“You mean, like a chain letter?”
“No. It’s for a charm school, and I have to do all these things to win a prize.”
Violet looked thoroughly confused. I knew I wasn’t explaining it well, so I held up my wrist. “It has to do with my charm bracelet.”
The bell rang then, and Violet said, “That sounds weird . . . but sort of cool.” She paused. “What are you doing after school today?”
What was I doing? The same thing I did every day: walking home by myself and trying not to feel like a loser while everyone around me talked to their friends.
“Nothing,” I said.
“Want to meet at the Kaleidoscope Café?” Violet glanced at my bracelet. “You could tell me more about it then.”
“Sure,” I said.
“Cool.” She turned to go, then turned back. “By the way, your sister really does have an angelic voice.”
Somehow, I knew she was trying to apologize, but I wasn’t exactly sure for what.
9
THE KALEIDOSCOPE CAFÉ
Dandelion Hollow sits at a forgotten edge of Napa Valley, a place that is super popular with tourists. Except we don’t have any tourists or hotels. There also aren’t any chain restaurants or big banks. The town is just too small. All the businesses are locally owned, including the Kaleidoscope, Dandelion Hollow’s only full-service restaurant.
The sky was the color of a polished nickel as I left school and headed down Clover Street to the café. The Kaleidoscope is smack-dab in the middle of downtown Dandelion Hollow, just across from Dandelion Square—a large village green with park benches, a fountain, a gazebo, and a small playground for kids.
The Kaleidoscope was named by Ms. Zubov, the café’s owner, because she said she liked the word. But most people said it got its name because the menu was constantly shifting around, and you just never knew exactly what you were gonna get. Usually, it featured whatever Ms. Zubov was harvesting from the large garden she kept out back. Ms. Zubov was hands down the best gardener in Dandelion Hollow. She said it was because the soil in Northern California was a lot easier to work with than the packed earth she grew up with in Russia.
Judging by the smell when I walked into the café, her soil was still serving up plates of her famous Parmesan-and-basil baked tomatoes. I glanced around, wondering if Violet was already here, when I heard, “Psst! Izzy! This way!” In the corner, Violet was sitting by herself in a circular booth that was nearly hidden by a large planter.
“Hi, Violet,” I said, sliding in across from her.
“Shhh, keep your voice down.” She peeked over the planter, then quickly turned back around.
“Why?” I asked. “Who are you hiding from?”
“Ms. Harmer—she’s sitting with Coco Martin over by the jukebox.”
I looked over and, sure enough, there they were, sipping coffee and chatting. Just behind them, six old men from the Rotary Club were seated at their usual spots at the counter. One of them, a man wearing wire-rimmed glasses and a gray cap covering white tufty hair raised his voice and said, “Rubbish! Janine Malone will be the best mayor this town’s ever seen!” I figured Mom must have won him over in their meeting last week.
“Why did you steal the Hammer’s keys, anyway?” I asked. The Violet I knew used to be teacher’s pet.
Violet shrugged. “I just wanted out of her class, and that did the trick. I have Miss Carter for English now.”
I filed that information away for possible use later. Generally speaking, I don’t go looking to cause trouble at school (trouble seems to find me on its own just fine), but it might come in handy knowing that stealing the Hammer’s keys was a surefire way to get booted from her class.
“Hello, Izzy,” Ms. Zubov said, appearing at our table. “Can you tell your mother I heard from Earl at the post office that her campaign mailers came in today? They should be delivered sometime this afternoon. I told him they could leave them on the back porch and your mom and I will deal with them tomorrow.”
“Sure,” I said. Ms. Zubov and Grandma Bertie are good friends, and since our house is so crowded, Ms. Zubov offered to let Mom use her storeroom as a sort of makeshift campaign headquarters.
“Great.” She produced a pen and her order pad. “What can I get you girls today?”
“I’ll have the baked tomatoes,” I said.
“Can’t—we ran out a few minutes ago. The specials now are zucchini pasta, zucchini pancakes, and zucchini pizza bites. I’m using up the last of the summer’s harvest.”
