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  That evening, as the Colonel puttered about our living room, I settled on my bed and printed a title across the bright blue cover of a new spiral notebook. THE PIGGLY WIGGLY CHRONICLES, VOLUME 6. TOP SECRET. If you ain’t me, stop reading.

  As far as I know, I’m the only kid in Tupelo Landing researching her own autobiography. I’m also the only kid who needs to. So far, my life is one big, fat mystery. At its heart lies this question: Who is my Upstream Mother, and why hasn’t she come for me?

  Fortunately, I’m a natural born detective, hot on my own trail since birth. I mostly decorate my room with clues.

  The Piggly Wiggly Chronicles, volumes 1 through 5, line the bookshelf over my flea market desk. The sprawling map of North Carolina, which Miss Lana helped me tape on the wall above my bed, pinpoints my search for my Upstream Mother. Using the process of elimination and a set of color-coded pushpins, I’ve marked all the places I know she’s not. By now, the map bristles like a neon porcupine.

  My bedside phone—a heavy, black 1950s model with a genuine dial—jangled. I scooped it up on the second ring. “Mo LoBeau’s flat, Mo speaking,” I said. “A message in a bottle? Yes sir. It’s mine. … You found it where?”

  I hopped onto my bed and studied the map. “Cypress Point? I see it on the map, sir. … No, I’m not upset that you’re not my mother. Thanks for calling.”

  I jammed a green pushpin into Cypress Point and settled on my bed.

  How did I wind up short a mother? Good question.

  I was born eleven years ago, during one of the meanest hurricanes in history. That night as people slept, they say, the rivers rose like a mutiny and pushed ashore, shouldering houses off foundations, lifting the dead from graves, gulping down lives like fresh-shucked oysters.

  Some say I was born unlucky that night. Not me. I say I was three times lucky.

  Lucky once when my Upstream Mother tied me to a makeshift raft and sent me swirling downstream to safety. Lucky twice when the Colonel crashed his car and stumbled to the creek just in time to snatch me from the flood. Lucky three times when Miss Lana took me in like I was her own, and kept me.

  Why all that happened is Mystery on a larger scale. Miss Lana calls it Fate. Dale calls it a miracle. The Colonel just shrugs and says “Here we are.”

  Behind my back, Anna Celeste Simpson—my Sworn Enemy for Life—says I’m a throw-away kid, with no true place to call home. So far, nobody’s had the guts to say it to my face, but I hear whispers the way a knife-thrower’s assistant hears knives.

  I hate Anna Celeste Simpson.

  The Colonel knocked on my open door and peeked in from the living room, his gray stubble glistening in the lamplight. “Busy, Soldier?”

  “Sorry, sir,” I said, closing my notebook. “I’m contemplating an intro to Volume Six. It’s Top Secret.”

  “I’m sure I haven’t got the clearance,” he said. “But as a dedicated member of your mess crew, I’m contemplating popcorn. Thoughts?”

  “Excellent strategy, sir.” I hesitated. “Colonel, has Miss Lana checked in?”

  “Not yet,” he said. “But she only left this morning. We’re nowhere near the Three Day Rule.”

  Miss Lana and I made the Three Day Rule last year, after the Colonel got turned around in the Appalachians and didn’t check in for a week. Miss Lana went frantic, dragging half the town along with her. Now whenever he or Miss Lana leaves, which is often, the Three Day Rule automatically kicks in.

  It’s a no-brainer for Miss Lana, who naturally checks in almost every day. When she leaves, she visits her cousin Gideon, in Charleston. Usually, they shop. Twice last year, she took me with her. I have the plaid sneakers to prove it.

  The Three Day Rule’s harder on the Colonel. When he leaves, he leaves to sleep under the stars—usually on a mountainside or at the seashore. Cell service along North Carolina’s wild fringes remains as patchy as it is here in Tupelo Landing—where, except for scratchy blips, we ain’t got none. For him, calling every third day is a tribulation.

  The Colonel glanced at my phone. “Lana loves talking to you, Soldier,” he said. “I believe you have Cousin Gideon’s number.”

  “Yes sir, I’ve seared it into my brain,” I said. “But I don’t want to over-dial.”

  He nodded and slipped back into the living room.

