Orbiting Jupiter

by Gary D. Schmidt

You can tell all you need to know about someone from the way cows are around him.

“Give me some of your stuff,” he said.

Except for Octavian Nothing.

Maybe if the teachers had heard Joseph late at night, they might have been a little afraid of him.

“Jupiter,” Joseph said.

You know what they say in books about your heart stopping? It’s true. It can. It does.

“Don’t touch him,” I whispered. “Please, please don’t touch him.”

The sound of the wind was awful, like it was crying and lost and scared and not sure what to do except to wail.

Okay, so maybe I was a little angry at Joseph by this time. I couldn’t even feel my toes. Or the ends of my fingers. What chance did he have of walking around Brunswick and finding a house with a baby, and that baby would be Jupiter? I mean, what chance did he really have?

The librarian looked at me, and I thought she was going to cry—just

“Yes, he can love her,” she said. “He can do that. But he can’t love her just for himself. He has to love her for her, too. That means he has to learn to let her live the

life that can come to her with a new home.”

He smiled. Really. He smiled. Number eight. Definitely not sort of.

You know how teachers are. If they get you to take out a book they love too, they’re yours for life.