by Brat
XO, Ellie
Rhyme sighed, feeling a mix of happy, sad, and jealous as she read and reread the note. On the front of the postcard, a picture of a log cabin next to a shimmering lake looked exactly like summer was supposed to. Ellie had also included, in the envelope, a picture of her bunkmates wearing war paint and forest green handkerchiefs, their arms around each other’s shoulders.
They looked to be having so much fun—and all getting along. Before school let out, the Chicken Girls and PowerSurge had put aside their longtime rivalry to dance together at the Spring Fling. The postcard made them look like old friends. And how about Ellie getting back into dance? She had dropped out last year, and Rhyme missed her best friend on the dance floor. With a big grin, she remembered their first collaboration, to “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” at the neighborhood holiday party. They couldn’t have been more than seven or eight. But it seemed like a million years ago.
Rhyme’s reveries were interrupted by a phone call. Seeing who it was, she picked up immediately.
“Birdie?”
“Rhyme? Hi!” What sounded like explosions erupted in the background. “Sorry I missed your call last week,” Birdie said. “It’s been a crazy summer.”
“Where are you?” said Rhyme. “I can barely hear you.”
“My bad. I’m still with my parents in Texas,” she said. “There’s all kinds of family drama happening down here, and of course baby bro left me all alone to deal with it.”
“T. K. How, uh, is he?” She hoped Birdie couldn’t hear the desperation in her voice.
Birdie laughed. “Way better than I am. Cruising around LA and going to fancy parties with Flash’s dad. But I’m sure you know that already. Haven’t you guys been talking?”
Not knowing what to say, Rhyme tried to change the topic. “Is everything all right in Texas? I mean, with your family?”
“Um, it’s—hold on one second …” Rhyme could hear a man’s voice yelling, then Birdie scraping her chair away from the table. Rhyme heard her say, “Please, can you guys not do this here?” Then some muffled, angry voices. “Hey, sorry. I had to step away from them. Texas is horrible, and it has nothing to do with Texas,” she said. “It’s my parents.” Rhyme fell silent, hearing the worry in her friend’s voice. “They’ll fight about anything. Sometimes it’s about money, or how to deal with my cousins. They’ll even fight about what to eat for dinner. Just now? They got into a screaming match over whether or not to put sugar in their coffee.”
“Oh no, Birdie … I’m so sorry,” Rhyme said.
“It’s fine, I just —I’m coming! Jeez!—Rhyme? I have to go.”
“Go, go, it’s fi—”
“I said, I’m coming!” With a click, Birdie hung up. Rhyme wondered how T. K. was handling all of this. It sounded awful. Secretly, though, Rhyme had to admit she was glad there might be another reason T. K. wasn’t calling her. Even if she hated the reason itself.
Rhyme felt Reggie brush against her leg. This past week, their walks together had taken them farther and farther, traversing nearly every street in Attaway. She fastened his leash, and out they went. Past rows of cheerful clapboard houses, white and yellow and powder blue in the fading light. Up the little hill that gave way to the town, where a few cars idled outside Junior’s Diner, and an elderly clerk closed up the bank. In the alley behind Allen’s Arcade, Reggie’s ears perked up even higher than usual—as if he knew what Rhyme was really after. Each night, she kept her eyes peeled for two silhouettes in the distance.
It had been over a week since the break-in at Mrs. Simpson’s and the twins had vanished into thin air. Rhyme couldn’t stop thinking about them. She kept seeing them out of the corner of her eye. In the library, outside the movie theater, beneath the flagpole. But when she turned to look, they were never there. Every time this happened, Rhyme said to herself, “Ha no way,” the paltry text that T. K. had written last week. She still hadn’t responded. Much as she tried, there seemed to be nothing to say.
As she and Reggie doubled back toward Mrs. Simpson’s, Rhyme’s phone buzzed in her pocket. Could it be him? She decided not to check. It was probably Harmony bragging about her latest punch line, or Ms. Sharpe telling her to come in early tomorrow. By the time she got to the front yard, Rhyme was practically sprinting. While Reggie helped to fertilize the rosebushes, Rhyme stole a glance at her phone.
(2) New Messages from T. K.
