Oliver lay down on the wooden platform, running his hands over the smooth planks Uncle Arthur had carefully sanded so Oliver wouldn’t get any splinters, and stared at the branches above him. The leaves rustled in the wind, and the sounds of Harlem filled his ears. People down the street were grilling in their backyard, their chatter a low rumble. A dog two doors down barked from a terrace, and the sirens of a passing ambulance pierced the night.
It could have been five minutes or maybe an hour, but the next thing he knew, it was much darker, and someone—probably one of his sisters—was climbing up the rope. Oliver rolled over onto his stomach and looked down over the platform.
“Leave me alone!” he yelled.
“Geez, Oliver, what a welcome.” The voice of his friend Angie rang through the darkness.
Oliver let out a breath. A second later, Angie’s head popped over the side of the platform.
“What’s up?” she asked as she settled next to him. She pulled a bulging bag off her back and put it between them. “I heard about Mr. Jeet. I figured you could use some company.” Angie unzipped the bag and pulled out two cans of grape soda, three packs of sour straws, and some cookies. “The cookies aren’t like your mom’s,” she apologized.
Oliver popped open a can of soda and took a deep drink. “Oh yeah, that is so good.” He paused, enjoying the artificial flavors filling his mouth. “Mama wants us all to eat really healthy now. The Mr. Jeet thing really freaked her out, so she is on a total health kick. I had quinoa for dinner.” Oliver shuddered.
“When can he come home?” Angie asked, peeling open the sour straws and offering one to Oliver.
Oliver took a straw and bit into it. “Mama doesn’t know. She keeps bringing clothes to Miss Josie because she won’t leave his side.”
“It’s so romantic,” Angie said. “They are totally that couple who always hold hands even though they’ve been together for fifty years.”
Oliver shrugged. “I guess.” He bit into a sour straw. “Wow, this all tastes so good.”
“We can put the rest in your bin,” Angie said, pointing to the wooden bin that held snacks, flashlights, his walkie-talkie, and other outdoor-survival essentials.
A long silence followed. Oliver wondered if he should tell Angie about the garden. It was supposed to be secret, but this was Angie.
“Can I tell you something?” Oliver finally said.
When Angie nodded, Oliver told her about how he and his sisters had discovered a way into the abandoned lot next to the church, and their big plans for transforming it. He related how they’d pooled their money and bought gardening tools, and how he wasn’t sure how they would afford to buy plants to create Mr. Jeet and Miss Josie’s dream garden.
“Come on, we can think of a way to raise money,” Angie said. She put an index finger to each temple. “I’ve got it. Let’s have a bake sale.”
“Mama banned sugar. She thinks it will make us sick.”
“Car wash.”
“No one would ever trust us to wash their cars.”
“Hyacinth can make dog treats to sell.”
“No one would—Hey, actually, that’s a good idea.”
“We can sell other things too . . . Hold on! A brilliant idea popped into my brain,” said Angie. “We can have a sidewalk sale! I have a ton of picture books I don’t read anymore.”
Oliver thought about the things in his tiny bedroom. Could he bear to sell some of his books?
“I’ll come by tomorrow morning after math,” Angie said. “We only have an hour of class on Fridays, so I’ll be back at ten fifteen. Our building has some folding tables we can set everything up on. Now tell me what else is bothering you.”
Oliver narrowed his eyes. “Nothing.”
Angie gave him a do-you-think-I-was-born-yesterday look. “C’mon, I know when something is up. Tell me.”
“You’re not going to be able to help or solve it or anything.”
“Who cares? I just want to know.”
There were so many things bothering him. So he told Angie about how they had snuck into the hospital and how Mr. Jeet looked like he was dying and how there were three tick marks under “Bad Days” on his health chart. He shared how Herman Huxley had called the garden a toxic waste pit, and how he couldn’t get that image out of his mind.
What Oliver did not share was why it was so important for him to finish the garden.
