orphanage, and how he and Mattie would try to find a family to adopt Rupee, the boy started smiling again, as if unbelieving of his good fortune.
Wanting to spend as much time as possible at the orphanage, Ian led the children to a taxi. The streets of Varanasi were predictably chaotic, and the driver punched at the horn like a moth battering itself against a streetlight. It took about twenty minutes to reach the orphanage, a two-story cement building adjacent to a dusty soccer field. Children swarmed over the field, chasing several balls, as if multiple games were occurring on the same patch of dirt.
Ian, Mattie, and Rupee walked past the field and toward the building. They hadn’t yet stepped inside when a well-dressed man emerged, introduced himself, and shook Ian’s hand. The manager spoke with Rupee in Hindi, and soon both were smiling.
After several minutes of small talk, the manager asked if Mattie and Rupee wanted to play soccer while he spoke with Ian. Mattie wasn’t interested, and politely declined, taking Rupee’s hand and leading him toward a purple bench near the other children. Ian and the manager stood not more than thirty feet away, watching the children, talking about Rupee’s future.
Mattie edged closer to her friend. “I’m going to miss you, Rupee,” she said, happy for him but sad for herself.
Rupee smiled, sure that he was dreaming, that an American girl couldn’t possibly think of him as a friend, that he hadn’t arrived at such a beautiful orphanage. “Why?” he asked. “Why you my friend? Everyone else, they think I dirty. Cannot touch me.”
Her hand found his. “You make me smile, Rupee. And you’re not dirty. See? My skin is against yours and there’s no dirt anywhere. So if anyone ever calls you dirty again, you just think about your hand against mine.”
Rupee nodded, remembering sifting through piles of bones at the bottom of the river, hoping that Mattie was right, that his hands had somehow remained clean. “You send me letter? From Hong Kong? I get someone to read it for me.”
“I’ll send you a lot of letters. A heap of letters, as my daddy would say.”
“I no forget you.”
“And I won’t forget you.”
Rupee looked at her skin against his, remembering her words. He didn’t have a single memory of being held, of a hand against his. “I so happy,” he said.
Despite her sadness at the thought of leaving him, Mattie smiled, reaching into her backpack. She took out her sketch pad and leafed through its pages, coming to the image she had drawn of him. She set the pad on his lap. “Someday, Rupee, I’ll come back to India. And I’ll draw another picture of you.”
He studied her sketch, smiling at his smile in the picture, warmed by the glow of his face. “You so good, Mattie. I think maybe . . . maybe a painter . . . he already reborn into you.”
Mattie thought about the river, about whether her mother was in heaven or had been reborn, as the Hindus thought. “Rupee? Can you climb a tree with me?”
“A tree? Why?”
“Because I want to leave a picture for my mother. So she can see it.”
Rupee looked around the soccer field, pointing to an immense teak tree at the corner of the building. “Like that one?” he asked, carefully handing her back the sketch pad.
She nodded, then walked to the orphanage’s manager, asking him if they could climb a tree and leave a message for her mother. The man’s brow furrowed, but then he saw the yearning in her expression, and he nodded. Knowing that her father was watching, Mattie walked toward the tree.
The climb was difficult, as the trunk had been pruned of low branches. Rupee went first, jumping up, grabbing onto the stump of a broken branch and hoisting himself higher. Mattie repeated his motions, her backpack moving from side to side as she climbed. She wondered how high Rupee would go, hoping that he wouldn’t stop. Wanting to give her mother the best possible view of her sketch, Mattie climbed higher. She liked following Rupee, liked that he looked down to make sure she was fine. Twice he held out his hand for her, helping her up, their fingers intertwined.
Mattie asked herself what it would be like to climb a tree with a brother or sister. Would they always help each other? Would they be best friends?
Rupee stopped, leaning against the trunk. He pulled Mattie up again and she straddled a nearby