Free Lark by Tracey Porter

my head. “I don’t want to go. I’m not feeling well.” But my parents say I have to go. They tell me to finish my soup and get dressed.
    Strangely, the three of us go in my dad’s car, something that hasn’t happened in years. I’m on the alert, waiting for the fighting to start. But it doesn’t. Seeing the backs of their heads so close together makes me remember what it was like before the divorce. I feel like crying, but I don’t.
    April’s cheery and welcoming, especially to my father, whom she hasn’t met before. She ushers me into her office and settles into her big comfy chair. She asks me if I know why my parents wanted me to see her today, and I say it’s because I was outside last night when I should have been in bed.
    “Were you running away?” she asks.
    “Of course not,” I say.
    “Your mother says you were talking to Lark.”
    “It was a dream,” I say.
    “Your parents wonder if you should live with your dad for a while. They think a change might be good for you.”
    I tell April that’s a stupid idea, and when she asks why, I remind her I’m homeschooled.
    “Hallie isn’t smart enough to teach me. My mother has a PhD.”
    “I don’t think they imagine you staying there for an extended period of time.”
    “Whatever,” I say.
    “They think the change would do you some good. After all, you have two little stepbrothers there, and a new stepmother you’ve told me you like. . . .”
    “I never said I like Hallie. . . .”
    “Sorry,” says April. “My mistake. But you have spoken well of her. She’s offered to teach you how to weave, am I right?”
    “She’s okay,” I say. “A little too namby-pamby for my taste.”
    April shrugs. “Maybe it would be good to spend some time in the home of a namby-pamby woman for a while. The way you’ve described her makes me think she’s rather . . . nurturing.”
    “Too nurturing! Those boys are incredibly spoiled.”
    “Maybe she’d spoil you. You could use some spoiling. After all, you’ve been through so much.”
    “Really?” I ask.
    “Really,” says round-faced April. “Your father’s departure, your parents’ divorce, your mother’s anger, the violent death of the person you most looked up to . . . these are all very difficult experiences, very draining, exhausting events for anyone, but especially for someone your age.”
    It’s cold in her office. I pull the pink-and-blue quilt off the ottoman and wrap it around my shoulders. It’s decorated with hobbyhorses and ABC blocks.
    “They’re worried that you were talking to Lark last night.”
    “They don’t have to be. Lark won’t visit me anymore.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because I let her down.”
    “How did you do that?”
    “I wouldn’t look where the knife went in. Now she’ll really die. That tree where she was killed is swallowing her up.”
    “Oh, dear,” says April. “Why would the tree do that to her?”
    “Because that’s what happens to girls who are killed the way Lark was. Don’t you know?”
    “No,” says April, “but I’d like to. Will you tell me?”
    “Some trees have a girl in them.”
    When I’m done, April sends me out to the waiting room and asks my parents inside. I sit on the floor, looking through a basket of broken toys and torn books. An assortment of Happy Meal toys, Lego key chains, and metal cars with missing tires are all tangled together in the mane of a My Little Pony. April should do something about this , I think. It could make kids think she doesn’t really care about helping them.

Chapter 23
Eve
    Upstairs in the attic, Ian and I sweep down the rafters and wash them with pine soap. We paint the walls white, scrub the one tiny window, hang a few clip lights and strings of Christmas lights from the beams. My dad and Ian carry up a worktable and chair and an old velvet armchair I found at the flea market. When it’s spring, my dad says, he’ll put in skylights so I’ll be able to paint by natural light.