Wonder
"What is this place?"
"I don't know. Some kid built it a long time ago."
.
"I was playing . . . in the woods . . ."
"Yes, but where? Where were you playing? It's very important that you remember."
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"It can be anything you want it to be—you just have to use your imagination. What do you see?"
"It's a tree house—that's all I see! Some wooden planks nailed to a tree."
"Yeah, that's 'cause you're not using your imagination."
.
"Wonder . . . wonder . . .
Wonder . . . world. Wonderworld!
.
How anybody even remembers the name of the place is something of a miracle. After all, you could count on one hand the number of people he had managed to tell. Every so often, though, a kid still comes into Whit's End, tells Whit about the strange old treehouse they found deep in the woods.
"Well, I think you may have just found Wonderworld!" he tells them. "That's a very special place."
Whit still remembers who built Wonderworld—he's probably the only person left in Odyssey who does. Perhaps the occasional kid, off at college, or starting out life in a new town, would recall that one person they used to know who had the endlessly peculiar name of Digger Digwillow.
.
"Digger. Digger Digwillow."
"Digger Digger Digwillow . . . ?"
.
Whit had laughed when Digger told him about that exchange. Said it was a little bit of a glitch in the programming that he needed to work out.
Digger had been the very first one in the Imagination Station.
.
Push the red button, Digger.
.
Digger told Whit later about how he almost just walked away then and there, tired of games that would bore a five-year-old, and adults who were always trying to make you do dumb stuff. How he'd almost walked away from one of the most astounding things to ever happen to him.
He told Whit how grateful he was that he hadn't—that he stayed long enough that he could be changed—that he had been given eyes to see, and ears to hear.
Nobody in Odyssey, not even Whit, ever really knew Digger, though. There wasn't time to.
The driver hadn't been looking. Not for a kid on his bike on the side of the road.
The funeral wasn't even held in Odyssey. They took the body to Seattle, where Digger had lived most of his short life. His parents never came back to Odyssey—not even to pack up their house. Movers came, quietly boxed up what had never been unpacked in the first place, and left, taking with them nearly every indication that a boy named Digger Digwillow had ever lived in Odyssey.
Except, of course, for Wonderworld.
Wonderworld, the place where Digger truly began to imagine, where he ran almost every day, where he stared out at the trees and the sky and the clouds and wondered why, exactly, he'd been pegged as such a strange kid, and why he had to feel so alone.
Where he began to wonder.
Where Lawrence and Jimmy would play—and fight—where Jimmy fell, fell, nearly never woke up, where Grim tried to take him away, but didn't quite succeed.
Where he began to wonder.
Where Alex and Mandy and Sarah and Cal all met to whisper about something so big that the whole town, the whole world would feel its impact soon. Where they felt infinitely amazed, infinitely helpless. Infinitely dependent on Someone else.
Where they began to wonder.
Whit only ever went to Wonderworld once—to nail up some sturdier plank railings after Jimmy Barclay fell. Digger had surely meant to do something of the kind, but never got the chance. By that time, the treehouse was old and weatherworn, but seeing it nearly took his breath away—this place, alone, secluded, where kids had played and dreamed and wondered.
Whit said goodbye to Digger, then—to the boy that none of them had ever really known.
Goodbye and thank you.