Angie was a good listener and didn’t interrupt him. When he was done talking, they lay down and stared up at the sky through the leaves. They couldn’t see many stars in New York City—too much light pollution—but Oliver liked the way the leaves were silhouetted against the dark sky. They rustled in the wind, and Oliver imagined that his wishes for the garden were being blown across Harlem, spreading out among the brownstones and buildings and resting upon the millions of other stories and wishes that made up the neighborhood.
* * *
It was no surprise to Jessie that she had trouble sleeping again. It was so quiet in the brownstone. No Isa lying in the bed across from her, whispering to her about the day. No footsteps above her from the second floor as Miss Josie and Mr. Jeet shuffled around, getting ready for bed.
Jessie pulled up the window and stepped out onto the fire escape. She started up the stairs, toward the roof. She had just reached Miss Josie and Mr. Jeet’s darkened apartment when the window abruptly raised and a voice yelled, “Stop, thief!”
Jessie’s foot slipped and she grabbed the railing, but the leaves sticking to the metal slats made the fire escape especially slippery. “Fudge!” she shrieked as she lost traction and skidded down a few steps. She imagined tumbling down the rickety stairs and crashing to the ground.
“Geez, help me out a little?” the voice from the second-floor apartment said.
Only then did Jessie realize that the hand attached to the voice was wrapped around her arm and was pulling her back. She tumbled through the window and landed in a heap on the floor in Miss Josie’s kitchen.
A hulking figure loomed above her.
Jessie blinked and looked up, but the apartment was shadowy and dark.
Then the hulking figure spoke, with a slight Southern accent. “Jessie?”
Fourteen
Jessie’s eyes adjusted to the darkness in Miss Josie and Mr. Jeet’s apartment as she peered at the person who had just saved her from tumbling down the fire escape. How did he know her name? That voice was so familiar . . .
“Jessie, it’s me. Orlando.”
Jessie scrambled up. “Orlando? What are you doing here?”
Orlando was Mr. Jeet’s grandnephew. Three years ago, Orlando had spent the summer living with the Jeets. He loved science and was the same age as Jessie, and they were glued at the hip for three months. Orlando had brought with him a whole pack of litmus paper, and they roamed the neighborhood, testing mango juice from the man selling peeled mangos from his cart, puddle water after a rain, and the remains of melted shaved ice on a hot day. They’d learned a lot about acids and bases that summer.
Orlando flicked on the light, and Jessie got a good look at him. “Holy smokes, you look like a football player!” The last time she’d seen him, he was short and skinny and carried a magnifying glass in his shirt pocket.
Orlando laughed. “I’m hungry all the time. And I play football,” he admitted.
Jessie staggered back and clutched her heart. “Tell me it’s not true.”
“What? It’s a big thing in Georgia.”
“I guess you can be a football player and a scientist. Are you staying with Miss Josie and Mr. Jeet again? Didn’t you hear they’re in the hospital?” Jessie said.
“I know. And I’m here for good. Ma got a nursing job at Montefiore Hospital, so we packed up our apartment in Georgia and moved down the street. I stopped by because I still have a key to their place, and Ma wanted me to drop off groceries for them. I was going to wait until tomorrow to come say hi to y’all.”
“That is the best news! What scho
ol are you going to in the fall?”
Orlando grinned. “I guess whatever school you’re going to.”
“We can be science lab partners! Ooh, I need to show you something, but let me water Miss Josie’s plants first.”
“I already did,” Orlando said.
Jessie leaned over to look at the seedlings. “Hey, these look so much better! Yesterday when we came by, they were all droopy.”
“I trimmed some of the weaker ones. Aunt Josie always puts a few seeds in each compartment, just in case, but there’s only room for one strong plant in each cell.”
Jessie looked at Orlando. “You know about plants?”
Orlando shrugged. “In Georgia I worked at the farm down the street during the summers.”
Jessie studied him. If he helped them, that would mean opening up the garden beyond the four Vanderbeekers.
Orlando caught Jessie staring, so he crossed his eyes and blew out his cheeks like a bullfrog.
Jessie laughed.
“You know,” he said, “you haven’t changed a bit. Your brain is always going at warp speed.”
