The Chronicles of Stinky Cove · Book 8

Windfall

The Bear Who Came to the Door

Everybody in Halftide has decided what Jaxson Pelkey is. So has Jaxson.

He is ten, the biggest kid in the fifth and sixth grade room, with hands that arrived four years before the rest of him, and he can list every single thing he has ever broken, in order, with dates. He says sorry to doors and goes through them sideways. The only person in town who walks toward him is Ridge Bickford, who is six, and thinks Jaxson is hilarious.

It is a year the woods said no. Not one acorn, not one beechnut, from the shore to the mountains, and a young bear alone for the first time comes down off the ridge, because hunger is a direction. Behind the Pelkeys’ shed, at dusk, a boy nobody has ever trusted finds the one creature in Maine that is not afraid of him.

So he feeds her. It is the kindest thing anybody in Halftide does all autumn. It is also the worst.