  I opened Volume 6, skipping the intro in favor of a quick note to Upstream Mother. I’ve been writing to her ever since I learned to print (Volume 2). I used to think she could somehow read my unsent letters. Now, of course, I know she can’t. I still write, partly out of habit and partly to settle my thoughts. Besides, my teacher, Miss Retzyl, says personal letters make rich research material for autobiographies—in my case, an obvious plus. I picked up my pen.

  Dear Upstream Mother,

  Miss Retzyl claims my vast experience in discovering where you’re not helps me zero in on you. But frankly, my map can’t hold many more pushpins. Neither can my heart. Eleven years is a long time to search. Drop me a line or pick up the phone. I’m on the verge of puberty.

  Mo

  Eleven years is no lie.

  Miss Lana mounted the first search when I was a week old. She dialed her way upstream, targeting churches and town halls as far west as Raleigh. No one had lost a baby. When our neighbors went out of town they asked too: “Anybody missing a lucky newborn?” My map’s 167 yellow pushpins mark the places people said no.

  The green pushpins are Bottle Pins, which I started adding the summer I turned eight. Me and Dale had plundered our way down to the creek, to escape the heat. As we lolled in the water, a leaf drifted by. “Look,” I gasped, pointing.

  It was so obvious! Why hadn’t I thought of it before?

  “Dale, what do we know about my Upstream Mother?” I demanded.

  “She ain’t here,” he said, standing and emptying the mud out of his pockets.

  “We know she lives by the water,” I prompted.

  He sat back down, the mud rising in the water like smoke. “So?”

  “So, if water took me away from her, water can bring us back together,” I said, watching the leaf swirl away. “I’ll send her a message by water, so she can find me. This is brilliant. Let’s go tell Miss Lana.”

  Moments later, I stood in the café, creek water puddling around my feet as I explained my plan: I’d put messages in bottles and release them far upstream, letting them float down to my true mother.

  Miss Lana studied me like I was a star chart and she had crashed on Mars. “I don’t know, sugar,” she finally said. She rang up Tinks Williams’s bill and handed him his change. “It seems like a long shot to me. A very long shot.”

  “But Miss Lana,” I said, “we have to. The water’s all I got.”

  “I’m going to Goldsboro for a tractor part,” Tinks said. “I’ll sling a message off the bridge for you, if you want me to.”

  Grandmother Miss Lacy Thornton dabbed her lips with her napkin. “I think it’s a fine idea,” she said. “I’m going to Raleigh tomorrow. I’d be glad to release one if you’d like, Lana.” She smiled. “You have to admit, some things do look better sailing away,” she’d said, and Miss Lana had nodded.

  So far my bottles have failed. Every once in a blue moon someone finds one and calls, but most just disappear. Like Miss Lana, I now recognize them as long shots. Still, I keep them ready for folks heading west, with my standard note inside: Dear Upstream Mother. You lost me during a hurricane 11 years ago. I’m ok. Write back or call. 252-555-4663. Mo.

  Sometimes I still dream she floats an answer back to me. But I always wake up before I can make out the words.

  The Colonel rat-a-tat-tatted against the door. “I’ve located Lana’s cooking oil and a popcorn pan,” he reported, looking frazzled. “Popcorn front and center in five.”

  “Message received, sir,” I said.

  The Colonel’s a wizard in the café kitchen, where he organizes things in neat lines and stacks. Miss Lana organizes our personal kitchen by “intuitiv
e whim”—circus-worthy towers of plates and bowls, canned goods stacked by color, a refrigerator of health foods possibly gone toxic. The Colonel says he can’t find a dad-blamed thing in there. He would say more, but Miss Lana doesn’t allow cursing.

  The phone rang again. “I got it,” I shouted, scooping it off the hook. “Hello? Miss Lana? … Oh, hey Grandmother Miss Lacy Thornton. How are you?” I asked, trying not to sound disappointed. “Fine. … No ma’am, not yet, but she’ll call. …”

  Miss Lana says the good thing about living in a small town is everybody knows your business, and they pitch in. The Colonel says the bad thing about living in a small town is everybody knows your business, and they pitch in. It cuts both ways.

  “Yes ma’am,” I said, “Anna Celeste’s party is Saturday, but I don’t need a ride. … No ma’am. It’s because Anna Celeste is my Sworn Enemy for Life and I’d rather go face-down in a plate of raw chicken entrails than go to her party. Plus I’m not invited. … Yes ma’am, I’ll tell the Colonel you called. Good-bye.”

