Much Ado About Anne

by Heather Vogel Frederick

  “So,” says Jess, consulting the piece of paper she’s holding in her hand, “counting the halter dress and the workout clothes, that makes an even dozen outfits. Perfect.”

  I make a face. “I’m not so sure about this one, though,” I tell her, pointing to the pleated plaid mini-skirt I paired with a V-neck sweater. “I still think it looks too much like a school uniform.” Becca thinks so too, but I don’t tell them that.

  The door opens and Mrs. Hawthorne pops her head in. “Lunch is ready, girls. Is the table set?”

  We nod.

  She sweeps in carrying a platter of roast chicken—I try not to think too much about where it came from—and Diana Barry’s “Splendid Lettuce Salad” from Anne of Avonlea. Mrs. Sloane is right behind her with the baking powder biscuits we helped make earlier, just like the ones Anne made for Marilla and Mrs. Lynde, and there’s some of Half Moon Farm’s famous raspberry jam to go with them.

  The four of us cheer when Mrs. Delaney comes in with tall frosted layer cake. She sets it down on the table with a flourish. “I promise there isn’t a speck of liniment in it,” she says with a smile.

  “What is liniment, anyway?” asks Cassidy.

  “It’s a kind of medicine,” says Mrs. Hawthorne, who knows everything. I think that’s one of the job requirements for a librarian.

  “Yuck,” says Cassidy. “No wonder Anne’s cake tasted so horrible.”

  Nobody cheers for my mother. She was worried there wouldn’t be enough healthy food, of course, so she brought a tray of organic vegetables and hummus. I told her that nobody in Avonlea ever even heard of hummus, but she wouldn’t budge. Sometimes I wish my mother would just chill out a little.

  Jess made place cards for all of us, with little dried flowers glued next to our names, and we each find ours and sit down. Cassidy’s mom pours out the raspberry cordial (apple-raspberry juice, actually, which was the closest thing we could find) and Mrs. Hawthorne raises her glass.

  “To kindred spirits!” she says.

  “Hear, hear!” echoes my mother.

  I look around the table at Emma, whose eyes are shining in excitement behind her glasses; and at Jess, who is staring off into space like she does sometimes, which is weird but probably just means she’s doing calculus in her head or something; and at Cassidy, whose cheeks are bulging already, which means she probably snuck a biscuit off the plate when her mother wasn’t looking. I know Becca thinks book club is, like, totally stupid—although maybe she just says that because her mother won’t let her come anymore—but I don’t care, I love book club. I love that I can be dorky, and pretend I’m at Green Gables even though I’m a teenager now and too old to pretend stuff anymore and not worry that anyone’s going to make fun of me.

  Is it wrong of me to want to keep all of my friends, even though they don’t get along? I plop some butter and jam onto a hot biscuit and think about it. How come everybody thinks I have to choose either one group or the other? Life is so confusing. Sometimes I wish there was a rule book.

  The keeping room door opens again and Mr. Delaney comes in. His arms are full of wood for the fire. I catch a whiff of goat—he must have been out in the barn—which used to gross me out but now it doesn’t bother me. Much.

  “Sorry for the interruption, ladies,” he says, “but I want to make sure you stay warm. It’s cold out there this afternoon.”

  After lunch and our book club discussion we’re all going skating on Half Moon Farm’s small pond. Make that “The Mirror of the Sky.” Jess and Emma told me that they named it in honor of Anne Shirley, which is so Emma and Jess that it’s ridiculous, but it’s still kind of fun. Definitely not something I’d share with Becca, though.

  “Michael, you’re welcome to join us,” says Mrs. Hawthorne.

  “You’re an honorary member of the mother-daughter book club, remember?” adds my mother. “Pull up a chair.”

  Mr. Delaney smiles. “And I am honored indeed,” he says with a bow, “but for today I am simply shy Matthew Cuthbert, who will leave you ladies to your elegant luncheon while he feeds a pair of monkeys out in the kitchen.”

  I can hear Dylan and Ryan out in the hall, giggling. They’ve been spying on us all day. Nobody suggested invisibility potion this time around, though.

