Once Upon a List Read Online Free PDF

with a grunt to pick up a couple of rogue peanuts that had fallen on the floor. “It looks futuristic.”
    â€œJust the opposite,” Clara murmured, transfixed.
    Suddenly, Libby gasped. “Wait a minute . . .” Giving the mysterious object a closer gander, her eyes expanded like saucers with a look of both shock and recognition. “I think I remember that thing. Yes . . . I do ! I know what it is!”
    Unable to tear her eyes from it, Clara softly stated, “It’s my fifth-grade time capsule.”

 
    3.
    U pon completing their history class unit on legendary ancient and lost civilizations, Miss Jordain, Clara’s fifth-grade teacher, assigned each student to create a personal time capsule. Referencing a worn Oxford English Dictionary, she read aloud to the class, “A time capsule is defined as a container used to store for posterity a selection of objects thought to be representative of life at a particular time .” After listing some specific guidelines to follow when filling the capsule, Miss Jordain distributed to each student an empty glass tube and announced that she would collect their finished creations the following week. “I want you all to think very hard and very carefully about the personal artifacts and information that you choose to include in your time capsule,” she cautioned. “Do not lose sight of the fact that it will be used as an important method of communication with people in the future. For other generations it will serve as a valuable reminder of your story so that it is not forgotten or lost, like our dear Atlantis and Lemuria.”
    Never in Clara’s wildest dreams did she imagine she’d see her time capsule again. In fact, she’d completely forgotten about it. Which was why to be sitting here now, in her mother’s music room, decades later, balancing the “ancient” relic in the palms of her hands sent shivers down her spine.
    Her fifth-grade time capsule contained an interesting collection of gems: a photograph taken after a January blizzard of Clara, Libby, and Leo poking their heads out the icicle-laced window of Maple Manor; a crinkled admissions ticket stub to Disney World; an individual packet of McDonald’s “fancy” ketchup; a “Finding Your Way” Brownies patch, which Clara had earned with her troop by mastering command of the compass; and a small, brittle molar tooth. A horrified expression crossed Libby’s face when Clara displayed the tooth. “Where did you get that?” she harrumphed. “Does the Tooth Fairy owe you money?”
    At the bottom of the time capsule, tucked neatly inside of its original pink envelope, Clara also discovered Natalie Marissa’s official Cabbage Patch Kid birth certificate.
    â€œMy God. Remember what you went through to get one of those dolls?” Libby smiled. “I had never seen you so hell-bent on attaining something in all my life. The unwavering determination you had . . .” Shaking her head, she chuckled at the memory. “There was no stopping you.”
    Clara recalled her quest to have a Cabbage Patch Kid, searching toy store after toy store, adding her name to waiting list after waiting list—she’d even once contemplated Cabbage Patch–napping a doll from her friend Stella. Finally, after trying for over a year, Clara’s prayers were answered in the form of Natalie Marissa. The moment she held Natalie Marissa in her arms and inhaled her sweet, fresh plastic and artificial baby powder scent, the pain and frustration of her struggle to adopt a Cabbage Patch Kid instantly vanished. At the time, Clara viewed Natalie Marissa’s birth certificate as an unequivocal symbol of hope: tangible proof that good things do indeed come to those who are patient and believe. And so into her time capsule it went.
    Clara stared at the birth certificate, a million miles away. She wished she could