by Natasha Lowe
“Do you feel all right, Lucy?” Mrs. Castor said. “You’re acting like you’ve got a brain freeze.”
“I’m just extremely happy,” Lucy said, thinking that some positive words of encouragement might make the sun come out. “I feel all sunny inside.”
“Oh, I’m so pleased,” Mrs. Castor gushed. “Honestly, you’re going to love having sisters.” She wrapped her arm around Lucy. “They’re going to look up to you and think you’re the most wonderful person in the world.”
Thomas Blackburn walked into the diner with his parents. He shot Lucy a sympathetic look as they sat down at a nearby booth, and she gave him a little wave.
“So, Lucy, we’ve been thinking,” Mr. Castor said, leaning across the table. “With two babies coming, we’re going to need to come up with a different sleeping arrangement.”
“I mean, they can sleep in our room for quite a while,” Lucy’s mom said. “But once they get bigger, they’re going to need a room of their own, and it’s just not fair to ask you to share with them both. One sister, maybe, but not two.”
“What about the linen cupboard?” Lucy said. “We could make it quite cozy for them. I’d help. We could paint it Sunburst Yellow, so it would be all bright and cheerful.”
“That might be a touch small for two girls,” Mrs. Castor said.
But not for two crocodiles, Lucy thought.
“So here’s the plan,” Mr. Castor said in a way too cheerful voice. “I’m going to move all the junk and stuff out of the attic and turn it into a special bedroom just for you. It’s tucked away under the eaves, so it would be nice and quiet and give you some big-sister privacy. There are windows, and I’ll put a proper floor down and carpet it to make it all nice and comfy.” Mr. Castor stopped talking for a moment and glanced at Mrs. Castor.
“I’ll make curtains for the windows, and we can pick out some pretty wallpaper,” Mrs. Castor said.
“What do you think, Lucy?” her dad asked.
This was just what Thomas had warned her about. She was getting moved to the attic like his cousin Adam. The dusty, spider filled creepy attic. They’d forget all about her, hidden away up there, just like poor Cinderella. Lucy glanced at Thomas, who was digging into a huge meringue filled with whipped cream. He shook his head slowly, as if to say, I told you so. This is what happens when twins come along.
“I think it’s never going to stop raining,” Lucy said, pushing her sundae glass away.
CHRISTMAS CAME IN A FLURRY of nor’easters. Mrs. Castor’s stomach was now so big she looked as if she had eaten two whole turkeys. Usually Lucy and her parents all went tobogganing together, but this year Mrs. Castor stayed snuggled inside, engrossed in the baby sweaters she was knitting. She was too tired to make Christmas cookies with Lucy, let alone attempt a snowman cake. And she forgot to get How the Grinch Stole Christmas! out of the library. This was a ritual in the Castor household. They always read The Grinch over the holidays, but when Lucy’s father dashed off to the library, every copy was already checked out.
It wasn’t all bad though. Lucy did have Rachel over twice for playdates. The girls made a rather successful memory cure for Mrs. Castor, who seemed to be forgetting everything these days, including where she had put the car keys. They stuffed a little cloth pouch full of dried rosemary (good for memory loss) and tucked one of Lucy’s special handwritten spells inside. Then following the directions in Nature’s Magic, Mrs. Castor placed the sachet under her pillow that night. Much to Lucy’s delight, after breathing in the magical rosemary scent her mother actually remembered where she had put the car keys and that she had promised to make Lucy pancakes for breakfast!
The girls also turned Lucy’s bedroom into an enchanted forest, which was easy enough to do, because it already looked rather forestlike and magical with all Lucy’s nests. Plus, it was a great place to hide from the baby reminders scattered about the house. The one perfect petunia moment came when Chloe arrived the day before Christmas, bouncing with joy because she had been offered a place at Prachets next fall, and bearing a special gift for Lucy.
“Open it up now,” Chloe said, the glass stud twinkling in her nose.
Lucy ripped off the paper and shook out a green dress decorated with delicate felt leaves. “My own elf princess dress,” she screamed, jumping up and down. She held it up for her parents to admire. “It’s just like yours, Chloe. I love it!”