  “So,” says Mrs. Hawthorne a little later, after we’ve finished our last bites of cake and are settled around the fire. “We got a bit sidetracked these last couple of months, what with, uh, various things”—there’s an uncomfortable pause at this—“but now that we’re back together again, let’s see where you all are. Has everyone finished Anne of Avonlea?”

  “I’m done with the whole series,” Emma blurts out.

  “Sheesh, Emma, way to make us look bad,” says Cassidy. “I thought I was doing good just getting through the first book.”

  “ ‘Doing well,’ darling, not ‘doing good,’ ” her mother corrects.

  “Whatever,” mutters Cassidy.

  Mrs. Hawthorne asks for a quick show of hands. Cassidy has barely started Anne of Avonlea, but says she loves the part where Anne accidentally sells her neighbor’s cow. Jess is almost but not quite finished with it, and I’m about halfway through.

  “I haven’t had much extra time for reading,” I say defensively, glad at least that I’m a bit further along than Cassidy, who barely reads anything unless she absolutely has to. Except for the sports page in the newspaper, of course.

  My mother nods. “Megan’s right. This Flashlite project is taking up all of her free time. I’m beginning to wonder if maybe it’s a bit much for a seventh grader.”

  “Mom!”

  “I know, I know, you have your heart set on it! But you didn’t do so well on that last math test, and your schoolwork really must have top priority.”

  What is it about moms and grades?

  “Why don’t we finish up any loose ends from our discussion of Anne of Green Gables, then, and at least get started on Anne of Avonlea, even though not everyone has finished it,” suggests Mrs. Hawthorne.

  “Before we do, I brought something to show you all,” says my mother, pulling out her laptop. I frown, worried that she’ll have found some weird connection between Anne Shirley and recycling or the Amazon rain forest. Fortunately, it’s nothing like that.

  “Look at this great website,” my mother says, and we all cluster around her. A map of Prince Edward Island pops up. I should have known. My mother loves maps. “See? There’s Charlottetown.” She points at a dot on the screen.

  “Where Anne and Gilbert and Josie Pye and everybody went to Queen’s College?” asks Jess.

  My mother nods. “Exactly.”

  “Wait a minute, where’s Avonlea?” asks Cassidy, peering at the screen.

  “Avonlea isn’t a real place, honey,” her mom explains. “Lucy Maud Montgomery made it up.”

  “You know,” adds Emma, “like Camelot, or Narnia.”

  Cassidy looks disappointed.

  “It’s based on Cavendish, though, where Maud spent her childhood,” Mrs. Hawthorne consoles her, pointing to a dot on the north shore of the island.

  “She didn’t make up Green Gables,” says my mom, clicking on a photograph of a pretty little green-trimmed house. “It’s a real house that belonged to her cousins. She used to stay there a lot. It’s a museum now, and look! This is the best part—you can take a virtual tour!”

  Now even I’m excited. We check out all the rooms, poring over the pictures.

  “The dining room looks a little bit like your keeping room, Jess,” I tell her. “See? There’s even a fireplace.”

  “And look at the dishes on the table—it’s as if Marilla and Anne just stepped out,” adds Mrs. Delaney.

  We decide we like Anne’s bedroom best of all.

  “It’s so cozy!” sighs Emma. “Can I have flowered wallpaper in my room someday too, Mom?”

  “We’ll see,” Mrs. Hawthorne replies, smiling at her.

  “I’ll bet there’s a nice view from the window,”
adds Jess. “With plenty of scope for the imagination, just like Anne always used to say.”

  “I’ll bet you’re right, Jess,” says my mother. She clicks on the map again and points out how Green Gables is part of a chunk of Prince Edward Island that’s now a national park. “The Canadian government did this to protect the landscape that Lucy Maud Montgomery loved so much,” she explains. “And to preserve the island’s fragile ecosystems.”

  Somehow, I just knew my mother would find a way to eventually bring things around to the environment.

  “It looks beautiful,” sighs Mrs. Sloane, looking at the pictures over her shoulder. “I sure would love to go there someday.”

  “What do you think it is about Lucy Maud Montgomery’s books that make readers love them so much?” says Mrs. Delaney, after my mother puts her laptop away. “People have been reading Anne of Green Gables now for, what, almost a hundred years?”

  “Since 1908,” says Mrs. Hawthorne. Like I said, she knows everything. “Which brings us to our handout.”

