“Is that you, Pixie?” Mom called from the kitchen.
“Coming!” Gently, I turned Egg over and misted it. I even petted it a few times before I put the cover back on the tank. I’d agreed to take care of the egg and I wasn’t going to back out. Besides, I was getting curious about the little bird inside.
Mom was sitting at the table, cutting something out of a piece of pink felt. “What is that?” I asked.
“What does it look like?”
“A dinosaur?”
She sighed. “It’s supposed to be a poodle.”
“Oh, I was going to say a poodlesaur.” We both laughed.
“I’m making poodle skirts for my ladies,” Mom explained. “I have to cut out twelve of these. Do you want to help?”
I went to the kitchen drawer to get another pair of scissors. “What’s a poodle skirt?”
“A flared skirt with a poodle appliqué on it. We’re putting on the play Grease. It’s about teenagers in the nineteen fifties. In those days a lot of girls wore them.”
“The old ladies are going to play teenagers?”
Her eyebrows rose up like gull wings in a stormy sky. I knew what she was going to say even before she uttered the words.
“Fun isn’t just for kids, Pixie.”
“I know, Mom. Sorry.” My mother believed that no matter how old you were, it was important to have fun every day. I think it was because her childhood had been so full of rules and limits.
As I cut out the shape she’d traced onto the felt, I could feel her watching me. Lately it was something she did often, when she thought I wasn’t looking. Probably she was wondering whether the Goose Ladies had come yet. I didn’t mention Ms. Haggerty, though, because then I’d have to tell Mom I turned the Goose Ladies down. She’d be so disappointed in me.
“Do you want to hear a secret?” she asked suddenly.
“Sure.”
“Mr. Bottoms has purchased a new toilet for the museum. A really famous one.”
“Whose?” I was hoping it belonged to a pop musician or a movie star.
“It’s King Louis the fourteenth of France’s throne toilet.”
It was hard to get excited about a toilet that belonged to some old king I’d never heard of. But then I realized she’d said something strange. “What do you mean, throne toilet?”
The whites of Mom’s eyes suddenly got big and she bit her lip to keep from laughing. “It’s a throne with a potty under the seat. The king supposedly used it while he received visitors.”
“E-e-ew! That’s gross, Mom!”
She was giggling so hard her eyes teared up. “Mr. Bottoms is planning on having a big unveiling ceremony in a few weeks,” she said when she could speak again. “But maybe he’ll give you and Gray a sneak peek later.”
“Gray went to Sage Green’s house. I’ll ask Uncle B. another time.”
“Oh.” There was a teeny bit of surprise in Mom’s voice. I sort of wished she’d ask me when Gray and Sage had become friends. But then I’d have to admit the dumb things I’d said to Gray. Instead, I picked up the scissors and started cutting out another appliqué. With each snip, I imagined cutting off a lock of Sage’s long, shiny hair.
“I’d better start dinner,” Mom said when the last poodle was done. “Thanks for your help.”
“That’s okay. It was a lot more fun than doing homework,” I said, lugging my backpack to my room. I had math, science, and two chapters of The One and Only Ivan to read. But first I pulled my poetry journal from the bottom of my pajama drawer and stroked the blue gray cover as if it were a beloved old cat. The I opened it and began to write.
Gray is clouds, fog, and gloom
It’s worse than feeling blue
Except when Gray is your friend
Then the opposite is true!
Tomorrow I would try to make Gray my friend again. Once I told him about the throne toilet, he’d definitely want to see it. I was pretty sure none of Sage’s seven bathrooms had one of those.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Ye Olde Realization
Gray wasn’t waiting at our stop the next morning or any other day that week. Only when the school bus had already pulled up did he run out his front door and get on. I guess he’d watched for it from behind the curtains in his living room, though I never spotted him doing it.
Even worse, he and Sage didn’t just sit with each other—they were acting like best friends. I knew I’d have to eat lunch alone again, unless I got up the courage to ask Lucy and Alexa if I could sit at their table. So I did.
“It’s not like we own it,” Lucy answered, shrugging a little. “Anyone can sit here.”
