Harriet Tells the Truth by Elana K. Arnold

Author:Elana K. Arnold
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2023-11-09T00:00:00+00:00

Nanu rocked me back and forth and kissed the top of my head. “Everyone deserves a hug,” she told me.

I cried for a long time. Nanu held me until I stopped. Then she wiped my face with a cloth napkin. Then she said, “Harriet, I don’t think I need to tell you how much you hurt Mr. Wallbacher’s feelings.”

I shook my head. She didn’t.

“And I don’t think I need to tell you that you owe him an apology.”

I shook my head again. “No, Nanu. I know I do.”

“Good girl,” she said, and she kissed my head again. “Let me know what you plan to do about it, and if you need my help.”

Then she went back in the front room and left me alone in the kitchen.

I needed fresh air. I walked through the back door and went outside. In my head, I kept seeing Horace Wallbacher’s face, the way he’d burst into tears. I kept hearing the bell of the front door when he’d pushed his way out onto the porch.

Maybe I was beginning to understand what Nanu had meant before when she’d talked about “my truth” rather than “the truth.” Some things just are true, like the fact that Marble Island is surrounded by water. But some things—things that can feel totally true, like everything I said to Horace Wallbacher . . . Maybe some of those things weren’t the same kind of true.

And even if something is true . . . I don’t know. Maybe not all truths need to be shouted out whenever I felt like it.

I knew that lies made things complicated. I guess I thought that deciding not to lie anymore would make things easier. But things didn’t feel easier.

I didn’t want to think about kinds of lies and kinds of truth or anything like that. Instead, I sat on the back porch and stared up into the trees. There was the birdfeeder that Mabel Marble had made and the Captain had hung. Three little birds were taking turns pecking at its sides, eating the seeds, and pooping little wet bird poops onto the flowers below. I remembered how the Captain had told me about the four “W”s—Wind, Wings, Water, and Westerners—and I wondered where the seeds the birds were eating right now would end up later, after they’d passed through the birds’ digestive tracts, as the Captain had said.

I looked around the yard. Maybe some of the plants growing here might have been the result of birds carrying seeds in their stomachs. But it wasn’t plants that caught my eye. It was the gate between Mabel Marble’s yard and ours.

It was cracked open. The gate was almost always closed, even if it was always unlocked. And what was that on the ground, poking through the opened gate? Something pinkish and pale, and curved up at the end.

It was a hand.

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