“Who’s Rusty?” asked Danny.
“Someone your father and I went to high school with,” Aunt True said lightly. “So, what do you say we all get ice-cream sundaes to go?”
I glanced anxiously at the clock, then turned to my mother. “Can I be excused to go to the library? It’s going to close soon.”
“May I,” said my mother automatically. “And no, you may not.”
“Mom!”
“You know our agreement.”
Attendance at family meetings is mandatory. It’s one of Lieutenant Colonel Jericho T. Lovejoy’s rules.
“I don’t need a sundae.” I begged. “And it’s just down the street—I’ll be back at the bookstore before you guys even finish dessert. We only need to look this one thing up.”
My mother frowned. “It’s for your project with the Winthrop boy, right?” she asked, and I nodded. It wasn’t a lie, really. Solving the mystery of the envelope counted as a project, and Lucas was helping me. My mother pressed her lips together, considering. “Well, I suppose it’s okay,” she said finally. “If you promise to hurry.”
“I promise,” I said, getting to my feet. “Absolutely truly, cross my heart and hope to fly.”
I froze, aghast.
I’d said it completely without thinking, the words no sooner out of my mouth than I would have given anything to snatch them back.
My father stared down at his prosthesis, which was resting on the table. Pain creased his forehead. “I think we’ll save the family meeting for another night,” he said gruffly, then pushed back from the table and stood up.
Ella Bellow swiveled around in her chair and stared as he walked out of the restaurant.
“Truly, how could you!” said my mother, giving me her trademark disappointed look.
“Nice going, moron,” added Danny. “You totally ruined everything.”
Even Hatcher looked at me reproachfully.
“I didn’t do it on purpose!” I protested. “It just came”—I caught myself before I said “flying” —“out!”
“Cross my heart and hope to fly” is this saying that Dad’s best friend Tom Larson made up, way back when the two of them were in flight school. We always knew when Dad was talking to Mr. Larson on the phone, because that’s how they’d end their calls. It was like their own private motto, and over the years it had become our family’s motto too. But now it’s strictly off-limits because Mr. Larson didn’t make it back from Afghanistan, and it reminds my father of that horrible day when he lost both his arm and his best friend.
Once again, I’d gone and stuck my foot in my mouth. I was Truly-in-the-Middle-of-a-Mess.
Aunt True was wrong—the evening could get worse. It just did.
CHAPTER 13
I didn’t wait for Lucas; I just grabbed my jacket and ran.
“Hey!” he called, dashing through the front door of the diner after me. “Wait up!” Panting, he caught up with me as I reached the Pumpkin Falls Patriot-Bugle building. “What’s the matter?”
“None of your business,” I snapped. What was I supposed to tell him? That I desperately wished that everything could go back to the way it was before? Before Black Monday, and before Silent Man, and before we had to move here to this stupid place? That I’d give anything to hear my dad laugh again, and to hear the Magnificent Seven ringtone on his cell phone? I charged ahead down the sidewalk and didn’t stop until I reached the library.
“I was worried you weren’t coming,” said Cha Cha, leaping up from the bench inside the lobby. “They’re getting ready to close.”
Lucas and I followed her through the main reading area, a cozy room lined with bookshelves and two big, comfortable chairs that flanked a crackling fire. Belinda Winchester was seated in one of them, still wearing her bright orange hunter’s cap. Her eyes were closed; she was either napping or listening to music through her earbuds. There was no sign of kittens.
I glanced up the stairs that led to the children’s room, wondering if Charlotte’s Corner was still there. I’d spent a lot of summer afternoons sitting cross-legged underneath it. Gramps and Lola didn’t just run a bookshop; they were book people through and through, and the Pumpkin Falls Library was at the top of their list of places to take visiting grandchildren. Story Hour was always held beneath the bronze sculpture of the doorway of Zuckerman’s barn, with Charlotte the spider looking down from her web, and us kids fighting over who got to sit next to Wilbur and who got stuck beside Templeton the rat.
Cha Cha led us to a pair of computer terminals in the teeny reference area. She climbed up on a stool in front of one of them, her short legs dangling.