“Unless you’re having a headcheese sandwich. Then no way!” Alexa said. “Even the name makes me nauseous.”
“This is only turkey on whole wheat,” I said, holding up my lunch bag. When I sat on the bench, I made sure to leave a little distance between us. At the end of the table, Leo looked up and sort of waved. He had a sandwich in one hand and a pencil in the other. His drawing pad was in front of him.
I was listening to Lucy and Alexa discuss whether headcheese was made from heads and if so, what kind, when Raffi came to our table. “Hey, Pixie, how come Gray dumped you?” he asked.
Alexa scowled at him. “Dumping is what you do to lunch leftovers, not people, Raffi.”
“Besides, what makes you think Pixie didn’t dump him?” Lucy added.
“We both got tired of each other,” I said before they could argue anymore. “We’ve known each other since, like, kindergarten.” It was nice of them to defend me—but I just wanted what had happened to go away. I wanted Raffi to go away, too.
Leo hadn’t said a word while Raffi was bugging me. But when Raf was gone, Leo slid a drawing across the table. It showed a figure with a boy’s head, a trash can for a body, and legs with sneakers that were giving off wavy “smell” lines. The boy’s mouth was wide open and “garbage”—an apple core and a half-eaten chicken leg—seemed to be spewing out.
I showed it to Lucy and Alexa, and they cracked up. But after lunch, I stopped in the girls’ bathroom to push the drawing through the swinging flap on the trash can in there. No one in our class really liked Raffi. He was the biggest boy in our grade, had a gray front tooth, and needed to use deodorant. Everyone called him Raffi Yucker instead of Raffi Tucker.
I didn’t want to make his life any worse.
Without Gray, I didn’t feel like exploring the woods. So when I got off the bus by myself on Friday, and Mom and Sammy weren’t home yet, I went to the mudroom to hang out with Egg.
Sitting alone in its newspaper nest, Egg looked as lonesome as I felt. I considered giving it some company by surrounding it with chicken eggs from our fridge. But I was afraid they’d get cooked under the heat lamp, so I carried Egg outside and sat down cross-legged under a big oak tree.
I picked a few blades of grass and tickled the shell. I was thinking that when I’d told Ms. Haggerty I didn’t want to be a Goose Lady, she hadn’t even seemed to care. So why did I still feel bad? It was what I’d wanted, wasn’t it? To be free of the Goose Ladies. Yet the surprising thing was, I missed the idea that they might come for me. I couldn’t stop wondering about their mission. It was something that required courage. As Ms. Haggerty had said, “Not everyone is up to the challenge.” I wondered if I could be.
Now that Ms. Tomassini was back, I’d never find out.
“I messed up, Egg,” I murmured. “I was too much of a coward. I let you down. And Mom. And myself.
But maybe there was still hope. I’d returned Sister Goose’s Cautionary Verse for Brats to Mom’s shelf the morning after I’d taken it. Even though I’d only read the first poem, I still got the chills just thinking about it. But now I needed to take another look. I was hoping the book held a clue to how I could find the Goose Ladies, or at least my Goose Lady.
I took Egg with me to Mom and Dad’s room. I had to remind myself the rhymes inside Sister Goose’s book were made up, not
true stories. When I felt calm enough, I pulled the book off the shelf. “Okay, Egg, I’ll read aloud,” I said as I flipped to the first verse.
“There was an old woman, who lived in a shoe.
When her brats misbehaved, she knew just what to do.
For dinner she fed them moldy old bread,
Then whipped them all soundly and sent them to bed.”
I knew the rhyme well, but this version seemed meaner. Didn’t the old woman ever hear of giving her brats a time-out? Couldn’t she have grounded them or made them do extra chores, like scrubbing the floors of the “shoe”? Besides, in the illustration, the shoe house looked like an old, worn-out boot. It probably smelled like feet. Living inside it would be punishment enough for me.
But the next poem really made me want to puke:
“Trixie Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
A peck of pickled peppers Trixie Piper picked.
Then Trixie Piper ate the peck of pickled peppers
And retched because the peppers made her sick.”
