Stewart squats down beside Yo-Yo and starts to pat him. His hockey skates are slung over his shoulder, and I’m guessing he’s been at the rink with Cassidy. Her punishment was that she had to give Stewart private hockey lessons.
Stewart isn’t that horrible, for a Chadwick—he’s always been pretty nice to me at our newspaper staff meetings—but he’s an unbelievable klutz on skates. Even worse than me, and I have the bruises to prove it. Every year Stewart tries out for the school hockey team, and every year he gets cut. He ends up on the town rec league, which pretty much takes anybody with a pulse. But Mrs. Chadwick is convinced there’s a pro hockey star just waiting to burst from Stewart’s gangly frame, and after our Hello Boston! stunt, whatever Mrs. Chadwick wanted, Mrs. Chadwick got. Including private hockey lessons.
“I’ll bet you miss him, huh?” I say sympathetically. I can tell Stewart loves Yo-Yo.
“Yeah,” he replies, standing up. “He’s a really good dog. Thanks for taking care of him. Usually my mom just puts him in a kennel when Grandma and Grandpa are here, but he’s probably having a lot more fun with you and Jess.”
“Probably.”
We stand there awkwardly for a minute. Stewart wears glasses, just like me, and they’re kind of fogged up. He takes them off and swipes at them with his mitten. I’ve never noticed his eyes before. They’re gray as snow-clouds. He flicks them nervously from me to the toy store window. “I used to love that store when I was a kid,” he says, sounding kind of sheepish.
“Me too,” I admit. “I think I gave them all my allowance for about five years.”
Stewart’s laugh turns into a squeak at the end as his voice cracks. Darcy’s has been doing the same thing lately. My dad has warned me not to tease him about it. “We men are sensitive about these things,” he tells me. So I pretend not to notice with Stewart.
He leans over and pats Yo-Yo again. “So, are you heading home?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Me too,” he says. The Chadwicks’ house is just past the center of town, not too far from ours. “How about if I walk Yo-Yo for you? He’s kind of a handful.”
“No kidding,” I reply, handing him the leash.
We cross back over Main Street. We’re quiet all the way to Monument Square, just looking in the shop windows and listening to the crunch of our boots on the snow-covered sidewalk. We pass the Colonial Inn and a row of stately old houses. In keeping with our town’s historic tradition, everybody keeps their holiday decorations spare and simple, the way it might have been back in the olden days. No strings of multicolored lights, no Santas on the rooftops or electric reindeer on the front lawns, just a wreath on each front door and the glow of a single electric candle in each of the windows facing the street. It’s almost dark now, and most of the candles are lit already for the New Year’s Eve parties that will soon be starting. Everything looks old-fashioned and pretty. I love Concord this time of year.
As we pass the Chadwicks’ house the front door flies open and Becca appears. She puts her hands on her hips.
“Stewart! Where have you been? Mom’s worried. She thought maybe you got squashed by a truck or something.”
Stewart gives another nervous chuckle-squawk. “Uh, no, I’m fine,” he says. “I ran into Yo-Yo downtown, and I was just giving Emma a hand.”
“What’s the matter, can’t Emma handle him on her own? Maybe her invisible friend Waldo can help.”
The tips of Stewart’s ears turn bright red, though whether from embarrassment or anger or just the cold wind I can’t tell. “Shut up, Becca,” he tells her, and she flounces back inside and slams the door. “Sorry about that,” he mutters to me. “My sister is, well, she’s—”
“I know,” I reply, taking Yo-Yo’s leash from him. “Don’t worry about it.”
The only good thing that came of the Hello Boston! disaster is the fact that Becca’s not in our book club anymore. Her mother pulled her out instantly, declaring us all to be hooligans and a bad influence. Cassidy says the invisibility potion worked after all because it made Becca disappear. She only says this to Jess and me, of course. Our mothers would go ballistic if they heard her say something like that. It took them weeks to cool down as it was.
