CHAPTER THREE
A TRIP TO THE ATTIC
Earlier I mentioned that Adam was a peculiar boy.
“Adam is a good student,” wrote his sixth-grade teacher, Ms. Basil, on his first report card of the year, “but he never interacts with his peers.”
The year before that, his fifth-grade teacher, Mr. Lemon, observed, “Adam sits by himself at recess and reads the entire time. Every single day.”
And the year before that, Mrs. Rosemary, Adam’s fourth-grade teacher, noted, “Adam has not spoken a single word this entire year in class, other than to mumble requests to use the restroom.”
Ever since kindergarten, Adam had kept his distance from other kids. In the classroom, he’d always pick the farthest seat possible from everyone else. He sat by himself at lunchtime. At recess, whenever someone asked him to join in a game, be it hide-and-seek, hopscotch, or freeze tag, he would adamantly shake his head. He kept himself inside an invisible cocoon, the way a caterpillar hides from the outside world.
The thing about isolating yourself is that once you do it often enough, people tend to avoid you in return. Eventually, kids started making up nasty rumors about Adam. Nicknames, too. His belongings started vanishing and turning up in the bathroom toilets. In sixth grade, a few classmates had taken up the hobby of shoving him into the school lockers whenever they had the chance.
Unfortunately for them, Adam was as nimble as he was invisible, and he usually managed to stay out of the bullies’ way.
The school counselor, Ms. Ginger, believed there was an easy solution to every problem. A fierce woman with fiery red hair, she frequently assessed Adam’s shyness and did not hesitate to offer Uncle Henry her unyielding opinion.
“As a professionally licensed counselor, I recommend Adam join an after-school club so he can meet children with similar interests. I myself am an honorary member of the Amateur Actors Association. (We have our first musical this summer, by the way. I’ll be playing the mermaid in the second act. Please remember to book tickets in advance.) Anyway, I know firsthand how wonderful after-school activities can be. Boy Scouts, for example, is a great way to build character. (Just ask my darling sons—did you know my eldest earned his second merit badge last month? Very proud of him.) Not to mention the splendid troop uniforms…”
But after-school activities meant spare time and money, neither of which Adam or his uncle had. So Adam did not wear a splendid uniform, but instead wore secondhand clothes from thrift stores. Uncle Henry owned neither a car nor a TV.
At least they never went hungry. Uncle Henry would make his own breads and pasta, since it was significantly cheaper than buying from the grocery store. They’d often finish leftover items from the bakery, soaking them in watery soup so the bread wouldn’t taste stale.
Adam understood his uncle was poor, and tried to help out whenever he could. He was fine with not getting an allowance like the other kids. On his last birthday, he didn’t complain when he received not a single present, much less the red seven-speed bicycle he’d been eyeing for months in the bike shop’s window. He skipped the bookstores and borrowed books for free from the public library. The one downside to that was all the fill-in-the-blank adventure stories and crossword puzzles tended to be scribbled in already.
It helped that Uncle Henry was one of the best bakers around, even if not enough people seemed to know it. Adam may have had to ignore the dollar ice cream line in the school cafeteria, but he had plenty of delicious sweets to come home to.
No, despite his financial situation, despite avoiding people in the school hallways, Adam was not a mean kid. You probably already guessed that when you learned how Adam spared Speedy’s life in the kitchen.
Ultimately, however, he couldn’t save the mouse.
Just like he couldn’t save his parents.
The first instance of loss, while tragic, was not peculiar. Although Adam didn’t know it, Speedy was already one and a half years old when rescued. And mice typically don’t live longer than two years.
As for his parents’ accident, there was no way Adam could have prevented that disaster. But we are getting ahead of ourselves.
About a week after the strange man in the raincoat visited the bakery, Uncle Henry broke the news to Adam: they were short on rent that month.
“There’s old stuff in our attic that we don’t need anymore,” said his uncle, avoiding eye contact. “If you wouldn’t mind picking out some things after breakfast, I can sell them to the pawn shop later…” He trailed off uncomfortably.