Jessie took that as a compliment. She headed back to the window. “C’mon, follow me.” She popped outside and onto the fire escape. When Orlando didn’t follow, she leaned down to look through the window. “You coming?”
Orlando was skeptical. “Will this thing hold me?”
Jessie jumped up and down on it. It only rattled a little bit. “Sure. Sometimes all my siblings are on it at the same time.”
“I’m not too fond of heights,” he told her, not moving from the apartment. “I don’t know why you New Yorkers want to live miles off the ground.”
“Fine. Don’t come if you’re scared,” Jessie said, heading up.
She wasn’t surprised to hear Orlando climb out the window behind her. She looked back at him, and he was gripping the skinny rail as if his life depended on it. The steps were narrow, so he could get only part of his sneaker on each step.
They went up past Mr. Beiderman’s apartment, then climbed onto the roof.
“Whoa . . .” Orlando said when he reached the top and got his first look out over Harlem. He followed Jessie around the perimeter of the roof, seeing the city from all angles. When he got to the area where a funnel was attached to a strange metal structure, he checked over the side of the roof to see where it led.
“Oh, hey,” he said. “Rube Goldberg machine, right? I built an epic one for our science fair. It fed our cat every morning at six.”
“I’d like to see that,” Jessie said.
“I have a video, but we had to leave the machine back home. Show me how this thing works.”
Jessie had a supply of filled two-liter bottles of water by the edge of the roof, so she uncapped one and set it upside down so the water flowed into the funnel and engaged a series of wind chimes and a rain stick. Music swirled around them.
“Nice!” Orlando said.
“I made it for Isa. She’s at music camp for three weeks. It’s hard for her to be away from Mr. Jeet and Miss Josie right now, though.”
“I heard you were there when he had the stroke. Was it awful?”
Jessie looked out over Harlem. The lights twinkled back at her. “I thought he was dying.” Thinking about Mr. Jeet made her feel like an elephant was stepping on her chest, so she changed the subject. “Do you miss Georgia?”
Orlando looked up at the sky. “I miss the bigness of the sky. Here it seems as small as a postage stamp. I really miss the stars. I loved feeling as if the stars could fall down right on top of me. Here it’s like stars don’t even exist.”
Orlando’s phone beeped, and he pulled it out of his jeans pocket and sighed. “My ma. Let me text her.” Orlando spoke out loud as he texted her back. “I’m fine. Coming home.” Then he said to Jessie, “Gotta go.”
“See you tomorrow?” Jessie said.
“I promised Ma I’d help her unpack in the morning, but I’ll come by after. Give me your phone.” After they plugged their numbers into each other’s phones, they walked to the fire escape and descended. When Orlando got to Miss Josie and Mr. Jeet’s apartment, he climbed in through the window. Jessie passed by him and started to go down the steps to her bedroom.
“Jessie?” he called out.
“Yeah?” she said.
“It’s good to see you again.”
Jessie smiled and turned back to say the same. But Orlando had already pulled down Miss Josie and Mr. Jeet’s window, and the only response from the night was the sound of a distant car alarm, ringing out in rhythmic bursts that matched her heartbeat exactly.
Fifteen
Oliver spent the morning going through his stuff, looking for things he could contribute to the yard sale. It pained him to give away any of his books, but he did manage to find seven he could maybe part with. Other items for the yard sale: an old catcher’s mitt, a set of superhero action figures, and some collared shirts and pants (that still had the tags on them) that he found hanging in his closet.
He had gone around to his sisters that morning to explain the sidewalk-sale plan, and they’d agreed it was the best way to raise funds for the garden. Laney and Jessie worked on a sign, and Hyacinth packed up little bags of the dog and cat treats she had baked.
Mama was back at the hospital, helping Miss Josie fill out insurance paperwork, and Papa was at work. No one had heard from Mr. Beiderman; sometimes he spent the day painting in his apartment and refused to open the door no matter how long the Vanderbeekers knocked.
At ten fifteen sharp, the doorbell rang, and Oliver opened it to find Angie standing outside.
“Ready?” she asked. “My neighbor helped me carry a folding table to the sidewalk already.”
