Thumb on a Diamond Read Free Page B

but I realized, talking to that woman earlier, that I have been homesick for the way the people in my part of England feel about the countryside around them.”
    Mr. Entwhistle told Charlie that he had been raised in the Lake District of England, a place where every hill and every pond and grove of trees has a name and has had a name for hundreds of years. Mr. Entwhistle liked Canada, except for the fact that there are so many mountains that hills are rarely named, and so many lakes and rivers that creeks and ponds don’t seem to count.
    â€œEven mountains,” he said, “may have names on official maps stored in an Ottawa basement, but they are just part of the scenery to people who stare at them every day. I like your village. Every piece of scenery has a name and a history. It reminds me of home.”
    So, Mr. Entwhistle moved into the Addison house and discovered that the woman at the dock was an artist even more famous than him.
    I promised you a baseball story, but I wanted you to have some sense of our village first. You may have noticed something. If you didn’t, I’ll make it clear. There is no grass in New Auckland. There is no field in New Auckland. Our tiny group of buildings hugs the sandy shore between a tall, rocky mountain and the deep, salty ocean.
    This is not an ordinary baseball story.

    3
THE IDEA
    SKIP…SKIP…SKIP …skip…plop.
    The skips were the sounds of a small flat stone jumping across the ocean’s surface, away from the beach. The plop was the sound of that same stone sinking.
    â€œFour skips,” I yelled to Susan. “I’m pathetic.”
    â€œA wave must have hit it,” said Susan. She leaned over and started to search the rocky beach. She picked up four flat rocks, checked their size and weight, and dropped three back onto the beach. She stared out at the ocean, concentrating. She pulled back her arm and flipped the stone over the water.
    â€œOne…two…three…four…five…six… seven…” I counted out loud before the stone disappeared under the water’s surface. “You win.”
    Susan always won.

    â€œDo you think people all over the world skip stones when there’s water around?” I asked.
    â€œMaybe people all over the world aren’t as bored as we are,” suggested Susan.
    â€œWe could fish off the dock.”
    â€œLike we did yesterday and the day before?”
    â€œWe could play a board game.”
    â€œEvery game in the village has at least three missing pieces.”
    I listened to the soft waves lap onto the beach. Even the ocean was lazy and bored.
    â€œWhat I really want,” said Susan, sitting on the rocky beach, “is to go someplace. I want to go to Vancouver or Toronto or Seattle or New York or Paris or even Prince Rupert. I want to see an elevator. I want to see streetlights and a real park with swings. I want that school trip your dad keeps talking about.”
    â€œHe’s trying,” I said. “He’s written tons of letters, and he talks to people at the school board for a few hours each week.”
    â€œAnd?”
    I shrugged. “There’s money for sports teams and for tournaments but there isn’t any money for a group of kids to just see a city.”
    New Auckland has a basketball team for the high-school kids. All the villages along the coast love basketball and have good teams. Sometimes our team manages to win the league championship and go to the regional championships and even to the provincial championships in Vancouver.
    None of the villages have teams for other sports.
    â€œWhat if we had a sports team?” asked Susan. “Then we could become champions and the school board would have to pay for us to go to Vancouver.”
    â€œNobody from this village plays anything except basketball. And you have to be in high school to play on the team. Besides, the basketball