“Why can’t you ever make zucchini bread?” Violet complained.
“Don’t get smart with me,” Ms. Zubov said, tapping Violet on the head with her menu pad. “Are you going to order something, or what?”
“What about hamburgers?” I asked.
“Meat smells putrid to me,” Violet said. “Can you order something else? I’m a vegetarian.”
“You are?” I hadn’t remembered that about Violet, and I wondered when she’d become a vegetarian. It seemed there were a lot of things I didn’t know about her now.
After we settled on plates of zucchini fries and Ms. Zubov had left, Violet said, “So . . . someone sent you a letter? Not an e-mail? A real, proper letter . . . like with a stamp and everything?” Violet looked like she couldn’t imagine such a thing.
“Yep, a real letter.” Briefly, I explained about Mrs. Whippie and her charm school. “Her second letter came in the mail yesterday, along with this.” I held up a tiny treasure box charm. It was gold and pink with bits of colored glass inside that looked like gemstones.
Violet took the charm and turned it over in her hands. “My mom used to write me letters,” she said wistfully. “She would take all my spelling words and use them in a letter she wrote to me.” The wistfulness vanished and she held out her hand. “Show me the letter,” she demanded.
I produced the second letter and pushed it across the table. A waitress brought us glasses of water, and I sipped mine while Violet read the letter aloud:
Dear Izzy,
I’m partial to the stars too! Next time I see a star-spangled sunset I’ll be sure to think of you. I’m glad you like my course so far. I promise not to give you any tasks you might think are “too lame.” As for learning to wear high heels, no need to worry. I’ve got no tolerance for those dreadful things. If God wanted us girls tottering around like a bunch of drunken sailors, we’d have been born wearing stilts! When I was your age, I didn’t particularly care for boys and makeup either. I spent a lot of time staring at the horizon, wondering what was just beyond, and when my real life was going to start. Now that I’m older, I know real life is every day, every moment, and it’s a treasure.
And speaking of treasures, I’ve enclosed this treasure box charm. Acts of kindness are like jewels: You store up enough of them in your heart, and you will have found one of the best treasures of all. For your next task, I want you to do something nice for someone. Do it anonymously, without expecting anything in return. Then you will have earned your charm, and you may place it on your bracelet. Send me a letter when you’re all through and let me know how it went.
Just as Violet finished reading, Ms. Zubov brought out our orders of zucchini fries. Her hands—which were webbed with thick purple veins—curled unnaturally around our plates.
“Arthritis,” she said, following my stare.
“Does it hurt?” I asked.
“I get by just fine.”
After Ms. Zubov left, Violet said, “What act of kindness are you planning to do?”
“I’m not sure yet,” I said, taking a bite of a zucchini fry. I’d been thinking about different ideas all day, but so far none of them felt right. “I thought maybe—”
“Hello, Violet!” The Rotary Man with the cap and wire-rimmed glasses stopped at our table. “Are you coming to my shop today? Bob would really like someone to pet him.”
Violet nodded and swallowed a fry. “Yeah, just as soon as Izzy and I are finished.”
&n
bsp; “Izzy?” He turned to me. “You wouldn’t happen to be Isabella Malone, Mildred’s great-niece, would you?”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “Do you know Aunt Mildred?”
“I do indeed. Or I did, at any rate. I haven’t seen her since high school. But I heard she was back in town.” He stuck out his hand. “My name’s Marty McGee.”
“Pleased to meet you.” I took his outstretched hand and shook it. Then a thought occurred to me. “Are you related to Scooter McGee?”
He laughed. “I see my reputation precedes me. He and I are one and the same! Please tell Mildred I said hello. And tell your mother she has my vote.” He tipped his cap and left.
“Who’s Bob?” I asked.
“His cat,” Violet answered. “He’s the fattest one I’ve ever seen. Mr. McGee owns the Dusty Shelf, the used-book store a few shops over. I go over there after school a lot to look at books and pet Bob.”
I figured Violet probably spends a lot of time in Dandelion Square. Her dad owns Barnaby Antiques, a shop on the other side of the village green.
