Rosetown

by Cynthia Rylant

  “We can read one when we get to the shop,” said Yury.

  Flora thought a moment.

  “No,” she said. “We need to remain loyal to the vintage books. I can read the magazine at home. But you may borrow it if you’d like to.”

  “No, thank you,” said Yury. “I’m putting together a Spitfire airplane in my spare time.”

  As they were nearing the bookshop, Flora could see the dear old books in the display window. Maybe she would write a story for Cricket, she thought. Maybe she would even write a book one day. If she did, would someone read it aloud with a friend when it was no longer shiny and new?

  She hoped so. Because old was best.

  26

  The most exciting thing about the April Lyrids was not, for Flora, the shooting stars. Although the nine stars she saw falling out of the sky in streaks of light were each a sudden and happy thrill, the most exciting thing about the April Lyrids was sitting at midnight on reclining webbed lawn chairs in the middle of a farmer’s field with both her parents, Forster and Emma Jean. And watching her father grab her mother’s hand and hold it tight after the first star fell.

  Did he make a wish? thought Flora.

  Flora did not make any wishes that night. She was so happy being under that dark sky with her mother and her father that she just could not bring herself to want anything else.

  It was in early May when the truly large changes began to take place, and when Flora and her family would become connected to the past in a most unique way.

  Flora had spent the night at her father’s rented house, and the following morning they decided to walk downtown to the Windy Day Diner for breakfast.

  As they made their way along Main Street, passing Wings and a Chair, which was not yet open, and then continuing on another block, Flora’s father suddenly stopped next to a storefront that had a large, empty display window. It had been a florist shop, but now it was abandoned.

  Flora’s father looked at her.

  “You will not believe what I am about to tell you,” he said.

  Though he was smiling, Flora could not help asking, “Is it bad?”

  Her father laughed. He had been laughing so much lately. Flora had not realized how his laughter had disappeared for so many months until it came back.

  “No, dear, indeed no,” said her father. “Not bad. It’s good. It’s very good.”

  He faced the large window and spread his arms wide.

  “This shop is going to be ours,” he said.

  “Our shop?” asked Flora.

  Her father moved his hand across the span of the plate glass.

  “This is going to be ours,” he told her. “Mine, yours, and Emma Jean’s. Our own shop.”

  Flora was amazed by what her father was saying. She could hardly absorb it.

  Her father told her that in the old days, printers made books and all kinds of printed materials on letterpresses.

  He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket. On it was a picture of a large machine with a round disc attached to it and a giant wheel on one side.

  “This is an 1890 Chandler and Price letterpress,” her father said. “And we bought it!”

  “It produces the most beautiful papers,” he continued. “Stationery and cards and calendars and journals . . .”

  He pointed to the round disc.

  “The ink goes there,” he said. “And the pieces of paper are fed by hand.”

  “Did you say ‘journals’?” asked Flora. She had decided to write a story for Cricket but had not told anyone. A journal would be good for ideas.

  “Yes,” said her father. “We will design everything ourselves. The letters and decorations are made of lead, and the machine presses them against the paper. You’ll see. And you know how your mother loves paper.”

  Flora did know. Her father had not talked with such excitement in a long time.

  “And, Flora,” he said, “wait until you see what is upstairs.”

  “Upstairs?” asked Flora.

  She looked up. There were three very tall windows on the second floor, with upper transoms made of stained glass.

  “Stained glass,” whispered Flora.

  “Upstairs will be ours too,” said her father.

  “Ours?” Flora repeated.

  She gazed up at the beautiful windows. The colors were glowing. Someone must have left a light on.

  “What is the shop’s name?” she asked.

  “Rosetown Paper and Press,” her father answered.

  Flora nodded.

  “It’s a good name,” she said. “Rosetown” was in the name. That is what she would have chosen, too.

  Her father gave her a hug.

  “We have a lot to do,” he said. “But first we need a key!”

  27

  One of Flora’s favorite books in Wings and a Chair was Meg and the Disappearing Diamonds. Meg was a girl who solved mysteries, and Flora had read several of the Meg books that Miss Meriwether had been lucky to find. Meg had a cat named Thunder, and this also made Flora feel warmly toward her.

  When Flora had read Meg and the Disappearing Diamonds in September, so many months ago, two lines from the book had stayed with her. And while lines from books often stayed with Flora, and she often recited them to others, these particular two lines from the Meg story Flora had not shared with anyone. Back then she had been sad about her father’s recent move five streets over, sad about having a room in her mother’s house and having another room in her father’s house when she had once had a room in a house that was everyone’s. She had wanted someone to cobble the two houses into one so that her family could be together. And when she had read those two lines in the book about Meg, they had sunk deep inside her, where longing was:

  Dad had found and restored an old two-story house. Meg loved every wall, floor, and window.

  Every wall, floor, and window.

  Flora had not imagined, back in September, that something very similar might happen in her own life.

  But it had.

  During the month of May—after the moving of all the things from the white house back into the yellow house had been accomplished—Flora’s parents worked many hours every day and night remodeling the empty shop into a home for Rosetown Paper and Press. Flora’s mother loved creamy whites, so every table and chair and cabinet—many pulled from storage in old barns after Flora’s father had asked around—was painted a creamy white, which gave the space a warm and open feel.

  The front of the shop was for displaying the various correspondence papers, journals, recipe cards, baby announcements, wedding invitations, calling cards, and calendars produced by the printers in the shop (Forster and Emma Jean Smallwood, of course).

