Letters from the Heart (16 page)

W
ednesday afternoon, there was the usual crush at the seventh-grade lockers. Avery was digging through the mess at the bottom of hers, trying to find her soccer cleats, when Maeve came hurrying up.

“I've been looking for you,” she said, panting a little. “I wanted to check and see how my babies are. You didn't say a word about them today!”

Avery bit her lip. She didn't think this was the best time to tell Maeve that one of her “babies” was AWOL: “absent without leave.” She had forgotten to secure the lid on the cage when her mother had come in the room. Avery had combed her bedroom last night, but she couldn't find a single sign of Beckham. Hamm was sleeping peacefully in her cage, apparently enjoying having the whole space to herself. But where was Beckham?

Avery had looked absolutely everywhere. Under the bed, under her desk, behind the bureau…a wave of panic had washed over her when she realized that the door to her bathroom was open, and maybe Beckham had gotten herself
into a jam. She'd peered frantically down into the toilet, but thank heavens, she wasn't in there. And not in the sink or shower, either. So then where could she be?

Finally, she'd had no choice but to go to bed, vowing to get up early and search all over again. Surely Beckham would show up in the morning.

Well, guess what? Morning had come, and still no Beckham. Even worse, Hamm was looking kind of glum. She seemed to sense that her buddy was free and she was still trapped in this cage. “Don't YOU get out, too,” Avery scolded her, but then she felt so guilty that she gave her some extra guinea pig food. Having guinea pigs was a lot more complicated than she'd imagined.

Now what was she supposed to tell Maeve? That she'd been so irresponsible that one of her little guys was loose somewhere in Avery's house?

“Um—Maeve—I am SO LATE for soccer,” Avery gasped, and before Maeve could say anything else, she'd jumped on her skateboard and taken off.

Weird, Maeve thought, staring after her with a confused look on her face. And she'd been about to give Avery an important warning about Ben, the bigger of her two guinea pigs. She wanted to let Avery know that Ben was an unbelievable escape artist, and that Avery should guard the door if she let Ben out of the cage…even for a second. Once Ben had gotten loose and Maeve hadn't been able to find her for almost a week.

Oh well, Maeve thought. Avery must know what she was doing. Anyway, Dillon was heading over…she better get out of here before he said something about Friday in front of her friends.

“Hey,” Dillon said, falling into step beside her. “You still psyched for Friday night?”

Maeve gulped. “Uh—yeah. Yes. I mean, I am,” she said, the words stumbling out in a rush.

Dillon started filling her in on one of the Celtics' forwards. He was still injured and it wasn't clear if he could play or not. “It should be a great game,” Dillon said. He glanced at her. “Maeve, I really feel bad about you having to walk over to my house. Why won't you let my dad and me pick you up at your place? We can be there around six. It's right on our way,” he added.

“NO!” Maeve said. It came out much more emphatically than she'd meant it to and she turned red. “I mean, that is SO sweet of you,” she said, struggling to think of a good reason why Dillon shouldn't come and get her.

How's this, she thought. My dad is supposed to be coming over to pick up Sam and me right around six o'clock. How am I going to explain it to him if Dillon and his dad show up at the same time? Especially since I'm supposed to be on my way over to my friends' house for a celebration dinner in my honor?

“But you know…I'm going to be out anyway…right near your house,” she said weakly. “Seriously. Just—don't worry about it.”

She barely gave Dillon a chance to answer. Just a quick wave and she dashed off, furious with herself for having gotten into this mess in the first place.

Why hadn't she just asked her parents? Why had she let everything get so ridiculously complicated for no good reason?

 

After school, Avery hunted absolutely everywhere for Beckham, but there was no sign of her.

“This is hopeless,” she told herself, shaking her head.

Her mom called upstairs to her. “Avery! Dinner's going to be ready in twenty minutes. It's just you and me tonight—Scott's at Chess Club.”

“Okay,” Avery hollered back.

She looked out the window, a frown on her face. What could be worse? Beckham was probably lost forever. And on top of that, she still had her Heritage Museum report to work on tonight.

Avery's eye fell on the carriage house across the garden. Could Beckham have gotten out somehow? Suppose she'd gotten outside…suppose Carla had opened the door and she ran out into the garden.

She sure hoped not. But on a whim, Avery decided to go out and search. And she'd better do it now, before the light faded.

