The Penderwicks in Spring

by Jeanne Birdsall

  “Another one? We just had one.”

  Now Ben saw the pile of money on Batty’s bed, lots of bills. Something big was happening, and he didn’t like it. Maybe the reason Batty had been so strange lately had to do with money. Maybe their parents really had gotten poor—way beyond being-careful poor—and Batty was going to give them her dog-walking money. Ben still had three dollars left from his rock-digging money, which he’d been saving for his first movie camera. But he couldn’t let Batty have all the nobility.

  “Are you giving that money to Mom and Dad?” he asked. “Because I have some, too, if they need it.”

  “No, I’m using it for myself.” Batty picked up her backpack and dumped it, schoolbooks and pens clattering onto the floor. Then she slid the money into an inside pocket and zipped it shut.

  “Then you’re sure you’re not dying? Because you look kind of crazy right now. This is awful.”

  “How many times do I have to tell you I’m not dying, you goop? Calm down so that we can start. MOYPS come to—”

  “What about Lydia? She should be here if it’s a meeting of the younger Penderwicks.”

  “This is really just for you. We’ll call it a MOBAB, Meeting of Batty and Ben, okay? Please?”

  Ben shrugged his reluctant agreement, feeling the heavy weight of Penderwick Family Honor.

  “Thank you,” said Batty. “MOBAB, Meeting of Batty and Ben, come to order. Both of us swear to keep secret what is said here from everyone, including parents, older sisters, Nick, and even Rafael.”

  They bumped fists and swore, and Batty turned the music back up a little, just in case anyone was lurking in the hallway. “I’m taking the bus to Boston tomorrow to see Jeffrey, and no one else knows but you. Not even Jeffrey. I’m going to surprise him.”

  Ben had been to Boston. It seemed very far away to him—not so far as Maine, where they went in the summer, but still really far. “You can’t. You’ll get lost or kidnapped.”

  “No, I won’t. I have to see Jeffrey.”

  “Why?”

  Because he’d asked for her forgiveness, and she wanted to give it to him in person. Because he’d sent her a perfect set of Beethoven’s symphonies. Because not only had he kept her photo of Hound safe for years and years, he’d known just when to give it back to her. But Ben wouldn’t understand any of that, except maybe the part about the photo, and Batty had already hidden it away in her closet, where no one could see it and pry into her feelings.

  “I just have to,” she said. “Skye might never let him come here again, and I want to see him.”

  Ben was learning a painful life lesson about secrets. He’d gotten sucked into keeping Batty’s Quigley Woods adventure a secret, and now she was expecting him to hide a much more dangerous adventure. Not only that, but he’d just promised Nick to report anything he needed help with, and oh, boy, he needed help with this but couldn’t report it because he’d just sworn an oath of secrecy.

  “My head is going to explode,” he said.

  “There’s no reason for your head to explode.”

  He tried reason. “Mom and Dad will be furious. Just think about the trouble you’ll get into, especially if you’re kidnapped. They might not be poor, but they don’t have enough for ransom money.”

  Batty didn’t like the idea of making her parents worry. She was almost certain that she could make it into Boston and back home before they noticed. Or so she told herself, in order to keep her courage high.

  “Ben, I promise I won’t get kidnapped, and Mom and Dad—I’ll call them if I’m going to get home later than they do. Does that make you feel better?”

  “No, it does not. What about school? You could get thrown out for cutting.”

  “Not for doing it just once. Anyway, let them throw me out,” she said, and almost meant it. “Then I won’t have to write those stupid, horrible, idiotic book reports, never, ever—”

  Batty paused, listening, and now Ben heard it, too, over the music. Across the hall, Skye was knocking on Ben’s door and telling him it was time for his bath.

  “Tell her you’re going to Boston,” he whispered urgently to Batty.

  “Haven’t you been listening?” she hissed. “Skye is the last person I’d tell, and if you tell her, you have no honor, Ben Penderwick.”

  Skye was now knocking on Batty’s door. “Ben, are you in there?”

  Ben looked at Batty, who nodded, but with a face full of warning.

