by Amanda Hosch
“Have you told your parents about your plans?” I asked, thinking that maybe they could go to Hollywood soon — like today.
Victoria merely rolled her eyes at my question. “You’d think Silverton was a magical place the way Dad talked about it all the time. For my entire life, no matter where we were living, it’s been like, ‘When we return to Silverton, blah, blah, blah.’ I want to live in a real city, not some two-stoplight town next to a mountain.”
Like it had heard its name being called, Mount Rainier popped its volcanic head out of the clouds for a few seconds. Tourists fly in from all around the world to see this view. Victoria missed it.
“Silverton is real. We’re on the map. Look at State Route 410 between Bluewater and Crystal Mountain.”
“There’s nothing in this pathetic town.” Victoria shook her head.
“Nothing?” Did the girl not see the awesomeness that was Silverton? “Le Petit Musée of Antique Silver Spoons is written up in all the major tourist magazines.” The Spoon was a source of pride for Silverton. Bluewater didn’t have a museum. Sure, it had the public school buildings, the public library, the fire department, the one and only Safeway supermarket, a movie theater, and a Dairy Queen. But no museum. “We have complete freedom here. We can go anywhere, anytime, and not have to worry about any of those big city dangers on the evening news that Aunt Gertie loves to watch.”
“That doesn’t matter. You’re going to help me get out of this place.”
“Why would I?”
“It’s the only way to save your aunt Gertrude.” Victoria smirked. “Unless you want her to spend the rest of her life in prison. Your choice, Moppet.”
“Of course I don’t want Gertie to be in jail. But you’re a kid, just like me. How will me helping you get her out?”
“This summer, after your mother refused to sell the spoons or hand over the red suitcase, my parents swore they’d get revenge.”
“They said that to my mom’s face,” I said. “It’s not a secret.” I could still see Frank, puffed up like an angry baboon, shouting at my mom. “But they made up, remember? Mom invited you guys here for Thanksgiving.” Maybe it hadn’t been for the most loving and honest reasons, but I didn’t mention that.
“Your mom might have forgiven Dad,” Victoria said, “but my mom still wants their share of the money.” Victoria glanced at my friends up front, then lowered her voice even though no one was anywhere near us. “My parents have been plotting for a while to take over the museum.”
“Your parents are planning a coup d’état for the Spoon?” I asked, trying — and failing — to not laugh at the ridiculous idea.
“A coo-what?” Victoria asked.
“A coup d’état is when someone, usually in the military, overthrows a sitting government,” I said, suddenly aware that most ten-year-olds didn’t discuss the details of world political events with their parents over dinner. I’d have to be more careful with my vocabulary. “Don’t you watch the news?” I asked, hoping to cover my mistake.
“No. I have a life,” Victoria said. “Back to my parents. They think they’ll live like royalty if they get control of the museum. Small-town royalty for the rest of their humdrum lives.” She rolled her eyes and sighed.
Did Frankenstella’s plotting have anything to do with the museum printouts I’d found in their suitcase? “Exactly how are they planning to live like royalty?” I asked.
“On money they’ll make from the museum,” Victoria said. “Pay attention, Moppet. My parents are going to take possession of your stupid spoon museum and live on its profits.”
“Good luck starving to death,” I said. “The museum only makes money during the tourist season, from June to August. And that barely covers operating costs and insurance.”
I knew for a fact that the mysterious red suitcase was certainly not in the museum — nor was anything else stolen by my grandparents. I knew this to be 100 percent true because right after Frankenstella had left Silverton, Mom and I spent several long days going over every inch of Le Petit Musée. And believe you me, when a superspy like my mom decides to search a place, it gets searched in the most thorough, time-consuming way possible, with absolutely no regard for anyone’s knees or cramped legs. It also gets dusted and polished because a mid-summer’s cleaning was our cover story — not that anyone asked.