“Read me the numbers,” she said.
I pulled the envelope out of the back pocket of my jeans and opened it. “ ‘PR2828.A2 B7,’ ” I replied.
She typed this into the search field, pausing a moment and then frowning at the screen. “Again, please. Slower this time.”
I did as she asked.
“It’s not here.”
I peered over her shoulder. “Are you sure?”
She pointed to the screen, which read ITEM NOT FOUND.
The three of us stared morosely at the computer. Our scavenger hunt was over before it started.
“We could ask the reference librarian,” Lucas suggested.
“No.” I clutched the letter to my chest. Maybe it was the fact that my entire family was mad at me, but I was feeling possessive all of a sudden. Three of us trying to solve the mystery was enough.
“Nobody has to actually see it, Truly,” said Cha Cha, passing me a pencil and a piece of paper. “Just write down the call number.”
I relented. As I started to write, the lights overhead flicked on and off.
“The library is now closing,” announced a voice over the loudspeaker, and the people around us started gathering up their things.
Cha Cha grabbed the piece of paper from me and dashed across the room to the reference desk. Lucas and I followed.
“Sorry, kids, we’re closed now,” said the woman behind the counter.
“Please?” begged Cha Cha.
The woman shook her head. “I just shut the computer down,” she explained. “Can you come back tomorrow?”
Lucas tugged on Cha Cha’s sleeve. “Let’s go find Mr. Henry,” he whispered, and Cha Cha dashed off again.
“Who’s Mr. Henry?” I asked Lucas as we jogged after her.
“The children’s librarian,” he told me.
We found him upstairs by Charlotte’s Corner, sorting picture books. I couldn’t help staring. Except for his dreadlocks and the fact that he was African American, Mr. Henry was a dead ringer for Where’s Waldo? He was wearing hipster glasses, jeans, a red-and-white striped shirt, and red sneakers.
“School project, huh?” he said, when Cha Cha gave him the slip of paper.
“Um, not—” Lucas started to reply. I stepped on his foot. Not correcting someone isn’t exactly the same as telling a lie, right?
“It’s really important,” I said.
Mr. Henry smiled. “Such eagerness! Such zeal!” He rose to his feet. “Who can resist young minds intent on edification? Certainly not Henry Butterworth!”
“Thanks,” said Cha Cha.
“Anything for the sister of the most awesome Baxter Abramowitz,” he replied with a bow. He crossed to the computer at his desk and typed in the numbers. “Shakespeare, huh? Looks like we don’t have the volume you’re looking for here on our shelves, I’m afraid. But perhaps I can get it for you through interlibrary loan.” He fired off a longer something on his keyboard, peering over his glasses at the screen. “Lovejoy College has a copy.” He swiveled around to face us. “Shall I request it for you? It shouldn’t take more than a few days, a week at most, for them to send it over.”
“Thanks anyway,” said Cha Cha at the same time that I said, “Yes, please.”
The librarian looked from one of us to the other, bemused. “Which shall it be?”
Cha Cha e
lbowed me sharply. “It’s a no, Mr. Henry. But thanks for your help.”
“That’s what I’m here for. You kids come back anytime.”
“What was that all about?” I asked, once we were back outside again. My question rose like a smoke signal in the frosty air.
“That was all about the fact that I have a better idea,” Cha Cha replied. “Why wait a whole week when we can just go over there ourselves?”
“How are we supposed to do that?” I protested. “They won’t let middle schoolers in—you have to have a college ID and everything.” I’d seen my mother’s.
“They’ll let us in,” Cha Cha told me. “But there’s a catch.” She paused. “We’re going to have to talk to Calhoun.”
CHAPTER 14
“Can you keep the kids out of my hair this afternoon, Truly?” my mother asked. It was Saturday afternoon, and Pippa had a playdate scheduled with Baxter Abramowitz, who was due to arrive any second. Annie Freeman was already here with Lauren. “I have a pile of homework to finish before my shift at the Starlite.”
I promised her I would.
