by Elise Broach
“Okay,” James says.
“There’s nothing to worry about,” Karl says. “You’ll hold it for a few minutes, then hand it to me, and then I’ll put it on Christina’s finger.”
James nods, looking serious.
When they get to the Cloisters, the sun is shining and flowers are in bloom all around them. The old stone church is high on a hill. Marvin and Elaine lean over the edge of James’s pocket. They can see everything, even the big Hudson River, shining far below.
“Where’s Christina?” James asks.
“We won’t see her until the music starts,” Karl tells him. “She wants her wedding dress to be a surprise.”
They walk quickly through crowds of people, under stone arches, past statues, and into a courtyard filled with flowers. White chairs are set up in two rows. There are four people playing music in the corner. Mr. and Mrs. Pompaday and William are already there.
Mrs. Pompaday rushes over, holding William. “Oh, James, don’t you look nice. We’ll be right here in the second row, to see you be the best man! And then you’ll come home with us when everything is over.”
“Ya ya!” William yells.
Marvin can tell James is glad to see them, but there’s no time to talk. James and Karl hurry to stand in front of everyone.
“Stay out of sight,” Marvin reminds Elaine.
They peek out at the people, the flowers, and the tall stone walls of the church. Marvin sees that the stones are very old. He wonders if there were other weddings inside this church, hundreds of years ago, across the ocean in France.
“I can’t wait to see the bride,” Elaine whispers.
“James,” Karl says, “here is the ring.” He takes a small gold band out of a box and hands it to James. “Give it back to me in a few minutes when I ask.”
“Okay,” James says. Marvin can see that James is nervous.
Karl squeezes his shoulder. “You’re the BEST best man any guy could ask for.”
As James smiles up at his dad, the music starts.
And then Christina appears. She is wearing a long white dress. Her hair is in a bun. She is carrying a big bouquet of flowers. She walks across the courtyard to Karl and James, her face glowing.
“Oh,” Elaine says, “she looks beautiful!”
The music stops, and a woman in a suit stands between Karl and Christina. She starts talking about love and family and getting married.
“They’re in LOVE,” Elaine whispers to Marvin. “And now they are going to be together forever.”
Marvin knows this isn’t always true. James’s own father and mother, Karl and Mrs. Pompaday, got married a long time ago, and they didn’t stay together forever.
But when they got married, Marvin thinks, they must have meant to stay together forever. And they had James, who would never have been born otherwise. Marvin cannot bear to picture a world without James.
He is thinking all these things when he hears Christina cry, “Oh!”
There, in her pretty bunch of flowers, Marvin sees a bee.
He sees the bee just as Karl asks James for the ring. And just as James is handing Karl the ring, two more bees land in Christina’s flowers.
Karl tries to wave them away.
“She’s allergic!” he cries.
But the bees keep buzzing around the flowers.
“Oh no!” Elaine whispers to Marvin. “This is bad!”
“We have to do something,” Marvin says.
Together, he and Elaine lean over the edge of James’s pocket, waving their legs at the bees.
“Hey!” Elaine yells. “Beat it!”
“Please,” Marvin calls. “And take your friends with you.”
Christina looks frightened. She is waving the bunch of flowers in the air, trying to get rid of the bees.
“What’s up?” says one bee, flying near Marvin.
“This is a wedding,” Marvin says. “Please go bother somebody else.”
“I’m not bothering anybody,” says the bee. “I’m collecting pollen.”
“We know,” Elaine says, “but you’re scaring the bride.”
“There are flowers all over,” Marvin tells him. “Can’t you leave this bunch alone?”
The bee sighs. “Okay, okay. But we weren’t going to hurt anyone.”
The bees take off, just as Christina shakes the bunch of flowers one last time.
And then something truly terrible happens.
Christina’s hand hits Karl’s hand, and the gold ring he is holding falls through the air.
Marvin freezes.
Elaine gasps.
The ring drops to the stone floor of the courtyard. It bounces once, twice, and then rolls into a metal grate, out of sight.
CHAPTER FIVE
The Ring
“The ring!” Elaine cries. “They can’t have a wedding without a ring!”
Marvin barely has time to think. He grabs Elaine’s front leg, and together they jump out of James’s pocket, after the ring.
They tumble through the air … over and over …
… until they land on the hard stones with a smack!
It’s a good thing they have their beetle shells to protect them.
They rush to the metal grate.
But it’s too late. The ring is gone.
“Oh, Karl,” Christina cries. “I’m so sorry! I was trying to get rid of the bees.”
“Don’t worry,” Karl says. “It went into that drain. We’ll get it back.”
Karl and James drop to the ground, peering into the grate. Marvin and Elaine hide behind a large pebble.
Nobody knows what to do. The ring has disappeared into a black hole.
Karl tries to lift the grate, but it is screwed on tight. He shines his cell-phone light into the blackness of the drain, but there’s nothing to see. Someone leaves to get a museum guard.
“We have to find that ring,” Elaine says to Marvin.
Marvin nods. “Let’s go.”
They are about to jump into the grate when James sees them.
Quickly, he covers them with his hand. Now they can’t go anywhere.
James turns to Karl. “Maybe I can fit my finger in there. I can try to reach the ring.”
“The gaps are so small,” Karl says. “I don’t want your finger to get stuck.”
