Bridge to Terabithia: Chapter 13 Summary & Analysis

Jess wakes up early Saturday morning to start on his chores—his father has been milking Miss Bessie twice a day since Thursday. After he comes in from the barn, he’s still the only one awake—so he decides to go back down to the creek with Prince Terrien and see if he can retrieve any of his paints. Spring has sprung, and on the way down to the creek, Jess marvels at the nature blooming all around him.

At the creek, Jess finds that a large log has washed up onto the bank. He tests how firm it is, then uses it to cross over to the other side, but he sees no sign of his paints on either bank. Jess knows he isn’t far from Terabithia, but he isn’t sure if it’s even Terabithia anymore without Leslie. Prince Terrien swims across the creek and joins Jess on the other side, and together, they walk toward the castle. Jess finds that it looks completely ordinary—there is no sign that someone has died. Jess begins worrying about death, and whether Leslie was scared at the moment of hers.

Jess decides to make a funeral wreath for Leslie, the queen of Terabithia, from a pine bough. As he finishes it, a bird lands nearby—Jess takes it as a sign that he has made a “worthy offering.” Jess walks slowly to the center of the sacred pine grove and lays the wreath on the ground.

The moment of peace is disrupted when Jess hears someone calling his name and shouting for help—it is May Belle. He runs back to the creek and finds that she’s gotten halfway across the tree bridge but is now too scared to go forward or backward. Jess carefully inches himself out onto the branch and urges May Belle to hold on to him and slide backward. He promises May Belle that he won’t let her fall. He coaches and guides her all the way back to the other side. Once the ordeal is over May Belle apologizes for being scared—but Jess tells her that there’s no shame in feeling fear. Together, they head back to the house to eat some breakfast.

On Monday, when Jess walks into class, he sees that Leslie’s desk has already been removed from the classroom. He wonders why everyone is in “such a rush” to get rid of Leslie and her memory. He sits in his desk and puts his head down, trying to ignore the whispers of his classmates as they filter into the room. He hates the things he imagines them saying—and hates the idea that while all of them hated Leslie when she was alive, they might now mourn her death. 

After the pledge of allegiance—for which Jess refuses to stand—Mrs. Myers asks Jess to step into the hall. He prepares to get yelled at, but in the hall, he finds that the strict Mrs. Myers has softened. In a quiet voice, she tells him how sorry she is for his loss. Mrs. Myers says that her husband died years ago—when he passed, people wanted her to move on and forget, but she knew she never could. She tells Jess that she wasn’t the one to take Leslie’s desk out—it was gone when she arrived this morning. Jess wishes he could take back all the cruel jokes he and Leslie ever made about Mrs. Myers behind her back. Through tears, Mrs. Myers suggests they “try to help each other” through the rest of the school year, and Jess agrees.

Jess cannot stop the flood of thoughts he has about Leslie throughout the day. She took him from his cow pasture and “turned him into a king”—but he wonders if now that she’s gone, he must move on from Terabithia. It was Leslie, after all, who showed Jess that the real world was just as “terrible and beautiful and […] fragile” as their imagined one.

On Wednesday, Bill and Judy return from Pennsylvania with a U-Haul, ready to pack up the Perkins place. With Leslie gone, they tell Jess, there’s no reason for them to stay—they moved here for her sake so she’d grow up in nature. Bill and Judy give Jess all of Leslie’s books and art supplies, and then Jess and Mr. Aaron help the Burkes load up the U-Haul. After the truck is packed, Bill asks Jess if there’s anything of theirs left that he wants—Jess asks if he can use of the lumber on the back porch, and they tell him he’s welcome to it.

Bill, growing teary, says that he envisioned leaving Prince Terrien with Jess—but after some time away from him, he’s realized he can’t give the dog up. Jess tells Bill that Leslie would want her parents to have the sweet pup.

The next day, after school, Jess begins shuttling a couple of pieces of lumber at a time from the old Perkins place to the creek beyond the house. He lays two long pieces across the creek near where the rope swing used to be, forming a bridge, then starts nailing the crosspieces on. May Belle, who has followed Jess down to the creek, asks what he’s doing. Jess says he’ll tell her when he’s finished. May Belle begs to know what he’s up to and promises to keep it a secret—she won’t even tell Joyce Ann. Jess, however, says that, one day, May Belle should tell Joyce Ann—after May Belle has trained her to be queen.

When Jess finally finishes building the bridge to Terabithia, he puts flowers in May Belle’s hair and leads her across the structure—he urges her to look around her at all the Terabithians who have gathered to watch the arrival of “the queen they’ve been waiting for.”