Downstairs, the refrigerator clicked and started to hum. There was no other noise in the house.
“Don’t you get lonely here, all by yourself?” I asked.
“Go away.”
It sounds like fun to have a whole house to yourself. But in real life, I don’t think it is.
From the other side of the woods, I heard the ship’s bell faintly clanging, almost as if Mom sensed I was thinking about her and decided to call me home.
“I’ve got to go,” I told Raymond. “But I’ll be back another day. And you can always come find me if you want. You know where I live.”
He didn’t move. I hated to leave this way, but I had to.
Outside, the sunny day had darkened. The air smelled like metal. Rain was coming. The wind picked up. I hurried through the woods, hoping to get home before the storm started.
A gust of wind pushed me along. The wind sang in the treetops. As I passed the Secret Tree, I thought I heard the spirit of Crazy Ike cackling.
Not all of the secrets had been put in the tree. There were some that we still held on to because they were too hard to let go.
The rain stopped after dinner. I went over to Paz’s house to see how Operation Annoy Our Sisters was coming along on the Melina side.
Lennie let me in. I was seized with the urge to blurt out, “I saw Marcella!” But I held my tongue. What good would that do? I couldn’t bring myself to take Marcella away from Raymond, so Lennie would only get mad at me. Then maybe she’d make a voodoo doll of me, and I didn’t want that.
I’d have to find another way to convince Lennie to stop the curse. So many feuds! When I thought about it too much, I got dizzy.
“Paz is in our room,” Lennie said, leading me upstairs. “And she’s not alone.”
“What do you mean? Who’s here?”
“You’ll see.”
I walked into their bedroom, and there sat Paz and Isabelle, painting each other’s toenails dark blue, the color of a bruise.
“Hey, Minty.” Paz’s voice sounded welcoming and cheerful, but her face looked a little nervous.
Isabelle looked up briefly and said hi before focusing her concentration on Paz’s left big toe. It wasn’t the warmest welcome I’d ever gotten. I guess I just had to pretend I didn’t know she’d had a pool party and didn’t invite me.
“Should I leave?” I asked.
“No! Why?” Paz capped the nail polish bottle and gave it a shake.
“Sit down.” Lennie made room for me on her bed. “If you can stand the fumes.”
“I just stopped by to see how things were going with Melina,” I said. “Is she still mad at Thea?”
“Oh, yeah,” Paz said. “But she hates me. I wrote a parody of one of her songs.”
“It really showcases the weaknesses in Melina’s songwriting style,” Lennie said.
“Plus I left a hard-boiled egg in her closet, which she didn’t notice until it rotted,” Paz said.
“And I threatened to cut her hair in her sleep,” Lennie added. “She’ll be begging for mercy soon.”
“My part of the plan is coming along too,” Isabelle said.
“What exactly is your part of the plan?” I asked.
“My brother, Martin,” Isabelle replied. “He has a huge crush on Melina.”
“He does?” Now that Isabelle mentioned it, I remembered how Martin had asked Paz if Melina was coming to the pool party, and how he’d perked up when Melina came to pick up Paz.
“Huge,” Isabelle confirmed. “But he’s too shy to tell her.”
“That’s Part Three of the plan,” Paz said. “If Melina has a boyfriend of her own, she won’t care so much about Thea and Kip.”
“And she’ll forgive Thea more easily,” Isabelle said.
“Very clever.” I warmed up to Isabelle, slightly, now that she was finally making herself useful.
“I just have to convince him to work up the courage to tell Melina he likes her,” Isabelle said. “That’s going to be the hard part.”
“You work on him, and we’ll keep annoying our sisters,” I said. “Between the four of us, this plan has got to work.”
“We make a pretty good team,” Isabelle said.
I wasn’t ready to go that far. Isabelle’s callous behavior was still fresh in my mind. But I was willing to give her a chance, if it would help make Thea and Melina friends again.
One chance. But if she did anything mean, or had any cruel tricks up her sleeve, that was the end. Paz could have her.
