“I’ll sit here in the lobby,” she said, plunking down on one of the benches near the big glass doors. “You go find Mr. Bell and see if he can come upstairs and meet us here.”
Ruthie sat on the bench next to an old lady in a wool coat with a fur collar. It seemed like she sat there a long time, getting warmer in her down parka, with the backpack on her lap. Every time someone came into the museum she would feel the whoosh of frigid air sweep in and cool her off a bit. She usually enjoyed watching people but now she mostly just wanted to see Jack come through the crowd with Mr. Bell. Finally Jack appeared, solo.
“Where’s Mr. Bell?” Ruthie asked.
“He can’t leave his post for another fifteen minutes,” Jack answered. “He’ll come up and meet us on his break. I told him we had something really important to show him.”
“Well, let’s hang out in the gift shop, at least,” Ruthie suggested.
They stayed in the gift shop, nervously checking the time so as not to miss Mr. Bell. After only ten minutes, they went back to the bench in the lobby to watch for him.
Jack jumped up first. “Here we are, Mr. Bell,” he called, walking up to him quickly. Ruthie followed right behind.
“Hello, Ruthie,” Mr. Bell said, his eyes betraying his curiosity. “What’s all this about?”
“Hi, Mr. Bell,” Ruthie started. “We have something for you.” She looked around, realizing that this crowded lobby wasn’t the place she’d had in mind when she imagined this moment. “Is there someplace quieter we could go?”
Mr. Bell’s look of curiosity intensified. “Follow me,” he said. He walked them past the entrance guards, who smiled at him and said hello by name. They entered the area of the main grand staircases of the museum, but instead of going up or down Ruthie and Jack followed Mr. Bell through a doorway on the left, into a cavernous and nearly pitch-black space. He switched on the lights. They were in an auditorium.
“I didn’t know this room was here,” Jack said.
“It’s used for lectures,” Mr. Bell said. “Have a seat.” Ruthie and Jack sat in two aisle seats in the back. Mr. Bell stayed standing.
Ruthie started speaking as she began to unzip Jack’s backpack. “We found something and we’re pretty sure it’s yours.” She lifted Caroline Bell’s backpack out and held it so he could see it clearly.
At first, Ruthie could see no reaction on Mr. Bell’s face. She watched him closely. After a second or two his eyebrows rose slightly and his mouth opened as if to speak. Next his shoulders lifted as he inhaled more than a normal breath, and his hand went to his chest.
“Is that what I think it is?” he asked softly. Neither Jack nor Ruthie said anything. Instead, she unzipped Caroline’s backpack and tipped it so he could peer in. He reached over and started unloading it, item by item: her arithmetic book, notebook, pencil box and pink barrette, and then the photo album. He opened it and gave a gasp, tears filling his eyes almost immediately. Ruthie felt a lump in her own throat. Jack looked at Ruthie and gave a quick smile of deep satisfaction.
“Oh, my … oh, my,” was all Mr. Bell could say. He pulled a white handkerchief out of his back pocket and wiped his eyes. Then he slowly sat down. Mr. Bell turned page after page, steadily wiping away tears. Jack and Ruthie sat quietly and waited until he was able to speak. Closing the book, he pressed it to his chest, saying, “How … Where on earth …?” He couldn’t say more but they knew what he wanted to ask.
Ruthie answered. “My family knows a woman who sells antiques—Mrs. McVittie. Jack and I were helping her clean out her storage room and this was in a box way in the back, under a bunch of other boxes. She thinks it came from an estate sale years ago but can’t really remember how long it had been there. She has piles and piles of stuff in her shop, and boxes she’s never sorted through.” Ruthie felt as though she was rambling on nervously. She wished she’d let Jack do the talking.
“We saw the backpack and thought it looked cool, kinda retro,” Jack explained, and then paused for a minute to let it all sink in, hoping Mr. Bell believed their story. “We were pretty sure it belonged to your daughter because we saw her name on the inside cover of the math book. Then we saw the album and since we’d heard your story, it just made sense.”
