Iva Honeysuckle Discovers the World by Candice Ransom Page B

house, slamming the door.
    â€œI’ll be here at eight,” Heaven yelled after her.
    â€œI’m not going!”
    Heaven flip-flopped down the steps. “Eight on the dot. Don’t be late.”
    Iva stormed down the hall.
    Her mother was scrubbing Lily Pearl’s latest creation, Party Witch, off the wall. “Did you and Heaven fall out again?” she asked.
    â€œNo. We never fell in .” Iva thought that was funny.
    Her mother didn’t laugh. “Iva, Aunt Sissy Two and I always wanted to have our babies at the same time so you all would grow up best friends.”
    â€œDoesn’t sound like much of a job to me.”
    Her mother was still talking. “Arden and Hunter. Lily Pearl and Howard. The others are best friends, but you and Heaven…”
    â€œI can’t help it, Mama. I don’t like her, and that’s that.”
    Iva went into her room, put her map and crayons on her desk, and flopped down on her bed by her tree.
    She had asked for the tree for her fourth birthday. She remembered describing it with her hands—slender trunk, soft papery leaves. Her mother had said, “Iva, honey, wouldn’t you rather have a baby doll? Or a teddy bear?” No, it had to be the tree or nothing. She got her fake tree, tall in its wicker pot, thick with silk leaves.
    When she was a little kid, Iva had whispered her secrets to her tree. Now she clothespinned notes to the leaves. Slips of paper, scribbled with her hopes and dreams, places she longed to visit, people she liked and disliked.
    Friends, neighbors, teachers, and especially relatives were either in favor or not, depending on how they’d treated her. The names of people she was mad at were clipped to leaves drooping at the bottom of the tree. The ones she liked earned spots on the top branches.
    Most people rotated from the top to the bottom and back again. Except Heaven. She was assigned a permanent leaf at the very bottom, close to the floor. Her name-paper curled at the edges and was furry with dust.

    Iva checked the bottom branches. Slips of paper were pinned to two leaves—Lily Pearl for messing up Iva’s map, and Heaven in her usual spot. Iva moved Lily Pearl’s name to the top of the tree.
    That left Heaven all alone at the bottom. Which she deserved.
    Iva made up her mind. This summer she would start on her life’s ambition. And Heaven would not accompany Iva on her mission. Let her cousin arrange guest soaps in her Hope Drawer.
    Iva Honeysuckle had a bunch of discovering to do. First on her list, finding the buried gold her great-grandfather Ludwell Honeycutt had spent his whole life looking for.

T he next morning Iva sat up in bed with her pillow propped behind her back. Her dog, Sweetlips, dozed next to her, snoring lightly. She had named him after one of George Washington’s foxhounds. Most people didn’t know that George Washington was a discoverer before he became president.
    Iva held a small black book with crumbling edges. Weber Tire Company Record Book, Browning 8-8770 was printed on the front cover. At first Iva thought Browning 8-8770 was a code. Then she figured out it was an old-fashioned phone number.
    She touched the book reverently, as if it were an artifact from King Tut’s tomb. Earlier that year, Iva’s father had cleaned out their attic. He came across some of his grandfather’s belongings. He gave Iva her great-grandfather Ludwell Honeycutt’s tire record book, a geography bee medal dated 1923, and a stack of old National Geographic magazines.
    At night she leafed through the musty magazines, marveling at the black-and-white photographs of people living in foreign lands. One night as she was reading, two things fell out of the July 1949 issue.
    The first was a letter from the secretary of the National Geographic Society in Washington,
    D.C. It was addressed to Lowell Hunnicutt . Iva had frowned at the misspelling of her