Mr. Shevvington, elegant and citified, looked both strong and hurt, dignified and crushed. “Mrs. Shevvington and I are so proud of you, Christina. And of course, we owe you our apologies.”
Christina snorted.
“When I talk to Mommy and Daddy on the phone,” said Dolly, “I’m going to ask if I can finish sixth grade on the island. I think I’m too young for the mainland.”
Her brothers said she was being brave and sensible. The Shevvingtons said, Oh, how they would miss her!
And, oh, how empty your file will be! thought Christina.
Christina could no longer stand being around any of these people. She went upstairs to take a shower, where gradually she turned the water from lukewarm to boiling. She washed her hair twice till it squeaked and, when she got out, towelled it dry. The gold and silver hair dried more quickly than the chocolate brown, and the gleaming ringlets curled in layers.
Christina went back downstairs. Temper, she said to herself. I must not lose my temper.
Dolly, Michael, and Benj had finished telling their parents everything.
Now the policemen were on the phone to Christina’s mother and father. “ … and your daughter is a heroine. Such presence of mind, such courage. She knew the only hope was to cross the Cove, and she managed it. I bet they’ll want to interview her on television. Probably re-enact the whole thing for the cameras.”
By now the downstairs was filled with noisy, happy people. It looked, for the first time, the way an inn should: a place where guests came to celebrate. All smiled lovingly at the Shevvingtons. Anya and Blake sat on a sofa, Anya asleep against his shoulder, Blake calm and proud to be the one supporting her. “It takes courage, also, Arthur,” said one neighbor, “to admit poor judgment. The town will stand behind you, Arthur. You did what you thought was best.”
Christina ate a jelly doughnut in two bites, took the phone from the policeman and shouted, “I saved Dolly, Daddy!”
“We’re so proud of you, Chrissie,” said her father in a choked voice. “Your mother and I are coming over in the morning. Actually it’s nearly dawn now. We’ll see you very soon. Honey, forgive us for our doubts. There really was an explanation for all the things that happened. And now I want you to thank the Shevvingtons for us.”
“To do what?” repeated Christina.
“Thank them. When they realized who must have committed the terrible crime of taking Dolly, they telephoned the police right away and admitted the circumstances. What responsible behavior. I think he is the best principal we’ve ever had.”
Far from being tarnished by this, the Shevvingtons would win gold medals!
Mrs. Shevvington was smiling.
Never would Christina Romney thank Mrs. Shevvington for anything.
“Dolly, darling,” said Mrs. Shevvington, “let me tuck you into bed. You have had a long and terrible twelve hours.”
“First I have to thank my best friend,” said Dolly. Almost shyly she approached Christina. The room went silent, watching them. “I’m sorry, Chrissie,” she said humbly.
“It doesn’t matter,” said Christina. Christina kissed Dolly.
It did matter. She did not know if they could be friends again or not.
The Shevvingtons had gotten away with everything.
But I’m alive. Dolly has not been hurt in an accident. Anya is sane … well, maybe she’s getting there. Blake is back.
I fought a good war.
But I didn’t win.
The enemy is still on the battlefield. Still teaching. Still running a school. Still living at Schooner Inne.
Christina had not, after all, brought Val back, nor located Number Six of laughter and gold. Nor produced the files of past Shevvington victories.
Dolly smiled trustingly at Mrs. Shevvington, trustingly took her hand, trustingly followed her up the stairs that swirled like mad white fences.
The Shevvingtons would start again.
It would never end.
A Biography of Caroline B. Cooney
Caroline B. Cooney is the author of ninety books for teen readers, including the bestselling thriller The Face on the Milk Carton. Her books have won awards and nominations for more than one hundred state reading prizes. They are also on recommended-reading lists from the American Library Association, the New York Public Library, and more. Cooney is best known for her distinctive suspense novels and romances.
Born in 1947, in Geneva, New York, Cooney grew up in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, where she was a library page at the Perrot Memorial Library and became a church organist before she could drive. Music and books have remained staples in her life.
