1.
One thing you don’t know about me yet is I am very quiet.
It’s one of my attributes, like my big feet and curls that fly out like ruby lightning when I race along the Mighty Atlantic and the way I can tell what my old dog Brody-Bear is thinking, just by looking in his eyes.
My big sister, Bronte, is nineteen and very noisy. She can’t hear the stars humming to each other the way I can, or the way the waves call out to the harbor seals at dawn. She’s too busy talking. This is why she doesn’t know my favorite herring gull wants to race this morning, and maybe my dog wants to run, too.
Which of course he does. Wouldn’t you?
The good thing about Bronte is she says we don’t have to all be the same way: “We’re like pieces of a puzzle that fit together because we’re different.”
When my big sister went to the little one-room schoolhouse I go to now, she won a prize for being the best orator. Give Bronte something to debate and she’ll make even the fishermen around here change their minds quicker than their hooks fly. “Boys AND GIRLS Should Attend University Before Making Life Decisions” was the speech she gave down by the docks after she decided there wasn’t a better place to practice her elocution.
Someone threw a fish at her, but Bronte kept going. She’s always been the strong one. I am very proud of her.
I have many bad days at school because my teacher, Miss Witherspoon, does not think being quiet is a positive trait. She thinks I’m too shy for my own good and I let my imagination run away with me, and she makes me keep my Words of Encouragement Journal buckled away in my leather rucksack. My mama gave it to me before she left, saying if I wrote about everything I see, it would help. I already broke the nib on one pen, and half the pages are full.
“You must spend more time with the other pupils, not writing in that book,” my teacher says, finding me out on the cliffs at recess, her frown as big as her desk. “Try to be more outgoing like Meggie Baldwin.”
I want to tell her: I’ve never really had a true-blue friend before and I don’t know how to do it, but if I did, Meggie would be the last person I’d pick.
Miss Witherspoon thinks I’m awkward and have the potential of a sand flea, and even though she doesn’t use those words, exactly, I see them in her eyes.
This is the first annoying thing about grown-ups. They think we don’t know what they’re thinking, but we always do.
Just a few minutes in her little class—where all different ages learn together tight as sardines—my throat goes dry as sand and my fingers itch to write in my book so I can start feeling hopeful about things again. It’s how I get all my best ideas.
As soon as my teacher rings the bell at the end of the day, I rush out the door and down the steps. One thing I am very good at is running fast as an Appaloosa, and I fly over the dunes toward our house high on the cliffs, my favorite clam-digging boots thump-thump-thumping, they’re so happy to get away from Miss Witherspoon.
I go a different way each day because it’s good to go beyond what you know. I try and remember everything I see so I can write about it when I get home: the first snowflake that lands on my nose, the way my boots crunch like soda crackers across the frozen sand, the gull waiting to race me home again.
I love the feel of my red wool hat my mama knit me back when she lived with us and I pull it over my ears.
They stick out, which is another of my attributes.
Also, I am eleven.
And I have a million freckles.
2.
Brody-Bear meets me halfway and when he sees me he leaps and bounces, wagging his feathery tail so hard he loses his balance.
I hug him for a very long time and press my face to his and when our hearts are close like this he makes those soft whimpering noises that say he is so sorry about all my bad-school-luck, which is a thing, in case you don’t know. I start feeling so much better about everything after that and then we race together toward our tall home high on the cliffs with a sunflower-yellow front door that whispers how happy it is to see us as soon as we fly up the porch steps.
I live in a house better than you can imagine, with windows so tall that no matter where you stand, the sun is always shining through all day and the moon and stars at night.
There’s magic in a house like mine, and here’s why: it was built by my grandpop and his pop before him, and since they were fishermen from the Old Country who knew more about boats than buildings, our roof is pitched steep as a sailing mast and every plank is caulked with tar.
They used funny ship tools you may have never heard of like nogs and beetles and horsing irons, which is why our foundation tips a teeny bit as if we are about to sink beneath a great storm.
But we never do.
Our house is steady.
We are lashed to rock.