Violet read the letter again while we ate our fries. Then she dug out her glittery purple journal from her backpack and wrote down “Whippie,” right after the words “tatter” and “sizzle.”
“Is that a list?” I asked.
“Yeah, I keep a list of words I like.” She stuffed the journal back in her backpack. “So, what were you thinking about doing to earn your charm?”
“I’ve got a little bit of allowance money with me.” I pulled out a five-dollar bill. “I could give it away anonymously.” I opened up a menu, tucked the bill inside, and closed it up again. “There, mission accomplished. Isn’t that kind?”
“Very kind.” Violet nodded.
We stared at each other until I sighed and said, “But also very boring.”
“Exponentially boring,” she agreed.
We both munched on our fries while we thought about this. Violet kept wiping up crumbs practically the second they landed on the table. I hadn’t remembered her being so neat.
“We could do something else,” she said suddenly.
“We?”
“Yeah, do you remember how we used to make up secret missions?”
I nodded. When we would pretend to be CIA agents we’d mess around with our walkie-talkies and imagine we were sent to exotic locations to spy on our enemies.
“What if we anonymously cleaned out Ms. Zubov’s garden tonight?” Violet said. “You saw her hands. I’ll bet it’s real difficult for her to keep up her garden. Plus”—she made a face—“I am so sick of eating zucchini. Maybe if we harvest some of her pumpkins she’ll finally change her menu. Do you have a cell phone?”
“Not allowed,” I said. Mom bought Carolyn a cell phone before she started middle school, but this past summer she told me I couldn’t have one because I wasn’t “responsible enough.”
“What about your walkie-talkie? Do you still have it?”
I nodded. “I think it’s in my closet somewhere.”
“Okay, find it, and I’ll call you on it. Maybe we could meet up around seven thirty. Can you get out tonight?”
Dad worked late at the station on Tuesday nights, and I knew Mom was planning on attending Carolyn’s first practice for the school musical, and they wouldn’t be home until pretty late. Since Grandma Bertie and Aunt Mildred usually went to bed early, that meant I’d be sitting home alone doing nothing.
“Tonight’s good,” I said.
We finished eating and then stood up and headed for the door. I left the fiver in the menu. Violet went to visit Bob the cat at the Dusty Shelf, and I nearly skipped as I walked home. Doing something nice for someone with Violet, and reviving our secret missions? It was gonna be awesome.
After all, what could go wrong?
10
SOMETHING GOES WRONG
Tonight’s episode of Izzy Gets In Trouble (Again) is brought to you by the Hammer, aka Ms. Harmer, Joy-Killer Extraordinaire:
For viewers just tuning in, it began after dinner when Mom called me into the den. She was flipping through a stack of mail while Carolyn was sprawled out on the couch, softly strumming her guitar.
“We have to leave in a few minutes for rehearsal,” Mom said. “But I wanted to ask how Mrs. Whippie’s charm school is going.” She squinted at an envelope then tossed it into the trash.
“It’s going fine,” I said. “I’m supposed to do something nice for someone anonymously. I put a five-dollar bill in a menu at the Kaleidoscope, but—”
“That was from you?” Carolyn said. “Layla found it when we stopped by earlier. She treated us both to hot chocolates. Thanks!”
“You’re welcome,” I said. “But I thought that was kind of boring, though, so—”
“Doing something nice for someone is never boring,” Mom said.
I was about to tell her all about clearing Ms. Zubov’s garden tonight, but right then she held out an envelope from school addressed to The Parents of Isabella Malone.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“How should I know?” I said, although I had a pretty good idea.
She opened the letter, and sure enough, I was right.
“It’s from Ms. Harmer. It says you frequently refuse to follow instructions.” She paused and said, “Well?”
I frowned. “Well, what?”
“Well—what do you have to say for yourself?”
“I guess I would say . . . instructions are for kids who have no imagination.”
Mom sighed loudly and ran a hand through her hair, but behind her back Carolyn grinned and gave me a thumbs-up.
“What? You told me to say something, so I did.”
