Eleanor Roosevelt's in My Garage!

by Candace Fleming

  Also Available in the History Pals Series

  Ben Franklin’s in My Bathroom!

  Other Books by Candace Fleming

  FICTION

  The Fabled Fourth Graders of Aesop Elementary School

  The Fabled Fifth Graders of Aesop Elementary School

  NONFICTION

  Amelia Lost: The Life and Disappearance of Amelia Earhart

  The Great and Only Barnum: The Tremendous, Stupendous Life of Showman P. T. Barnum

  The Lincolns

  On the Day I Died

  This is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters with the exception of some well-known historical and public figures, are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical or public figures appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2018 by Hungry Bunny, Inc.

  Cover art and interior illustrations copyright © 2018 by Mark Fearing

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Schwartz & Wade Books,

  an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of

  Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Schwartz & Wade Books and the colophon are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Visit us on the Web! rhcbooks.com

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 9781524767860 (hc) — ISBN 9781524767877 (lib. bdg.) ebook ISBN 9781524767884

  The illustrations were rendered in pencil and digitally manipulated.

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

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  Contents

  Cover

  Also Available in the History Pals Series

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Epilogue

  What Nolan Knows

  Bibliography

  Author's Note

  About the Author

  To Annie…who is definitely blabworthy! —C.F.

  For Lily Emma. You can change the world. —M.F.

  I groaned at the picture. Why, oh why, had Mom sent my little sister to technology day camp? Seriously. Second graders should not be allowed to text. It’s just annoying. I tapped out a reply to tell her to stop.

  Believe it or not, she did.

  My phone went quiet.

  Too bad it was the only thing that got quiet. “FD?” shouted the woman in my closet. She pounded on the door. “This is outrageous. I insist you let me out this instant!”

  Just so you know, I am not FD. And I was pretty sure I’d never met FD. In fact, I was pretty sure I’d never met the woman in my closet, either, except in the pages of some boring social studies book, or in a musty history museum, or maybe during one of my teacher Mr. Druff’s long, snore-fest lectures about “the incredible story that is America’s past.” He actually said that. He made us write it down in our social studies notebooks too.

  “FD, are you still pouting about your speech to Congress?” the woman called out. “Truly, darling, no one noticed your zipper was down.”

  I knew I had to open the door. I also knew that the second I did, things were going to get way out of control. I am not exaggerating. I’d experienced this blast from the past once before, and I needed just a few more minutes to brace myself. I mean, it wasn’t like I’d been expecting any…um…visitors today.

  An hour earlier, my day had been pretty normal. I’d been lying on the family-room sofa reading another graphic novel—this one about an alien kid who crashed on Earth—while my irritating little sister, Olive, danced around the house in her brand-new mermaid Princess Aquamarina bathing suit. She was singing at the top of her lungs too. “Party, party, par-TAY! party, party, par-TAY!”

  At first, I’d tried to ignore her by burying my nose deeper in my book. I do both these things a lot—ignore my sister and read graphic novels.

  I love graphic novels.

  I do not love Olive when she’s being annoying.

  And boy, was she annoying. I knew she was really excited about the swimming party Mom was throwing for her eighth birthday that day. But geez, did she have to be such a pest?

  “Knock it off,” I’d growled.

  Olive scrunched her face at me. “Party party poop-ER! Party party poop-ER!”

  I slammed my book shut and stomped up to my room.

  Of course, she followed. “Come on, Nolan. We’re going to be late to my party.”

  “I’m ready, already,” I grumbled.

  Just as I was putting on my shoes…

  POP! A bright light shot out from under my closet door. It grew white…whiter…crystal white. From deep within came the sounds of static and faint voices. A second later, my bedroom filled with the sound of a gazillion bubbles popping all at once. Then…

  Bam! Bam! Bam!

  Someone started banging on the inside of my closet door.

  “It’s Ben!” Olive had cried. “He’s come back for my birthday!”

  She flung open the door.

  Screamed.

  And slammed it shut again.

  “That,” she panted, “is definitely not Ben Franklin.”

  “Hullooo!” came a woman’s quavering voice. “FD? Is that you? Let me out, won’t you? I seem to have gotten trapped.”

  At that moment, Mom hollered from downstairs. “Nolan! Olive! Is somebody up there with you?”

  I swear our mother has the sharpest hearing in the universe. Maybe that’s why she’s the author-illustrator of the Bumble Bunny series of children’s books. Big ears come naturally to her.

