“Good afternoon,” Creelman said. “Today’s lesson: rubbings.”
“Rubbings,” Pascal predictably repeated before the Brigade could catch their breath. “What’s that?”
Wooster and Preeble crossed their arms and took a step back.
“Ever put a leaf or a penny underneath a piece of paper and rub a crayon on top of the paper so that you get an image? That’s a rubbing,” Creelman explained.
“I did that once, only I drew a picture in crayon, covered it in black paint, then scratched out a drawing so that the colors underneath showed through.”
“Not the same thing,” said Creelman, turning away from Pascal. “Now, inside each of these bins you’ll find a package of jumbo crayons, scissors, masking tape and nonfusible interfacing fabric.”
Pascal took a few steps so that he planted himself directly in front of Creelman again.
“Reusable what?” he asked.
“Nonfusible interfacing fabric. You buy it at fabric stores to stiffen collars and buttonholes and cuffs. But that’s not important. We use it here because it doesn’t tear as easily as paper.”
Pascal was about to ask another question, but Creelman gave a dismissive wave of his hand.
“Now, open your bins.”
We did. Inside my bin was a roll of white fabric and all the other items Creelman had listed. Except mine also had one more item — Creelman’s book of epitaphs called Famous Last Words.
I glanced up at Creelman, but he didn’t look my way.
“What you’re going to do is select a gravestone that you like. Just make sure that the stone you select is in good shape, that it isn’t cracking or weakened in any way. Then you need to cut off a piece of interfacing that is larger than the stone you want to rub.”
“So we can pick any stone we want? Any stone at all?” Pascal asked, with a sweep of his hand that covered the entire cemetery.
“No,” Creelman replied. He turned to me. “Derek, which stones are good for rubbing?”
“Ones that are not cracked or weakened in any way.”
Creelman nodded curtly. I could see that he was going to treat me as if he still didn’t know much about me or my past. I was so relieved that I didn’t mind being singled out for questions.
“Got it,” Pascal said, undaunted as usual.
He began to wander off with his bin in search of a gravestone.
“Wait!” Creelman barked. “I’m not done.”
Pascal trailed back to us, clumsily dropping his bin to the ground.
“As I was saying, pick a stone, a stone that is not cracked or weakened, and cut a piece of interfacing larger than the stone. Tape the interfacing dead center over the area you want to rub. Pick a color of crayon you like and peel off the paper covering the crayon. Then rub with the side of the crayon — not the tip! — against the interfacing, and watch the image appear. If you do this correctly, your rubbing will be an exact replica of the stone. When you get home, use an iron to set the crayon into the fabric. Then you’ll have an artifact that is suitable for framing.”
I glanced at Merrilee, who was listening intently to Creelman’s every word. This kind of project was right up her alley.
“When you say iron,” Merrilee probed, “how exactly do you do that?”
“Place your rubbing face-up on your ironing board with an old towel over it. Then with a hot iron, press down on the towel. This will melt the rubbing beneath it into the interfacing fabric so that you have a permanent image.”
Merrilee nodded along with Creelman’s instructions. I had never seen her look so fascinated, so eager. I was certain that her bedroom walls would soon be covered in spooky rubbings of every type of skull and crossbones imaginable.
I wished she’d turn into a vampire and get it over with. What was she waiting for?
Creelman seemed to pick up on Merrilee’s enthusiasm.
“If you ever want to do a rubbing at another cemetery, be sure to get permission first,” he added. “Not all cemeteries allow it.”
We nodded.
“That’s it for now,” Creelman said. “Pick your gravestone and begin. And be careful. We don’t want to see any crayon wax on any gravestone. We’ll be back later to check your work.”
The Brigade left without a backward glance, leaving us behind with our blue bins.
I turned to face Pascal and Merrilee, but Merrilee was already off like a shot.
“So much to choose from,” Pascal said. “What do you think you’ll pick? One with an hourglass? An angel? A weeping willow?”
“I think I’m going to look for one with an interesting epitaph,” I said, thinking back to my conversation with Creelman. “There’s bound to be something I like that’s been written in stone.”
“Okay. Well, good luck,” Pascal said, and he wandered away with his bin.
I picked up mine and headed in the opposite direction. I slowly made my way up and down the rows, reading the gravestones one by one.
Rest in peace.
Rest in peace.
Rest in peace.
The oldest ones were more of the same, so I made my way over to the north section, past the marbles. There I read some interesting epitaphs with more modern phrases. Then I came across a great one carved underneath the person’s date of birth and death. It read, Writer. End of Story.
I set my bin down and opened the lid. I took my time and followed Creelman’s instructions exactly. I didn’t want to mess up, especially because he had lent me his book without a word.
I carefully rubbed across the epitaph with a blue crayon and the letters came through boldly. The sun was warm on my back, the ground was drying out, and the grass was soft and bright green — signs of spring. When I was almost done, I stood to see where Merrilee and Pascal were working.
Merrilee had remained in the oldest part of the cemetery, near poor Enoch’s plot where there were plenty of skulls and crossbones to choose from. No surprise there.