“I am overjoyed…. You can’t even begin to understand! And I am deeply grateful.” Mr. Bell was still wiping tears off his cheeks. He continued to look at the old photos, lost in his memories. After a while he looked up at the two of them.
“Funny thing is, we still don’t know how it disappeared. I can’t believe it’s been in Caroline’s old backpack all this time.”
Ruthie and Jack said nothing and offered no more explanation. They would simply stick to their story.
“I guess my daughter was telling the truth all those years ago. At least partially,” Mr. Bell remembered.
“What do you mean?” Ruthie asked.
“She had a very hard time when her mom died—she was only seven years old. I took her to see a psychiatrist because she seemed to be imagining all sorts of things. After my photos disappeared, she blamed herself. She even made up a story about being able to shrink and get into the miniature rooms. She said she left the photos there.” He paused and shook his head. “Imagine that!” Mr. Bell added, “I knew she’d lost her backpack but I didn’t want to believe that she had taken the photo album without my permission. But since the backpack and the album were together, I guess that proves it. I didn’t want her to feel guilty on top of grieving over her mother.” He sighed. It was the deepest sigh Ruthie had ever heard. “The doctor said children tend to blame themselves when bad things happen….”
As Mr. Bell looked at page after page of his photos, Ruthie glanced at Jack, unsure of what to say next. He put his finger to his lips. Ruthie nodded in agreement.
After a few more moments, Mr. Bell looked up at the two of them. “Did you take a look at these?”
“Yes,” Ruthie answered. “We thought they were beautiful!” She was relieved to be able to say something that was completely true.
“Thank you! Won’t Caroline be surprised, to say the least! I’ll call her this evening,” Mr. Bell said, and added, shaking his head, “After all these years, she’s been carrying this burden….” His voice cracked with emotion.
Ruthie thought it was amazing that a grown-up could still feel guilty about something she’d done when she was young. She thought about Mrs. McVittie searching for books all her life, trying to understand things that had happened in her childhood. Did everyone live with unanswered questions? “Little kids lose stuff all the time,” Ruthie said. “She shouldn’t feel bad anymore.”
Mr. Bell smiled at Ruthie with a smile brighter and larger than any she’d ever seen. “You’re right, Ruthie. You know, I think she became a pediatrician in order to help children in all kinds of ways.” He thumbed a few more pages of the album and then turned to Jack and said, “I guess I owe a special thanks to you, Jack.”
“To me?” Jack asked, surprised.
“You seem to keep finding things that belong to me,” Mr. Bell said with a twinkle in his eyes. “First my key, and now the photo album.” Then he raised an eyebrow and added, “Maybe we could put you to work here in the museum; we seem to need a mouse catcher. They’re always setting off the motion detectors, driving security crazy!”
Jack tried to remain poker-faced. Was Mr. Bell referring to the fact that it had actually been the two of them who had set off the detectors the other morning?
Mr. Bell stood up. “I’ve got to get back to work now. Jack, Ruthie, I just can’t thank you enough.” Outside the auditorium he gave them both bear hugs. “I know we’ll be seeing a lot more of each other!”
After Mr. Bell was safely out of earshot Jack grabbed Ruthie’s arm and said, “He knows! The security people must have told him that the lights went on over the weekend. I bet he was trying to see how we would react!”
“I don’t know, Jack; maybe we’re just being paranoid,” Ruthie said, trying
to convince herself.
“Should we talk to his daughter? She definitely would believe us, since she experienced the magic herself,” Jack said.
“I don’t think we should say anything. What if she’s convinced herself that it was all her imagination, just like Mrs. McVittie’s sister? Besides, what if we tell them and they think we’re crazy? They’ll send us to psychiatrists!”
“That’s probably true. And if Mr. Bell does think there’s magic involved, he’s probably not going to say anything because people would think he’s crazy!” Jack said logically.
