The Great Museum Mix-Up and Other Surprise Endings

by Deborah Lytton

  On the wall, there is a poster-sized picture of Lavender. It’s the same one I saw when Dad and I were doing our research, the one where she looks really sad. Next to the poster is a lot of information about her work. It’s mostly information I already know.

  Siri grabs my hand. “I can’t believe after all that planning Mrs. Sablinsky brought us over to see it.”

  I grin at my best friend. “I can’t believe our escape went so wrong. Claudia must have been much better at running away than we are.”

  Siri laughs. Jessica joins in. “Any ideas about the message in her writing?”

  Now that we are really and truly here, I need to put my sleuthing skills to work. This is the moment I have been waiting for—it’s also the moment I have been secretly fearing. I don’t want to let my friends down. (Or let myself down either.)

  I step closer to look at the open books. The sketches are laid across the pages as if Lavender Lakewood had been looking at them all together.

  “Can I use your flashlight?” I say to Jessica.

  “Sure.” Jessica answers as she takes the little blue flashlight off of her belt loop and hands it to me.

  I take a big breath and then hold it as I shine the light over the writing. If the map is hidden in invisible ink, the light should reveal it to us.

  Only nothing happens. Nothing at all.

  One of my friends behind me sighs and another one lets out a soft “oh” of disappointment. My heart sinks like coins in a wishing well. I thought the map would be there. I was sure of it.

  “What about a code?” Siri suggests.

  She’s right. There could still be a pattern of letters or numbers in the writing. Maybe.

  I look at the writing again. I don’t see any numbers there. At least nothing that looks like a math equation or a secret code. But then, a secret code wouldn’t be secret if everyone could see it. A secret code would have to be hidden.

  I imagine Lavender Lakewood sitting right here working on her research. I can see her writing in her notebooks. If I were Lavender, how would I hide the secret?

  I know exactly what I would do.

  It’s a strange idea. And maybe it won’t even work.

  But it might.

  Sometimes it takes imagination to see things other people can’t see. You have to see the impossible.

  If I’m right, I might just know where the unicorn can be found.

  I stand on the edge of Lavender Lakewood’s campsite. Lavender sits in one of the chairs at the table, scribbling in one of her field journals. Her back is to me, but I can see that she is wearing her explorer’s hat and her jacket with all the pockets. She doesn’t turn around, but she knows I am here. When she speaks, it is with a British accent, sort of like my fake one, only real. “Seeking is not always finding. Some decisions are not ours to make. I know you are wise enough to understand.” I do understand—more than she knows.

  “It’s time for lunch,” Mrs. Sablinsky’s voice breaks into my special moment. Why is she always doing that? “Everyone, follow me back to the lunch benches.”

  I can’t leave yet. I need more time. “Can we have a few extra minutes in here?” I paste my most hopeful smile on my face.

  The Unicorns catch on right away. This is the amazing thing about best friends: they know you so well that sometimes you don’t even have to tell them what you are thinking.

  “Please, Mrs. Sablinsky. Just five more minutes?” Charlotte begs.

  “Please,” Siri, Daisy, and Jessica chorus in harmony.

  Mrs. Sablinsky sighs. Then she shrugs. Our teacher shrugs! “How can I resist all of these puppy-dog eyes? Five minutes. Meet us just outside that door. Please, do not get lost.”

  “We won’t,” I promise. My friends look at me and grin. Getting lost is our specialty.

  As soon as the rest of the class leaves the room, I step closer to the table. Seeing the sketch laid on the side of the written notes makes me think of a poetry exercise Mrs. Sablinsky had us try in class one time. We drew a shape in pencil and then filled it in with words to describe the shape. When it was filled with words, we erased the outside line. The words formed the shape.

  “I want to try something,” I tell my friends. “Remember that poetry assignment with the shapes?”

  I pull my pen and sheets of paper out of my shirt pocket. Then I climb into the exhibit and sit down in the chair. I’ll have to be extra careful not to knock anything over in this exhibit. My friends gather around.

  “You might get in trouble for being in there,” Daisy warns.

  She’s right, of course. But I haven’t come all this way to give up now. “If someone comes, I’ll climb out superfast.”

  I lay my paper next to the first book and carefully copy one of Lavender’s unicorn drawings. Then I open to the first page of the field guide. There, I see what I am looking for. A shiver of excitement slides down the back of my neck. This must be how Nancy Drew feels when she is about to solve a mystery: like everything is falling into place.

  I know what we need to do next. “Can you help me tear out the middle of the shape?”

  I hand my friends the paper with the unicorn drawing. Then we take turns carefully tearing out the middle of the unicorn along the lines I have drawn.

  When Daisy tears out the last piece, we have an empty unicorn cut out in the middle of my wrinkled paper. “Perfect!” I place the open shape over the words in the journal. It turns out that the words outside the shape are camouflage for the secret message inside the unicorn. I hold up the book so everyone can see. We read it out loud together:

  “We solved the mystery, but what does it mean?” Charlotte asks.

