Really Truly, page 19
I sat there miserably, feeling like a musical failure.
She regarded me for a moment, then smiled. “I’ll tell you what—how about we spend the rest of this lesson playing some simple duets—fun ones that are way too easy for us, just to loosen up and get acquainted a bit, musically. When I was your age, it was always a big deal to change piano teachers.”
Things went a little better after that, and I was genuinely enjoying myself by the time we finished. I could tell I was going to like Ms. Patel.
ON MY WAY! I texted my friends as I left her apartment. I had my cell phone back, thanks to my mother.
“If you want Truly out at night working on stage crew, she might need it,” she’d insisted to my father at breakfast this morning. He’d grumbled, but finally agreed.
My friends were waiting for me on the front steps of the town library. Inside, we found Mr. Henry in his usual spot upstairs in the children’s room. For once, though, he wasn’t wearing his signature red and white. Or if he was, it was hidden under a pair of painter’s coveralls.
“To what do I owe this pleasure?” he asked from where he was perched on a ladder, paintbrush in hand. The walls were empty of bookshelves and books and the Charlotte’s Web statue was covered with drop cloths, as was the floor. The old carpet had been ripped up, and rolls of the new carpet were waiting in the hallway, covered in plastic.
Something else was different too. I frowned, trying to put my finger on it.
“How do you like the new skylight?” Mr. Henry asked. “It was installed over the weekend.”
I glanced up. That was it! Light streamed in, brightening what was formerly a cozy but somewhat dim room.
“It’s going to be brilliant, don’t you agree?” He winked. “Literally as well as figuratively.”
I smiled. “Mr. Henry, if someone wanted to find out about our town’s history—and about some of its early residents—where would they start?”
He climbed down from the ladder and placed his paintbrush on one of its rungs, then wiped his hands with a rag. “Funny you should ask that question. A woman came in just yesterday wanting to know the same thing.”
My friends and I looked at each other in dismay. Dr. Appleton had beaten us to it!
We followed Mr. Henry downstairs to the reference room, where he showed us a shelf of books about the history of Pumpkin Falls and a drawer full of old maps.
“If you really want to go way back, I believe the Lovejoy papers are in the archives over at the college,” he told us. “They would most certainly contain information about the town’s early history.”
My ears perked up at that. “Papers? Like newspapers?”
“The term usually refers to a broad range of items,” Mr. Henry explained. “For an author, it might mean manuscripts and research material and correspondence with an editor or publisher, that sort of thing. In this case, it may mean letters, diaries, account books, deeds, and more. And yes, newspaper clippings as well.”
He looked over at Calhoun. “You’ll have to get special permission to visit the archives. Perhaps your father can get you access, R. J.” He turned to me. “Or you might try asking Professor Rusty. The fact that you’re a Lovejoy should work in your favor.”
This sounded promising. Dr. Appleton wasn’t a Lovejoy, and she didn’t have a father who was the college president or a soon-to-be uncle in the history department. Maybe we could still stay a few steps ahead of her.
“By the way, how’s the case of the missing trophy going?” Mr. Henry looked at us expectantly.
“Um, slowly,” I replied.
Scooter pulled out his cell phone and scrolled to the picture of the woman at the finish line in the red-and-white-striped sundress. “We were wondering if you knew this person.”
Mr. Henry took one look and burst out laughing. “My sister Sarah? Yes, in fact I do know her.”
My friends and I exchanged sheepish glances.
“The thing is,” I continued, “we had to ask. Just because we recognize somebody or know them doesn’t mean we can automatically eliminate them as a suspect.”
Mr. Henry nodded soberly. “Just doing your due diligence,” he said. “I understand.” He placed his right hand over his heart—or where his heart would be under his painter’s coveralls. “What is it your father always says, Truly? Cross my heart and hope to fly, my sister did not take the trophy.”
I made a show of pulling my notepad out of my backpack and crossing her off our list.
“I suppose you heard about the special town meeting that Ella Bellow called while you girls were away,” Mr. Henry told us. “Some folks are fired up to go ahead and have a new trophy made, but most of us voted to wait a bit longer. We’re still hoping that the original will turn up.” He winked at my friends and me. “Keep up the good work! Everyone in Pumpkin Falls is counting on you. Well, everyone except, perhaps, Officer Tanglewood. I for one hope you solve this before he does.”