“Please don’t take any chances,” Christina says.
“Let me try,” James tells them.
He bends over the grate and sticks his pointer finger into the drain.
Marvin sees their chance. “Now,” he says to Elaine, and together, they run along the inside of James’s finger until they are below the grate, inside the dark drain hole.
Clinging to James’s finger, they look around.
The drain is not very deep. At first, all Marvin can see are the metal walls of a pipe and little piles of leaves and twigs.
“Yuck,” Elaine says. “It’s dirty down here. Do you see the ring?”
“No,” Marvin says.
They peer through the darkness. Luckily, beetles have excellent night vision. They don’t need a light to see anything down here.
And then Marvin does see something. A flash of gold. “Elaine, over there!”
“The ring!” Elaine cries. “We found it!” She drops off James’s fingertip to the bottom of the shallow drain and rushes to the spot where the ring has fallen.
She tries to lift it. “Ugh, it’s too heavy,” Elaine says.
Marvin jumps down beside her. Even working together, they cannot lift that heavy ring. And James’s finger is too short to reach it.
“I know,” Marvin says. “We can roll it.” So that is what they do. They roll the ring directly under James’s fingertip.
But just then, James pulls his finger back up into the world above.
For a minute Marvin is scared. What is going on? Is James leaving them down here?
Then he hears James’s voice. “I think I see it.”
Other voices say, “Really?”
“James found the ring!”
Marvin and Elaine look up, and James’s big eyes look down at them through the metal bars of the grate. “I don’t think I can reach it,” he says. “Hang on…”
The next thing they know, James’s two fingers are poking through the grate, holding something long and silver.
The beetle tie clasp!
Now there are three beetles in the drain.
James pinches the tie clasp open and waves it in the air above them.
They duck.
“Yikes,” Elaine says. “That thing is sharp.”
“We have to hold the ring where he can grab it,” Marvin says.
They stand on either side of the ring, and with all their might, they try to lift it. It is so heavy. Oomph!
Finally, they raise it up, just enough to bang the tie clasp with a clink.
The tie clasp closes on the ring, and—hooray!—James lifts it out of the drain.
Above ground, what a commotion there is! Marvin and Elaine can hear everyone cheering and clapping for James.
“Let’s get out of here,” Elaine says. “Or we’ll miss the wedding!”
They crawl up the slippery side of the pipe and through the grate.
James is there, watching for them. Grinning, he quickly bends down to tie his shoe. He sweeps Marvin and Elaine into his hand and tucks them both back in the pocket of his suit jacket.
“You did great, little guy,” he whispers. “And your friend too.”
Marvin and Elaine beam at each other. They saved the day!
The bees are gone. The ring is back. Everything is just as it should be, and now it’s time for the wedding.
Karl says, “With this ring, I thee wed.” He slides the golden ring onto Christina’s finger.
Marvin and Elaine stay hidden in James’s pocket.
Elaine sniffles. “It’s so beautiful.”
“What?” Marvin asks.
“Love!” She turns to Marvin. “Marvin, you did it. You found the ring.”
“We did it,” Marvin says. “And James helped. James always helps.”
“That’s what friends are for,” Elaine says.
Marvin smiles at her, and together they lean back into the silk of James’s handkerchief, as Karl and Christina are married.
About the Author
Elise Broach is the New York Times–bestselling author of books for children and young adults, including My Pet Wants a Pet, Bedtime for Little Bulldozer, The Wolf Keepers, Masterpiece, Shakespeare’s Secret, Desert Crossing, the Superstition Mountain trilogy, and The Miniature World of Marvin & James, James to the Rescue, and Trouble at School for Marvin & James, Books One, Two, and Three in the Masterpiece Adventures series. She lives in Connecticut. Visit her at elisebroach.com, or sign up for email updates here.
About the Illustrator
Kelly Murphy is the acclaimed illustrator of many children’s books, including Masterpiece, The Miniature World of Marvin & James, James to the Rescue, and Trouble at School for Marvin & James. She lives in Providence, Rhode Island. Visit her at kelmurphy.com, or sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
CHAPTER ONE
Big News
CHAPTER TWO
So Many Questions
CHAPTER THREE
Wedding Plans
CHAPTER FOUR
A Wedding Emergency
CHAPTER FIVE
The Ring
About the Author and Illustrator
Copyright
Text copyright © 2019 by Elise Broach. Illustrations copyright © 2019 by Kelly Murphy.
Henry Holt and Company, Publishers since 1866
Henry Holt® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
mackids.com
All rights reserved.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Broach, Elise, author.|Murphy, Kelly, 1977– illustrator.
Title: Marvin & James save the day (and Elaine helps!) / Elise Broach; illustrated by Kelly Murphy.
Other titles: Marvin and James save the day (and Elaine helps!)
Description: First edition.|New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019.|Series: The masterpiece adventures; book 4|“Christy Ottaviano Books.”|Summary: Marvin the beetle tries to reassure his human boy, James, who is worried about his father’s upcoming wedding and the changes it will bring.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018021058|ISBN 9781250186072 (hardcover)
Subjects:|CYAC: Weddings—Fiction.|Beetles—Fiction.|Human-animal relationships—Fiction.|Friendship—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.B78083 Mar 2019|DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/201802105
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First hardcover edition 2019
eBook edition April 2019
eISBN 9781250186089
