CONTENTS
Epigraph
Chapter 1 A Snowy Wedding
Chapter 2 Flor Bernoulli Gets Grounded
Chapter 3 Square Man Pays a Visit
Chapter 4 The Pie Shop Calamity
Chapter 5 Kidnapped!
Chapter 6 A Trip in a Golden Rocket Ship
Chapter 7 Be There, or Be Square
Chapter 8 Round Pegs in Square Holes
Chapter 9 Lucy Catches a Most Unusual Horse
Chapter 10 A Most Unusual Dress
Chapter 11 Rectangles Galore
Chapter 12 A Lonely Square
Chapter 13 A Pool of Tears
Chapter 14 Fire in the Heart
Chapter 15 Home at Last
Chapter 16 Red Eye in the Sky with Diamonds
About Gillian Neimark
We asked for signs
The signs were sent.
—LEONARD COHEN, “ANTHEM”
A SNOWY WEDDING
Lucy was late for the snowstorm. It was due to blow in at noon, just in time for her older sister’s wedding. Snow would swirl up the steps of their back porch as Nell was gliding out the door in her bridal gown under a blazing Georgia sun. Then Nell would get married and leave their little town of Puddleville to go live with Matt in the big city, forever.
The thought was unbearable. That’s why Lucy was sulking in the barn. It was so hot the sun was practically burning a hole in the barn roof. Salty sweat slicked Lucy’s short brown hair into a wet cap and dribbled down and stung her eyes. It must be nearly ninety degrees and only eleven a.m. And of course, the snow had already started.
Still, she stayed in the hot barn. She’d been there with Mrs. Chocolate, her pet chicken, for most of the morning. Nobody had even missed her. Television reporters from Atlanta had come early and swarmed the house, with lights and cameras on trolleys. The TV station was doing a special feature on Nell’s snowy June wedding. Lucy and Nell’s father was personally responsible for the snowstorm. He owned the biggest ice-making plant in America, and his machines would crush 40,000 pounds of ice to turn into snow for the wedding, just the way Nell wanted it. This was going to be a day Puddleville would never forget.
Nell herself was the kind of girl nobody could forget. She was beautiful, with smooth brown hair and gold-flecked eyes. She could cook and sew and do back flips with ease. She was basically perfect, and Lucy adored her. But so did everybody else. And that was the problem.
All morning everybody had ignored Lucy. She had sat at the kitchen table in her cowboy boots and jeans, waiting ever so politely. She was going to stretch the truth a little for the news: “I caught a bunch of deer and pulled their antlers off and then let them go. I rode a baby alligator all the way down the creek to town, got me a Coca-Cola, and rode him back home. And I skinned that poor poisonous rattlesnake and made this bracelet here.” Then she would blow on her knuckles and shrug. “That’s just one girl’s life in Puddleville.”
But nobody looked her way. They were all oohing and aahing over Nell. “I might as well be a ghost,” Lucy muttered as she slipped out the door.
Lucy Moon was ten years old, four foot two, and nicknamed “Pip,” for pipsqueak. She was planning to be a horse rustler. She wasn’t sure exactly what a horse rustler did, but she was saving up to buy a big ranch, and as soon as she got it, she was going to be the first pipsqueak in history to go find a bunch of wild horses and tame them.
She lived in a brick house on six acres of land in southern Georgia. Her mom had died in a car accident when Lucy was two months old. Her dad and eighteen-year-old Nell filled her world. And it had been a fine world until Nell fell in love. Suddenly, before Lucy could blink, her sister was engaged. And all anyone could talk about was the wedding and the snow. Then life took an even more horrible turn. Nell decided to sew Lucy a flouncy, frilly, hot pink maid-of-honor dress. “Tie me to a pig and roll me in mud. I won’t be caught dead in that dress,” she’d tell the chicken. Somehow she didn’t have the courage to say the same thing to Nell.
But life has a funny way of turning your worst day into your best, and changing the thing you hate most into your lucky charm. In the end, Lucy owed everything to that dumb pink dress.
It happened like this: Lucy slipped unnoticed into the barn, climbed the ladder to the loft, and hiked herself up the piles of hay. Once she was on top, she dropped easily down a secret opening. This was her hiding place, one she’d made herself. Nobody would ever guess, until maybe next winter when the hay got all used up. She even had a survival kit—a pocketknife, flashlight, jug of water, jar of peanut butter, and her dad’s laser thermometer. She loved that laser thermometer. You could point its red beam at anything, and the temperature of that thing would show up on the digital screen.
She lay down. She could hear the machines grinding the crushed ice, as loud as a million motorcycles, and she knew snow was blowing out of their green hoses. She could hear voices. Laughter.
And then she heard the screen door on the back porch bang open, hitting the railing like it always did.
“Lucy, where are you?” Nell shouted. “If you ran away on my wedding day, I’ll never forgive you!”
Lucy felt a little better.
“Matt, hold her dress for me. I know she doesn’t want to wear it and that’s what this is all about.”
Next thing Lucy knew, there were a lot of people crowding into the barn. Not just Nell, but a bunch of cameramen, and her dad, and half the wedding party. They were all shouting and stomping around and calling for Lucy, and then Nell said, “I’m going to hike up my gown and climb right up that ladder. She’s in that hay. I know it.”
“Darling,” Matt said, “that hay is packed way too tight for someone to hide there, even for a pip like Lucy.”
“I won’t get married without Lucy.”
