Free The Seventh Most Important Thing by Shelley Pearsall Page A

what he spotted first.
    Once he’d managed to pull out the rest of it, Arthur knew it would make the perfect gift for his mom. She always kept a row of African violets on the kitchen windowsill.
    He was pretty proud of how it had turned out too. He’d glued the shaky handle back into place and polished the metal with some of his dad’s chrome polish. It looked brand-new. If the person who had thrown out the flowerpot could see how nice it looked now, Arthur was sure they would have kept it.
    “Well, thank you,” his mom said, squeezing his shoulders with one arm. “However much it was. I love it.”
    —
    As it turned out, Arthur’s mom surprised him with a gift too. She handed him a flat box wrapped in green paper. When he opened it, he found his dad’s silver-dollar collection. Six mint-condition peace dollars displayed in a black frame.
    “I saved these for you. I know your dad wanted you to have them,” his mom said softly.
    A thick lump rose in Arthur’s throat as he remembered looking at these silver coins with his dad. He’d taken them to elementary school a bunch of times for show-and-tell. He’d written a research report about them in third grade called “All About Money.” His dad had often said, “One day, when I’m gone, I’ll pass them on to you.”
    Now that he had them, Arthur didn’t really want them.
    Not now—or ever.
    “And I got something for you too, Arthur. Open it! Open it!” Barbara flopped on the sofa next to him. For once, he was grateful to his sister for interrupting something.
    She shoved a roundish package covered with way more tape than paper into his hands.
    “It’s a baseball! Did you guess? Did you guess?” she shouted before he had the wrapping half off.
    “Thanks, Barbara. That’s really nice,” Arthur said, his voice cracking only a little. He tossed the baseball in the air and caught it. “It’s perfect.”
    “I bought it with my own allowance money,” she said proudly as Arthur’s mom winked at him. “I’ve been saving all year.”
    —
    Later, when his mom and Barbara were busy doing dishes in the kitchen, Arthur went upstairs and put the baseball on top of the dresser. He shoved the coins in the back of his closet, though.
    It was weird how much they bothered him. He wasn’t sure why. When his father’s motorcycle cap and coat had been in the downstairs closet, they hadn’t bothered him at all. In a way, they had made him feel as if his dad was still there.
    But the coins made his throat clench up the minute he looked at them.
    Arthur knew his mom was just trying to make up for what had happened in November. He knew she still blamed herself for some of it, even though he’d tried to tell her it wasn’t her fault—she wasn’t the one who’d lost her cool and hit someone with a brick.
    It made Arthur realize how you couldn’t always know what things would be important to people and what wouldn’t. His mom had thrown out his dad’s motorcycle cap, thinking it didn’t matter, but it was way more important to Arthur than the silver coins she’d saved. And the flowerpot had been worthless to someone in Mr. Hampton’s neighborhood, but it had turned out to be the perfect Christmas gift for his mom.
    In other words, there could be a lot of reasons why people decided to save some things and why they threw others away—reasons that might not make any sense until you dug much deeper.
    Which, Arthur thought, might be a small clue to the Junk Man’s list.

TWENTY
    J ust to get out of the house, Arthur took a walk to Mr. Hampton’s garage on the Saturday after Christmas. It was one of those deceptively sunny but frigid end-of-December days. Arthur’s breath made clouds. The snow-covered sidewalks crunched like icebergs under his feet.
    He passed by an older guy who was walking a dog wearing a ridiculous sweater. Arthur normally didn’t wave to people, but since it was just after Christmas and they were the only ones around, it seemed like the