Absolutely Truly

by Heather Vogel Frederick

  Beside me, Lucas pulled out a small notebook and a pencil and began to draw. I glanced over his shoulder and watched him for a minute or two; he was pretty good. Then I turned my attention to the river. Most of it was frozen, and the parts that weren’t were remarkably still—so still that I could see the reflection of the bridge’s red paint. I took a picture of that, too. Directly below us, some water was still flowing between the clumps of ice, and I watched for a while as it swirled lazily around the stone pillars holding up the bridge. Then I glanced over Lucas Winthrop’s shoulder again. He was adding a graffiti-speckled rafter above his sketch of the waterfall.

  Curious, I glanced up. The rafters were decorated with names, hearts, arrows, dates—the oldest one I spotted was 1899—and interlinked initials, sure signs that Cupid had been here. Directly overhead I saw SAM LOVES BETTY; JOJO AND CARL; and E & T FOREVER drawn inside a slightly lopsided heart. I took a few more pictures.

  I was so busy looking up that I didn’t notice Scooter and Calhoun until they were practically on top of me.

  “Whatcha looking at?” Scooter demanded.

  “Nothing,” I replied coolly.

  He looked up, too, then nudged Calhoun. “Got a pen?”

  Calhoun fished in his jacket pocket and produced one.

  “Gimme a boost—I’m going to add ‘Truly Gigantic loves Lucas,’ ” Scooter told him, and Calhoun snickered.

  “Morons,” I muttered.

  Calhoun bent over and laced his fingers together. As Scooter placed a foot in his grip and Calhoun started to hoist him into the air, Mr. Bigelow suddenly materialized.

  “Don’t even think about it, boys,” he said. “Besides the fact that it’s incredibly dangerous, defacing the bridge is a very big no-no, and the town will charge you a very big fine.”

  Scooter removed his foot from Calhoun’s grasp and held his hands palm up in the classic Who, me? gesture.

  Mr. Bigelow squeezed in between us and leaned on the railing, looking out at the falls. Several of my classmates drifted over. “Drink it in, kids, drink it in,” he said. “The minute the January thaw arrives, which should be any day now, this will all be water under the bridge.” He waggled his eyebrows at his stupid pun, and a chorus of groans went up around me. I could tell that my classmates really liked Mr. Bigelow, though. I was beginning to, as well.

  “So,” he continued, “who knows why the early settlers built covered bridges in the first place?”

  Franklin’s hand shot up.

  “Yes, Franklin?”

  “To keep snow off the bridge?”

  “Indeed!” said Mr. Bigelow. “A buildup of heavy snow could collapse a wooden bridge like this one, which would have been disastrous for a town like Pumpkin Falls, cutting it off from the outside world. Instead, the slope of the roof allows the snow to fall harmlessly into the river.” He looked around. “Anyone else?” None of us rushed to answer, so he continued, “Covering a bridge also protected it from the elements, preventing rot. Our thrifty Yankee forbears liked the idea of extending a bridge’s useful life by a couple of decades.” He winked. “Plus, I wouldn’t put it past them to have figured out that someday covered bridges would attract tourists.”

  “So how do waterfalls freeze, exactly?” asked Jasmine.

  “Why, thank you for asking, Miss Sanchez!” said our science teacher. “Water freezes at thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit—you all know that. But for moving water, it’s a little more complicated.”

  He went on to explain that as water cools below the freezing point, the molecules slow down and start to stick together, forming crystals. Ms. Ivey passed around a handout with diagrams showing those stuck-together bits, which were called “frazil.”

  “You’ll note they’re roughly one millimeter in diameter,” Mr. Bigelow went on. “Very tiny, but small is mighty in this case. As the frazil clump together, they form snow in the air, ice in the water. Now in the case of moving water, they first accumulate against solid surfaces—like those rocks over there along the riverbank, or the bridge’s supports below us.” He pointed to the top of the falls. “See those icicles up there?”

  We nodded.