  “Yes, I’m here,” Ben called back. “I’ll have my bath soon. Thank you.”

  They listened for more—but Skye had gone away.

  “Tell Jane, then,” said Ben. “Or Rosalind. Call Rosalind and tell her.”

  “No,” said Batty. “And no. They’d try to stop me, and I won’t be stopped.”

  Ben suddenly remembered what had brought him here in the first place.

  “If you cut school,” he wailed, “how will I carry Minnesota?”

  Batty had this already worked out. “I’ll walk you to school like normal, then not go in. Someone else can help you get Minnesota inside, and I’ll run back to the bus stop. But in the afternoon, you’ll have to ask Rafael to walk home with you. He’s as goofy as you are, but between the two of you, you should be okay.”

  Ben felt like he was aiding and abetting a great crime. “I wish you wouldn’t go.”

  But she plowed on, relentless. “If something goes wrong and I don’t get back in time, you might need to help with Lydia. Like telling her a bedtime story.”

  “Batty! What story would I tell her?”

  Here Batty’s planning had failed her. Everything else she’d figured out in detail: bus schedules and ticket prices, how to get from the bus station to Jeffrey’s school (subway and trolley), and whether or not the Beethoven symphonies would fit in her backpack so that she and Jeffrey could indeed listen to the Eroica together. (No, they wouldn’t fit.) She’d even already informed Duchess’s and Cilantro’s families that she wouldn’t be doing a dog walk tomorrow. But it was painful to think of leaving Lydia behind, more so than her parents, even. Lydia was now used to having Batty sleep in the big-girl bed in her room. If Batty didn’t get back in time—

  “If you don’t know any stories, just sing ‘The Itsy Bitsy Spider’ for her.” Batty reflected that it might even be a treat for Lydia after having witnessed the wreck of Batty’s voice. “But I’ll do everything I can to be back home in time.”

  “You’d better,” he said. “Because if I end up having to sing ‘Itsy Bitsy Spider’ to Lydia, I’ll never forgive you.”

  She looked at him sadly. There was a lot of that going around in their family.

  “All right,” she said. “Thus concludes the MOBAB.”

  WHEN BATTY WOKE UP TO RAIN, her courage almost failed her. This wasn’t just normal rain, but the kind of driving rain that comes at you sideways and drenches you in an instant. Suddenly the journey to Boston seemed more difficult and scarier than she’d planned. She had to go today, though, rain or no rain. It wasn’t fair to expect Ben to keep such a big secret for too long, and if he did end up telling someone, their parents would find out and talk to her and she’d end up promising never again to even think of going to Boston alone, and she’d never see Jeffrey—or not until Skye decided she could, which could be forever.

  So after breakfast she stuffed an extra shirt and pair of jeans into her backpack, just in case she got soaked and had to change, hoping no one would notice that the pack was fuller than usual. And for the thousandth time, Batty made sure she still had the address of Jeffrey’s school—torn off the box her birthday presents had come in—though by now she had it memorized. And the money—yes, it was still in the zippered pocket. It was every penny she’d earned so far from walking Duchess and Cilantro, except for her share of Skye’s Doctor Who sweatshirt, and it was enough for bus fare to and from Boston—she’d sneaked onto Iantha’s computer to look up bus fares—plus plenty left over for subways, trolleys, and food. Yes, she was ready. She went
into her closet to kiss the photo of Hound good-bye and—gently and shyly—touch the photo of her mother, then slung her backpack over her shoulder and went downstairs.

  Ben, too, was upset about the rain. Minnesota would never survive it, and after all his hard work, this seemed almost as awful as Batty running away to Boston. He went to his dad for help.

  “No, you’re right, we can’t take the chance of drowning the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes,” said Mr. Penderwick as he carried Minnesota downstairs.

  “Not lakes, mountains,” said Ben, wishing that his dad were paying more attention.

  “We can cover Minnesota in plastic, Ben, and then we’ll figure out who can drive you to school. How’s that?”