  Our search led us to the answer—but not to the unicorn.

  “If we want to keep the last unicorn safe, we have to leave it hidden.” I look at my friends. “We can’t become famous Unicorn Seekers after all.”

  “But we did something even the experts couldn’t do,” Jessica points out. “That’s pretty amazing.”

  Siri says the thing the rest of us are all thinking but are too afraid to say out loud. “We won’t be famous though.”

  We won’t be famous. Because to be famous, we would be hurting the last hidden unicorn.

  “It’s not fair,” Daisy whispers. “We know the answer, but we can’t tell anyone about it.”

  I step out of the exhibit and join my friends. “Lavender is asking us to keep the secret.”

  We all know that keeping the secret means we will have to say goodbye to Siri.

  Standing in Lavender’s forest, I know that this is not the last adventure the Unicorns will have together. I don’t know how I know this. I just do.

  • • •

  On the day my book report is due, I begin my presentation standing in front of the class next to my poster about Lavender Lakewood. I have printed out the photo and then sketched my own version of her campsite. I have also written out some important sentences from her research.

  “She was a brave adventurer who discovered the last unicorn. Then she wrote two books about her research. She hid the secret about the unicorn in her work so that no one could find it. Well, no one except true Unicorn Seekers.”

  I look over at Mrs. Sablinsky, who nods at me. She has already approved my surprise.

  “I would like to ask the other Unicorn Seekers to present this last part with me. Siri, Jessica, Daisy, and Charlotte, could you please come up here?”

  My friends come to the front of the room. We all stand side by side. Here’s the order: me, Siri, Charlotte, Jessica, and Daisy.

  I hand each one a present I have made for them. It’s a lavender, braided friendship bracelet with a silver unicorn charm in the middle.

  “Thank you for your courage and for believing in the unicorn,” I say in my most official-sounding voice. “You will forever be Unicorn Seekers.”


  Everyone claps after that. I can’t believe my eyes or my ears—Mrs. Sablinsky claps the loudest!

  I know Siri and I won’t be together every day at school. And I will probably cry a few (or a lot) more tears over it. But we will always be Unicorns. Like my brother said: Who knows what will happen in the future?

  Things might even turn out exactly the way we planned.

  You can learn anything from books. One thing I learned is that friendship lasts forever.

  Siri and I are finally living in New York City. There are tall buildings all around us, but our apartment is actually inside a house-sized red apple. Siri has dress forms everywhere, and I am writing a novel on a very long sheet of paper that keeps going and going. Buddy the fox lives with us. Outside the apple, a unicorn peeks in the window. I stopped looking for the unicorn, but it seems the unicorn never stopped looking for me.

  Acknowledgements

  To readers, parents, teachers, and librarians, thank you for reading and sharing my book! I hope you enjoyed Ruby’s latest adventure.

  I am so grateful to all the people who have helped make this book possible.

  To my agent, Stacey Glick, thank you for being Ruby’s champion from the beginning. I truly appreciate your support and friendship. To my editor, Annie Berger, thank you for your vision and guidance. It is a joy to work with someone who loves stories as much as I do! To my copy editor, Lauren Dombrowski, thank you for working so hard on this book and for helping me to make it the best it could be. To Nicole Hower and Jordan Kost, thank you for creating such adorable Ruby designs that flow right from the words themselves. To Sarah Kasman, thank you for your focus on this manuscript so it would be fabulously fabulous. To Jeanine Murch, illustrator extraordinaire, you have captured every one of Ruby’s thoughts so perfectly—thank you! To Stefani Sloma, my PR and marketing BFF, thank you so much for your enthusiasm and professionalism. To Margaret Coffee, thank you for all of your efforts to get Ruby out to schools and libraries! To Dominique Raccah, Todd Stocke, and Steve Geck, thank you for your commitment to this series and for encouraging imagination and freedom of ideas in all of your Sourcebooks writers.

  To my family, thank you for your prayers and for always encouraging me to follow my dreams.

  To my daughters, Ava and Caroline, thank you for all your help from visiting bookstores to shooting my head shots. Most of all, thank you for inspiring me every single day.

  To Jesus, thank you for everything.

  About the Author

  Deborah Lytton writes books for middle grade and young adult readers. She is the author of Jane in Bloom and Silence. Deborah has a history degree from UCLA and a law degree from Pepperdine University. She lives in Los Angeles, California, with her two daughters and their dog, Faith. For more information about Deborah, visit deborahlytton.com.