I love everything about it: the way it’s wrapped in clapboards the color of driftwood and how it juts out in odd places from where my grandpops kept adding on, and now we have two winding staircases. One, on the inside, leads to my skinny bed under the eaves, which is topped with the star quilt my mama stitched me before she left. As far as rooms go, mine is the icing on the cake.
The other staircase is on the outside and you climb it to get to the roof-walk, where on a clear day, when the sun just wants to have a contest with me over who can smile bigger, you can see all the way to where ocean meets sky.
There’s an extra-long banister inside for sliding down (watch out for nails!) and hidden cupboards with secret shelves that hold old rolled-up seafaring maps and nautical clocks and compasses and little clay pots of pitch for fixing cracks.
At night, when the waves thunder for shore and the wind rattles our shutters from their hinges and the salt off the ocean sprays through our window screens and our clothesline outside spins like a Ferris wheel, our hull is sure.
It’s a wonderful feeling to know your home will take care of you, no matter what storm is coming.
I don’t know why anyone would ever want to leave.
3.
Bronte is already mixing up a honeycake, our favorite remedy for times of tribulation.
My big sister knows that at the end of another long sour day with Miss Witherspoon I am in need of a boost.
“Tell me,” she says, warming a cup of honey slowly on the stove, using the same difficult recipe that’s been passed from memory down through the generations because there’s nothing better for heartache.
I shake my head. I don’t want to talk about it.
Bronte is taking classes at the university because she wants to be a teacher, and I think she’ll be an excellent one. She doesn’t think you should always be trying to turn the quiet ones into magpies the way Miss Witherspoon does.
We both have hair the color of fall—rich coppers and dark chestnut, a bit of burgundy, and a few strands of dazzling light. As soon as I see her, one of my curls reaches for hers.
My mama’s name was Lavender, but she wanted stronger names for us, so she named me Hurricane and my big sister Bronte (which means thunder in the Old Country) so we could weather any storm. Believe me, it’s good to have extra protection like this because, when you lose your mama like we did, you are as knowledgeable as a crock of cucumbers that things can sour up in an instant if you don’t keep a constant eye.
I kick off my boots and let our house hug me close. One thing about a kitchen like ours, with a long wooden table always covered with flour dust, it knows how to make you feel better about everything.
Bronte sets a cup of steaming cocoa in front of me and I pull out my journal as she beats six eggs. Dear Mama. I start every page the same way and my fingers itch to get going.
I blow on my cocoa, breathe in all the extra chocolate Bronte puts in.
The black cookstove, big as a bed, sits right across from me and is already stuffed with hickory wood, the kind that burns hottest and lasts longest and is best for baking. Our wooden drying rack for dish towels sits beside it and on the far wall is the icebox the Sweet Pond Ice Company fills once a week.
There’s a narrow cupboard for our ironing board, which since I’m small and skinny as a rubber band, I can still fit into. Our two flatirons stand at attention on the back of the stove complaining about the heat. Bronte says we won’t even need them when the electricity comes.
“Any day now,” she says, adding cinnamon to the batter. “They’re already stringing wires at the Baldwin place.”
She thinks we need one of those new Frigidaires, also a Toastmaster. Our great-aunt Claire has a Hoover in her fancy house in the city, so she doesn’t need to even sweep anymore, plus there are real bathrooms and electric lights everywhere.
“I’m fine with how things are,” I whisper, looking out the window at our skinny privy with the crescent moon carved into the door. I already know that when your mama goes away you don’t want any more changes.
Brody-Bear lies under the table where I can rub my feet all along his back. He’s an Irish setter, all gray about the nose, but the fur on his back is still red as my hair and very soft.
Bronte is always telling me to think about something happy when I have a hard day.
I look up from my journal, unsure how to do this. All I see is my teacher’s frown.
“Do you want me to speak to Miss Witherspoon?” she asks when she sees the expression on my face.
I nod slowly.
The other good thing about Bronte is she talks for me when I need her to.
Copyright © 2025 by Kimberly Newton Fusco. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
