Free All the Way Home by Patricia Reilly Giff

worse.
    “What about your stuff?” the other boy called.
    “Our lunch bags? I don’t want them.”
    “Can I keep them?”
    She waved her hand over her shoulder. “Yes.” She couldn’t eat, couldn’t imagine being hungry again.
    Her legs were heavy, her limp worse than usual, and there was a sharp ache in her knees. She went outside the gate. Brick would be blocks away now, going in the direction of the bridge. She trailed her fingers along the black spikes around the park, seeing the boy just inside, opening one of the bags.
    “Can I keep the book, too?” he yelled.
    “Go ahead.” She looked back. He held up a heavy book.
    Claude’s book?
    “No,” she called. “Not that.”
    “You said.” His face was angry. “Finders keepers, anyway.”
    “Not the book.” She said it in a Geraldine Ginty voice, a not-to-be-fooled-with voice. “Give it back or else.”
    “Or else what?” the boy began.
    She couldn’t think of what she’d do, but it would be something. No matter what, she was going to have that book. She started back into the park.
    The boy rooted through the bag to see what else was inside. “Just the book,” she said, “I don’t care about the rest.”
    “All right,” he said, his voice sullen. He tossed it to her. It landed on the wet grass and she scooped it up,rubbing it against her dress, drying it. She felt the thickness of it, the soft leather cover, saw the words in another language. What would Brick do when he realized it was gone?
    She tucked it under her arm, trying to protect it from the rain; then she started for home, passing Ambrose on the street, his hat down over his eyes. He didn’t even see her, although he could have. It was after school now, and kids were outside, jumping off stoops into puddles, sailing Popsicle sticks into sewer gratings. And luckily Ambrose turned the corner away from the bridge.
    Mariel walked through the lot on the boulevard, its weedy smell strong in her nose, and moments later when she reached her own street, she didn’t even remember how she had gotten there.
    She went in the back door, stepping on the killer vines, silly game, and climbed the stairs. A picture of her mother came into her head. That red sweater, the bracelet dangling.
    Her mother there in the middle of the night, but Mariel was too tired to open her eyes
.
    “Tomorrow, we’ll have a wonderful surprise, Mariel, you’ll see.”
    And in the morning, someone had lifted her out of the machine. It was a long round machine, easier to see now that she was on the outside instead of the inside. There was a hole in the top for her head, and a mirror so she could look
around. But now the machine was turned off. No more whooshing. And she was in a chair, safe
.
    “Don’t be afraid. See, you’re breathing on your own. How does the world look?”
    “Good,” she had whispered, almost not making a sound, surprised there was no feeling against her chest, surprised that the machine wasn’t breathing for her
.
    But everyone had heard her whisper. “Atta girl. Great girl …,” one of the nurses had said
.
    All those faces, and Loretta saying, “You see, you can do anything, Mariel.”
    And the ache in her knee now. She pressed it down with her hand as she stood at her chipmunk-safe bedroom door, looking at her everything table, her bed with the white chenille spread, and above the bed …
    She leaned her head back against the door.
Above the bed
 …
    The two-dollar bet money.
    “It’s yours anyway,” Loretta had said. “You can do anything.”
    She could take the money. She could find Brick.
    And her mother, too?
    She reached for the frame, lifting it gently off the hook, and went into the kitchen to rummage around in Loretta’s junk drawer. She picked up the hammer.
    It took only one good smash to break the glass, and then she turned the frame upside down over the garbage pail and shook it until the shards of glass were gone.
    She knew time was going and finding Brick would be