Olivia strained shamelessly to see the red letter at the top. She had to stop herself from saying, “Why, Melody, you’ve gotten a D!” And for the first time in her life, she wished mightily that she owned a cell phone camera. How satisfying it would be to take a picture of Melody’s face — several pictures, actually — and send the photos to Flora and Nikki. Olivia had to content herself, however, with trying to memorize Melody’s various expressions so she could describe them later.
First Olivia saw surprise, complete and utter surprise. This was followed by embarrassment (Melody’s face turned a rewarding shade of pink), but the embarrassment soon changed to a smirk. Ha, thought Olivia. Melody thinks I didn’t understand the assignment and now I’m going to get a D, too. That, she realized, would be just as pleasing to Melody as stealing Olivia’s work in order to get an A.
Olivia couldn’t help herself. She flashed Melody another smile. Then she waited for Mr. Krauss to approach her desk. In the next moment, he did so, and he handed her a paper bearing a nice fat A. One glance showed Olivia that she hadn’t missed a single problem, not even the one that had given her trouble.
Olivia angled the paper so that Melody could see it easily.
“Nice work, Olivia,” said Mr. Krauss.
“Thank you,” she replied.
“Melody,” he continued, “I would like to see you after class.”
Olivia allowed herself one final look at Melody, whose expression had turned to a combination of surprise (again) and anger. Then she ignored Melody for the rest of the period. When Olivia left the classroom later, Melody was standing miserably at Mr. Krauss’s desk.
In the hallway, Olivia saw, to her own surprise, Flora and Nikki, who were waiting breathlessly to find out what had happened.
“It was fabulous!” Olivia exclaimed softly. “Simply fabulous! You should have seen the look on her face. It was so worth everything.”
“What was worth everything?” asked Jacob, joining the girls.
“Hey, Olivia! Hey, you guys!” Claudette rounded the corner, followed by Mary Louise and several other members of the book club.
And that was how it happened that when Melody finally left Mr. Krauss’s room that day, she found Olivia Walter, smiling and happy, surrounded by a large group of friends, including Jacob.
Melody gathered her face into something resembling a smile. “Hi, everyone!” she said.
“’lo,” said Claudette.
Jacob glanced at her. “Hey.”
“Um,” said Melody, and she edged around the group of kids and disappeared in the crowded hallway.
“The best thing,” Flora said to Olivia later that day, “is that no one even knows what Melody did to you, and they still can’t stand her.”
“I have a feeling, though,” Olivia replied, “that I’d better get my locker taken care of right away.”
“I’ll go with you,” said Flora, and she put her arm around her friend.
Flora was awakened early on Tuesday morning by Ruby, who ran into her room, exclaiming, “Flora! When we get up tomorrow we have to remember to say ‘Rabbit, rabbit’ first thing.”
“And you woke me up to tell me this?” mumbled Flora.
Ruby plopped down on the edge of her sister’s bed. “Your alarm’s going to go off in five minutes, anyway. You know,” she said thoughtfully, “there really ought to be something you say on the last day of each month, too. Why just the first day? I think on the last day you should say, ‘Ferret, ferret’ or ‘Mole, mole.’”
“‘Ferret, ferret’ or ‘mole, mole’?”
“To keep it in the rodent family.”
Flora rolled over. After a moment, she said, “I can’t believe it’s the last day of September.”
“Yeah,” said Ruby, and she made a smacking noise.
“Are you chewing gum?” asked Flora, horrified. “It’s not even six-thirty.”
Ruby shrugged. Then she said, “So, tomorrow is October, and that means Halloween and then Thanksgiving and then Hanukkah and then Christmas and then Kwanzaa and then New Year’s Eve and then Valen —”
“Yeah, yeah, all the holidays,” muttered Flora.
“You sure are grouchy.”
“Well, don’t you remember what else today is? Besides the last day of September?”
“Is it … did I forget Min’s birthday?” screeched Ruby.
“No! Today is the day Mr. Willet leaves.”
Ruby’s face fell. “Oh. Right.”
Flora stretched and turned on her light. “Maybe it’s a good thing you woke me up. We need time to say good-bye to Mr. Willet before we leave for school this morning.”
“I know. But, Flora, he is only going to be a few miles away.”
“It’s still going to be sad. I mean, having an empty house in the row. I don’t ever remember an empty house here — not even before we moved to Camden Falls.”
“Well, somebody new will move in soon,” said Ruby. “And that will be kind of exciting. I wonder who it will be. Maybe a family with kids our age.”
