My Name Is River (17 page)

“Suffer the children!” oh, hear His voice!

Let ev'ry heart leap forth and rejoice;

And let us freely make Him our choice;

Do not delay, but come.

Think once again, He's with us today;

Heed now His blest command, and obey;

Hear now His accents tenderly say,

“Will you, My children, come?”

All of a sudden, my body stands up, and I feel myself walk to the front of the church. It's like I'm being pulled by a giant magnet.
Then before I know it, I realize Gram's standing on one side of me and Billy's on the other. And if I didn't know better, I'd swear Pastor Henry has tears in his eyes.

Pastor Henry smiles at me and Gram. “I'm very glad you came forward,” he says, “and I can only imagine how all of heaven is rejoicing.” Then he looks at Billy. “Did you come to support River?”

Billy shakes his head. “I want to make sure I'm ready too.”

Pastor Henry puts his arm around Billy's shoulder. “You made a decision to follow God when you were five, Billy. You don't need to do it again.”

“I know, Dad, but I was little then. I'm older now. And even though God doesn't need me to do it again, I want to.”

Pastor Henry squeezes Billy's shoulder. “Well, that's certainly fine.”

Pastor Henry leads us in a prayer. He says we can repeat it out loud if we want. All three of us do.

After we finish praying, I have the most amazing thought—I finally have a father who loves me.

21

Presentation Day

M
s. Grackle greets everyone Monday morning with a huge smile. And since it's Project Presentation Day, she's dressed as if she were having dinner with the president of the United States. She's squeezed up tight in a sparkly purple dress and is wearing purple sparkly shoes, lipstick, and nail polish to match. Plus, she's wearing earrings that dangle all the way to her shoulders (I definitely think she went overboard).

She taps a ruler on her desk. “Since each one of you has worked incredibly hard and very diligently on your projects, I've invited Mr. Sparrow's class to join us for your presentations. I'm quite pleased, to say the least. I've never had a class who's taken their projects as seriously as you, so I wanted to do something extra special for you.” The classroom grows dead silent. I think everyone was expecting something more.

Within seconds Mr. Sparrow's class walks through the door. The rotten thing is, there are so many students that we have to double up on our seats, which seems more like a punishment.

As Ms. Grackle introduces our first presenters, Mr. Sparrow raises his hand and asks if she could wait a minute. He said he has one more student coming. Then three seconds later, Robert Killdeer walks through the door. Billy and I look at each other (and I wonder if his heart is beating as fast as a hummingbird's too).

Once Robert finds half a chair to sit on, Ms. Grackle click-clacks
her way to the door and closes it. Then she click-clacks back to the front of the room, all the while shimmering like a jar of grape jelly. She introduces Sam and Joel, who did their project on stamp collecting. They pass around stamps from all over the world. They do a great job presenting, but I don't see how collecting little square pieces of paper with dry glue on the back could be as much fun as they say. I wonder if Robert will try to steal any when they're passed his way (I'm definitely keeping an eye on him).

Ms. Grackle calls up Kristina and Louise next. They present their cake-decorating project and even brought in a giant, green turtle cake to share. They took step-by-step pictures of everything they did to make their turtle cake and taped their pictures to a display board, like me and Billy did. Their pictures turned out okay, but when they see ours, they'll be wishing they had an Uncle Jay like we do.

When Kristina and Louise hand out pieces of their turtle cake, I silently pray that Robert gets the tail. But then I feel guilty because I'm supposed to be a new creation (but since I'm new at this whole God thing, it's probably going to take me a little more time to get it right).

Ms. Grackle calls us next. Billy and I walk to the front of the room and lean our picture display against the chalkboard so everyone can see. We take turns sharing about our ecotone and how we made suet cakes and hummingbird nectar, and how Pastor Henry helped us make bluebird houses. We talk about the different kinds of plants the birds and butterflies like. We tell them about everyone who shared plants. We tell them everything—except for our pinky swear. When we're done, Billy asks if anyone has a question. Mr. Sparrow raises his hand. “Can anyone go to the birding place?”

Billy answers, “Yes. My parents own the land, and everyone's welcome. River and I actually made the birding place for the whole community. We want everyone to enjoy it.”

