“I wish he would call me names,” said Amanda.
“I’m sure he’d be happy to. Want me to tell him?” I offered.
“What do you want him to call you? Amanda Panda? Amanda Banana?” Lola asked.
Amanda dissolved in giggles and buried her head in Lola’s shoulder. When she recovered, she said, “Hey, I like your hair thing. Where’d you get it?”
I felt my head. I was wearing a hair clip with tatted lace that Cousin Hepzibah had given me. I took it out and handed it to her. “My cousin. She made it for me.”
“Really? Who’s your cousin? Does she go to school here?” asked Amanda.
I laughed. “No, she’s, like, ninety years old!”
“That’s really cool. Can I see it?” said Lola, taking the clip.
“Could she make me one?” asked Amanda.
“I can ask,” I said. “Or I could ask her to show me how.”
“If she teaches you, would you teach me?” asked Lola.
“Sure.” I put the clip back in my hair.
“You know who I think is really cute? Garvin Graves,” said Amanda.
Lola and I made faces.
“You’re kidding!” I said.
Lola said, “Garvin Graves? He’s awful!”
“How’s he awful?”
“He’s mean,” said Lola.
“You can be mean and still be cute,” said Amanda. “Look at those arms!”
“Stay away from those arms,” said Lola. “Hey, Sukie, did you figure out Ms. Pitch’s extra-credit problem from yesterday?”
“No, I haven’t really worked on it yet. Did you?”
She shook her head.
“What is it? Maybe I can figure it out,” said Amanda.
The problem was about strategies for winning the student-council elections in various scenarios, with different percentages of the vote required for avoiding a runoff. Lola and I worked on it together for a while, even though Amanda thought there was no point.
“Who cares? Hannah Lee’s going to win no matter what,” she said.
The end-of-lunch warning bell rang, and we crumpled up our food wrappers. “Hey, can I ask you guys something? Are my pants too short?” I asked.
“Stand up,” said Lola. “Now turn around.” She shook her head regretfully. “Yeah, definitely too short.”
Amanda nodded. “Those are some serious high waters.”
“Thanks, I was afraid you’d say that.”
Too bad. I would have to spend what was left of my birthday money on new pants.
Still, it was nice to have someone who would tell me straight out, instead of just snickering behind my back. It felt almost like having friends.
• • •
We ran into Cole when we went to dump our trays in the trash. “Howdy, partners,” he said.
“Howdy to you too, Cole,” said Lola. “Hey, my cousin has a question for you.” She nudged Amanda.
Amanda giggled and fake-slapped her. “I do not!”
“Yes, she does. It’s about your brother.”
“Jake? What about him?” asked Cole.
“Nothing,” said Amanda.
Lola said, “Amanda wanted to know, is he—”
Amanda jumped in quickly, talking over Lola. “I wanted to know, is he . . . um, is he on a sports team?”
“Yeah, he plays hockey. He’s pretty good too. Why?”
“I don’t know, I just . . .” Amanda looked like she wished she could die.
To spare her from having to answer, I said, “Are you athletic too, Cole? What about the rest of your family?”
Cole said, “My dad and my grandfather both played football in high school. And some of my ancestors way back were pretty good at sports—at least, they won races and stuff at church picnics. I don’t think they had sports teams back then.”
“Wow—how do you know all that?” asked Amanda.
“My grandpa kept the ribbons they won. He loves that kind of thing, like history. He has a lot of old family letters. Most of them are just about boring stuff like who owes them money or what the pastor said at church. But some of the men were sailors, and their letters are pretty cool. They sailed all over the world, to China and India and places like that.”
Hannah and Becky came over with their sandwich wrappers. “Is this the new hot spot—the trash?” said Becky.
“That’s right,” said Cole. “It’s where everyone who’s anyone dumps their trays.”
Becky glanced at my ankles again, but she didn’t say anything out loud. Apparently there were some advantages to having Cole as a friend.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Adolphus T. Feathertop, Factor-at-Large
Even though Cole’s presence kept the girls from giving me a hard time about my pants, the high water situation was dire. I got my birthday money out of its hiding place—an old cocoa box—and asked Dad to take me to the shopping center in East Harbor.