  Anna Celeste Simpson—blond hair, brown eyes, perfect smile—became my Sworn Enemy for Life our first day of kindergarten.

  Miss Lana had walked me to school and fled, crying. As I waited for the bell that would spell my doom, I spied a princess-like girl across the muddy playground. A new friend! I started toward her. Her pinch-faced mother grabbed her arm. “No, honey,” she said in a pretend whisper. “It’s that girl from the café. She’s not one of us.”

  Not one of us?

  Until that instant, everybody in my world had been “one of us.” Still, I might have regained my Legendary Poise if little Anna Celeste hadn’t squinted at me and shown a faint, pink crescent of tongue.

  For one sickening moment, I thought I would cry. Then I had a better idea.

  I lowered my head and charged like a bull, the blood pounding in my ears as my white sandals pounded across the playground. My head slammed into Anna’s tender belly just as the bell rang. I trotted toward my first time-out, leaving Anna Celeste wheezing in the mud.

  For me, it was a Gold Star day. I’d identified an enemy, and I’d made a life decision: I might come home tore up from fighting or late from being punished, but I’d never come home crying. So far, I ain’t.

  The Colonel took my educational debut in stride. Miss Lana was a harder sell. “Hold on, sugar,” she said, pulling out her dog-eared copy of Suddenly Mom. “Let’s see what the experts say.” I leaned against her as she ran her finger across a page. “As I suspected, there are better ways to express baby rage,” she said, taking my hand. “We’re going to the Piggly Wiggly.”

  At the grocery store, she bought my first spiral notebook—a bright red one—and the Piggly Wiggly Chronicles were born. I filled Volume 1 with scribbled portraits of Anna Celeste in mud.

  The phone rang again. “Mo’s place. Mo speaking.”

  “Hi, sugar,” Miss Lana said. “How are you?”

  I smiled. “Fine,” I said, closing Volume 6. “How’s Charleston?”

  “Beautiful. And hot.” Miss Lana’s voice is the color of sunlight in maple syrup. “How did things go today?”

  “Fine.” A long silence crackled through our line.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked. Miss Lana reads my voice like a Gypsy reads tea leaves.

  Should I mention Mr. Jesse’s boat? Detective Joe Starr? The murder in Winston-Salem? The Underbird? The Colonel’s lie?

  “Nothing,” I said. “How’s Cousin Gideon?”

  “Fine. Well, a little nervous. His play opens this evening. And the Colonel?” She doesn’t say so, but Miss Lana worries about the Colonel, maybe because of his background. Or the fact that he doesn’t have one.

  The Colonel came to town the same stormy night I did, crashing headfirst into a pine at the edge of town. Some people say he lost his memory in the wreck. Others say he lost it before he got in the car, or he wouldn’t have been out in a hurricane. Either way, he climbed out of that car free of every memory he’d ever owned.

  Rumors swirl around the Colonel like ink around an octopus: that he’s a retired warrior, or a paper-pusher. That he’s from Atlanta, or Nashville. That he came to town broke, or carrying a suitcase of cash.

  I suspect he started most of the rumors himself.

  “The Colonel’s just fine, Miss Lana,” I said. “He’s making popcorn.”

  “Oh dear,” she said, and I could hear her smile.

  “Popcorn, front and center,” the Colonel barked from the living room.

  Miss Lana laughed. “It sounds like he survived,” she said. “Run along, sugar. Tell the Colonel hello for me. I’ll see you in a couple of days.”

  “Yes ma’am.” I grabbed Volume 6 and made a beeline for my favorite chair as the Colonel folded himself onto Miss Lana’s velvet settee. He looks as out of place as a coyote in a tuxedo among Miss Lana’s Victorian curlicues.

  Our fancy house surprises people used to the café’s plain, cinderblock face. The Colonel built the café and our house together, in one building. The café faces the street. Our home faces the creek.

  Anna Celeste calls our place the Taj Ma-Gall, because she says you got to have gall to talk about a five-room house the way we do. Miss Lana calls her room a suite, and the Colonel’s room his quarters. Last year, the Colonel and Miss Lana gave me my own apartment. Anna Celeste says it’s just a closed-in side porch with a bathroom stuck on the side. I say I’m the only kid in Tupelo Landing with her own flat.

  “Miss Lana called,” I told the Colonel, and he smiled. “She’s fine.”

  “History Channel?” he offered, handing me a bowl of popcorn. The Colonel enjoys reliving battles he may or may not have been in. “Any progress on your intro?”

