Hazel unhooked her pinkie. “You did all that to find out if a boy likes Maryann?”
“Well, we thought it would be a fun thing to do, and we had other questions, too. I had a question that we didn’t get to because you and Samuel came barging in on us.”
“Why didn’t you just ask Timmy?”
Connie widened her eyes. “You can’t just ask a boy that.”
“Why not?”
“Well,” Connie began, then started chewing on the edge of her thumb again. “Well, that’s just not how you do it. Because then he would know that she liked him. And she doesn’t want him to know that she likes him unless he likes her back.”
Hazel closed her notebook without ever having written anything down. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. And I’ve heard a lot of stupid things.”
Connie pursed her lips. “Think of it this way. It’s not like you’d just go and ask Samuel if he liked you, would you?”
And then she let herself out and, looking both ways, scurried out of the library.
A moment later, Hazel left the booth. She went downstairs to the children’s room, where Miss Lerner was finishing up a story time. She wished she were still little enough for story time. The way Miss Lerner’s voice rose and fell with the story was soothing, like a hot water bottle under your covers in the winter.
Out the window, which was at street level, Hazel could see Connie’s penny loafers waddling away. She wondered what Connie’s question had been. Was she wondering about a boy, too?
Story time finished and the kids all spread out around the library looking for books to take home. Hazel walked over to Miss Lerner and listened as she described Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel to a little boy who looked suspicious that a book could be as exciting as a real steam shovel.
Once Miss Lerner had convinced the boy to take the book home—and come back with a full report on any inaccuracies—she turned to Hazel. “You’re looking a little glum, Hazel.”
“I suppose I feel a little glum,” she replied.
“The whole town is these days,” Miss Lerner said. “Even the kids. I read Goodnight Moon, and half the kids couldn’t be bothered to find the mouse.”
“What do you think it’s all about?”
Miss Lerner raised her eyebrows. “It’s about the factory, Hazel. What else? No one trusts each other anymore.”
“Someone threw a brick through the Lis’ window.”
Miss Lerner nodded. “I saw it. Some of us collected money for them to get it fixed.”
“Mr. Li wanted to leave it. So people would know, I guess.”
Miss Lerner stacked up the books from her story time, and carried them to her desk. Hazel trotted along behind.
Hazel looked at her shoe. “I’m sorry about what I said about Mr. Bowen.”
Miss Lerner gave her a soft smile. “I know you didn’t believe it. But that’s the problem with all this: a whisper becomes a rumor becomes a fact.”
“That’s why we need to figure out who the real spies are. We need to smoke ’em out, and fast.”
Miss Lerner put the books down and looked at Hazel with eyes as sad as the puppies in the Richmonds’ pet shop. “What if there aren’t any spies?”
“Of course there are spies. Why else would there be an investigation?”
Miss Lerner sighed. “When you’re a little bit older, Hazel, maybe you’ll understand.”
Hazel frowned. “That’s what adults say when they don’t know the answer, either.”
Miss Lerner looked up, surprised, but her expression softened. “You’re probably right about that. I don’t know why good folks turn against one another. Maybe it’s fear that if they don’t accuse someone else, they’ll get accused themselves. Maybe it’s a way of working out an old vendetta. Or maybe they just get caught up in the moment, and they start to believe things that couldn’t possibly be believed. Like Mr. Short heading up some sort of spy ring—”
“Oh, Mr. Short isn’t the head of the spy ring!” Hazel exclaimed, but then stopped herself.
“I’m glad to hear that from you, Hazel. Not everyone has such an open mind.”
Of course Hazel couldn’t tell Miss Lerner that she did think Mr. Short was involved, she just didn’t think he was in charge. She knew for certain that was Mr. Jones. So she said, and considered it a truth, “I like to keep my mind open to all possibilities.”
27
Holes
As Hazel rode her bike home, she chewed on her lip. All that rigmarole to find out that Maryann liked Timmy. Big whoop. She had much bigger things to worry about, like spies and the people of her town doubting one another when she knew the whole story but just couldn’t prove it. If she had cared about something as little as boy-girl stuff, which she didn’t, she could have just made some observations at school. Now she was going to get in trouble with her parents for not coming directly home after school. Plus she had rotten apple on her shoe. Plus Samuel was mad at her. Again.
