“So it isn’t a fun trip?” someone said from the back of the room.
The glasses came off again, but this time Ms. Crozzetti had her lecture face on. “I’ll have you know I’ve spent the past two months writing up a grant to pay for this field trip, which I thought would be a nice change of pace from reading the textbook. But if you’d rather stay put and do that . . .” She waited for a response, knowing full well no one wanted that option, then re-glassed herself and opened her plan book.
“Now, while this is a field trip, it is also an educational trip, which means you will have an assignment to do while you’re there.” She ignored the groans piling up around the room and pulled out a thick packet.
“You will be working with a partner that I will choose”—more groans—“to complete this packet as you visit the different sites around the museum. And just so there’s no wondering and fussing about who’s going to be with whom, I’ll tell you who your partner’s going to be right now.”
Icy fingers crawled up my spine as Ms. Crozzetti consulted her plan book. A partner? Who I’d have to work with? Why didn’t she just borrow a hammer from the custodian and split my head open? It would have been a lot less painful.
As she read the paired names, I tried to imagine who’d be the least awful partner. Ellie Vance was almost as quiet as I was. And Priya Kaur seemed friendly enough, even if she’d never said anything to me.
Not that my opinion mattered. The names had already been written out, and Ms. Crozzetti was the kind of teacher who wouldn’t change a list unless someone dropped dead, and even then she’d be seriously annoyed about the inconvenience. The only thing I could hope for was she wouldn’t make the torture worse by partnering me with the one person I dreaded more than a long and violently painful death.
And the moment I thought it, I knew it was going to happen.
“Lucy Bloom,” Ms. Crozzetti said as the icy fingers squeezed themselves around my throat, “you’ll be partners with Maddie Underwood.”
Maddie Underwood. Madison.
It was all I could do to keep from falling out of my chair and collapsing in a quivering heap. This was bad—end-of-the-world zombie apocalypse kind of bad. Well, maybe not that bad, but it was a pretty close second.
I managed to steal a glance toward the front of the class, where Madison sat. She never turned to look back at me, didn’t moan and carry on, didn’t even turn to one of the Oslo twins to roll her eyes. But she’d never do that in front of the teacher. She’d never let any adult see behind her perfect mask.
Ms. Crozzetti finished her list and asked if there were any questions. A smirking boy raised his hand.
“Yes, Marty?” Ms. Crozzetti said, pinching the top of her nose and closing her eyes.
“Can we stop for ice cream on the way back? That would be awesome.”
Ms. Crozzetti sighed. “Any useful questions?”
Madison raised her hand. I stiffened. Was she going to ask for a new partner? The thought of it gave me a little thrill of hope, even as I braced for the humiliation.
“Ms. Crozzetti,” Madison said in her sweetest classroom voice, “will there be any extra credit?”
13
I WAITED FOR the hammer to drop. The hammer, of course, was Madison, who I was sure couldn’t wait to let Ashley and Gretta Oslo know how disgusted she was having me as a partner.
With my head bent low, and the icy fingers twisting my stomach in knots, I slunk out of social studies and waited for poison to rain down on me.
“Can you believe you got Trash Licker of all people?” started Gretta, not wasting a moment.
Here we go, I thought. Just get it over with.
Madison didn’t respond right away. I figured she was thinking of something especially nasty, something that would outnasty all the other horrible things she’d ever said to me.
“Gretta,” she said finally, and I braced myself. “Where did you get your nails done? They look so awesome.”
I almost stopped in the middle of the hallway. Nails? Must have been a fake-out. She’d drop the bomb on me soon enough.
Even Gretta was thrown off balance. “My . . . my nails? What, these? Do you think so?”
“Oh yeah,” Madison said. “I can’t stand this glossy neon stuff I’ve been wearing. I mean, look at it. Yuck.”
And all the way to science, Madison and Ashley and Gretta talked nails. Nothing but nails.
