After dinner, we got out the Trivial Pursuit game. We played boys against the girls, which gave us an advantage, since Mrs. Gordon has one of those steel-trap minds for history and geography and I am good on literature. I admit, we were pretty hopeless on Arts and Entertainment (I mean, who knows the names of people in old seventies sitcoms?) and a little weak on Sports and Leisure (how many points for a bull’s-eye in darts?). But still, even with Mr. Gordon being great on science and nature and Beamer pretty fair on sports, the girls definitely ruled that night.
I think our mood was kind of contagious, because Beamer’s grandparents got kind of silly, too. We had this huge argument—the kind where nobody is really mad—about whether we should get credit for “Martin Luther King” as an answer when, technically, the person we were referring to was Martin Luther King, Jr. Martin Luther King was a whole other person, the father of the civil rights leader.
“So you want to play hardball?” said Mrs. Gordon.
“They’re two different people,” Beamer insisted. “I can’t help it if you got it wrong.”
“Okay,” she said. “But don’t forget. What goes around comes around.”
“We can take it,” said Mr. Gordon.
“We’ll see,” said his wife.
That’s when the phone rang. Beamer shot out of his chair like he’d just sat on the cat.
His grandparents looked puzzled.
“You want to get that?”
“Yeah,” Beamer said, dashing into the study. “It’s probably for me.”
Ten seconds later, Beamer was back, a disappointed look on his face.
“It’s for you,” he said. “It’s Zoë.”
“Zoë?”
“Your sister.”
“I know who Zoë is, Beamer,” I snapped, and went in to the study to pick up the phone.
“Hi,” I said. “What’s up?” I couldn’t imagine why she would be calling me long-distance.
“We’re moving again,” she said.
“Oh, great,” I moaned. “That is just great.”
“But wait, there’s more.”
“We’re moving to Iceland?”
“No, listen,” Zoë said. “J.D. overheard Mom and Dad talking last night. Dad was saying he had been offered this job in Cleveland. . . .”
“Wonderful! We’ve never lived in Ohio. Maybe at this rate, we can make all fifty states before I go off to college.”
“Will you shut up and listen? I haven’t gotten to the important part. So Dad says that the job would be a lot more challenging and pay more than the offer to stay on in Baltimore!”
“Say again?”
“They asked him to stay on as president of the college here.”
“No kidding!”
“So, anyway, Mom says, you know, ‘It’s up to you, sweet face, whatever you want. I can take my work with me.’”
“And?”
“So J.D. comes into my room and tells me all this and then I freak out and all, and he just sits there like he does, looking weird. Then he says, ‘They can go to Cleveland if they want to. I’m staying here.’”
I literally had to catch my breath.
“Oh my gosh!” I said. “J.D. is a genius.”
“No, he’s just weird. But when he said that, you know, I just suddenly realized that if all three of us—”
“Went on strike?”
“Yeah, like that.”
“Oh, that is so cool!”
“Are you with us?”
“Yes, of course!”
“Wait—here’s J.D.”
He came on the line. “Hi,” he said.
“Hi back,” I said. “I just want you to know that I think you’re brilliant.”
“Whatever,” he said. “I’m just not moving again.”
“Have you said anything to them yet?”
“No. Zoë thought we ought to wait and get you in on it.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “But I think we need to move fast. If we wait too long, he may turn the Baltimore job down, and then we’ll have to move. Talk to them tonight. Call me if you need to and I’ll back you up.”
“They’ve gone out tonight,” he said. “We’ll do it tomorrow.”
I realized that Beamer was standing in the doorway, watching me curiously. I raised my eyebrows to signal that it was an interesting conversation.
“Okay,” I said. “Call me!”
“Wait,” said J.D. “Did you ever find I. M. Fine?”
“Oh, sorry, J.D. Yeah, we did. I guess I should have called to tell you—seeing as how you were the one who found out about Wimberly.”
“So, what’s he like?”
