Free 13 Gifts by Wendy Mass Page A

so maybe only the boy can’t talk and this Amanda girl is such a good friend that she uses a board to talk to him. I stare at her open, smiling face. Emily elbows me. “Tara,” I say. “My name is Tara.”
    “And this is Leo,” Emily says, stepping aside so the black-haired boy can join the circle.
    I give him a little wave. Should I say hello? I’d feel weird talking to him when he can only write. But maybe the wave was rude? While I’m trying to figure it out, he says, “Hi, Tara. Welcome to Willow Falls.”
    I take a step back, looking from one to the other in surprise. I don’t get it. They can
both
talk. A woman with hair the exact yellow shade of Amanda’s calls to them from the other side of the patio. She’s kneeling in front of a little boy with four hot dogs sticking out of his mouth.
    “Coming, Mom,” Amanda replies. Then to me she says, “That’s our friend Rory’s little brother, Sawyer. We’re supposed to be watching him until she gets here.”
    The two of them hurry off and I turn to Emily. “Um … what’s with the blackboards?”
    “Oh, right! That must seem weird to someone who isn’t used to them.”
    “Just a little.”
    “It’s pretty simple, really. They can’t talk to each other. I mean, not out loud.”
    “Why? Are they in a fight or something?”
    Emily shakes her head. “Not this time, but Rory told me that when they were all in fifth grade Amanda and Leo were in a huge fight and didn’t even go
near
each other for a whole
year.
Then something happened that they won’t tell anyone, some big secret, and they’ve been best friends again ever since. Then last summer they started using the blackboards to talk to each other. Or they text. But that’s rude to do in a group.”
    I watch the little boy, Sawyer, spit his half-chewed hot dogs into Leo’s hands. Leo makes a face, but I can tell he isn’t really grossed out. “How long are they going to stop talking for?”
    She shrugs. “Who knows? Those two are weird.” The other Emilys return and my Emily tells them (with way too much enthusiasm) that she thinks she found “an inconsistency in the XY coordinates” in the math homework. This is my cue to exit.
    I wander over to the pool pit and look down, half expecting to find Bar Mitzvah Boy. Instead, I see a stuffed green bunny lying at the bottom, one ear flopped over its face. A minute later the owner of the bunny announces himself with a howl and a wail.
WHEREISMYBUNNY?!
reverberates through the backyard as the boy who tried to eat too many hot dogs bursts into tears.
    I want to tell him the bunny is in the hole, but there are so many people and they would all be looking at me. I do manage to sort of point into the hole, but no one really notices. Bar Mitzvah Boy appears from the side of the house, headingright toward me. He reaches the edge and looks over. “He’s here! I’ll get him!”
    “The Hamburglar to the rescue!” a girl standing next to him declares. I hadn’t noticed her at first, but she must have been running alongside Bar Mitzvah Boy the whole time. It’s like she blended into the background or something. She’s wearing a brown and white sundress with brown sandals, which is sort of the perfect outfit for a summer barbeque and makes me feel even more underdressed. Drat my utter lack of fashion sense.
    Then she turns and looks straight at me. Our eyes connect for only a second, but it’s enough to give me a strange sort of jolt. I’ve never seen eyes like that before. I don’t think it’s the color, which is your basic green. But as soon as she looked at me, I got this weird déjà vu feeling. Like I’ve met her before, while knowing absolutely that I haven’t. How could I not have noticed her right away?
    The little boy runs over to her and wraps his arms around her waist. She laughs and says, “Don’t worry, Sawyer. David Goldberg’s going to rescue your bunny.” I realize the girl must be Rory, Emily’s babysitter and sister of the