She backs up to where the hard-packed winter snow meets the new slush in the crater and runs at the rock with her arms out. There’s not even the tiniest bit of movement. It’s as if the rock has grown roots or legs that are locked into the earth. It won’t topple over the way people do when she runs at them.

Birdie changes tactics and reaches her arms as far as she can in both directions and gives its hard, blocky surface a hug. She lays her head on the big boulder and looks up toward the sky.

I crawl around the rock on my hands and knees, soaking my jeans. All the sides are the same bluish black, but some have more silvery veins, and some are more dimpled than others. I wish I had seen the bottom of the rock before it landed. Is it the same color? Is it bumpy or smooth? I’m also curious how far the bottom of the rock sank into the earth.

Birdie presses herself against the big glassy rock. The melted snow in the crater almost reaches the tops of her red rubber boots now. Maybe the Boss, always looking above, recognizes the rock, because she acts like they’re already friends.

I want to say something to the big rock myself, to welcome it the way my parents make visitors, even strangers, feel at home. Then I remember what my mother says when she finds a mushroom or fern she can’t identify.

“I don’t know your name, but I’m glad to meet you,” I say to the big rock.

“Name BIRDIE.” Birdie laughs.

I laugh, too, when she says that.

“I meant the rock, not you, Birdie. I know your name.”

My hand rests on the hard surface of the stone. I breathe in the spring smell. And I think about my trip to the museum and what happened to the twelve-thousand-year-old woolly mammoth tusk. If you can even call something a tusk if it doesn’t have one single particle of the real tusk in it.

I press one finger to my lips. “The rock here. This is our secret. Can you say ‘I’ll keep the secret, Henry’?”

“Tell James,” Birdie says.

“Okay, we’ll show James when he gets out of school. Won’t he be excited when he sees it? But don’t tell anyone else.”

Birdie reaches out and puts her finger on my lips the way I did.

“Big hat,” she says.

Birdie is shivering, and my legs are cold in my wet jeans. I’m suddenly hungry for the breakfast I forgot to have.

“Let’s get home where it’s warm and dry off and have something to eat,” I tell her.

On the walk home, I think about how old the stone might be and if it was traveling toward us when Bower Hill Road was still covered by a glacier.