The witch?
The fox twitched.
But it was just an old stick!
Why on earth had the enemy called it a witch?
Will took the book from his mother and flipped the pages. “Looks like boring junk to me. But if Grandpa wants it, you should take it.”
Frida had had enough. She refused to let the O’Pinions take any book from this library. If they wanted to borrow the book, that’d be different, but they didn’t seem like the borrowing type. She reached to the nearest shelf, grabbed a heavy bookend, and threw it down hard on the floor. Desdemona shrieked, and Will jumped. The book fell from his arms, and Frida dived for it.
“What in the . . . what is happening?” Will shouted, backing against the wall.
Ha-ha! Frida thought:
The fox was so stealth
so sharp
and slick
that nobody could even see her trick!
Desdemona pushed off the bookcase and ran for the book. “Will! Shut the door!”
“Gladly,” Will shouted, slamming the door as he ran out of the room.
Frida shoved open the window. “SAL!” she screamed, and slung the book outside as far as she could. Even though she’d tossed hard . . . the book didn’t land very far away.
Desdemona hurdled through the window.
Too bad we’re only on the first floor, Frida thought as her assailant landed on the ground with a heavy thud. Desdemona grinned gleefully and clapped her hand down on the book.
She stood, beaming, and ran her fingernails over the cover. “Frank Problim and his funny little magic tricks. His funny little secrets. Daddy will know how to find the treasure.”
Frida shouted:
“It’s not your treasure,
you villainous clown!
Throw it back right now,
or the fox comes down!”
But Desdemona totally ignored her. Frida thought:
Was it a secret?
A story?
A chest full of gold?
What wonderful secrets did this old mansion hold?
Frida tried to pull herself over the window to pounce. Desdemona O’Pinion was about to have a clever Problim on her hands (or on her shoulders)!
But then a long, green twist of ivy snapped around Desdemona’s ankle and pulled her to the ground. She dropped the book.
“What was that?” Desdemona shouted as she crab-crawled backward.
Sal’s Wrangling Ivy wrapped around the book and pulled it in a quick streak back through the yard. Back to Sal, who was watching from underneath a tree.
He picked up the book, dusted it off, and thanked the ivy. “I believe this belongs to us,” he said as he glared at Desdemona.
Desdemona jumped to her feet. “Your family and its dark, terrible magic. It’s time to end all that.” She stomped away. “Rue Baby! Will! We are leaving. Now.”
As she stomped away, Sal looked back at the library window, where a tiny pair of pointy orange ears peeked over the sill. “Well done, Fox,” he said, with a salute and a smile.
The doorbell rang at the Problim mansion, which gave Sundae a quick reprieve from her guests. She was grateful for the break. Toot was a much better host anyway. The guests were having a ball, but Sundae’s voice was rusty now from leading sing-alongs. She opened the door, expecting another lady from the neighborhood.
Instead, she found a boy about her age.
“Oh,” he said. “Hey.”
She blinked as if he might disappear. When she thought about neighborhood children, it hadn’t occurred to her that there might also be a neighborhood teenager. Or that he might be quite adorable. “Hello.”
The boy’s hair was black and pulled back. He wore a hoodie, jeans, and scuffed up sneakers. He held up his phone. “Listen, this is really embarrassing, but I’m Alex Wong. Noah’s brother.”
“Right!” she said a little bit too excitedly. Then she frowned. “Why’s that embarrassing? I adore the name Alex. Alexander the Great!”
His cheeks flushed. “More like Alexander the Mediocre.”
Sundae smiled again. “There are lots of great Alexes. Conquerors, explorers, kings, wrestlers!”
“Actually, I don’t mean my name is embarrassing.” He grinned. “I mean the reason I’m here is embarrassing. Thing is . . . Noah called and said he’s stuck in a room.” Alex grinned sheepishly. “He’s a dork. He can’t help it. I don’t know how it happened.”
“We’re all dorks around here,” Sundae said. “And I have a feeling he got stuck there because of my sister. Long story. Just follow me. Oh!” She whirled on him just as he was about to step inside. “I’m Sundae.”