Mom read the letter again. “Apparently, you were supposed to write an essay about a famous poet, and instead you turned in a story.”
“So what? Ms. Harmer didn’t actually say it had to be a real life famous poet—so I made one up.” If you ask me, what I did was actually harder, and, the best part of all, it only took me fifteen minutes. I wrote a story about a poet named Wanda Wordsmith who went fishing for her poems. Except instead of a fishing pole, she used a kite to catch her words on the wind. I thought it was a great story and deserved an A. But apparently, the Hammer thought it deserved a note home, which made no sense to me at all. Sometimes I think teachers like Ms. Harmer view creativity as something dirty and slightly embarrassing, and would prefer to turn kids into people who color inside the lines.
Generally speaking, I don’t care much for lines.
“She shouldn’t have had to specify she meant a real poet, Isabella. It was implied.”
“My name is Izzy. And if Ms. Harmer wanted to learn something about real poets, why couldn’t she just Google them herself?”
“The point,” Mom said in a steely voice, “was that you were supposed to do research in the library and compile facts, so you could learn something.”
“I’m allergic to libraries.” All that dust and crusty old Mrs. Menzel, the school librarian. No thanks. “Besides,” I added, “imagination is better than facts.”
Mom closed her eyes and took a deep breath. A few of them, actually. “Go upstairs and do your homework. We’ll talk about this tomorrow morning when your dad is home.”
“Okay, but don’t you want to hear about how I’m going to earn my—”
“No, I don’t!” Mom’s eyes flew open. “I don’t want to hear about it. I want you to go upstairs and, for just this once, do what you’re told without complaining and arguing!”
“All right, fine! I just thought for once you might want to hear about my life!” I stomped up the stairs as loudly as I could, expecting Mom to holler at me to keep it down. She didn’t, though, which I guessed made perfect sense.
After all, it’s not like she ever listened to me, anyway.
• • •
At precisely 7:15, a burst of static escaped from my walkie-talkie, which I’d managed to dig out of my closet.
“Wordnerd to Stargazer
, do you copy?”
“This is Stargazer,” I said, smiling at our old code names. “I read you, Wordnerd.” I quickly turned down the volume. “Report your position.”
“I am en route and heading northeast to Dandelion Square. ETA five minutes.”
“I’m right behind you, Wordnerd. Over and out.”
Quickly, I dumped out the contents of my backpack and stuffed it with the walkie-talkie, a flashlight, Mom’s old gardening gloves, my pack of star stickers (I wanted to show them to Violet), and a water bottle. Last, I stuffed my bracelet and the treasure box charm in my pocket. As soon as we finished clearing out the garden I planned to add the charm to my bracelet.
The doors to Grandma Bertie’s and Aunt Mildred’s rooms were closed, and I held my breath as I tiptoed downstairs, hoping they wouldn’t hear me. Mom was usually too distracted to care about my comings and goings, but Grandma Bertie and Aunt Mildred were a lot stricter. I opened the front door and nearly gave a shout when I heard the porch swing creaking and voices murmuring.
“I just miss him so much.” Grandma Bertie sniffed, and I knew she was crying again over Grandpa Frank, who died a couple years ago.
“We all miss someone,” Aunt Mildred said, and her voice held a strange tone. I couldn’t tell if she was mad or sad.
“Oh Milly, I know. I know we do.”
I stepped outside and softly closed the door behind me. The porch swing was off to the side of the house, so Grandma Bertie and Aunt Mildred couldn’t see me. I could see them, though. They had their arms wrapped around each other, and their white hair rippled in the wind. One of the wooden floorboards squeaked as I inched toward the porch steps.
“Is someone there?” called Aunt Mildred. “Is that you, Izzy?”
I pressed myself into the shadows and held my breath.
“It’s probably just the wind, dear,” said Grandma Bertie. “Izzy was in her room not ten minutes ago. I swear, you can’t remember anything these days, can you?”
“I’ll tell you what I remember,” Aunt Mildred said, her voice filling with indignation. “I remember . . .”
The Charming Life of Izzy Malone Page 4
