Catching a Storyfish Read online

  Text copyright © 2016 by Janice N. Harrington

  All rights reserved.

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, please contact [email protected].

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  WordSong

  An Imprint of Highlights

  815 Church Street

  Honesdale, Pennsylvania 18431

  wordsongpoetry.com

  Printed in the United States of America

  ISBN: 978-1-62979-429-7 (hc)

  ISBN: 978-1-62979-743-4 (e-book)

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2016936167

  First hardcover edition, 2016

  First e-book edition, 2016

  Design by Barbara Grzeslo

  Production by Sue Cole

  The text is set in Garamond 3.

  The titles are set in Buckley.

  H1.1

  For Grandpa Elmer and Alyssa,

  and for our poet, Katharen

  CONTENTS

  Prologue:

  The Storyfish

  Chapter 1:

  The Big Mistake

  Keet-Keet Parakeet

  What I Tried to Say

  The New House

  What Allegra Saw

  Do We Have To?

  Go Play

  Why?

  A Box Big Enough

  Settling In #1

  One Thing Only

  Every Friday, I Call Grandpa

  You’re a Wiggle Worm

  Grab the Tackle Box!

  Just the Right Spot

  Fish Bait

  Fishing Line Knot Hook

  Fishing Lesson #1

  Fishing Lesson #2

  Bedtime Stories

  Keet’s Story for Noah

  Fishing Lesson #3

  New School

  Chapter 2:

  First Week: Why Do You Talk That Way?

  Bells

  What Allegra Thought

  Fishhook Eyes

  Monday: Reading and Writing Centers

  Yella? Yellow?

  Recess

  Stings

  Not Yet

  School’s Out!

  I Wonder How She Knows?

  Nothing to Say

  Kids Say

  Grandpa Fridays

  What Do You Say, Grandpa?

  We’re Going After Ol’ Muddy Joe

  Muddy Joe

  Can We Catch Him?

  Just Us

  Nose Trouble

  Things to Do with a Baby Brother

  The Yellow Kite

  Together

  The Bedtime Bell

  Chapter 3:

  Second Week: New-Girl Blues

  New-Girl Blues

  Spelling on M-O-N-D-A-Y

  Allegra Can Spell Anything

  Weird

  Allegra Wonders

  Keet Wonders

  Math Class

  Cafeteria

  Wednesday: Library

  Time

  Always Together

  Chapter 4:

  Third Week: A Friend, Maybe?

  Hullo!

  Gone!

  Library Helper

  Book Magic

  Storytime

  Molly!

  After-School Allegra

  Library Fish

  Saturday: Fishing Lesson #4

  Chapter 5:

  Fourth Week: Wiggle Worms and Sand Plums

  Settling In #2

  Tired

  Keet’s Story about the Sand Plums

  Deep Inside

  Allie-Gator Says

  Keet Says

  You Can’t Spell It, Allie-Gator

  Keet’s Scary Story for Allie-Gator

  Sleepover

  Loud

  Hallway Elephants

  Pencil Song

  Keet’s Science Experiment: Worm Watch

  Allegra’s Science Experiment: Worm Watch

  Chapter 6:

  Fifth Week: Fishing for Words

  In Line

  All the Talkin’ I’ve Heard

  Maybe Me

  Splash!

  Fishing Lesson #5

  Saturday: Fishing Lesson #6

  Fishing Lesson #7

  Chapter 7:

  Sixth Week: The New Grandpa

  An Ordinary Day

  Hospital Rain

  The New Grandpa

  KeetGrandpa

  No Words

  Allie-Gator’s Wish

  Keet’s Wish

  Rainy Days

  Moonlight

  A Shiny Sheet of Paper

  Sad

  Catching Grandpa

  Keet’s Story for Grandpa about the Great Big Rocket

  Keet’s Story for Grandpa about the Terrible, Horrible, Kid-Eating Dog

  Any for Me?

  Chapter 8:

  Seventh Week: Say Something, Keet!

  “Dream Day”

  Nosy Posy

  Fish Count

  Swimming Away

  Can

  Genie

  What Will I Say?

  My Knees Are Knocking

  Catching a Storyfish

  Ruin, Disaster

  Home

  An Unexpected Visitor

  Fishing Lesson #8

  This Might Interest You

  Waiting

  Noah’s Big Surprise

  Chapter 9:

  A Trillion Weeks Later

  The Mystery of the Strange Smile

  Honorable Mention

  The End of the Story

  Poetry Glossary

  Acknowledgments

  PROLOGUE

  THE STORYFISH

  Grandpa says

  it’s the storyfish

  that fills me

  with stories to tell,

  a storyfish

  all rainbow-colored

  and quick, quick,

  a storyfish that’s guppy-small

  and sometimes as big as a whale.