“Like the day of the week?”
“Born on the day of the week.” She smiled. “Spelled like the ice cream.”
Alex smiled. “Cool.” And then his face froze as he heard his mother laugh in the other room. “Listen, Sundae, if we could bypass my mom, that would be super.”
So they snuck up the staircase, just in time to see Sal pick the lock of the room with his needle-nose pliers.
“Congrats,” Sal shouted to the room as he reattached the pliers to his sleeve. “You all win.”
Carley-Rue ran out first, yelling for her mom.
“She left already!” Sal hollered after her.
“Aww, we were so close to getting out on our own!” Noah said. “Another hour and we’d have had it!”
Noah high-fived his brother. “Thanks for coming, Alex! I tried to pick the lock like you said, but I’m just not good at it . . .”
Sal shrugged. “I can teach you to pick a lock. Or my sister Thea can. She’s amazing with locks.”
“Yeah? Great! Thea seems cool.” Noah smiled. He looked up at his brother. “I guess I’ll stay until Mom leaves, then?”
“Glad you found a way out, dude.” Alex ruffled his brother’s hair. And then he looked at Sundae. It was just a glance, just a second when their eyes locked. All he said was, “See you around, Ice-Cream Sundae?”
But it made Sundae feel as happy as springtime in the swamp. Like that moment when little yellow mud-roses burst up through the mushy ground after a long winter. “Hope so, Alex the Great,” she whispered back.
Sal chuckled as Alex left. “He made you blush.”
She gave him a playful push. “Desdemona left.”
Sal grinned. “I noticed. I’ll take over games up here then,” Sal told her. “Mona is . . . busy.”
“Remember,” Sundae said as she made for the stairs. “Normal games. Not Problim fun.”
“Of course.” Sal nodded. And then he turned to his guests and smiled. “Now if you’ll follow me back outside, I’ll show you our circus spiders!”
Elemental
Violet followed Wendell around Thea’s Room of Constellations. For the first time, she really did feel like an astronaut. “If my aunt sees me here, I’ll get in big trouble. She’ll ground me forever.”
“Which means you’d stay in your room like you always d-do?”
Violet grinned. “True.”
Wendell showed Violet the riddle. She mumbled one section aloud:
“Mr. Biv will show the way,
Where widows watch is where he stays.
Nestled there inside the beast,
Is the first clue for which you seek.”
Violet’s eyes danced with an idea.
Sal walked in just as Wendell shouted, “B-brilliant!”
“What’s brilliant?” Sal held up the purple book. “I need to talk to you about something.”
“It can wait. I think Violet cracked part of the clue!”
Violet nodded proudly. Her voice crackled again through the speaker of her helmet. “Mr. Biv—Roy G. Biv—that’s seven letters for all the colors in a rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet—like me!”
“Of course it’s seven letters,” Sal said with a laugh. He tucked the book against his side. He was fairly certain he could trust Violet O’Pinion. But still
. . . she was an O’Pinion. He didn’t want to give too much away just yet.
“So now we look for rainbows.” Violet smiled.
Sal nodded. “That sounds like something Sundae would suggest. When we first moved in, the sun made rainbows down in the library. They were all over the place, though . . .”
Violet applauded. “Then let’s go look!”
As Thea pedaled back to the front door, guests were leaving. She ditched her bike behind the gate and jumped behind a large sculpture. Ichabod crouched beside her. She assumed people would be leaving angry.
But the guests were actually smiling. Laughing, even.
Mayor Wordhouse was still wiping icing from his face. Someone high-fived him for his extra spin down the stair slide. Mr. Larson was red-faced with laughter. His clothes were wet, and soapy suds clung to his face like a Santa beard. Melody walked beside him, and told her dad (and her dog, Xena) everything she’d loved about the Problim children.
“They’re funny!” she said. “And really weird but in a good way. And when you’re around them, you feel like it’s okay to be weird too.”
“Around here, it’s fine to be a freak,” Noah said.
Alabama wiped a swipe of icing off his forehead and licked it. “And it’s okay if you aren’t a freak too. Like, you can just be kind of quiet and boring and it’s still okay.”