Adam nibbled the last bit of his toast and nodded, reluctantly. The tiny storage space was dusty, stuffy, and home to dozens of crawling spiders and other abominations with more than six legs. Adam wasn’t afraid of bugs, but he hated when they appeared out of nowhere. He hated when anything appeared out of nowhere.
After breakfast, he climbed the ladder in their apartment that led to the attic. Forgotten boxes and broken suitcases lay scattered across the creaky floorboards. Adam made his way across the room, guided by a shaft of muted white sunlight that streamed through a small circular window. After half an hour of searching, he set aside several promising items that he suspected would sell for a decent amount of money—mostly things like candelabras, extra silverware, old curtains, and rusty tools.
Then, inevitably, one of the boxes in the corner caught his attention. The cardboard was worn, and the handwritten label on the box had faded. But one could still make out the familiar name: Tripp.
Adam’s heart raced. That particular box was one he had gone through only a few times in his life—and for good reason. Today, though, he felt drawn to open it.
A stale cloud of dust greeted him as he carefully lifted the lid. His parents, international aid workers and avid travelers, had owned a large collection of paper maps and atlases. From what Adam knew, they’d been part of an explorers’ club of some sort. Several of the maps and thick books sat in the box, nested among souvenirs from all over the world. Adam picked up a carved wooden seashell from when his parents had visited the shores of Brazil. Beneath that was a volcanic rock from Hawaii, the jagged piece of earth looking more like a black, deformed kitchen sponge. His parents had reportedly climbed an extinct volcano when they visited the tropical island. Snuggled against the rock was a smiling porcelain cat with Chinese symbols painted on its body, one of his mother’s heirlooms from her birthplace.
He dug past a few more miscellaneous items, setting them on the floor beside him—keychains, plastic cups with faraway city names printed on them in shiny block letters, bead bracelets, an antique admission ticket to a carnival in New Jersey—until he found the faded postcard. His parents had sent it from Norway, just a few days before the accident. Like the box, the edges of the postcard were frayed, and the ink had smeared in some places, but Adam already knew the message by heart.
Dear Adam,
Hello from Norway! We hope all is well back home. Uncle Henry left us a message at our hotel to tell us you won second place in the kindergarten egg-and-spoon-race derby! We’re so proud of you.
We miss you and can’t wait to be back next Tuesday. Someday when you’re older, we’ll take you on these trips with us. Soon you’ll be as tired of airplanes as we are! (Though they’re certainly more ordinary and predictable than other forms of travel, shall we say?)
No matter where or when or how, we want to do all the good we can in the world. It’s such a big, amazing place full of wonders. And you never know which of these wonders are in store for you, or what you might find!
Love,
Mom and Dad
Adam would never sell any of his parents’ personal belongings, of course. But neither did he like to look at them for too long. He started to place the postcard back in the box. Then he did a double take.
Underneath the postcard, wedged next to an atlas, was a snow globe. Adam vaguely remembered seeing it displayed on the topmost shelf of his parents’ bookcase in their old apartment.
The snow glob
e looked like an ordinary snow globe, the glass sphere a little bigger than a grapefruit, and glued onto a square wooden base. However, unlike most snow globes, the inside of the glass was clear and blank. It contained only a layer of confetti snow—nothing else. On the corner of the base was a small engraving of a compass rose.
Adam remembered the uncanny stranger in the raincoat who had shown up with his own snow globe a week ago. Go up to the attic, he had instructed Adam.
Nonsense, Adam fumed. It doesn’t mean anything. The man was a lunatic.
He was bitter at himself for even thinking of the man in the raincoat, who had correctly guessed Speedy was about to die. Earlier that week, Uncle Henry had prepared an empty egg carton for Speedy’s funeral. “A dead mouse can’t feel the cold,” his uncle had said in a failed attempt to comfort him.
They’d buried the mouse in the dumpster out back, since they didn’t have a yard.