  Ben saw Batty waiting at the bottom of the steps, already in her raincoat and holding an umbrella. She was frantically shaking her head at him—she meant that he should turn down the ride to school, because the driver could end up being Skye, and Batty couldn’t stand getting into a car with Skye this morning. But Ben didn’t know why she was shaking her head—he didn’t understand anything she did anymore. His hope was that the head shake meant she’d changed her mind about going to Boston.

  “That’s good, Daddy,” he said. “Thank you.”

  Mr. Penderwick set down Minnesota and went to the kitchen to discuss driving schedules with Iantha.

  “It better not be Skye driving us,” Batty told Ben. “Because then you’re on your own and I’m walking.”

  “Walking to school, right?” asked Ben with one last gasp of hope. “Batty, don’t go to Boston.”

  “I have to. I have to.”

  Ben groaned.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Jane, coming out into the hall.

  “Nothing,” answered Batty before Ben could say something stupid.

  “So you guys need a ride to school? We’ll take Flashvan.”

  The good part was that Batty had no problem getting into Flashvan with Jane. The bad part was that Jane wasn’t yet used to driving Flashvan, which had something called a clutch. Neither Batty nor Ben understood anything about clutches, and since neither did Jane, there was lots of jerkiness and muttering and lots of inching this way and that to get Flashvan pointed the right way out the driveway. At least Jane didn’t stall during that part, but she did stall at the bottom of Gardam Street in full view of the bus stop, where Batty had a wild impulse to flee right then and there, throwing caution and Minnesota to the winds. But she refrained and stuck out the entire uncomfortable, lurching ride to Wildwood. With this one benefit: that when Jane took a look at Batty’s pale, anxious face and asked if she felt all right, Batty could answer truthfully that she might indeed be a little carsick.

  The rain and fresh air drove away the car sickness, but Jane and Flashvan sat stubbornly in front of Wildwood, waiting to see that Batty, Ben, and Minnesota got safely inside. Since Batty couldn’t walk right away from the school with Jane watching, she had to change her plan on the fly and go with Ben into the building. It turned out not to be as great a risk as she’d feared. Because they’d made it to school early, there wouldn’t be many people around to see Batty and then wonder why she wasn’t in class. So she helped Ben lug Minnesota not only into school but all the way to the second-grade wing. They stopped outside his classroom.

  “I’ll leave you here,” she said. “And I’ll go out the side door. Less chance that way of being caught by anyone from my class.”

  “Promise you’ll come back home,” said Ben sadly.

  “I promise I’ll come back home. Now put Minnesota down on my count: three, two, one.” As they lowered Minnesota to the floor, Batty spotted a possible threat to her plan—Texas lurching down the hall toward them. “Ben, intruder alert.”

  “Those twins again?” Ben had been forced to dodge them several more times the day before.

  “Not the twins. Remy,” she whispered to Ben. “Distract her so that I can get away.”

  Ben couldn’t believe that even more was being asked of him. “Distract her how?”

  “I don’t know, talk to her.”

  “Talk to her? About what?”

  “Please. Please, Ben.”

  “I could talk to her about Minnesota, I guess.” Of all the things his sisters had ever asked of him, this was one of the worst.

  “I don’t care what you talk to her about. Just do it.”

  Batty put her hand on Ben’s back, shoved him toward his fate worse than death—and also Texas—and slunk away toward the side door, willing herself into invisibility. Then she was outside, sprinting across the parking lot, around the hedge, and flying back toward Gardam Street. In five minutes she was sheltering in the bus stop, wet, yes, but exhilarated. She’d made it this far, and soon a bus would arrive to carry her away to Boston and Jeffrey. Eagerly she watched through the glass, wanting to spot the bus the moment it came into view.

  Oh, no. She closed her eyes and hoped she hadn’t seen whom she thought she’d just seen. This would be so much worse than Remy with her cardboard Texas. This would be worse than the entire actual state of Texas. She opened her eyes again and peered out through the rain. Instead of a bus, a man was heading her way, a man running through the rain, a man, she saw as he got closer, who was wearing shorts and an ARMY T-shirt. Which proved that it was exactly the person Batty least wanted it to be: Nick, out for his morning run, and right on target for the bus stop.