That evening Lucy went through the ritual of hanging up her stocking and leaving cookies and milk out for Santa. Right before bed she snuck downstairs and grabbed a little butter cookie for her gnome, which she left on the floor of her cupboard. Lucy didn’t mention this to her parents, because she had a feeling her mother wouldn’t approve. She wasn’t allowed to leave food lying around in her room, since most of the mice in Hawthorne seemed to know that the Castors’ house was a lovely warm place to live in the winter. And Mr. Castor spent a great deal of time catching these furry visitors and releasing them outside again.
It was always difficult for Lucy to fall asleep on Christmas Eve, and she lay awake for a long time, listening for sounds against the thick, muffled quiet of the night. When a soft scratching broke the stillness, Lucy sat up in bed, holding her breath and staring through the dark at her cupboard. She imagined her gnome, crouched beneath her red sweater, munching away on the butter cookie.
“Merry Christmas,” Lucy whispered, too scared to get out of bed and check. But first thing in the morning, she raced over to her closet, thrilled to discover that the cookie had indeed vanished. Lucy didn’t tell her parents about this, because they might insist on putting a trap down, and what if her gnome got one of his curly-toed shoes caught in it? He would never come back again.
So she added Gnomes like butter cookies to her list of magical signs and then tucked the secret away in her head, next to Chloe’s dinosaur footprint. Chloe’s footprint was the first important secret Lucy had actually managed to keep. Secrets tended to leak out of her like juices bubbling from a pie, and Lucy had had to press her hands over her mouth many times to stop this one escaping. Much as she wanted to tell her dad about the footprint, she knew it wasn’t her secret to share.
For the rest of vacation week Lucy wore her elf costume, spending most of her time in her enchanted forest bedroom. She rearranged her nests, drew a gnome village in her notebook, and gave her oil lamp a vigorous rubbing, just in case a genie should appear. Lucy already knew what she was going to wish for: a visit to Neverland with Peter Pan, so she wouldn’t have to get any older. But however hard she rubbed, there was no genie, and she couldn’t hide in her bedroom forever or stop school from starting up. And now they were deep into January, and it was impossible to keep on avoiding the fact that these babies would soon be here.
“Look what I found in the attic,” Mr. Castor called out one morning, bumping something squeaky down the stairs. He had been up there since six o’clock—and on a school day! All this enthusiasm over moving Lucy out of her room was getting harder and harder to bear. Every time she walked into her bedroom now, she felt a pang of sadness.
She already missed her window seat, where she liked to snuggle up with a book, and the way the sunlight fell across her bed in the morning, as if waking her up with a smile. And what if her gnome came back again and she wasn’t there to see him? It was hard for Lucy to truly believe her parents were going to force her to leave her cozy mouse nest for the attic. But judging from the piles of stuff being carted off to the Put and Take, this did seem to be the plan.
There was a creaking noise as her dad walked whatever his big discovery was along the hallway. “Remember Matilda?” he called through to the kitchen.
“Who’s Matilda?” Lucy called back, carefully picking all the mushrooms out of her omelet. Her mother seemed to have forgotten that she didn’t like mushrooms.
“This is Matilda,” Mr. Castor said, wheeling a rusty, cobweb covered carriage into the kitchen. “She was your baby pram, Lucy. Don’t you remember? You stayed in here till
you were almost two. Refused to walk! We took you everywhere in Matilda.”
“Oh, talking about baby prams, Aunty Karen is coming for tea,” Mrs. Castor said, waddling over to the Nest. There wasn’t even room for Mr. Castor on the sofa anymore, let alone Lucy. Mrs. Castor and the crocodiles took up the whole thing, and they still had two more months of growing to do.
“She wants to give us a new baby carriage as a present, which is lovely. We’re going to look through some catalogs and find a nice double one. That way we can order it before she leaves for vacation tomorrow—ten days in California, lucky thing.” Usually Lucy adored it when her mom’s friend Karen came for tea, but lately all Aunty Karen wanted to do was talk about the babies. How she couldn’t wait to see them and how she’d be over at their house all the time because Lucy’s mom was going to need an extra set of hands.
“That’s kind of Karen,” Lucy’s dad replied, and then turning to Lucy he said, “You know I’m making great progress clearing out the attic. I’m going to try and get it fixed up for you as soon as I can, Lucy. That way you can move in anytime.”
