The Secret Book Club

by Ann M. Martin

  “It seemed like the summer was going to go on and on forever,” added Flora, “and then it went by in a blur.”

  “Vacations always do that,” Ruby said, and sighed.

  “But you still have one more day,” Min started to say.

  “Two for me,” interrupted Ruby.

  “Okay, one or two,” Min amended. “So you might as well enjoy Nelson Day.”

  They had turned onto Dodds Lane by then and reached the corner of Main Street. “Hey!” exclaimed Ruby. “Look!”

  Strung across Main Street was an enormous red banner with black letters reading CAMDEN FALLS CELEBRATES NELSON DAY!

  “That is SO cool,” said Ruby, and Flora knew full well that her sister was imagining a sign that read CAMDEN FALLS CELEBRATES RUBY DAY!

  “Wow, just look at everything,” said Flora, her gaze sweeping up and down the street. “It’s kind of like the three hundred and fiftieth birthday celebration.”

  “Oh, it is,” agreed Ruby. “The street is closed off again. Look, there are the sidewalk sales.” Ruby felt in her pocket for her change purse. She had saved sixteen dollars to spend on Nelson Day. “Is Needle and Thread going to have a sidewalk sale?”

  “Of course,” said Min. “Nearly every store is.”

  “I hope the Nelsons get lots and lots of money,” said Ruby.

  “Hey,” said Flora, “you can get your face painted, Ruby.”

  “And there’s Bud. I’m going to have a hot dog for lunch.”

  “You girls can spend as much time at the street fair as you want,” said Min. “Just check in with me at the store once an hour, okay?” Ruby and Flora nodded. “Are Olivia and Nikki going to meet you?”

  “At eleven,” said Flora.

  Ruby and Flora spent half an hour wandering along the west side of Main Street.

  “I think I might need some new things for school,” said Flora.

  “Clothes?” asked Ruby. “Talk to Min. You might find something on sale today. And Min would appreciate it if you saved her some money.”

  “Actually, I was thinking about, you know, jewelry and hair clips and stuff like that.”

  “Oh. You need to accessorize,” said Ruby. “Min might not pay for those things.”

  “I know. Come on. Let’s look at Bubble Gum’s sale. Olivia and Nikki can help me make decisions later.”

  “What about me? I’m …” Ruby hesitated, “pretty accessorable.”

  Flora smiled. “I know you are.”

  “How much money do you have?”

  “Almost twenty-five dollars.”

  “Sweet.”

  Outside Bubble Gum, Ruby and Flora examined the trays and trays of plastic jewelry, hair scrunchies, sunglasses, and barrettes.

  “Hey, look!” said Ruby. “Pink cell phone cases. And they glitter.”

  “For your nonexistent cell phone,” replied Flora.

  “I’m going to buy these,” said Ruby, holding out a pair of tie-dyed socks with peace symbols embroidered on the ankles.

  “Very Woodstock,” said Flora.

  “And I’m going to get this necklace with the beaded peace symbol on it. Hey! I can buy the socks and the necklace for six dollars. That’s a bargain.”

  “Hi, you guys!”

  Ruby looked up to find Nikki and Olivia making their way through the crowd that was forming on Main Street. “Hi!” she cried. “We’re shopping for school stuff.”

  “Oh, good,” said Olivia. “I need notebooks and pens. Let’s see what’s on sale at the art supply store.”

  “And I promised Mae I’d get her new markers,” said Nikki.

  Ruby, Flora, Olivia, and Nikki spent the next hour going from store to store, looking at jeans and jewelry, notebooks and necklaces.

  “Isn’t it funny,” said Ruby, “how much more fun it is to shop outside than inside? Just like it’s more fun to eat outside than inside?”

  At the end of the hour, Flora said, “We have to check in with Min now. We might as well leave our bags at Needle and Thread.”

  “And then let’s get something to eat,” said Ruby.

  Their purchases safely stowed behind the counter at Needle and Thread, Olivia said, “I know what we should get — ice cream.”

  “Now?” said Nikki. “We haven’t even eaten lunch yet.”

  “Who cares? Today is Nelson Day,” replied Ruby. “If today was Ruby Day, I would declare that people could only eat ice cream. All day long. Ice-cream cones and ice-cream sundaes and ice-cream sodas and —”

  “Okay, we get it,” said Flora.

  The girls bought Popsicles from the Good Humor truck that was parked outside Verbeyst’s Cleaners and walked along Main Street again, licking vanilla ice cream as it dripped in the morning sun. They saw the Morris kids getting their faces painted. “I’m a kitty cat!” Alyssa called to them. They waved to Mr. Pennington, who was talking to Sonny outside of Time and Again. They saw Aunt Allie sitting in the window of Frank’s Beans with a cup of coffee. At last Flora said, “Let’s see what’s going on in the square.” So they crossed Main Street and threaded their way through the knots of shoppers.