Oliver called to his sisters, who crashed down the stairs with bags of stuff and a huge sign. Franz followed, holding a dirty tennis ball in his mouth.
“Look what I got!” Laney opened a bag for Angie and Oliver to see. Inside were a bulging pouch of rocks and seashells, six headbands with enormous bows on them, and a few mostly empty notebooks. “Those headbands squish my head,” she told them. “I’m going to get a hundred dollars for them so I can buy roses for the garden.”
Oliver raised his eyebrows, but Angie shoved her elbow into his side before he could respond.
“We definitely need plants, but I think our first priority should be good soil,” Jessie said. “Miss Josie always talks about how important soil is.”
The Vanderbeekers lugged their stuff to the sidewalk and promptly got into a fight about how everything was going to be displayed. Laney wanted her stuff in the prime real estate at the front of the table, but Jessie argued that Oliver’s books would sell better and should be placed more prominently. Oliver didn’t want his books to be seen—he was having doubts about selling them—so he discreetly rearranged the merchandise while Jessie was occupied trying to locate potential customers.
Oliver didn’t need to worry about his books, because their block was strangely deserted. Sure, it was ten thirty on a Friday morning, but was it always this quiet? The Vanderbeekers and Angie stood behind their table; the only sound was Franz gnawing on his tennis ball.
“I’m sure people will come by soon,” Hyacinth asserted, and she was right. Mr. Jones was making his way down the street with his USPS mail cart, and he waved to the Vanderbeekers as he approached.
“‘Awesome Stuff for Sale,’” he read from the sign. Then he took his time looking through the offerings. “What are you raising money for?”
“Flowers,” Laney said immediately.
“Um,” Jessie said, glancing at her siblings, “it’s for neighborhood beautification.”
“Ah,” Mr. Jones said. “Flowers around the street trees would be nice.”
“Uh-huh,” the Vanderbeekers and Angie replied.
Mr. Jones took a few more minutes perusing the table. “I’m afraid there’s not much here I can use,” he said after picking up and putting down a headband.
“That�
��s my favorite,” Laney said.
“I’d be up for some more dog treats, though,” Mr. Jones said, glancing at the basket of pet treats. He pulled his wallet out.
“It’s two bucks a bag,” Oliver said, but Hyacinth shushed him.
“No way are you paying for dog treats,” she said. “You have complimentary status for life.”
“But—” Oliver and Mr. Jones protested.
“Nope,” Hyacinth interrupted firmly, waving a hand in front of her. “How many bags do you want?”
“Oh, just one,” Mr. Jones said.
“Here’s five,” Hyacinth said. “You should try these cat treats too. Want some for Pinky Pye?” Pinky Pye was Mr. Jones’s eighteen-year-old tabby cat. Hyacinth shoved three bags of cat treats into Mr. Jones’s mail bag.
“Worst salesperson ever,” Oliver mumbled, and Angie and Jessie shrugged in a that’s-Hyacinth gesture.
“Thank you much,” he said. “Pinky Pye will right enjoy these.”
When Mr. Jones had rolled his cart out of earshot, Oliver hissed, “Pinky Pye doesn’t even have teeth! How is she going to eat those?”
Hyacinth pursed her lips. “I don’t want to take his money, okay? He works really hard.”
“Fine,” Oliver said. Then he watched as five more people bought nothing but received complimentary dog and cat treats. “Our business model is a disaster.”
Angie, who was a girl of action, came up with a new plan. “Maybe we need to hand-sell our stuff,” she suggested. “We can bring some things with us and knock on doors in my building. There are seventy-seven units, and lots of people are retired and should be home now.”
Oliver consulted with his sisters, and everyone agreed there was no harm in trying. He grabbed one of the boxes and put in some books, his fancy clothes, three headbands, two unidentifiable knitting projects Hyacinth had made, a couple of outdated space books (one still acknowledged poor Pluto as a planet), and five glass animal figurines Jessie had found at the bottom of her desk drawer.
The Vanderbeekers and the Hidden Garden Page 7