Ms. Mary Jane Forbes

The Message, Call Me! Ms. Mary Jane Forbes

Nine-year-old Rawly Scott pokes a message into a wine bottle sealing the cork with wax melting on his grandmother?s stove. The next morning he tosses the bottle into the outgoing tide off Newburyport, Massachusetts, watching until it disappears in the sparkling surf. One year later a young French girl, Leigh Dobrev, finds Rawly?s bottle while on the beach south west of Paris. Leigh did as Rawly?s message in the bottle requested?Call me! Coincidences abound: both are with their grandmothers on the beach?the toss, the discovery; same age; same first name Rawleigh?nicknamed Rawly and Leigh. Leigh Dobrev, now ten, dreams of growing up to be a chocolatier, owning her own candy shop in Paris, displaying her chocolate truffles, and tantalizing her patron?s pallet. Rawly Scott builds model rockets and dreams of doing something big in his life. At ten he didn?t know what that might be. Perhaps riding into space on one of his rockets? Letters pass between them but enchantment wanes as the trials of growing from youngsters to young adults take over their lives. It wasn?t until Rawly flies to Paris thirteen years later that sparks ignite between the two. What was to be a one-day side trip to see Leigh turns into six days. Did the bottle?s journey set the course for their true destiny?