“The package is from Uncle Aaron in Scotland,” Rylee told her father. Her uncle travelled a lot on business, so Rylee seldom got to see him. Her father’s only response was to raise an eyebrow (眉毛).

Rylee opened the box. She pulled out a large necklace (项链). One side of the necklace had a symbol of circles. It looked like writing on the other side, but Rylee did not understand what the words meant.

The box also had a letter from her uncle. He explained how he had found the necklace at a curious little shop. He described how the elderly storekeeper had told him that the necklace had special powers and warned him to be careful with it.

Her uncle ended the letter with “BE CAREFUL!!!” in big letters and a “laughing” emoji (表情符号). He did not seem to take the storekeeper’s warnings seriously. “Let me wear it to school today, Dad,” Rylee said. “Maybe it will bring me luck on my history test.” “Good grades come from studying, not from luck,” Dad said. “I did study, but everyone thinks this will be a hard test.” Rylee put her fingers around the necklace she still held, “I wish you’d let me wear it.” “Yes, you can wear it today.” That made Rylee stop to wonder, because her dad had never given in that fast before.

At school, Rylee heard a group of kids talking. Some said her necklace looked ugly, while others thought it silly to believe in good luck necklaces. She wished her classmates thought the necklace was as cool as she did. Without warning, all eyes turned to Rylee and her necklace. Students began to push to get a closer look. Everyone seemed to talk at once, telling her how cool it looked. All Rylee’s friends wanted to borrow her lucky necklace. That made Rylee stop to wonder why everyone changed their minds so fast.

Sitting at her desk, Rylee watched the teacher pass out their tests.

Rylee looked down at her test and found that her score was one hundred percent.

At first, Michael Surrell didn’t see the black smoke or flames shooting from the windows of his neighbors’ home. He and his wife had just parked around the corner from their own house in Allentown, Pennsylvania, when they got a call from one of his daughters, “The house next door is on fire!” He went to investigate. That’s when he saw two women and a girl hysterical (歇斯底里的) on their porch.

“The baby’s in there!” one of the women cried. Though the fire department had been called, Surrell, then 64, instinctively ran inside. The baby was 8-year-old Tiara Roberts, the woman’s granddaughter and a playmate of Surrell’s three youngest kids, then 8, 10, and 12. The other two on the porch were Tiara’s aunt and cousin.

Entering the burning house was like “running into a bucket of black paint” Surrell says. The thick smoke caused him to stumble blindly around, burned his eyes, and made it impossible to breathe. The conditions would have been hazardous for anyone, but for Surrell, who has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (慢性阻塞性肺疾病), they were life-threatening. He was the last person who should have run into a burning building—he has lung disease. But that didn’t stop him.

After a few minutes in the smoke filled house, he retreated outside to catch his breath. “Where is Tiara?” he asked desperately. “The second floor.” her aunt shouted back.

Surrell knew he couldn’t hold his breath for long. So he uttered a little prayer, “Well, Lord, this is it. You gotta help me, because I’m not coming out without that little girl.” Taking a deep breath, he went in a second time.

The darkness was overwhelming. Yet because the house had a similar layout to his, he found the stairs and made it to the second floor. He turned to the right and was met by intense heat. He was already out of breath.

“Baby girl, where are you?” His throat and lungs burned as if he’d breathed in fire instead of the smoke and soot (烟灰) in the air. All he could hear was the crackling and popping of burning wood. Then a weak but distinct voice emerged. Still unable to see, Surrell fell to his knees on the hot wood floor. He crawled toward the sound, feeling around for any sign of the girl. An ominous thought crossed his mind: I’m probably gonna die up here.

Finally he touched something.

A voice told him, “You have to breathe for her.”

Mash Assadollah was the grocer at our corner store. Standing behind his glass display case, he tore out a page from a book. He twisted the page into a cone-shaped envelope and then filled it with tobacco. He then weighed the tobacco. He folded the envelope of tobacco closed and handed it to me. I was also buying sugar cubes and tea. Mash Assadollah calculated the amounts on an abacus (算盘). I paid him and left.

When I got home, Grandmother took the goods I had purchased, emptied the envelopes of their ingredients, handed me the wrappers, and asked me to throw them away.

It was summer vacation, and I didn’t have much to do. To keep myself busy, I sat down in a corner of the room and started to read the wrappers, which had once been eight consecutive (连续的) pages of a book. How well written and attractive the words were! It was a good story. I sat there until I had read all eight pages. Honestly, I had never read a book before, except for my textbooks. But when I read those eight pages, I realized that I now loved reading! The only problem was that the story stopped right at the best part, right at the end of Page 22, which was the most important and exciting point in the story.

It was about a boy who wanted to run away from home and escape his father who was always spanking (打屁股) him, but the boy was afraid. He finally left home but didn’t know where to go. I was excited to find out where he would go and what would happen to him.

I decided to go back and get the rest of the book from Mash Assadollah.

Mash Assadollah didn’t know what I was talking about.