Iva Honeysuckle Discovers the World

• Chapter One
  
• Chapter Two
  
• Chapter Three
  
• Chapter Four
  
• Chapter Five
  
• Chapter Six
  
• Chapter Seven
  
• Chapter Eight
  
• Chapter Nine
  
• Chapter Ten
  
• Chapter Eleven
  

I
va Honeycutt was scolding her Cadet Blue crayon when Heaven's shadow fell across the porch.

“Did I tell you to stand next to Sea Green?” Iva said, not looking up. “You're supposed to be with the blues.”

Heaven loomed over her. Her cousin was hard to ignore. She was a head taller and weighed fifteen pounds more than Iva. And she was a mouth breather. Heaven huffed wetly next to Iva's ear.

Iva shifted so she was sitting on the one thing she didn't want Heaven to see. The Shame of Her Third Grade Year.

Of course, Heaven saw. Her eyes were as sharp as a lizard's.

“I see a little corner. Is that your map?” she said. “You said you lost it.”

Iva stuck the wayward Cadet Blue in the time-out row at the back of her sixty-four-crayon box, where crayons with peeled wrappers and broken tips were sent to think about why they were there.

“Did you fib to me? I'm going to tell Aunt Sissy.” Heaven cut her eyes toward the door. She was the only cousin who didn't have the Honeycutt light brown eyes. Heaven's eyes were a shifty gray, like oysters in a mason jar.

Iva thought about sad little Cadet Blue. Maybe she'd been too hasty. She plucked the crayon from the time-out row and said, “Stand beside Cerulean and learn a few things.”

Iva had spent all afternoon straightening out her crayons. On the first day of third grade, she'd marched into Miss Callahan's class with her brand-new box of sixty-four.

But Miss Callahan had a rule. No one could have more than twenty-four crayons, just like in second grade. Iva didn't think her teacher was very forward-thinking, as her great-grandfather Ludwell Honeycutt used to say.

She went home that day, picked her favorite colors from the box of sixty-four, and packed them into her old twenty-four-crayon box. All year the other kids asked Iva how she could have a Dandelion colored sun or a Robin's Egg Blue James River, when their suns were plain old Yellow and their James Rivers were dull old Blue.

Now school was over for the summer, and order was at last restored in Iva's crayon box.

“I'm talking to you.” Heaven punched Iva in the arm.

“I hear you.” Iva wiggled away, accidentally uncovering her map.

“You got an Incomplete!” Heaven shrieked, spit flying. She always spit when she got excited.

“I did not!” Iva flipped the construction paper over.

“I saw it, Iva.
In-com-plete
. I got a B plus on mine.”

Iva knew this. She knew every little thing about her almost-the-exact-same-age double-first cousin. Heaven lived right next door. Iva's bedroom window looked into Heaven's bedroom window. When Heaven sneezed, Iva reached for a Kleenex.

This year Iva had been able to escape from her cousin in school. Heaven had been assigned to Miss Park's third grade. Everyone in both third grades had had to make up continents, and their maps were displayed in the hall outside the two classrooms.

All but one.

“I'm telling Aunt Sissy,” Heaven said again.

Iva stuck her little finger in the plastic sharpener in the side of her crayon box. She liked testing the limits of her power. The sharpener didn't even hurt.

“Mama knows I got an Incomplete.” Iva hated that word. It made her feel half finished.

Her map had serious problems. Number one, she had
not
invented a continent, like they were supposed to. Why make up countries and rivers and mountains when there were so many real ones to discover?

Heaven had named her continent Cloudland, which Iva thought was stupid. Who could live on a cloud without falling through it?

Instead of making up a continent, Iva had drawn a map of the world. But she had made the United States too big. Russia, Japan, and China were scrunched along the far edge like squashed cockroaches. She had put Australia next to Hawaii, in the wrong ocean.

Iva didn't label half of the states. She had gotten bogged down in all those square ones. Kansas, Nebraska—who could keep them straight? And what about those states that began with
I
? The state discoverers should have come up with better names.

Heaven tapped a drawing on one corner of the map. “Lily Pearl?”

“Yeah.” Iva had tried to erase her sister's drawing of a witch wearing a diamond tiara and spraying an arc of rays. The caption read,
Fancy Witch. Get You a Ghost
in Lily Pearl's scratchy kindergarten scrawl. Lily Pearl's masterpieces were always in ink.

“Howard doesn't dare touch my stuff,” Heaven said, snorting through her left nostril. Once Iva had heard Aunt Sissy Two tell Iva's mother that Heaven must have adenoids the size of tennis balls. Iva figured an adenoid must be that little punching-bag thing she'd noticed in the back of her throat. Heaven must have two of them. She
would
.

“I'll make a new map,” Iva said. “Better than this one. My honor is at stake.”

