Lea 3-Book Collection

by Lisa Yee

  Abby’s eyes lit up. “Yes!” she said, practically shouting. “That has to be it!” She grinned at me. I smiled back, until I remembered I was still mad at her for saying I’d never find Hallie. I turned back and refocused on the mural. The girls in the painting smiled down at me looking calm, like they knew something I didn’t.

  “Is it okay if I take some photos?” I asked Sarah.

  “Of course,” she said, moving the ladder to a part of the wall that was still covered with plaster. I slipped my camera out of my backpack and switched it on. As Sarah picked up her plaster knife and brush, I started taking photos. Her hands moved quickly, chipping off the cracked top layer of plaster. Abby and Camila stood next to her, looking up at the girls in the mural. The flakes of plaster fell down, swirling through the air like snow. From where I stood, it seemed like the girls in the mural were smiling right at Abby and Camila, as if they were all connected. Looking at them, I knew it would make a great photograph.

  I raised my camera. Abby looked confused. “Are you taking a picture of us or the mural?” she asked.

  “Um, sort of both. Just pretend I’m not here, okay?” I said. Abby looked curious, but then she gave me a little nod and went back to watching Sarah work.

  Specks of plaster came loose as Sarah chipped at the wall, and the white dust floated toward Abby’s and Camila’s upturned faces. I set the camera on burst mode and started shooting as I moved around. Finally, I stopped and reviewed the shots. One of the shots was perfect—Abby and Camila smiled up at the mural, plaster snowflakes on their shoulders, as the girls in the painting smiled down on them. I couldn’t help smiling. For the first time in a long time, I’d taken exactly the picture I’d wanted to take.

  It was almost time to go meet Dad, but Abby had to use a restroom. Sarah directed her to one down the back hall, where we’d seen Dodger on our last visit. “I’ll be right back,” said Abby, slipping through the side door.

  Sarah put her earbuds back in and got back to work. I gave Camila a half smile, hoping she would say something, but she turned back to the mural and avoided my eyes. She was obviously still upset with me. Suddenly it felt like I was standing at the edge of an icy pool. Finally, I got the courage to dive in and say something. “Camila? I’m really sorry,” I said. “You were right to get mad at me. I haven’t been the best host.”

  It took a long moment, but finally Camila’s eyes warmed a little. “I am sorry, too,” she said. “I know you miss your grandmother, and you want to solve the mystery so you can feel close to her.”

  I blinked, surprised. I hadn’t realized that Ama was the reason I wanted to find Hallie, but once Camila said it, I knew she was right. “Yes,” I admitted. “But I also want to be a good host. Tomorrow we should do what you want to do.”

  Camila let out a bright laugh. “Oh, Lea,” she said, “I really do want to help find Hallie, you know.”

  “Really?” I said.

  Camila nodded. “Of course I do, because you’re my friend. And I want to try frozen custard,” she replied. “And go see the Arch. And see Dodger. But we can do all of that, I think. Yes?”

  “Yes,” I said in a rush, and we hugged.

  As we waited for Abby to come back, I thought about what I would say to her. I’d apologize for being too sensitive, I thought, but minutes passed, and there was no sign of Abby. It was weird.

  “Perhaps she is still in the restroom,” said Camila.

  “Let’s go check,” I said. We went through the side door and made our way to the bathroom. When we opened the door, it was empty. Where had Abby gone? We were going to be late to meet Dad. “Maybe she got lost,” I said. “We should look for her.” Camila nodded.

  We left the bathroom and moved quickly down the long hallway. I kept telling myself that Coventry House was big and it was easy to get lost, but I could feel worry tightening in my chest.

  “Abby! Abby!” we called as we turned a corner. All I could hear was the creak of the floorboards as we moved. I was starting to get really worried. At the top of my lungs, I shouted—

  “ABBY!” I held my breath, waiting for a response. Above us, I heard a faint noise.

  “Abby?!” Camila called, looking up at the ceiling.

  “Here, Dodger! Kitty, kitty, kitty? Dodger!” We could hear Abby’s voice, one flight up.