  FUN FACTS ABOUT MAUD

  1. The Anne of Green Gables story came from something Maud jotted down in her idea notebook: “Elderly couple apply to orphan asylum for a boy. By mistake a girl is sent to them.”

  2. The book was rejected five times, and Maud tossed it in a hatbox and forgot about it. Later, she pulled it out again and read it over. Deciding it wasn’t all that bad, she rewrote it and sent it off to a publisher in Boston, who accepted it.

  3. Anne of Green Gables was first published in 1908. It was an instant success and was reprinted six times in the first five months.

  4. The book has been translated into over twenty languages, made into movies, television shows, and a popular musical, and is still a worldwide bestseller one hundred years after its publication.

  5. People everywhere loved the book. The Prime Minister of England asked to meet Maud when he was visiting Canada, and even Mark Twain wrote her a fan letter.

  “Wow,” says Jess. “If Maud hadn’t taken the story out of her hatbox, and tried again, the book would never have gotten published.”

  My mother nods. “That’s right, honey. It just shows you how important it is to be persistent. You can’t give up.”

  Emma’s hand shoots up. I know she’s not showing off or anything, she’s just enthusiastic about books, but honestly, sometimes I can see why Becca thinks she’s such a goody-goody.

  “Yes, Emma?” says her mother.

  “I’ve been thinking about Mrs. Delaney’s question, and I think people love the Anne books so much because they’re about friendship, and love, and growing up, and that’s something everybody thinks about. Plus, there’s a little bit of Anne in everybody, even in all of us.”

  “Hey, Emma’s right,” says Jess, looking around the room. “Cassidy has red hair and freckles—”

  “What’s wrong with red hair and freckles?” Cassidy sounds belligerent.

  “Nothing,” says Jess. “I’m just saying you kind of look like Anne Shirley, that’s all.”

  “And she’s smart like you, Jess,” Emma adds. “Anne’s always getting the best grades on her tests and coming in first in everything, or tying with Gilbert Blythe.”

  “Plus she likes poetry and wants to be a writer like you do, Emma,” I tell her.

  “And she likes fashionable clothes, just like you!” Emma tosses back, smiling at me.

  “Looks like you’re right, Emma,” says my mother. “There does seem to be a little bit of Anne in everybody.”

  My cell phone vibrates in my pocket and I sneak it out to see who’s calling. It’s Becca, of course. I told her that I’d be busy at book club this afternoon, but she must have forgotten. Or maybe she didn’t forget. Even though she makes fun of us all the time to Ashley and Jen—she says we read stupid books and who’d want to be in our stupid club anyway—I think secretly she’s a little jealous. Emma sees me peeking at my phone and flushes slightly. I slip it back in my pocket. No point upsetting Emma. I’ll text Becca later.

  “So what were your favorite parts of the first book?” asks Mrs. Hawthorne. “Megan? How about you?”

  “I liked when Matthew bought Anne that dress for Christmas. The fabric, I mean. I loved how he got so nervous and tongue-tied at the store, and bought all that other stuff first.”

  “I liked that too!” says Mrs. Delaney.

  “I liked when she lost her temper and called Mrs. Lynde a bunch of names, and that time when Josie Pye dared her to climb the ridgepole and she did, and broke her ankle,” says Cassidy. “And I especially liked when the boat got a leak while she was in it pretending to be the Lady of Shalott, and she nearly drowned.”

  Emma says it’s impossible for her to choose, because she has too many favorite parts, and then everybody looks at Jess.

  “Remember when Anne and Diana went to Charlottetown, to visit Diana’s Aunt Josephine in her fancy house?” says Jess.

  We all nod.

  “Well, I like when Diana said she thought she was born for city life, and Aunt Josephine asks Anne what she thinks, and Anne says—here, I’ll read it to you.” She riffles through the pages of her book. “And Anne says, ‘It’s nice to be eating ice cream at brilliant restaurants at eleven o’clock at night once in a while, but as a regular thing I’d rather be in the east gable at eleven, sound asleep, but kind of knowing even in my sleep that the stars were shining outside and that the wind was blowing in the firs across the brook.’ ” Jess looks up. The room is quiet, except for the crackle and snap of the fire in the fireplace. “That’s the way I feel about being here, at Half Moon Farm.”

