The Sixty-Eight Rooms

by Marianne Malone

“It’s two in the morning,” she said, looking at her watch. “No wonder I’m feeling so tired all of a sudden.” Ruthie realized she would fall asleep soon whether she wanted to or not and she still had to decide which room to sleep in. They decided that it would be safer for them to be on the European side for lots of reasons. First of all, if for any reason they had to leave fast, they would be near the alcove exit, where there was less chance of getting caught. Even if the Gallery 11 key worked on the door to the American rooms’ access corridor—which they bet it did—that door opened right in front of the information booth. Second, all of the food was on the other side and they were both getting hungry—they hadn’t eaten since just after the cockroach attack.

  “We need to go now, because soon I’ll be too tired and hungry to make the climb,” Ruthie said practically. They decided to look into a few more rooms before they left—but just quick peeks, no adventures. They walked along the ledge looking into room after room. One of the things Ruthie observed was that the ceilings were all lower in the American rooms, not like the castle or palace rooms, although some of the rooms from the South were pretty ornate. She especially liked the rooms that had old toys in them. She saw a child’s tea set with a saucer that she knew in real size must be no bigger than a grain of rice.

  Ruthie began to yawn as they made their way back to the duct tape climbing strip.

  “Ready?” Jack asked, picking up the bucket from where he had left it and attaching himself securely to the sticky strip.

  “Yep,” Ruthie said, following. They had become expert climbers. Jack said he was going to try to invent some sort of climbing strip like this for full-size people. “I’d make a fortune!” he said. Halfway up he warned, “Watch out on your left.”

  Looking up and to the left, Ruthie saw what Jack was alerting her to—a fly had gotten stuck to the tape and was trying in vain to free itself. It was as big as Ruthie’s head and very ugly, with its hairy legs and large globe-like eyes. Its wings, though, were kind of beautiful, like leaded glass. It wasn’t scary once she got used to it. After all, it was stuck and couldn’t move. Besides, it was no kid-eating cockroach. She found herself going by it slowly, fascinated. She even began to feel sorry for it and wondered if she should stop to try to set it free. Keeping her balance, she reached over and pulled gently on one of its legs. The spiky hairs were actually softer than they looked. She lifted another leg off the sticky surface. With two legs freed, the fly automatically began flapping its wings and Ruthie had to pull back out of the way fast. That was all it took to liberate the creature, and it flew away down the dark corridor. She felt she had done a good deed.

  The two weary climbers made it to the top and forged ahead through the long, dark heating duct. This time they knew to get away from the edge quickly, in case the heat went on while they were too close to it. Fortunately, the heat did not go on this time and before long they were on the floor on the other side again.

  “You know what?” Jack started. “I think I’ll sleep full size out here in the corridor. Just in case.”

  “You mean because of the cockroach?”

  “Exactly. I don’t want to wake up with some giant hissing monster about to take a bite out of me. One of us needs to stay on guard.”

  “You’re probably right. You sure you’ll be okay out here on the floor?”

  “No problem. I can sleep anywhere. Besides, I don’t really care about sleeping in one of those fancy beds—I’d only want to sleep in one of the castle rooms and they don’t have any beds in them. I’d be on the floor anyway.”

  After returning to full size, eating some trail mix and helping Jack arrange a bed with their coats, Ruthie shrank back down again. She had Jack place her on the ledge outside room E17, the very first room she had entered. She walked into the room and felt happy with her choice, partly because she was so tired but also because one of her first wishes on seeing these rooms had been to experience sleeping in a bed this grand. She walked around the room and looked at all the sixteenth-century objects one more time.

  She took off her sweatshirt jacket, placing it on a chair near a big carved wooden cabinet. Then she took her shoes off and laid them on the floor next to the bed. She pulled back the silk bedspread to find satin sheets underneath. She climbed in and stretched out. The sheets were cool and slippery. It felt wonderful. From the bed she looked around at the painted walls and the massive chandelier and up to the high canopy. She pretended that this was her room and that she led a life that allowed this kind of luxury.

