The Star She Gave Away Twice

She texted back a red heart and said they would miss me, and that Ilse had brought her lemon bars. I read that message probably twenty times.

The thing I kept coming back to was the price. Forty dollars. My star had a price on it now, and it was not my price.

Somebody had decided what it was worth, and decided it without me, and a stranger in Arkansas or Ohio was paying it and thinking somebody named Hill and Hollow had drawn it.

I could not take the star back. It had been out in the world for twelve years. But I could take the price back off of it.

The only way I knew to take the price off a thing was to give it away, out loud, with my name on it, to as many people as would come.

On Monday after school I drove into town and walked into the library.

Mrs. Ferris has run the front desk for as long as I can remember.

She has silver hair she wears in a twist and a voice that carries without ever getting loud, which is a gift in a librarian.

She checked out my first library card when I was nine and still remembers that I read every Little House book twice.

“Marla Quist,” she said. “What can I do for you, honey?”

“I want to book the meeting room,” I said. “For a Saturday. For a quilting class.”

She opened the big binder she still keeps, even though the county gave her a computer for it. “Is this for a business? Because if you’re selling anything, there’s a fee.”

“No, ma’am. It’s free. Anybody can come. I’m teaching a block I made up, and I’m giving away the pattern.”

She looked at me over her glasses. Mrs. Ferris has known me for forty-three years.

I think she saw right through my face to whatever was underneath it. She did not ask. She just ran her finger down the page.

“I have the second Saturday in March,” she said. “Nine to three. The room seats thirty if we put in all the folding tables. I’ll put it in the library newsletter and on the community calendar in the paper. You’ll want them to sign up, so you’re not swamped.”

“Thirty would be fine.”

She wrote it in pen. “What do you call the block?”

“The Ozark Star.”

“Pretty name,” she said, and wrote that down too. “Bring your own coffee. The board won’t let me buy any.”

I went home and told Hugh, and he nodded once and asked if I needed him to haul anything. I told him the library had tables.

He said he would bring the irons and the extension cords, then, because nobody ever has enough of either one at a quilting class, and he was right.

The listing went in the paper that Thursday. By the next Tuesday, Mrs. Ferris called me at the school kitchen.

“You’re full,” she said. “Thirty names. I’ve got eleven more on a list in case anybody drops. One of them drove in from Mountain View just to sign the paper in person, because she doesn’t trust the phone.”

I hung up and stood in the walk-in cooler for a minute where nobody could see me.

Then I went home and started typing.

I had never written the directions down properly. All these years I had taught the Ozark Star from the scrap of paper in my head and a stack of fabric on the table.