Heart Finds, page 1
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2022 by Jaime Berry
Cover art copyright © 2022 by Oriol Vidal. Cover design by Karina Granda. Cover copyright © 2022 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
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First Edition: November 2022
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Title: Heart finds / Jaime Berry.
Description: First edition. | New York : Little, Brown and Company, 2022. | Audience: Ages 8–12. | Summary: Eleven-year-old Mabel is a quiet loner who only feels like herself when she is extreme treasure hunting with her grampa, but when her friendships start to crumble and her grampa suffers a stroke, Mabel must learn to let go of the past and embrace the future.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022035569 | ISBN 9780316390477 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780316390675 (ebook)
Subjects: CYAC: Collectors and collecting—Fiction. | Grandfathers—Fiction. | Change—Fiction. | Middle schools—Fiction. | Schools—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.B46346 He 2022 | DDC [Fic] —dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022035569
ISBNs: 978-0-316-39047-7 (hardcover), 978-0-316-39067-5 (ebook)
E3-20221013-JV-NF-ORI
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
Acknowledgments
About the Author
For my grandmother Stella, who was my very first heart find
1
MY GRAMPA ALWAYS SAYS THE BEST TREASURES are the ones that hide in plain sight. That’s what we search for—unnoticed, unwanted wonders. It takes a certain kind of skill to see something special in an item that’s been tossed aside. We have to look with our eyes and our hearts. But when we do discover a hidden gem, it’s like pure magic.
Today, the dumpsters outside the Old Creek Village apartment complex are a picker’s heaven, relatively clean and stuffed to the brim. But Grampa and I, we don’t see a dumpster at all—to us it’s an oversize treasure chest. We’re urban scavengers, modern-day pirates, only without the stealing. Mom calls it dumpster diving, but we think of ourselves as extreme treasure hunters. Plus, we don’t actually dive into dumpsters. Grampa climbs in very carefully and only when he has to.
“Eureka!” Grampa shouts, shaking stray pieces of newspaper from a shoebox. “Full of cassette tapes and CDs. Can you imagine throwing away music?” This isn’t really a question. It’s more of a statement of disbelief.
People throw away all kinds of stuff. So really, I can imagine it, but I shake my head anyway. Grampa stands and passes the picking tool over to me. “Want a turn?”
“You know I do.” I snatch the pole and use a milk crate as a stepstool. First, I poke a black Hefty, but it’s a bit soupy, so I move on to a white bag pulled taut on the bottom in weird, angular edges. It’s heavy and I lift it with a grunt over the edge of the dumpster, like pulling a giant catch from the ocean. Grampa says I have a “feel” for picking, knowing which bags to explore and which to avoid.
Dumpsters in Abner, Oklahoma, aren’t like the ones in the movies, full of puffy garbage bags waiting for people to fall into them from fire escapes. Nope. There’ve been some nasty surprises, a few with teeth, but we’ve also found a diamond ring, hardcover first editions of three books in the Nancy Drew series, and a table setting of genuine silver silverware worth almost five hundred dollars, even though the fork was bent.
I gently lower the bag and hear something solid as it touches the pavement. Untying the top isn’t easy with dishwashing gloves on, but I can already feel it, that hum of excitement whenever a big find is nearby. Under an empty egg carton, I find a dusty wooden box. Once I lift it out and brush it off, I click open the hinged lid and a tangle of jewelry almost spills out.
“Whoa,” I whisper.
Grampa comes over for a peek. He reaches in and takes something from the bottom while I try to unknot a mess of necklaces.
“What do you think?” Grampa holds up a small brooch, a fancy silver pin shaped like a spider. “I know jewelry’s not your thing, but this one’s kind of cool, right? There’s another—a silver butterfly.”
Grampa places the pin in my palm. I hold it close, turning it this way and that to see if it sparks anything in me. Just then the fading afternoon light flashes on the abdomen, and its leaf-green stone flickers. I nod and say, “I like it.” I take the butterfly one for my best friend, Ashley, and slide it into my pocket.
He smiles at me and says, “Sometimes you don’t find what you were looking for, but just what your heart needed.”
Today, we’ve uncovered a crate full of lampshades, a table with only one broken leg, and two grocery bags full of what appear to be brand-new men’s underwear. We believe that almost everything can be fixed. If it worked once, it can work again. But it’s hard figuring out what to let go of and what to keep.
We won’t be keeping the underwear.
I smile down at the little bug pin. The gemstone is smooth and solid, not plastic. Some fakes are easy to spot, some aren’t. Maybe it belonged to a bug scientist studying the effects of venom. Or maybe a spy? Or some sort of secret double agent like Black Widow? Maybes are the best part of treasure hunting. Who knows what adventures that little spider’s been on, and now, it’ll be a part of mine. I stand a little straighter and then stare at Grampa.
He shakes his head. “Don’t make me say it.”
“Come on, Grampa.” I work the pin through the fabric of my coveralls, shut the little clasp, and then look up at him again.