“You’re not boring,” Noah told him. “Then again, maybe everybody’s kind of boring compared to the Problims . . .”
THOMP.
Thea heard the human catapult release.
“WAHHH!”
And Thea saw Bertha arch through the air, screaming with joy. The parachute popped, and Bertha laughed. She made double peace signs as she floated down to the ground.
“They have done a lot with the house,” Mrs. Wong said, draping her arm around Noah’s shoulders. “It reminds me of the stories I’ve heard the mayor tell about how the Problim mansion used to be.”
Noah nodded and looked back. “They really aren’t so bad.”
Mrs. Timberwhiff was still eating her cake with a fork as she walked away. “I’m not convinced I want them as neighbors. But at least none of us died terrible deaths while inside. I really need the name of their caterer.”
Inside, Thea heard Wendell and Sal talking in the library. She ran in and found Sal, Wendell . . . and Violet.
“Oh,” Thea said as the little astronaut whirled around.
Violet beamed. “You’re Thea! Hi!”
Thea waved shyly.
“Th-there you are!” Wendell said. “Where’ve you been? V-Violet might have an idea about the clue.”
Thea’s heart sank a little bit. “Great.”
“The clue has to do with rainbows,” he told her. “Sometimes all the glass in this house catches the l-light and makes rainbows.”
“But,” Violet’s crackly voice added, “if it’s in a clue, the rainbow must be pretty obvious. Pretty big.”
“Wait!” Thea pulled Theodora Problim back out from the corner and tried to position her the same way she’d been when they first arrived. “This statue was here in the library the first day we came, and Sal moved it. Because it reflected too much light, which gave him a happiness headache. I don’t remember where Grandpa used to have it exactly. But on the first day, her lantern made a rainbow path! Do you remember? If we can remember exactly where Theodora was standing . . .”
Thea twisted the Theodora back and forth, but there was no sunlight to catch.
Sal sighed. “Should we break it? See if the treasure is inside Theodora’s lantern?”
“No!” Thea said, suddenly protective of Theodora and her light. “Besides, the clue also says it’s where widows watch. And widows watch the ocean. And Jeopardy.”
Violet giggled at Thea’s joke. Which made Thea smile, just a little.
“So . . . we’re still s-stumped,” Wendell said.
They stood in silence until someone began banging on a distant door. “Let. Me. OUT. Or bring me another cupcake, at least. I’m hungry. And maybe a fly for Fiona? And Sal, you will pay.”
“Oops. That reminds me,” Sal said. “I locked Mona in the closet while we had company. I’ll go get her in a sec. First, look at this. This is the book Desdemona tried to ‘check out’ from the library. There’s a bone-stick in the cover! And . . . Frida says Desdemona was calling it a witch.”
Thea’s eyebrows scrunched together in concentration. “I don’t understand.”
“I don’t either,” Sal admitted. “But I did a quick scan of the library and found this . . .” He held up another book with a hole in the cover. “I think there was a bone-stick here too. Grandpa said there were three in the library, remember?”
Thea’s heart sank. “But how will we find it now? Where did it go?”
“I . . . don’t know. But check out the authors of the books.”
The Seven Ancient Elements by Frank Cornelius Armadillo Problim and . . .
“Theodora Problim!” Thea yelled. “She’s the statue girl! She was a Thursday, and she was a leader, and . . . she was an author!”
The other book, also written by Frank and Theodora, was called Rare and Fabulous Plants of the Carolinas.
“Grandpa was an author too, apparently.” Sal passed the books to Wendell. “You’re the mega-reader. Want to skim it and see if you find anything?”
Wendell nodded. Thea noticed her twin’s hand shaking a little when he took the book. She could feel the anxiety there. Maybe because there could be important clues hidden in those pages. Or because they’d found another bone-stick. But also, more likely, because Wendell was overwhelmed holding something that belonged to his grandfather. Because it was another book shared between them.
Thump, bump. It’s okay, Thea heartspoke. You’ve got this.