  It leaps and plunges

  and dives down deep,

  and swims inside my dreams.

  I have a storyfish

  inside me, a fish

  made of words.

  It nibbles, nibbles

  when I’m daydreaming.

  But if I’m quiet, if I listen hard,

  I’ll hear the storyfish,

  and it will tell me

  the best story ever.

  Listen, and you’ll hear it too.

  Chapter 1

  THE BIG MISTAKE

  KEET-KEET PARAKEET

  “You’d talk the whiskers off a catfish,”

  Grandpa says, “and the shine

  off a new penny.”

  “Grab the glue, grab the tape,”

  Daddy says. “Keet, if you keep talking,

  I’ll need to stick on an extra pair of ears.”

  They’re right. I like to talk.

  I like to spin stories,

  this-is-what-I-did stories,

  this-is-what-I-saw stories,

  stories to make my brother giggle-bouncy

  and wiggly as a worm,

  stories to make Daddy lean in

  and hold me octopus-tight,

  stories to make Mama’s eyes

  shine birthday-candle bright.

  My teacher used to say,

  “Katharen, that’s a good story.

  But why don’t we give someone else a turn?”

  I think she meant I’d said enough.

  My grandma used to say,

 
“Only thing wrong with a duck is its bill.”

  I think she meant I go quack-quack-quack.

  But Mama says, “Keet,

  you’re a born storyteller.

  You’re my little parakeet.

  You always have something to say.”

  That’s why my friends call me

  “Keet-Keet Parakeet,

  that story-talking, story-making girl.”

  WHAT I TRIED TO SAY

  At least—

  I used to be.

  I talk, talk, talked,

  but this time no one listened.

  This time, it didn’t matter

  what I had to say.

  Mama and Daddy moved us away.

  Even though I talked,

  even though I squawked

  and told them that I had to stay.

  THE NEW HOUSE

  When we moved in,

  Daddy said

  the small red-brick house

  with the long gray driveway,

  the peely-paint fence,

  and the rickety picnic table

  was our new home.

  When we moved in,

  the neighbors stopped to stare.

  A girl watched from the alley.

  Then she sat on the curb

  and scribble-scribbled in a notebook.

  (What was she doing?)

  When we moved in,

  my daddy said, “Keet-Keet,

  what do you think?”

  I frowned.

  I think we made a big mistake.

  WHAT ALLEGRA SAW

  A new family.

  A girl.

  A boy.

  But

  I didn’t see

  any pets.

  I saw

  one bicycle,

  one tricycle,

  three beds,

  a long sofa,

  a desk,

  shelves,

  an old clock,

  a dining room table,

  and four fat chairs.

  I saw

  boxes—

  bulging boxes,

  boxes tall and boxes short,

  boxes labeled,

  tied with string,

  boxes filled

  with a thousand things.

  I saw

  the new girl look

  at me,

  but she didn’t smile.

  She didn’t wave.

  She didn’t come over.

  Maybeshe’s shy.

  Maybeshe’s stuck-up?

  Maybeshe’s m-e-a-n?

  DO WE HAVE TO?

  Do we have to stay?

  Mama turns sad eyes to me.

  Can’t we just go back?

  Do we have to stay?

  Daddy sighs and rubs his head.

  Can’t we just go back?

  Do we have to stay?

  Do we really have to stay?

  What if I go back?

  GO PLAY

  “Stay out of the way, Keet,”

  Mama says.

  “Go play with Noah in the backyard,”

  Daddy says.

  “Where are we going, Keet-y?”

  “Come on, Nose,” I say.

  “Are you going to play with me?”

  Nose asks. “Can we play ball?”

  “Come on, Nose.”

  Nosy Nose, Nosy Noah,

  full-of-questions, full-of-why,

  full-of-when, my nosy-posy

  little brother.

  “Hurry up, Nose.”

  Nose skips toward the back fence,

  bouncing his ball.

  He watches the neighbor girl

  turn cartwheels on the grassy hem.

  She stops. She looks at us.

  “You want to play ball?” Nose says.

  The neighbor girl says nothing.

  She throws her hands to the ground,

  pushes her legs over her head,

  and wheels away.

  “Keet-y, why won’t she play with us?”

  I think about CarlAlishaMichaelDante

  LilyKeishaGordonEvieMadisonEmma

  CharletteTaylor and all my friends.

  I think about hunting for muscadines.

  I think about fish fries and laughter.

  I think about playing checkers with my uncle

  and winning sometimes.