  “Autobiographies are tough when you’re clueless,” I admitted, settling in. I picked up my pen.

  Miss Lana says her life’s a tapestry. Mine’s more of a crazy quilt stitched together with whatever happened to be at hand. Then there’s the Colonel.

  “Excuse me, sir,” I said. “Do you feel more like a tapestry or a quilt?”

  He tossed a handful of popcorn in his mouth. “Wool blanket,” he said. “Warm, scratchy, too ugly to steal.”

  “Thank you, sir,” I said, closing Volume 6 and settling in.

  I glanced out the window, at Mr. Jesse’s lights flickering a couple hundred yards down the creek, like they had every night of my life.

  It’s funny, the things you think you’ll always see again.

  Chapter 4

  Meeting Up at Lavender’s

  Mr. Jesse lingered over lunch the next day. “This pudding ain’t right,” he said, a fleck of meringue clinging to his unshaven chin. “Take it off my bill.”

  I eyed the half-eaten dessert du jour. “The Colonel’s banana pudding is county-renowned, Mr. Jesse,” I said. “You’re just suffering from sticker shock. It happens every time you order dessert.”

  Dale rolled his eyes. The Colonel says if you handed Mr. Jesse a two-dollar sandwich wrapped in a twenty-dollar bill, he’d still complain about the price.

  “I can’t take back half a pudding, Mr. Jesse,” I said. “You know I can’t.”

  He slapped four George Washingtons on the counter. “Count whatever you charge for that pudding as your tip,” he growled, and stalked off glaring like the afternoon sun.

  The Colonel strolled in from the kitchen and tossed his apron on the counter. “You two have performed above and beyond the call of duty,” he said, watching Mr. Jesse disappear down the lane. “You’re at liberty for the rest of the afternoon.”

  We sprinted for the door before he could change his mind.

  “Want to go fishing?” I asked Dale as the door banged shut behind us.

  He drained a soda and crumpled the can. “Not until Mr. Jesse settles down about that boat. It’s not that I’m scared of getting caught,” he added, giving me a quick look. “It’s just that I’m too pretty to do hard time. Lavender already told me.”

  Lavender, a
s I may have mentioned, is Dale’s big brother.

  “Hey,” Dale said, flipping his empty can to me. “Practice me.”

  Dale dreams of being the first rising sixth grader to be drafted by a high school football team. This is because he sings in church, which his daddy says is sissified. Football ain’t. Dale may not know much from the classroom, but his recess skills are legendary. He’s small, but he’s a wildcat of a receiver and fearless when he goes up for a pass. I sighed. “Buttonhook on three,” I said.

  He set up to my left.

  “Set!” I said, looking right and left. “Down! Hut-hut-hut!”

  Dale sprinted across the parking lot. I dropped back three paces and he did a neat buttonhook. My pass sailed high, but he climbed into the air like a cat scrambling up a tree, and snagged it. Touchdown!

  “I’m going home to check on Mama,” he called, veering across the parking lot to his bike. Dale’s protective of Miss Rose. “You want to meet up at Lavender’s?” he asked. “We can watch him work on his car.”

  Visit Lavender? The day went golden.

  “Sure,” I said, trying to sound casual. “See you there.”

  We got two streets in Tupelo Landing: First Street, where the café sits, and Last, where Lavender lives. We like to say if you’re looking for somebody in Tupelo Landing, you’ll find them, First and Last.

  I discovered Lavender working in his front yard, the hood of his faded red Monte Carlo up. While he tinkered, I settled in the cool, dense shade of a water oak and told him about Joe Starr’s visit—even though he’d probably heard it from five other people before me. He stayed quiet until I got to the Colonel’s lie.

  “He lied about the Underbird?” He peered across the car’s engine, his blue eyes soft and thoughtful. “Why?”

  I shrugged, and he pushed his wheat-colored hair back with his wrist. Lavender is tall and hound-dog skinny. He wears his hair combed up in front, like he’s speeding through life. “Have you asked him?”

  “No,” I said. “Mostly the Colonel won’t talk ’til he’s ready.”

  Lavender’s handsome in the NASCAR way, and if I was old enough I’d snatch him up and marry him before sundown. I’ve asked him plenty of times already, starting the day I turned six. He always laughs and says I’m too young. Lavender is nineteen, and dangerous close to being a man.