Bridge to Terabithia

DEDICATION

I wrote this book

for my son

David Lord Paterson,

but after he read it

he asked me to put Lisa’s name

on this page as well,

and so I do.

For David Paterson and Lisa Hill,

banzai

CONTENTS

Dedication

Foreword by Kate DiCamillo

ONE

Jesse Oliver Aarons, Jr.

TWO

Leslie Burke

THREE

The Fastest Kid in the Fifth Grade

FOUR

Rulers of Terabithia

FIVE

The Giant Killers

SIX

The Coming of Prince Terrien

SEVEN

The Golden Room

EIGHT

Easter

NINE

The Evil Spell

TEN

The Perfect Day

ELEVEN

No!

TWELVE

Stranded

THIRTEEN

Building the Bridge

Author’s Note

Katherine Paterson’s Newbery Medal Acceptance Speech

About the Author

Books by Katherine Paterson

Credits

Copyright

About the Publisher

FOREWORD

I read Bridge to Terabithia for the first time when I was thirty years old.

I was working at a book distributor in Minneapolis called the Bookmen. The Bookmen was housed in a huge old warehouse. I worked on the third floor of the warehouse, filling the orders for children’s books.

The Bookmen’s floors were concrete; the shelves were metal, and there were windows everywhere. In the afternoons, the warehouse floor would fill up with great slabs of light, and it was very much like being in a dusty, book-filled cathedral.

I read Bridge to Terabithia standing in one of those great squares of light; and the story, for me, is forever associated with light.

There is a point in the book when Jess (the main character) helps his friend, Leslie, and her father paint a room in Leslie’s house.

They painted the living room gold. Leslie and Jess had wanted blue, but Bill held out for gold, which turned out to be so beautiful that they were glad they had given in. The sun would slant in from the west in the late afternoon until the room was brimful of light.

Bridge to Terabithia is like that room—golden, brimful of light.

Something terrible happens in these pages, something that we almost can’t bear.

But we bear it.

And we bear it because Katherine Paterson loves these characters so much, sees them so clearly, that it makes us—her readers—feel loved and seen, too. We feel as if we are in a golden room, a square of light. We feel held.

We feel as if someone is telling us the truth.

I recommended Bridge to Terabithia to my best friend’s son, Luke Bailey, when he was nine years old. This was sixteen years ago. Luke finished the book and came out of his room and went into the kitchen and stood in front of his mother. He was sobbing. The front of his shirt was wet. He said, I will never, ever forgive Aunt Kate.

Luke is grown up now. He is a reader, a history teacher, a writer.

"Do you remember reading Bridge to Terabithia?" I asked him recently in a text.

He said that to think of the book now, all these years later, is emotionally rending.

He said that he has this vague memory of blaming me.

And then he told me about a devastating loss one of his students was enduring, and that he was able to imagine his way into that student’s loss by remembering the feelings he had reading Bridge to Terabithia.

That is what literature does for us, I suppose, said Luke.

It is what literature does for us.

Bridge to Terabithia takes us by the hand and leads us into a room that we have never entered before.

After we read this story, we cannot unknow what we now know.

We are devastated, emotionally rent.

But still: we feel held, loved, seen. Someone trusted us enough to tell us the truth; and because of that, the room is golden, brimful of light.

—Kate DiCamillo

ONE

Jesse Oliver Aarons, Jr.

Ba-room, ba-room, ba-room, baripity, baripity, baripity, baripity—Good. His dad had the pickup going. He could get up now. Jess slid out of bed and into his overalls. He didn’t worry about a shirt because once he began running he would be hot as popping grease even if the morning air was chill, or shoes because the bottoms of his feet were by now as tough as his worn-out sneakers.

Where you going, Jess? May Belle lifted herself up sleepily from the double bed where she and Joyce Ann slept.

"Sh." He warned. The walls were thin. Momma would be mad as flies in a fruit jar if they woke her up this time of day.

He patted May Belle’s hair and yanked the twisted sheet up to her small chin. Just over the cow field, he whispered. May Belle smiled and snuggled down under the sheet.

Gonna run?

Maybe.

Of course he was going to run. He had gotten up early every day all summer to run. He figured if he worked at it—and Lord, had he worked—he could be the fastest runner in the fifth grade when school opened up. He had to be the fastest—not one of the fastest or next to the fastest, but the fastest. The very best.

