“Yes. You try and try to figure out all those squiggles on a page when you’re a little tiny child. They mean nothing to you. You might know their names and know the sound each letter makes, but to slide them together into a meaningful word seems impossible. But then there is this moment. This bewitching moment when you see it. You break through the code that has been shutting you out and you land softly in this beautiful world of meaning and stories.”

“That’s wonderful, Gran.”

Rosalinda was growing very excited. “I’ll tell you another such moment. Swimming. Same thing. You know there’s that moment you’ve been trying to imagine what it’s like to float. To float and not to sink. It seems like a foreign language for your body. You come so close but you just can’t quite do it. And then one day it happens. You float off. You move your arms, kick your feet, and you’re at one with the sea. This brand-new element that seems made just for you. I think the secret is that you just relax. You yield to the extraordinary. So much of life is yielding to the extraordinary.”

“The extraordinary,” Rose said softly. “I know what you mean.” Rose was thinking of those first moments when she had really learned how to jump with Ivy. When the pony’s hooves left the ground and together they sailed into the air, sailed toward the sky. They were fused for those fleeting moments—girl, pony, sky.

Rose went back upstairs, climbed into bed, and took a nap. She dreamed of Ivy; she dreamed of damask roses and September with her sea-green eyes, cuddled in her arms.

There was a soft tap on the door.

“Yes?”

“It’s me, Rose, Betty.”

“Oh, sure, come in.”

“Feeling better, Rose?”

“Yes, much better.”

Betty held up an envelope. “This just came for you. Someone slipped it through the mail slot.”

She reached out her hand. “Thank you, Betty.”

Rose opened the envelope. She could tell it was a kid’s handwriting. She skimmed to the bottom. It was signed “Sibby.”

“Sibby Huang,” Rose murmured. One of the remoras. Her eyes went to the top of the page.

Dear Rose,

I need to tell you something . . . something very important. I can’t tell you in school. We can’t be seen together. Can you meet me at the corner of Delaware and Hampton Street at 4:30? Please please please.

Sibby Huang

Was this a trick? Sibby was one of the most ardent of the remoras, a super suckerfish if there ever was one. Rose felt she had to be careful. At the same moment, her cell phone rang.

She looked at the number. It was Susan. “Hi.”

“Where were you today?”

“Uh, sort of sick. How is Joe?”

“Well, not happy, you can bet that . . . but, Rose . . . they’re saying you did it.”

“Did what?”

“Messed with Joe’s skates.”