“Pippa’s upstairs in her room,” I told Baxter a few minutes later, when I interrupted my piano practice to answer the doorbell. He and Cha Cha were waiting on the doorstep, their cheeks rosy from the cold. Cha Cha had offered to walk her brother over so that the two of us could hang out. Lucas was on his way to join us.
They came inside, and Cha Cha helped her little brother out of his jacket. He sat down and pulled his boots off impatiently, then scampered upstairs.
“Who are all these people?” asked Cha Cha, staring at the portraits on the wall as we followed him.
“Lovejoys,” I told her. “That’s the original Truly.”
She paused. “You look a bit like her.”
“You think?”
She nodded. “Yeah. Same eyes and nose.”
This was good news. If I had the original Truly’s nose, that meant I wasn’t doomed to inherit the dreaded Nathaniel Daniel Lovejoy proboscis.
I led Cha Cha down the hall to my room. She looked around in approval. “Nice,” she said. “But what’s with all the owls?”
I shrugged. “I just like them, that’s all.”
Cha Cha plunked herself down on the braided rug in front of my bookshelf. “You have a lot of bird books.”
This was an understatement.
She ran her finger across the row of titles. “Have you read all these?”
I nodded.
“Wow. So you must know a lot about birds, huh?”
I glanced at her out of the corner of my eye, trying to tell if she was really interested or just being polite. Or worse, if she was asking me out of pity. Did she think I was a bird nerd?
Well, I sort of am.
“Yeah, I guess I do,” I replied, deciding she was sincere. “Would you like to see my life list?”
She nodded and I pulled a dog-eared leather notebook from the shelf. Gramps gave it to me back when I was Lauren’s age. The front was stamped with gold silhouettes of birds, but the gold had mostly worn away.
I opened it to the first page. “All real birders keep a life list,” I explained. “You add to it every time you spot a new bird. See? This one here at the top, the northern cardinal? That was the very first bird I saw after I got this notebook.”
I looked at my round and careful nine-year-old handwriting, remembering how thrilled I was when Gramps taught me the Latin name—Cardinalis cardinalis—and made me write it down. It was like a secret handshake, something that let me into his club.
I scanned a few of the pages, thinking about all the walks we’d taken together here in Pumpkin Falls, and all the birds we’d seen—from the barn swallows that came back every year to nest in the eaves over Lola’s studio to the purple finch (Carpodacus purpureus), New Hampshire’s state bird. Gramps had told me that his birding hero, Roger Tory Peterson, a naturalist who wrote a bunch of field guides, once described the purple finch as “a sparrow dipped in raspberry juice.” He laughed about it, but the description stuck in my head, and I’ve never had any trouble spotting a purple finch since.
No owls, though. I still didn’t have one of those on my life list.
Cha Cha’s gaze wandered down to the bottom shelf. “Whose yearbooks are those?”
“My aunt’s,” I told her. “This used to be her room.”
Cha Cha pulled one from the shelf at random and flipped it open. “West Hartfield Pep Squad,” she read aloud. “Whoa, check out these hairstyles!”
I knelt down beside her and peered over her shoulder. “My aunt should be in there someplace,” I told her. “I think this one’s from the year she graduated.”
Cha Cha flipped to the back to check out the senior portraits.
“Wait, you passed it,” I said, and Cha Cha turned the pages until we found Aunt True. Instead of the typical headshot, my aunt had chosen a candid pose that showed her perched on the railing of the covered bridge, with the waterfall sparkling in the sunshine behind her.
“She’s really pretty,” said Cha Cha. “Even with the big hair.”
I nodded. Looking at the picture, I realized that I had stood in the exact same spot just a few days ago on our science class field trip. I could tell because the camera had caught some of the same graffiti that Lucas had sketched: SAM LOVES BETTY; JOJO AND CARL; and that lopsided heart with E & T FOREVER inside. Things didn’t change much over the years in Pumpkin Falls.
I read the list of activities beneath my aunt’s picture. She’d been on the debate team, which explained how she could win so many arguments with my father, and she’d also been captain of the tennis team, editor of the school newspaper, and a member of the Thespian Club, whatever that was.
“Sweet,” said Cha Cha. “She was voted ‘Most Likely to See the World.’ ”
“They sure got that right,” I replied. “Aunt True’s been everywhere.”