After things backfired that morning, Carson Dawson stormed out, threatening to sue. It didn’t take everybody else long to figure out that we were behind it—Cassidy couldn’t stop snickering, for one thing, which was a dead giveaway, plus her mother spotted the garage door remote and quickly put two and two together—and when the truth came out, our mothers were so furious I thought they were going to end the book club permanently right then and there. Mrs. Chadwick left in a huff with Becca and Mr. Chadwick and Stewart and a whole lot of stinging words about our hideous behavior.
Cassidy didn’t help matters by bringing up Anne of Green Gables.
“Can’t you just think of it as kind of like the time Anne served liniment cake to the minister’s wife?” she’d argued. “Only we used garlic instead of liniment.”
“Cassidy Ann! How dare you compare what you just did to a scene in a book!” Mrs. Sloane had exploded. “That was fiction. This is real life. There’s a big difference!”
“And besides,” added my mother severely, “what Anne Shirley did was unintentional. It was an accident, and therefore excusable. What you three did was deliberate.”
“That’s right,” said Mrs. Delaney. “There’s simply no excuse for what you girls did to poor Mr. Dawson.”
Behind us there was a muffled snort. We’d all turned around to see my brother and my dad and Mr. Wong struggling not to laugh.
“Don’t you start!” warned my mother. “This is not a laughing matter. Nicholas, I’m expecting you to back me up on this one.”
My dad had nodded, pressing his lips together tightly. He couldn’t stop his eyes from smiling, though. So were Mr. Wong’s and Darcy’s and even Stanley Kinkaid’s.
“You have to admit it was kind of funny,” said my dad. “The teeth and everything, I mean.”
That did it. Darcy laughed so hard he went weak in the knees and slid to the floor. The dads quickly joined in. Murphy heard them from his exile out in the garage and started to howl.
“Out!” Mrs. Sloane had cried, furious. “All of you! Out of my sight!” She shooed them from the room and shut the door firmly behind her. Her face was flushed with anger.
“Mom,” Cassidy had said after a moment, “the thing is, the tea wasn’t meant for Mr. Dawson.”
“Oh, really?” her mother replied icily. “And that’s supposed to make it all right?”
Cassidy dropped her gaze.
“Who exactly did you think was going to drink your wonderful concoction?”
Jess and I looked at each other. Megan and her mother were sitting quietly on the sofa, watching us. Neither of them had said a word this whole time.
“Uh, Becca,” said Cassidy.
Megan got a funny look on her face when she heard this.
“Because she’s been so mean to Emma,” Jess explained.
“Girls!” chided my mother. “That is absolutely no excuse for such a thoughtless prank. Besides, didn’t you think about the fact that your actions might have wider repercussions? This was an important morning for Mrs. Sloane and her new show, and now you’ve gone and ruined it.”
We were all shipped home in disgrace. The only thing that saved us was the Internet. Clips of Carson Dawson’s flying dentures quickly flashed around the world, and overnight, viewership on Hello Boston! shot way up. All the media exposure gave Cooking with Clementine a boost in the ratings too, as people tuned in hoping for more comedy disasters. The producers of both shows were delighted with the results, which mollified Carson Dawson enough that he withdrew his threat of a lawsuit. He’s been basking in the limelight of international celebrity ever since. My dad says he’s taking full advantage of his fifteen minutes of fame, whatever that means.
We weren’t completely off the hook, of course. Our moms spent our entire De
cember book club meeting lecturing us again, and on top of that, things are really awkward with Megan. It was clear from all the drawings in her sketchbook that she still likes Becca a lot. Plus, she’s been making excuses for Becca’s behavior, even when she picks on me. It’s like Megan has a blind spot where Becca is concerned. And it seems to have grown bigger since the Hello Boston! prank.
Stewart and I are still standing in front of his house.
“Brrrr,” I say, because I can’t think of anything else to say.
“Uh, I hope you have a happy new year,” he replies, jamming his hands in his pockets and hopping from one foot to the other.
“You too,” I tell him.
“I guess I’ll see you next week. At the newspaper staff meeting, I mean.”
“That’s right.”
“Well, bye then.”
“Bye.”
“Unless maybe you wouldn’t mind if I walk, uh, Yo-Yo, back to your house,” he adds, suddenly very interested in the sidewalk. “With you, I mean.”
I’m not sure what to say to this. “Well, I guess—I mean, sure, that’d be okay,” I manage to stammer.