Mr. Henry went back upstairs. I looked at my friends. “Divide and conquer?”
Each of us took a stack of books from the shelf and started flipping through the pages, looking for information about Nathaniel Daniel, aka Dandy Dan, any mention of pirates, or anything else that might prove useful.
After half an hour, though, we came up empty-handed. Well, except for the fun facts that my ancestor won the town’s very first Halloween pumpkin toss in 1769, the same year he founded the town, and that his wife Prudence was “possessed of a greene thumbe and civick spirit,” as one newspaper of the era put it.
If we’d been hoping to discover a long-lost treasure map, that didn’t happen either. The drawer that Mr. Henry had pointed out proved almost as much of a dead end, yielding only a topographical map of the Lake Lovejoy area that included MacPherson’s Island, aka Cherry Island. Scooter took a picture of it with his cell phone for future reference.
“I have to get back to the bookstore,” I told my friends, glancing up at the clock. “My father will notice if I’m gone much longer.”
“We’ll stop by the bookstore if we hear anything about the other suspects,” Calhoun told me. “Otherwise, see you tonight at the Grange.”
I nodded. I was stuffing my notebook into my backpack when I heard a sharp intake of breath from Jasmine. I looked up to see Amanda Appleton standing in the doorway of the reference room.
“Hello, kids.” She cocked her head, a puzzled expression on her face. “Wait a minute—I recognize you girls! You were at the book signing on the Cape!”
Cha Cha and Jasmine and I nodded cautiously.
“Nice to see you again.” Glancing at the open map drawer behind us, she pursed her lips. “What brings you all here?”
Her question caught me off guard. “Research,” I blurted, and instantly could have bitten my tongue off. “For the play we’re all in, I mean,” I added quickly.
“Really? What play is that?”
“The Pirates of Penzance.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Pirates? How interesting.” A smile flitted across her lips. “Well, happy hunting!” She walked briskly back across the lobby toward the bank of computers by the front desk.
“What was that all about?” Calhoun whispered.
“That was Amanda Appleton,” I whispered back. “I shouldn’t have told her anything.”
“Do you think she suspects?” asked Cha Cha.
I lifted a shoulder. “I don’t know. I hope not.”
I was still wondering when I turned onto Main Street a couple of minutes later. Glancing across the street at the Starlite Dance Studio, I read the sign in the window: WINNER OF THIS YEAR’S PUMPKIN FALLS FOUR ON THE FOURTH ROAD RACE! But the pedestal in the middle of the display was empty.
Between the missing trophy and Dr. Appleton, the Pumpkin Falls Private Eyes certainly had their hands full. If there was one thing I knew for sure, we weren’t giving up just yet on either account.
CHAPTER 27
The afternoon passed agonizingly slowly. I was keyed up about Amanda Appleton and eager to talk to Hatcher. He was still with Lobster Bob, though. I channeled my nervous energy into vacuuming the entire store, helping Belinda unpack the latest shipment of books, and taking turns with Aunt True at the Cup and Chaucer counter.
Later, back home after my shift was over, I slam-dunked a quick dinner, then gathered the cleaning supplies that Dr. Calhoun had asked us to bring to the Grange. My mother was backing the minivan out of the barn when Lobster Bob’s truck finally appeared and Hatcher hopped out.
“You’re late,” I told him, wrinkling my nose. “Plus, you smell like fish.”
He grinned and tipped his new baseball cap at me. It was red, with a white lobster on the front. “You were expecting roses?”
“I was expecting maybe you’d take a shower before rehearsal!”
“Hey, all we’re doing tonight is cleaning. I’m just going to get all sweaty and dirty anyway. Chill, Drooly.”
The Grange was already abuzz with activity by the time our mother dropped us off. Elmer Farnsworth, Belinda, and Augustus, who must have finished the draft of his new book, because his laptop was nowhere in sight, were beating the curtains onstage with brooms. Bud Jefferson and Lucas trailed in their wake with a pair of vacuum cleaners, attacking the clouds of dust that had been stirred up. A group of actors was mopping the floor, and Mr. Henry and Lucas’s mother and the rest of the costume and makeup team were tackling the windows with buckets of water and rags.