  Mom didn’t wait for us to reply. “It’s getting late!” she shouted. “Time to go to the party!”

  Olive yelped and looked from the bedroom door to the closet door. “Now what?”

  “You go,” I said urgently. “I’ll stay with…with…whoever.”

  “But I’m dying to know who’s in there,” she whined. “I didn’t recognize her.” She reached for the knob. “Let’s take another peek.”

  I leaped in front of her and pressed my back against the closet door. “And turn her loose in the house with Mom here? Are you crazy?”

  “But—”

  “You promised,” I whispered through gritted teeth. “You promised to keep all this—the crystal radio, Ben Franklin
time traveling here from history—a secret until we figured it out, remember?”

  She made a pouty face.

  “I know you’re there, FD. I can hear you breathing,” the woman in the closet called.

  “Remember, Olive?”

  She nodded slowly.

  “Then go!” I said. “Try to act normal. And whatever you do, don’t say a word about, er, this.”

  “Olive!” Mom called from the staircase.

  “Coming, Mother dearest!” she shouted back in this ridiculous British accent she’d learned from watching PBS. She crossed the room and stepped out into the hallway. “Pish posh, but it’s a lovely day for a party.”

  Believe it or not, that was normal for Olive.

  “Nolan, are you coming?” Mom called up.

  I came out of my bedroom and stood on the upstairs landing, peering down at her. “I…I can’t.”

  “But it’s your sister’s birthday.”

  “It’s mermaid swimming, Mom. With a bunch of giggling eight-year-old girls.” I slapped on my most pathetic puppy-dog expression. “Please, can’t you give a guy a break?”

  “Do let him stay, Mummy,” chimed in still-British Olive. “The big oaf will do nothing but ruin the party.”

  Mom looked at me with laser eyes for a second. Then she nodded. “But stay in the house. And no friends.”

  “No friends,” I promised. I figured it wasn’t a lie. How could the person in my closet be a friend if I’d never met her?

  Mom looked at me another moment. Then they were gone.

  And I was alone with the lady in the closet.

  She knocked again. “Enough, FD. You’ve had your silly joke. Now open this door at once. Franklin? Did you hear me? I’m beginning to grow faint.”

  So am I, I thought.

  My belly felt tight and fluttery, like it was filling with bats. Beating their wings. Crowding my chest. Squeezing the air from my lungs.

  Hand shaking, I reached for the doorknob…

  …AND STOPPED. WHAT IF the person on the other side of the door was some kind of murderer? I mean, not everyone in history was nice. What about Al Capone, or Attila the Hun, or that lady who chopped people up with an ax?

  The bats were really going crazy now.

  I sat back down on my bed.

  I sat there awhile.

  Buh-dop, went my phone. I glanced at it.

  Buh-dop!

  Buh-dop!

  Trust my sister to send selfies while I was fighting for my life.

  Dropping the phone onto my bed, I snatched my baseball bat from its place in the corner and approached the door again.

  “On three,” I told myself. “One…two…THREE!”

  I flung open the door.

  And the woman stumbled out.

  She wasn’t an ax-wielding maniac or an old-time gangster.

  She was a grandma.

  She was tall, with sloped shoulders, and her white-gloved hands flapped at the ends of her arms like her wrists were hinged. Her front teeth stuck out, but her chin curved in. She had on a navy blue skirt, a white blouse, plain white tennis shoes, and…was that a hairnet? It was! A hairnet, just like the school lunch lady’s. It covered her short, graying hair.

  I searched my brain. She looked familiar, but…who was she?

  With one white-gloved hand, she held her nose. With the other, she brushed a gym sock off her shoulder.

  Oh, geez. Whoever she was, she’d had to climb over my dirty clothes pile to get out. I blushed. Good thing it was just a sock.

  “Gracious! Good heavens!” She waved her hands in front of her face, sucking in fresh air. “What a stench! I was beginning to think I would never be set free. Honestly, Franklin—” She stopped abruptly. She blinked. She looked around and her brow furrowed. “This is not the White House,” she said.

  “No,” I said. “And I’m not FD or Franklin.”

  “They are one and the same,” she replied. “And that you are not him is patently obvious.”

  Her voice was high-pitched and fluttery; it made me think of a flock of small birds flying up and out of a cage. I could actually see the birds in my mind, flapping and thrashing against the bedroom ceiling. That’s what happens when you read as many graphic novels as I do. You start to visualize everything.