What we discovered was that there were no hidden nooks at the Spoon. Mom’s radar gun found nothing in the walls or ceiling or under the floorboards. The 1890s building was just what it appeared to be — an old wooden house that was home to lots of old spoons.
“If the museum doesn’t make money, how do you guys live?” Victoria asked.
“My father has a job too,” I said. “I bet the Spoon doesn’t make enough profit to pay your cell phone bill each month.” At least that’s the excuse my mother gave me when I asked for a smartphone like all the other fifth graders have. That, and they wanted to keep me “off the grid,” meaning no one could track me using a phone’s built-in GPS.
“My father says the museum is an untapped gold mine.” Victoria crossed her arms as if that settled the discussion.
The museum printouts were burning a hole in my back pocket, but I couldn’t take them out in front of my cousin, and I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I just bit my pinkie fingernail. A bad habit, I know.
As if changing the subject, Victoria showed me her thumb. The nail had been bitten to a bloody quick.
“Aunt Gertie says she used to bite her fingernails when she was young too,” I said.
“How’d she stop?”
“She started baking to keep her hands busy whenever she felt nervous or upset. She got so good, she started selling muffins and cookies at school.”
“Speaking of Gertie. Do you want to get your aunt out of jail?”
“She’s your aunt too.”
“That’s not an answer, Mabel. Yes or no?”
“I’m confused. Why did your father put his sister in jail?”
“Promise to help me and I’ll tell you everything I know.”
“Why should I trust you, Victoria?”
“You have to.”
“You took video of me while I was sleeping.”
“Insurance.” She took her purple smartphone out of her pocket.
“Blackmail is more like it. Erase it, and I’ll think about helping you.”
“Help me, then I’ll erase it.” Victoria grabbed my shoulder so hard I thought she was going to pull it out of the socket.
What did the girl do up in Alaska? I wondered. Wrestle grizzly bears for fun?
Batting her eyelashes, Victoria sniffled. “You’re my only hope.” She loosened her grip. “How pathetic. I sound like Princess Leia.”
“I love Star Wars too,” I said, brightening. Maybe my cousin wasn’t totally evil.
“The original trilogy is the best. Princess Leia had to beg virtual strangers for help.” Victoria nodded for emphasis. “Turned out to be a close relative.”
It didn’t take super spy sense to know that she wanted me to ask: “So what do you want from me?”
“Help me make a video.”
“Of what?” I asked.
“Me.”
“Why?”
“To make me famous.”
“Why do you want that?” Of course it didn’t make sense to me. My parents spent their whole lives trying to blend in. I spent most of my school days trying to avoid questions about what I did on the weekend and dodging endless sleepover invitations.
“I said it earlier. I want to be an actress and live in Los Angeles,” Victoria said. “It’s the only place for an actress to be.”
I shook my head. “I don’t get it.”
“You will. You wanna know a secret?”
“Sure?” I said, since saying ‘not really’ would probably invite s
ome type of bruising.
“You’re gonna help me become a sensation. I’ve got it all planned out.”
Victoria was staring at me, an eager grin on her face and everything, so I asked, “How will you become a sensation?”
“By sneaking into the stupid spoon museum and recording it.”
“What?” I wasn’t sure I heard her right.
“It will be unique, just like me. And I’m the only one who can do it. That’s the key to video stardom — you have to do something new and totally different. No one has broken into a spoon museum yet. I checked on the Exploring Locked Places website. I can either do it all scary — like the museum is haunted, or super silly — like ‘how stupid is this place.’” Victoria barely took in a breath before continuing. “We’ll shoot a couple of different reactions so I can see what works during the edits. All you have is spoons in there, right?”
“Yep.” It felt good to say a totally truthful answer.
Apparently, my actual honest face didn’t convince my cousin because she raised one eyebrow and said, “Really?”
“It’s a museum of spoons. Old spoons, mostly silver. Nothing else. No stainless steel forks or crystal goblets or porcelain thimbles for us. Just spoons, and lots of them.”