Pascal had moved to the marble section of the cemetery, just before the first hedgerow.
Except for an older couple who were visiting a gravestone a few rows ahead of me, I had the granite section to myself.
I was just finishing up when the couple came over to see what I was doing. They looked to be the same age as my grandparents and were dressed as if they had just come from church.
“What do you have there?” the woman asked kindly.
“I’m taking a rubbing of this gravestone.”
“Did you know this person?”
“No, but I like the epitaph.”
“Writer. End of story. Oh, that is clever. Lenore was always very funny.”
I reread the name on the gravestone. Lenore Swinimer.
“You knew her?” I asked.
“We knew of her,” the man said. “She wrote a column for a coastal magazine that we liked to read. Do you go to school around here?”
The woman quickly turned to him.
“Stop your questions. You’re retired now, remember!”
“Once a school superintendent, always a school superintendent,” he said with a shrug, but then he fixed a stare on me, still expecting an answer.
I was pretty sure that school superintendents kept records of attendance and dealt with kids who skipped class.
“I go to Queensview Elementary,” I explained quickly. “The grade sixes do community work on Wednesday afternoons for the last three months of the school year. I ended up with cemetery duty.”
“How wonderful! We were just visiting Mother,” the woman said, nodding toward the row they had just come from. I could see that they had left flowers on top of one of the gravestones.
“Oh,” I said. I was at a dead loss about what more to say. This was the first time I had talked to people who actually knew someone buried in the cemetery.
> “I’m sorry,” I added hesitantly.
“That’s okay. She died years ago. This is the anniversary of her passing.”
“Oh,” I said.
“It’s a beautiful day,” she remarked, holding her face up to the sun.
The man stood with his hands on his hips and surveyed the rest of the cemetery.
“Nothing like a cemetery to teach us about local history. They keep great records.”
I thought back to how quickly Creelman was able to check to see if Trevor Tower was buried at Twillingate. I nodded in agreement.
“Cemeteries. Churches. Schools. They all keep great records,” the man continued.
Great records? That got me thinking! We could find out if Trevor Tower had been a student at Queensview by checking the school’s records!
Simple!
“Do schools keep records of every student who ever attended?” I asked, just to be sure.
“Guaranteed,” the man said.
Trevor Tower. If he had been a student at Queensview, then it would be easy enough to confirm just by asking the secretary at the school’s office. Had Merrilee or Pascal thought of that? No, I was certain they hadn’t.
“Well, we must be on our way,” the woman said.
“Yes, we should if we still want to stop for lunch,” the man said, checking his watch.
“Are you going to Sacred Grounds Cafe?” I asked.
“We might,” the man said. “It’s close.”
“If you do,” I said, “try the meat loaf. It’s excellent.”
“Thanks for the tip,” the man said.
The couple headed off.
I packed up my bin and put Creelman’s book and my rubbing into my knapsack.
The next day during recess, I stood in the hallway outside of the school’s office and waited to meet Pascal and Merrilee. They arrived together.
“What’s the plan?” Pascal asked. “You’re going to ask the secretary if Trevor Tower was a student here? Just like that?”
“Sure,” I said. “Why not?”
“She’s going to ask why we want to know,” Merrilee warned.
“So we’ll tell her,” I said.
“Tell her what, exactly?” Merrilee asked.
“We’ll tell her that we found a book at the public library with his name in it, and we wondered if he had been a student here. That’s the truth, more or less. We don’t have to say that his name was written in a secret code.”
Pascal and Merrilee thought this over.
“I guess we could say that,” Merrilee said at last.
“Let’s do it,” Pascal added.
Together, we filed into the office. Ms. Albright, the school’s secretary, was at her desk talking on the telephone. When she hung up, she surveyed the three of us, then settled on Merrilee.
“Merrilee! Have you been sent to see the principal? Again?”
“No,” Merrilee shot back with surprising force.
“I’m very glad to hear it,” Ms. Albright said. “You and the principal must be running out of things to talk about.”
Merrilee said nothing, but she gave me an angry little push forward.
“We were wondering if you could check the school records for us,” I said in my politest voice. “We’d like to know if Trevor Tower was ever a student here.”
“Trevor Tower?”
“Yes. Trevor Tower. Could you please check?”
“Trevor Tower? What do you know about Trevor Tower?”
“Nothing. Not a thing.”
“Nothing?”
“No.”
“Trevor Tower. It’s the same thing every year. I don’t get it.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Every year, a student comes by to ask me about Trevor Tower.”
“Is that right?” I said. I realized then that the mystery book codes had to have been floating around in the public library for years, and that others had been on the same trail before us.
“So you’ve already looked him up?” I asked. “You keep good records?”
“I most certainly do,” Ms. Albright said.
I thought of my list of t-shirt sayings. If I were to make one for Ms. Albright, it would read, Not here to make friends.
The telephone rang.
“Good afternoon. This is Queensview Elementary. How may I help you?”