Yeow! It was bad enough that the Sinister Sisters, whoever they were, had changed Peter Piper to Trixie Piper—which was awfully close to Pixie Piper. But the illustration that went with the poem showed a stream of peppers exploding from the mouth of a curly-haired girl.
Super gross!
The poems in this book were creepy, but I turned the page anyway. It was like when you put on a horror movie that’s too horrible—but you keep watching to see what happens.
“Sing a song of sixpence,
A pocket full of rye
Four and twenty naughty boys
Got baked in a pie.
When the pie was steaming
The brats began to shout
‘We’re sorry! We’re sorry!’
And then they all popped out.”
In the illustration, the boys were bursting out of a piecrust. As they ran away, their clothes were smoking and their mouths were wide open, as if they were crying or screaming.
I slammed the book shut and shoved it back on Mom’s shelf. Sister Goose’s rhymes were only about the sickening punishments waiting for children who didn’t behave. There weren’t any clues to finding Ms. Haggerty in it.
“Oh, Egg, I think it’s better I turned Ms. Haggerty down,” I said, cradling it in my hands. “Let’s just forget all about this crazy Goose Lady stuff.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Ye Olde Aisle 6
I was getting a glass of water from the sink when Mom got home.
“Sorry I’m late,” she said. “We had a drama at the residence. Mrs. Looper claimed Mrs. Pyle was in her seat at the two o’clock movie, even though there are no assigned seats in the rec room. They had an argument that lasted an hour and—” Suddenly, Mom stopped and looked at me. “How was your day, honey?”
“Okay.”
But she knew me too well to be fooled. “I guess you and Gray haven’t made up yet, huh?” she asked.
I’d never told Mom why Gray didn’t want to be my friend anymore. She was always kind to everyone. She’d never understand how I could have been so mean to him. I could hardly understand it myself. And I didn’t know how to fix it.
“He doesn’t want to make up,” I said, sounding as if I’d swallowed a frog.
Mom walked up behind me and put her hands on my shoulders. “Don’t worry, he will soon. He’s just stretching. Around your age, that’s what kids do. They explore who they are by trying out new people and new things.”
Stretching was a word with a lot more hope in it than dumping. I imagined Sage pulling Gray’s arm, elongating it like a rubber band. Maybe soon, it would snap back again—and Gray would snap back, too.
“Why don’t you come grocery shopping with me?” Mom asked. “We can pick Sammy up from Grandma Westerly’s on our way.”
“Okay.” I chugged down the rest of my water.
“Don’t rush,” Mom said. “I want to change out of this costume before we go.”
I gave her a second look. I hadn’t even noticed that she was wearing a poodle skirt and saddle shoes with fluffy white socks. The funny thing was, I wouldn’t have cared one bit if she’d stayed in her costume.
We were waiting in the checkout line when Mom looked up from her shopping list. “Oh fudge! I forgot the peanut butter. Would you run and get a jar, Pix?”
“Sure.” I wriggled through the maze of customers and carts, toward the aisle where they kept the nut butters and jellies. I knew the store as well as I knew the path through our woods.
I’d just located our brand when I heard a loud craaack! Out of the corner of my eye, I glanced down aisle six. There was one other shopper. I took in her frizzy red hair and the bandage on the side of her nose, and I gasped.
She looked up from placing a jar in the straw basket on her arm. “Do you need help reaching something, kiddo?”
“Ms. Haggerty! I—I didn’t think I’d ever see you again,” I stammered.
“I do need to eat, you know.” She raised an eyebrow. “Did you want to see me?”
No! Yes! I wasn’t sure. “Um, maybe,” I mumbled.
“Well, if you’re not certain, I’ll finish my shopping.” She turned to go.
“Wait! Please!”
She looked back over her shoulder.
“I—I think I might have made a mistake when I said I didn’t want to join the Goose Ladies. I have questions I can’t stop thinking about.”
She turned and faced me again. I could tell she was waiting for me to say more. I squeezed my eyes shut so I could concentrate.
