Free A Box of Gargoyles by Anne Nesbet Page B

“There’s usually more wiggle room than you think, even in stories.”
    Meanwhile, however, the wiggle room in Maya’s life seemed in many respects very much limited. When she was getting ready for bed that night, something clinked onto the floor and wobbled there for a while like a flattish brass top. It was the clunky old button the ebony bird had spit out into her hand—she had forgotten all about it. She reached down to pick it up, and it gave an extra wobble in her palm, like a dog turning in circles before curling up in its bed. It was stamped with an old-fashioned crest: an elaborate F and a salamander curled up on a rock—
    Oh, yes , thought Maya. Of course. It would have to have a salamander .
    On the back were engraved a few words in French, “ Au point d’origine .” To the Origin Point. That made her think of graphs in her geometry textbook, but why geometry terms should be showing up on a button was not entirely clear. She put it up on a high shelf, out of sight.
    And outside on the fire escape, the gargoyles sat waiting for her. That’s not all: every day they sat differently . In the middle of each night Maya would be woken up by another brief eruption of clatter, and every morning when she cracked open the window to peer out, those gargoyles would still be there, but no longer exactly where they had been the day before. They would be clustered together looking at something, or one would be lifting something (a twig?) into the air, examining it, or their wings would be spread out wide to catch some nonexistent breeze, as if they had just landed back on the fire escape after a bit of aerial gallivanting when time froze for them again.
    But stone is way, way heavier than air. Stone things can’t fly .
    Maya gave up. She could not think about these problems the way Valko did. “You just didn’t notice the wings before”—that was what he had said yesterday on the phone. “They’re statues , Maya. I know someone apparently dragged them from here to your place, which is really weird and hard to imagine and doesn’t make any sense, but they can’t really be moving around on their own . I mean, like we were saying the other day: it’s hallucinations, maybe. Your brain is playing tricks on you.”
    But Valko wasn’t the one who had to crack open the back window every morning and look at what the gargoyles were getting up to now.
    At least I’m not as frightened as I used to be , she told herself. After three days of gargoyles on her fire escape, a person can find herself almost getting used to the idea. By yesterday, they were beginning to look what you might even call familiar: good old Beak-Face and Bonnet-Head (she even had names for them now), frozen in the middle of whatever their big project was, over there on the far side of the fire escape. And she would be thirteen tomorrow, anyway. She had always liked the number thirteen. It was a magical and courageous number: unique, prime, and with an individual approach to life.
    She swung her legs over the edge of her bed and walked over to the window with quick, determined steps, the kind of steps someone almost thirteen should use, and opened the window with a quick, determined twist of the latch. And then ruined the effect by being so startled all over again that she squeaked out loud and took a hasty step back.
    The thing was, he was so close to her window today, old Beak-Face. His monsterish, craggy face was staring straight at her from about ten inches away, and his front claws were right there in front of her nose, almost as if that stony-bony index finger had been petrified just at the very moment it had decided to give his own carved chest a tap.
    Once she found her balance again, she got mad, even though what use is it, really, to get mad at statues? So what she said was “What the heck do you want ?” and it didn’t come off as all that brave, either, because