Set Me Free Read Free Page B

didn’t matter whether the baby saw her pee, but
     she wasn’t sure if that was okay. She made sure her pants were down around her ankles and her butt was sticking far enough
     out that she wouldn’t splatter on her clothes. The pee took a few seconds to come; she pressed her face against the juniper
     and breathed in deeply. Little blue berries jangled against her face. The sharp smell of the juniper was like pee, but she
     couldn’t tell if it was her pee or the pee of the tree. She remembered she was going to sing to the baby, so she started on
     “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” again until she was done. Just then she heard the voices of Victor and her father. It was going
     to be exciting to explain about the baby to her dad. She pulled up her pants and stepped around the bush and waved.
    They were running toward her, toward the spot where the baby was. Or had been. Because it wasn’t until she looked at her father’s
     face, and Victor’s, that she glanced at where the baby was supposed to be, at where it had been just a moment ago, and saw
     that itwasn’t there anymore. Not it, not the blanket, not her sweatshirt, not anything.
    “Where is it?” her father asked, walking slowly forward.
    “I told you, Mr. Barrow, it was right there,” Victor said. He was looking at Amelia as if he didn’t know who she was.
    “Where’d you take it?” her father asked, taking her by the shoulders.
    “It was right there.” She pointed. “I swear. I just went to pee for a second.”
    “Did you move it?” he asked. He was starting to shake her a little bit. His grip on her shoulders was tight.
    “No,” she said. All she could think to say was “no.”
    Her father was frantic. He pushed his long fingers through his hair. “You just don’t lose a baby, Amelia,” he said. “Tell
     me where it is.”
    Amelia started to cry. “I don’t know, Daddy. I promise, I don’t know.” He squatted beside her then and hugged her tight.
    And that was it. They searched and searched, but nothing was found. Her father gave them a talking to for telling tall tales.
     He didn’t want everyone to think that she and Victor were liars, so they all three agreed that this “prank” would remain a
     secret. Amelia knew that her father was right. If the older kids, even the ones who played pranks on one another all the time,
     found out, they would act like she’d done something terrible.
    Even with the secret agreement, things unraveled. Victor wouldn’t talk to her anymore; whenever his mom was staying late at
     school, he sat in her office and did his homework. It was as if they’d never been friends. And her dad gave a stern lecture
     at assembly about the dangers of lying.
    But that wasn’t what got Amelia. She knew what was true. She knew there’d been a baby. She’d smelled it. What got her was
     knowing she would have to hold a terrible truth inside herself for the rest of her life: something bad had happened to that
     baby. Death. Just like Victor said. A wolf had dragged it, or goblins. Or she and her game and her fairy wand had made the
     baby appearfrom another world, and she had done the wrong thing with it, like not saying the best magic spell, and that had made the
     baby disappear again, back to a horrible land where it would know no happiness. She should have taken it into her arms and
     held it. She should have been brave. She should not have let it die.
    So Amelia vowed: no more fairy games. She didn’t know her own power.
    In the weeks afterward, before the memory faded and summer came and she forgot the reason that she and Victor Littlefoot would
     never be friends again (which seemed to matter less and less as time went on, if only because Victor and his mother moved
     soon thereafter to a faraway land called Chicago), Amelia could still see her father clearly, in that first moment when he’d
     taken her by the shoulders and asked where the baby was. He trusted her. She knew, despite what he said later, that