Heaven kicked off her ladies'-sized pink flip-flops. “You still got the worst mark of anybody in the whole third grade.”

“I don't care,” Iva said, though she really did. “I'm a discoverer. Discoverers find places nobody has ever seen before.”

Heaven pointed her big toe at the map. “Chicago isn't a state.”

“It should be. Who ever heard of Illinois?” Yet this was the very thing that worried Iva.

How would she ever be a famous discoverer like George Washington or Admiral Byrd or her great-grandfather Ludwell Honeycutt if she didn't even know Chicago was a city? She was almost nine. She'd better get busy discovering.

With a black crayon, she scribbled her initials on one of the porch posts. “I bet Ludwell Honeycutt knew all the states
and
their capitals by first grade.”

Heaven snorted through her right nostril. “Mama says our great-grandfather was a crackpot, who never paid his light bill. And he would drive a hundred miles an hour out of his driveway and then poke along on the wrong side of the road.”

“He was
not
a crackpot!” Iva said. “Why are you here, anyway? Did you come over just to bug me?”

“You want to go with me to Cazy Sparkle's yard sale tomorrow? I'm looking to get me some embroidered pillow slips for my Hope Drawer. Special ones that say ‘Good Morning' on one side and ‘Good Night' on the other. That way I won't get bored making the bed.”

Iva was bored just listening to Heaven. “Cazy Sparkle is a crook.”

“She is not!”

“Then how come she has yard sales at weird times, like Tuesday morning and Thanksgiving?”

“Because she's looking for things to sell all those other days, that's why.”

“You know where she gets that stuff?” Iva said. “She sneaks into old people's houses in the middle of the night and steals their pot holders and tea towels. Then they come to her yard sales and buy their own tea towels back.”

Heaven jumped up. “You never want to do anything I want to do!”

“You never want to do anything good, like discovering.”

“You'll never be a discoverer,” Heaven said, snorting through both nostrils. “You can't even pass geography.”

“A fat lot you know!”

From inside Iva's house Mrs. Honeycutt said mildly, “Girls. Be nice, now.”

Heaven aimed her tattling voice at the screen door. “Aunt Sissy, Iva won't come yard sale-ing with me tomorrow.”

“I wouldn't go with her to the corner!” Iva called back.

“And she wrote all over the porch,” Heaven threw in for good measure.

Iva stood up, grabbing her map and crayons. Once Heaven started telling on her, she wouldn't quit till Christmas. Iva stamped inside the house, slamming the door.

“I'll be here at eight,” Heaven yelled after her.

“I'm not going!”

Heaven flip-flopped down the steps. “Eight
on the dot.
Don't be late.”

Iva stormed down the hall.

Her mother was scrubbing Lily Pearl's latest creation, Party Witch, off the wall. “Did you and Heaven fall out again?” she asked.

“No. We never fell
in
.” Iva thought that was funny.

Her mother didn't laugh. “Iva, Aunt Sissy Two and I always wanted to have our babies at the same time so you all would grow up best friends.”

“Doesn't sound like much of a job to me.”

Her mother was still talking. “Arden and Hunter. Lily Pearl and Howard. The others are best friends, but you and Heaven…”

“I can't help it, Mama. I don't like her, and that's that.”

Iva went into her room, put her map and crayons on her desk, and flopped down on her bed by her tree.

She had asked for the tree for her fourth birthday. She remembered describing it with her hands—slender trunk, soft papery leaves. Her mother had said, “Iva, honey, wouldn't you rather have a baby doll? Or a teddy bear?” No, it had to be the tree or nothing. She got her fake tree, tall in its wicker pot, thick with silk leaves.

When she was a little kid, Iva had whispered her secrets to her tree. Now she clothespinned notes to the leaves. Slips of paper, scribbled with her hopes and dreams, places she longed to visit, people she liked and disliked.

Friends, neighbors, teachers, and especially relatives were either in favor or not, depending on how they'd treated her. The names of people she was mad at were clipped to leaves drooping at the bottom of the tree. The ones she liked earned spots on the top branches.

Most people rotated from the top to the bottom and back again. Except Heaven. She was assigned a permanent leaf at the very bottom, close to the floor. Her name-paper curled at the edges and was furry with dust.

Iva checked the bottom branches. Slips of paper were pinned to two leaves—Lily Pearl for messing up Iva's map, and Heaven in her usual spot. Iva moved Lily Pearl's name to the top of the tree.

That left Heaven all alone at the bottom. Which she deserved.

Iva made up her mind. This summer she would start on her life's ambition. And Heaven would
not
accompany Iva on her mission. Let her cousin arrange guest soaps in her Hope Drawer.

Iva Honeysuckle had a bunch of discovering to do. First on her list, finding the buried gold her great-grandfather Ludwell Honeycutt had spent his whole life looking for.