  I think about the tear in my teacher’s eye

  when she said, “Good-bye, Katharen, good-bye.”

  Why did we move here?

  Why? Why? Why?

  WHY?

  Better job,

  better pay,

  better school,

  away, away.

  For Grandpa’s sake. He’s all alone.

  For all the reasons parents drone,

  for all the reasons parents say,

  for bigger dreams, for better dreams,

  we moved away.

  A BOX BIG ENOUGH

  Please, give me a box

  to pack my cousins in,

  a box to hold the wide front porch

  where I liked to sit and swing,

  a box for the fishpond and another for the fish,

  a box for my old room

  and my old floor that c-r-e-a-k-e-d,

  a box for the egg-gold evenings

  when all my friends played tag.

  And we ran, ran, ran, pinwheeling

  brown legs, swinging

  brown arms, laughing and calling,

  running this way and that, trying not to be,

  not to be, not to be—it!

  We played long enough for the stars to join in,

  for the moon to shine as bright as the eyes

  of my cousin Carl who almost, almost, almost

  tagged me—but I escaped!

  Give me a box,

  a cardboard box, a wide box, a deep box

  for the long, low screech of the swing on the porch,

  for Mama and Daddy softly talking,

  with Noah on Mama’s lap

  and me in the middle.

  Give me a box,

  a big box,

  the right box, a heart box,

  to carry everything I love

  and all my friends

  from far, far away.

  SETTLING IN #1

  “I know it’s hard to move away, Keet,”

  Daddy says. “I miss our home

  and our friends too.”

  “You do, Daddy?”

  He doesn’t answer. Instead he lifts

  his shovel and drives it into the hard

  ground again, digging, digging, digging.

  “Does his talking with his eyes,” Mama always says.

  “Why take a thousand words, when one look will do?”

  The shovel chuh-chuh-chuhhs.

  Heaves of dirt fall

  in clumps atop the grass.

  “I promised your mama a garden

  and an apple tree,” Daddy says.

  Daddy wants me to help.

  I put on Mama’s garden gloves and my purple floppy hat.

  Nose comes too. Nosy nuisance.

  In a corner of the yard, Daddy digs

  the hole, deep and wide.

  It smells earthy and wormy.

  It smells rotty and sweet.

  He fills the hole with manure

  and mulch to help the tree grow.

  “Smells bad,” Nose says.

  The corners of Daddy’s eyes crinkle,

  and he nods at Nose.

  Daddy lets us pull the burlap wrapping

  from the apple tree. Then he

  gently loosens the curling roots.

  “See the roots, Noah?” Daddy says. “Tree

  has to have roots, if it’s going to grow.”

  Noah stoops down and looks.

  The roots look twiggy and tangled,

  crooked-fingered and stringy.

  “Rooooots,” Nose chants.

  “Root, root, root.”

  “Strong root
s, strong tree,” Daddy says.

  “The tree has to get settled in,

  and these roots will help it grow.”

  Daddy watches me then.

  His eyes seem like two earthy holes,

  where you could plant something

  to root and grow strong.

  Do I have roots?

  Maybe Mama, Daddy, and Nose are my roots.

  Maybe I’m a root too. Maybe.

  “Strong roots, strong tree,” I say.

  Daddy’s eyes hold me for a while.

  He nods, but he doesn’t say anything.

  He asks me to hold the tree in place

  while he covers the roots with dirt.

  Roots in a new place, settling in.

  ONE THING ONLY

  Mama says,

  “Look on the bright side.”

  There isn’t any.

  Mama says,

  “Count your blessings.”

  Zero.

  Mama says,

  “Every rain cloud has a silver lining.”

  Where? Show me one.

  Mama says,

  “Keet, you will find something good here,

  if you look hard enough.”

  I try, try, try,

  but I can see only one good thing: Grandpa!

  EVERY FRIDAY, I CALL GRANDPA

  Keet:

  Grandpa, what are you doing?

  Grandpa:

  Doing? I’m talking to you.

  Keet:

  Grandpa, you want to go fishing?

  Grandpa:

  Wishing? Well, I wish I could take a good nap.

  Keet:

  No, Grandpa, not wishing—fishing.

  Do you want to go fishing?

  Grandpa:

  Hissing? No, I don’t hear anything hissing.

  Keet:

  No, Grandpa. Fishing! Do you want to go fishing?

  Grandpa:

  Is this my Fish Bait talking or some ol’ snake?

  Keet:

  Grandpa, you’re just being silly. I want to go fishing.

  Grandpa:

  You wanna go fishing?

  Keet:

  Yes, Grandpa.

  Grandpa: