The Secret of Goldenrod

by Jane O'Reilly

  “Poppo, you’re not listening to me.”

  “Yes, I am. I’m just not sure it’s a good idea.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll do all the work. I’m going to make caramel apples and—”

  “Citrine,” he said, interrupting her. “I mean the invitation for your mother.”

  “But why? Why can’t I try to find her? Please, Poppo. I want to try.” She looked at Augustine again and could hear her words of wisdom: I know of no good story where the maiden gives up. “You can do anything if you put your mind to it, right?” She marched across the room and pushed the invitation into his hand. “You have to know someone who knows where she is. Promise me you’ll try.”

  He nervously creased the folds of the invitation. “I’ll give it my best shot. On one condition.”

  “What?” Trina said.

  “You have to promise me you won’t get your hopes up.”

  “I promise,” Trina said, but her hopes were already up. Way up.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Clink. Clink. Clink. Trina was standing at her bed, counting out fifty dollars in quarters and even a couple old fifty-cent pieces. Enough, she hoped, to make posters instead of invitations, and buy decorations and other stuff for the masquerade ball. The rest of the money she would leave in the can and give to Miss Kitty for food. Clink. Clink. Clink.

  “Citree-een! Citree-een!” Augustine called at the top of her little lungs. Trina turned around as Augustine stumbled out through her front door with her hands over her ears.

  When Trina stopped counting the money, Augustine released her ears. “What is the news of the day? I heard the bell tolling.”

  Trina turned toward her window. Poppo was working to clear the big tree, but his chain saw sounded more like a distant truck than a bell. “I don’t hear a bell. All I hear is my dad’s chain saw.” Clink. Clink.

  “There it is again,” Augustine said, looking a little faint.

  “Oh,” Trina said, about to drop another quarter in the pile. She bent down and showed Augustine her handful of coins. “It’s not a bell. I’m counting money for the party. I’m going into town today, on a bike. All by myself.”

  “Unescorted?” The little doll sounded worried.

  Trina nodded. “I’ll be okay, Augustine. It’s how we do things in my world.”

  “Then all is well with your father?”

  Trina nodded again. “He promised to send my mother the invitation to the party.” She counted out the last two dollars without making a sound. “Do you want to come with me? You can ride in the basket.”

  Augustine shook her head. “I think not today. While living in your world, I have learned many things about myself I did not know. I find I am quite content right here.”

  “But what about adventure? I thought you wanted a life full of adventure?”

  “My dear Citrine, the Land of School has too many rules. And a frog who is not a prince. And the Land of Goldenrod is far too big for me. They are grand places to visit, but they are not home.” Augustine glanced back at the dollhouse. “That is my home, Citrine. That is where I am meant to be.”

  “I understand completely, Augustine. You’re lucky to know where your home is.” Trina filled her pockets with twenty-five dollars in coins. “Would you like to ride your pony now?”

  “I would indeed.”

  Trina placed Augustine on her pony and handed her the reins. Then she picked up the mother and father dolls and leaned them against the door of the stable for a perfect view of Augustine riding her horse in the sunshine. “I’ll see you later,” she called to Augustine as she carried the coffee can out of her room.

  The front door was wide open. The yard was strewn with branches and leaves, but already Trina could see a cleared path from the porch to the gate and a mound of sawn logs. Edward and Charlotte’s bikes were leaning safely against the trailer and her dad was wielding the chain saw, wearing his goggles and bright yellow earmuffs. When she waved her hands in the air to get his attention, he cut the motor and uncovered his ears. “Plan on picking me up in a few hours at Miss Kitty’s diner,” Trina said, strapping Charlotte’s pink helmet to her head. “And don’t forget to bring Edward’s bike.”

  “I lowered the seat for you. I’ll fix it when I’m in town. And be careful,” he said. He watched as she put the coffee can of money in the pink basket hooked to the handlebars of Charlotte’s pink bike. And she knew he continued to watch as she walked the bike toward the East Garden. Just as Trina rounded the corner of the house, she turned and waved and he waved back, and then she heard the grinding whir of the chain saw resume. Poppo was letting her grow up.

  Trina pushed the bike through the field of goldenrod, past Annie’s grave, and all the way to the apple orchard. She could smell the ripening apples before she got there. She found the path between the cornfields where Edward said it would be and hopped on Charlotte’s bike.

  She stood up on the pedals and ground her way along the rutted path. Bumping along for six point four miles, the coins jingling in the coffee can, she pretended she had lived in New Royal her whole life and riding her bike into town all by herself was an everyday thing to do.

  Her first stop was Hank’s Tool and Lumber for a box of colored markers and a package of eight sheets of heavy paper for posters. Her dad was right. The hardware store was a mess and it smelled like sawdust, but it had everything—towers of paint cans, scrap wood, buckets of tools, crates of old plumbing. The paper was in a section marked “Toys.” A teenage boy named Tyler rang her up as Mr. Hank walked into the store. “Tell your dad the paint should be here next week.” And then he handed Trina a baby sucker.

  “I’ll save it for later,” she said, to be polite. She popped it into her T-shirt pocket and went out the door.

  With the markers in Charlotte’s basket and the paper rolled up under her arm, she rode the bike down the sidewalk. She saw Mr. Kinghorn coming out of the bank and nodded to him when he waved. Maybe, if she had her own bike, she might like living in New Royal.

  When she arrived at the Cat’s Meow Diner, she leaned the bike against the flower box, put the poster paper in the basket, and grabbed the coffee can. Even before she pushed open the door, she could hear the chatter of voices and the clink of silverware. When the little tin cats chimed overhead, Miss Kitty looked up from wiping the counter. “Charlotte,” she hollered over her shoulder. “You got company.”

  Every seat in the diner was taken and a few people were standing in a corner waiting to be seated. “You’re so busy!” Trina said, amazed at the number of customers.

  “You should have seen the breakfast crowd,” Miss Kitty said. “Everyone wants to hear about last night.”

  Trina set the coffee can on the end of the counter with a loud clang, which caused the customers to stop chewing and turn their heads. “I told you,” Miss Kitty said. “That’s yours and I want nothing more to do with it.” Miss Kitty stepped back as Charlotte pushed through the swinging doors, carrying a bucket of water. Edward followed with a mop.

  “What are you doing here?” Trina asked Edward.

  “Working off his punishment, what do you think?” Charlotte snarled before Edward had a chance to open his mouth. “What are you doing here?” Charlotte’s eyes were on the coffee can.

  “I want to place an order for as many monster brownies and cupcakes and whatever else I can afford with this money.” Trina carried the coffee can to the cash register, where Miss Kitty was ringing up a customer. “For the first Harvest Moon Masquerade Ball to be held at Goldenrod in more than a hundred years.” She spoke in a loud voice, making sure everyone could hear her. “It’s in two weeks and the whole town is invited.”

  The conversations in the booths fell to murmurs. Hesitant, grumbling murmurs. Trina felt as if she’d just invited everybody to help paint Goldenrod, not come to a party there.

  Except for Edward.

  “Wow!” Edward said, glancing up at Miss Kitty. “How many do we get?”

  “Non
e, if you don’t get your work done,” Miss Kitty said, looking at the coffee can as if it contained worms instead of money. She looked around the diner before she pulled the can to her side of the counter.

  “I kept fifty dollars for decorations and miscellaneous things, but you get the rest,” Trina said to Miss Kitty.

  “Seems mighty equitable to me.” Miss Kitty had a tinge of excitement in her voice until she looked up and realized all the customers’ eyes were on her. “But I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

  The murmurs got louder, but Trina didn’t pay any attention to them. She was concentrating on Charlotte, who hadn’t said a word. Charlotte looked at the coffee can and back at Trina. Trina held her breath, expecting the word Latrine to cross Charlotte’s lips at any moment. She and Charlotte had a stare-down, beady eye to beady eye.

  When Charlotte squinted, Trina squinted.

  When Charlotte blinked, Trina blinked.

  When Charlotte breathed, Trina didn’t.

  “Can I be Princess Leia?” Charlotte asked.

  Trina exhaled, relieved. Maybe she and Charlotte had a chance at becoming friends. A small chance. “You can be anyone you want. I already decided there isn’t enough time to make 397 invitations, so I wondered if you could help me make posters and then we can put them up all over town.”

  “Can I help too?” Edward asked.

  “Of course. I have everything we need,” Trina said.

  Charlotte and Edward looked up at Miss Kitty and both of them cowered in her firm glare. “Pretty please, Miss Kitty,” Edward said as the tin cats chimed again and the place started to clear out.

  “I guess there isn’t any harm in making posters,” Miss Kitty said. She grabbed the mop from him and gave his feet a nudge with the mop head. “But get to it before I change my mind.”

  Trina got the supplies from the bike basket while Charlotte and Edward pushed two tables together, and then the three of them sat down and got to work. They decided to make posters for the library, the school, the diner, and all the businesses, like the bank and Mr. Hank’s store.

  In the middle of her second poster, Trina said, “I invited my mom too.”

  “Why do you have to invite her?” Charlotte asked. “Where is she?”

  As strange as it was to talk about her mother so openly, Trina knew she had to get used to it. But it took her a minute to figure out the best way to answer Charlotte’s questions. “She’s in the process of moving,” she said, which seemed to satisfy Charlotte’s curiosity. She had an urge to tell them her mother was a big TV producer, living a fancy life, but the last thing she wanted to do was give Charlotte and her mean fist the idea that she thought she was better than anyone else. The fancy things didn’t matter, anyway. She just wanted to see her mom.

  “It’ll be the first time I’ve seen her since I was really little.”

  “Wow!” Edward said, sitting back to admire his picture of a sharp-fanged bat. “Are your mom and dad divorced?”

  Charlotte kicked Edward under the table.

  “Ow,” he yelped. “What’d you do that for?”

  “Geez, Edward, you don’t ask personal questions.” Trina thought Charlotte was sticking up for her until she added, “You wait until they tell you.” Charlotte turned to Trina with a sneaky smile. “You can tell if you want.”

  Trina had stopped drawing. She was thinking about that word, divorced. It sounded final, but it sounded better than maybe or someday. It was easier to know the truth, even a hard truth, than it was to wonder. “Yeah. Divorced. It happened a long time ago,” she said. And now she felt satisfied with all the answers, too. She looked down at Edward’s picture, finally paying attention to what he was drawing. “Why are you drawing a bat?”

  “Because Goldenrod is a haunted house. Duh.”

  “No, it’s not,” Charlotte said, reaching for the yellow marker to color what looked like a field of daisies. “We broke the spell, right, Citrine? By finding Annie’s grave?”

  Trina felt a great weight lift from somewhere deep inside her. Augustine’s logical idea was working. Trina nodded happily. “Yup. Now all we have to do is get Annie and Toby buried in the cemetery where they belong before my dad puts in the new septic system.”

  Edward frowned at his poster. Then he scribbled over his bat and turned it into what looked like a monster brownie. “I think we should bob for apples like they did in the olden days.”

  “I think we should have a piñata,” Charlotte said.

  “I like both ideas,” Trina said.

  Edward put his finished poster aside and started on another one. “Do we really have to be characters from a book like it said in the newspaper?”

  “Yes. Or a movie,” Charlotte said before Trina could answer.

  “Well, if you get to be Princess Leia, then I’m going to be Obi-Wan Kenobi.” Edward held his marker like the handle of an imaginary light saber and waved it across the table.

  Charlotte twirled her hair to the sides of her head, imitating Princess Leia’s hair-do. “Who are you going to be, Citrine?”

  Trina was shocked. Twice now Charlotte had called her by her real name, Citrine. “I’m thinking about being Briar Rose,” she said. She wanted to wear a fancy dress and look grown-up for her mom. Just in case she came. And she kind of liked it that her dad had been calling her Princess ever since they arrived at Goldenrod. But Edward looked like he had no clue what she was talking about.

  “You know, Sleeping Beauty. Except I can’t sew.”

  “Make room,” Miss Kitty said, waiting for Charlotte to move the markers before she set a plate of warm chocolate chip cookies on the table. When Edward grabbed three cookies, Miss Kitty swatted his hand. “One at a time, buster.”

  And then the little metal cats clinked above the door and in walked Miss Dale.

  “Hey, Mith Thale,” Edward said with his mouth full of cookie.

  Miss Dale walked right up to their table. “Hey, Aunt Kitty. I’m ready for all the tin cans you’ve been saving for me.”

  “What for?” Edward asked as he swallowed.

  “For a surprise art project coming up at school.”

  “Oooo,” Charlotte said. Then Charlotte held up her finished poster. “Look. The whole town is invited to a masquerade ball.”

  Miss Dale read the poster and nodded happily. “So we have to dress up as one of our favorite characters, huh? Sounds like a lot of fun.”

  Miss Kitty shook her head. “That’s some mighty high pie-in-the-sky thinking, if you ask me. You can make the prettiest posters in the world, but I don’t think it’s going to be enough to convince the town to go to a party at Goldenrod.”

  “But you’ll come, won’t you, Miss Kitty?” Trina asked. If Miss Kitty wouldn’t come after surviving a visit to Goldenrod, then no one would come.

  Miss Kitty looked as if she were literally biting her tongue. Miss Dale put her arm around her. “Aunt Kitty, you were there last night and nothing happened.”

  “Nothing? You call driving off the road and getting stuck in the mud nothing? And that big tree just about smashed these kids to smithereens. That isn’t nothing.”

  Miss Dale winked a wink that only Trina, Charlotte, and Edward could see. “You can count on my being there, Citrine. I just have to come up with a costume.”

  “Me too,” Trina said, adding leaves to a sprig of goldenrod at the top of her poster. “I’m thinking about being Briar Rose—”

  “But she doesn’t know how to sew,” Charlotte said.

  “Carrie can teach you how to sew,” Miss Kitty said, nibbling a cookie with her front teeth. “She can’t cook worth a pickle, but she can sew rings around any seamstress I ever met.”

  Miss Dale rolled her eyes behind Miss Kitty’s back as the tin cats sounded again. This time Trina’s dad came through the door.

  “Poppo, what are you doing here so early?” Trina scolded. Trina didn’t want to go home. She was just beginning to feel a part of something. And she’d only finished two po
sters. But deep down inside she knew why he was there. He couldn’t let her grow up all at once.

  “Hey,” he said, but he didn’t step any farther than the doorway. “I’ve got frozen pizzas and ice cream in the truck, so you need to hurry. Edward, your bike is out here. Next to Charlotte’s.”

  “But Miss Dale’s going to teach me how to sew,” Trina said.

  “Now?” he asked.

  Trina looked at Miss Dale with hopeful eyes.

  “Sure, we can start today. But I’ll need a lift home.” Miss Dale tapped Miss Kitty on the shoulder. “Are the cans out back?” When Miss Kitty nodded, Miss Dale turned to Trina’s dad. “Would you mind grabbing the big box of tin cans by the back door? I was going to ask Mr. Hank, but if you don’t mind . . .” She held her bandaged arm in the air. “No sling, but still no heavy lifting.”

  “Sure, no problem,” he said, following Miss Kitty’s pointed finger to the back of the diner. Miss Dale followed him.

  Trina helped Charlotte tape up her poster in the diner’s window—in the middle of the blinking lights. “I’ll take mine to the library and Mr. Hank’s on our way home.” They hurried outside to see how the poster looked. Edward came racing out too, and the three of them stood on the sidewalk facing the window. Charlotte had spelled the word “masquerade” with a k, but Trina knew better than to point out the mistake to her. Instead she said, “You draw really nice flowers.”

  “Thank you,” Charlotte said. “I can’t wait until the party.” This is how friendships begin, Trina thought. Little by little. “Edward and I’ll make more posters. We’ll get the gas station and Millie’s Grocery Store.”

  “And Shegstad’s Funeral Home,” Edward said.

  Trina and Charlotte frowned at him in unison.

  “What?” he said.

  “Geez, Edward,” Charlotte said.

  “Maybe you should skip Shegstad’s,” Trina said.

  When they finished dividing up poster duty, Trina climbed into the back seat of the truck’s cab and sat next to the big box of miscellaneous tin cans so Miss Dale could sit in the front. First they stopped at Mr. Hank’s. Trina was stuck next to the tin cans, so her dad delivered the poster. When they stopped at the library, Miss Dale delivered the poster.