Stewart looks up and flashes me a smile. It’s a nice smile, almost as nice as Zach Norton’s, in fact. For some reason, I’m suddenly feeling a little shy.
Stewart takes his skates off his shoulder and props them against the front gate. Then he takes the leash from me and we set off again. He gives me a sidelong glance. “So, did you really have an invisible friend?”
I scowl at him. “Yeah.”
“No need to get huffy about it,” he says mildly. “I had one too.”
“You did?” Somehow, I never would have expected a Chadwick to have an invisible friend.
He nods, grinning. “His name was Brubby. He was always getting me into trouble. You know, breaking things and stuff. The only problem was, he’d always disappear the minute my mother came into the room.”
Now it’s my turn to laugh. I start to tell him about Waldo, and pretty soon we’re trading stories about our invisible friends like we’ve known each other forever.
“How are the hockey lessons going?” I ask eventually.
“Terribly,” Stewart moans.
Actually, I know this already. Cassidy’s been tutoring him twice a week all month. She’s pretty grouchy about it, not because it’s a lost cause—although Stewart is completely hopeless and should probably take up miniature golf, or bowling, according to her—but because Stanley Kinkaid has been going along to help. Stanley doesn’t skate himself, but it seems he knows a fair amount about hockey. Or at least he thinks he does. He sits on the sidelines and offers advice, which doesn’t endear him to Cassidy. She says he’s just butting in, but it makes her mom happy and after Hello Boston! Cassidy needed to earn a few brownie points with her mother. More than a few brownie points, actually.
“This afternoon, at the rink?” Stewart says, “Cassidy decided it would be fun for us to scrimmage with some of her teammates against your brother and his friends.”
“Uh-oh,” I reply. The Concord Comets are the top-ranked team in New England’s PeeWee division, and Darcy plays for the Alcott High Avengers.
“Exactly,” says Stewart. “Things were going along just fine at first, and I started thinking maybe I was finally getting the hang of it. Then one leg went one way and the other leg went the other way, and I ended up sliding into the net and scoring a goal for the wrong team. Now everybody’s calling me the human hockey puck.”
I turn my head so he can’t see me smile. Poor Stewart! That’s almost as bad as Porky the Poet.
He shakes his head sadly. “I’m just not cut out for hockey.”
“Then why do you play?”
He shrugs. “It’s my mother, mostly. She can be kind of stubborn when she gets an idea in her head. Her dad and her brother played hockey, and she thinks I should too. You know, ‘part of a New England boy’s childhood’ ”—Stewart mimics his mother’s booming voice—“and all that.” He sighs. “The thing is, even though I’m terrible, it’s still kind of fun.”
“I know what you mean,” I tell him. “I’m not very good at figure skating—about as good as you are at hockey—but I like being out on the ice.”
“Exactly.”
We look at each other and smile.
“Whoa!” says Stewart, as Yo-Yo suddenly breaks into a trot. “What’s gotten into him?”
“Melville!” I explain breathlessly, jogging to keep up with the two of them.
“Herman Melville the author?” Stewart looks puzzled.
“No, silly—Melville my cat! Yo-Yo knows we’re almost to my house, and he’s crazy about him.” I’m puffing like a dragon now, but I notice I’m not quite as breathless as I used to be when I tried to run home from the Colonial Inn. Maybe Cassidy was right; maybe the extra exercise is helping a bit.
Stewart finally manages to rein Yo-Yo in, and we slow our pace to a walk again. “So, did you read anything good over vacation?” he asks.
“My dad gave me this book called The Alpine Path for Christmas,” I tell him. “It’s by Lucy Maud Montgomery—you know, the one who wrote Anne of Green Gables? We’re reading her Anne stories for book club this year. We just started Anne of Avonlea. Anyway, it’s her memoir about how she became a writer. Oh, and I got The Hobbit, too.”
Stewart’s face lights up. “I love Tolkien! Have you read The Lord of the Rings trilogy yet?”
We launch into a discussion of our favorite authors, and it turns out Stewart is nearly as big a bookworm as I am. He’s read almost all the same books I have, except for the girl ones like Little Women. We both love Treasure Island and The Count of Monte Cristo, and he even likes poetry, too.
