A Clatter of Jars Read Free Page A

blister—insistent, sharp, painful. But Lily hadn’t untied it.
    She tugged her duffel farther up her aching shoulder, her attention stolen by the music drifting through one of the lodge’s windows. It was a song Lily was quite familiar with. This was an instrumental version, without lyrics, but Lily knew the words by heart.
    Los golpes en la vida
    preparan nuestros corazones
    como el fuego forja al acero.
    Lily and Max’s father had sung them the melancholy lullaby countless times, on nights when he wasn’t traveling for work. When he sang the tune, the notes swept you up and cradled you, made you feel safe.
    (“Why do you always have to travel?” Lily had asked him last year, when he’d been in Prague instead of her school auditorium for the opening ceremony of the Talent festival. He’d responded as he always did. Not that it was his job—not that he
had
to be away so often, that he had no choice—but rather: “Oh, Liria. Traveling helps ease my heartache.” Which didn’t explain why her father had begun his travels long before he and Lily’s mother had been married.)
    Lily let the words of the song sink in. Her father had translated the lyrics for her once, but she never felt she truly understood them in any language.
    The blows of life
    prepare our hearts
    like fire forges iron.
    Summer camp, Lily thought, pulling herself from the music to rejoin the tour, didn’t seem like a place for melancholy songs.
    When they reached Cabin Eight, Del creaked open the door and let them inside.
    â€œCordelia Fabius Sibson,” Miles said as he entered the cabin. “Eighty-two years old as of her last birthday. Talent: Scribe.”
    Lily wound the length of yarn around her right thumb, staring at the three bunks that lined the cabin walls.
    Three bunks.
    Six beds.
    â€œAre we waiting for another camper?” Chuck asked Del. “There are six beds, and only five of us.”
    â€œThe assignments for this cabin were a little odd,” Del admitted. “I don’t know what Jo was thinking, but you don’t question Jo. Anyway, you were supposed to have one more cabinmate, but at the last minute, he—”
    Lily dropped her duffel with a heavy
thunk
. “I need to go to the infirmary,” she said.
    â€œYou okay?” Del asked, stitching his eyebrows together.
    â€œI have to go,” Lily repeated. And she squeezed past him out the door, racing down the path. Kicking up dirt.
    It should have been Max in that sixth bed. It should have been their summer together, while Hannah the housefly was far off in a different cabin, buzzing at someone else. But they weren’t together, because three weeks ago, Max had gotten hurt.
    Around and around went the length of yarn.
    Lily was the one who’d hurt him.

Jo
    J OLENE M AL LORY DUG HER HAND DEEP INTO THE pocket of her knitted sweater, retrieving her harmonica. The instrument was well used and well loved, silver, scuffed, and slightly dented at one end.
    Running her thumb over the harmonica’s mouthpiece, Jo let her gaze settle on the smattering of sample-size glass jars that sat on her office shelves. Soon those shelves would be overflowing with hundreds of identical jars, carefully labeled and sorted. At the moment, however, there were a mere half dozen. Each jar was hardly larger than a Ping-Pong ball, with the words
Darlington Peanut Butter
embossed on the bottom. And to most people, they would have appeared empty.
    Jolene Mallory was not most people.
    Her gaze fixed upon the leftmost jar, Jo put the harmonica to her lips and, ignoring the sounds of the three hundred campers arriving for the first session of the summer, she began to play.
    Los golpes en la vida
    preparan nuestros corazo—
    â€œYou think you’d get sick of that song, after a while.”
    Jo swiveled around to face the man in the doorway, who was holding a familiar briefcase. “I thought I locked that