  But here came the bus! Now it was behind Nick, and now it was passing him. Everything was all right. The bus would reach Batty before Nick did, and she’d get on, and he’d never know the difference. Hurry, bus, hurry, hurry, hurry. Using her backpack to shield herself from Nick’s view, Batty stepped out of the shelter just as the bus roared to a stop, brakes squealing, wipers hammering, doors banging open.

  Batty lunged forward to board but was blocked by a woman getting off the bus, slowly, one careful step at a time. And on came Nick, closer, ever closer … but now the way was clear. Batty leapt on, paid her money, and ran to the very back, as far as she could get from Nick. She heard the bus doors bang closed again. She’d made it!

  The bus’s engine revved up, but what was this? The driver was opening the doors up again, and here came Nick, sopping wet Nick, climbing onto the bus, dripping all over everything.

  There was one last possible reprieve. He had no money. Batty watched, breathless, as he patted his empty pockets and smiled winningly at the driver, who wasn’t going to let him on for free, smile or no smile, army or no army. Bang went the doors again, opening to expel Nick, when a young woman near the front got up from her seat to pay the driver what Nick owed, perhaps hoping that he would sit with her and light up the gloomy day with that Geiger smile of his.

  But if the young woman was disappointed when Nick headed toward the back of the bus, it was nothing to what Batty felt, with her intricate plans, her necessary escape, in ashes around her. She slumped against the window, refusing to look at him.

  “Okay if I sit with you?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Thanks,” he said, and plopped down beside her. “Where are we headed?”

  “The bus goes to Wooton.”

  “So that’s where you’re going instead of school? Wooton? I’m assuming your parents have no idea where you are.” When she didn’t answer, he went on. “I thought we had a deal. No more running off.”

  “I promised not to cross the creek in Quigley Woods. I didn’t say anything about buses.” She knew she sounded petulant, like Lydia in a bad mood, but she couldn’t help it.

  “Batty, I can’t let you go on, you know that, right? Let me take you to school.”

  “I can’t go to school now. It’s already started.” She began to cry.

  “I’ll talk your way in, late or not,” said Nick. “Mrs. Thompson still works in the front office, right? She’ll remember me. I used to give her flowers to make up for the trouble I got into. Flowers I swiped from my mom’s garden, naturally. Stop crying, and tell me what’s going on.”

&nbs
p; “Nothing’s going on,” she gasped through her tears. “I can’t tell you.”

  “Who can you tell?”

  “No one. Besides, they all know. Only I didn’t know.” She wept and wept.

  “You’re not making any sense.”

  “There’s no sense to make. Everything’s fine.”

  “Which is why you’re crying, I guess.” Nick looked out the window. “Listen to me. We’re coming up on the next stop, where we’re going to get off and wait for another bus to take us back to Gardam Street. Then you’ll have two options. You can let me take you to school, where you belong, or I’ll take you home to your parents.”

  “They’re not home, they’re at work.”

  “I’ll call them. I have to call them anyway, to tell them I found you trying to leave town. I’m also going to tell them about your Quigley Woods stunt, as I should have done before. Now stand up.” He got out of the seat and waved to the bus driver that they wanted to get off. “I’m warning you. You’re either walking off this bus or I’m carrying you off, and you know I can.”

  “I hate being too young for anything important,” she sobbed. “I hate it, I hate it!”

  “I know, buddy. Let’s go.”

  The stop where they got off had no shelter—it was just a pole with a sign that said BUS. Silently they stood together in the rain, Batty with her sobbing and Nick with his determination to get her back to safety. Which he finally did, after a bus ride back to Gardam Street—Batty paid both fares. When she refused to return to school, he walked with her to the house and ordered her into dry clothes, called her parents, then waited dripping on the kitchen floor while they rushed home.

  By the time they arrived, Batty had gone upstairs to bed and would answer none of their worried questions. She wouldn’t explain where she’d been trying to go, or why. Neither would she agree to be taken back to school that day. Was she sick? No, just tired, she guessed, and proved it by staying in bed for the rest of the day, coming downstairs only for dinner, which she ate quickly and quietly before slipping away to her room.