“Lately I’ve been feeling like a part of me is missing.” I wasn’t sure that made any sense, but when I opened my eyes again, Ms. Haggerty had set her basket down at her feet. She was staring at me, as if I were a book she was reading. I clutched the jar of peanut butter to my chest and forced myself to meet her gaze.
“Ask your questions kiddo,” she said finally. “I’ll tell you what I can.”
I began with the thing I’d wondered about the most. “You said the Goose Ladies have a mission. What is it?”
She glanced around before she answered, “Our mission is to bring hope to the world.”
The way she was grinning at me made her look like she belonged here with the nut butters. I think she was expecting me to jump up and down. But her answer sounded like the words to a cheesy song or the message in a Christmas card.
“How do you do that?” I asked.
“We bake birthday cakes that can make wishes come true.”
It wasn’t what I’d been expecting to hear. It wasn’t mystical. “Oh— so you give cakes to needy people.”
“Well . . . not exactly.”
“Then I guess you sell them to raise money to help needy people.”
Her eyes got all bugged out. “Oh no! We never sell them. We distribute them secretly. No one knows who gets them. Not even us.”
I was pretty confused. “Do you mean you don’t know whose wish you’re granting?”
“Exactly.”
“But wouldn’t it be better to choose the people who need it most?”
She put a hand on her hip. “How would you know who is the most needy?”
“I’d know who didn’t need a wish,” I muttered, thinking of Sage.
Ms. Haggerty cracked her gum so sharply I winced. “Look, kiddo, hope is the belief that something good might happen. It keeps us going. And if everyone—rich or poor, healthy or sick, happy or sad—has an equal chance of having a wish come true, it keeps hope alive.”
“But what about bad people?”
“A bad person might just be someone who needs a bit of good luck.”
I kind of got it, but I was still a little disappointed. I’d been expecting the mission to be exciting and maybe even dangerous. Baking wasn’t either of those things, though once I’d gotten a blister from a hot pan of brownies Mom and I had made.
As if she could read my mind, Ms. Haggerty began reciting a rhyme:
“
A birthday cake without a wish
Is like an ocean minus fish.
Pretty to look at, but deep inside
It leaves you quite unsatisfied.”
At first it seemed like such a simple rhyme. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized how important every birthday wish I’d ever made had felt, even though I had no idea if my wishes would come true. Maybe most people felt that way. At every party I’d ever been to, the most important part was when we gathered around the cake. Someone would light the candles, and while the birthday person was making a secret wish, we’d all be quiet. Then the kid or adult would blow out the candles and we’d clap, sing “Happy Birthday,” and eat.
But a birthday cake that was guaranteed to grant a wish—well, that would be amazing!
“What goes into a wish-granting cake, anyway?” I asked.
“Sorry, kiddo,” Ms. Haggerty said. “You’d have to become one of our Goose Girls, which is what we call our apprentices, in order to learn our secrets. And that’s a job you’d have to earn. It wouldn’t be easy.”
Suddenly my heart stood at attention like a soldier.
“You’d have to be braver than brave,” she continued. “You’d have to be truer than true. You’d have to keep everything about the Goose Ladies a secret.”
I nodded and pretended to lock my lips, but Ms. Haggerty didn’t crack a smile. “I’m serious, kiddo. If you tell someone—anyone—you could both be in real danger.”
“But I could talk to my mom, right? She already knows a little because of her own mother.”
Ms. Haggerty let out a long sigh. “I’m afraid not. The less she knows, the safer she’ll be. As I said, becoming an apprentice isn’t easy.”
I felt bad for my mom. But I believed she’d want me to try anyway—though only if I wanted to.
Suddenly I remembered something. “Ms. Haggerty? Did you ever hear of a book called Sister Goose’s Cautionary Verse for Brats?”
She blinked, as if she were startled. “How do you know about that book?”
“I found it on Mom’s bookshelf. It belonged to her mother. I’ve read some of it, but it’s super mean and scary.”
“Listen, kiddo, that book is just a bunch of bad baloney. The Goose Ladies had nothing to do with it—absolutely nothing. It was purely the work of the Sinister Sisters!”
The Secret Destiny of Pixie Piper Page 5