  Her mother looks at her sadly.

  There’s a knock on the sitting room door and Mr. Delaney pokes his head in. “I hate to interrupt again, but it’s nearly two thirty,” he says. “The others will be arriving any minute.”

  “The others” are the rest of our families. They’re going to join us for skating and a bonfire. Jess said her dad has been fussing with the pond—I mean “The Mirror of the Sky”—all week, clearing the snow off it with their tractor and hosing it down every night to try and make the ice nice and smooth.

  Mrs. Delaney blows him a kiss. “I think we’re about wrapped up here, sweetheart,” she says. “Girls, why don’t you go and get your jackets.”

  Pretty soon cars start to pull in the driveway—Mr. Hawthorne and Darcy first, then my dad, and then Courtney, who just got her license. Her grandparents gave her their old car for her birthday, so she could take over driving Cassidy to hockey practice now that their mom is so busy. I can’t wait until I’m sixteen. I hope I get a car too.

  We all walk over to the pond and sit down on the logs that Mr. Delaney stuck around the bonfire for benches. I pull on my skates and start to lace them up.

  “Watch this!” cries Emma, who’s the first one out on the ice. She zooms across the pond. Frowning in concentration, she does a tiny little leap.

  “Hey, nice bunny hop,” says Cassidy, clapping.

  “Can you show me how?” asks Courtney.

  The two of them twirl off together while Darcy and Cassidy round up hockey sticks and start chasing a puck around, using an old badminton net that Mr. Delaney nailed to some scrap wood for a goal. Mr. and Mrs. Hawthorne skate around sedately, holding hands—well, mittens. Jess and I race past them, trying to see who can go faster.

  “What’s all that barking in the barn?” I ask her when we pause for a break.

  “We have a few dogs boarding with us over the holiday weekend,” Jess explains. “There’s a beagle named Buddy, and this fat, mean little dachshund named Jelly Roll, and Yo-Yo, of course.”

  I’d forgotten that Becca’s grandparents were in town again. They told Becca they might take us into Boston shopping tomorrow afternoon.

  “Hey, boarders are good. More money for our secret fund, right?”

  “Yup,” says Jess.

  We loop around the pond again, trying to skate backward this time. I manage to get my skate tip caught in J
ess’s blade and we tumble over in a heap. I lie there for a minute, laughing, then sit up and look out over the snowy fields, trying to imagine them covered with condominiums. I sure hope we can help the Delaneys save their farm.

  There’s a loud bang behind us and we scramble to our feet in time to see the side door of the barn slam open. Jess’s brothers scamper out, clutching brooms to use as hockey sticks.

  “Close the door, boys!” hollers Mr. Delaney, but it’s too late. There’s an explosion of squawks and feathers as a handful of chickens make their escape. Right behind them come the dogs in hot pursuit. Buddy the beagle is at the head of the pack, Yo-Yo is chasing Buddy, and the chubby little dachshund is nipping at both their heels. Sugar and Spice are trying to herd the three of them plus the chickens back into the barn, but of course none of the other dogs is paying the least bit of attention. For some reason the chickens all make a beeline for the pond.

  “Look! The chickens are skating!” cries Dylan as they slide out onto the ice.

  Not exactly. In a panic because of the dogs, the chickens are trying to run, but on the ice their little legs just thrash around like those cartoon characters on TV. Buddy’s legs, on the other hand, go out from under him as he dives after them, and he slides across the pond on his belly, yowling. Yo-Yo’s scrambling to stay upright, and Jelly Roll, who may be mean but who at least has some sense, stays put on the bank, yapping furiously.

  Cassidy comes flying down the ice, herding chickens with her hockey stick. The chickens don’t like this idea at all, and scrabble around even harder to get away. Cassidy manages to scoop one up on the blade of her stick, and carrying it gingerly she glides toward us to give it to Jess. Before she can, though, the chicken gives an indignant squawk and hops off—straight into the goal net.

  “Score!” cries Darcy, and everybody laughs except the dogs, who start to howl.

  “Chicken hockey!” shouts Ryan. He and Dylan slip-slide across the ice clutching their brooms, bent on cornering a plump, blondish hen.