“All right, all right. You win catch of the day,” Grampa admits. He peels off his gloves, ruffles my hair, and adds, “Don’t let it go to your head.”
Grampa resells most of what we find at Frank’s Pawn and Salvage and donates the rest to his friend Archie, who owns the Tuesday Thrift. Some things we hang on to for our personal collections. And we’re always on the lookout for heart finds, items that take hold and stir something in our hearts.
“You’ve got your first day of sixth grade tomorrow, and your mom will be by soon. Should we call it a day?” Grampa asks.
I look around at all our treasures. “Day’s a weird name for all this stuff, but okay.”
Grampa shakes his head. “I don’t know whose jokes are worse, yours or mine.” He nods toward the pin. “Decide to take her for a spin?”
“She’ll keep some eyes out for me,” I say. “My own personal spy-der.”
“Good one, Mae-mae.” Grampa is the only person who calls me Mae-mae instead of Mabel, one more thing that’s just between us. He puts a hand on my shoulder. “Looks good on you, but I hope it doesn’t cause your life to tailspin.” I roll my eyes, as he thinks of another one. “Now, you’ve got your own website!”
“Ha-ha,” I say, but actually laugh a little too. “Your jokes are definitely worse.”
During the summer, Grampa and I have a loose schedule. We don’t always stick to it, but normally Monday is Frank’s Pawn and Salvage followed by a taco dinner on Grampa’s couch while viewing our favorite show, Collector’s Menagerie. Tuesday is always a trip to the Tuesday Thrift, but we stop and visit with Archie whenever we have a donation. Wednesday means the Goodwill, sometimes a late afternoon hunt like today, then dinner with Mom at the Icon diner. Thursdays we look over our treasures from the week and plan for upcycling projects. Friday is our day of rest and relaxation. Weekends we reserve for repurposing our finds, taking what we’ve kept and giving them a new beginning.
We load our haul into the back of Grampa’s pickup truck. Grampa closes the tailgate and texts Archie.
“He’ll take the lampshades and the underwear.” There’s no telling what someone’s heart needs most. Grampa starts the truck and says what he always does at the end of a good hunt. “Another day full of treasures.” He doesn’t just mean the finds, but our time together too.
Sometimes we don’t keep anything at all. Those are what we call “dud days.” We never know what a hunt holds, and that’s what makes it so fun.
When we swing by the Tuesday Thrift, Archie’s yellow truck is already there, and he stands out front waiting, dressed like he’s ready for church. One of Archie’s heart finds was a sketch of a banana, and he had no idea at the time that it would change his life. That’s how heart finds normally work; you don’t know what you have on your hands right away, but your heart has a clue—heart finds can connect you to a special person or a moment in time, or better yet, both.
Grampa stops and unloads. I lean out my window and wave to Archie. “Hey, sweetheart,” he says. “Find anything for your notebook today?”
“Not today,” I say.
Grampa climbs back in with a handful of butterscotch candies from Archie.
Archie’s find helped him fulfill a lifelong dream of opening his own secondhand store, where he takes donated items and keeps them until they call to someone else’s heart. He writes heart-find stories from customers in a battered notebook by the register. So, I followed his example and started my own journal. I have one entry already.
Grampa and I stop by our storage space before we head to his house. His home is the shabbiest one in Lakehaven, the best neighborhood in our town. The neighbors don’t quite appreciate Grampa’s innovative decorating. His walkway is lined with the rims of broken plates, birdhouses built from scrap wood sit atop the rungs of a ladder, his fence is made from a few iron headboards that we painted yellow, two old colanders bursting with ferns hang over his porch, and his doormat is a coiled, recycled garden hose held together with zip ties. Everything is living out its second chance to the fullest.
Grampa and I exchange maybes about my pin all the way to the front door. Grampa nudges me. “Maybe it belonged to famous country singer and fellow Oklahoman Reba McEntire. That green gem would look fantastic with her red hair.”
This is a pretty boring maybe, but Grampa has a thing for Reba, so I just nod. He frowns at my reaction and thinks of another. “Or maybe it belonged to famous outlaw Belle Starr. She lived in Eufaula and hid her outlaw friends in what’s now Robbers Cave State Park. And when those fellas robbed stagecoaches, they took the passengers’ jewelry.”
As we walk in, I look down at my spider pin and say, “Now, that’s a good maybe.”
Mom’s loading Grampa’s dishwasher, wearing pink rubber gloves, an apron over her dress, and a deep frown. “Well, I’m glad you two came back empty-handed. There’s hardly an inch to spare in this house.”
Grampa and I exchange a quick look. Secret keeping isn’t my favorite thing, but Mom would put an end to a lot of our adventures if she knew all the details.
The storage space is one of the details Mom doesn’t know. She pulls the gloves off, smacks them down on the counter, and scans me head to toe. I’m wearing the coveralls Grampa bought me. They are just like Grampa’s, only his are faded and softer. Until now, Mom didn’t know about the coveralls either.