Maybe it wasn’t worth it being friends with someone so touchy.
Maybe it wasn’t worth it having friends at all. Because all they did in the end was leave. They moved to Tucson and never wrote letters. Or they got mad every other day. She hadn’t realized how good she’d had it in those weeks after Becky left and before Samuel arrived. She had just gone about her business, playing her games in the graveyard and reading her books. Now she worried Samuel would tire of her, and she would have a Samuel-shaped hole, and she didn’t like it.
She was afraid she was starting to get a town-shaped hole, too. It’s true she planned to leave Maple Hill as soon as she could, but she still wanted it to be there, just the way she liked it. With Mr. Wall and the library and her school—all of it quiet and the same. She didn’t like people throwing bricks in one another’s windows. She didn’t even like Otis shoving Timmy. Maybe that’s how you know you really love something—how you feel when other folks start to tear it apart.
She didn’t want to go home, so she rode her bike in and out of cul-de-sacs. If she was going to get in trouble (again), she might as well enjoy her last moments of freedom. Mrs. Buttersbee was outside tending to her chrysanthemums, which she kept in big pots on her front step. She seemed to be having some trouble. Hazel slowed her bike, hopped off, and walked up the path.
“Why, if it isn’t Amelia Earhart!” Mrs. Buttersbee exclaimed.
“Just Hazel today,” she replied. “Do you need some help?”
Mrs. Buttersbee smiled and lowered herself down onto the front step. “I most certainly do. The wind came by and knocked them all over.”
“No problem,” Hazel said. She began straightening the pots back up. Some of the dirt had fallen out of the pots, and she brushed it from the cement steps into her cupped hand, being careful not to get it onto her school skirt. If she ruined any more of her nice clothes, her mother would have a conniption fit.
“I used to have the most beautiful gardens in the whole neighborhood,” she said. “Hostas and peonies, and you should have seen my holly bush in the winter. People used to offer to buy boughs from me.”
“That’s nice, Mrs. Buttersbee,” Hazel said. She didn’t know why old people always spent so much time reminiscing about the past. Even when she was old, she’d be looking forward.
“I have blackberry bushes out back. The neighbor boy, Randall, used to come and pick them for me.” She wiped her wrist across her brow. “You could come pick them in the summer if you’d like. You can take as many as you want, and I’ll make jam with the rest. I haven’t made jam in ages.” Her eyes lit up as she spoke.
“That sounds nice,” Hazel said. She really didn’t like picking berries; it was always hot and there were too many bees and prickers. Plus poison ivy always seemed to grow among the blackberry brambles. It was like weeding, with obstacles. But she did enjoy fresh jam. “I would love to do that.” Hazel patted the dirt in around the plants. “I need to be going. I’m grounded, and I’m already late getting home.”
/> “Grounded? Whatever for?”
“It’s a long story,” Hazel said.
“Then we’ll have to save it for another day. In the meantime, help an old lady up?” She reached out her arm, and Hazel took it in both hands, and pulled her to her feet.
When Hazel let go, she saw two dirty smudges on Mrs. Buttersbee’s sleeve where her hands had been. “Oh, no!” Hazel cried.
Mrs. Buttersbee just smiled, though. “It’s no bother. Reminds me of when I was out here doing it myself. You run along now. I don’t want you getting into any more trouble on account of me.”
Hazel said good-bye and hopped on her bike. She rode to the hill and pedaled hard, standing up and shifting the bike from side to side. It was a big, steep hill, and a lot of people got off their bikes and just walked up. But Hazel was not a lot of people. By the end of the hill she was barely moving, but she made it to the top. She raised her fist in the air.
This hill was not as high as the one on the other side of town, where Samuel lived, but it still gave a good view. She could see the graveyard and her house, and, behind her, she could see Samuel’s house, his peaked turret. She wondered if he was in that room looking out in this direction, trying to make the cars and the people do what he saw in his head.
