Libby on Wednesday

by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

  Wendy’s latest story, the one set in the twenties, was getting more interesting as it went along, particularly after the heroine’s rich father lost all his money in the market crash and she started having to sell all her beautiful clothing to buy food. Tierney’s critique was that Wendy should always have her characters go broke, because her stories were much faster paced when she didn’t have to describe what everyone was wearing every couple of paragraphs. To Libby’s surprise, Wendy seemed to take the remark as a compliment—but maybe that was because of the way Tierney said it. Tierney—well, everybody really—was getting a little better at constructive criticism.

  After they more or less finished the “Island Adventure” collaboration, they mailed it to Mizzo. And a few days later she mailed it back with her critique of what they had written. Of course Libby read it as soon as the letter arrived, but she decided not to tell the others and surprise them with it at the next workshop meeting.

  So, on the next Wednesday, Libby was planning to start the meeting by reading Mizzo’s letter. It was a nice, warm day, and they were meeting as usual in the Treehouse. As soon as they were all seated and Wendy had marked everyone present in the roll book, Libby told them about Mizzo’s critique.

  “Hey, great!” Alex said. “I’ll bet she really liked the part where the movie company shows up on the island and we all get jobs as extras.”

  “Sure she did,” Tierney said sarcastically, who had never thought much of Alex’s movie-company idea. “Particularly the part where we don’t explain how come the movie guys go away in all their fancy boats and leave us still marooned on the island.”

  So Alex said that was Hollywood for you, and Tierney said what did he know about Hollywood, and Libby finally had to bang on the table and yell to get them to shut up and let her start reading Mizzo’s letter.

  She had just read, “It’s a riot. I laughed until my broken ribs ached”—as usual, Mizzo started out constructively by mentioning what she liked best—when suddenly Wendy said, “Hey, listen. Somebody’s coming.”

  As soon as Libby stopped reading, they all could hear it, the rusty squeak of the iron staircase as someone climbed up toward the Treehouse.

  “Gillian, maybe?” Wendy asked, but Libby shook her head. None of the family ever came up to the Treehouse.

  The creaking noise went around the trunk, getting closer and closer, and then someone was on the landing, pushing the door open—and then standing there in the doorway. It was G.G.

  It was hard to believe. After seeing him over and over again in imagination the way he had looked that last day, on the floor of his room, it was hard to believe that he was actually standing there looking just like his normal self. His wide, blunt-looking face was just the way it had always been, and even his halfway threatening smile seemed unchanged. And as they all sat there staring, speechless with surprise, the smile widened.

  “Hey, you lucky people,” he said. “Look who’s back.”

  “Wha—wha—wha?” Alex was beginning to stutter, when Wendy pulled herself together and interrupted.

  “Well, HI!, G.G.,” she said, with her best TV-hostess smile. “Where did you come from?”

  “Yeah,” Tierney said. “I thought you were living up in Chico now.”

  G.G. took off his backpack and sat down. “I’m back,” he said. He took out his notebook and kept his eyes on it as he went on. “I’m back with my dad. He got out of the clinic last week, and I came back to live with him. He’s—he’s all right now. He hasn’t had a drink in six weeks. Besides, it was no big deal. I just had this little concussion from hitting my head on something when I fell down. Well, yeah, he knocked me down. See, he told me not to use the phone because he thought I was going to call the police or my mom or something, so when he caught me calling you guys, he blew his top. But we’re getting along great now. So, hey. Let’s get started. Who’s reading?”

  So they went on with the meeting. For the first few minutes G.G. was quieter and more polite than usual, but before the workshop was over, he was pretty much back to normal—making sarcastic comments and laughing harder at things that were embarrassing than things that were funny. And when Libby asked him if he wanted to read, he said he didn’t have anything ready but he was working on another war story and he’d have it ready to read next time.

  Next time. The thought gave Libby a sinking feeling and, looking around at the others, she could tell that they were feeling pretty much the same way. None of them said anything, but it was easy to tell what they were thinking.

  G.G. left early. “I’m outta here,” he said, getting up suddenly and putting on his backpack. “I got to get home a little early because my dad and I are going out to dinner. See ya.” Then he went out and down the stairs, leaving the door open.

  Tierney got up, closed the door, leaned against it, and groaned. “Okay, you dudes. You been breaking the Ten Commandments, or what?”

  Wendy looked shocked. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean somebody must have done something really evil to deserve this.”

  Alex’s face was twitching, and he looked really angry. “It’s no joke, Laurent,” he told Tierney. “We have to do something to get rid of him. It’s been so—so great without him. So now we have to go back to old Gary the Ghoul throwing his weight around and entertaining himself by tormenting everybody. I think what we ought to do is vote him out of the workshop. Oh, I know it won’t stick while we’re still meeting here, unless somebody wants to take up karate. But once Mizzo is back and we start meeting at school again, we can tell her we’ve voted him out and I’ll bet she’ll go along with it. You know how big she is on democracy.”

  “Yeah,” Tierney said, nodding thoughtfully.

  But Wendy looked worried. “I don’t know. I kind of hate to do that. Don’t you think that maybe if we let him stay in, he’ll kind of change? Like, it seemed to me he’s changed a little bit already. You know, like today I noticed that sometimes when he was doing that look, you know, the way he does …” Wendy pulled her eyebrows together and curled up one side of her mouth, which made everyone laugh because there was no way Wendy was going to look anything like G.G. “I know,” she went on, smiling ruefully. “But like, I was just noticing today that when he did that—it looks mean, all right, but underneath it’s more like …” She stopped and frowned thoughtfully. “Scared?” she asked.

  Libby nodded hard. “Yes,” she said. “Scared. I thought so too. That’s really funny, because I thought that same thing a long time ago.”

  No one said anything else for quite a while. Finally Tierney said, “What do you think? You think his dad is really going to stay off the sauce?”

  Alex shrugged. “Who knows. Mostly they don’t, I guess. G.G. was talking like he believed it, but I’ll bet …”

  There was another long pause. Libby was thinking about the story G.G. wrote called “Eric.” About the boy who waited and waited for something terrible, not ever knowing when it was going to happen or how bad it would be. “Remember that story he wrote …?” she started to say, but then she stopped because the way the others were nodding, she could tell they were already remembering.

  “Well,” Wendy said, “what I want to say is—I mean, like, I know it wouldn’t be easy but …” She got that far before Tierney slapped her on the back so hard that what she was going to say turned into a startled gasp.

  “So what?” Tierney said. “EASY is not necessarily where it’s at. Right?”

  Libby was the first to repeat it, and Wendy was next, as soon as she got her breath back. Alex was the last, and he groaned a little first, but finally even he managed it.

  “Right!” Alex said, with a sigh. “So it’s unanimous. Don’t ask me why, but it is. Looks like our next collaboration is going to be ‘The Return of G.G.’ Do you think we can write it?”

  Libby thought maybe they could.

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