Part 26 (2/2)
Henry finding the marble.
Maybe it wasnt luck.
Maybe it was faith.
A word like that reverberated. It didnt care if there was a fence or a wall or sixteen hundred miles of sadness between one pair of ears and another, it slipped inside any old way it could.
And so the word became a bridge.
A place to meet.
A place to connect.
Kind of like pa.s.sing a marble back and forth, Jake thought.
He patted his s.h.i.+rt pocket, where the marble sat just outside his heart.
chapter 62.
HENRY.
Henry watched Jake hold the marble like it was the very world itself. Then Jake closed his hand around it and held it to his chest.
”I knew you took this from Waynes casket.”
”You did?”
”Yup. I cant explain why. But I just knew. Couldnt blame you.”
”Im-”
”Nah. Dont apologize. I mean it. No reason for one more thing to be buried in the ground.”
”Jake, I dont know why I took it. I just-I wanted-”
Jake held up his hand. ”No need, Henry.” He held the marble against his heart for a moment and then opened up his hand. ”You want it?”
Henry pulled his shoulders up to his ears and then dropped them.
He didnt know if he wanted the marble or not.
chapter 63.
ZAVION.
Zavion woke up in North Carolina and kept his eyes open all the way to New York. The highway up north looked almost the same as the Louisiana highway, especially at night. It stretched out in front of the truck for miles, gray and black and hard. But there were hills on either side of it, and in the faint dusky light, they looked like little countries to Zavion, one after the other rising up out of the earth, and the occasional tall tree looming high above the hills like a flag.
Zavion imagined he was trekking up and over each of the hills, leaving one country and entering another.
chapter 64.
HENRY.
It was cleaner along the edge of the highway here. Henry noticed that as he watched the yellow line whiz by. In Louisiana, there had been a steady stream of garbage. Here, he saw one lone black plastic bag, ripped, its insides spilling out along the shoulder of the road. And a dead racc.o.o.n. Henry wondered if the racc.o.o.n had broken open the bag.
The yellow line rushed by. Mile markers came and went. Each of the eighteen wheels of the truck turned like a marble. Over and over and over as Jake drove north.
Henry felt like an elastic band had been fully stretched, and it was now snapping him back home.
chapter 65.
ZAVION.
Right before they left, Ms. Cyn had given him a gift.
- Zavion untied the string on the wrapping. A scarf. Zavion unfolded it. The scarf. He looked at all the pieces Ms. Cyn had added to it. One for each person he had come to know in this house. Tavius, Enzo, Skeet, and Osprey. There was even a piece of Coras potholder, Pierres cap, and the logo from Lunas grocery bag.
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