  Halfway back the way we’d come was a sagging set of side stairs. Camila and I raced to it and started up the steps, calling for Abby. We reached the second-floor landing. A pile of dusty old rope that looked like it was as old as the house was in the middle of the floor. We stepped over it as we moved ahead, still hearing Abby above us.

  The stairs twisted up one more flight, but the steps were in bad shape. Some were splintered and cracked, and at the top, one was missing.

  “Should we keep going?” Camila asked, frightened.

  I knew Mom had told us that the upper levels of the house were still under major construction—but I also knew we needed to find Abby. If we could just get her to come downstairs, maybe none of us would get in trouble.

  “Let’s just go up one more floor slowly,” I said. Camila gave a little worried nod. We edged up the stairs, gripping the side railing.

  “Abby?” I called.

  “Lea?! Is that you?” Abby sounded excited. “You guys have to come here!”

  “Abby, we’re not supposed to be up here! You need to be careful,” I called, as I helped Camila up over the rotted step to the top of the third-floor landing.

  My mom had said the upper floors of Coventry House were damaged, and when we stepped inside the first room off the landing, I gasped. In front of us there had once been a turret, but fire had burned away part of the circular room. On the far side, the thick brick wall had crumbled, revealing patches of sky. The floorboards were singed and uneven, and in a few places, the wood was rotted through. Abby stood by a skeletal window frame, and a few feet away crouched the Artful Dodger.

  Abby lit up when she saw us. “Look!” She pointed to the cat. “I’ve got him!”

  Dodger did not look like he’d been “gotten” by anyone. His tail and most of his fur were sticking straight up, and his eyes were wide. When Abby reached for him, he backed up with a hiss, as if he was frightened. “It’s okay,” Abby murmured as she crept toward him. “I’m the cat whisperer, Dodger.”

  As Abby approached, Dodger watched silently, his tail twitching. As she reached down to pick him up, he leapt away.

  “Dodger, no!” Abby squealed, lunging for him.

  “Be careful!” I shouted, but Abby was already running after the kitten. As she crossed the floorboards, the wood groaned in a sickening, splintering sound.

  Camila and I screamed, and I shut my eyes, terrified that Abby had fallen through the floor.

  “Lea!!” Abby shrieked. “Help!”

  I looked, and my stomach dropped. Abby was clinging to the window frame and standing on a narrow patch of floorboard, with Dodger at her feet. A giant hole gaped in front of them. One wrong move and Abby and Dodger would both fall in.

  bby stared at the hole in front of her, then up at me. Her eyes flashed with fear. “I’m going to fall!” she cried. Her voice sounded high and thin, like an alarm going off.

  “Don’t move!” I ordered, remembering when my dad was trapped on the cliff in Brazil. The rescuers had told him not to make any sudden movements, in case they triggered more rock or mud to collapse. “Hold on to the window frame. Stay still.”

  I turned to Camila, who looked just as scared as Abby. “Go down to the main floor and get help,” I told her. Camila nodded and rushed back down the stairs.

  “We’re getting help, Abby,” I called, trying to sound calm although my heart was racing. Even from across the room, I could see she was trembling.

  She had wrapped her arms over the window ledge, gripping tightly.

  “It’s going to be okay,” I reassured her, as Dodger cautiously approached and rubbed against her leg. “See? Dodger thinks so, too. He likes
you. You are a cat whisperer.”

  Abby tried to smile, but her lower lip wobbled as she stared into the pit in front of her. “How far down do you think it is?” she said in a small voice.

  “It doesn’t matter, because you’re not going to fall,” I said, trying to sound confident.

  Abby nodded as if she wanted to believe me. She shut her eyes. “I’m scared,” she whispered.

  “So am I,” I told my best friend. “But you’re going to be okay.”

  Abby shook her head. “You don’t know that,” she said, and her voice quavered. “What if the rest of this floor collapses, and I fall?”

  She was right. The boards definitely looked as if they might not be able to support her weight for long. There must be something I can do, I thought. I remembered the coiled rope I’d seen on the second-floor landing.

