Open If You Dare

by Dana Middleton

  * * *

  “He fell off the rope swing too close to the edge,” Romeo whispers. “Hit a rock. And crack.”

  “We heard it and everything,” Connor says, making a weird bone-crunching sound.

  There’s a rope swing upstream from our island where the boys hang out. It’s up a steep cliff and it’s dangerous and some boys are dumb.

  We got to Joey’s house by bike caravan and Romeo wouldn’t tell us anything along the way. He and Connor led us into Joey’s TV room, where the big boy was draped across the sofa like a fallen soldier. With a cast on his right arm.

  “I can’t believe you fell off the rope swing,” says Rose. “You really are the complete package. Charm and grace.”

  “Shhhh!” Joey puts his left index finger to his lips. “My mom would crap if she knew I did this on the rope swing.” As one, our eyes shift toward the kitchen, where Joey’s mom is wiping the counter, and we become suspiciously silent.

  “Everything okay in there?” Joey’s mom calls out.

  “Yes,” Joey calls back. “We’re fine. Thanks for asking, Mom.”

  Rose’s face scrunches. “What excellent manners, Joseph. So refreshing and unexpected.”

  He rolls his eyes. “Shut up, string bean,” he says, like himself again, but quietly, so his mom won’t hear.

  “What are you going to do?” Ally asks. She’s staring at the cast on Joey’s arm with real and true concern. “The game’s this Saturday!”

  “Well, yeah,” Joey says, his chest deflating.

  “Yeah,” Romeo says. “That’s why we asked you here.” Romeo nudges Joey.

  “Do I have to?”

  Romeo’s hands fly up, his face ready to explode. “Really? Come on, Joe.”

  Joey glances down at the cast on his arm, then turns to Ally. “As you can see, this really sucks.”

  “Totally sucks,” Ally says. “I hate the Broncos, but I hate the Condors more. Who’s going to pitch if you don’t? You guys have got to win.”

  “We thought you’d see it that way,” Romeo says.

  “That’s really tough luck,” Ally adds earnestly.

  I look at Romeo. Is he hiding a grin?

  “So, Blondie, that’s why we called you here,” Joey says. “We talked to Coach and the whole team agrees. If we’re going to win, we need a good pitcher.” Romeo pokes his leg. “Okay, a great pitcher. And if yours truly is not available, then there’s no other choice. We need you, Blondie. We need you to pitch the game on Saturday.”

  “Huh?” Ally says, stunned.

  “Yeah, can you do it? I mean it’ll be a great opportunity for you, too. It’s not all about the Broncos.”

  “But mostly about the Broncos,” Rose says and elbows Ally back to life.

  “Yeah,” says Ally breathlessly. “Of course—”

  “Wait!” I hold up my hands. “There’s a condition.”

  “What?” Joey says. “No conditions!”

  “Only one, Joey. But it’s a deal breaker.”

  Ally turns to me. She’s afraid I’m going to ruin this. I can see it in her eyes. But I’m not. I’ve got this.

  Joey groans. “What is it?”

  “Ask her again,” I say.

  “Huh?”

  “Just ask her again. The right way.”

  Joey shoots me a look, then says, “Okay, Blondie, will you—”

  I clear my throat pointedly. The confused look on Joey’s face tells me volumes about his intellectual capacity. Romeo leans over and whispers in his ear. “Oh,” Joey says, finally getting it. “Do I have to?”

  “I’m going to throw you off that swing myself!” Romeo exclaims, but softly, keeping an eye on the kitchen and Joey’s mom. “Dude!”

  “Okay, okay.” Joey looks at Ally. “Blon—I mean … Ally—will you pitch for me in the game on Saturday? Please?”

  A smile blossoms across Ally’s face, but she buries it quickly and gives Joey a shrug. “Yeah, I guess.”

  “You guess?” I say. “Are you kidding?”

  Her smile returns like the sun. “Yeah, I’m kidding! Heck, yeah, I’ll pitch for you, Joey! I can’t wait to be a Bronco!”

