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of dolphins.
    “Here’s a bunch of stuff on renovations and adding extra rooms,” Murphy said, letting an armful of books tumble down on the table. “But nothing that says how to build a house, A to Z.”
    Donita looked up from her notebook. “Y’all really serious about building a house?” sheasked. “I mean, you got some land around here?”
    I hadn’t thought about where we would build the house. We’d gotten so caught up in the idea of building a house at all, we hadn’t really discussed the details. I looked at Logan. “How big is your yard, anyway?” I asked him. If he was going to be a part of this, he might as well come in handy.
    Logan reddened again. “It’s pretty big,” he said, like it almost embarrassed him to admit it. “But, well, I don’t think my parents would let us build another house on it.”
    “Why don’t y’all just build a fort?” Donita asked, sounding practical. “ ’Cause I used to live with this family where the man was a contractor, and he had to hire lots of people to build his houses. No offense, but I’m not sure y’all could build a whole house by yourselves. Now a fort, that’s a different story. I could even help you get the boards and the supplies for it.”
    Murphy sighed. You could tell she really wanted to build a house. But Donita was right, and we all knew it.
    “So Logan,” Murphy said after a moment, “we know that building a house on your property is out of the question, but how about a fort? A big fort?”
    “Sure!” Logan said, sounding relieved that he could be of some use after all. “The back of our property is mostly woods. My parents would probably like it if I built a fort, as a matter of fact.”
    “Why’s that?” Donita asked.
    Logan shrugged. “It’s the sort of thing a normal guy would do. My parents would like for me to be as normal as possible. Like right now, my dad’s mad because I decided to be in band instead of trying out for football.”
    “You don’t look unnormal to me,” Ricky Ray said nicely.
    “Abnormal,” Murphy corrected him. She turned to me and mouthed the words “ frog prince .”
    Donita bounced her pencil on the table a couple of times. “You hanging out in the woods all afternoon with this bunch is going to make your folks happy?”
    “They’ll be glad I have some new friends,”Logan said. “My mom is always getting on my case about making more friends.”
    “How many friends do you got now?” Ricky Ray asked.
    Logan looked down at the table. “I had one, but he moved last summer.”
    “Well, if your parents will let us build a fort in their yard, they must be nice folks, which means you’re probably a nice person too, underneath it all,” Donita said, standing up. “I’m going to check out these books, and then we’ll go see my Uncle Wendell. He’ll help us out.”
    We all followed her to the checkout desk. Without so much as a how-do-you-do, Donita was part of the plan.

Chapter 7
    “I didn’t even know you had an uncle here,” I said to Donita as we tromped up the sidewalk toward the center of town. We were passing the Limestone Grocery, which was hardly a grocery store at all, just one room of wooden bins filled with produce from Sonny Baldwin’s farm. Today the outside bin featured mostly pumpkins and yellow squash.
    “He’s not really my uncle,” Donita said. “But black folks in this town are few and far between, in case you haven’t noticed. I think he just wants me to feel like I’ve got some of my own kind around if need be.”
    “Could we grow pumpkins at our fort?” Ricky Ray asked, catching up with us. He hadhung back a few seconds at the Limestone Grocery and was clearly under its influence.
    “I thought I told you, we’ll be building the fort in the woods,” Logan said, like he couldn’t believe how dumb Ricky Ray was. “Pumpkins need sunlight to grow. Lots of it.”
    I grabbed Ricky Ray’s hand and pulled him along with me. “Logan Parrish, I believe you