Hoping to be a hero, Dell enlists Mai to help him find Willow but Mai takes charge. At the hospital where she has been taken for stitches, she runs away, calling Jairo to take her to the library. She faints when she sees a picture of her parents’ wreck on the front page of the newspaper. The following day, Willow is forced to go to the Jamison Children’s Center. She decides the girl is coming with her and convinces her mother to let them keep Willow overnight. Once inside, Mai finds the library book that Willow had checked out to learn Vietnamese. Mai sits on the steps with Willow as she cries until Willow is willing to go inside. Willow’s parents have been killed in a car wreck, Dell learns. After they finish and Dell takes Willow home, they are shocked to see a police car in Willow’s driveway. One day before Willow’s counseling session, Mai convinces the bumbling counselor Dell the take the two girls, along with her brother Quang-ha, who is also being counseled, for ice cream. Her driver is Jairo Hernandez who quickly tags Willow as his angel after she first encourages him to pursue his dream of going back to school, then warns him of a dangerous mole on his neck. In order to arrive at the counseling office more quickly, Willow takes a taxi one day. She learns Vietnamese so she can converse with Mai in her native tongue. Willow arrives early for a counseling session and meets Mai and Quang-ha Nguyen. Her counselor, Dell Duke, realizes that Willow is of exceptional mental capacity in fact, he labels her a genius. Both she and her parents hoped she’d have a better school experience at this new school but within days of the beginning of school she’s referred to a counselor because a teacher believes she cheated in order to ace a standardized test. Willow is an adopted, only child who has recently started classes at a new school. As they bond, those helping Willow realize their lives are enriched by her as much as her life is bettered by them. Although she had no relatives or close family friends, an unusual group of people steps forward to become a surrogate family to this unusual but highly intelligent girl. The book “Counting by 7s” charts Willow’s journey through her grief to the realization that her life will go on. Losing one’s parents is never easy, and for 12-year-old Willow Chance losing her adoptive parents in a car wreck is devastating.
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