“How nice,” Lucy said, thinking that “nice” rhymed with “mice,” and there’d probably be hundreds of them up in the attic. Still, she’d fit right in, and Lucy gave a long sigh, wondering if she’d ever feel like an elf princess again. She hadn’t worn Chloe’s Christmas present much lately, because it was hard to look like an elf princess on the outside when on the inside you were as small and inconspicuous as a mouse.
When Lucy got home from school that afternoon, she knew right away that Aunty Karen had arrived, because her car was parked out front. And when Lucy let herself in, loud Aunty Karen laughter could be heard coming from the kitchen. The banjo clock struck eight, even though it was only four, and a cuckoo clock followed right behind, the little carved bird flying in and out six times. It seemed as if all the clocks in the house were counting down the minutes until the babies’ due date. Lucy could have sworn they were ticking faster and faster each day, as if time were literally flying. The problem was none of the clocks, except the grandfather clock and the station clock, told anything close to the right time, so it was a bit like living in a fun house with clocks striking crazy hours all day long.
Dropping her backpack on the floor, Lucy walked down the hall to the kitchen, her mother’s voice drifting out to meet her.
“I just don’t know what to do with her, Karen. I can’t bear to part with her, I really can’t. All those great memories.” Lucy froze. She couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing. Were they talking about her?
“But be honest,” Aunty Karen said. “You don’t need her anymore, do you? Not with a new shiny model coming along. And she’s nine years old, don’t forget. There’s just not the room to keep her around, is there?” Lucy covered her mouth in horror. Thomas was absolutely right. Her parents didn’t want her anymore. They were planning to get rid of their own child.
“So, any ideas who might want her?” Mrs. Castor was saying.
“Not really,” Aunty Karen replied as Lucy doubled over with the shock. “Best bet would be to leave her at the Put and Take.”
The Put and Take! Lucy’s legs went all wobbly. She thought she might faint. What were her mother and Aunty Karen thinking? No parent would do such an awful thing, would they? Only in fairy tales where evil parents leave their children in the woods to get eaten by witches. But Lucy had heard them talking with her own mouse ears. There was no mistake. Or that’s what it sounded like.
Her mother and father didn’t want her anymore, and with a dramatic scream, loud enough to make sure her mother and Aunty Karen would hear, Lucy ran back down the hallway and out of the front door, slamming it loudly behind her.
She glanced over her shoulder as she sped along the street, to see if anyone were chasing after her, but neither her parents nor Aunty Karen were in sight. This made Lucy slow down for a moment. She couldn’t believe they didn’t want to come and find her, their own wonderful daughter. Well, she would run extremely far away and never come home again if that’s how they felt. She’d find another family to live with. A family who would love a special elf princess and take care of her and treasure her and never ignore her or forget how special she was.
As Lucy ran past the Hawthorne railway station, she decided to go to New York. She’d live on the streets and join a band of orphans like Oliver Twist did. They must have orphans in New York as well as in London. She’d pick pockets and sleep in an abandoned house with someone called Fagin who would look after her. And one day her parents would take the crocodiles to New York to see a show, and they’d find Lucy begging on a street corner and be so happy to see her again that they’d burst into tears and promise her whatever she wanted if only she’d come home. It was such a satisfying daydream that Lucy didn’t realize she’d walked right into the station and up to the ticket counter until the man behind the window said, “Where are you going, miss?”
“New York,” Lucy told him in a confident, “I’m completely in charge of my destiny” sort of voice. “A one-way ticket, please.”
“That’s forty-five dollars,” the man said, giving Lucy a hard look.
“Forty-five dollars! For a train ticket?” Lucy rooted around in her pockets. “I can give you forty-five cents,” she said, putting some coins down on the counter. “Will that do? I am a small person,” Lucy added, “and I don’t take up much room.”
“Are you her mother?” the man said, peering over Lucy’s shoulder.
“No, I’m not,” a woman replied, touching Lucy gently on the arm. “Do your parents know where you are, dear?”
“Because I can’t sell you a ticket if you’re by yourself. Even if you had the forty-five dollars,” the man said.