The only thing Ruthie was certain of was that Caroline Bell would be happy the photos had been found. She wanted to meet her and talk to her about the magic. Maybe someday they would, but for now Ruthie was happy just to have given the photographs back to Mr. Bell.
Jack looked at his watch. “We better get home and tell my mom before she hears it from Mr. Bell first. We need to convince her of our story.”
They were both quiet as they left the museum. On the walk to Jack’s house, Ruthie remembered her dream from a few days back. She described it to Jack—how it had ended with bells ringing and ringing. “That must have something to do with solving the mystery for Mr. Bell and his daughter,” he said.
“I guess so,” she agreed. “I guess we solved it for Mrs. McVittie too. It feels pretty good.”
“Yeah,” Jack agreed. “It feels cool.”
They arrived at Jack’s house to his mother’s smiling face. Ruthie knew what she was happy about even before she opened her mouth. Lydia told them she had received a phone call from the school a little while ago. She explained about the commission and how excited she was to be offered such a large-scale job. Jack was so relieved he almost forgot to tell her about Edmund Bell’s photos and the visit they had just had with him. Because of all this good news, Lydia barely questioned them about the details of their discovery.
“Really? In Mrs. McVittie’s storage closet?” she asked after they told her their story. “I guess people find things right under their noses all the time!” She shook her head at the improbability of it all.
“This calls for a celebration!” Lydia said, opening up a bottle of sparkling cider and pouring it into real champagne glasses. As Ruthie lifted her glass, the clink of the crystal reminded her of the sound of the key shrinking and expanding, the key that had unlocked such a great adventure, and she silently toasted the fact that finally something exciting had happened in her life.
SOMETHING LEFT BEHIND
RUTHIE AND JACK HAD ONE more adventure, one last bit of business to finish. They needed to return Sophie’s journal. After school on Tuesday, they went to the museum. Getting into the rooms would be a great challenge—the museum closed at five o’clock on Tuesdays and they didn’t arrive until after four. And of course they thought Mr. Bell would be there, wondering what they were doing at the museum again. However, when they arrived at the exhibition space, Mr. Bell was not on duty; they were told by another guard that he had taken a few days off.
“He probably felt like celebrating today,” Ruthie said, thinking she would have done the same thing.
“That makes it so much easier,” Jack said. “And so should this.” He took something out of his pocket that looked like a wadded-up clump of yarn with bits of wood. “I made it last night. It’s a rope ladder.” He unrolled a little of it so she could see it better. Jack had made it out of his mother’s knitting yarn, with toothpicks for the rungs.
“Cool, Jack!” Ruthie was impressed. “You got the scale just right.”
“I knew we might not have time to build the book staircase, and I didn’t want to miss out. This way we can both go into the room,” Jack explained. Ruthie was glad he’d thought of that.
She had Sophie’s journal in the inside pocket of her coat, ready to be put back. But the problem still remained of how to get into the corridor without being noticed. They had two options: they could use the Gallery 11 key to sneak in full size, or they could wait until no one was looking, shrink down in the alcove and slip under the door. Both ways had risks. Jack had a key in each hand, ready. Fortunately, most of the crowds had left the museum for the day.
Ruthie looked at Jack and then at the room around them. “I think we can shrink. Wait just a minute.” A mother and daughter walked off around the corner. There was no one on their side of the exhibition. “Okay, now!”
Jack dropped the key into her palm while simultaneously wrapping his fingers around her hand. In seconds they were facing the crack under the door. They quickly slipped into the corridor.
“We’ll have to get big to hang the ladder,” Jack said.
They grew to full size again, along with the rope ladder. Jack picked up the key and the two of them hustled down the corridor to Sophie’s room. Jack hung the tiny rope ladder from the ledge with wire hooks that he’d also brought. He tugged on it to make sure it would be secure. It went all the way to the floor. He stood back and admired his handiwork.
“C’mon, we don’t have a lot of time,” Ruthie said in a hushed voice, reaching out her hand. “Give me the key and hold on!”
Now the ladder that had looked so small a second ago loomed far above them. Ruthie suddenly questioned the wisdom of using it.