“Ah, the cavalry is here!” said Dr. Calhoun, swooping down on my brother and me. He handed us each a long-handled duster. “How does cobweb duty sound?”
We started with the chandeliers. As we swiped at the cobwebs, I filled Hatcher in on what had happened at the library, from our dead ends to Amanda Appleton’s surprise appearance.
“So do you think she suspects anything?”
I shrugged. “That’s what Cha Cha asked. I honestly don’t know.”
“Maybe I should get another perspective,” he said a few minutes later, and wandered off to talk to Cha Cha, leaving me on my own to start on the rafters. He’d been talking to Cha Cha a lot lately. I dragged a ladder into place and was halfway up when I heard a voice below.
“Hey!”
I looked down to see Calhoun standing there, smiling at me. I was suddenly acutely aware that I was covered in cobwebs. I smiled back. “Hey yourself.”
“Want to take a break and help me?”
“Sure.” I followed him out the back door to where a large, rectangular something was waiting, strapped to a dolly and covered with a drop cloth. It looked kind of like a refrigerator.
“You’ll see” was all that Calhoun would say when I asked him what it was.
“Set it by the stage,” his father called to us as we rolled it inside. “Gather round, people!”
Work around the Grange halted as everyone came over to stare at the drop cloth–covered object.
“What is it?” asked Jasmine.
“Our time machine to the 1950s!” Dr. Calhoun enthused. He reached for the drop cloth and pulled it away. “Behold, a genuine, bona fide midcentury jukebox!”
“Groovy!” said Belinda. “Does it work?”
He nodded. “Elmer was able to get it going for us.”
Calhoun plugged it in, and the machine lit up like a Christmas tree. Belinda punched a couple of the glowing buttons.
“One, two, three o’clock, four o’clock, rock…” The song began blasting from the built-in speakers.
“Five, six, seven o’clock, eight o’clock, rock,” Belinda sang, her short white curls bobbing in time to the music. Augustus grabbed her around her ample waist, and the two of them started to dance.
“Nine, ten, eleven o’clock, twelve o’clock, rock,” Bud Jefferson continued, as he and Mrs. Winslow followed suit.
“WE’RE GONNA ROCK AROUND THE CLOCK TONIGHT!” bellowed Elmer, twirling his broom around the stage.
The music was upbeat and irresistible, and bit by bit everyone joined in. My brother paired off with Cha Cha. Dr. Calhoun danced with his daughter, Juliet, and Jasmine danced with Scooter. Calhoun took my hand, and the two of us began bobbing up and down to the music too. He’d grown since the last time I’d danced with him during cotillion last winter. We were almost eye to eye.
Dr. Calhoun was grinning broadly when we finished in a breathless whirl. “I knew the 1950s was the right era! If we can bring this same kind of bounce and energy to Gilbert and Sullivan, we’ll have the audience eating out of our hands.”
We all took turns picking songs as we continued with our cleaning. We sang along to the ones we knew and tapped our toes to the ones we didn’t. The rest of the evening flew by, and by the end of it the Grange looked as good as it was going to get without a complete renovation. The windows sparkled, the chandeliers and rafters were cobweb free, the floor was mopped clean, all the chairs were wiped free of dust, and the stage was neat and tidy.
“Good work, team!” said Dr. Calhoun. “You’ve earned a break. Juliet will hand out refreshments while I go over a few housekeeping items and give you a brief outline of my vision for the play.”
“Chocolate with chocolate ganache frosting or carrot cake with spiced cream cheese frosting,” whispered Juliet as she passed around a tray of cupcakes. “My father made them.”
“The operetta usually opens aboard a ship or a beach along the coast of Cornwall,” Dr. Calhoun continued. “But in this case, we’ll open in a 1950s malt shop.”
Lucas’s hand flew up. “What’s a malt shop?”
“Like a diner,” Dr. Calhoun replied. “With lots of ice cream on the menu. A malted is kind of like a milkshake. Anyway, I thought we’d name it the Rockin’ Mermaid to give it a nautical flair, as a nod to the traditional setting. As the prelude begins, a pair of pirates will wheel in the counter and stools, and atop the counter will be our own resident mermaid, Miss Truly Lovejoy, the Esther Williams of Pumpkin Falls!”