  As she lay there, she thought about everything she had experienced in the past few hours and how lucky she and Jack were to have stumbled across this magic key. She rubbed her fingers across it in the pocket of her jeans. Questions whirled around in her sleepy head: How did the key work, and had Mrs. Thorne known about it? Where had the pencil and barrette come from? How had Christina’s book and Thomas’s Mayflower model ended up in these rooms? She thought about Thomas and figured he would be a man of nearly seventy when Ben Franklin did his famous key and kite experiment. Would Thomas hear about it? Would he remember Jack, the visitor from a faraway place called Chicago who’d showed him the fantastic object and tried to explain electricity to him? She still worried about the safety of Thomas’s family and whether she would be able to find out if she and Jack had caused problems for them. Could they warn Sophie about the dangers ahead in the French Revolution? And how could they ever go back to being just plain kids in Chicago? Ruthie fell asleep and dreamed all night of rooms, arrows and shimmering books, all dancing in her head to beautiful, glittering music.

  “Hey, Ruthie, wake up!” Jack’s voice came from the corridor. He said it a few more times, and then added, “It’s almost seven!”

  Who cares? Let me sleep, Ruthie thought groggily as she rolled over and tried not to wake up.

  “Ruthie! The museum opens at ten—we only have three hours left!”

  That did it. Ruthie sat up in the beautiful bed and rubbed her eyes to make sure she wasn’t still dreaming.

  “Ruthie!” he called again, more insistently.

  She called out to Jack, “Okay, okay! I’m waking up! Just give me a second.” Ruthie was really tired and forced herself to stay sitting up. She wanted to linger in this room fit for a queen. After a minute, she got off the bed, put her shoes on and, yawning, walked out to the corridor, where she found Jack raring to go. He lowered her to the floor and she took the key out of her pants pocket and dropped it.

  “C’mon,” Jack said to the full-size Ruthie. “We promised Sophie we would meet her, remember?”

  “Of course I remember, Jack. Just give me a minute to wake up, okay?” She looked at him and wondered how he could be so wide awake. “How long have you been up?”

  “I dunno … about a half hour, I guess,” he said, handing her a chocolate chip granola bar.

  “Thanks.”

  Ruthie chewed in silence for a few minutes, waiting for her morning fog to lift. One thing she knew for certain: they had miscalculated how long they could go without using the bathroom. Even without having had anything to drink since yesterday afternoon except a few sips of cider, she wasn’t going to be able to wait till they left the rooms. She wondered if Jack was having the same problem.

  “Hey, Jack,” she started, “do you, uh, need to use the bathroom?”

  “Yeah … I was wondering if you did too.”

  They were both quiet for a moment, thinking.

  “You don’t suppose we could ask Sophie where there’s a restroom?” Jack suggested.

  “I don’t think I can hold it that long. And what if she doesn’t know where there’s a restroom?” Ruthie really didn’t want to go behind a bush in a public park in eighteenth-century Paris.

  They had two options: trying to find a bathroom in the Thorne Rooms or somehow getting out to the ones in the museum. Almost all of the Thorne Rooms predated modern plumbing, and who knew how far into another world they would have to travel to find some sort of restro
om. And they wouldn’t be wearing the right clothes for any of the rooms.

  “The museum bathrooms are just around the corner,” Jack said. They were coming to the same conclusion.

  “We can shrink down, go under the door and run along the baseboards. I bet we’ll be safe—the full guard staff isn’t on duty yet. We’d be as small as mice—we weren’t picked up by the motion detectors when we tried to get to the American corridor. Once we’re in the stalls, we’ll get big.” Ruthie was sure this was the best option.

  “Okay. Let’s try it!” They ran to the door and let the key perform its magic.

  Once they were out of Gallery 11, they felt even tinier, like two specks in a huge universe. The lights were still off in the museum. As five-inch-tall people, it was a much longer trip. They followed the baseboards through the hall, but they did have to make one nerve-wracking run across the wide-open space.

