Age:
High School
Reading Level: 3.2
Chapter 1
At the time, I thought Nori and I would be inseparable for the rest of our lives.
There was no separate self, and there was no separate Nori. Nori and I existed only together.
She was my best friend. My only friend, for that matter.
Dad decided to rent a house on Lupa Island that summer. No one in the family knew Lupa Island existed except him. So Mom, as she always did when she wasn't sure about something, took the New Hungarian Encyclopedia off the shelf and started reading aloud.
“Lupa Island is located approximately nine miles north of Budapest on the Danube River… One of the smallest islands in Hungary... Its maximum length is almost half a mile. Its maximum width is just about one-tenth of a mile. Only accessible by boat. It was named after Péter Luppa, a landowner from Pomáz...”
All I cared about was if Nori could come with us.
Chapter 2
July 1997—I wrote in our notebook—Nori, maybe this summer will be THE summer! Who knows who will be on that island?
We had been keeping notebooks for our letters for several years, writing back and forth in them.
It all started with messages we passed in class. They would get taken by the teacher.
A regular notebook would be better, we thought. That way, teachers wouldn’t even notice.
We liked plain notebooks with perfectly blank pages. We hated graph paper or lines.
Chapter 3
The house on Lupa Island faced the Danube River. It stood on poles. It reminded me of a giant spider with thin, scrawny legs and a ridiculously small body.
All houses on the island had such long legs. Dad said it was because of flooding.
In spring, the Danube would overflow. Any place that didn’t stand on columns would get soaked.
The house had a grassy garden with a long pebble beach below. A stone-paved forest path led down to the river.
The garden was lined with boulders and rose bushes. The flagstone walkways were swallowed beneath moss and bellflowers, covered to the point you almost couldn't see them.
There was an apple tree, a cherry tree, a gooseberry bush, and a large acacia tree. They filled the garden with fruit.
Nori and I would spread a blanket under the acacia tree and play cards in the cool of the shade.
We picked ripe raspberries from the bush next to the fence when my mother wasn’t watching.
“We could die. They’re unwashed!” I told Nori, giggling as we stuffed ourselves.