  28

  I’M IN the library the day before the big charity game, flipping through James and the Giant Peach. The oldest copy they have. It’s been read hundreds of times—you can tell by the worn pages.

  I remember thinking how unbelievable it was when the peach rolled over Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker and flattened them into human pancakes. And how cool it was when the peach floated out to sea and ended up on the Empire State Building.

  If I had a giant peach, maybe it could take Ally and me to England to visit Rose. Ha. Rose would freak out if the giant peach rolled up in front of her house and Ally and me got out. Especially if we brought along Miss Spider and the Old-Green-Grasshopper.

  Rose is packing and Ally is practicing. Dad took Zora to play miniature golf. He’s trusting me again to be alone at the library and this time he can. I sit at a cubicle near the front. Out the window, I can see the fabric store. No need to go there today. No need to go there ever again. Meg was never at the fabric shop. Lucy doesn’t know a Meg and neither do I. Girl Detective’s Meg might as well be a ghost.

  I feel like being alone today. I watch big white cumulus clouds roll in and think about Ally. She’s been practicing with the Broncos since Joey asked her to pitch for him. She’s getting a second chance, and even her brother Mark is helping her get ready.

  Ally is getting what she wants.

  Rose is getting what she wants, too. In a way. She has liberated herself from her violin. I think about that poor, burned-out violin lying abandoned somewhere in our creek. And although Mrs. Ashcroft has assured her there will be a new violin once they get to London, for now Rose is free. At least for a little while longer.

  So I’m left wondering—what do I want?

  The summer is almost over and what have I done? I’ve followed these crazy clues to nowhere. Yeah, it was exciting to find the clue box on the island. It was pretty amazing that the knife was actually hidden under the bird in the Gillans’ mailbox. And I found them. I did that.

  But since then, it’s been a giant waste of summer. My detecting skills have failed me completely. Sneaking over to the fabric store. Taking the bus trip to Decatur. We could have been swimming. We could have been hanging out. Soon we’ll be heading to Chicago to visit Grandma before school starts. And Rose will be gone for good.

  I close James and the Giant Peach and carry it back to the shelf. The fabric shop was a dead end. I see that so clearly now. But I can’t help thinking about Meg. It’s not a common name. I don’t know any Megs. I’ve never met anybody named that.

  I slip James back in its place on the shelf and lean against the Roald Dahl section feeling defeated. I’ve spent so much time wandering this long row of books. Most of them I have read. They can whisper to me because I know their secrets.

  I stand there staring at nothing. Just the Ls, those books across from me whose authors’ names begin with the letter L. I’m about to walk away, when I realize what I am looking at.

  Her.

  My mouth falls open. Because, of course, I know a Meg. I’ve known a Meg for years. She’s one of my favorite people. But this Meg?

  I pull out a copy of A Wrinkle in Time from the shelf across from me. In it, Meg Murry goes on a journey through time and space to rescue her father. Like me, she has a scientist mother. Like me, she feels different from the rest of her family. Like me, she is dealt an incredible mystery to solve over one stormy summer.

  I look at the cover—the one with the centaur—and remember the clue and the words I didn’t understand: But here’s the Wrinkle. That was what Girl Detective wrote right before Meg is waiting.

  When I read it before, I had thought it meant there’d be a complication. A wrinkle. I had noticed she capitalized the W but I didn’t think it meant anything. But it did. Because Wrinkle is part of the name of a book that happens to be abo
ut a girl named Meg.

  I gaze at the book and wonder. What if she wasn’t sending me to the fabric store? What if she’s been sending me to the library all along?

  To Meg.

  It hits me like a wave.

  Sweeping all six copies of A Wrinkle in Time from the shelf, I rush them to a nearby table and lay them before me. Three have the Centaur cover, two show the night sky surrounded by book images, and the last one is a picture of a dove sitting atop an egg filled with three children.

  A Wrinkle in Time is old. Flipping to the copyright page, I see it was first published in 1963.

  The timeline works.

  One by one, I strum through the pages of each book, searching for a clue. But nothing. Then I realize why. None of these editions is old enough. These books were published after Girl Detective was here.

