Reading

In Sunnyglass, a parade is considered a perfectly sensible way to deliver almost anything.

New library books arrive behind a marching kazoo band. The first strawberries of summer travel through town on a wagon shaped like a jam jar. Once, when Mrs. Pebble found a mitten outside her bakery, forty-seven people accompanied it home with drums, banners, and a respectful trombone solo.

Today is the largest parade of all: the Parade of Good Ideas. Every family brings something that made the year kinder, funnier, or easier. There is a folding chair with six cup holders, a bicycle that waters flowers as it rolls, and a recipe for soup written in pictures so anybody can make it. At the very back waits a cake float carrying a cupcake taller than Aunt Zuzu.

And you—Mina Bell, ten years old, owner of two puff buns and one extremely serious pair of purple glasses—have been trusted with the route.

You spent twelve evenings drawing it. Your map curls through Sunflower Street, crosses Button Bridge, circles the clock tower exactly once, and arrives at Market Square at noon. Every corner has a colored arrow. Every arrow has a backup arrow. You even measured the narrowest lane against the widest float, while Rufus Reed marched beside you beating his red drum and asking whether measurements become more accurate when accompanied by a drumroll.

They do not.

Your mother helped paint the arrows, though she let you choose every direction. Your little cousin tested the map by crawling across it with two toy wagons and a wooden duck. Aunt Zuzu signed the final corner with a purple thumbprint. The route may be yours, but traces of other people are tucked all through it. That makes you proud. It also makes the flutter in your stomach flap harder.

The square buzzes around you. Rufus tests a beat loud enough to surprise three paper birds off the library float. Waffles, Aunt Zuzu’s golden-and-white corgi, guards a basket of feathered hats with the alertness of a royal knight. He is wearing two hats himself.

Aunt Zuzu sweeps across the cobbles in her lavender parade-marshal coat. She has silver curls, a blue-striped baton, and a talent for making every sentence sound like the beginning of excellent news.

“Route-maker Bell!” she calls. “Five minutes until magnificent forward motion.”

Your stomach flutters. You know your map is good. You also know that hundreds of feet are about to trust it. Those thoughts do not feel as similar as they did last night.

Nearby, eight-year-old Suki Song holds the tiny silver bell that will start the parade. She practiced all week, but now the crowded square has made her as still as a fence post. Beyond her, the west arrow leans slightly on its stand. Rufus has somehow added a third feather to Waffles’s hat.

There are five minutes. You cannot do everything first.