“Look, Dad. I just made this poster for my room.” I brought my latest art project outside to the patio, where Dad was listening to the Orioles game on the radio, and Thea was reading in the sun. I’d spent the morning making a giant roller derby poster. I drew a picture of myself in uniform, scowling and hip-checking a skater from the opposing team. Across the top I wrote in large, red letters: The Catonsville Nine, starring Minty Fresh! “Aren’t you proud of me?”
Dad studied the poster carefully. He’d always been a big supporter of my roller derby career. “Very sharp, Minty. I love the colors — where did you get such a bright red? And those pastels —” He leaned closer and touched a powdery light blue I’d used for the background. A bit of blue came off on his finger. “It’s not paint, and it’s not colored pencil….”
“No, I didn’t use either of those.” I grinned. “I used a completely new medium this time.”
Something mischievous in my voice must have caught Thea’s attention. She looked up and glanced at the poster. Then she looked again. Then she stood up and swiped her finger through the black line around the helmet. “Hey … Minty, what is this?”
“It’s — it’s, um …” Now that I’d gotten the attention I wanted, I was a little afraid of the consequences. “It’s this, um, stuff I found that’s really fun to draw with —”
“Stuff you found in my room!” Thea growled. “This is my makeup!”
“What?” Dad looked at the poster again. “You drew this with makeup?”
Thea ran upstairs to check. A minute later, her scream shattered the peaceful summer morning.
“Minty! I’m going to kill you!” She stormed back outside. “Dad! She used my makeup to make this stupid poster!”
“Minty! Is that true?”
What was I going to say? I knew this would make Thea crazy. I opened my mouth, hoping some kind of butt-saving answer would come out. And my good luck saved me. Dad’s cell phone buzzed. He was on call that day.
“Just a second.” Dad held up his hand to us, to put us on hold while he took the call. He stood up and paced while he talked. “Yes? Yes. Okay. I’ll be right there.” He hung up. “Sorry, girls, they need me at the hospital. We can take this up later. Minty — do not touch your sister’s things without permission, okay?”
Thea groaned and stamped her foot in frustration. “Is that all you’re going to do? You’re not going to yell at her or punish her or anything?”
Dad went inside to change his shoes. “Thea, I don’t have time for this right now. Take it up with your mother when she gets home.”
“You never do anything to her! She’s the most annoying person on the face of the earth, and she gets away with murder!” Thea cried.
Dad grabbed his car keys, kissed her on the forehead, kissed me on the forehead, said, “Be good,” and left for work.
Thea’s eyes burned into me. I was the peskiest little sister in the world, and nobody cared. She had to find somebody to take her side or she would explode.
“I’m in charge until Mom comes home,” she said. “I’m going outside. Do not leave the house.”
She went out the front door. Two doors down, Kip was in his driveway with his head under the hood of his car. “Kip!” She sprinted toward him. “Kip, listen to this!”
I went outside and sat on the front steps to watch, disobeying her once again. Farther down the street, just beyond Kip’s house, Paz was setting up a microphone and a beat box in her front yard. Lennie filmed ev
erything she did on Paz’s phone. I gave them a conspiratorial little wave. They waved back.
Kip came up for air, smiling and smeared with grease.
“Thea! Want to help me change some spark plugs?”
She ignored him. “You know what Minty did? She drew a poster using my makeup. All my favorite lipsticks, eye shadows, pencils — ruined!”
Kip’s smile faded. I chuckled to myself. I could tell that this was a problem he did not understand.
“She’s always going in my room and touching all my stuff!” Thea knew she was losing him, but she had to make somebody understand how hard her life as a big sister was. “She wears my clothes, she has no sense of boundaries —”
“Aw, come on,” Kip said. “She’s a nice kid.”
Thea’s expression darkened ominously. Kip had not said the right thing.
“Well, I guess you could get back at her by wearing her clothes,” Kip suggested lamely.
Thea was practically tearing her hair out in frustration. “Her clothes are little-kid clothes! They don’t fit me, and I wouldn’t want to wear them if they did. And besides, half of them are hand-me-downs from me — I already wore them!”
