Mina and the Museum of Sounds

Mina's friend Sal had broken her leg and could not come on the school trip to the museum. Mina promised to bring something back. The teacher explained that museum objects had to stay where they were, even the very small ones.

So Mina brought back sounds. On her mother's old recorder she saved the squeak of the museum door, the clink of coins in a fountain, and a roomful of children pretending to be quiet. At home she put numbered labels on three empty boxes and arranged them beside Sal's bed.

“This is my museum,” she said. “You open a box, and I'll play what belongs inside.”

Sal opened the first. She listened to the door squeak and guessed that it was a mouse. Mina explained that it was a door large enough for a giant. Sal opened the second and thought the coins were someone washing spoons. By the third box, Mina felt that her museum was failing.

“You had to be there,” she said.

Sal lay back against the pillows. “I know.”

Mina looked at the cast on her friend's leg. She had made a museum of a place Sal could not enter, then given her a test she could not pass.

The next morning, Mina returned with the recorder but no boxes. She asked Sal which sounds she missed. Sal thought for a while. The school bell was not one of them. Neither was the whistle the swimming teacher used.

“The loose board on the way to our classroom,” she said. “And the football hitting the fence. And that dog who sneezes outside the bakery.”

Mina collected the board and the fence, though she had to wait through half a match for someone to miss the goal. The dog would not sneeze. Its owner explained that sneezes could not be arranged. Mina recorded it snoring instead and wrote an apology on the label.

This time, Sal recognized every sound. She told Mina why the floorboard creaked twice when the head teacher crossed it, and how they had once convinced a younger child that the bakery dog spoke in its sleep.

They added Sal's own recordings: a pencil rolling from the bedside table, rain against the window, her father trying not to drop a tray. Mina brought back stories from school to go with them.

When Sal's cast finally came off, the museum filled a whole shelf. Its boxes still held nothing. Mina decided that was useful. There would always be room for one more thing they had heard together.