Going Over by Beth Kephart

Author:Beth Kephart
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Chronicle Books LLC
Published: 2014-08-28T04:00:00+00:00

The kids are all settled onto the storytelling rug by the time I go in to greet them—Markus made it happen, so I thank him. They watch me, different than before, like I’m a stranger to them, like being gone for a few days means I forgot them. Forgot how one twin sits perfectly still and the other one fidgets. Forgot the high shrug of Brigitte’s shoulders. Forgot who sucks which fingers and who calls out and who has to be invited, every time, to say what she is thinking. I prop myself up on the too-small chair and wrestle the big book up onto my lap. I tell them that they have to come closer to hear, and one by one, on elbows and knees, they scoot forward—the paint in their fingernails, the smell of their playdough, the stain of their juice, the smashed dust bunnies on their sock toes.

“Meryem,” I say, “do you want to come and join us?” Because she hasn’t moved from the window ledge and she’s holding Savas’s dragon like an old-world talisman.

“No thank you, Miss Ada,” she says.

“Are you sure, Meryem?” Normally I would press but today I don’t. Today Meryem is watching the window, looking out, I sense, for all of us. She has her reasons and the other kids don’t mind. They let her be, her back to us, her one ear cocked in our direction.

I turn the big cardboard pages slow—past the thieves in the den, past the dead in the cemetery, past the lonely house and the storm at sea.

“Where is the fear?” I ask the kids, and at every picture they shake their heads no. It’s not here or here or here or here. The boy can’t find his fear. We come to the page where we’d stopped the last time.

“What’s going to happen?” I ask, my voice in a hush.

“Fear’s coming,” Meryem says, from her perch on the ledge. “Fear’s coming, Miss Ada. I know it.”

I turn around and she’s facing forward. Her eyes are big black lakes, wind-rippled. She clutches the dragon close and reaches one arm for me. I lay the book on the floor and stand to catch her. She wraps her arm around my neck and her legs around my waist. Her skin is warm and clammy. “Hey,” I say, but she just clings harder, and now when I sit us both down onto the tiny chair, I feel its silver legs tremble.

“I think it’s juice time,” I say, but the kids don’t move. They stay where they were—quiet, frozen. Finally Daniel raises his hand. “Miss Ada,” he says, “Savas is missing.”

“I know,” I say. “We’re looking for him.”

“Where’s Savas?” Aysel says, twisting her arms up and locking her fingers, rocking back and forth now, and now Daniel’s rocking, too, and even Aylin starts moving—an agitation, a fever.

And now Meryem starts crying. Henni appears in an instant, like Henni does, calling the kids to the table for juice. They don’t really know what they want to do.

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