“Or with a baby so Grace won’t be the youngest kid in the row. And Olivia and I will have someone else to baby-sit for.”
“Maybe it will be another couple just like Mr. and Mrs. Willet. Well, not just like them. I don’t want the lady to have Alzheimer’s. But you know what I mean.” Ruby paused. “Or maybe it will be a family with two teenage boys and Margaret and Lydia will fall in love with them and there will be a double wedding in the backyards.”
Flora smiled. “We could be junior bridesmaids.”
“Yes!” exclaimed Ruby, imagining her dress.
“But right now we have to get ready to say good-bye to Mr. Willet.”
Min accompanied Flora and Ruby to Mr. Willet’s house after breakfast. “I might as well say good-bye now, too,” she said, “before I leave for the store.”
They weren’t the only ones there. Every one of the Row House neighbors who would soon be leaving for school or work had planned to drop by Mr. Willet’s that morning.
“Oh,” said Flora, her lip quivering as Mr. Willet held his front door open. “Look, Ruby. Look, Olivia.”
Mr. Willet’s living room wasn’t empty yet, but it had the look of a house that had lost its owner. Much of the furniture had already been given away, since it wouldn’t fit in the apartment at Three Oaks. And the Willets’ belongings had been packed into cartons bearing labels such as BOOKS, KNICKKNACKS, PHOTO ALBUMS, AND ODDS AND ENDS — TO BE UNPACKED LATER.
Mr. Willet was talking to Mr. Morris. “The movers are scheduled to arrive at nine,” he was saying.
“Roger and John and I will be over later this afternoon to give you a hand with the unpacking,” Mr. Morris replied.
“See?” Ruby said to Flora. “Mr. Willet will still have all his old friends around. Mr. Morris and Dr. Malone and Mr. Edwards are going to help him out today.”
Flora nodded. “Min said I can visit on Friday.” She looked at her watch. “Well … I guess this is it. We’d better say good-bye or we’ll be late for school.”
Flora and Ruby and Olivia surrounded Mr. Willet and each gave him a hug.
“We’ll see you soon,” said Olivia.
As Flora walked through the door, she heard Min say behind her, “You’ve been a wonderful neighbor, Bill. You and Mary Lou are dear friends.”
“I can’t tell you how much I’m going to miss all of you,” replied Mr. Willet.
“But you need to be with Mary Lou again,” said Min.
“Yes.”
When Flora and Olivia returned from school that afternoon, they paused at the path leading to the house that had been the Willets’.
“Empty,” remarked Flora.
“It feels empty, doesn’t it?” said Olivia. “Even from the outside. I don’t know why, since it looks just the same as all the other houses.”
“I think houses know when they’ve been left alone, just like people do.”
Flora and Olivia walked on to their own houses. F
lora let herself inside. She patted King Comma and hugged Daisy Dear and went to her bed, where she lay down and had a small cry.
All across Camden Falls, people have turned the pages of their calendars from September to October. On Main Street the themes of the store windows have changed from back-to-school to Halloween and even Thanksgiving. If you were to walk along a single block, you would see Needle and Thread’s display of hand-sewn Halloween costumes, the array of ghost stories in Time and Again, the Halloween baskets in Sincerely Yours, and the spooky lawn decorations in Zack’s hardware store. On this Friday evening, you might notice a very excited young man standing outside Zack’s. The young man is Robby Edwards, and he’s trying to convince his father to buy everything they would need to turn their front yard into a cemetery. “Look!” exclaims Robby. “Skeleton hands and skeleton feet and tombstones. Wouldn’t those be perfect for Halloween?”
Leave Main Street behind (Robby and his father are striking a deal in which Robby agrees to pay for some of the decorations out of his salary), and walk through the chilly air to the Row Houses on Aiken Avenue. Darkness is falling and lights are on in all the houses except the second one from the left. If you are very observant, you will notice a small hole in the yard of this house where a FOR SALE sign recently stood.
In the house at the left end of the row, Lacey and Mathias, the Morris twins, are engaged in a conversation their mother fears will soon turn into a fight.
“Guess what,” says Lacey. “I’m one month older than I was at the beginning of September.”
“Well, I’m one second older than I was at the beginning of this sentence.”
“No. That sentence is longer than one second. You’re three seconds older than at the beginning of the sentence.”
“But it took you six seconds to say all that so I’m really —”
“Kids,” Mrs. Morris interrupts. “Enough. Come into the kitchen, please. Supper’s ready.”