“Sure, but I have to swing by a couple of house sales this afternoon,” said Dad. “We’ll stop there after.”
“Okay.” Maybe I might even find some decent clothes for cheap at the house sales.
The first house was a washout—just a lot of baby clothes and car seats—but the second looked promising. An elderly widow had died, and her niece was selling everything: furniture, linens, kitchen stuff, clothing. Some of the furniture had been in the family for generations; judging from the hall tree and the breakfront, they’d been pretty well off in the 1880s. And the old lady had taken good care of her clothes. There were even a few pairs of jeans in a style I remembered Grandma O’Dare wearing.
I fingered a green wool dress trimmed in yellow. It came with a matching jacket with big, cheerful yellow buttons. Hannah and Becky were going to make fun of me no matter what I wore, so why not try something fun?
Then I remembered Kitty. If Hannah and Becky gave me a hard time, what would she do? Maybe something worse than making them sprain their ankles, even. I put the dress back.
“That was a favorite of Aunt Catherine’s,” said the widow’s niece. “I have such a vivid image of her wearing it at Thanksgiving, with a little corsage of yellow chrysanthemums. It would look nice on you. It matches your hair. You have the height for it, too.”
“I like it, but I wouldn’t have anywhere to wear it. Definitely not to school,” I said.
“No, I guess not. It’s too formal for you young people.” She held out a shoebox full of glittery brooches. “Do you like costume jewelry? Aunt Catherine had quite a bit. I know it’s popular with girls nowadays.”
Not at my school, but it seemed rude to say so. “Thanks.” I poked around in the box politely. I wasn’t really interested in costume jewelry, but I did know that some pieces could be pretty valuable. I wasn’t sure I would be able to tell which were which, though. I found a big purple plastic daisy pin that I kind of liked and an iridescent rhinestone earring that Kitty would have loved. As I rummaged through the box looking for its mate, I felt a jolt so cold and evil that I stopped breathing.
I snatched my hand away and stared at the box in horror. My first impulse was to drop it and run. But then I smelled dense, chocolaty-sulfuric pipe smoke that I recognized at once. The little man who’d tried to buy my broom—was he here?
Without any help from me, my mind started leaping to all sorts of conclusions. The fancy-dressed pipe smoker was after whatever horror was hiding among the jewelry, it decided. And letting him get his hands on it would be a bad idea.
The widow’s niece was looking at me funny. “Are you okay?”
“What? Oh, yes, sorry. I’m fine. I just stabbed myself with a pin.” I needed to find whatever had given me that cold horror, but I couldn’t seem to make myself reach inside the box again. Instead, I said, “Your aunt had great taste in jewelry. I’d like to buy the whole box.”
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The niece beamed at me. “I’m so glad! Aunt Catherine would love to know her collection has found a good home. Shall we say forty dollars? There’s some good pieces in there. Some Trifari, I think.”
I counted my money. “I only have thirty-seven,” I said. “Plus some change.”
“That’s fine—you can give me thirty-five. I know Aunt Catherine would have liked you to have it.”
I handed her the crumpled bills. “Thank you.”
The sulfurous smoke got louder, and a man came into the room. I was right—it was the guy from the flea market. This time he was wearing a navy-blue suit with thin red pinstripes and the same red hat as last time, the one with a feather in it. “Excuse me, may I see that box?” He reached for it.
I snatched it back. “I’m sorry, I just bought it.”
He turned to the widow’s niece. “How much did she pay? I’ll give you double.”
“I’m sorry, but it’s sold,” she said.
“Triple, then.”
“I just told you, it’s sold. And I would appreciate it if you didn’t smoke in my aunt’s house. It’s disrespectful.”
He turned to me. “Will you take a hundred dollars?”
“No,” I said. “It’s not for sale.”
“Five hundred.”
“Do you even know what’s inside?” I asked.
“Do you?”