An awful lot of eyes seemed to be staring at Lucy, and she felt her confidence evaporate away. “I have changed my mind,” Lucy whispered. “New York is too dirty and noisy for me.” Pulling away from the woman, she ran out of the station.
“You go right home,” the ticket man yelled after her. “I’m sure your parents will be worried.”
Lucy doubted that. She’d left home only ten minutes ago, and it didn’t count as running away properly unless she’d been gone long enough for them to miss her. The problem was Lucy didn’t know where to go. She hurried past the Candy Emporium on Main Street as a gaggle of schoolkids came bursting out, opening bags of jelly beans and caramels with their gloved hands.
“Hello, Lucy,” Thomas said, offering her a caramel. Lucy glanced back at the station, to make sure the ticket man or the nice but nosy woman hadn’t come after her.
“I’m running away,” Lucy whispered, taking two caramels and putting them in her pocket in case she got hungry later.
“You are?” Thomas sounded a touch nervous.
Lucy sniffed, her nose red and dripping from the cold. “Well, your cousin Adam did, and I can see why now,” she said, swallowing back her tears. “I am not wanted anymore.”
“But, Lucy …” Thomas shuffled his feet.
“Where did he go?” Lucy asked. “Because I’m trying to decide myself. You said he was gone for days and days, and I’m wondering where he went.”
“Well, not quite days and days. Certainly a few hours,” Thomas waffled. “Definitely through lunch.”
“So where did he run to?” Lucy said, eyeing the bag of caramels.
“The garden shed,” Thomas admitted, looking rather worried. “But you should probably go home, Lucy.”
“I don’t have a home to go to,” Lucy told him in her most pitiful voice. “I have been abandoned, Thomas. So if anyone asks where I am,” she said, “I’ll be at the Put and Take looking for a new family.”
FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER Lucy didn’t feel her usual excitement, pushing open the door of the Put and Take. An old toaster sat on the table beside a stack of paperback books and a heap of yellowish lacy fabric. The books looked like the sort of thing Aunty Karen would enjoy reading, with pictures of long-curly-haired wome
n on the front, bursting out of their dresses as they stared off into the distance. On a different sort of day Lucy would have brought them home as a surprise, but she didn’t feel like doing anything nice for Aunty Karen ever again.
There was a bench against one wall of the Put and Take, and Lucy had to squeeze around a clunky metal file cabinet and a rather rusty lawn mower to reach it. The file cabinet had been sitting at the Put and Take for months. No one seemed to want such an ugly piece of furniture, and Lucy knew just how it felt, all lonely and unloved.
As she wiggled past the cabinet, she yelped in pain, feeling a sharp jagged edge scrape the side of her leg. Blood started to drip down her shin, and she limped over to the bench, lowering herself onto the wooden seat. Lucy examined her leg and saw a long shallow gash. A slow burning sensation pulsed from the cut, and not having anything else to use, she took off her sock and pressed it against the wound. Drops of blood leaked out, white cotton soaking up the redness.
Lucy thought about going home, and then she thought about the conversation she had overheard between her mom and Aunty Karen, and although she couldn’t really believe she wasn’t wanted, big sad tears rolled down her cheeks, because that’s what it felt like right now.
Why did everything have to change? The twins were going to get her special magical bedroom, and she was being forced into the attic. Lucy’s tears started to fall harder. She didn’t want to give up her gnome cupboard or her nest shelf.
It was quiet in the Put and Take, a dusty, lonely quiet and so cold Lucy could see her breath. She wondered how long she would be here before somebody found her. Every few seconds Lucy glanced at her watch, and exactly six minutes had ticked by when she noticed two boxes sticking out beneath the bench—boxes that hadn’t been there on her last visit. Lucy stared at them for a while, until finally, unable to resist, she crouched down and pulled them out, wincing at the pain in her leg.
Obviously, someone had done a big attic clean out because both the boxes seemed to hold a jumble of old clothes, shoes, and books. At the bottom of one box was an antique cookie tin with a scratched flower design on the lid. Lucy tugged it out and sat back down, holding the tin in her lap. Getting the top off was difficult as the edges had rusted together, but with a lot of pulling and two broken fingernails she managed to remove the lid.