  “Well,” the woman went on, “do you know where I might find him?”

  “Who?” I asked.

  She looked annoyed. “Franklin, of course. My husband, and thirty-second president of the United States—Franklin Delano Roosevelt.”

  I snapped my fingers. “I know you! You’re Eleanor! Eleanor Roosevelt! We studied you last year in school.”

  “In your current events class, no doubt,” she said.

  “History class,” I corrected her.

  I searched my mind for what I’d learned about her. Facts came out in a spurt: “You…you worked for civil rights, and equal rights. When you were First Lady, people nicknamed you…um…Eleanor Everywhere because…Wait, don’t tell me. Because you traveled everywhere for your husband. He was in a wheelchair, right? So he needed you to be his legs and go where he couldn’t. You went all kinds of places First Ladies never went, like Nebraska cornfields and Virginia coal mines.”

  “Yes, that is correct,” Mrs. Roosevelt replied. “But where am I now?”

  I hesitated. “Maybe you should sit down for this.”

  “For what?”

  I blurted out the truth. “You’re not in Washington, D.C., anymore. You’re in my bedroom—I’m Nolan Stanberry—in Rolling Hills, Illinois. You…you time traveled to the twenty-first century.”

  I waited for her to faint.

  She didn’t. She didn’t start screaming or running around either. She didn’t even need to put her head between her knees like Mom did the time she backed the car into that lamppost at Dunkin’ Donuts.

  She just stood there, rocking back and forth on her heels. I could tell by the way her lips tightened and her blue eyes took on a beaming sort of gaze that she was concentrating really hard.

  “Um…Mrs. Roosevelt?” I said cautiously. “Are you okay?”

  She didn’t seem to hear me. She just kept rocking and looking the place over.

  “Are you feeling sick or something?”

  Mrs. Roosevelt blinked again. Then she walked over to my desk and with one gloved index finger started touching stuff: the lid of my closed laptop, my reading light, all three of my soccer trophies—one for each year I’d played. She paused at my calendar. With the same finger, she underlined the year once…twice…three times. She shook her head and stared at nothing for a few seconds. Then she headed toward my bookshelf. On the way she touched some of the stuff on my walls: my Darth Vader poster, my Chicago Cubs World Series Championship pennant.

  At first I thought she was checking for dirt. I saw that one time on the Science Channel. A guy wearing a pair of white gloves stuck his fingers into all the places in your house that never get cleaned, like the inside of the bathtub drain and under the refrigerator. It was pretty disgusting. I didn’t think Mrs. Roosevelt was swabbing for gunk, though. I was pretty sure she was trying to deal with everything that had happened. Still, it was kind of weird.

  She moved along my shelf, touching the spine of each one of my books. When she came to Captain Blood, my favorite graphic novel, she took it off the shelf, opened the cover, and stared at the copyright date before touching it once…twice…three times.

  “ ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,’ ” she muttered.

  Oh, geez, she wasn’t making any sense. Did she lose her mind on the way to the twenty-first century? And why was she calling me Horatio?

  “Nolan,” I corrected her. “My name is Nolan.”

 
; She didn’t reply. Instead, she headed out the bedroom door and down the hallway. As she went, she touched each of the family pictures that lined the wall from one end to the other. Pictures of Mom and Olive and me.

  We used to have pictures of us with our dad, too, but after the divorce and his move to London, Mom put them away in the attic. Not all at once, but little by little, like he just faded off the walls.

  Mrs. Roosevelt kept going. Like a sleepwalker, she went down the stairs, her finger tracing a path down the banister. In the kitchen, she touched the toaster and the blender. Her lips moved, but no sound came out.

  I was really starting to worry. “Mrs. Roosevelt?”

  She turned and opened the door leading into the garage. More touching. More muttering. She picked up the hedge clippers. She poked at the recycling bin. She ran a finger along the tool bench, then reached out and rang the bell on Olive’s bicycle.

  CHA-CHING!

  Mrs. Roosevelt started and sort of shook herself. That faraway look faded from her eyes. “Yes, well, that is that,” she said at last. She gave one brisk nod.

  “Can I get you something?” I asked. “A glass of water? An aspirin? Maybe some cheesy doodles?” Cheesy doodles always calm my mom. When’s she upset, she needs carbs.

  Mrs. Roosevelt shook her head. “No, thank you.”

  I stepped closer to her. “Are you feeling okay?”

  “I do admit to some nerves,” she said. “A person never imagines herself traveling through time, after all.”