He tiptoed out of the house. The place was so rattly that it screeched whenever you put your foot down, but Jess had found that if you tiptoed, it gave only a low moan, and he could usually get outdoors without waking Momma or Ellie or Brenda or Joyce Ann. May Belle was another matter. She was going on seven, and she worshiped him, which was OK sometimes. When you were the only boy smashed between four sisters, and the older two had despised you ever since you stopped letting them dress you up and wheel you around in their rusty old doll carriage, and the littlest one cried if you looked at her cross-eyed, it was nice to have somebody who worshiped you. Even if it got unhandy sometimes.

He began to trot across the yard. His breath was coming out in little puffs—cold for August. But it was early yet. By noontime when his mom would have him out working, it would be hot enough.

Miss Bessie stared at him sleepily as he climbed across the scrap heap, over the fence, and into the cow field. Moo—oo, she said, looking for all the world like another May Belle with her big, brown droopy eyes.

Hey, Miss Bessie, Jess said soothingly. Just go on back to sleep.

Miss Bessie strolled over to a greenish patch—most of the field was brown and dry—and yanked up a mouthful.

That’a girl. Just eat your breakfast. Don’t pay me no mind.

He always started at the northwest corner of the field, crouched over like the runners he had seen on Wide World of Sports.

Bang, he said, and took off flying around the cow field. Miss Bessie strolled toward the center, still following him with her droopy eyes, chewing slowly. She didn’t look very smart, even for a cow, but she was plenty bright enough to get out of Jess’s way.

His straw-colored hair flapped hard against his forehead, and his arms and legs flew out every which way. He had never learned to run properly, but he was long-legged for a ten-year-old, and no one had more grit than he.

Lark Creek Elementary was short on everything, especially athletic equipment, so all the balls went to the upper grades at recess time after lunch. Even if a fifth grader started out the period with a ball, it was sure to be in the hands of a sixth or seventh grader before the hour was half over. The older boys always took the dry center of the upper field for their ball games, while the girls claimed the small top section for hopscotch and jump rope and hanging around talking. So the lower-grade boys had started this running thing. They would all line up on the far side of the lower field, where it was either muddy or deep crusty ruts. Earle Watson who was no good at running, but had a big mouth, would yell Bang! and they’d race to a line they’d toed across at the other end.

One time last year Jesse had won. Not just the first heat but the whole shebang. Only once. But it had put into his mouth a taste for winning. Ever since he’d been in first grade he’d been that crazy little kid that draws all the time. But one day—April the twenty-second, a drizzly Monday, it had been—he ran ahead of them all, the red mud slooching up through the holes in the bottom of his sneakers.

For the rest of that day, and until after lunch on the next, he had been "the fastest kid in the third, fourth, and fifth grades," and he only a fourth grader. On Tuesday, Wayne Pettis had won again as usual. But this year Wayne Pettis would be in the sixth grade. He’d play football until Christmas and baseball until June with the rest of the big guys. Anybody had a chance to be the fastest runner, and by Miss Bessie, this year it was going to be Jesse Oliver Aarons, Jr.

Jess pumped his arms harder and bent his head for the distant fence. He could hear the third-grade boys screaming him on. They would follow him around like a country-music star. And May Belle would pop her buttons. Her brother was the fastest, the best. That ought to give the rest of the first grade something to chew their cuds on.

Even his dad would be proud. Jess rounded the corner. He couldn’t keep going quite so fast, but he continued running for a while—it would build him up. May Belle would tell Daddy, so it wouldn’t look as though he, Jess, was a bragger. Maybe Dad would be so proud he’d forget all about how tired he was from the long drive back and forth to Washington and the digging and hauling all day. He would get right down on the floor and wrestle, the way they used to. Old Dad would be surprised at how strong he’d gotten in the last couple of years.

His body was begging him to quit, but Jess pushed it on. He had to let that puny chest of his know who was boss.

Jess. It was May Belle yelling from the other side of the scrap heap. Momma says you gotta come in and eat now. Leave the milking til later.

Oh, crud. He’d run too long. Now everyone would know he’d been out and start in on him.

Yeah, OK. He turned, still running, and headed for the scrap heap. Without breaking his rhythm, he climbed over the fence, scrambled across the scrap heap, thumped May Belle on the head (Owww!), and trotted on to the house.

We-ell, look at the big O-lympic star, said Ellie, banging two cups onto the table, so that the strong, black coffee sloshed out. "Sweating like a