Diamond Willow by Helen Frost Page A

baby Diamond Willow!
    Mom had to think about it for a few days.
    I can see it now: They’re on the airplane
    flying to Anchorage. Mom’s in labor,
    she’ll agree to almost anything.
    Okay, she says. So Dad puts
    Diamond Willow on my
    birth certificate, and
    then Mom says,
    We will call
    the baby
    Willow.
    Â 
    If
    my
    parents
    had called
    me Diamond,
    would I have been
    one of those sparkly
    kinds of girls? I’m not
    sparkly. I’m definitely not
    a precious diamond—you know,
    the kind of person everyone looks at
    the minute she steps into a room. I’m the
    exact opposite: I’m skinny , average height,
    brown hair, and ordinary eyes. Good. I don’t
    want to sparkle like a jewel. I would much rather
    blend in than stick out. Also, I’m not one of
    those dog-obsessed kids who talk about
    nothing but racing in the Jr. Iditarod.
    I like being alone with my dogs
    on the trail. Just us, the trees,
    the snow, the stories I see
    in the animal tracks.
    No teachers, no
    parents, no
    sneak-up-
    on-you
    boys.
    Â 
    In
    the
    middle
    of my family
    in the middle of
    a middle-size town
    in the middle of Alaska,
    you will find middle-size,
    middle-kid, me . My father
    teaches science in the middle
    of my middle school. My mother
    is usually in the middle of my house.
    My brother, Marty, taller and smarter
    than I ever hope to be, goes to college in
    big-city Fairbanks. My sister, Zanna (short
    for Suzanna), is six years younger and
    twelve inches shorter than I am.
    She follows me everywhere—
    except for the dog yard.
    I don’t know why
    my little sister is
    so scared of
    dogs.
    Â 
    What
    I love
    about dogs:
    They don’t talk
    behind your back.
    If they’re mad at you,
    they bark a couple times
    and get it over with. It’s true
    they slobber on you sometimes.
    (I’m glad people don’t do that.) They
    jump out and scare you in the dark. (I know,
    I should say me , not “you”—some people aren’t
    afraid of anything.) But dogs don’t make fun
    of you. They don’t hit you in the back
    of your neck with an ice-covered
    snowball, and if they did, and
    it made you cry, all their
    friends wouldn’t stand
    there laughing
    at you.
    (Me.)
    Â 
    Three
    votes! Did they
    have to announce that?
    Why not just say, Congratulations
    to our new Student Council representative,
    Richard Olenka . Why say how many votes each
    person got (12, 7, 3)? I don’t know why I decided to
    run in the first place. A couple people said I should,
    and I thought, Why not? (I don’t like staying after
    school, and no one would listen to me even if
    I did have anything to say, which I don’t.)
    Now here I am, home right after school,
    and as soon as we finish feeding
    the dogs, Dad says, Willow,
    could you help me clean
    out the woodshed?
    I say, Okay, but
    it feels like
    I’m getting
    punished
    for being
    a loser.
    Â 
    We’re
    cleaning
    the woodshed,
    and I lift up a tarp.
    An old gray stick falls out.
    Just a stick. Why does it even catch
    my eye? Dad, what is this? I turn it over in
    my hands a few times; Dad studies it for a couple
    minutes, and then he gets so excited he almost pops.
    Willow, let me tell you about this! What you have
    found is more than just an old stick. This is the
    diamond willow stick I found that afternoon,
    just before you were born! Can it be—
    let’s see—twelve years ago already?
    All this time, I thought it was lost.
    He hands it back to me like it’s
    studded with real diamonds.
    This belongs to you now.
    Use your sharpest knife
    to skin off the bark.
    Find the diamonds.
    Polish the whole
    thing. It will
    be beautiful,
    Dad says.
    You’ll
    see.
    Â 
    I
    came
    out here to
    the mudroom
    so I could be alone
    and make a mess while I
    think my own thoughts and
    skin the bark off my stick. But it’s
    impossible to be alone in this house.
    Mom: Willow, don’t use that sharp knife
    when you’re mad.