Impatiently—and hopefully—Rhyme opened the texts. One was a snapshot of T. K. in front of the HOLLYWOOD sign and the other: “Sup, Rhyme?” That was it? She tried not to overreact. At least it was better than “Ha no way.” But, still. The text seemed so friendly, so impersonal. Maybe it hadn’t even been T. K.’s idea—and Birdie had put him up to it. Didn’t he have so much more to tell her? Sometimes, T. K. could be such a … boy.
Reggie yelped from the base of the elm tree. He had finished doing his business and was ready to be picked up and fed. “Yeah, yeah, I’m coming,” Rhyme said, pocketing her phone with disappointment. She knelt down to pick him up, stopping to scratch him behind the ears. That made him flop over to have his belly scratched. Dogs were so easy to understand. You knew exactly what they wanted and didn’t want. “C’mon, boy,” Rhyme said, hoisting the terrier up.
That’s when she saw it: a faint, worn heart carved into the bark of the tree in front of Mrs. Simpson’s. Rhyme must have passed the tree at least a thousand times before—it was a large, gnarled oak that took up most of Mrs. Simpson’s front yard—but she never noticed the carving. Rhyme put Reggie back down and traced her finger along the faded grooves, a heart encircling two initials: “B. C. + V. P.”
Mrs. Simpson’s first name was Anne, her late husband’s was Fred, and their daughter’s was Leslie. Nobody with any of those initials. So whoever “B. C.” and “V. P.” were, she doubted they were Simpsons. Which meant it might’ve been carved by somebody else. Somebody who lived in the house a long time ago. As she pressed her hand to the knotted wood, Rhyme remembered Conrad’s voice….
… Finding out if this is really Grandma Bea’s place.
CHAPTER 7
“Here you go,” Ms. Sharpe said, dropping another dusty stack in front of Rhyme. Old editions of the Attaway Appeal, from the sixties. “Would you be a dear and sift through these?” Ms. Sharpe often made her directives sound like favors. “Why don’t we organize them chronologically and photocopy any coverage of the Attaway sit-ins? We’d be remiss not to feature the civil rights movement in our ‘Through the Ages’ retrospective, don’t you think? But how do you choose? I mean, there’s the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act, obviously … Then there’s Brown v. Board of Education or Loving v. Virginia … But you’ve studied all this in school, yes?”
“Definitely,” Rhyme said. Truthfully, she didn’t know much on the subject. She must not have sounded too convincing, because Ms. Sharpe launched into a whole explanation of some ancient court case. “See, back in the sixties, interracial marriage was illegal. And there was this couple in Virginia: Richard and Mildred Loving. That was actually their last name, dear. Anyway, they were madly in love and petitioned the courts …” Rhyme knew if she didn’t put an end to this soon, Ms. Sharpe would go on all afternoon. Plus, there was something else she wanted to ask.
“Hey, Ms. Sharpe,” she interrupted. “Is there any way to look through the archives for a specific keyword or, I dunno, a person’s name?”
Ms. Sharpe stopped talking and looked at her suspiciously. Thinking fast, Rhyme said, “I just want to make sure I can follow up on some of these leads.” She pointed to the papers. “If I were to search some of the names mentioned in these stories, maybe we could find even more stories. For the retrospective, I mean.” Ms. Sharpe still looked skeptical. Rhyme added, “I mean, who knows? Maybe Mildred and Richard Loving visited Attaway at some point.”
That did it. Ms. Sharpe looked up excitedly. “I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist the pull of history!” she said. Across the li
brary, Rhyme saw Matilda purposely not watching them, her jaw clenched. “I just love the initiative you’re taking, Rhyme.”
Crack!
Rhyme looked up as Matilda snapped her pencil.
“Come with me,” said Ms. Sharpe. Rhyme followed her to an ancient desktop computer hidden away behind the copier, in the back of the periodical room. Ms. Sharpe booted it up. “This boy doesn’t get much use anymore,” she said, stroking the monitor like a favorite pet. “Of course, we haven’t digitized all the archives, so your search may be incomplete. But it’s a fine place to start.” Ms. Sharpe patted her shoulder encouragingly. “This is just perfect,” she said. “After the fair, you can upload the rest of the files!”
Rhyme managed a pained smile. “Great!”
