Free Not-Just-Anybody Family by Betsy Byars

only two reasons she went to all the trouble of making the braids. Now she was too miserable to care.
    “Vern?”
    Far above her, in the light of the vent, Vern’s small, round face appeared. Maggie lifted her arms like a mother urging her child to jump.
    Vern said just one sentence before he slipped back into the jail and out of sight.
    “Junior’s in Alderson General Hospital.”
    In the jail Vern tumbled once again into Pap’s trembling arms, and the two of them sat down on the side of Pap’s bunk. The first few minutes of the reunion had been spent with Pap rubbing his hands over Vern, testing to make sure he was real, mumbling, “I knew you’d come. I knew you wouldn’t let me down.”
    The next minutes were spent realizing that now, instead of having one family member in jail, they had two. After that, they hadn’t said anything, just sat enjoying the comfort of each other’s presence.
    Finally Vern had broken the silence with “Maggie’s outside.”
    “That’s what I figured,” Pap said.
    Pap knew it wouldn’t be proper to bring a girl into the men’s half of city jail. Then, with a sudden lift of heart, he remembered Junior.
    Junior had been worrying Pap ever since the policeman had told him Junior was in the hospital. Now the heavy lines between Pap’s brows eased. Things were working out all right after all. Maggie could take care of Junior.
    “I’ll boost you up, and you yell out and tell her Junior’s in Alderson General Hospital.”
    “That’s all?”
    “She’ll know what to do.”
    Vern had climbed on Pap’s old sloping shoulders, turned his head sideways, poked it through the vent, and looked down at Maggie’s pale face far below.
    He called, “Junior’s in Alderson General Hospital.” Then he shimmied down Pap’s body as if it were a tree, and joined him on the bunk.
    No one in the jail had awakened.
    Pap, comforted at last, leaned back against the concrete block wall. Vern did too. Their eyes closed.
    Vern opened his eyes. “I forgot something. Boost me up again, Pap.”
    “Verrrrrrrrrn,” Maggie wailed. She stood with her head back like a howling dog. “What am I supposed to do nowwwwww?”
    She looked down at the board at her feet. Maybe she could get it up the tree and across the gap to the ledge so Vern could come back across. She knew she couldn’t. It had taken all her strength to lift it up for that one short boost. Maybe she could do something terrible and get arrested. “Just put me in with my family,” she would tell the arresting officer, “—the Blossoms.” She would look so pitiful that—
    At that moment, with tears of pity welling in her eyes, Maggie heard the clink of a coin at her feet. She brushed her tears away with her braids.
    The clink was followed by another. Then money poured from the vent. It fell around her like rain—nickels, dimes, pennies, wadded-up dollar bills.
    Even before the last coin hit the sidewalk, Maggie was on her hands and knees, gathering it in.

CHAPTER 21
Rich and Special
    Maggie felt better. It was surprising how much more wonderful things looked when you were rich.
    The money was in her jeans pocket—nineteen dollars and forty-nine cents. She had wrapped it up like a package, securely, with the dollar bills folded around the coins.
    “Isn’t it late for you to be out by yourself ?” the bus driver asked.
    Maggie was sitting on the long sideways seat behind him. Now that she had money, everything seemed to be going her way.
    The bus had stopped. She had said, “By any chance do you go past Alderson Hospital?”
    The bus driver had said, “I sure do.”
    She said, “How much?”
    He said, “Fifty.”
    She said, “Just a minute.” She unwrapped her package of money, dropped the money in the slot, and here she was, on her way.
    Life sure was easy when you had money.
    “I asked,” the bus driver said again, “isn’t it late for you to be out by yourself?”
    “Yes,” she admitted, “it is.”
    “You got family