All of a sudden, Robert stands and walks right up to our display. He doesn't bother to raise his hand. He gets real close and then points to the picture of a chickadee that's eating seeds from the wooden bird feeder. “What are those shiny little round things all over your bird feeder?” he says. “If you ask me, they look like BBs.”

My heart sinks, and it's hard for me to breathe. Billy looks my way for a second, but for some reason he doesn't seem flustered. He walks over to the picture and gets real close, just like Robert did. Then he says, “They're probably little dots of paint. That feeder used to be in my dad's workshop, so it could've accidently been splashed when he was painting.”

Robert walks back to his half seat, sits down, and clenches his fists. Then he asks another question and still doesn't bother to raise his hand. “So,” he says, “how long do birds live, anyways?”

I look at Billy, not believing this is real. I'm so scared that all I can do is stand as still and motionless as a dead bird.

Billy answers calmly, “We actually didn't include information about the lifespan of birds in our project. But I do know that most small birds, like the ones that come to the birding place, live approximately one year.” Billy shrugs his right shoulder. “But then again,” he says, “if you're asking about all birds, an albatross will often live longer than most humans.”

Billy isn't pale or shaky, but Robert's face looks tight and red, and it doesn't seem like he has any plans to stop. He asks another question, “Then tell me, when them small birds die, what do they die from?”

“Good question,” Billy answers. “Most often they die from natural causes… like old age, sickness, or from extremes in temperature or weather.” Billy never says they die when some creep shoots them with a BB gun.

Finally, Mr. Sparrow tells Robert he needs to give other students
a chance. Robert squirms in his seat and can't seem to hold still (I feel sorry for Angelina who's on the other half of the seat).

Mr. Sparrow's class leaves after the last presentation, and Ms. Grackle waves goodbye to them. Then she smiles her shiny, purple-lipstick smile and says she has one more surprise for us. And since there's no possible way it could be worse than her first surprise, I actually feel a bit of excitement (but then I'm not sure what to think since she wore that purple dress to school). Anything could happen.

Ms. Grackle clicks her shimmering purple self over to the phone and calls Mr. Augur. “Bring it on down,” she says and then stands in the doorway all excited (like a kid waiting for Christmas) and leaves us hanging in suspense.

Two minutes later Mr. Augur walks into the room carrying the biggest pizza box I've ever seen. The smell of pepperoni finds its way to my nose.

Ms. Grackle clicks over to her desk, bends down, and pulls out a bag from underneath. I'm expecting her grape jelly dress to burst a seam, but she stands back up without disaster and places seven big bottles of soda next to the pizza. She arranges them in an arch like a rainbow—cherry-
red
,
orange
, lemon-
yellow
, lime-
green
,
blue-
berry, passion-fruit the color of
indigo
, and
violet
grape (she's obviously been talking with Mr. Grebes, our science teacher who just finished teaching us about spectrums and Roy G. Biv). Sometimes teachers can be so weird.

Ms. Grackle smiles and tells us again how proud she is of us, but I can't keep myself from staring at her mouth. I think about telling her she has a hunk of green turtle frosting right in the corner, where her purple lips meet, but instead I sink my teeth into the best tasting pizza ever and take a nice long drink of the rainbow.

Billy and I walk home from school together, but neither of us says a word about Robert. We kick a stone back and forth instead.

Billy looks my way and asks, “Did you hear the weather report? It's supposed to reach eighty-five degrees tomorrow. That's even hotter than today. I'm definitely wearing shorts to school.” I imagine Billy wearing shorts with his pure white socks and brown leather shoes. The thought of it makes me smile. Only Billy could get away with that.

As we turn the corner onto Meadowlark Lane, Billy asks if I can go to the birding place with him. “It's pretty warm,” he says. “I'm sure everything's dry. We should fill the birdbath and give the flowers a good soak.”

“I wish I could,” I tell him, “but I promised Gram I'd go to physical therapy with her. I have to make sure she tells the therapist about her heart attack—if I'm not there, she'll never tell. She'd probably even ask for more exercises, which could be bad for her heart.”

“That's okay. Don't worry,” he says. “I'll take care of everything. See you tomorrow.”

I turn into my driveway, and Billy heads to the birding place. He smiles and waves. I smile back.

22