It wasn’t a one-day fluke either. The insult shutout continued for the rest of the week. On the endless three-minute trudge from social studies to science, the three of them talked about how Mrs. Burns, the PE teacher, had the nerve to lecture the girls about proper dental care, considering her own crooked, mossy teeth; if it were true eating Pop Rocks and drinking Coke at the same time would make your stomach explode; why seventh-grade boys acted like such cheeseheads whenever three or more of them got together; and so on and so on.
You’d have thought I’d be relieved not to be her daily punching bag. But I wasn’t. My nerves were stretched out like thin wires of brittle glass.
The hammer might have looked like it was gone, but I knew it was only in hiding, waiting for just to right moment to strike. And when Madison finally brought it back out and walloped me, it would break me in pieces so small I’d never be put back together.
On Thursday, our social studies class met in the library to research postcolonial life in New York for the field trip the following week.
Ms. Crozzetti piled a stack of books on one of the library floor shelves. She instructed us to pick one book, check it out at the library desk, read it (she repeated this part three times), and write a short paragraph highlighting a detail about daily life.
I darted ahead of the crowd, snatched the nearest book, and was the first one in line at the library desk. Once I checked it out, I made my way to a library table separated from all the others. Just like the cafeteria, I knew the best places in every part of the school to keep out of sight.
After kids stopped scrambling for books and friends to sit with, the librarian quit shushing, and Ms. Crozzetti barked out her final-warning detention threats, the library quieted down to the low buzz of the fluorescent lights. I let out a breath and took my first look at the book I’d taken.
Hunter’s Moon Island: A History.
I stifled a yawn. Not exactly a thrill ride of a book. It even smelled old and musty. On the other hand, boredom was better than fretting about Madison and her secret evil plans for me, so I set my chin on my hand and got ready to flip open the cover. But a voice stopped my hand.
“Hey, Lucy.”
My heart squeezed up tight like it usually did when anyone talked to me. Then I looked up and saw May Darasavath standing there with an armful of books. Immediately I relaxed.
“Hi,” I said.
“Look at all the new Demon Donnie books that came in!” She grinned and displayed her book treasure. “They’re mostly about what happens between episodes or in alternate universes, so they’re not really canon, but they’re still pretty awesome. You here with Ms. Crozzetti’s class?” I nodded, and May nodded with me. “My friend Richie, who knows everything about everything, says she’s doing a field trip. That sounds so cool! I wish I was going.” She let out a dramatic sigh. “But I got Mr. Bradley for social studies. He’s so boring.”
A loud “Shh!” came from behind one of the bookshelves. May rolled her eyes and bent in closer to speak to me. “I bet you have partners. Richie says Ms. Crozzetti loves doing partners. Who’s yours?”
“Madison . . . Maddie Underwood,” I said, trying to sound like I didn’t care.
May frowned. “That’s too bad.”
“Too bad?”
“Yeah. I know her. She’s in my math class. I guess she’s supposed to be smart, but she’s got a mean streak she doesn’t let the teachers see. I wouldn’t want her as a partner. Yu
ck. Still, I kind of feel a little sorry for her.”
I stared at May. Sorry for her? For Madison? Perfect, poisonous Madison? How was that possible? I had to ask.
“Why are you sorry for her?”
May’s face turned serious, which wasn’t something I’d seen from her. “She tries so hard to be popular. It must be exhausting.”
I kept staring at May. I’d always thought of Madison as a girl who skated through life without a care, shoving away all obstacles—such as me—without missing a beat. It never occurred to me she might be skating on thin ice, terrified of the frigid water below her feet.
But before I could say anything about that (which wasn’t too likely), May grinned and said, “Anyway, it’s just one day, so I wouldn’t worry about it. I better let you get back to work before I get you in trouble. Keep thinking about Art Club. Bye!” She wiggled her fingers at the top of her book stack and left.