  Read on for the start to Ruby’s story in

  Chapter 1

  It All Begins with Books

  Once upon a time opens every fairy tale so it’s the way I’m starting my own story. Once upon a time, there lived a girl named Ruby Starr. (That’s me.) Here are some things you should know:

  1. I love—absolutely, completely love—books (every kind of book, especially if it involves animals).

  2. Pickles are my favorite food. (They go with everything. Even chocolate ice cream! Hmm, this is making me hungry…)

  3. I say a lot of things without thinking (which sometimes gets me in trouble with a lowercase t).

  4. The book that made me love books was Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. (Probably everyone says that, right?)

  5. I have three besties—Siri, Jessica, and Daisy.

  6. Sometimes I imagine I am in the pages of a book. My thoughts sort of fly up into bubble-gum bubbles full of ideas.

  7. I believe in happy endings.

  Today I’m not imagining things when my teacher, Mrs. Sablinsky, announces that we will be welcoming a new student to Room 15. (This is the way lots of books begin—with someone new coming to town.) I sit up a little taller in my seat and glance across the room at my best friend, Siri Mundy. Siri and I have been best friends since we were in kindergarten. Kindergarten to fifth grade is a lifetime. So we have been friends for something like forever. Siri raises her eyebrows and grins back at me. She just got braces, and they make her smile look even happier than usual.

  I know what Siri is thinking. ’Cause I’m thinking the same thing. Someone new to join our Fearsome Foursome: Siri, Jessica, Daisy, and yours truly. (There’s nothing really fearsome about us at all. I just like to say that because it sounds sort of superheroish.) Pink is our signature color. We use pink markers whenever possible, wear pink clips in our hair, and have pink laces in our sneakers. Even Siri’s braces are pink. Confession time: I like green better than pink, but I got outvoted. So I wear the pink, but in my heart, I’m all about the green.

  I watch the door all morning. It’s not that easy to write in cursive with my eyes looking up instead of down at my paper. But when a new character is about to step into the pages of a story, you don’t want to miss it. I want to be the very first person in Room 15 to see who it is. Finally, the star-spangly door opens. She looks like she is already one of our group. She wears a pink headband in her smooth black hair, a floral skirt with a white tank top, and pink sneakers. She also looks sort of nervous, if you ask me. I think of all the books I’ve read about new kids, like Harry Potter, coming into a story. They always turn out to be the heroes. I’m not sure I like that.

  “Class, this is Charlotte Thomas. Charlotte has just moved here from Northern California. I want everyone to welcome her and help her get settled in.” Charlotte stands there quietly. But her eyes dart around the room. Look at me, look at me! I scream silently. Only her eyes skip right over me to land on Siri. I glance over at my best friend. Siri is smiling at Charlotte with her sparkly braces. Charlotte suddenly smiles back. And I can’t believe my eyes. She has the same pink braces as Siri! Something in my stomach flips over right then. I know, somehow, that there is trouble ahead (maybe even trouble with a capital T).

  So when Mrs. Sablinsky says, “Who would like to show Charlotte around and sit with her at lunch today?” I keep my eyes on Siri and raise my hand as fast as she raises hers. Only I must be faster, because Mrs. Sablinsky picks me. “Thank you, Ruby. I’m counting on you to make Charlotte’s first day really special.”

  When Mrs. Sablinsky starts going over the schedule for the rest of the day, I begin imagining things.

  I see myself walking Charlotte down a pink carpet. The other students stand along the carpet, taking photos of us like we are famous. The carpet leads all the way around school. Even Principal Snyder is waving to us. I wave back like a princess on parade. Only I don’t see my glass slipper fall off. And I trip over it and tumble down the stairs, landing with a splash in a river of pickles.

  “Ruby, did you have a question?” Mrs. Sablinsky’s voice cuts into my imaginary world and drops me right back into the present. I want to say no, but my hand is waving back and forth in the air as though I have a very important question to ask. I don’t want to embarrass myself, so I make one up, really fast. “What time is it in Paris?”

  OK, it’s not my best question. It’s not even my sort-of-best question. It’s lame. So I deserve the snickers and giggles. Even I want to giggle.

  “Not amusing, Ruby.” Mrs. Sablinsky does not have a sense of humor. I bet if a line of dancing goats came into the room right now wearing ballet tutus, she wouldn’t even crack a smile. If you ask me, a sense of humor should be a requirement for teaching degrees. If I made the test for teachers, they would have to show that they can laugh at jokes and play charades. I’m positively one hundred percent certain that Mrs. Sablinsky hasn’t ever played charades. (Charades is one of my top three favorite games:

  1. Chess

  2. Monopoly

  3. Charades)
>
  The class is still laughing at me. I look over at Siri and shrug. I pretend it’s no big deal, but truthfully, I hate when people laugh at me. I love laughing. And I love jokes too. I just don’t want to be one.

  I keep my eyes on my work after that. I don’t allow my mind to wander once. Then I hear the bell ring. Everyone around me scrambles out of their seats and runs for the door. I stand slowly and walk over to Charlotte. I don’t want to seem too anxious. But Siri beats me there.

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