“Well, first off, he’s a woman.”
“No way!”
“Yes way. Ida May Fine. And she’s crazy and out to destroy civilization, only we discovered that our teacher is her long-lost twin sister, and she’s over there right now, trying to convince her to stop being evil.”
“Wow,” said J.D.
“Anyway, it’s a long story. I’ll tell you every little detail when I get home, only I don’t want to tie up the phone. We’re waiting to hear whether we saved civilization or not.”
“Oh. That’s a good line. I think I’ll use it next time someone calls selling aluminum siding.”
“Good-bye, J.D.”
“Good-bye, Franny.”
I hung up.
“Well?” said Beamer.
“Zoë and J.D. and I are on strike,” I said.
“What do you mean, ‘on strike’?” he asked, following me back into the living room.
“My dad got offered a new job in Cleveland.”
“Wasn’t that destroyed by Jelly Worms?”
“Beamer, this is important! Don’t you care whether I move away or not?”
“Yeah, of course I do. I was just being silly.”
“Well, pay attention. It turns out he has a choice this time, because he’s also got a job offer in Baltimore. It doesn’t pay as much, but it would mean we could actually live somewhere—you know, permanently.”
“So, what did he decide?” asked Mrs. Gordon, who had been following all this with great interest.
“He hasn’t decided anything yet. But we have—my brother and sister and I. They can move to Cleveland if they want to, but we’re staying in Baltimore. Like I said, we’re on strike.”
“Wow,” said Beamer. “Will that work?”
“Well, they’re pretty fond of us. I think they’d miss us a lot up there in Cleveland by themselves.”
Beamer’s grandparents burst out laughing.
“Even I will miss you, and you haven’t even been here a week!” Mrs. Gordon said.
“Could I join the strike, too?” Beamer asked. “I could make a sign and picket your house. MOVING TO CLEVELAND UNFAIR TO CHILDREN!”
“That’s very good, Beamer. I think we should have signs. March around in the front yard. Call the TV stations. News vans parked up and down the street.”
Just then, the phone rang again. Beamer leapt to his feet and dashed into the study to answer it. His grandparents shot conspiratorial glances at each other and grinned. We were more entertaining than a three-ring circus.
“Hello?”
There was a long pause. All three of us sat there eavesdropping shamelessly.
“Yes!” he said triumphantly.
I found myself positively bouncing in my chair.
“Oh, that is so great!” he said.
Another long pause.
“Yeah, hold on. I’ll get her.”
He ducked into the living room and motioned for me to come into the study.
Giving me a thumbs-up, he handed me the phone.
“Hello . . . Franny?” It was Mrs. Lamb.
“Hi, Mrs. Lamb,” I said. “Did it go okay?”
“Yes, sweetheart. It did. Ida called the publishers this afternoon and they agreed to let her make some minor revisions . . . to page sixty-eight.”
“That’s great,” I said. “That is so
great!”
“You know, I don’t think I’ve properly thanked the two of you. For helping me find my sister, for stopping her from making such an awful mistake. I will be forever grateful, Franny.”
“No problem,” I said.
“I’ll be staying on here for a few more days,” Mrs. Lamb said. “Then Ida and I will drive back to Baltimore together.”
“Will you stop by here on the way?”
“No, Franny, I don’t think so. But I’ll see you in the fall.”
“Yeah, okay,” I said. “Bye, then.” And I hung up.
When we went back into the living room, Beamer’s grandparents were out of their minds with curiosity.
“What was that all about?” Mrs. Gordon asked.
Beamer grinned. “Oh, nothing much,” he said. “Your turn. Roll the dice.”
25
H. L. Mencken Middle School is brand-new. The air smells of paint and just-laid carpets. The bulletin boards are empty. The floor is spotless. There are no trophies in the trophy cases and no dents or scrapes on the hallway walls. There aren’t even any books on the library shelves. But they’re coming, I’ve been told.