Now step away from the Morris house. Three doors down is Min Read’s home. On this evening, Min and Ruby are here and so is Mr. Pennington, but Flora is at Three Oaks having dinner with Mr. Willet. Ruby, who returned from her tap class claiming she was absolutely famished, has already eaten her supper and is now tap-tapping away in the front hallway, whispering a new routine under her breath. “And time step, time step, fa-lap, ball-change …” In the kitchen, Rudy Pennington and Min sit next to each other on one side of the table, a casserole of chicken and vegetables forgotten on the counter. They’re holding hands and talking quietly.
Next door, the Walters will be eating a late dinner. Sincerely Yours stayed open for a special sale this evening, so dinner won’t be on the table for a while yet. Olivia, having already helped her father make a salad, has closed herself into her room. Presently, Jack knocks on her door and says, “Olivia! Telephone!” Olivia is surprised. Flora is at Three Oaks, and Olivia just got off the phone with Nikki. Who could be calling now? A shudder runs down her spine — Melody? Has Melody come back to haunt her? She hasn’t spoken to Olivia since the day the homework papers were returned, and so far, Olivia’s nice, new locker seems to be in working order, but Olivia has a feeling she hasn’t heard the end of Melody. Heart pounding, she opens her door and takes the phone from Jack.
“Hello?” she says.
“Hello, Olivia? This is Jacob,” the caller replies.
Several miles away, on the outskirts of Camden Falls — at the very moment Jack hands Olivia the telephone — a car pulls into the driveway of Nikki’s house. Nikki and Mae and Mrs. Sherman have just sat down to their dinner. They’re not expecting a visitor and they look at one another warily. Mrs. Sherman is rising from her chair when the front door bangs open and a man’s voice calls, “Hello?”
Mae leaps to her feet. “Tobias! It’s Tobias!”
And into the kitchen he strides.
Mrs. Sherman hugs her son. “What a wonderful surprise!” she exclaims.
“How long can you stay?” asks Nikki.
“All weekend,” he answers.
“Yes!” cries Mae. “Oh, goody! All weekend. Tobias, look what we taught Paw-Paw to do. We taught him to dance. The trick is named Ballerina. All you need is a dog cookie —”
“Honey, give your brother a chance to catch his breath,” says Mrs. Sherman.
Tobias flings his backpack on the floor and joins his family at the table. Nikki fixes him a plate of food.
“Three plus one is four,” says Mae with satisfaction.
Back in Camden Falls, several streets from Aiken Avenue, Allie Read is finishing up a day of writing. The afternoon has been particularly productive and she closes her laptop with a snap, looking forward to a quiet evening. In the kitchen, she removes various items from the refrigerator and begins to prepare her dinner. She sets one place at the table. She considers the place. She considers the small meal on the stove. She considers the one umbrella in the stand in the front hall and the mostly empty coatrack nearby. Everything seems somehow insignificant.
Allie sighs. And then she does the thing that she has told herself she must stop doing so often. She climbs the stairs to the second floor, turns on the hall light, opens a closet door, and stands before the closet. She looks over the shelves of baby supplies. After a moment, she selects a tiny yellow shirt, holds it to her cheek, and then returns it to the shelf.
She closes the door on her secret.
Author photo © Dion Ogust
ANN M. MARTIN lives in upstate New York in a town not unlike Camden Falls. She loves to sew and loves to take walks with her dog, Sadie. She also has two cats, Gussie and Woody.
Ann’s acclaimed novels include Belle Teal, A Corner of the Universe (a Newbery Honor), Here Today, A Dog’s Life, and On Christmas Eve. Her much-loved series The Baby-sitters Club has sold over 176 million copies since it began.
To find out more about Ann, please visit
www.scholastic.com/mainstreet
Belle Teal
A Corner of the Universe
A Dog’s Life
Here Today
On Christmas Eve
P.S. Longer Letter Later
written with Paula Danziger
Snail Mail No More
written with Paula Danziger
Ten Kids, No Pets
The Baby-sitters Club series
Main Street #1: Welcome to Camden Falls
Main Street #2: Needle and Thread
Main Street #3: ’Tis the Season
Main Street #4: Best Friends
Main Street #5: The Secret Book Club
Copyright © 2008 by Ann M. Martin. All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc. SCHOLASTIC and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
First printing, September 2008
Cover art and illustrations by Dan Andreason
Cover design by Steve Scott
e-ISBN 978-0-545-29570-3
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
Ann M. Martin, September Surprises
Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net Share this book with friends