I formed a tight huddle with Pascal and Merrilee.
“I don’t think she’s going to tell us. She’s too suspicious,” Merrilee whispered.
“Well, what do you want me to do?”
“We’ll have to trick her into answering our question. Come at her from the side.”
“Come at her from the side? What’s that supposed to mean?” I whispered.
“Follow my lead,” Merrilee whispered. “And you,” she added, turning to Pascal, “you say nothing.”
Pascal opened his mouth to object, but Ms. Albright hung up the telephone. Before she could say anything further, Merrilee jumped in.
“We’re really enjoying cemetery duty,” Merrilee announced.
“I’m glad,” Ms. Albright said. “Community service is important. Is Mr. Creelman still with the Brigade?”
“Yes, he is,” Merrilee said. “I think he’s been there since the beginning of time.”
Ms. Albright chuckled. “You might be right. But I hear that he’s been having some health issues, so I wondered if he was still keeping up with his volunteer work.”
“Well, he sure knows everything there is to know about that cemetery. Parts of a grave marker. Types of stones. How to clean them. And just yesterday, we learned how to make rubbings.”
“That sounds lovely,” Ms. Albright said, as she began to straighten the paperwork on her desk.
We were losing her. I looked anxiously at Merrilee.
But Merrilee was unflappable.
“Mr. Creelman even knows who is buried in every single plot. The cemetery keeps amazing records.”
“Is that so?” Ms. Albright said, reloading her stapler.
“You can give him a name, and just like that, he can tell you if that person is buried at the cemetery or not.”
“Well, good for him,” Ms. Albright said, putting stray pencils into her pencil holder.
“It’s impressive,” Merrilee agreed. “We asked Mr. Creelman about Trevor Tower,” she added sadly. “He looked up Trevor’s name for us, but there was no record.”
“Oh, my! Trevor would be far too young for the cemetery, I should hope. And besides, he and his family moved away years ago, right after Trevor graduated from grade six,” Ms. Albright said, dumping holes from her hole puncher into her wastebasket like confetti, without realizing she had confirmed that Trevor had been a student at Queensview.
“Moved away?” I repeated.
To tell the truth, I was a bit relieved. If Trevor no longer lived in our town, and those mystery code books had been floating around the library for years and years, then there was no longer any locker to open. We had reached the ultimate dead end and could now move on with our lives.
“With all the student records you take care of, how can you be so certain about Trevor?” Merrilee asked.
“It’s easy to remember the names of the students chosen to participate in the school’s time-capsule program. That only happens once every seven years.”
“Trevor was selected?” Merrilee asked, elbowing me ever so slightly.
“Yes. Seven years ago. That’s why it’s easy to remember him.”
Pascal gasped, but Ms. Albright didn’t seem to notice.
“So, his locker is a time capsule,” I said, almost in a whisper. “It’s still here.”
“That’s right. Locked up and scheduled to be opened forty-three years from now.”
Her words, so casually dropped, almost knocked me to my knees. But Merrilee took a bold step forward and leaned her hands on Ms. Albright’s tidied desk.
“Where is it?” she demanded.
Seven
_____
Famous Last Words
“WHAT LUCK! Trevor has a time-capsule locker!” Pascal said in awe as we hurried along the upstairs hallway, our shoes squeaking against the linoleum. “And there it is! I can see the plaque from here.”
We stopped and stood in front of Trevor Tower’s locker. The engraved metal plaque fixed to it gave Trevor Tower’s name, the year he graduated and the year that the locker was to be reopened. Except for the plaque, the locker seemed ordinary in every other way.
“Look,” Merrilee said.
She pointed to the lock securing Trevor’s time capsule, which was also ordinary, but I could see why she was excited. It was not a lock that needed a key. It was a combination lock with a dial.
“Twenty-eight. Thirty-four. Eighteen. That has to be the combination,” she said.
The three of us spied left and right, but the hallway was crowded with lunchtime traffic. Even worse, Trevor’s locker was located directly across from the school’s music room, which was also used as a homework drop-in center over lunch. From where we stood, it felt like the busiest part of the school.
“This is no good,” I cautioned. “Too many people.”
“I can see that,” Merrilee said irritably.
“So we’re not going to open it today?” Pascal said with disappointment.
“We need to be careful,” Merrilee said. “Besides, the locker isn’t going anywhere.”
“She’s right,” I said, a bit relieved that we had put off the deed, at least for now.
I was still not convinced that breaking into a time capsule filled with secrets and meant to stay locked for fifty years was a good idea.
And yet, I had to admit that I was now a little bit intrigued about what the contents might be. Secrets, we knew that, but what kind?
I thought back to my lunch with Creelman and about how, for the first time ever, I had kept my mind’s garage door open and had taken a really good look around. Up until then, I had always been afraid of what I might find lurking in the shadowy corners. But with Creelman, I had remembered all the details of the accident, every last one of them. And although I was still having nightmares, at least I had confronted the facts I knew about that terrible day. Doing so somehow made me feel safer and more in control.
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