“Like a float in a parade,” whispered Scooter.
More like a fish on a platter, I thought in dismay, feeling my face flame.
“This will bring in another nautical element and help set the scene a bit.” Dr. Calhoun outlined his vision in broad strokes, from the pirates dressed in black leather jackets, white T-shirts, and a hairstyle called a ducktail, to the high school prom dance floor where the second act would take place. I tuned out after a while and focused on my chocolate cupcake with chocolate ganache frosting. It was delicious. Dr. Calhoun really knew how to bake.
When he got to the finale, though, I tuned back in again big-time.
“It’s here that the pirates are revealed to actually be noblemen, and thus entitled to wed the daughters of the Major-General”—my brother hopped up and took a bow—“and then of course there’s the big smooch between Frederick and Mabel at the end.”
Dr. Calhoun added this last bit almost as an afterthought.
I sat in shocked silence. Scooter, being Scooter, gave a wolf whistle. Calhoun was expressionless in his seat beside me, staring straight ahead. Farther down the row, Cha Cha had gone beet red. This was clearly a surprise to both of them, too.
“I understand that this can be awkward for actors your age,” Dr. Calhoun told his son and Cha Cha, “so fake it for now during rehearsals. We’ll save the real thing for the performances.”
The real thing?
He couldn’t mean it!
But he did.
This was really truly happening! My crush was going to kiss my closest friend in Pumpkin Falls onstage right in front of me, and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it!
CHAPTER 28
“It’s not fair!” I wailed, flinging myself into Aunt True’s arms.
“What’s not fair?” she asked, bewildered.
“Calhoun is going to kiss Cha Cha in front of everyone!”
“Oh, honey,” she said, patting my back soothingly as I explained what had happened. “It sounds like you need a cup of tea.” She drew me inside and shut the door behind us.
Hatcher and I and the others had all left the Grange shortly after Dr. Calhoun dropped the kiss bomb. On the drive home, I’d asked my mother if she could swing by Aunt True’s apartment above the bookstore.
“I forgot to show her where I put the shipment of new teas she ordered for Cup and Chaucer,” I fibbed. “I’ll walk home afterward.”
Now, as my aunt poured me a cup of her best Earl Grey, the floodgates opened.
“What if Calhoun likes kissing her?” I said, the tears starting up again. “I thought he liked me, but maybe he’ll like her better.”
“Well—” Aunt true started to reply, but I barreled on.
“And it’s not just the kiss—it’s everything! Being grounded. Mackenzie living so far away. The stupid mermaid stuff. Even Hatcher—all he wants to do these days is hang out with Cha Cha. My own brother likes her better too!” I was being irrational, but I didn’t care. My voice rose and cracked. “Plus, you’re getting married and you’ll probably have a baby and not even want to work at the bookstore anymore!”
My aunt nearly spat out her tea. She looked over at me, astounded. “Whoa, how did we get from misplaced kiss to baby and quitting the bookstore?”
I shook my head, too miserable to answer.
“Look, things do change, Truly, I won’t lie. Life is all about change. People grow up, people grow apart, they move on and move out of our orbit, or we move out of theirs. But not all change is bad, sweetie. There are happy surprises around every corner too. New people move into our orbit while others we thought were gone suddenly reappear. Look at Rusty and me! And new experiences, even the difficult ones, can bring unexpected blessings—just look at how far your father has come.”
She handed me a tissue, and I wiped my nose.
“Have you talked to your mother about all this?”
I shook my head again. “She’s too busy. Besides,” I added bitterly, “she didn’t even want me around this summer, remember?”
“Truly!” My aunt gave me a reproachful look. “Your mother is never too busy for you, and you know it. And as for not wanting you around, don’t you think maybe you’re being just a little bit unfair? Try and think about things from someone else’s perspective for a moment. It wasn’t just your father’s arm that was shattered in Afghanistan. Many of your parents’ hopes and dreams and plans for the future were shattered too. And with your father struggling to recover, your mother had to completely reorient her life to help support him. Now, just like him, she’s trying to build a future she didn’t expect either.”