She pinches the bridge of her nose. “Mabel, go change. You know we’re going out for dinner.” Grampa, Mom, and I eat together at the Icon diner once a week—our one family tradition.
While I’m latching my new pin to my T-shirt, I hear Mom’s voice rise and I press my ear to the door. At first, I can’t make anything out, but then I hear her say, “Different isn’t always a good thing.” Whatever Grampa says is impossible to hear. His voice is a low, steady rumble, like a box fan running at night.
I look down at my little pin and say, “Don’t worry. They argue; they make up. That’s how it works with Mom and Grampa.”
I step out into a quiet hallway. “I’ll clean up and meet you two there,” Grampa says, and gives me a wink—our secret signal that everything will be fine.
There’s twice as much traffic because all the university students are moving back for the start of school. Mom grouches about Grampa the whole drive. “You know, when I was kid he was a workaholic, at the bank constantly. But now I guess he’s just replaced one unhealthy obsession with another, filling the void… literally.” Grampa worked at the Bank of Oklahoma, whose motto is “We go above. So you can go beyond.” He retired and traded in his old BMW for an even older truck, but he still wears some of his bank T-shirts.
A car cuts Mom off and she yells, “Thank you very much!” This is part of what she calls her path to positivity, but mostly it seems like saying the opposite of what she means.
She finds a parking spot, turns off the car, looks over at my cargo shorts and Doc Martens, and takes a deep breath. “Let’s have a nice night, okay?”
I wonder if when she has a bad night, she thinks it’s my fault.
Benny and his husband, Otis, own the Icon. As soon as we walk in, Benny stands up from behind the front desk like he was waiting for us. He has a tall poof of black hair with silver on the sides, and he’s also a fan of Collector’s Menagerie.
“Jane and Mabel, my two beauty queens,” he says, with his arms open to hug Mom.
Long ago, Mom was an actual beauty queen. She laughs like this is the best thing she’s heard all day, but I roll my eyes. If Mom is anything to go on, beauty queens do not appreciate the pocket capacity of a good pair of cargo shorts.
“Benny, that was years ago,” Mom says, and touches the pearl necklace she always wears. Her pageant days are long gone. Now, she works at Pattie’s Parties as a wedding planner. But she’s also a professional tablescaper, competitively designing and decorating these elaborate table settings. Her last year’s county fair runner-up table was Dinner with Elvis. The plates looked like records and sat on a gold-flecked mirrored tabletop next to blue suede napkins. There’s an Elvis table at the Icon, a Beyoncé booth, three tables featuring movie stars from black-and-white films I’ve never heard of, and more. Mom and Benny worked on the themes together.
Grampa comes in right after us and shakes hands with Benny. Then we go to our booth, the one dedicated to Princess Diana, and I slide in next to Grampa. Mom stares up at Princess Diana with her blond bob and pearl necklace and touches her own blond hair and pearls like she wishes she was looking in a mirror and not at a photograph.
Benny comes over for our order and says, “I read about a woman who bought a five-dollar painting at a thrift store because she thought it was so ugly that it’d make a perfect joke gift. Turned out to be a Jackson Pollock worth millions.”
“Whoa,” I say. “That’s Pol-lucky.”
Benny laughs and says, “Mabel, you’re the best kid I know.”
Mom looks doubtful.
During dinner, Mom and Grampa do most of the talking. I study the spider pin, with its little white beads lining the legs and eyes made of shiny black stones. And there aren’t just two eyes; there are eight, just like the real thing. A Sp-eye-eye-eye-eye-eye-eye-eye-eye-der. I smile, and when I look up Mom is frowning.
“Did you hear what I asked?” she says.
I shake my head. Her frown deepens.
“You’ll be old enough for the Youth Division soon. So, I think we should do some tables together this year. You know, collaborate. I’ve got a few competitions coming up. What do you think?” She points her fork at me. “My tables are a little like a collection, you know.” I raise my eyebrows and send Grampa a quick look. But Mom sees it and crosses her arms. “I don’t appreciate being ganged up on.”
“Now, Janie. Don’t be dramatic.” Grampa turns to me. “Might be fun.”
I help Mom at competitions already and it’s not even close to fun—collaborate, emphasis on the bore. Plus, when Mom creates a table, she spends months planning and polishing. Maybes and surprises are her worst nightmare.
“Interesting idea,” I answer. This is something my fifth-grade teacher said whenever anyone said something way off.
Mom sighs and points to my shirt. “Is that pin something you found today?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Like it?”
“It’s different,” she says, and gives me a tight smile.
Grampa looks up. “I think different is good.”
Mom crosses her arms again just as Benny comes over with our food. “Enjoying your last days of summer, Mabel?”
“New year, new beginning. Right?” Mom asks. Mom has a thing for new beginnings from her one and only collection—self-help books. They’re all about changing your life. A New You: A Path to Internal Transformation; Beginning Again: The Fresh Start Within; The Magic of Beginnings.