Adam placed the rest of his parents’ keepsakes back inside the box. He gathered the tools, candelabra, and old curtains he’d found for Uncle Henry into a duffel bag, slung the strap over his shoulder, and started to climb back down the ladder.
But then, for some reason he couldn’t explain, Adam stopped. He set down his bundle and went back to his parents’ box.
The next time he made his way to the ladder, he had the snow globe with him.
Downstairs, the bakery was devoid of customers. Adam placed the bag of items from the attic on the counter, right above the untouched rows of breakfast pastries that were slowly going stale.
Uncle Henry was in the kitchen. “Did you find anything?” he called through the window, to which Adam held up the candelabra in reply.
His uncle came over with a batch of mouse-shaped frosted sugar cookies. “Here, I made these for you. You’ve been glum all week.”
Adam knew they were meant to cheer him up about Speedy. For his uncle’s sake, he pretended to enjoy a piece of mouse tail, even though he didn’t feel like eating anything. They chewed in silence. His uncle cleared the plates.
“All right, I’m heading out,” said Uncle Henry. He hung the CLOSED sign on the bakery door, then picked up the bag of items Adam had gathered. “This is everything, right?”
“Wait!” Adam jumped up and removed the snow globe from the duffel. “Not this.” He placed the snow globe on the counter.
After Uncle Henry left, Adam went back to his cramped bedroom. There wasn’t a lot to do at home, especially now that he no longer spent his free time teaching Speedy new tricks. He sat for a while and tried to read the new book he’d borrowed from the library, but there was a paragraph about talking mice, so he tossed that aside. He doodled on a piece of paper, but soon his circles and zigzags connected into a head, and then into the body of a cartoon mouse, as if his hand had a mind of its own. In frustration, he crumpled up the paper.
Adam didn’t like to admit it, but in particularly lonely moments like this, he wished he had at least one friend. A friend who was a real person, just like him—someone to swap stories and joke with, the way other sixth-graders did.
He sat in his room until the empty silence, without the usual scratching noises Speedy made, became unbearable. He shuffled back downstairs, looking for something to distract himself.
Outside, the early afternoon sun hung lazily behind puffy autumn clouds. The first brittle leaves had begun to litter the sidewalk. Adam decided to sweep the leaves from the front of the store—a boring task, but his uncle would appreciate it.
First, though, a quick snack.
The croissants behind the counter still looked fresh enough. Adam started to reach for one with raspberry jelly. He halted.
On the counter, the snow globe had changed. The glass dome was no longer empty, but contained a tiny, snow-covered city.
Adam examined the snow globe. The cityscape within looked just like New York. He thought of J.C. Walsh’s snow globe again.
Great things await you. Fantastic things.
Adam batted away the voice. He carefully inspected the snow globe again. It still looked like an ordinary snow globe, the kind sold in toy stores or tourist shops. Adam shrugged and gave it a shake. Sparkling snow confetti swirled inside the glass.
Then a single, real snowflake landed on the back of Adam’s hand.
CHAPTER FOUR
AN UNEXPECTED HOLIDAY
Adam now stood in the middle of a busy, snow-covered sidewalk. Around him, snowflakes fell steadily between enormous flashing neon signs and glittering buildings that towered over both sides of the packed street.
He recognized this place. It was Times Square, the center of New York City. Somewhere beyond the crowds of people bundled in winter jackets and scarves, bells jingled in the freezing night air. The gigantic billboards above featured red-white-and-green advertisements.
Adam clutched the snow globe in his hands, wondering how he’d managed to get himself here, in the middle of December. He was still only wearing his long-sleeved T-shirt and jeans, an impractical combination for the new weather situation. The icy wind bit into his exposed skin like a set of sharp teeth. He stumbled backward and accidentally jostled several people carrying shopping bags. One of them dropped a candy cane in the shuffle.
“Watch it!” another person snapped.
Adam stammered an apology. He turned in all directions, unsure what to do next. The snow and crowds, not to mention the sudden shock, were disorienting.
“Hey kid!” shouted a voice behind him.