  “Those started as clumps of frazil. And so did that,” he added, pointing to the broad ledge of ice that had formed at the bottom of the falls. It appeared to be holding up the entire mass of frozen water that had once been the waterfall. “Look at all the different formations! Chandeliers of icicles! Undulating folds! And all those nodules and layers and cauliflower lumps! It’s like something out of a fairy tale.” He sighed happily. “Isn’t nature spectacular?”

  I fished my binoculars out of my backpack (a birder is never without her binoculars) to inspect the waterfall more closely. Now I could see that the ledge of ice at the bottom was actually an inch or two above the river.

  “Water is still getting through underneath that ledge, right?” I asked. “It’s not frozen solid, I mean.”

  “Ah, our new student has sharp eyes,” said Mr. Bigelow. “And binoculars! Extra points for bringing binoculars. You are correct, Truly. Water is still flowing through, though at a much slower speed than usual.”

  I panned across the face of the waterfall, then stopped. Hanging down from the top of the falls was something that looked like a large, frozen tube. With the aid of my binoculars, I could see a fine spray of mist emerging from the end of it, like clothes out of a laundry chute.

  “What’s that?” I asked, handing my binoculars to my science teacher.

  “Oh my,” Mr. Bigelow breathed when he spotted it. “Students, you all need to see this.” He passed the binoculars down the row of my classmates. “That, my friends, is very rare! You can actually see the waterfall in the process of freezing from the outside in. At the moment, water is still flowing through it, like a pipe. Eventually, though, if this cold weather continues, it will freeze into a solid column of ice.”

  I stood there for a long time, gazing at the waterfall and thinking, oddly enough, of my father. Had his injury frozen him from the outside in? And was the father I’d known all my life still in there somewhere, a trickle of him at least?

  CHAPTER 7

  “See you tomorrow,” said Cha Cha.

  We were standing outside Lovejoy’s Books, finishing up the donuts Mr. Bigelow had bought for us at Lou’s Diner, just like he’d promised. The rest of our class had gone back to school, but our teachers had let the two of us remain behind downtown since I was headed to the bookstore anyway and Cha Cha was going to the dance studio. Their receptionist was on maternity leave, and Cha Cha’s mother had texted her to see if she could fill in for half an hour while she taught a tango class.

  “Have fun sledding later,” I replied.

  “Thanks. Have fun with pre-algebra.” She laughed as I made a face, then waved good-bye and crossed the street.

  I waved back, then stepped inside the bookshop—and right into the middle of an argument.

  “No cat, and that’s final!” said my father in his Lieutenant Colonel Jericho T. Lovejoy you’d-better-not-answer-back voice.

  Aunt True laughed, which startled me. Laughter is not the usual response to one of my father’s orders. “Who made you boss?” she retorted.

  The two of them were too wrapped up in their quarrel to notice me, so I quietly slung my jacket and backpack onto the old church pew by the door that served as a bench.

  My father’s face was the same color as Lucas Winthrop’s mitten-and-scarf set, a sure warning sign that an explosion was imminent. This didn’t seem to faze Aunt True in the least.

  “We’re running this place together, J. T., remember?” she continued.

  “We’re already saddled with a stupid dog,” my dad told her. “We don’t need a cat, too.”

  The “stupid dog” in question was curled up on her bed by the sales counter, watching this exchange anxiously.

  “Memphis has been with me through thick and thin,” replied Aunt True. “He’ll get lonely upstairs all by himself.”

&n
bsp; Aunt True had been dog-sitting until we got settled. Miss Marple was scheduled to go home with us tonight, and Lauren could hardly contain herself. She’s always wanted a dog, but our constant moves—one of them overseas—had ruled that out.

  “Besides,” Aunt True continued, “the two of them are already great friends.”

  It was possible that she was stretching the truth. Memphis was perched on the sales counter staring balefully down at my grandparents’ dog, his coal-black tail lashing back and forth. By the wary expression on Miss Marple’s face as she glanced up at him, I figured it for an uneasy truce at best.

  “The two of us are a package deal,” Aunt True stated firmly. “If Memphis goes, I go.”

  Hearing her bicker with my father reminded me of Hatcher and Danny. It was weird to think that to Aunt True, my dad wasn’t a lieutenant colonel in the United States Army, but just her baby brother.

