Wunder had been enraptured by this story when he was young—the story of how wanted he had been, how longed for, the story of his specialness, of how he had defied the odds and come into being. As he got older, he started trying to cut his mother off when she told it, embarrassed by how she would run her hands over his hair and his back, how she would beam at him. But she never let him stop her, and he didn’t really try that hard.

Embarrassed or not, he had always believed her. He was a miracle. Miracles happened.

And when his mother had announced, out of the blue, that she was pregnant, it had seemed like another miracle.

Not right away, of course. He’d had almost eleven years of only-child-hood, almost eleven years at the center of his parents’ love, and at first, the news that everything was about to change had completely terrified him.

But little by little, his parents’ excitement had become his own. His father had told him story after story about growing up with two sisters and three brothers. His mother had taken him to one of her ultrasounds, where he had seen, for the first time, the baby that would be theirs.

And his parents, they hadn’t seemed to love him any less. In fact, everyone seemed to have more love.

He had started wondering what kind of big brother he would be, and once they knew she was a girl, what kind of little sister she would be. He had found himself paying attention to babies he saw at the grocery store or at the park, found himself thinking about things he could teach her and how it would feel to have someone to take care of, someone new to love.

He had helped his father set up the crib and install the car seat. He had helped his mother shop for baby clothes and bibs.

And he, he alone, had chosen her name.

They had all been so happy, waiting for her to be born.

And even when there were more and more doctor’s visits and more and more bad reports and more and more times when Wunder walked in on his mother with her head in her hands—even when the baby was born and so much was wrong and everyone was waiting, waiting for her to die—even then, Wunder had expected that there would be another miracle.

But there hadn’t been.

And he couldn’t stay in the house with his mother and the crib and those rising floodwaters of sadness.

So he grabbed his backpack, full of schoolbooks and The Miraculous, and he headed out the front door.

Chapter 7

Wunder usually rode his bike to Golden Fig Middle School, but that day he felt like walking. He decided not to take the route through the woods either. He didn’t want to see the cemetery. He didn’t want to see the DoorWay House. He headed straight to school.

It felt strange to be going back after being gone for two weeks. Much stranger than returning after a vacation. It wasn’t just that time had passed. He was different now. He thought about how Faye had described him—not zippy. He didn’t like the word zippy any more than he liked excessive smiling, but he knew what she meant. He had always been happy.