James goes to the brick school on Main Street in Lowington. I’ve never ridden the yellow school bus that passes me and Mom on our walks. It barrels past our house, collecting all the children in Lowington except me.

Once when I was little and Mom and I were in the supermarket, Mrs. Stockford from Bog Road peered down at me and asked, “Now, why aren’t YOU in school, little man?”

I shrugged. I didn’t know what to say. When we got home I asked Mom if she forgot I was supposed to go to school.

“No,” she said, kneeling down to look me in the eye, “you can learn whatever you want right here at home. What do you want to study?”

The answer came to me all by itself. “I want to break open rocks and see what’s inside. And I want to dig holes.”

So Mom found me plastic goggles and a sledgehammer. The sledgehammer was heavy, but it wasn’t long before I could lift the hammer and split a rock open in one blow. Dad gave me a short shovel and let me dig in the front yard. Deep down in my holes I found dirt-covered rocks, spotted newts, salamanders, and bits of clay.

Every year after that, when fall came, Mom asked me, “Home or school?” I didn’t know if there was a right or wrong answer. This year it was close. Maybe fifty-five percent home and forty-five percent school. But there could only be one answer.

While I wait for James, I look in the M and the R volumes, reading about the biggest rocks that fell to Earth. Braggy got the set of red-and-black encyclopedias at a farm auction when I was six. He bid on a box of carpentry tools and in the bottom under the tools were the encyclopedias.

“You read these, Henry,” Braggy said, laughing, when he gave them to me, “and you’ll know everything there is to know. Then you can tell ME.”

I knew he was joking, but I wondered if maybe it was true.

What I find in the encyclopedias makes me worried. One gigantic meteorite was loaded onto a boat, sailed across an ocean, and put in a museum. Another was secretly dragged through the woods on a homemade wagon so the man could claim it fell on his land. Pieces of the biggest meteorite in the world were cut off by people to make metal tools out of the iron rock. I learn that no matter how big or special a meteorite is, someone always wants to take it or chip it.

When I hear the bus coming down the hill, I run out to meet James.

“How was school?” I ask him.

“Good. How was home?”

“VERY good. I have something to show you up in the field. A secret.”

“You found a mammoth tusk up there?” James guesses.

“No.”

“The other antler?”