A Box of Gargoyles by Anne Nesbet Page B

didn’t like moving around, since they were made of stone and all, so they tried to do all their motion in one quick burst, just to get it over with. (See how logical she could be at midnight? Maya felt almost smug, and then noticed the cold beginning to get under her skin.)
    â€œGuess I’m really truly thirteen now,” she said to the stony blur that was the gargoyles at work on whatever they were working on. “Hey, there! You hear me?”
    To her surprise, they turned around and actually looked at her for the tiniest fraction of a second; they bobbed their stone heads, spread their wings, jumped up in the air (the sound was a cross between sticks breaking and a small avalanche)—and vanished.
    She waited another minute, which must be worth an hour or more of gargoyle time.
    Nothing.
    They were gone. A pile of debris on the far side of the fire escape—that was all that the gargoyles had left behind.
    And the quick staccato of her heart (because the whole thing had been quite a show, to tell the truth) was the only sound left.
    â€œWell, happy birthday, me,” she said to herself. She hardly knew how she felt: Relieved? Abandoned? Both?
    She decided, since it was her birthday, to stick with relieved . And then she closed the window and went to bed again.
    The next morning, with end-of-October sunlight filtering in, like weak tea, through the mottled glass of her window, it was hard to believe she had been watching a pair of statues race about and then fly away only a few hours earlier. But when she opened the window and looked out across the fire escape, the gargoyles were still gone. Just that mess in the corner of the fire escape—a pile of sticks and rubbish, that was all that was left.
    Then she leaned out of the window to take a closer look at the mess, because really, why would a pair of stone gargoyles leave little piles of trash?
    Already, now that her attention was focused on it, the trash looked distinctly less trashy. There was organization to it. The sticks piled up in a roughly doughnutish heap, and there—
    There was something rounded and shiny, there in the middle. She could see that now. It would mean climbing out through the window onto the fire escape, though, if she wanted to take a closer look.
    It’s my birthday , thought Maya, and she brought the chair over to the window and climbed out over the windowsill, keeping her eyes on the shiny thing (she was not the sort of person who enjoys looking down through metal grids at the hard ground four stories below).
    With one hand carefully gripping the metal railing—and not looking down—she bent her knees and leaned forward—not looking down—and stretched her right hand out, out, out, until she felt that smooth shininess under her palm.
    She was doing fine, not looking down, and then a voice came from deep inside the apartment and broke right into that spell:
    â€œMaya, good morning! Are you up?”
    Oh, her mother would not be pleased to see her clambering around on the wrong side of the window! Forgetting all the rules, Maya looked down through the grating she was perched on, yipped with fear, and rebounded into her room like a yo-yo. In fact, she backed up over the sill so fast that she tripped and hit the floor of her room with a rolling splat.
    â€œMaya?”
    Her mother looked in through the bedroom doorway. A familiar, loving, worried face.
    â€œDid you fall again ? Happy birthday, sweetheart! Or is that some kind of violent yoga you’ve taken up? Close the window, don’t you think?”
    Maya got up off the floor to close the window; that was when she realized her hand was full of rounded, shiny stone.
    â€œBirthday breakfast in five minutes,” said her mother. Her face was especially pale today, Maya couldn’t help but notice. “And what have you got there?”
    â€œA rock?” said Maya, still somewhat dazed.
    â€œHow nice,” said her mother.