For me, it’s another new beginning—but then, I ought to be used to that by now. I’ve spent my entire life learning peoples’ names and struggling to remember whether the lunchroom is down the hall on the right or around the corner on the left. Only this time, it’s even more confusing, because in middle school you go to a different room and have a different teacher for each and every subject. Plus, the place is five times as big as Park Place Intermediate.
But for once, I’m not alone in feeling lost and out of place. At Mencken, everybody is starting over, even the eighth graders!
We’re a lot of little fish in a great big pond now, and the people who were stars in their old schools are just nameless faces in the crowd. DeeDee, for instance. She showed up on the first day of school ready to knock ’em dead, looking about seventeen and gorgeous with her short skirt and carefully applied makeup. And then she looked around and realized that, for the first time in her life, she had serious competition. There were lots of pretty girls—Valerie, Jennifer, Claudia, Lauren—and each one was the former uncontested glamour queen of her old school. Most of them are really nice to everybody, so they made friends right away. DeeDee started in with her smart remarks and got labeled as a snob. She caught on, though—I’ll give her that. Now she’s so sweet, it’s disgusting. We’ll see if it lasts.
On the other hand, the people who were not necessarily stars in their old schools, regular kids like Beamer and me, get a fresh start. The cliques aren’t set; the leaders aren’t chosen. It’s nice to have an even playing field for once.
As you have no doubt gathered, we’re still in Baltimore.
Zoë and her friends made masses of protest signs (my favorite? MOVING MADNESS MUDDLES MUNCHKINS!) and had them out in the yard and all over the house when Dad got home. So he walked through the door, and there were J.D. and Zoë, holding their signs and chanting, “Hey! Hey! Ho! Ho! We’ve decided not to go!” Then, while he stood there with his jaw hanging open, they started marching around the couch and chairs, chanting, “Unfair! Unfair!” until Dad screamed for them to stop.
Ah, how I wish I’d been there! He was flabbergasted. He’d never realized—got that?—that it bothered us so much to move every year! And this is a man with a Ph.D.
So instead of spending the summer watching our household belongings disappear into cardboard boxes, which would then be loaded into a great big truck that would block the street and annoy the neighbors—though that wouldn’t really matter because, hey, you’d never see them again!—as I said, instead of doing that, I hung out with Beamer all summer. We put on an Alfred Hitchcock Film Festival for Zoë and J.D., complete with popcorn. We taught a couple of Beamer’s dogs to heel (not as easy as you might think). I read him The Bronze Bow and My Brother Sam Is Dead while he worked on his construction. We got lessons on how to make wontons from Beamer’s dad. All in all, my best summer ever.
Then August arrived and we started school. This, as I’ve already mentioned, was something of an adventure, and I was too busy running to my locker to get my science book and trying to find room Q210 and stuff like that to think about anything else. Or almost too busy, anyway. Distracting as it all was, I could never quite forget that the publication date for The Avenging Word—posted on the Riverbend Press website—was September 15. And even though I knew that Ida May had taken out the bad part—well, I just couldn’t rest easy until the book was out there and kids were reading it and I could see for myself that no harm had been done.
So we waited. And when September 15 arrived—sure enough, copies of The Avenging Word showed up in abundance, clutched in the sweaty hands of half the population of H. L. Mencken Middle School. Kids were reading it on the bus and in line at the lunchroom. Some were even reading it in class. As far as we could tell, none of them suddenly lost the ability to read. I even questioned a couple of kids. You know—“So, is that a good book?”—that kind of thing. And some of them said it was just the most exciting, fabulous book they had ever opened, but others said it got off to a great start and then kind of lost steam and they weren’t going to finish it. I guess Ida hadn’t put all that much work into the book past page sixty-eight.
There was one other thing we noticed. Usually, there is a kind of pattern to the I. M. Fine phenomenon. A few fanatics get the book the very first day it’s out. Then there is a sort of groundswell of interest, until it seems like everybody in America between the ages of seven and fifteen is reading it. Then a gradual tapering off. Like with the Jelly Worm fad. It usually lasted about two months. Only this time, it was pretty much over after two weeks.
