For Mom, and all the “Emmas” out there. “Healing does not mean going back to the way things were before.” –Ram Dass   “Em? Wanna go bike riding with me today?” “Can’t,” I mumbled and grabbed my backpack. “Emma?” Jennifer asked, “Are you OK?” But I was already out the door and sprinting down the sidewalk as fast as I could. “Emma?” Jennifer called, “Emma?!” I ignored her. I didn’t care. I just ran. I just ran toward nowhere in particular. And I didn’t care. I didn’t care about biking with Jennifer. I didn’t care about moving to Maine. I didn’t. I didn’t! And then, quite suddenly, I realized I was standing in front of Maddy’s house, and just as suddenly I realized that was where I’d intended to go all along. Maddy! I should have thought of Maddy sooner. *          *          * Maddy was the strangest kid in my class. Every day at recess she sat on the swings and rocked slowly. In the beginning lots of kids asked her if she wanted to play with them, thinking she had nothing to do. Maddy replied (very politely), “Maybe another time, right now I’m thinking,” though what she thought about beat me. She was a quiet kid, not the shy kind of quiet but the thinking kind of quiet. Maddy was the kind of person who spoke only when speaking was necessary. No more, no less. Whenever someone was sad, or stressed, or when a pet or relative died, people went to Maddy. When they went away again they were, if not happy, calm. I had only been to Maddy once. It was after Coral died. Coral was my border collie, the first dog I ever had. We got her a few years after I was born. I’d played with her and fed her, and slept with her, and loved her, and suddenly she was gone… I’d stayed home from school, refusing to talk to anyone for two whole days. “To you this is dirt, but what is it to me?” Then I found myself at Maddy’s. Maddy had listened to my story without saying anything. After I finished she was silent for a moment. Then she said, “Pick up a stone.” That had seemed far too simple. I stared at her. “Just any stone?” I asked. “The right stone.” “How will I know which one is the right one?” “You’ll know.” I looked down at the ground. It was littered with stones, but sure enough one stood out to me. I picked it up. It was not particularly smooth or shiny. It was just an ordinary gray stone. I closed my hand around it, the hard crust of the stone against the soft skin of my hand. It felt good. Really good. And suddenly I knew that Coral had a long, happy life and that it was time for her to return to the endless circle from which we all come, the circle of life. I still have that stone under my pillow. *          *          * Maddy was weeding a flower bed when I came to a stop in front of her house. “Hi, Emma,” she said. I took that as an invitation, so I opened the gate and stepped inside. Maddy continued weeding. Was it the rhythm of her work, or was it just the way her light brown hair fell over her shoulders that made me feel at home? “My family has to move to Maine because of my parents’ jobs, and I really don’t want to go.” I surprised myself. I hadn’t really meant to tell her, because I was trying so hard not to believe it. But deep down I knew what I said was true. I didn’t want to leave my friends. Especially Jennifer. “Mom says we can come back in a few years, but I don’t want to go at all.” Maddy slowly looked at me. Her soft brown eyes gazed straight into mine. Her face was gentle, yet unreadable. After a minute she said, “Come here, Emma.” I walked over to her. She had turned her attention to the flower bed and was digging with gentle and strong intention. After a minute she scooped up some loosened soil and held it in her cupped hands. “What is this, Emma?” she asked. “It’s dirt,” I said, knowing all the time that I was wrong. That soil wasn’t dirt. Not in Maddy’s world. To my surprise, she smiled. “To you,” she said, “this is dirt, but what is it to me?” “I don’t know,” I said. She looked at me for a long time before she spoke, but when she spoke she did so with such passion that it touched me to the heart. “It’s a little bit of home, Emma, it’s a little bit of home!” *          *          * Later that night, while my parents were talking in the living room, I slipped outside. I took an old plastic bottle out of the recycling and got a hand shovel from the garden shed. In the backyard I found an out-of- the-way place behind a bush and began to dig. In a minute I scooped some soil out of the hole and put it in the bottle. Now I had my own little bit of home. *          *          * My family’s move to Maine was not as hard as I expected. Though I really missed Jennifer at first, after a while I started to make new friends. I grew particularly close with a girl named Maria. I told her everything. We spent lots of time together: hiking, drawing, talking, or even just sitting and staring at the sky. Life was rich and wonderful. And then one day, three years later, my mother asked me if I wanted to go back. I felt a great surge of happiness rise up in me. Then I remembered Maria. The happiness melted away as fast as it had come. Mama saw this. “Emma,” she said, “maybe I

