a dream.

  The fact was, no matter how mad I was at Murphy, I’d go wherever she told me to.

  She handed me both of the books, said, “Wait here for two minutes,” and ran in the direction of Logan’s house. I thought maybe she was going to get him and tell him to come take the books and hide them in his house, so that we wouldn’t have to look at them anymore.

  But when Murphy returned she was carrying a shovel she must have gotten from the Parrish’s toolshed. She motioned me to follow her, and we tracked through the woods until we reached the fence separating the subdivision from Hampton’s Dairy Farm, right at the edge of the trees. “I used to help my mom garden,” Murphy said, beginning to dig. “Mostly I weeded, but first thing in the spring I helped her turn over the soil.”

  Within no time she dug a good-sized hole. It took me a second to realize that what I was feeling was scared, like we were about to bury a person, someone we’d murdered.
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  “Put the books in the hole,” Murphy told me, and that’s when I started to cry. I didn’t know why I was crying. The books were no good to me anymore. Why save them? But I couldn’t make myself hand them over to Murphy, even if the books were ruined.

  “Come on, Maddie,” she said gently, laying her hand on my shoulder, and I let my fingers loosen a little bit. I was tired and jumbled up with anger and sadness, and suddenly I just wanted to be done with the whole mess, the laughing voices and the torn pages and Olivia Woods’ closed-down face. Sometimes things get too twisted up for you to hold on to them anymore; I guess that’s the reason I handed those books over to Murphy. She took them from me and buried them deep in the hole and shoveled the dirt back over them.

  “This is for the best,” she said, and then turned and ran a few feet before throwing the shovel into the woods. “I’ll come back tomorrow and put the shovel in the shed,” she promised. Then she held out her hand, palm up, to the sky.

  “It’s starting to rain,” she said. “We’d better run for it.”

  Chapter 20

  That night everyone in the dorm went over to the dining hall to watch a movie they were showing on a big screen, a cartoon about the headless horseman. I didn’t have the heart for it. I had no idea what Murphy and I would tell everyone when they discovered that the books were gone: dead and buried.

  I doodled in my notebook, trying to come up with a good lie. What if Murphy and I acted surprised, like we thought the books had been stolen? My heart lifted with this idea, then fell. Why would anyone steal the books? Logan and Donita were too smart to fall for that sort of story.

  I couldn’t even bear to think about Ricky Ray.

  Murphy stayed in the room too, claiming that she needed to study for a math test, but she was lying across her bed staring up at that blue stone as if she were hoping to fly away on the next strong wind.

  “I think we should go dig up the books,” I told her. I was starting to get a panicky feeling inside of me. I couldn’t think of one good lie to tell Logan, Donita, and Ricky Ray. Besides, even if I didn’t care about the books anymore, they still did. They were going to kill me when they found out what happened.