I’ll admit I was tempted. Five hundred dollars might not get us our house back, but it would buy a lot of jeans. But the cold touch of whatever had brushed my hand was still coursing down my spine. “I’m keeping it,” I told him firmly.
He took a deep breath of smoke and released it.
“If you won’t put out your pipe, I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” said the widow’s niece.
He took a step toward me, drawing on his pipe, his eyes flaring like the lit tobacco. I felt panic rising. What was he going to do? Where was Kitty? I scrabbled in my pocket for her whistle. There! I brought it to my lips and blew.
Kitty arrived in a dark gust of wind that sent a stack of magazines slithering to the floor and dimmed the spark in the man’s pipe. She hovered a few feet up and loomed over him, her red hair writhing like snakes of flame. I’d never seen her look so impressive, so threatening. She even scared me.
But the scariest thing was, the man could see her.
Nobody ever sees Kitty—nobody except me. But the pipe-smoking clotheshorse did. He cringed, sheltering his pipe behind his hands. His face and posture seemed to crumple. Then he pulled himself together and stood up straight. He handed me a card. “If you change your mind,” he said and swept out.
Kitty swept after him like an avenging orange cloud.
“I wonder what that was about,” said the woman.
She couldn’t mean Kitty, could she? But no—she sounded too calm. Way calmer than I was.
I took a deep breath—the remains of the smoke made me cough—and looked at the card. It read Adolphus T. Feathertop, Factor-at-Large and gave a phone number and an email address.
I went to the door to catch my breath and make sure he was gone. I looked up and down the street. No sign of the man, or of my sister. I went back inside.
“Did that man know your aunt? Maybe he saw her wearing a valuable brooch or something?” I asked.
“I guess that’s possible. Aunt Catherine set store by her jewelry.”
I felt bad, making the widow’s niece pass up all that money from Adolphus T. Feathertop. It’s not like I actually wanted any of the jewelry. “If I find out any of this is worth a lot, I could bring it back,” I offered.
“No, don’t do that,” she said. “A bargain is a bargain. I would far rather you have Aunt Catherine’s treasures than that rude man.”
“Well, thank you. That’s very nice of you.”
Dad came back from loading the hall tree into the truck. Good antique hall trees always sell fast in Brooklyn, which is long on Victorian brownstones and short on coat closets. “Ready, Sukie? Let’s go get you your new jeans,” he said.
“Change of plans,” I said. “I just spent all my money.” I held up the box, lifting the lid so he could see inside.
“Jewelry? Really? Well, your money, your choice,” said Dad. He gave the widow’s niece a raised-eyebrows “Girls!” look that I found deeply unfair.
She glanced at my legs. “You do seem to have outgrown your slacks. Wait there.” She bustled out of the room and came back with an armload of grandmother jeans, with a few pairs of woolen trousers thrown in. “These should fit. You’re just about Aunt Catherine’s height, maybe a bit slimmer, but you can always take them in.”
What was I going to do with grandmother pants? But she had been so nice. I thanked her and followed Dad out to the truck, sniffing for sulfur. To my relief, the wind had blown away every trace of Adolphus T. Feathertop.
• • •
When we got home, I took my shoebox of jewelry up to my room, poured it out on my bed, and began to put the pieces back in the box one by one. Maybe I could sell them online. If only Cousin Hepzibah had an Internet connection.
Some of the pieces were elegant, some garish, but none gave me that cold jolt of horror when I touched them. I set aside a few nice ones: the purple enamel daisy; the earrings that reminded me of Kitty; a delicate, lacy metal bracelet I thought Amanda would like; and a blue-green rhinestone necklace the same color as a sweater of Lola’s.
Would I be bribing the Pereiras to be my friends? Did that make me a bad person? But wasn’t all friendship an exchange anyway—would it be so wrong for the exchange to involve jewelry? The nice lady had been so certain her aunt Catherine would have liked the idea of me wearing her treasures. Surely she would like it even better if three of us wore them.
