Free Found Things by Marilyn Hilton Page B

to hurry and see Daniel before visiting hours were over.”
    â€œYour mama does know that visiting hours don’t end until eight, doesn’t she?”
    To stop myself from telling any more lies, like the one about Mama only understanding Portuguese and the one about us being from Alaska, I just stood there. He looked at me hard. I thought he was going to send me home, but then he pointed to the left. “Go on,” he say, “Three-fourteen’s down that way, end of the hall. You’re his first visitor.”
    â€œToday?”
    â€œEver. I’ll send your mama there . . . after she parks the car.”
    My legs felt like noodles and my pulse played drums in my ears as I walked down the hall toward Daniel’s room. It was my own fault I was here. I might not believe that Daniel was in the hospital because of Meadow Lark and me, but she did, and it was my duty as her friend to see how bad off he actually was. So I kept walking toward room 314 and wishing I wasn’t so scared.
    Daniel Bunch’s door was open a crack, and I stood outside, breathing slowly and trying to stop shaking, not knowing what I’d see. I actually hoped Daniel would be nasty to me, like he usually was, because that would mean he wasn’t sick. It would mean everyone was wrong.
    â€œHello,” come a voice from across the hall.
    â€œHello,” I say. I couldn’t see anyone, so I walked toward the voice and looked in the room. “Do you need something—a nurse?”
    A boy with a mop of sandy-colored hair half sat up in the hospital bed reading an Edgar Allan Poe comic book. A cast covering his whole leg hung just above the bed, aimed at the TV on the wall.
    â€œPassword,” the boy say, and lay his comic book down on his stomach.
    â€œHmm,” I say, and looked at the title. “Usher.”
    His face grew a smile. “Impressive.” The boy’s teeth were so short that it looked like he didn’t have any, and his cheeks were patchy red, like they’d been rubbed with snowballs.
    â€œEither you’re a genius or a mind reader,” he say. “Or perhaps the password is too obvious. I’ll have to change it as a precaution.”
    â€œYou could have just say I was wrong.”
    â€œI could have,” he say, “but that would have been dishonest.” Then he took in a breath. “Are you here to visit someone? That boy across the hall, perhaps?”
    I nodded. “The nurse say that’s Daniel Bunch’s room.”
    â€œIt is his room. Are you his . . . sister, a friend, a . . . ?”
    â€œI go to school with him.”
    â€œOh. Has anyone ever told you that you have an unusual way of talking?”
    Him too? I thought. “Yes, everyone say that.”
    He crossed his arms. “And I’m sure you get teased about it.”
    I shrugged. “I can’t help it,” I say. “I woke up one morning after my brother leave us and I start talking like this.” Then I glanced across the hall for a glimpse of Daniel. A glimpse was all I wanted of him at the moment. And then maybe another glimpse, and then I would have the courage to see him.
    The boy scratched his chin and looked at the ceiling. “I’ve read about that. It’s rare, but it has a name. People wake up talking with a French accent or an Australian accent or a Japanese accent. You found your accent somewhere very far south of New Hampshire—I’d say from somewhere in the Carolinas.”
    â€œWell, I wasn’t looking for it, so it must have found me.”
    â€œThat’s an interesting way of describing it,” he say, and picked up his comic book. “Just so you know, it’s rather charming. However, if you don’t like it, you can force yourself to lose it.”
    â€œYou talk funny too,” I told him. “You sound like a professor.”
    When he finished ha-ha-ha-ing behind his comic book, he say,