Yonder by Ali Standish

Author:Ali Standish
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2022-01-19T00:00:00+00:00

25

June 1943

MONDAY

The next morning, my thoughts were still with that bright bird that had slipped into the forest. And I wasn’t the only one whose thoughts were elsewhere. In Mrs. Pattershaw’s class, legs were already jiggling under desks with anticipation of the summer break, just around the corner.

I kept chancing glances at Lou, trying to signal I was sorry for what I had said the day before, but she gazed past me out the window. Her eyes looked flat, like shallow puddles, the skin beneath them smudged with shadow.

Lou would never go to war like her brother, but the war had marked her just the same. It had marked Dylan Price, too. Really it had marked all of us in our own ways. It was thousands of miles away and yet there with us, all the time, like an unforgiving sun.

Mama and I had stayed up the night before, listening to President Roosevelt give one of his fireside chats. I was hoping he might explain what exactly was happening in Warsaw. Answer some of the questions about the war that had begun to form in my mind. Instead, he talked about the coal miners’ strikes, which had been happening on and off for months, and how important the supply of coal was to the war effort. So I had gone to bed none the wiser about Yonder or the war.

At lunch hour, I jostled along with everyone else to get out of the classroom. By the time I spilled into the hall, Lou had disappeared. She wasn’t in the cafeteria, either, so I thought perhaps she had gone home for lunch.

I finished my sandwich and, not wanting to spend any more time sitting alone in the cafeteria, headed back toward Mrs. Pattershaw’s class. I would wait in the hallway until it was time for class again.

The hallways were mostly empty as I retraced my steps back. As I rounded the corner I nearly ran smack into Bruce and Logan.

“Hey, watch where you’re going,” said Logan. He held a bulging lunch bag, clenching it hard.

Bruce turned on his heel to find me staring at him. A slick smile spread over his face. “Well, hey there, Danny boy.”

I dropped my gaze. And it was then that I solved a mystery that, of all the mysteries prowling my mind, I least expected to solve.

There on Bruce’s shiny penny loafers were three drops of red.

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