  In the town square, Ruby approached a kiosk. “Well, look at that,” she said, pointing to a sign featuring a cheerful red bar stool. “If we had enough money, we could buy a stool for the Marquis Diner and have it named after us. The stool, I mean. Darn. I don’t have nearly enough for that. There isn’t a Ruby anything yet. No stool or day or sandwich or constellation. Nothing.” She looked at Flora and her friends. “But one day there will be.”

  “Well, anyway,” said Nikki, “buying stools for the diner is a really good idea. I wonder who thought that up. I’ll bet tons of money will be raised for the Nelsons today, and that everything will turn out okay for them and they’ll be able to stay in Camden Falls after all. Olivia, what’s the matter?”

  Olivia hadn’t been paying attention to Ruby or Nikki. She was staring at a sign behind the kiosk. Ruby now looked over her shoulder and saw a painting of a pink-and-green hot air balloon next to the words BALLOON RIDES: FIFTY DOLLARS. “Olivia?” she said.

  Olivia shook her head. “Nothing. I just … wow. Fifty dollars.”

  “Would you actually go up in one of those things?” asked Nikki.

  “Well, wouldn’t it be fun to see Camden Falls from way up high? You might float over your own house. You’d see Aiken Avenue. And Main Street! You’d look down and there would be the roofs of all the stores. And everyone would be tiny. And then you’d keep on floating, and you’d float out of town and out over the countryside. Now that would be a Saturday adventure.”

  The rest of the afternoon passed in a slow but delicious fashion, and before Ruby knew it, the store owners on Main Street were bringing in their tables, and the shoppers began walking toward the town square. Ruby and her friends split up. Nikki met her mother and Mae, Olivia found her parents and her brothers as they were closing Sincerely Yours, and Ruby and Flora joined Min just as she and Gigi were locking the door of Needle and Thread.

  “We’ll have supper on the square,” said Min cheerfully. “Are you girls hungry or did you have a lot of snacks this afternoon?”

  “Hungry,” said Ruby and Flora.

  At the town square, anyone celebrating Nelson Day dropped five dollars in a large canister and was handed a coupon for a free hot dog or hamburger. Min, Ruby, and Flora, clutching their coupons, wandered the green and greeted their friends and neighbors while in the background the band from the high school played Gershwin tunes and jazz numbers and old rock-and-roll songs that made Min smile.

  As dusk was beginning to fall and Ruby saw the flicker of the first fireflies, the band began to play a march. When it was over, a woman wearing a summer pantsuit climbed the steps to the grandstand and tapped on a microphone.

  “That’s the mayor!” Ruby exclaimed. “Mayor Howie.”

  “Welcome, everyone,” said the mayor. “Thank you all for participating in Nelson Day. As you know, the profits from today’s f
estivities will be donated to the fund in honor of the Nelson family to help them rebuild the Marquis Diner and their home. Over the next few days, the stores that participated in the sidewalk sale will calculate the sum of their donations. But I can tell you right now that the money from the sale of the stools today, from the collection canisters that were set out several weeks ago, and from this evening’s donations here on the square total just over twelve thousand dollars.”

  A cheer rose from the crowd, and Ruby put her fingers in her mouth and let out a whistle.

  “And to present that check to the Nelsons,” the mayor continued, “I’d like to call to the grandstand Ruby Jane Northrop, who came up with the idea for Nelson Day.”

  Ruby gasped. She looked at Min, and then she ran to the grandstand and clattered up the steps. Mayor Howie shook Ruby’s hand and indicated a giant cardboard check made out to the Nelsons on which someone had written the words TWELVE THOUSAND AND TWENTY-FIVE DOLLARS with a fat black marker. “Now,” said the mayor, “I’d like to ask the Nelsons to join us.”

  While the Nelsons made their way to the grandstand, Ruby grinned at her audience and waved to various friends and relatives. “Ruby,” said Mayor Howie when the Nelsons had gathered, “would you do the honors, please?”

  The giant check was handed to Ruby then, and she handed it to Mrs. Nelson. Mr. Nelson started to say something to the crowd but had to wait until the cheering and clapping stopped. Finally, he held up his hands, and when the square was quiet, he said, “My family and I moved here to escape the city and to settle into a smaller community. When the fire destroyed our diner, we thought we had lost that chance. Tonight, thanks to all of you, we know we’ll be able to finish rebuilding and stay here after all. We’ve been embraced by Camden Falls, and we want to thank you for your generosity, your support, and most important, for your friendship.”

  The crowd began to applaud again, and Ruby beamed a movie-star smile as the Nelsons hugged one another and the fireflies twinkled and the moon rose over Main Street.

  Camden Falls, Massachusetts, has a different face every day of the year. This is Camden Falls on the evening of Labor Day, which is the first day of September. The Nelson Day festivities are over and Main Street is quiet. The cleaning crew has come through and swept up the candy wrappers and sales receipts, and the sparrows have enjoyed bits of popcorn and the ends of hot dog buns. The lampposts, still twined with gold lights, glow brightly in the dark, and so do the store windows. There’s the window of Needle and Thread, now featuring back-to-school clothes made by Min and Gigi and Flora. There’s the window of Time and Again, designed by Sonny Sutphin: The rows of books arranged in it have been chosen as Fall Book Club Picks. In the window of Frank’s Beans is a sign introducing Pumpkin Spice Chai.

