We girls in the 4-H club had made a flag to hang in the church, adding a blue star every time someone from the township went off to fight. When one of them died, we changed the blue star to a gold one. Just two, so far, but I had been to their funerals, and I knew there was no “just” about it.

But some people let fear set its hook in them, so it’s hard to pull out” -Miss Maggie.

Mrs. Pelham’s face was old but she moved like someone younger, and when she smiled I could see that her teeth were still strong. I wondered what had mapped her face like that” -Crow.

And that’s when I felt the first wave of sorrow that came from keeping a new secret.

Some of them would survive to become fruit as good as anything on earth. Others would wither on the branch, killed by frost, wasted.

It’s terrible to feel useless.

At times, I was so confused that I felt like the stem of a pinwheel surrounded by whir and clatter, but through that whole unsettling time I knew that it simply would not do to hide in the barn with a book and an apple and let events plunge forward without me.

At which I felt hot and cold at the same time. Too big for my skin. Too small.” -Crow.

To listen to the whisper in the back of my mind.

Don’t you understand, Crow?” he said, his voice so sad, so tender, that I couldn’t breathe. “You’re the one worth finding.