  Even if I’m right and Meg Murry is the Meg I’m looking for, the A Wrinkle in Time that Girl Detective entrusted with her next clue is long gone—lost or recycled in the forgotten dump heap of old library books. My heart sinks. Too late. I’m too late.

  Closing my eyes, I search for Girl Detective through time and space. I see her blue eyes. The ones from the bottom of the creek. And tell her I’m sorry.

  With a tip of my finger, I shut the cover of the last book before me. It falls onto its pages like a freshly cut tree collapsing onto a leafy forest floor. It’s finally time to close the book on Girl Detective. To close the book on all of it.

  After returning all the Wrinkles back to the shelf, I pick up James and the Giant Peach again. It feels like comfort food in my hand as I carry it to the checkout counter.

  “Get everything you need?” Mrs. Thompson asks.

  “Not really,” I say.

  Mrs. Thompson stops mid-scan. “What’s the matter? You never look like this when you’re checking out a book.”

  I force a smile. “I’m fine.” But I’m not fine. A part of me wants to tell Mrs. Thompson all about it. How I can’t find Girl Detective because I was born too late.

  “Okay, but I’ve seen that troubled look before,” she says. “At some point, you’ll need to unload it.”

  I nod and take James in my arms. “Thanks,” I say and start to turn but don’t. I look up at the librarian. “Mrs. Thompson?”

  She peers over her computer. “Yes, Birdie.”

  “What happens to old books that the library doesn’t want anymore?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know, the old ones. The special ones that got too old or too fragile to stay. What happens to them?”

  Mrs. Thompson grins oddly. “Oh, dear.” She glances over her shoulder, then leans in conspiratorially. “We do have a little secret.”

  29

  I CAN’T believe it. I cannot believe what I am seeing.

  This is not my library. It can’t be. This is like some secret hidden chamber from an old Nancy Drew mystery. But here it is. We walked through the door behind the checkout counter, the door I’ve seen hundreds of times, and it’s like we’ve stepped into another world. I’m standing in the middle of it, astounded. Gazing at all the books. Stacks and shelves of them.

  “This used to be the whole library,” Mrs. Thompson says from beside me. “It was like this when it was first built. Wasn’t very much back then.”

  “But it’s beautiful,” I say, staring at the wooden walls and the beams that reach to the ceiling. As I look up, a “wow” escapes my lips.

  “Isn’t it amazing?” Mrs. Thompson says.

  “Yeah,” I answer, our heads tilting upward. There’s a huge painting up there. Right on the ceiling. And even though the room isn’t especially large, the mural is. It dominates, with its white clouds and green countryside. Its old-timey train station. The horse-drawn wagon. The man with the reins in his hands. The girl with the red hair sitting beside him. “Is that Anne Shirley?” I ask.

  “Yes, it is.” I can tell she’s proud of me for knowing that. “Anne of Green Gables was still a big deal when this library was built.” She pauses. “For some of us, it’s still a big deal.”

  “Who painted it?”

  “I don’t even know. Mrs. Parsons could tell us if she were still alive. She was the librarian back then. For years and years and years. I remember her from when I was a girl. Children were afraid of her because her mouth turned down in a rather permanent frown. But she wasn’t mean. She loved books. And she loved readers. She showed me this room when I was about your age.” She turns to me and smiles. “There weren’t as many books in here then.”

  I peel my eyes from the ceiling and let them linger over all the volumes—old books on shelves and piled in tall stacks all around us.

  “As a librarian, we’re trained to cull the old books that are too delicate for general usage. But Mrs. Parsons had a hard time with that. She gave away hundreds of old books but there were some she couldn’t part with. Ms. Lincoln, the librarian after Mrs. Parsons, kept up the tradition. And then there was me.”

  “These are the old books?”

  “Not all of them, of course. This room would be bursting twenty times over if we kept everything. Just certain ones.”

  “I’m looking for A Wrinkle in Time,” I say resolutely. “An early one.”

  “An early one,” Mrs. Thompson says, thinking. “That was before my time here but … maybe … why don’t you look over there?” She points to the corner of the room, at a spot under the old-timey train on the ceiling.