  On the final leg of their journey, when they were about twenty feet from the bathrooms, something happened that they should have expected but didn’t. Ruthie noticed it first.

  “Uh-oh, Jack. Something’s happening! I feel—”

  “Me too!” he interrupted. As they ran they could feel the magic reversing, and they were quickly getting larger.

  “Go faster!” Jack said.

  “I am. We’re almost to the restrooms.”

  They had grown to about half their normal size by the time they bounded around the corner to the ladies’ room.

  “Quick—into the stalls,” Ruthie instructed. This was more than she’d bargained for. Were there security cameras monitoring the restrooms?

  “What do we do now?” she whispered to Jack from inside her stall. She could barely hear her voice over the sound of her pounding heart.

  “I don’t think we have any choice—we have to go back the way we came and hope that the key shrinks us as we go. Where are you keeping it?”

  “It’s in my jeans pocket. Why?”

  “As soon as we leave the stalls, hold the key in your hand so the power is full strength.”

  “What if someone saw us, Jack? I mean on one of the surveillance cameras,” Ruthie worried out loud.

  “All the more reason to get back into the corridor and shrink, fast. Are you finished in there? You ready?”

  “Ready!”

  Ruthie grabbed Jack’s hand as they exited the stalls. Then she reached into her pocket and held the key tightly.

  “C’mon,” Jack urged. “Do you feel anything yet?” They were almost at the exit to the restroom now.

  “The key is heating up! Keep going!” she answered in a whisper. They peeked around the corner first, to make sure they were still alone in the hall. Then they kept going.

  “Okay, it’s getting hotter,” Ruthie said, still running with Jack.

  Finally the process started. At the halfway point to Gallery 11 they were completely mouse-sized again.

  Almost breathless, Jack said, “That explains why you couldn’t shrink at my house; we have to be near the Thorne Rooms.”

  Just as he said that, the lights in the museum flipped on all at once.

  “Faster, Jack!” They rounded the corner into the exhibit. It was only a dozen feet to the alcove, but the loops of carpet slowed down the shrunken twosome and it seemed to take forever. They reached the door, slipped under and kept running. They ran along the U-shaped corridor and didn’t stop until they reached the far end.

  The tiny Jack and Ruthie sat huddled like hunted creatures, catching their breath.

  “Do you think the lights went on because we were seen?” Ruthie said after a moment.

  “I’m not sure,” Jack started, and then added, “Wait—do you hear something?”

  Voices came from the exhibit side.

  “That side check out okay?” said the voice of a man.

  “Yeah, all clear here. I’ll check the doors,” said the voice of a second man.

  They heard the sound of a key going into the lock in the door at the end of the corridor.

  “This one’s still locked. Everything looks good. Probably a rodent. We’ll tell them to set some traps around here. These motion detectors are too sensitive.”

  That was the last Ruthie and Jack heard. They sat frozen for a few more minutes.

  “That was a close call,” Ruthie said, her heart rate finally slowing. Then she added, “What time is it? We’ve got to go meet Sophie!”

  On their way back to the catalogue staircase they planned what they would say to Sophie. First, in order to know how soon the French Revolution would start affecting her life, they needed to know the current date for her. They also wanted to confirm that the people living in the past times could not see the entrances to the rooms. They’d suspected it when the arrows disappeared before their eyes in room E16. What had happened in Thomas’s town seemed to confirm it. But they wanted to be certain it was true for all the rooms.

  Once up on the ledge, they headed to room E22, the bedroom where they’d found the eighteenth-century clothes. Then, in full costume, they moved on to room E24.

  Being outside in eighteenth-century France felt surprisingly normal. Ruthie breathed deeply as they stood on the balcony and scanned the landscape. She looked to see if Sophie was in view yet. Then they set out into the park and walked along the path to wait at the bench where they’d told Sophie they would meet her. They waited for a long time.

  “I guess we’re a little early,” Jack said.

  “Well, it probably takes her some time to get dressed in the morning. You remember how complicated her hair was! You’d have to get up before dawn to get that fixed up,” Ruthie said. In the morning all she did was run a brush through her hair.