If my brain wasn’t in a muddle before, now it was a thick pea soup of confusion. May saw the nastiness hiding under Madison’s perfect smile, but she still felt sorry for her. And that made me wonder if maybe Madison really was exhausted from playing all her petty little games to show how much better she was than a little nothing like me. Maybe she was bored of the whole Trash Licker thing and had moved on from harassing me to just pretending I didn’t exist. I could live with that.
Then again, could I really afford to let my guard down?
I closed my eyes and shook my head. It was too, too much to take in, and I didn’t really want to take a deep dive into my thoughts about Maddie right then. So I planted my chin in my hands once more and opened the Hunter’s Moon Island book. And when I saw the photograph of the island printed on the first page, I sat up.
“That’s our island,” I whispered under my breath.
It was unmistakable. I’d looked at it practically every day over summer vacation. The same birch trees and the same puzzle-piece curve of the shore.
Who knew it had a name? Who knew it had a history?
I flipped through the pages looking for more pictures of the island, skimming through the sections on early Oneida settlements and European explorers of the Susquehanna, until I stopped at a photograph under a chapter titled “Hunter’s Moon Lodge: A Hotel Island Dream.” Faded and scratched, the photo showed a long white two-story building with rows of windows and columns dotted along both floors and a large sign on top reading HUNTER’S MOON LODGE.
I thought back to the day last week that Antonia and I had found Hush-a-bye’s body on the island. I remembered the charred pine columns set in a row and the pine board with the letters LOD I’d discovered in the dead leaves. I shivered, but I kept reading.
I read that fifteen years after the end of the Civil War, a steamboat company ran river tours up and down the Susquehanna River with a stop at Hunter’s Moon Island, a perfect spot to let the tourists out to stretch their legs and have a picnic. It became such a popular destination, someone decided to build a hotel there.
“Of all things,” I muttered. “A hotel on a river island.”
I turned the page to read more about the hotel, and I saw another photograph with the caption Hunter’s Moon Lodge, Summer 1881. I stared at the picture taken almost a hundred and forty years ago, and icy fingers dragged slowly down my spine.
It was an old-fashioned black-and-white photo, the kind where the black is washed out and almost looks brown. In it, a girl my age stood stiffly in front of a forked tree. She wore what seemed to be a gingham dress, and her face was expressionless, like a mask.
But it wasn’t her name or her lack of expression or the familiar forked tree that made me feel like all the air had been sucked out of the room. It was the doll she cradled in her arms. The curly, light-colored hair, the dress with frills at the end of the sleeves and along the bottom, and the thin dark sash tied above her waist—I’d seen it all before.
Hush-a-bye.
But it wasn’t possible. It didn’t make any sense.
Nothing’s impossible. Not anymore.
Above the photograph was a title: A Hunter’s Moon Lodge Mystery. I chewed the end of my pencil in my mouth furiously, my fingers tracing the last word. I was so caught up in what the mystery might be, I never heard her approach.
“Hey, Lucy.”
I thought at first May had come back to gab a little more, which was okay by me. But it sure didn’t sound like May’s voice. I glanced up.
It wasn’t May standing there.
It was Madison.
I snapped the book shut. Madison stood by the library table with a smile on her face. My mind raced. What is she doing? Why did she call me Lucy? I didn’t even think she knew my real name.
She pulled back a chair and sat down next to me. The pencil still dangled from my mouth.
Madison opened up a bright yellow binder and took out a neon yellow sheet of paper. She smoothed it on the table with her nicely manicured fingers and pushed it over to me.
Extra Credit Project (+10 points): Madison Underwood and Lucy Bloom was typed in bold face across the top.
“I’ve been thinking about the extra credit we could do at Old Hops Village,” she said breezily, as if this conversation was something we did every day. “I went online and looked at the different exhibits they have there, and I thought it would be cool to do one on the Gypsum Man. Have you heard of that?”
