Coyote Lost and Found by Dan Gemeinhart

Author:Dan Gemeinhart
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)

CHAPTER

SIXTEEN

The sandwich party was a smashing success, and then we spent that night in the parking lot of a Walmart Supercenter. It’s not as bad as it might sound. Way quieter than a truck stop, plus you can go inside to buy snacks and use the bathroom.

I heard my phone buzz a couple of times in the morning but I was far too asleep to care. Once I was finally awake awake, I shuffled inside the Walmart to brush my teeth and, I guess, do my business, and then I remembered the buzzing and walked straight back to my room to see what it was. Salvador was pretty soundly asleep in his sleeping bag, but on the off chance that he’d woken up and texted me and then gone back to sleep I wanted to be sure to keep my promise and text back.

It wasn’t a text, though. It was a missed call notification and a voice mail.

I didn’t recognize the number at first but then I realized that the area code was the same as the bookstore I’d been calling and calling in Maine and then my heart skipped four or five beats and I tapped through to the voice mail as fast as I could.

It’s funny, how one phone call can change your life. I’ve had that happen a couple times, actually.

“Hey, there,” the friendly guy leaving the voice mail said into my ear. “This is Cal from One More Time Books up in Freeport. I got your messages about the lost book and I think I got some good news for you. Give me a call back whenever.”

My heart went from skipping beats to cramming extra ones in.

Relief and joy flooded into me from all sides.

I bounced on my toes and spun in a quick circle.

I went to hit the “Call Back” button so frantically that I dropped my phone and swore and dropped to my knees to grab it and then hit the button just about hard enough to crack the screen and pressed the phone up to my ear.

The phone rang three times, though it felt like thirty, and I was just about to die but then the ringing stopped and the guy I now knew to be Cal said “Yello!” and I said “Hi there, my name is Coyote and I left you a few messages and then you called back and now I’m calling you back and it’s about a book that I left there last summer?”

“Ah, Coyote!” Cal said. “Sorry I missed your calls for a while there. Had the shop closed up so’s I could go down and visit my daughter in Key West.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Try to do that at least once a year. Gorgeous down there. Ever been?”

“Yes,” I said, “but—”

“Bit of trouble getting back, of course, with all this Covid business, and—”

“The book!” I interrupted at a shout. “Sorry. But I need to know. You have my book, right?”

“Ah. Black Bird, by Mary Oliver, right?”

“Uh, no, it’s Red Bird.”

“Oh, oh, yeah, right.

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