For the next hour, Rhyme sat at the old computer, transfixed. She was sure that “B.C.” was Meg and Conrad’s grandma—Grandma Bea. But … Bea who? On the grainy, off-white screen, the cursor blinked and blinked, as if daring Rhyme to take a guess. First she typed in “Bea.” No results. “Bee,” in case it was like the bug; again, nothing. Maybe it was short for … “Beatrice” brought up over two dozen results—Beatrice Gluck, class of ’53; Beatrice Magoo ’74; Beatrice M. Juniper ’83—but nobody with a C last name. Stumped, Rhyme tried Mrs. Simpson’s address, the initials “B.C.” and variations on “V.P.” None of them yielded a single helpful item.
After an hour, Rhyme took a break from her scavenger hunt. The air in the periodical room was stuffy and stale, smelling somewhere between an encyclopedia and an armpit. Fruit flies circled the trash can. Down the hall, Ms. Sharpe hummed a Broadway tune. Feeling a little faint, Rhyme lay down on the shag carpeting, and felt her eyelids flutter. She checked her phone absentmindedly: a message from dad about Harmony’s day on set, and how the studio audience went wild. She scrolled down to T. K.’s messages. “Ha no way.” It still stung. Her eyelids grew heavy. She heard a train rumbling, the sandy desert spreading out before her eyes, and was about to fall asleep when …
“Another tough day in the office, huh?” A hazy shape above Rhyme’s head resolved to a scrunched-up face. Matilda, again. “If nap time is over, we actually have work to do on the retrospective.”
Matilda looked over at the computer, which was displaying zero results for the search term, “Bea+1960s+Attaway+C.”
“What are you looking for anyway?” Matilda asked.
“Nothing,” Rhyme said, getting up and closing out her search tabs.
“Ms. Sharpe didn’t seem to think so.”
“Why do you care?”
“Because while you’re off on some wild-goose chase,” Matilda said, “I’m sorting through all the old newspapers.”
Rhyme got up and retrieved the stack of papers. “Happy? I will make sure I spend the rest of the day as bored and miserable as possible.”
Matilda sneered at her. “You know, some of us actually want to be here,” she said.
“I do know. It’s weird.”
“You’re always getting things you don’t even want,” Matilda snarled.
“What does that mean?” Rhyme asked. It sounded like Matilda had something specific in mind—but what? All this bitterness over a lousy summer job? It didn’t make any sense.
“Is this who you’re searching for?” Matilda stood over Rhyme’s phone, open to her conversation with T. K. “Something to do with that boyfriend of yours?”
“That’s not what I was doing,” Rhyme said, grabbing her phone and flipping it over. “Plus, he’s not even my boyfriend. At least, I don’t think.” Rhyme wasn’t quite sure why she had shared this with Matilda, who was probably the least sympathetic ear.
“That’s why you’ve been moping around all summer?” Matilda said. Rhyme looked up at her. Something in Matilda’s expression conveyed genuine concern. Finally, maybe, she’d broken through.
“He went to LA for the summer and didn’t even tell me until the last second,” Rhyme said, Matilda regarding her curiously. “I’m all alone here.”
“Oh no,” Matilda said, and Rhyme agreed “yeah” before she realized Matilda was being sarcastic.
“Get a grip,” Matilda said. “And I mean that sincerely. You’re going to ruin your whole summer because a boy you like isn’t in town?” Rhyme didn’t say anything. “Lord, you set feminism back decades,” Matilda said. “Betty Friedan would be so disappointed.”
“What did you say?” Rhyme said, her eyes suddenly wide.
“Have you never read The Feminine Mystique?” Matilda scoffed. “Super famous feminist book? We’ve definitely come a long way since then, but I guess your gender values are more consistent with the fifties….”
“Hey!” Rhyme didn’t know for sure—but that sounded like an insult.
“Here,” said Matilda, pulling a white hardcover book with orange lettering from a nearby shelf and handing it to Rhyme. “Why don’t you give it a whirl?” Rhyme held up the book, a library copy wrapped in cellophane. On the spine, it said: THE FEMININE MYSTIQUE—FRIEDAN, B.
“Bea isn’t Bea!” Rhyme said, standing up in place. “Bea is B!”
Matilda looked like she was witnessing a mental breakdown. “I don’t have time for this.” She sighed. “I’ll be in the other room when you’ve come to your senses.”