He spun to face a dark-skinned girl in a gray cloak. She was a head taller than Adam but looked no older than nine or ten, and she carried an armful of long, white-and-green-striped candles. With her free hand, she pushed back her thick curly hair and spoke again.
“Are you nuts?” she asked. “Where’s your jacket?”
“Don’t h-have one.” Adam’s teeth chattered, and his mouth hurt to move.
“Where’s your ma and pa?”
Adam shook his head. “Gone,” he said shortly.
The girl’s eyes softened. “Come with me.”
Adam hesitated. Although he normally wouldn’t follow a stranger, he was in no position to refuse right now. He could barely feel his fingers, and it wouldn’t be long before he became like one of the immobile paper snowmen plastered on the store windows nearby. The girl seemed confident enough, so he trailed after her.
She led him down the snowy streets, weaving expertly left and right through the crowds. After they’d gone a couple of blocks, Adam realized they were heading east. His senses returning, he began to take in more details of his surroundings.
That was when Adam noticed there was something not quite right about the city.
The street signs were humped and shaped like little blue bowler hats instead of normal green rectangles. The cars that passed were nothing like the sort he was used to; they looked more like boxy wagon carts, reminiscent of those seen in black-and-white movies. As a clanging streetcar made its way uneasily among them, he realized the advertisements on the billboards and windows seemed off, too, their art style reminding him of cartoons he saw once from Uncle Henry’s collection of vintage newspapers.
But everything else seemed normal enough. They passed large shop windows lit with colorful, flickering lights, and tall office buildings more than twenty floors high. Laughing families bustled out of stores with armfuls of glossy, gift-wrapped boxes.
The two passed the giant Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center. Adam and his uncle had visited the tree in previous winters. Every December, the city lit up the enormous evergreen for the holiday season, and it attracted millions of visitors. The tree stood tall and wide, about ten stories high, and it glowed with enough shimmering lights to brighten a dozen ballrooms.
The girl in the cloak kept going. The quick pace warmed Adam up somewhat, though his shoes were wet and squishy from the slush, and his arms had goose bumps that felt as large as pumpkin seeds. His hair was also damp from the snow. To forget how cold he was, he concentrated
on the puffs of fog his breath made in the air.
The girl walked briskly along until they arrived at a quiet alleyway away from the main streets. The narrow space was shielded from most of the snow. A worn canvas bag lay on the ground next to a makeshift shelter that contained a bed of thick blankets and pillows. Behind the bed was a mountain of candles.
The girl stooped down and rummaged through the bag. She pulled out a wooly brown blanket and tossed it to Adam.
The blanket was scratchy, but it instantly protected Adam from the cold. His lips were numb, but he managed a shaky “Th-thanks.”
“Don’t mention it,” said the girl. “My name’s Francine. What’s yours?”
“I’m Adam.”
“Say that again?”
“Adam,” he mumbled louder.
“Okay, Adam. You’re lost, aren’t you? I can take you to the cops, but I can’t go inside the station with you.”
“No, I know where my home is…” The last thing Adam wanted was to explain to the police how he’d magically transported across the city—and apparently across an entire season.
“Are you from the orphanage?” asked Francine.
“No, I live with my uncle.”
“Where?”
“The Lower East Side,” Adam answered. Then, because he was curious, “Do you—do you live here?”
“Don’t be silly. This is just a temporary spot to store my inventory, before the snow gets bad. Times Square is full of customers around the holidays, see?”
Francine turned to the pile of candles and began to brush away the snow at the edge of the heap. The care with which she did it reminded Adam of how he handled Speedy.
Adam’s curiosity must have been apparent, because Francine explained, “They’re from a factory in a nearby town. My friend got them for me. They make a good buck in the winter.” Francine held a candle out for Adam to see.
The candle was half the size of Adam’s arm, and the color of vanilla with green stripes. He carefully touched the smooth, waxy surface of the candle, and could tell the quality was superb. It smelled like flowers.
No Ordinary Thing Page 2