I reached for another brooch. As I touched it, the cold feeling swept over me like a breaking wave, pulling me under and pelting me with pebbles of stinging terror. I sank to my knees, gasping. It took everything I had to make myself open my hand and look at it rather than hurl it as far away as possible.
It was a small clasp made of onyx inlaid with gold, in a style that was popular at the end of the nineteenth century. I’d seen hundreds of pieces like that at flea markets, black stone with gold initials. In old photos, ladies wore them to hold their collars together and men used them as tie clips.
The only odd thing about the clasp was the letter itself, which was definitely not from our alphabet. It didn’t look Greek or Russian, either. Not Arabic or Hebrew, not Chinese, Japanese, Korean, or Thai. Definitely not Egyptian. It looked—well, it looked foreign. Beyond foreign. Inhuman.
I didn’t want to hold it. I didn’t want it in my room. I didn’t want it in my life.
Shuddering, I dropped it into a plastic bag, zipped the bag shut, and folded it up in paper. I tucked it into an empty mint tin, clicked the tin shut, started to put it in my pocket, then stopped. I zipped it into my backpack instead.
Kitty was back. She didn’t like the thing. She didn’t want me to keep it. She thought I should fly my broomstick far out over the ocean and toss it.
I imagined the relief I would feel as it left my hand, the splash it would make. I imagined it vanishing into the water. I imagined the currents dragging it back and forth, through seaweed and schools of fish, washing it up on a beach. I imagined someone finding it: Adolphus T. Feathertop, or—worse—some kid my age. I imagined a kid opening the box, unfolding the sodden paper, unzipping the plastic, and pinning the clasp to their jacket.
I couldn’t imagine what would happen next.
Something bad.
I needed help. I dug out Elizabeth Rew’s card with the address of the New-York Circulating Material Repository. I put on my parka, grabbed my backpack with the clasp in it, took the Hawthorne broom up to the widow’s walk, swung my leg over, and launched myself out into the air, swiveling towa
rd the sea and heading down the coast.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The New-York Circulating Material Repository
The ride to New York City took a lot longer than I expected, mostly because I hadn’t thought it through. North Harbor is a couple of hundred miles from Manhattan as the crow flies. As it happened, a crow took off from one of the chimneys and flew out ahead of me, and I actually considered following it before deciding that would be insane. So I took Andre’s advice from earlier and hugged the coast.
Following all the bends along the shore—all the coves and nubbles and promontories—added distance to my trip. Clinging to the broomstick with hands and knees, I urged it to go faster, faster! I outstripped crows and seagulls. Mist stung my cheeks and soaked through my scarf. Kitty hated it. This was far, far more dangerous than riding a bike without training wheels. She tried to help by blowing the air backward from my face, but that just whipped my hair around, stinging my ears. My legs were aching and everything chafed.
Then I saw a helicopter ahead of me, and I panicked. I gave the broom a storm of mixed messages: Up! Down! Forward—no, back! But most of all, go! Get past it!
The broomstick hung for a moment, as if paralyzed. The helicopter came hurtling toward me. It seemed to be blowing up like a balloon. Then something intangible snapped, and the broomstick broke loose into some unknown dimension. Everything vanished: the helicopter, the sharp mist, the seagulls, the coast. My sister. I was alone in dark, blank, racing silence.
I gasped and pulled up on the broom’s end. The broom flapped impatiently, as if irritated at being interrupted by someone who clearly had no idea what she was doing.
“Take me back,” I shouted. My voice sounded dim and flat in the emptiness. “Go back to the coast!”
The broom didn’t respond.
“Broom! Come on!”
The broom made a reluctant turn—I felt the motion, but I couldn’t tell the direction—and gave a swishing shudder, as if it were sweeping stars along the infinite stone wall at the end of the universe. It made a rough, sparking sound. Then I felt the air catch around my arms and legs, and the wind came back, slicing at my forehead. I blinked away tears and saw the coast below me again, laid out like a map. The helicopter was gone, as was Connecticut. I saw Manhattan ahead of me. We were almost there.
The Poe Estate Page 9