She coasted along for a bit, in no hurry to get home. She was only going to face certain punishment. Then again, what could they do? It’s not like they could ground her for any longer than they already had.
She pulled up alongside her house and tucked her bike into the garage. She opened the door and peered around. Her parents weren’t in the kitchen. She went down the hall and saw the office door was open. With a deep breath, she went to the door to face her fate.
Her dad looked up from a stack of books. “Hello, Hazel,” he said. “How’s things?”
Did he not realize what time it was? That she was late? “I was just visiting with Mrs. Buttersbee,” Hazel told him.
“Mrs. Buttersbee!” her father said. “She’s a nice lady.”
“I went there after school,” Hazel said. “Instead of coming right home.”
“Is that so?” he asked. He took a pencil from behind his ear and noted something on a piece of paper.
“Where’s Mom?” she asked.
“At some meeting,” he said through the pencil, which he now gripped in his teeth. “Concerned Mothers of Maple Hill or something.”
“What are they concerned about?”
“The spies, I suppose. The alleged spies, as your mom says.” He made a check on his piece of paper. “And when Mom’s away, the cats can go to Li’s! Grab your coat and we’ll head out.”
“I’m in my coat.”
Her dad looked up from the book. “So you are. Well, then grab my coat and meet me by the door. I can practically taste the pork dumplings.”
Hazel went and opened the closet door. It smelled like mothballs and the pipe that her grandfather had smoked back when this was his house. When she was little she’d liked to crouch down on the floor of the closet, close her eyes, and just smell. She tugged her father’s coat off the hook, making the hanger swing back and forth.
Her dad caught her there, staring at the swinging hanger and thinking about her mom at a concerned mothers meeting. Her dad grabbed his coat from her and said, “Sometimes I just wonder what goes on in that head of yours.”
“You don’t even know the half of it,” she replied. But soon she would have the proof and she’d be able to tell him everything she had figured out, and boy, wouldn’t he be surprised.
28
Banished
Connie’s punishment for talking with Hazel was swift and severe: banishment. At least that’s how it appeared to Hazel when she arrived the next day to find Connie sitting at her desk, her pretty lips pushed out and her eyes red-rimmed. Maryann had her arm around Patricia O’Malley. They were giggling and glaring at Connie, and Hazel almost felt bad for Connie. Then Connie demanded, “What are you looking at?” and Hazel knew that she’d been right about Connie after all.
Hazel sat down in her seat baffled that this huge blowup had started with a boy. With Timmy, of all the boys. Sure, he looked a bit like Ricky Nelson from The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, with his poof of light brown hair, wide eyes, and smirk of a smile. But he smelled like baloney and wasn’t very smart, either.
When Ellen Abbott came out of the cubby area, Maryann called, “Come over here, but don’t get too close to Connie. She might be contagious.”
Ellen looked from Connie to Maryann, and back to Connie.
“What has she got?” Ellen asked. “It’s not polio, is it? It’s okay if it’s chicken pox, because I already had that, but I don’t want polio.”
Maryann rolled her eyes, but getting Ellen Abbott over to her was key to her plan, Hazel could see that. Choosing Ellen over Connie was just about the meanest thing Maryann could do. The absolute worst would be if Maryann chose Hazel as her new best friend. “Communism,” Maryann whispered. “It’s got her whole family.”
Hazel blinked. “That’s not how it works,” she said. “You don’t catch Communism. It’s a choice.”
Next to her, Samuel winced.
Maryann snickered. “You would know all about it, wouldn’t you?”
“Well, I do know about most things, but yes, actually, Samuel and I have been investi—”
“Your whole family is a bunch of Red sympathizers. Maybe your family and Connie’s family ought to have a commune together. Isn’t that what Commies do? You could all go live in her stupid fallout shelter.”
“Oh!” Patricia exclaimed. “I bet that’s why they have the fallout shelter in the first place!”
“What are you talking about?” Hazel demanded.
“You’re so smart, you figure it out,” Maryann said.