Robin Carter was a lonely child. He had no friends, and he couldn’t remember a time when things were different. He was twelve, in the seventh grade. He was only open when he was reading and had such great passion for it that it was the most dominating factor in his life. He had loved reading for as long as he could remember, and his parents told him that he still loved reading even before that. His parents had tried to drive him out of his shell, but when he was put out into the world he would pull out a book and read. As much as it broke their hearts to see their son alone and cut off from the world, they eventually gave up. At school he was no different. He was average in nearly every subject, barring English, in which he excelled. The kids acted as if he was invisible, and even the teachers sometimes forgot about him. And when they did remember him it was only to give an acknowledgment when they passed back a test. His English teacher, Ms. Murkly, was perhaps one of the few people in the whole school who realized that he existed. He was her best student. He always turned in his homework and always had something to say about the author of the book they had been reading most recently. On the other end of the spectrum was his sister, Judy Carter. Eighth-grade diva, Judy was one of the most popular kids in the school. She was a motormouth and always had something to say or a story that she had just remembered. The parents of these drastically different children were Mabel and Albert Carter. Mabel was a thin and kind woman with long flowing dark hair and a large intellect. She would read to Robin when he was a baby and never ran out of books, since she was the head librarian at the Guava County Library. Albert was a slightly rotund man with hair like a bonfire and a deep love of botany. The first thing he did when he bought the house was build an extension in which he housed his vast collection of plants. Just recently his collection had grown too vast and he had been forced to make an extension to the extension which he classified as “For Bonsai Trees Only.” “No books!” he spluttered. “Mom, this is outrageous!” On this particular day, Robin was in the fiction section of the Guava County Library, currently reading E. Nesbit’s The Magic City, when his mother walked in. Robin was a curious figure in the library. While the librarians loved his passion for reading and encouraged it often, Robin could be quite aggravating due to his tendency to check out the maximum amount of books at a time. Sometimes he would use his parents’ library card too. When his mother spoke, she startled Robin out of his fantastical reverie. “We’re going on a vacation,” she said. “Where?” said a surprised Robin. “The beautiful Hibiscus County,” she replied. “OK,” said Robin dismissively, and continued reading. “Also, we were thinking you shouldn’t bring very many books, if any,” she continued. Now Robin was really surprised. “No books!” he spluttered. “Mom, this is outrageous! Books are great!” “I agree, but I think you read too many books for it to be healthy,” responded his mother. “You have no friends, Robin, you don’t stop and enjoy this world because your head is in another.” “Books are my friends,” muttered Robin. But it was hopeless and he knew it. Unlike his father, his mother was a strong woman, and he would be even more shocked if she did back down than he was about this atrocity. He quickly relented and stormed down the street towards his house. A cloud of fury was about him. *          *          * Judy had a similar reaction, but for very different reasons. “The country! We’re going to the country!” she screeched. “There’s no cell reception in the country! How will I talk to my friends?” “This is a family trip,” responded a tired Albert Carter. Judy continued to complain, but Robin didn’t stick around and listen. He was walking upstairs to his room, hoping that it would provide him some calm and sanctuary. His room was a veritable treasure trove for people like him who loved books. Robin’s dream room, in other words. It had stacks of books everywhere. Robin had tried to put them all into shelves, but he was unsuccessful, as they repeatedly spilled out. He had so many books that you would wonder why he goes to the library at all, as his room was a library in its own right. This remains a mystery. Once upstairs he walked straight to shelf A-6 and pulled a book from the shelf. It was his favorite book, Edward Eager’s Magic or Not. He found it was calming, a charming story about a young girl, her brother, their friends, and their adventures in a rustic town. He sighed. This was going to be a horrible vacation. *          *          * The Carter family’s red truck rumbled down a bumpy dirt path. Up ahead was the house they had rented, a small ivy-encrusted cottage, which was barely large enough to avoid being classified as a hut. Goodie, thought Robin as they pulled up to the “parking space.” In truth it was brittle twigs forming an open rectangle. Robin’s father was the first to leave the car, followed closely by Robin’s mother. “All right, gang, let’s go see the place,” said Albert Carter in a voice that suggested that he had won the lottery. He was answered by the chirping of the birds. Judy was giving them the silent treatment, and Robin… well Robin just didn’t feel like talking. Unperturbed by the apparent lack of enthusiasm, Albert pushed on. He had a brief tussle with a door that appeared to have never been opened within the century, but eventually