  “Hold on,” I said. I could hear Abby trying not to cry as I raced out of the room and down to the landing below. The rope was so old that thick dust flew into my face like a puff of smoke when I picked it up. I coughed but kept moving, running back upstairs with the rope in my arms.

  “Abby, here!” I called, coming back into the room. I threw her one end of the rope. “Put this through the loops on your jeans and tie it.”

  Abby carefully released the window frame so she could thread the rope around her waist twice. She knotted the end to her belt and locked her hands over the knot.

  “What now?” she asked.

  I looked around the turret room. Above me, a burned-out hole in the ceiling exposed a beam that hadn’t been touched by fire. Seeing it made me remember a trick Abby and I had seen once when some movers delivered a piano to a house down the block. It was too big to go through the front door, so they used a pulley to haul it up to some big windows on the second floor and inside. I tossed my end of the rope over the rafter and ran with it over to the thick wooden post at the top of the stairs.

  “Just in case something breaks,” I said to Abby, “this will help.” She nodded, watching as I wrapped my end of the rope around the thick wooden post, double-knotted my end to one of the loops, and tucked it under. This will have to do, I thought.

  Just then, Abby screamed! I looked over my shoulder. Abby was still at the window, but Dodger was now on the sill beside her. “Sorry, false alarm,” Abby said, releasing a nervous laugh. “He scared me.”

  Dodger purred, rubbing his head against Abby’s hand on the window. When his tail flicked her cheek, she made a face.

  “So now you want to be friends?” she said, but I could tell she was calming down. Abby reached over to pet the cat. As she shifted her weight, the boards under her cracked with a sound like fireworks exploding.

  Abby yelped and hugged the window frame.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “I don’t want to just stand here until the rest of the floor gives out!”

  I crouched down, studying the hole in the floor. It wasn’t as big as it had seemed at first, but the broken boards were blackened and weakened by the fire. It was hard to know where on the floor you could step safely.

  I lay on the ground and craned my neck, trying to see beneath the floor at the edge of the hole.

  “What are you doing?” Abby said.

  “Hold on,” I replied. From this angle, I could see a support beam running under the floorboards where Abby stood. The beam was thick and sturdy-looking, and didn’t appear to be blackened by fire.

  Abby shifted her weight, and the floorboards groaned again. She clutched the rope around her waist and looked at me in panic.

  “Step to your right and put one foot in front of the other,” I told her.

  She followed my instructions, putting her feet on top of where the beam was. “That feels more solid,” she said.

  “It is. There’s a strong beam underneath. If you step straight ahead, you’ll be on it the whole time, and you can walk over here.”

  Abby looked at me—then down at the jagged hole in the floor beside her, terrified. “I can’t,” she said. This wasn’t the fearless Abby I knew. A tear ran down her face.

  “Yes, you can,” I told her. “I’ll help you.” I grabbed the rope, leaving only enough slack for Abby to walk the few feet across to me. “The rope and the rafter will hold you up if you fall,” I assured her.

  Abby looked down at the hole again. In that moment, I tried to send her all the courage I had ever had.

  Abby took a deep breath, then turned and grabbed Dodger, holding him under her arm. To my surprise, he didn’t fight at all as she let go of the window frame and started across the room.

  “Good,” I said, sounding confident. I couldn’t let her know I was scared. “Now walk straight.”

  Abby did as she was told, putting one foot in front of the other like a gymnast on a balance beam. Dodger mewed as they passed the edge of the pit, but Abby kept going across the rickety floor until she was nearly beside me. Then, with a deep sigh, Abby took a giant step through the doorway onto the safety of the landing, and hugged me harder than she ever had before.

  We were halfway down the stairs when we heard Camila and my parents calling our names from below. We met them on the second-floor landing. My mom looked surprised when she saw Abby holding Dodger, but she didn’t say anything. She and Dad hugged us both, but I could tell they were really upset. I could see my father looking at the rope around Abby’s waist, and I knew I’d have some explaining to do later.

  As we tramped back downstairs, I started to confess what had happened, but Abby interrupted me.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Clark, it was all my fault. I saw Dodger and I forgot about everything else,” she said as we reached the front entry hall. “Camila and Lea were just trying to help, and Lea saved me!”

