8. In the Mail

8 In the Mail At the end of the awards ceremony, Stanley joined all the special guests onstage for the grand finale. Arthur paced before the line of performers like a general. Stanley was on the end. "This is it!" Arthur said. "Ready?" A murmur of excitement went down the line. Yang, the Flying Chinese Wonder, leaned forward and winked at Stanley. Stanley noticed that, beside him, Carmen del Junco and Oda Nobu were holding hands. "Commence countdown!" Arthur hollered. "Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two… one!" Yin flipped high into the air and landed on her brother Yang's shoulders. Yang bent his knees, and the pair launched straight upward like a rocket. Yang landed on Oda Nobu's shoulders, so they

were now three people tall. At that moment, Carmen del Junco grabbed Stanley's hands and spun him around. His feet left the ground, and she let go. Stanley arced around the theater like a boomerang, until he saw Yang's face come into view, and they grabbed each other's hands.

Stanley held his body out to the side and waved his legs gently atop the flagpole formed by his friends. The crowd leaped to their feet. "That's my boy!" cried his father. "Bravo!" yelled the president of the United States. "Be careful!" cried Stanley's mother. High over his friends from all over the world, Stanley waved his body proudly. "Now me!" called Arthur. That spring, Arthur and Stanley were playing in their room at home when their mother burst in. "Look!" she cried, waving an enormous envelope. "What is it?" asked Stanley. "Open it!" said his mother. The envelope was made of thick, creamy paper, and Stanley slipped his finger under the flap and slit it open. He pulled out a grand square of paper and read:

You are cordially invited to join us in celebrating our wedding. Oda Nobu of Tokyo, Japan and Carmen del Junco of Mexico City, Mexico In the corner of the invitation was a note jotted in blue pen. Stanley peeked inside the envelope and spotted something else inside. He pulled out a piece of card that was shaped just like a very small version of himself. "What's that?" said Arthur. "RSVP via Flat Stanley," Stanley read. "You're starting a trend," Arthur said. He sounded impressed. Stanley smiled to himself and walked over to his bulletin board. He looked for a free spot among all of the things tacked up there. His eyes passed over a newspaper headline from when he

saved Mount Rushmore, pinned next to a postcard from Calamity Jane. There was a snapshot of him and Amisi in front of Egyptian pyramids and a picture of Oda Nobu in a karate class in Japan. Underneath one corner of an Australian boomerang, there was a picture he took at the Beijing Zoo of a ferocious-looking panda bear. There was a newspaper headline from his plunge over Niagara Falls next to a flat fish head skull from Africa. He'd had a lot of adventures, and he hoped to have many more. Near the center of the board, with its red, white, and blue ribbon hanging from a pushpin, was his National Medal of Achievement. Stanley tacked the wedding invitation right next to the bronze medal. He read again the note jotted in the corner:

Stanley, Thank you for bringing us together.