  “I never thought of that,” Jack said.

  “You’ve never lived with an older sister!” Ruthie said.

  “Bonjour, mes amis! How are you today?” Sophie said as she ran up to them from behind. They turned and she kissed them each on both cheeks.

  “Bonjour!” Ruthie couldn’t resist saying.

  “Hello!” Jack said to Sophie. “How are you?”

  “I am very well, merci!” Sophie had a small canvas bag out of which she pulled three freshly baked croissants, handing one to Ruthie and one to Jack. “I have not eaten yet. Have you?”

  “Thanks,” Ruthie said, taking a bite of the still-warm roll. The flaky bread melted in her mouth with the rich taste of butter. Croissants didn’t taste like this in Chicago!

  “We have the best baker in the court cuisine,” Sophie said, taking a dainty bite. Ruthie was pretty sure cuisine meant “kitchen.”

  As Sophie spoke, her tutor approached. He had a book in his hands again today, open so that he could read as he walked. Sophie said something to him in French and then introduced them all. The tutor’s name was Monsieur Lesueur. He had a mass of curly hair, wire-rimmed reading glasses and a comfortably disheveled look.

  “Enchanté,” he said, bowing formally to Ruthie. He took her hand and kissed it.

  She felt a bit embarrassed and simply replied, “Hello.”

  Jack, on the other hand, held out his hand for Monsieur Lesueur to shake, saying, “Pleased to meet you.”

  Sophie’s tutor seemed to be acting as a chaperone. “Shall we walk as we talk?” he suggested, making it clear that he would not be leaving Sophie alone with them. He spoke perfect English, with a British accent.

  “Sophie tells me you are here from the colonies. How very interesting. It is a voyage I dream of making someday,” the tutor said. “In what city do you live?”

  Ruthie said, “We are from Philadelphia. Our father works with the new congress and we’ve been traveling with him.” Feeling pleased that she had contributed something useful, she realized she had the perfect opportunity to find out an important piece of information. Just as they had asked Thomas, she said, “We have been traveling so much that I’ve lost track of the days. What is today’s date?”

  Monsieur Lesueur answered that it was May 20. But he didn’t say wha
t year!

  Jack checked his mental files; he was pretty sure Ben Franklin had returned to America in 1785. The French Revolution had started in 1789. He took a stab at it.

  “Seventeen eighty-four?”

  Both Sophie and her tutor roared with laughter. “Goodness, you must have been traveling a long time! It is 1785!” Sophie corrected.

  Ruthie laughed too. “Jack loves to make jokes,” she offered as an explanation.

  Jack turned a little red but decided to laugh with them. At least they had the information they needed. But Monsieur Lesueur wanted to hear about the legendary Ben Franklin.

  “Monsieur Franklin is a most fascinating and learned man,” he started. “Does your father work as an assistant to Monsieur Franklin?”

  “Yes,” Jack answered. “And now his job is to help Mr. Franklin finish his work here and accompany him on his voyage back home. Because of the situation here.”

  “The situation?” Sophie asked.

  “The Americans and Mr. Franklin believe there will be a revolution here,” Jack replied matter-of-factly.

  Sophie gasped. “A revolution! When?”

  “Soon—in a few years. There are many people who are ready to fight—and kill—in order to overthrow your king.”

  “I am not surprised,” the tutor said. “I too have witnessed many unhappy people who are demanding change. They have heard what happened in your country. You won freedom from the king of England and they want that as well. Maybe this would be a good time for planning the trip to America I have wanted to take.”

  Sophie looked very concerned. “Do you really think it will happen?”

  “We are sure it will,” said Ruthie.

  Sophie looked at her tutor for reassurance.

  “Perhaps we can arrange for you to continue your studies in England,” he said kindly.

  “I should like that very much! I do not like violence!” Sophie exclaimed.

  Ruthie thought Sophie sounded very young when she said that. If she had been in Sophie’s place she would have been feeling the same.

  Then Sophie added, “And perhaps I would not have to get married so soon!”