I never in a million years would have guessed that a Chadwick might actually be a kindred spirit. Stewart is completely different from Becca. I’m almost sorry when we finally reach my house and it’s time for him to turn around and go home.
The Sloanes pull in just as he’s saying good-bye.
“Was that Stewart Chadwick?” says Cassidy, hopping out of her minivan and gaping at him as he lopes off.
I nod.
“What the heck did he want?”
“I think he misses his dog,” I tell her, reaching down and giving Yo-Yo a pat.
Mrs. Sloane pokes her head out of the window. “Happy New Year, Emma!”
I’m glad she’s not mad at me anymore. I like Cassidy’s mother so much, and I felt awful after Hello Boston! Especially after my mother pointed out that what we did reflected on her new show. That honestly never occurred to me. I was just thinking about getting even with Becca.
“Happy New Year, Mrs. Sloane,” I reply. “You look really nice.”
Cassidy’s mother is wearing something twinkly under her winter coat. Sequins, probably. She’s going to a fancy party in downtown Boston with her friend Stanley Kinkaid. The accounting firm he works for puts on a big shindig every year at the top of the Prudential Center.
“Thanks. You girls have fun now, okay?
We wave as she drives off, then race each other inside.
“There’s a towel on the floor for you!” my dad calls from his office, hearing the back door slam behind Cassidy and me. “Wipe off that dog’s feet!”
My dad calls Yo-Yo “that dog.” He’s about as thrilled with Yo-Yo as Melville is. The two of them have been sticking close together these past two weeks, hiding out in Dad’s office “away from marauding paws,” as my father puts it. He is not a dog person, and Melville definitely isn’t a dog cat.
I asked for a puppy for Christmas, but my dad said no. He tried to be funny about it, by slipping a note under my door supposedly written by Melville. There was a silhouette of a dog on the envelope, in the middle of a red circle with a line through it.
“No dogz allowed!” was written inside, in shaky letters. “Resident feline gives two paws down to canines! Love, Melville.”
Honestly, sometimes my dad still thinks of me as a little kid. He forget
s that I’m almost thirteen. The note was funny and everything, but it didn’t exactly cheer me up. I’ve wanted a puppy forever. Which is why it’s nice having Yo-Yo around.
“Only seven more hours to go!” crows Cassidy, waltzing around the kitchen. “Seven more hours till freedom!”
Our punishment officially ends at midnight tonight. I planned our sleepover party to celebrate. Jess and Cassidy and I all agreed we should invite Megan, too, even though she wasn’t punished since she wasn’t in on the prank, and even though it felt a little awkward asking her.
“I’ll get back to you about it,” she’d said coolly, when I told her about the party.
I figured that meant she wouldn’t come, but then she called right before she and her parents left for San Diego for the holidays and said yes, she’d be there. I’m glad we invited her, but still, I’m feeling a little nervous about the four of us being together.
“So when is everyone else getting here?” asks Cassidy.
“The party officially starts at six,” I tell her, dutifully wiping off Yo-Yo’s paws. Cassidy got dropped off early so her mother could leave for her date. “We could start making the pizzas, though.”
Six is when New Year’s Eve officially starts for my parents, too. They’re not much for parties. Not fancy ones, anyway. Their New Year’s Eve tradition is to hole up in the living room with Pride and Prejudice. The six-hour miniseries, not the movie. My father calls it “the annual marathon,” and kind of drifts in and out, but my mother stays glued to the TV the whole night. She tries to time it so that the wedding scene at the end happens right at midnight. It’s more romantic that way, she says. My mother has a crush on Colin Firth. He’s the British actor who plays Mr. Darcy. I like the newer movie version better, but my mother says nobody beats Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy.
“What’s that?” Cassidy asks me, pointing to a puffy mound on a platter on the counter.
“That, my dear Miss Sloane, is an ambrosial confection fit for the gods,” says my father as he enters the kitchen. He’s obviously warming up for Jane Austen mode. “You and your gentle companions are in for a rare treat this evening—I highly doubt there are any other young ladies in these environs who will be enjoying such a heavenly dainty!”
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