  Take a walk through town to a little one-story house in front of which a FOR RENT sign recently stood.

  “Pretty soon we can put the sign up again,” says Hilary Nelson with satisfaction. “We won’t have to live here much longer. We can move back to Main Street.”

  “We are very, very lucky,” says her father.

  The Nelsons, all four of them, are sitting in the living room of their rented house. The oversize cardboard check leans against the wall next to the couch.

  “We have good friends here,” says her mother.

  “It’s funny how a friend can be someone you never met,” remarks Hilary.

  In a somewhat larger but even shabbier house on the outskirts of town, Nikki and Mae Sherman and their mother sit at the table in their kitchen. On the floor next to Mae, Paw-Paw is chowing down a bowl of dog food.

  “Poor Paw-Paw. He had to eat late tonight,” says Mae. “And we got hamburgers, but he only got … whatever that stuff is.” She leans over to examine the contents of his dish.

  “Well, he seems to like it,” says Nikki, but her attention is not really on her little sister or on Paw-Paw. She’s listening for the sound of cars on the road, and her eyes are trained out the window on the drive to their house. She suspects that her mother is watchful, too. But Mae and Paw-Paw are oblivious to nighttime dangers, and Nikki is grateful for that.

  Back in town, lights begin to blink off here and there. In the Morrises’ home on the left end of the Row Houses, the light goes off in Alyssa’s room. Alyssa, five years old, lies in bed thinking about school. “Kindy garden,” she says to herself. “Flower garden, vegetable garden, kindy garden.” In three days she will begin kindergarten, and at long last she’ll be able to walk to Camden Falls Elementary with her sister and brothers.

  In a little plot of land behind the fourth Row House from the right are, somewhat to the surprise of Olivia, Ruby, Nikki, and Flora, flourishing plants that still yield squash, green peppers, eggplants, tomatoes, and more. The moon shines down on the garden, but the only pair of eyes that notices it belongs to Sweetie, Mr. Willet’s cat, who has been prowling behind the Row Houses ever since he slipped out the back door, unseen by Mr. Willet, whose mind is on other things.

  Inside the Walters’ house, Olivia is lying on her bed. She has come up with a new project for herself: She has decided to read all the other books by the authors of the secret book club selections. She decides to start with the books by Elizabeth Enright, who wrote The Saturdays, so propped against her knees is a copy of Thimble Summer. Olivia is happy to lose herself in a new story, something to yank her mind from thoughts of tomorrow’s orientation at the central school.

  Three houses away, Bill Willet stands on his front stoop and looks across his yard to the object that was pounded into the lawn late in the afternoon. Mr. Willet was surprised to learn that the real estate agent worked on Labor Day and now doesn’t know whether to be pleased or dismayed by the sight of the FOR SALE sign. He wants to be closer to Mary Lou, but this has been his home for a long, long time. He thinks of the faces of his neighbors as they walked home from the Nelson Day festivities earlier. No one was surprised by the sign, but everyone felt a pang of sadness, the way Olivia felt when she thought over her years at the elementary school, or Mrs. Morris felt when she looked at Alyssa’s baby clothes.

  “I can’t imagine the Row Houses without the Willets,” Mr. Fong had said as he and his wife, baby Grace in front of them in her stroller, paused to consider the sign.

  “I wonder who’ll buy his house,” Ruby had said a few minutes later. “We’ll have new neighbors.”

  “The last time we had new neighbors,” Min had replied, “was when the Fongs moved here.”

  Now the Row Houses are quiet. The Morrises have settled in for the night, and so have the Edwardses, the Walters, and Dr. Malone and Margaret. Lydia Malone is out with friends but has a ten o’clock curfew so should be home soon. The Fongs are singing Grace to sleep in her room. Mr. Willet takes one more look at the sign before closing and locking his front door. He hears Sweetie meowing at the back door and opens it gratefully. Sweetie shouldn’t be out at night.

  One house in the row is dark. Mr. Pennington hasn’t come home yet. He’s sitting in the living room of Min Read’s house. Upstairs, Flora and Ruby are in their bedrooms, neither asleep. Flora is looking through the items she bought at the sidewalk sale and planning her outfit for orientation. Ruby is writing up a list of musicals that feature children, specifically children her age, and planning to present it to someone at the community center. It is her dream to be featured in a musical before she turns twelve.

  Downstairs, Min and Rudy Pennington sit side by side on the couch, each wondering what the autumn will bring. They are sitting in silence, but they are very, very happy. Rudy Pennington reaches for Min’s hand and covers it gently, and Min smiles into his face.

  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 Christ
mas 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

  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, July 2008

  Cover art and illustrations by Dan Andreason

  Cover design by Steve Scott

  e-ISBN 978-0-545-29569-7

  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.