My pencil decided right then to fall onto the table with a loud clatter. Madison glanced down at it briefly, and a flicker of annoyance crossed her face. Then she twisted her smile back on and continued.
“So the Gypsum Man was this big hoax, like, about a hundred years ago. There was this guy who made this big stone man and buried it and convinced a whole bunch of people for a while that the Gypsum Man was this for-real ancient giant. They have a special exhibit at the Village about the Gypsum Man, so I thought it would make a good extra credit project, don’t you think?”
“Uh, sure,” I mumbled.
Madison, looking very pleased, stuck the paper back in her binder. “Don’t worry about doing anything now,” she said as she pushed back her chair and stood. “We’ll take notes when we’re there, and then afterward we’ll figure out what to do with them. Okay, see you later.”
And just like that, she was gone.
14
AFTER MADISON LEFT, I just sat there, staring into the air, thinking about the one-sided conversation I’d had with her.
She’d called me Lucy. Not Trash Licker. Lucy. And she asked for my help with a project. Had she changed? Or was she setting me up? Or maybe she was being nice because of the project, schoolwork being the one thing she was dead serious about. Maybe once it was all over I’d go back to being Trash Licker again.
Maybe. Maybe not. I didn’t have a clue.
When the period bell rang, I absentmindedly stuffed Hunter’s Moon Island in my bag and slunk off to the next class.
For the rest of the day I wandered through a thick fog. I didn’t hear a word any of my teachers spoke. Somehow, I managed to get on the right bus and find my way home. Antonia had to stay after school for some extra tutoring in reading, so I rode alone. It wouldn’t have mattered if she was there. She could have straddled my shoulders and bopped me on the head with a sock full of cat litter and I wouldn’t have noticed.
Mom’s car wasn’t parked by the trailer, so I was on my own. I drank a glass of water and ate a sleeve of stale crackers Mom brought home from Theodora’s diner sometime last week. I turned on the TV but got nothing but fuzz, so I turned it off and went to my room.
I tossed my bag down and sat on the edge of my bed. The closet door was wide open. I could see the little wooden chair Antonia sat on each night. At the edge of the doorway, the frilly lace of a small yellow dress peeked out. My fingers dug deep into my blanket. I sat there for the longest time, chewing on an idea that was either amazingly brilliant
or completely insane.
“Why not?” I finally said, and I got off the bed.
I clicked on the single bulb in the closet and eased myself carefully on the chair, not sure if it would hold me as well as Antonia. It creaked a little, but otherwise seemed pretty solid.
Hush-a-bye’s green eyes gleamed in the dull yellow light of the closet, like they had their own flame buried somewhere deep inside. I cleared my throat.
“So,” I started, “I think you know I’m Antonia’s sister, Lucy. I’m sure you’ve seen me around.”
I waited a moment. The doll said nothing. That was probably for the best, because if she started talking back, I would have screamed for sure.
“Anyway, all those things you did for Antonia—I really don’t know how you did them—they were pretty awesome. The thing is, I was wondering if this was an exclusive thing between you and Antonia, or if you could help someone else out, maybe?”
I ran my fingers through my hair and bit my bottom lip.
“Okay, so there’s this girl at my school—her name is Madison—and she’s real pretty but she’s not always so pretty inside. Not to me, anyway. Lately she’s been nicer to me, but I wonder if she’s just pretending. Whatever it is, I’m worried about this field trip coming up on Tuesday, where I’m her partner. I’m scared she’s going to try and do something mean to me.”
Just talking about it made my chest tighten. I breathed slowly in through my nose and out through my mouth, which I’d read somewhere was a good way to calm yourself down.
“So I guess what I’m asking is . . . is . . . I don’t know what I’m asking. I mean, I can’t tell anyone else about it. Well, I could, but I can’t, if you know what I mean.”
I reached out and touched Hush-a-bye’s blond curls. They were so soft and silky, and I stroked them with the back of my hand.
“Can you help me?” I said.
Hush-a-Bye Page 7