“Don’t pretend. What about that FBI agent who came and totally busted Gertie for selling stolen goods?” Victoria held my gaze.
“She wasn’t busted for anything.” I looked down at my hands and saw that I had twisted the strap from my backpack around my fingers. “How do you know about what happened, anyway?”
She shrugged and gave me a self-satisfied smile, like her mother’s. “I just do.”
Victoria was right — an FBI agent and our local sheriff had come to talk to Gertie in early June, but there were no charges, no handcuffs, and no one was hauled away to jail. Later, two of my parents’ co-agents also had a few words with Gertie. “The whole misunderstanding was my fault,” I said.
“What did you do, Moppet?”
“You know how the Star’s Tale is a little disorganized?” I asked.
She nodded.
“I was helping Aunt Gertie over Memorial Day weekend. The store had gotten crazy busy with hikers and other tourists coming through. Some lady wanted to buy a necklace, but it didn’t have a tag. I looked around and found a price tag on the floor, which seemed to be the right amount. So I rang her up.”
“Go on,” Victoria said.
“Well, when the lady got home, she had the necklace appraised. Apparently, it had been reported stolen in 1967. It was Aunt Gertie’s supplier’s fault for including the necklace in the batch.”
But that wasn’t the whole story. What I didn’t tell Victoria was that the necklace actually was one of Gertie’s personal ones. I hadn’t recognized it in the rush. And, as my aunt told the FBI and the Agency, it came from a collection of her mom’s jewelry, which she’d had for years. She had worn many of the pieces, since it was all costume stuff — no actual diamonds or gold.
It turned out the necklace and almost everything else in the bag had been taken from a display of Virginia colonial jewelry. My mom didn’t tell Aunt Gertie that her parents had been suspects in that robbery — or, at the very least, accomplices to the actual thieves. The cover story she’d given was that my grandparents had found the bag while hiking around Mount Rainier. As far as I knew, Gertie still believed that.
My aunt had been so upset by the whole ordeal, she never wanted to talk about it with me. “How do you know the FBI questioned Aunt Gertie?” I asked my cousin. The FBI agents had been very discreet when they visited Silverton.
“Gert told us when we were here in June.”
“Oh.” It seemed odd that Aunt Gertie would share an embarrassing secret with Frankenstella, especially since they weren’t on the best of terms.
“Will you help me break into the museum?” Victoria asked again.
“Why can’t we just walk in the front door?” I asked.
“It has to be at night,” Victoria said, ignoring my question. “Once the Exploring Locked Places production team sees me in action, they’ll pick my video to play. Then it’s goodbye, sucky Silverton. L.A. is calling my name.” Victoria tapped on her purple phone. “I can’t waste my time talking to you. Mabel, are you in or not?”
We both chewed our nails and liked Star Wars… it was hardly the basis for an alliance. “I don’t know,” I said.
“If I leave, my parents will leave with me. Think about it.” Victoria paused, then took out her phone and swiped her index finger across the screen, playing the video from this morning. In it, my eyes were shut, my mouth was open, and I sounded like a cross between a grunting pig and a chainsaw. “But not for too long.”
She took out half of the now squished cinnamon bun and handed it to me.
7
Anticipate surprises. No one — not even a supergenius — knows all the facts.
— Rule Number 29 from Rules for a Successful Life as an Undercover Secret Agent
Our twenty minutes of silent reading time first thing in the morning was my favorite part of the school day. But just thirty seconds after I sat down, my peace and quiet was interrupted. A note landed on my desk from Emma G.
The HEGs were curious. It wasn’t every day a new student arrived in our class. It wasn’t even every year. In fact, Grace K. was still sometimes called the new girl and she’d moved to Silverton during fourth grade. For a new girl, she was lucky, since she already had one of the three pre-approved names.