We looked for my father next, and found him lined up with the other wrestlers for the team photo. I noticed that he was already wrestling varsity, even though he was only a sophomore that year.
“He looks a little like Hatcher,” said Cha Cha.
“Wait until you meet my brother Danny,” I told her. “He and my dad could practically be twins.” I stared at the picture. My father stared back, his jaw set and determined even then. It was weird to think he hadn’t met Mom when that picture was taken, or known that he was going to join the army and have five kids.
My gaze strayed to his arms. Both of them. He certainly hadn’t known about Black Monday.
“Principal Burnside was a wrestler too,” said Cha Cha, pointing to a vaguely familiar face in the lineup. It was perched atop a long, skinny, flamingo neck. Our principal was a sophomore then too, just like my father, only he looked about twelve.
“Guess he hadn’t hit his growth spurt yet,” I remarked, and Cha Cha snickered.
She turned the page. “Check it out, Belinda Winchester used to be a lunch lady!”
“She looks exactly the same,” I noted in surprise. “Well, except for the hairnet and uniform. And her hair wasn’t white back then either.”
Cha Cha nodded. “I’ll bet she’s got kittens in her pockets, though,” she said, and we both snickered this time.
I read the caption under the photo: West Hartfield High welcomed Down-Easter Belinda Winchester to the cafeteria staff this year. Everyone’s hoping she’ll add lobster to the menu!
We flipped around in the yearbook a bit more, poking fun at the stupid hairstyles and clothes.
“Hey, there’s the guy from the stamp store,” I said, pointing to another senior portrait. “See? Earl ‘Bud’ Jefferson Jr.”
“Nice mullet, Bud,” said Cha Cha.
“Business in the front, party in the back,” I intoned, and she grinned.
“Not a good look,” she scolded, wagging her finger at the picture. “Especially for a ‘Future Business Leader of America.’ ” She turned the page again.
“Who names their kid Erastus?” I said, pointing to a photo of a boy with bushy dark hair and glasses. “Sheesh.”
Cha Cha gave me a sly look. “Um, pot calling the kettle black much?”
My mouth fell open. I swatted her on the shoulder with the mystery envelope. “You’re one to talk, Cha Cha.”
Her dimple flashed again, and I had to laugh. It felt good to be joking around. I hadn’t done much of that since leaving Austin, and Mackenzie.
I looked back at the yearbook. Erastus Peckinpaugh had been on the National Honor Society and was voted “Most Likely to Get a PhD.” He also proudly listed his membership in “The Fighting Fifth”—a living history group that portrayed the Fifth New Hampshire Regiment Volunteers.
“Civil War reenactors,” I told Cha Cha. My father had lots of army buddies who did that for a hobby. “In other words, total geek.”
Cha Cha turned the page. “Hey, there’s Calhoun’s parents.” I leaned in for a closer look. James Calhoun had been class president, captain of the soccer team, and, like Aunt True, a member of the yearbook staff and the Thespian Club. He had the same sandy hair and dark eyes as his son but he looked a whole lot friendlier. Mostly because he was smiling. I didn’t think I’d seen Calhoun smile yet. A real smile, that was, not just a stupid smirk.
“That’s Calhoun’s mom,” said Cha Cha, pointing to a picture of a pretty brunette on the opposite page. Jennifer Upton had played in the school orchestra, was president of the National Honor Society, and had starred in a whole bunch of plays while she was at West Hartfield.
“I overheard Ella Bellow and Lou talking about them once at the diner,” Cha Cha said. “Calhoun’s parents were high school sweethearts. Everybody figured they’d be famous one day, because they were really awesome actors.”
“So what happened?”
“They got married after college and moved to New York.”
“To be actors?”
She nodded. “After their parents retired and moved away, though, they stopped coming to Pumpkin Falls. And then one day out of the blue last year, the Patriot-Bugle announces that Dr. Calhoun has been hired as president of Lovejoy College, and he turns up with Calhoun and his sister, but no Mrs. Calhoun. I guess they got divorced right before the move.”