The Boy on Cinnamon Street

by Phoebe Stone

Henderson closes his eyes. I close my eyes. Then he says, “The end.” And we both sit there lost in Henderson’s novel.

  I do think my mother would have liked Henderson. And I would have liked to introduce him to her, but then, I am just introducing myself to her after forgetting so much for a whole year. In a way, I can feel her presence tonight. In the boat on Lake Mescopi, she told me she would always be with me in my heart no matter what happened, and she is.

  As proof of that, when we get to the Spring Fling Dance, I find the theme is Stars and the song they are playing in different variations is “Oh Stars in the Sky.” You might think, “No, no, it can’t be. It’s too strange.” But my grandma would say, “Strange? I think not. Coincidences are the marvelous little mysteries of life. Don’t question a coincidence. Just enjoy it.”

  The Spring Fling Dance takes place on the green, grassy-smooth football field, and it’s strung with lights that look like stars and there are banners with galaxies and spinning planets painted on them. When night falls, the real moon and stars will be above us. Maybe we’ll even see a shooting star or a cluster of falling stars dropping down the horizon to land somewhere in Iowa.

  Henderson says, “Thumbelina, you didn’t wear the crown of flowers.”

  “Oh, I lost it,” I say, “on Cinnamon Street.”

  “I guess I brought you something, then,” he says and he reaches in his pocket and gets out the headband with reindeer antlers sticking up along the top, and he puts it on my head. “There’s your crown, Thumbelina,” he says. Then he reaches in his pocket again and presses the meteorite into my hand. “You know I found out something interesting,” he says. “Benny McCartney got a job as a pizza delivery boy on the very day I bought this piece of falling star. The very moment the eBay auction ended and the falling star was mine, Benny signed on with Palomeeno’s Pizza.”

  “How do you know that?” I say.

  The Hen smiles. “I have my ways,” he says.

  I stare up at Henderson and he looks one minute handsome and brown-haired and dark-eyed and tender and the next second he looks a little awkward and then a split second later he’s part nerd or geek and a little shy and then sooo handsome and sure again, and I’m thinking what my grandma said to me: “Oh, we’re all complicated. Every prince is ten percent nerd. No one is nerd free. It doesn’t work that way. But we are all beautiful, each one of us.” How does my grandma know everything? (Well, almost.)

  I look up at Henderson. He’s my Frosty the Snowman and he has his arm around me and his hand on my waist at my back and it feels so warm. He looks down at me and he kisses me with his eyes. And with my eyes I kiss him back, and it feels better than any real kiss anybody ever had.

  Oh stars in the sky,

  All the stars twinkling by,

  I wish and I sigh

  At the stars so high.

  I wish and I sigh

  And I wonder why.

  Why? Why? Why?

  They say that true love always brings with it great and generous acts. Sometimes, amazing things happen to people and nobody knows about it. Nobody knows or cares. Someday many years from now in the faraway future, I will look back and say, “That year when I was in seventh grade, I knew a boy named Henderson Elliot, and what he did for me was extraordinary and who he was and how he won my heart was nothing short of incredible.”

  Some people in peril don’t get saved, like Marty Hoey or my mom, and some people in peril do get saved, like me. Maybe it was because Henderson bought a chunk of a falling star, a gold-flecked quiet and ever-hopeful star. I hold it now tightly in my palm.

  Author’s note

  I was eleven years old when my father took his own life. Before that, my world had been beautiful, like Louise’s. I had friends, a school, violin classes, and a close-knit family. While our stories are quite different in many ways, after learning of my father’s death, I too became very sick with a high fever for a week or so. When I awoke I was so weak, I had to relearn how to walk. I soon found myself in a frozen landscape. I avoided all contact with any part of my old life. In fact, I asked my mother to help me change schools so that I wouldn’t have to face my old friends. I never played the violin again and it took me some time to find my way out of my own winter storm.

  I am told many children block out the memory of trauma. In fact, the healing process can only truly begin when we are willing to remember.

  Acknowledgments

  A very special thank-you to my wonderful and insightful editor, Rachel Griffiths, dear friend, who helped me find my way through the thickets and fields of this story. Also special thanks to Arthur Levine. What a joy it is to be a part of the Arthur A. Levine Books family! (Thank you, Mallory Kass.) And thank you to all the incredibly nice people at Scholastic, especially Nikki Mutch, Sue Flynn, Becky Amsel, Whitney Lyle, Cheryl Weisman, Jana Haussman, and Ann Marie Wong.

  I am also grateful to my friends Yvette Feig and Bob Murray, who read the book aloud together on their one-week vacation this year. Thank you to my kind readers, Kristy Carlson; Mary Swanson; Linda Smith; Sarah Wesson; Jillian Fay, gymnastics coach; and my sister, Marcia Croll. I am forever grateful to my poet mom, Ruth Stone, who has heard this book at least twice and who always laughs over and over again in all the right places. And thank you to my husband, ever-patient David Carlson, who by the way, has saved my life three times!

  About the Author

  Phoebe Stone’s last book was The Romeo and Juliet Code, which received starred reviews in both Publishers Weekly and the Horn Book Magazine. The Boston Globe hailed it “a masterpiece for young readers everywhere” and said it was “quite simply the best novel for young readers … since Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.” Phoebe lives in Middlebury, Vermont.

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2012 by Phoebe Stone

  All rights reserved. Published by Arthur A. Levine Books, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC and the LANTERN LOGO are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Stone, Phoebe, 1947-

  The boy on Cinnamon Street / by Phoebe Stone. -- 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Since a tragedy she cannot remember, thirteen-year-old Louise has changed her name, given up gymnastics, moved in with her grandparents, and locked her feelings inside but through her friends Reni and Hen and notes from a secret admirer she begins to find herself again.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-545-21512-1 (alk. paper)

  ISBN-10: 0-545-21512-9 (alk. paper)

  [1. Memory — Fiction. 2. Best friends — Fiction. 3. Friendship — Fiction. 4. Grandparents — Fiction. 5. Schools — Fiction. 6. Massachusetts — Fiction.]

  I. Title.

  PZ7.S879Boy 2012

  [Fic] — dc23

  2011017862

  Cover photo © 2012 by Michael Frost

  Cover design by Whitney Lyle

  First edition, February 2012

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

  e-ISBN 978-0-545-39316-4

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

 
Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Author’s note

  Acknowledgement

  About the Author

  Copyright