Not that it really matters. The important thing is that nobody was harmed. And you have Beamer and me to thank for that.
One day in late September, we went over to Park Place after school to see Mrs. Lamb. We remembered that she usually stayed late on Thursdays, so that’s when we went.
“Franny and Scott!” she said when we came into the room. “I’ve been meaning to call you!”
She scooted a couple of desks up next to hers, then sat down and gazed at us, her chin cradled in her hands. She was grinning like she’d just won the lottery and we were there to deliver the money.
“So how did it all turn out?” I asked. “We’re dying to know.”
“Well . . .” Mrs. Lamb said. “Ida’s been here in Baltimore all summer. It’s been pretty amazing, introducing her to all this family she’d never met—my children, my grandchildren. We spend a lot of time telling stories, catching up. Both of us have blanks to fill in, you know.”
“So, is she happier now?”
“Yes, I think she is. She’s laid some things to rest that were . . . oh, I don’t know—holding her back. Making her angry. It’s an important step.”
“That’s good,” I said. “Is she still mad at us?”
“Well, she’s upset about the way you invaded her privacy.”
We both nodded, embarrassed.
“But I guess she’s not too mad. She said for me to tell you she was sending a little gift. Something you would particularly appreciate.”
“Really?” I said, not sure whether I liked the sound of that or not.
Mrs. Lamb could see that I was worried, and she reached over to squeeze my hand. “She promised me it was a nice gift. That you would like it.”
“Do you know what it is?”
“No. She just said to tell you that you would know when it arrived.”
“But Mrs. Lamb,” Beamer said, “are you sure she’s not—you know—trying to get back at us? Sending us a stink bomb, or something worse?”
“No, Scott, please don’t worry. She asked me all about you. She was curious, you know—and impressed that you were the only ones who caught on to what she was up to. I told her what smart kids you are—how you did a sixth-grade book report on David Copperfield. That really blew her away.�
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“Really?”
“Yup—she said that if you liked David Copperfield, then you must be okay. She has a real thing for Dickens—all those story lines about abused and abandoned children. She really identified with that, I guess.”
“Do you think she’s going to write any more books?”
“Not that kind of book, anyway. She canceled her remaining contracts for the Chillers series, so that’s all over now.”
“But will she write anything else? Other than Chillers, I mean?”
“Well, she hasn’t said, exactly, and I try not to pry too much. But I can assure you that if she ever does get an itch to write again, she won’t add any . . . well, special effects, if you know what I mean.”
“No more magic?”
“No more magic. She’s put all that behind her. All she talks about now is finding a house in the country with a bit of land.” Mrs. Lamb kind of chuckled. “She wants to raise horses. And maybe get some more dogs.”
“How’s Jake?” Beamer asked.
“Oh, he’s such a sweet dog. We’ve really grown very attached to him.”
“Me, too,” Beamer said.
I noticed a couple of framed pictures sitting on her desk. They hadn’t been there the year before. I peered around to take a look.
One of them was a head-and-shoulders snapshot of Ida, with trees in the background. Her hair had grown out some. She was smiling.
“Nice picture,” I said. “She looks more like you now.”
Mrs. Lamb nodded. “Yes,” she said, “I think so, too.”
Then I checked out the other picture. It was old, in black and white, taken in a photographer’s studio. It showed a painfully thin, angular, dark-haired man with cheekbones like a Cherokee and beautiful dark eyes. He stood with his arm around a very young woman with wild, curly hair.
“Is that . . .”
“My parents,” Mrs. Lamb said. “We found the pictures when we were cleaning out the old house. I guess Aunt Mildred couldn’t quite bring herself to throw them away.”
“They look so young,” Beamer said.
“They were. I think this must have been their engagement picture. They were just out of college then.”
“Did you find any baby pictures?”
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