But Patricia was too proud of herself. “Since Mr. Short is a Red spy, he knows the Commies plan to bomb us, so he had the fallout shelter built. I bet he has a special telephone, and they’ll call him on it, and he’ll take the whole family down underground. At least that was the plan before Senator McCarthy caught him.” She tossed her red hair over her shoulder and grinned at Maryann.
“I guess your mom is smart being nice to the family,” Maryann mused while spinning her long, flat blond hair around her index finger. “Maybe she thinks it will keep her safe. Me, I’ll put my faith in Uncle Sam.”
“Why are you talking about my mother?” Hazel asked.
Maryann and Patricia laughed and Ellen gave her a look of sympathy. “What?” Hazel demanded of Ellen. Rumor. Whisper. Lie. The words echoed in her brain.
“At the meeting last night—” Ellen began, but again Patricia was too excited. Her bright green eyes flashed.
“At the meeting last night your mother told the other mothers to lay off the Commies.”
But that was impossible, Hazel thought. Why would her mother have said something like that?
“She said that we all should be ashamed of ourselves turning against one another like this.” Maryann licked her thin lips. “She said it wasn’t the Communists tearing the town apart. It’s us.”
Hazel dropped her head into her hands. Now the whole town probably thought her mother was a Communist sympathizer, and soon they would find out that The Comrade, the head of the whole spy ring, was working for her. No one would ever believe it was a coincidence.
Mrs. Sinclair bustled into the room. “To your seats children, to your seats!” As soon as they were all seated, she had them stand again for the Pledge of Allegiance. Hazel spoke with deep fervor. No one could doubt her loyalty to her country. Still, when they sat back down, Hazel made the mistake of looking over her shoulder to see Maryann smirking at her.
At recess Connie sat alone on the wall. The bright sun shone on her curls, and she looked like one of those paintings of a chubby angel. Folks liked to think about those pink-cheeked angels watching over their loved ones when they were dead, and Hazel often found cards with their pictures in the flowers left
on the graves.
The difference, though, was that Connie did not look peaceful or helpful. She looked as sad as an under-watered plant. “Connie the Commie,” that’s what they were calling her.
“It doesn’t work that way,” Hazel complained to Samuel. “Connie isn’t a Communist just because her dad is. At least, I don’t think so.”
Samuel picked up a rough piece of granite and tossed it in his hand. “I think your mom was doing the right thing.”
Hazel narrowed her eyes. “Sure. Making everyone think our family supports the Communists, that was a great decision. Just swell.”
“She’s trying to keep this town together. Isn’t that what you want?”
Hazel shook her head. Of course that was what she wanted, but there were good ways to go about it, and not so good ways. Her mom’s way was putting a big target right on the family. She couldn’t think about it anymore, so she turned her attention back to Connie. “I suppose Connie will want to be friends with us now.”
“Why?”
“Because she doesn’t have any other friends.”
“Maybe,” Samuel said. He bent over and picked up a smooth, white pebble and placed it next to the rough one in his hand.
“Of course we’ll tell her to get lost,” Hazel said. “But it won’t be because of her dad. It will be because of her.”
Samuel spoke without looking up. “That would make us no better than her.”
Hazel was glad that Samuel wasn’t looking, so he couldn’t see the emotions on her face: surprised, angry, then, finally, agreement. She was a better person than Connie and that meant she had to act better. This was a bitter pill to swallow.
After school Hazel hopped on her bike and pedaled hard to catch up with Connie, who was walking home alone. Connie waddled with her head down, kicking a stone and sending it skittering along in front of her.
Hazel was feeling pretty good about her choice. She’d thought about it all afternoon. She was a good person, and most certainly a better person than Maryann Wood, who had dumped Connie at the drop of a hat. It was especially generous of Hazel to be nice to Connie after she had been so wicked. Hazel liked this feeling of generosity. She was sure that Connie would be so surprised and grateful she might even faint to the ground. After which she would hop up and tell Hazel that she was the kindest person ever to have lived, and surely she didn’t deserve Hazel’s friendship, but she was happy for it.
The Spy Catchers of Maple Hill Page 16