Rhyme raced to the computer. Her head was buzzing. For the first time since the Spring Fling, when she’d snuck into the school dance dressed in a chicken costume, she felt exhilarated. She set her fingers on the keyboard, and changed the date range to 1960–1970. In the back of her mind, she realized that even if B was an initial, it could stand for anything—Brenda, Barbara, Bellatrix … But she had a good feeling about this one. In the search window, she typed “Betty+C.” Right away, a record popped up for the Attaway Horticultural Society, and four names down she found it:
BETTY CASSIDY, CLASS OF 1967
Rhyme still had no clue where the twins were hiding. But now she was one step closer to finding out who they were.
CHAPTER 8
As the sun set, Rhyme pedaled furiously around town on her single-speed bike, looking for any sign of the red station wagon. She sped to Attaway High, where Betty must have gone when she lived at Mrs. Simpson’s. Maybe the twins would be breaking into the school? Was there an alarm? What if they’d been picked up by the cops?
There was no one in the parking lot when she got there, sweaty and panting. She stopped and walked her bike around the building. It was strange being at school during the summer. The breezeways seemed cavernous, the classrooms eerie. Dark windows and padlocked doors. Perfect silence. It was a ghost town, Rhyme thought, as she walked beneath the arches by the fountain. It was almost a year ago that T. K. had flagged her down after the pep rally, with something to give her. As usual, he’d come up empty-handed.
The twins weren’t at Allen’s Arcade, either. That place was sort of depressing now, too. Earlier that year, the girls had tried to save it from bankruptcy after Rhyme’s friend Monica’s grandmother passed away. But now it was owned by Robin Robbins, a music producer who acted like she was too good for Attaway—yet always seemed to lurk around town. Robin hadn’t been seen in months, and good riddance. Rhyme rode on past the supermarket, the florist, and the hardware store. No station wagon. For a single day the twins had lit up her summer like fireflies, and now they were gone for good. So much for solving a mystery.
Defeated, Rhyme parked her bike outside Junior’s. Most mornings, she spent her lunch money on one of Junior’s famous “Oh Mama” omelettes, surrounded by old-timers from Attaway, Millwood, and sometimes as far away as Crown Lake with nothing better to do. Tonight, the café was nearly empty. Rhyme took a seat at the counter, where Junior was polishing coffee mugs.
“Want the regular?” the old man asked. “Omelette and a strawberry shake?” Rhyme nodded and smiled. Many years ago, Junior had been Attaway’s star point guard on the basketball team. Now he was gray and a little hunched, but still a formidable figure. Though he was known to be gruff, he se
emed to have a sweet spot for Rhyme—as if he’d known her in another lifetime. “Coming right up,” Junior said, waddling away to the kitchen.
Rhyme placed her phone on the counter, staring at the dark screen face-to-face. She still hadn’t replied to T. K. Last summer, the two of them had often combined allowances to sneak a grilled cheese at Junior’s before dinner. Usually she only got in a single bite before he wolfed down the sandwich. By then, at least, he was too full to eat all the french fries—which Rhyme happily devoured. Back then, everything was easy and uncomplicated between them. While all of their friends were away for the summer, Rhyme and T. K. biked across town, tossed a Frisbee at Scout Field, and learned to do backflips in Rhyme’s swimming pool. What could she text him now? A selfie from Junior’s seemed so silly and insignificant next to the HOLLYWOOD sign. With a sigh, she put her phone away.
Rhyme pivoted on her stool to take in the scene. An older gentleman at the counter reading a book by Ernest Hemingway. A young mother, spooning baby food to her newborn at the middle booth. And over in the far corner, some unknown entity hidden behind one of Junior’s oversized menus. “One shake,” the old man said, as he came back through the double doors with Rhyme’s pink dessert. “Don’t drink it too fast or you’ll get a headache,” he told her, grinning ear to ear. Rhyme dunked her straw in the shake when—ding!—the doorbell rang, and somebody breezed behind her. Swiveling on her stool, she followed the figure out of the corner of her eye. Walking briskly to the end of the diner, he took a seat opposite the giant menu, which soon fell to the table to reveal …
“Meg?” Rhyme said to herself.
“What?” asked Junior.
“Nothing,” she said, getting up from the counter. She padded over to the last booth, where the twins were huddled in conversation. Before she could say anything, Conrad looked up.