No sign of Beckham in the garden. Avery used a flashlight to shine in and around all of the bushes, but no luck. And no sign of her in the carriage house, either. Avery looked behind the trash cans, the coils of garden hose…everywhere she could think of. She even climbed up the ladder to shine her flashlight around in the loft. But it was hopeless. No Beckham.

She was about to shimmy back down the ladder when her flashlight fell on a box against the far wall marked “AVERY
” It was next to a bunch of other boxes, right near the one marked Talbot Academy. Avery was surprised that she hadn't seen it the last time she was up here, helping her mother look for her old yearbooks.

She still had a few minutes before dinner. Avery couldn't help herself. She had to check out the box and see what was inside.

The box smelled faintly damp, but everything inside was
carefully wrapped in plastic. It seemed to be mostly manila file folders—tons and tons of paperwork. Avery was about to close the lid when she saw something colorful in the bottom of the box. Also wrapped in plastic, it looked like a quilt—but the fabrics didn't look like quilting fabrics. They actually looked Korean.

In fact, as Avery started to rifle through the folders, it became clear that this whole box was filled with material having to do with her adoption. Papers from the adoption agency in Seoul, Korea. Papers from an agency in New York. Document after document, a huge fat file called “Home Study 1990–1991.” A map of Korea. Several books on adoption. Avery kept rifling through the box, hoping to find…

What?

She wasn't sure. Something. A photograph? A tape? Some sort of evidence of the place that she'd come from. But all she could find was paperwork. It all looked pretty boring. The only other thing was the cloth that looked like a quilt, but wasn't.

Avery carefully lifted the cloth, still in its plastic cocoon, and brought it back down the ladder with her. She'd go and ask her mother about it—Avery was sure she'd know what it was.

 

“Mom, what's this?” Avery asked, coming into the kitchen a few minutes later and handing the cloth to her mother.

An expression of recognition came over her face, and then pleasure. “Where did you find this?” she asked, looking delighted. “I've been looking all over for it, but I couldn't remember where I put it.”

“In a box up in the loft,” Avery said.

“The loft…” her mother still looked puzzled.

Avery thought fast. She didn't want to tell her mother that Beckham was lost. “I'm doing this Heritage Museum project for school,” she said, “and remember, when I was up there helping you look for yearbooks, I thought there might be some cool stuff I could find to bring in. And I found this box up there with my name on it.”

“So THAT'S where I put it. I'm so glad you found it. I thought I had put it with your baby clothes,” her mother exclaimed.

“What is it?” Avery demanded, getting more and more curious.

“It's a
bojagi
. A carrying cloth,” her mother said, carefully taking out the cloth and turning it over and over in her hands. “Avery, when we adopted you, the agency gave this to us. It came from your birth mother. It's a traditional cloth from Korea, used to carry things…See, you fold it up, and the things you carry—well, they give the cloth its shape.”

Avery took the cloth back, staring at it. “So this came with me?” she asked wonderingly.

Her mother nodded. “I wanted you to have it for your thirteenth birthday. But you know,” she said, leaning over to give Avery a hug, “I'm actually glad that you found it yourself. Somehow that seems even more fitting. Now, there's something else I want you to have. I wrote a letter to you on the first night you joined our family. I think maybe this would be the right time for you to read it.”

Avery's mother left the room and came back a minute later with a small baby pillow, which she handed to Avery. There was a note sticking out of a pocket in the pillow. Avery opened the note, which smelled a bit like sweet lemonade, and read:

 

When she finished, Avery looked up and her mother held open her arms. Wordlessly, Avery moved toward her. Mother and daughter held on to each other for several quiet minutes.

Later in her bedroom, Avery traced the pattern on the bojagi with her finger. She had grown up so comfortable with the idea of being adopted that she often didn't think about it. And then, at moments like this, it flew out at her. How she had two worlds that she belonged to, one that she knew so well, and one that lay in her past. She and her dad
had talked for years about going to Korea together one day. Avery really wanted to do that. Looking at this cloth, Avery felt a sudden, intense longing to learn more about her background. Her mother was right. It was important that Avery had found this herself. She knew that this was a definite choice to show the class for her part of the Heritage Museum. But first, she needed to do some research.

Avery's Blog

 

That night Avery slept with the bojagi spread out on the pillow beside her. It was beautiful. She loved tracing the patterns on the cloth with her fingers. And just before she fell asleep, an amazing feeling of calm came over her. And a phrase floated into her head, a phrase her mother had used.

The shape of what it carries.