Cooney has attended lots of colleges, picking up classes wherever she lives. Several years ago, she went to college to relearn her high school Latin and begin ancient Greek, and went to a total of four universities for those subjects alone!
Her sixth-grade teacher was a huge influence. Mr. Albert taught short story writing, and after his class, Cooney never stopped writing short stories. By the time she was twenty-five, she had written eight novels and countless short stories, none of which were ever published. Her ninth book, Safe as the Grave, a mystery for middle readers, became her first published book in 1979. Her real success began when her agent, Marilyn Marlow, introduced her to editors Ann Reit and Beverly Horowitz.
Cooney’s books often depict realistic family issues, even in the midst of dramatic adventures and plot twists. Her fondness for her characters comes through in her prose: “I love writing and do not know why it is considered such a difficult, agonizing profession. I love all of it, thinking up the plots, getting to know the kids in the story, their parents, backyards, pizza toppings.” Her fast-paced, plot-driven works explore themes of good and evil, love and hatred, right and wrong, and moral ambiguity.
Among her earliest published work is the Fog, Snow, and Fire trilogy (1989–1992), a series of young adult psychological thrillers set in a boarding school run by an evil, manipulative headmaster. In 1990, Cooney published the award-winning The Face on the Milk Carton, about a girl named Janie who recognizes herself as the missing child on the back of a milk carton. The series continued in Whatever Happened to Janie? (1993), The Voice on the Radio (1996), and What Janie Found (2000). The first two books in the Janie series were adapted for television in 1995. A fifth book, Janie Face to Face, will be released in 2013.
Cooney has three children and four grandchildren. She lives in South Carolina, and is currently researching a book about the children on the Mayflower.
The house in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, where Cooney grew up. She recalls: “In the 1950s, we walked home from school, changed into our play clothes, and went outside to get our required fresh air. We played yard games, like Spud, Ghost, Cops and Robbers, and Hide and Seek. We ranged far afield and no parent supervised us or even asked where we were going. We led our own lives, whether we were exploring the woods behind our houses, wading in the creek at low tide, or roller skating in somebody’s cellar, going around and around the furnace!”
Cooney at age three.
Cooney, age ten, reading in bed—one of her favorite activities then and now.
Ten-year-old Cooney won a local library’s summer reading contest in 1957 by compiling book reviews. In her collection, she wrote reviews of Lois Lenski’s Indian Captive: The Story of Mary Jemison and Jean Craighead George’s Vison, the Mink. “What a treat when I met Jean George at a convention,” she recalls.
Cooney’s report card from sixth grade in 1959. “Mr. Albert and I are still friends over fifty years later,” she says.
Cooney in middle school: “I went through some lumpy stages!”
In 1964, Cooney received the Flora Mai Holly Memorial Award for Excellence in the Study of American Literature from the National League of American Pen Women. “I always meant to write to them, and tell them that I kept going!” Cooney says. “I love the phrase ‘pen woman.’ I’m proud to be one.”
Cooney at age nineteen, just after graduati
ng from high school. (Photo courtesy of Warren Kay Vantine Studio of Boston.)
Cooney with Ann Reit, her book editor at Scholastic. Many of the books Cooney wrote with Reit were by assignment. “Ann decided what books she wanted (for example, ‘entry-level horror, no bloodshed, three-book series,’ which became Fog, Snow, and Fire) and I wrote them. I loved writing by assignment; it was such a challenge and delight to create a book when I had never given the subject a single thought.”
Cooney with her late agent Marilyn Marlow, who worked with her on all of the titles that are now available as ebooks from Open Road.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text 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 hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1990 by Caroline B. Cooney
cover design by Kathleen Lynch
978-1-4532-6424-9
This edition published in 2012 by Open Road Integrated Media
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New York, NY 10014
www.openroadmedia.com
EBOOKS BY CAROLINE B. COONEY
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Contents
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A Biography of Caroline B. Cooney
Copyright
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