  The buzzer rings. “That’s for me,” she says.

  “This is where the buzzer goes?”

  “This is where the buzzer goes.” She grins. “Now, go find your book.”

  As she leaves the room, I make my way through the maze of books to the corner under Anne Shirley’s train. There are so many books here. I search up and down the stacks, recognizing some but not many.

  After having no luck in several stacks, my eyes shift to the shelves. There are mostly kids’ books in this corner but there are some adult ones, too. And forget about anything called alphabetical order.

  I’m never going to find it, I think as my eyes get lost in the titles and authors. And how do I even know this is one of the books Mrs. Parsons or Ms. Lincoln saved? I’m searching for the long shot of long shots.

  Instead of bending down to the bottom shelves, I sit on the floor so I can more easily see the low ones. I lean in close and examine title after title. After title. To the end of the row.

  Nothing.

  No A Wrinkle in Time.

  No Meg.

  Hmmmm. I stare at the ceiling, at Anne Shirley, heading to her new life at Green Gables. Things must have been so much simpler back then. Turning, I lean forward to stand—and stop cold. Between The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and The Wind in the Willows, in the stack I haven’t searched yet, I see it.

  A Wrinkle in Time. By Madeleine L’Engle.

  Waiting patiently for me.

  I begin unstacking like mad. The first handful of books goes on one stack. The next handful onto another. Until I’m staring down at a blue dust jacket with white words written on it that say: A Wrinkle in Time, next to three white silhouette figures surrounded with circles. I recognize these fictional figures to be Charles Wallace Murry, Calvin O’Keefe, and Meg Murry. My Meg.

  I lift the book like it is a sacred tome and it falls open in my hand. The pages are yellowed, some of them torn. I rest it on top of a book stack and carefully turn the pages. When I reach the end, there is a sinking feeling in my stomach. Because nothing’s there.

  Looking up at Anne, I whisper, “Little help, please.” But Anne has very little to contribute, so I turn back to the book in my hand. I hold it up and inspect it from all angles. I open it again and examine the inside of the front cover. Then, I search the inside of the back cover.

  The stamped checkout card is there. Mrs. Thompson told me that before the computer checkout system, library books used to be checked out using a card that lived in a little pocket on the inside back cover of a b
ook. The card was stamped with the date the book was due back so it became a record of when a book was taken from the library.

  I pull the card out of the card slot and scan down, looking at the dates until I get to the last stamp: JAN 3 ’74. That must have been the last time the book was checked out before it was pulled from circulation and ended up here.

  Scanning up the card, I stop at JUN 24 ’73. That would be about the right time. Soon after the Allman Brothers Band concert. Soon after Ruthie didn’t show up at the Omni Coliseum.

  Girl Detective was here. I can feel it. I find myself inspecting the front cover again and realize something isn’t quite right. The inside paper lining appears somehow wrong. Like someone carefully glued in a piece of blue card stock to make it look like the real inside cover when it really wasn’t. But why would somebody do a thing like that?

  With my fingernail, I scratch at the top corner of the blue card stock. Because there’s only one reason someone would do that. To hide something.

  Once I get it started, the fake panel begins to peel away easily. Slowly, what’s hiding behind it is revealed.

  A photograph. An old black-and-white one. Not a Polaroid but a real picture about the size of a 4×6, but not exactly. Gently, I lift it from its hiding place.

  It’s a picture of a rather large brick house with a chimney and wooden shutters. The lawn in front is mostly bare with only a couple of small trees.

  I flip the photo over, and written on the back in blue ink is the next clue:

  Good work, detective.

  You’re almost home.

  The evidence you need

  Lives where I used to

  Upstairs. Second on right,

  Creaky floorboard by the bookshelf.

  Thank you.

  Holy smokes! This is where she lived. This is Girl Detective’s house. Find the house and I find her.

  And just like that, in the middle of this insane room with all these books, I know what I want. I want to finish the mystery. I want to meet Girl Detective, dead or alive, and find out what happened. I want to know why she asked me to Open If You Dare. And why she led me to find dead Martin and alive Ruthie.