A long time ago, in third grade, the two Hannahs decided to form a club based solely on the first initials of their first names. They called themselves the H-Girls — really original. Right away, the Emmas just had to join, and the Graces would not take no for an answer, promising to be good little minions. Sometime that afternoon, the H-Girls morphed into the HEGs, and the Es and Gs were stumbling all over each other to be next in line after Queen Bee Hannah and Princess Bee Hannah decided something was cool.
In the world of cliques and mean girls, we’d all lucked out. Our Queen Bee Hannah was a benevolent dictator. She wanted everyone to be happy and full of school spirit. Princess Bee Hannah, while not as kind, enforced the “be nice” policy with an iron fist. They even allowed/forced me to join despite my name, but they refused to change the name of the club. I really couldn’t blame them, since HEGM sounded at best like a type of igneous rock, and at worst like a cross between a bad cough and a hiccup.
Queen Bee Hannah usually decided what our daily fun would be: wearing matching hair ribbons, helping the kindergarten class finger paint during our recess time, or, my personal non-favorite, deciding the theme of this week’s sleepover while dissecting the events of last week’s sleepover.
At the last sleepover I ever hosted, my parents had departed on a mission during the middle of the night. It was the first weekend of October of fourth grade. At 2:14 a.m., a Black Hawk helicopter swooped down on my front lawn to extract (pick up) my parents. To cover for them, I told my friends that the Mount Rainier park rangers had a telephone wire emergency. I was afraid my parents’ covers would be blown if one of the HEGs mentioned the event to someone else. It was just too risky, so after that, I stopped inviting the HEGs to my home. Since the host of each sleepover rotated through the group, I pulled out of the sleepover circuit. It was safer that way.
The HEGs were glancing at Victoria and me, waiting for a reply, so I scribbled the truth: visiting cousin. The quickly-made origami tea cup disappeared off my desk corner, expertly handled by the network of girls.
The next note was written in unfamiliar handwriting: From where?
Victoria leaned in to read it, but when I shoved it closer to her, she tossed her hair like she didn’t care. She had to know that all the gossip would be about her as the new girl. Being the topic of conversation was what she wanted, right?
I folded the
paper square into a crane and wrote, “Alaska,” across its wings.
I studied the world map hanging on the wall. Nome was far, far away. It was located on the west coast of central Alaska, the part of the state that was closest to Russia. I twirled a curl behind my left ear as I did the math. Stella claimed that Mom had called her yesterday to ask them to stay with me. While possible — depending on flight schedules — it would have been difficult for Frankenstella to fly to Seattle and drive to Silverton in less than one day. That wasn’t even counting buying tickets and packing. So while it wasn’t impossible, it was really improbable.
I nearly jumped out of my seat when Ms. Drysdale shouted, “Mabel! I haven’t seen you turn a page in five minutes.”
I looked up quickly, startled, and then looked back at my book. Didn’t she have some quizzes to grade or something? The HEGs were passing so many notes the classroom resembled a blizzard, but did any of them get into trouble?
Left alone after that, I spent most of morning reading time wondering if I should trust Victoria — while being sure to turn the page every couple of minutes. The spy rules clearly stated that I should not trust her.
I glanced at Victoria. She tapped the screen of her smartphone. The video of me sleeping with my mouth opened wide played silently.
I waved my hand and called out, “Ms. Drysdale?”
“What is it, Mabel?”
“Can I introduce my cousin, Vicky, to the class? She’s from Alaska.”
“That’s a lovely idea.” Ms. Drysdale beamed her approval. “Vicky, come on up with your cousin. We could all use a break before writing time.”
“Sit, Moppet.” Victoria glared at me. “I can do it myself,” she said to the teacher in her sweetest voice as she strode to the front of the room. “Hello,” she began with a wide smile. “I’m so happy to meet all of you.”
“Vicky, are you really from Alaska?” Emma H. asked, waving her hand in the air.
“We went to Alaska on a cruise last summer,” Grace L. said, “and saw a chunk of ice drop off a glacier and smash into the water.”
“Did you take the helicopter tour?” Queen Bee Hannah asked. “That’s the only way to see Alaska.”