She waited a steady second. Thump, bump. And Wendell’s heart—and the heart of his twin—settled into something more like excitement.
The Wishing Captain
Thea stood behind Sal as he opened the closet door, which emitted a long, low squeak. The flytrap was still in there. Mona was not.
“Oh no.” Thea shook her head. “She found a way out. Now she’ll come for you.”
Thea saw her brother swallow visibly. “But there is no way out!” He stepped into the closet to grab the flytrap. “It’s a closet, not a passage—” Sal grabbed his flashlight and held it out like a sword. “Mona!” he called. “Reveal yourself!”
With a wild scream, Mona jumped down from the top of the closet—eyes shining, arms spread wide. She looked like a deadly—but beautiful—zombiefreak, Thea thought. Sal’s own scream of terror ended quickly when Mona slammed into him.
“Fiona needs a snack,” Mona said as she stood, narrowing her eyes at Sal. “Next time you put me in a closet, I’ll feed her your fingers. One by one.”
Sal’s voice was muffled by the floor. “I might as well search this closet again for a clue while I’m in here.” He pulled a magnifying glass from his belt. “Go check on Wendell, Thea?”
Wendell-Thea. Wendell-Thea. Maybe people did say that a lot.
After sending Violet back across the zip line (she insisted on going alone), Wendell had zoomed back to the library to look for more clues. He looked most relaxed among the books, Thea thought. That was his happy place, his perfect world. He’d tucked into the corner of a plush old couch holding Frank Problim’s books.
Thea sat down beside him, curling her legs up pretzel-style in the seat. Wendell passed her a bag of popcorn he’d been munching on—a spicy chocolate flavor he’d concocted for the party. He was speed-reading, but other than a few “hmms” or an “oh . . . cool!” he hadn’t found anything worth sharing yet.
Sundae sorted party leftovers on bookshelves, using the Dewey decimal system to organize each snack. “Chocolate cookies in section 398.2—the fairy tales! Because wouldn’t it be fun to live in a castle made of cookie dough? I think so! And these wontons belong in the mystery section. Because I don’t know wha
t’s inside them and they smell . . . like dead fish, a little.”
With a grunt, Toot tapped his tiny heel against Ichabod’s side, and they rode over to Sundae. The baby farted a squishy #1425 as he took one.
“I made those,” Mona said, marching back into the room.
Sundae slapped the wonton out of Toot’s hand. “Let’s move them to the horror section, then. Hello, treasure hunters! Anybody need a snack? I’ll go get the rest, then I’ll be back!”
Frida applauded Sundae’s rhyme.
“There’s no treasure here to hunt besides these sticks,” Thea said. “We’ve already looked everywhere. Unless Wendell finds a new clue in the book or proof that we’re Problims . . . we’re sunk.”
“I’m w-working on it!”
Thea stared at Theodora’s statue as if she might have some answers about the treasure Grandpa had stolen. Hidden, she thought. He would not steal a thing. Sal still thought they should smash the statue. Or at least break it in two. He even tried to coax Frida closer to it, so she might knock it over “accidentally” and he could see if the treasure was inside.
“Now here’s s-something,” Wendell said, tapping a page from the book about plants. “There’s a rare tree that used to grow in Lost Cove called a Wondering W-Willow Birch—white bark, like a birch tree. But it only grows near water. The branches have been dowsing rods.”
“Cool!” Sal cried, grabbing the book from his brother. “I’ve read about those!”
Thea sighed. “Will someone tell me what it is?”
“A dowsing rod finds water,” Sal said. “And this tree here . . . the book says it’s a legendary tree, that there were stories of dowsing rods leading the adventurer to enchanted rivers. Think Grandpa went looking for one?”
“Or,” Thea said, leaning close, “do you think he found one? That sounds like the wood on the bone-sticks, doesn’t it?”
“He could have painted those to look that way,” Sal said. “I’ve tried to tell you, Grandpa was—”
“Crazy!” Thea said. “You tell us all the time. But he was also brilliant. What if he left the pieces of a dowsing rod so we’d put them together? So we would find something important.”
The Problim Children Page 12