  I felt a surge of pride.

  “That’s sweet of you to say, Abby,” Mom replied sternly, “but none of you should have gone upstairs. You could have been seriously hurt!”

  I felt my pride crumble, replaced by shame. I studied my feet, not wanting to see the disappointment in my mother’s eyes.

  “Not to mention,” she continued, “that if anyone had been injured, the city could have shut down the entire restoration of Coventry House.”

  “Well, now, that didn’t happen,” Dad said soothingly. “The girls are safe, and as an added bonus, they have a cat!”

  “Thank goodness no one was hurt,” Mom said. I could hear the anxiety in her voice. She rubbed her forehead.

  Camila, Abby, and I shared a guilty look. I was glad we’d saved Dodger, but I hated letting my mother down. “I’m really sorry,” I said.

  Mom softened a bit. “I know you are. I hope I can trust that you will never do it again.”

  We all nodded. Dodger squirmed in Abby’s arms. I scratched him under his chin and he started purring, rubbing his head over my hand. “We still need to help Dodger,” I said in a small voice.

  “Yes,” Camila chimed in. “What will happen to him?”

  “My mom should take a look at him,” said Abby. She turned to me. “He can stay at our house, since I know your dad is allergic.”

  “That sounds like a plan,” Dad said. “Let’s get going before Dodger changes his mind.”

  On the way home, I asked Dad if we could stop for frozen custard. “Camila wants to try it before she goes back,” I said. Camila beamed at me.

  At Ted Drewes, we got concretes—custard with the toppings mixed in. Camila and I got our custard with pralines and caramel sauce, while Abby got hers with fresh cherries and hot fudge. Camila ate hers so fast she got a melted custard mustache—and a brain freeze! “Mmmmmm,” she kept saying between bites, as Dad drove us home.

  Dodger was curled on the backseat between me and Abby, napping comfortably. He didn’t seem to miss Coventry House too much.

  Dad drove to Abby’s house, a few blocks from ours. Abby’s mom examined Dodger, checking his eyes, ears, teeth, and fur.

  “He’s thin,” she noted, “but he looks generally health
y. Abby and I will clean and de-flea him. And Lea, if you take a nice picture of him, we can make a flyer.”

  “Yes!” enthused Abby. “We’ll hang it in the veterinary office. Customers are sometimes looking for cats or dogs to adopt.” She gave me a shy smile, and I smiled back.

  When it was time for us to head home, Abby walked us out. As Dad and Camila continued down the front steps, Abby took my arm.

  “Hey,” she said, stopping. She seemed nervous, very un-Abby-like. “Thanks again for saving me.”

  “I didn’t really save you, Abby,” I pointed out. After all, it’s not like I had airlifted her out of there, the way Dad was rescued by the helicopter in Brazil. “You saved yourself,” I added.

  “Well, I couldn’t have saved myself without you,” Abby argued, sounding more like herself. Still, her chin wobbled a little, and her eyes looked wet. “I’m really sorry for saying you might not find Hallie,” she said. “And I’m even sorrier for making you cry.”

  “I know,” I said, trying not to cry again. Only this time it wasn’t from anger. “I’m sorry too. I overreacted.”

  “I don’t want you to be mad at me.” Abby wiped her eyes. “Lea, you’re my best friend.”

  “You’re my best friend, too,” I said in a rush, relieved. “I’m sorry about getting so upset before. At first I really liked that you and Camila got along so well. But after a while, I started to feel bad about it. I felt like maybe you guys preferred hanging out without me.”

  Abby looked stunned. “Are you kidding?” she said. “This whole time I was trying to be extra-nice and friendly to Camila, because she was your special friend and I wanted to make you happy.” She looked down and added, “Also, I was worried that you liked her more than me.”

  “Really?” I said in disbelief.

  Abby gave a hard little nod. “Ever since you got back from Brazil, all you’ve talked about is how great Camila is, and then how she was coming to visit. I thought maybe when she got here that you would forget all about me and just want to hang out with her,” she confessed. “Then of course I met her, and she was really fun, but I was still sort of worried.”