Kip dove back into his car’s engine. “Don’t you understand?” Thea cried.
“Sure,” he muttered. “I get it. Casey can be a real brat too.” But he didn’t really get it. Because if he did, he would have been outraged. His little sister, Casey, was quiet and not very bratty at all.
Down at the Calderons’ house, Paz’s microphone gave a squeal of feedback. She started the beat box and began to sing. Lennie circled Paz with the camera on her phone.
“Hey hey, go away, it’s a muggy summer day.
Beat beat, smell my feet, they get stinky in the heat.
Why why, do I cry, I got something in my eye, yo.
Summertime’s the worst time, summertime’s the
worst …”
“Hey,” Thea said. “That’s Melina’s song. Paz is making fun of it!”
“It’s pretty good.” Kip bopped to the beat without really listening to the words.
Melina came running out of the house, screen door slapping shut behind her. “What do you think you’re doing?” She snatched the microphone away from Paz and switched off the amplifier.
Paz played innocent. “I want to be creative like you, so I wrote a song.”
“And I’m making the video to post on YouTube,” Lennie added.
“Don’t worry, we’ll give you full songwriting credit,” Paz said.
“You mean you wrote a parody of my song! You’re making fun of me in front of the whole neighborhood!” Melina self-consciously glanced toward Kip and Thea. Then she grabbed the camera from Lennie. “The whole world!”
I had to get closer now, to see and hear everything. I walked down the street to Kip’s house. Thea caught Melina’s eye. I saw it — a flash of sympathy. Here were two girls who understood each other. Two girls with the same problem: bratty little sisters. Two best friends.
Melina ran toward Thea. Thea ran to meet her. It was just like in old movies when two lovers run to each other in slow motion. Kip barely looked up from his car.
“I can’t believe what Paz just did to you,” Thea said. “But wait until you hear what Minty did!”
“What? Tell me everything, and then we’ll make a plan to get back at them.”
I joined Paz and Lennie on the grass while Thea and Melina released all their big-sister tension to each other. At last, someone who understood.
“Good job,” I said to Paz and Lennie.
“Same to you,” Paz said.
“They’re speaking again,” Lennie said. “It’s a start.”
“What about the revenge they’re planning?” I said. “How bad do you think it will be?”
“I don’t think they’re ever going to get around to it,” Paz said. “They’ll be too busy with their new boyfriends.”
“Boyfriendzzz?”
“Martin finally told Melina he likes her,” Lennie said. “She doesn’t care about Kip anymore.”
“So now we can stop torturing our big sisters,” Paz said.
“Whoa — let’s not get crazy,” I said. “I can’t stop cold turkey. Annoying Thea is part of my lifestyle.”
Paz laughed her good-old-Paz laugh. I felt like we were friends again, the way we used to be. Or almost the way we used to be.
“Hey,” she said. “Want to go to the pool later with me and Isabelle?”
“Sure.” I felt happy. Things with Paz might not be exactly like they once were. But maybe they’d get even better.
“What about me?” Lennie asked.
“Well, you belong to the pool, so I can’t stop you from going,” Paz conceded.
Lennie scowled. Her face said, You’ll be sorry.
An hour later, Paz’s tongue swelled up.
Dad gave Paz an antihistamine that reduced the swelling in her tongue. He said it was probably some kind of allergic reaction. I knew better.
Paz was okay for now. But Lennie wasn’t fooling around.
It was time to get Marcella, I decided, before Lennie took the curse too far.
I set off for Raymond’s house.
On the way I found a new secret:
I like Melina.
Well, duh. Martin Barton for sure. I just hoped Raymond had a picture of Martin ready to be captioned.
I rang the doorbell — ding-dong ding-dong — but no one answered. I listened for any sound in the house. Maybe Raymond was hiding. I knew he was very mad at me.
The house was silent. I knocked. “Raymond, please let me in!”
Nothing.
