Free Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy by Gary D. Schmidt

your hand. But only if you're done with the begats."
    "I'm done," said Turner, and took Reverend Griffin's hand. He wasn't surprised that it was strong, but he was surprised by how he felt every scar that ridged the man's palm, every cut drawn through by a quick and sharp pull on a fishline, every slit opened by an accidental knife.
    "You can tell a man by his hand," said Reverend Griffin. He shook hands solemnly. "You hold your bat on the knob."
    "Just on it," said Turner. Lizzie's granddaddy was a prophet after all.
    "Good. Now, if you give me those clams, I'll see what I can do with them."
    While Reverend Griffin carried the spitting clams into the house, Lizzie took Turner's hand that held his bat on the knob, and they walked back down to the shore. The water was so different here than in Boston Harbor. There was a cold wildness about it, and it didn't seem to care whether you looked at it. It would do what it was doing with or without you, as it had been doing for a long time before you and would be doing for a long time after you. They sat down and did not speak but watched the small waves chuck at the shore, frothing and foaming and disappearing into the sand and rocks, and then doing it all over again.
    A loud screeching of gulls from behind the pines, louder and louder, and then it was no longer gulls that were screeching but a pack of five, or four, or six, or who knows how many children flapping their arms and running up and down and back and forth, screeching and cackling, and then careening down upon them, cawing and laughing and thrashing up the water until they flopped down like a flock of swarming birds all come to roost.

    "You Tripps," scolded Lizzie, but she was not really scolding, and though she stood and put her hands on her hips and looked at them with a terrible eye, Turner knew right away that they had seen it all before, and not a single one—not a single one—felt any remorse.
    Two of them grabbed Turner's hands. "Fly with us!" cried one. And they pulled him up and suddenly he was flapping his arms and running down the beach, and Lizzie was flapping hers and running alongside them, together in the midst of the swarm, and calling and calling and running and running, plashing through spent waves, cavorting up the granite ledges, wheeling around stands of pines. And when they were too spent to flap and screech anymore, they collapsed on the point, and Lizzie's granddaddy waved them to his door. Inside, there was bread and chowder in cracked white bowls, and they all—Tripps and Lizzie and Reverend Griffm and Turner—they all took the food and sat on the rocks, sun-warmed and briny, and Turner could not tell if it was the scent of the chowder or the sea that filled him, and he knew that he was late again for his own dinner and he did not care. Then there was quiet among the Tripps, and Turner and Lizzie looked at each other over their heads and smiled.
    One of the Tripps who had held his hand came to stand on Turner's toes. "I'm Abbie," she said. "You the boy who throws rocks at his nose?"
    Turner glared over at Lizzie, who was trying not to laugh. "Does Lizzie go around telling you stories?"
    "Only all the time."

    The Tripp who had held his other hand climbed onto his lap.
    "That's Perlie," said Abbie. "She don't talk much yet." Turner began to tickle her stomach.
    "And she ain't ticklish, either," said Abbie. "You could tickle that girl till half past tomorrow and she won't laugh none."
    "She won't laugh, huh?" said Turner. He set down his bowl, shoved off Abbie and Perlie, picked up a round stone, and tossed it in the air. He let it fall just by his face, then began to howl and howl.
    Perlie laughed, and Abbie laughed, and all the Tripps laughed. And they laughed louder and louder, and then they spread their arms and began to run in circles. They swarmed up the beach, and back down, and finally disappeared abruptly into the pines, Perlie the last in line, looking back at him and holding her