  The muscles in my father’s jaw twitched. He swiveled on his heel. “Fine,” he said, stalking off toward the office. “But one whiff of litter box and he’s out of here.”

  Aunt True spotted me and smiled. “Truly!” She came over and gave me a hug. “Cup of tea?”

  “No, thanks,” I replied.

  “You’d better be off to the dragon’s lair, then.” She nodded toward the office door. “Watch your step in there; he’s a little cranky today. Bossy older sister, out of his element, too many pets. You know the drill.”

  She disappeared toward the back of the store and I headed into the office. “Truly Lovejoy reporting for duty,” I announced with a smart salute, hoping to get a smile out of my father.

  No such luck. He was too busy frowning at a piece of paper clamped in the steel pincers at the end of his prosthesis.

  “I’ve got you set up over there,” he said, waving his left hand at the other desk.

  I slid into the beat-up leather swivel chair in front of it and stared glumly at the book that was waiting for me. Pre-Algebra for the Clueless! blared the familiar bright blue-and-black cover from the Clueless series.

  “We’ll start at the beginning and work our way through,” my father said, still not looking up.

  “But—” I began. It wasn’t like I was a complete moron at math, after all.

  “A firm foundation is the key to success,” he continued, ignoring my protest. “That and review, review, review. Oh, and there are worksheets, too.”

  Of course there were. I sighed and opened the book. At the beginning, just like he’d ordered.

  An hour later, my head was spinning. I was algebra-ed and Lieutenant-Colonel-Jericho-T.-Lovejoy-ed out. “Can I go help Aunt True now, please?” I begged, handing over my latest worksheet.

  My father inspected the results, then nodded. “Dismissed.”

  I scuttled out before he could change his mind.

  Aunt True was nowhere to be seen, but I could hear rustling in the back of the store. I found her in the room that Lola and Gramps called the Annex, where all the used books were kept. Most of the books in the store are new, but my grandparents have always had a spot where they shelved used ones.

  My aunt looked up. “How’d it go?”

  I made a face, and she laughed.

  “Maybe this will be more fun.” She passed me a handheld scanner and steered me to a back corner of the room. “If you could start on this shelf over here, that would be great. Just take one book at a time and scan the bar code, okay? The computer will do the rest. Any books without bar codes—and there are bound to be some—go in this basket. I’ll deal with them later.”

  She walked me through the scanning procedure a couple of times to make sure I knew what I was doing, then patted me on the shoulder. “I’ll leave you to it, then. Your father and I have a meeting with the accountant in a few minutes.” She started to walk away. “Let me know if you find any treasures,” she called back over her shoulder. “Lovejoy’s Books could use all the good news it can get right now.”

  I took the scanner and started in on my assigned task. Half an hour later, I pulled a book off the shelf that would change everything.

  CHAPTER 8

  I’m not sure why I took my discovery home with me.

  I probably should have just given it to Aunt True, or to Dad. By the time I found the envelope tucked inside an old copy of Charlotte’s Web, though, they were already in the meeting with their accountant and Danny was double-parked outside, honking the horn. So I just stuffed the envelope in my backpack, grabbed Miss Marple, and left.

  Dinner was the usual Magnificent Seven mayhem, as my father used to call it before Black Monday.

  “Toot Soup!” cried Danny, as Hatcher ladled some into his bowl.

  “Don’t start,” my mother warned.

  Too late. My little sisters were already giggling. “Toot Soup” is what my brothers call bean soup, because of the inevitable sound effects it produces. Knowing we’d be busy with the first day of school, Aunt True had made a pot of it for us and dropped it by, along with a salad and some bread.

  Eyes dancing behind her sparkly pink glasses, Pippa spooned up a bite, then made a rude noise. Lauren snickered.

  “Pipster,” said my mother severely. “Do you want to eat in the barn with Miss Marple?”

  Pippa thought this was a great idea. Between trying to settle her down, Hatcher and Danny’s instant replay of their first wrestling practices, and Lauren’s glowing report on her new friend Annie, I was squeezed out of the dinner conversation as usual.