  And at the back of the shop was the letterpress machine as well as a deep, wide cabinet filled with the lead alphabet letters in many styles and sizes. Each drawer in the cabinet was carefully labeled with its contents: ENGRAVERS TEXT 12 PT and COOPER BLACK 14 PT and dozens of others. Other drawers had all of the lead decorations such as trailing vines and birds and roses.

  There were also wide, deep chests of narrow drawers filled with all of the papers that Emma Jean had carefully chosen, and there were sturdy shelves to hold the many canisters of colored inks.

  And upstairs—upstairs was one of Flora’s two favorite places in the world (the other being Wings and a Chair Used Books, of course). It was in this large room upstairs with its high tin ceiling, its old oak floors, and its three stained-glass windows that Flora felt she had almost become Meg. For Flora loved every wall, floor, and window.

  As did her cat, Serenity. Flora’s parents said that this upstairs room would be for “creating and a cat.” To this end, the room had only a few pieces of furniture: a long, creamy white table for design work, a few old kitchen chairs pulled up to it, a reading chair with a lamp, and a wicker daybed.

  The daybed was for the cat. It was positioned right in front of the tall windows, and from this perch Serenity could look out over the tow
n. She could see people tending their flower gardens. She could see the shopkeepers below, placing their goods on the sidewalk or simply getting some fresh air.

  Best of all, she could see the roofs of some of the other downtown buildings where the pigeons would spend their time, plump and gray, keeping a shop cat interested for hours.

  Flora’s parents planned to keep the shop open for limited hours only: nine o’clock to two o’clock weekdays. They both wanted to keep their regular jobs and to grow the paper shop gradually. “It is barely a sprout,” her father said.

  Flora was very happy about the limited hours and her mother keeping her part-time job at Wings and a Chair. Flora so loved being there three afternoons a week, and as a girl rooted in tradition, she did not want her time there or her walks after school with Yury to change.

  By the end of May, then, it seemed that everyone had projects. Important projects! And not only Flora’s parents, who would open Rosetown Paper and Press in July.

  Flora also had a project: a story she intended to write and send to Cricket by the end of the summer.

  And Nessy had a project: she was finally going to learn to ride a bike. Nessy had resisted bicycles. But Flora told Nessy that if she had a bike, she could put a basket on it, and a bell, and even streamers. So Nessy changed her mind.

  And Yury—Yury had so many projects planned for the summer. First and most important, the Beginner’s Class at Good Manners for Good Dogs dog school. He could hardly wait. He and Friday would have to do much practicing, so Yury was reserving mornings for his dog. Second, continuing to serve Mo’s 24 tea at his father’s office in the afternoons. And third, becoming a better bowler than his mother.

  Flora and Yury soon would be graduating fourth grade. What a time it had been. Flora felt so lucky that when school had started last fall, and fourth grade had felt so new and daunting, Mr. Cooper had seated the new boy in class at the desk behind hers, a new boy who was Ukrainian, bright, and good.

  Serenity had found a home with Flora this past year, and Friday had achieved the status of Beginner Dog.

  Flora’s father and mother had come apart and then come back together.

  And Nessy had been given a canary. She had also discovered that she was very good on piano.

  At dusk on the evening before the last day of school, Flora’s father took her for a long drive through the countryside, where they could see more of the horizon, more birds, more farms, more sky. They played their favorite Beatles song, “Here Comes the Sun,” on her father’s cassette player, and every time the song ended, Flora pressed the rewind button and they played it again.

  It seemed ages ago that their old dog, Laurence, had passed on, but on the other hand, it seemed to Flora that he really hadn’t, and was there with them, in the backseat of the car, his big warm nose smearing up the windows. She would never forget Laurence. He would always go everywhere with her.

  Flora and her father listened to the Beatles, ate Red Hots, counted crows, and, as her father liked to say, watched the corn grow.

  Then they turned their car around and went back home.

  Home, to Rosetown, Indiana.

  About the Author

  Cynthia Rylant grew up in West Virginia and then spent many years living in the Midwest. Today she and her two cats live in an old, green house in Oregon.

  Beach Lane Books

  Simon & Schuster • New York

  Visit us at simonandschuster.com/kids

  Authors.simonandschuster.com/Cynthia-Rylant

  Also by Cynthia Rylant

  Appalachia: The Voices of Sleeping Birds

  God Got a Dog

  Gooseberry Park

  Gooseberry Park and the Master Plan

  The Henry & Mudge series

  Life

  Missing May

  The Mr. Putter & Tabby series

  The Old Woman Who Named Things

  The Van Gogh Cafe

  When I Was Young in the Mountains

  BEACH LANE BOOKS

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  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2018 by Cynthia Rylant

  Jacket illustration copyright © 2018 by Lori Richmond

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

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  Book design by Irene Metaxatos

  Jacket design by Sonia Chaghatzbanian

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Rylant, Cynthia, author.

  Title: Rosetown / Cynthia Rylant.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Beach Lane Books, [2018] | Summary: In 1972, Flora Smallwood, nine, copes with her parents’ separation with the help of her friends, Yury and Nessie, a new pet, and the familiar routines of life in Rosetown, Indiana.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017023378 | ISBN 9781534412774 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781534412798 (e-book)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Friendship—Fiction. | Family life—Indiana—Fiction. | City and town life—Fiction. | Books and reading—Fiction. | Indiana—History—20th century—Fiction. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Girls & Women. | JUVENILE FICTION / Social Issues / Friendship.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.R982 Ros 2018 | DDC [Fic]—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017023378

  ISBN 978-1-5344-1279-8 (ebook)