I knocked again. “I’m sorry about the harmonica! I’ll get a new one!”
Silence.
“I’ve got a new secret to show you!”
When he didn’t answer, I tried the doorknob. It was unlocked.
I went inside.
Raymond wasn’t home. I checked every room. He wasn’t there.
Strange, I thought. I wonder where he is.
Marcella sat stuffed in a corner of the living room couch. I picked her up. I could take her back to Lennie right now. It would be so easy. She would lift the curse off of Paz, and that problem would be solved.
I put Marcella back and sat down with the secret notebook. Raymond had taken a Polaroid of Martin talking to Kip in front of Kip’s car. I pasted I like Melina under his picture. Very satisfying.
I paged through the book, looking at all the secrets we had matched to people in the neighborhood over the summer. Troy and David, Thea and Melina, Lennie and Katie …
I decided to invite them all to my birthday party, Katie and Lydia and Isabelle too. Even the Mean Boys. And Raymond, if he would come. I’d always had just one best friend, Paz. But now I had a whole circle of friends, and it was growing all the time.
I turned to the page that showed a rather sour-faced picture of Lennie over her secret: I put a curse on my enemy. And it’s working.
I picked up Marcella. Where was Raymond? I couldn’t just steal Marcella from him without an explanation. I went to the kitchen window and looked out at the muddy yards of the unfinished houses in the new development. I looked at the fading Witch House. And there he was.
He stood inside the Witch House, near the living room window, crying. The Witch Lady towered over him, saying something to him.
Then Raymond threw his arms around her waist, clinging to her. He sobbed. At first, the Witch Lady didn’t do anything. She stood still and frozen, arms at her sides, as if she were afraid to touch him. He gripped her tighter, pressed his face into her belly. She wouldn’t move.
Raymond didn’t let go. He would never let go. At last the Witch Lady started to cry too. She fell onto her knees and wrapped Raymond in her arms and held him tight.
I couldn’t take Marcella away from him. I left the model house and walked home through the woods.
“Hey, Minty!” Mr. Gorelick was in his driveway, polishing Old Don
na. “Is this yours?”
A shiny object flashed in his hand. I walked over to see it. It was the harmonica Raymond had given me.
“I found this tin sandwich in my garage the other day,” Mr. Gorelick said. “Don’t you have one just like it?”
“I did, but I lost it.” I took the harmonica, glad to feel its cool weight in my hand again.
“Wonder how it got here,” Mr. Gorelick said. “Maybe that Man-Bat is playing tricks on us. Ha-ha.”
“Isn’t it yours? I thought your harmonica was stolen.”
“It wasn’t,” Mr. Gorelick said. “I just misplaced it. Actually, my darn wife hid it from me.”
“Oh.” So Raymond hadn’t stolen my gift after all. I felt terrible.
“This one’s mine.” He held up a large, black harmonica and blew a loud riff on it. “It’s a Suzuki Fire Breath. Judy says the sound of it scares Kelly. I don’t know how she can tell — all that dog does is pant and sniffle through her tiny little nose.” He sighed. “Course I love her like a child, but a dog’s not really a child. And someday I’d love to have somebody in this house who’s on my side when it comes to harmonica playing.” He played a few bars He played a few bars of “You Are My Sunshine.” “Isn’t that beautiful?”
“Sure is,” I said. I put my harmonica to my lips and played along.
Mr. Gorelick grinned. “Now where did you learn that?”
“A friend taught me.”
He played the song again, and I played with him. Mrs. Gorelick stuck her head out the window and cried, “What’s that racket? Oh — hello, Minty.”
“Hi, Mrs. Gorelick. We’re playing a duet.”
“Okay. Well … okay.” She shut the window. Mr. Gorelick laughed and said, “Let’s play it again.”
We played it over and over until we got it just right. The whole time I was thinking of Raymond, and how much he would have enjoyed it. I couldn’t wait to tell him I got my harmonica back.
I just hoped he’d forgive me for losing it in the first place.
The Secret Tree Page 14