  I’d brought the envelope with me to the table, but even if I’d had the opportunity to tell everybody about it, in the end something held me back. I decided to keep the secret to myself for a little while longer.

  After dinner, I went directly upstairs. One of the only good things about moving to Pumpkin Falls is Gramps and Lola’s house. The house Dad grew up in is so big, half the town could move in and we’d never bump into one another.

  All of us kids have a bedroom of our own, and there are still a couple left over. Hatcher and Danny have taken over the entire third floor, and I even have my own bathroom, which was where I was headed. It’s the warmest spot in the house.

  Locking the door behind me, I sat down on the floor by the radiator. It’s one of the old steam-heat kind, like all the others in the house. They hiss and rattle and clank so much it sounds like a bunch of baby dragons are on the loose. But they do the trick as far as keeping the house warm, which I guess is the main thing when you live in a climate as cold as this one. I leaned back against the claw-foot tub and pulled the envelope out of my pocket.

  It was sealed shut, and as far as I could tell had never been opened. Why would someone leave a letter stuck in an old copy of Charlotte’s Web? Had they meant to mail it, and forgotten? Or had they left it there deliberately for someone to find? There wasn’t an address on the envelope, or even a real name—just the capital letter B. But the envelope had a stamp on it, like it was all ready to send.

  So why hadn’t it been?

  I traced the B on the front with my forefinger, wondering if I should open it. I was pretty sure that was some sort of a crime, though. Mail tampering or interfering with the US Postal Service or something. I didn’t want to get arrested. On the other hand, if I didn’t open it, how was I supposed to figure out who it was meant for? What if it were something important?

  “Truly?”

  I jumped as someone hammered on the door. It was my brother.

  “Hatcher!” I hollered. “You about scared me to death!”

  “Quit barking at me. Someone’s on the phone for you.”

  I scrambled to my feet and returned the envelope to my back pocket. Maybe it was Mackenzie. She’d know what to do.

  It wasn’t Mackenzie, though; it was Cha Cha.

  “I’m calling to see if you want to sign up for a practice slot,” she said. “They’re going fast.”

  “Practice slot for what?”

  “Cotillion.”

  I had no idea what she was talking about.
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br />   “Didn’t Ms. Ivey tell you about Cotillion?” she asked as I hesitated.

  “Um, maybe?” I’d come home with a stack of newsletters and sign-up sheets and flyers, all of which were still in my backpack upstairs in my room.

  I, meanwhile, was now perched on a rickety old wooden chair in a tiny closet tucked under the front hall stairs. The closet contained the only landline in the house, an ancient rotary-style phone that looked like a relic from some old movie. Dad says it’s the same one that was here when he was a kid, and that it’s always been in the makeshift phone booth under the stairs. Gramps and Lola aren’t much for change.

  “So here’s the deal,” Cha Cha continued. “All middle schoolers at Daniel Webster are required to attend Cotillion.”

  “Which is?” I prodded a stack of moldy phone books with the toe of my sneaker. Above me, a bare bulb dangled from the ceiling. Not exactly the kind of place for a lingering conversation.

  “Kind of a tradition in Pumpkin Falls. My mom calls it a rite of passage. Cotillion is a series of dance classes we all take at school, and then the big finale is during Winter Festival, when we get to show off what we’ve learned at the town’s annual dance.”

  I had no idea how to respond. A dance that the entire town went to? What planet was I on?

  “We’re lucky,” Cha Cha continued. “Now that we’re in middle school, we get to do ballroom instead of a stupid square dance, like the younger kids have to do. Anyway, it’ll be starting up soon.”

  “You’re telling me I have to take a ballroom dance class?” I could feel panic rising in me. Dancing is practically at the top of the list of things I’m not good at. “You’re kidding, right?”

  Cha Cha was very quiet. Uh-oh, I thought. Had I just insulted her?

  Apparently not. “Nope, I’m not kidding,” she said cheerfully. “In fact, my parents will be teaching it.”

  I could hear music in the background, and people talking. “Where are you?”

  “At the Starlite. Anyway, in addition to the class at school, everybody’s required to attend two private practice sessions here at the studio with my parents. There’s no charge, of course.”