“You go first, Jack,” Ruthie suggested, knowing that would give her confidence.
Once she got used to the rhythm of climbing, it wasn’t so bad—and she remembered not to look down. They reached the top just as they heard the announcement from the other side: “The museum will be closing in twenty minutes.”
The two tiny visitors approached the side door of room E24. Ruthie opened the old door slightly and peeked in.
“Anybody there?” Jack asked.
“All clear,” she said. Ruthie walked in first and Jack followed. She looked around the room and then placed the beautiful journal back on the desk, where it belonged. It felt very satisfying. Then they both stepped out onto the balcony; they wanted to get a last look at eighteenth-century Paris.
“I wonder where Sophie is right now,” Jack said.
“Me too.”
“I brought something.”
“What?” Ruthie asked.
Jack reached into his inside coat pocket and pulled out his bento box. Opening it, he lifted out a letter in his handwriting. Ruthie looked at him, not understanding.
“I thought maybe we could take this around to the end and leave the box and this letter in the Japanese room. Sort of a note of explanation—in case someone else knows how to get into these rooms, they could know about us. I don’t think anyone will notice that it doesn’t belong if we put it in just the right place.”
“That’s a great idea, Jack. But are you sure you want to leave your bento box? It’s one of the coolest things you own,” Ruthie said.
“Yeah, but it will be even cooler to have something of mine in the rooms, you know? Every time I look at it it’ll remind me that I was actually here.”
“What did you write?” she asked.
Jack read the letter out loud. It said:
To whom it may concern,
Ruthie Stewart and Jack Tucker, sixth-grade students in Chicago, visited these rooms by way of a magic key. We think the magic came from Christina of Milan (see room E1). If you are reading this, it means you are experiencing the magic too. Others have done this before us. Good luck!
He had signed and dated it on the bottom, and held out a pen for her to do the same.
“What do you think? Should we leave it?”
Ruthie thought about it for a minute. If she grew up and started to believe that this had all been a fantasy, maybe some young girl could find this letter, locate her and tell her about it. Sort of like an insurance policy. Or like leaving a time capsule buried in the ground.
“Let’s do it,” she answered, signing her name.
They followed the ledge quite a long way, all the way to room E31, the last room on the European side. They entered a small room to the left of the main
room and peeked into the larger space. It was very different from the other rooms: the ceilings were low, the floor was covered in mats and the doors were made of rice paper with delicately painted branches of cherry trees blooming across them. The furniture was also low and horizontal; you sat on the floor, not a chair. It felt like a room you would whisper in and only speak what was absolutely necessary to say.
They saw a low black lacquered writing table at the far end of the room, near the opening to a beautiful, serene Zen garden.
“Let’s put it there,” Jack said, pointing to the table. “That would be perfect.”
“Okay, you do it. I’ll wait here,” Ruthie said.
Jack slipped in and placed the bento box softly on the table. He folded the letter, laid it inside the box and put the lid back on. Then he left the room.
From the small side room, they both looked at the new addition to the room to make sure it fit in. Jack was right; it looked like it belonged there and had been sitting on that table for years.
“The museum is now closing,” came the voice from the other side of the glass.
“We’d better hurry, Jack. We don’t want to get locked in the museum!”
They headed back out to the ledge and ran all the way around to the ladder.
“It’s gonna take too long to climb down, Jack. We should jump.” Jack held out his hand to her in agreement. With her other hand she tossed the key down to the ground and stepped into thin air.
“Wow!” he said, full size, picking up the key after the jump. “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that!”
“Don’t forget the ladder,” Ruthie instructed.
Jack rolled it up as they walked to the door, knowing they might have to leave separately. But just as they approached the door, they heard a sound that made them freeze in their tracks: someone was putting a key in the lock! Ruthie stifled a gasp and held her breath. But the door never opened; what they heard must have been a guard checking to make sure the door was locked. They could hear voices on the other side.
The Sixty-Eight Rooms Page 18
