I went and stood between them. We looked into the night together, and I saw it right away, even before Mom said, “Look.”

The moon.

Sisters

The thing about making butter is that it feels like it’ll never be done, almost right up to the moment when it is done. If what you want is butter, you have to keep going, even if you only half believe you’ll get there.

It was like that with Sonia. I wanted a sister so badly, but when she first came, she wasn’t my sister—she was a stranger. And all those nights she fell asleep with her back to me, it felt like she might be a stranger forever. Having a sister was like a dream that was getting further away instead of closer.

But, somehow, it had happened: we were sisters. And now she was leaving. I was one of the people who understood why she couldn’t stay. Her mom was somewhere else.

In five weeks, when school was over, she would be back.

On Sonia’s last night, we pushed her new bed so that it was almost touching mine, with just a crack in between. I got the tape recorder from its hiding place, and we listened to her favorite Grandpa story: Charlotte’s Web. We listened from the beginning right through to the end, without saying one word.

The ending of that book always makes me sad, but that night it made me really sad. I hoped Sonia couldn’t tell, but I was crying. After a minute, she got up and stood over me, her legs in that tiny space between our beds.

“Make room,” she said.

I moved over, and she scooted in next to me. We talked into the darkness, making plans, until we fell asleep. And in the morning, she left.

Brothers

You may be asking yourself what this story has to do with the sound of corn growing. The answer isn’t about corn. It’s about two brothers, listening, together. It’s about the kind of love that doesn’t ask you to be anyone but who you are. Dad and Uncle Frank had that kind of love from the beginning. I wish everyone did.

They could never believe that other people didn’t hear it. The most surprising thing about the sound of corn growing, Dad says, is that it’s loud.

Acknowledgments

I want to thank a lot of people:

My unparalleled editor, Wendy Lamb, and my fantastic agent, Faye Bender, for their constant, loving, and excellent support.

My wondrous readers, Judy Blundell, Deborah Heiligman, Marthe Jocelyn, Randi Kish, Ros Kish-Levine, David Levithan, and Deborah Stead, for their questions, insights, and encouragement.

(Double-thanks to Ros for the exclamation points.)