“It looks like you’ll have to,” Lucy heard a cameraman say. “Otherwise, all your snow will melt and we’ll go home without a news show.”
There was a sudden, hushed silence. Then a sniffle. Was Nell crying?
“Lucy!” Nell called finally. “I don’t care about the pink dress! Just come to my wedding as you are. Please!”
Then Bill Goldsmith, their next-door neighbor, ran into the barn. “Everybody look at the blizzard Buddy’s machines have made! Buddy Moon, you are the King of Ice!”
“My daddy was the one who taught me, and Pa Moon taught him,” Lucy heard her father say modestly. And then he added loud and clear, “Folks, I know Lucy, and I know she’ll do the right thing. She wouldn’t miss her sister’s wedding even if the whole world were on fire. She’ll show up in the nick of time. So let’s get on with the celebration. We’re blessed today. Aren’t we blessed?”
Buddy had a way with words, simple but strong, and people usually agreed with him. Everyone began to murmur, “We’re blessed. Yes, we’re blessed.”
And then the barn was empty again.
Amazing, thought Lucy. I’m going to the wedding in my blue jeans. And I’ll be on TV! I can’t believe it! She pointed her laser thermometer at the hay. It was then that she noticed a small, shiny object. She moved the red laser beam over it. The digital screen read 86 degrees. She picked up the object. It was warm to the touch, a shiny, old-fashioned copper key with two square teeth at the end. The key fit her hand perfectly.
Hey, this was kind of exciting. She turned it over. On the back were words she could barely pronounce.
“Divina sectia,” she said slowly. “Well, that sounds about as pretty as a bucket of rocks. I wonder what it means.” She thought for a minute, and decided the key had fallen out of the rafters into her hiding place for a reason. It might have belonged to my great-great-grandpa. He probably hid it there before he died. It could
be the key to a buried safe full of gold I can use to buy my ranch.
The thought was so wonderful that she nearly laughed with delight. Just in case someone unexpectedly discovered her key and her secret hiding place, she opened the peanut butter jar and shoved the key inside. And then she climbed out of the hayloft and skipped across the now deserted barn, taking the back steps two at a time, banging the kitchen door as loud as she could, and racing across the kitchen to the living room, where she ran smack into her dad.
“Ready for the wedding, Pip?” he said, brushing bits of hay from her shirt.
She hugged him. “Thank you, Daddy.”
“For what?”
“For trusting me.”
“You deserve to be trusted. Even if you took my thermometer and put it in your secret hay room.”
Her mouth dropped open.
“You know about my hiding place?”
He smiled. “How could I not? I made the exact same one when I was a kid. In the same place. And of course, my daddy knew about mine, because he’d made one when he was a kid. Hiding in hay goes back a long way in our family. The other day I worked on your hideout a little, to make it more comfortable. I straightened out the edges and made it quite a bit bigger. Did you notice?”
Lucy flushed deep pink. “Yeah, I was able to lie down and stretch out. I couldn’t figure out how it had grown on its own. So does Nell know too?”
“I doubt it. It’s just our secret. You’re a pip off the old block.”
He ruffled her hair. Then he asked, “Are those the jeans you’re going to wear to the wedding? Or do you want to put on the ones with holes in the knees?”
She laughed. “No, but I’m gonna get my cowboy hat.”
“Come look at the snow first, Lucy,” her father said, motioning her to the bay windows in the front of their living room. “It looks even better than I imagined.”
She gazed out at a sight she’d never seen in Puddleville, where snow was almost unheard of. Their front porch, the stately steps, and the entire front yard were softly blanketed in billows of white. Her dad had even dusted the rosebushes with snowflakes. It looked exactly like a postcard from some faraway place. Yet across the street, the warm sun shone on green lawns without a speck of snow.
“You made magic, Daddy,” said Lucy.
“I did, didn’t I? I’ve got to clear a path now so Matt can carry Nell through the front door and down the steps at the wedding ceremony. So go on and get your cowboy hat and shine your boots.”
“I’ll shine ’em until they’re so bright they blind you!”
He laughed. “It’s going to be one fine wedding.”
FLOR BERNOULLI GETS GROUNDED
A thousand miles northeast of Lucy Moon’s house in Puddleville—in a brownstone apartment in Brooklyn, New York—another ten-year-old girl was cleaning her closet. And what a closet it was. It ran the length of her bedroom, with four sliding doors, and was filled with outfits she’d designed and sewn herself. Each outfit was labeled with the place where she’d first worn it, with a handwritten card pinned to the sleeve: “Judy Blake’s Halloween party.” “First day of fifth grade.” “Paris, the morning I finally met my father.”
The outfits were also cataloged on her blog, which simply bore her name, Flor Bernoulli.
Tonight she was putting aside all the clothes she’d outgrown, to give to her French half sister, Aimée. Flor’s father, Jacques Bernoulli, was bringing Aimée over in a week to visit New York for the first time ever. Flor lingered over the outfit she’d worn to Paris last month when she’d flown in a magic hat across the ocean. She smoothed the black pantaloons and cape, thinking back about that fateful trip and how it had changed her life forever. For years she had planned for the day she’d actually go on her own to surprise her dad. She just didn’t expect it to happen when she was ten years old.
Her mom and dad had divorced when Flor was only two. Her dad went back to France, and seemed to forget about her. Years passed, and he never once called or wrote. Worse still, her mom clammed up whenever Flor brought up her father, as if the memories were too painful.
But just a month earlier, on an ordinary Wednesday in May, all that had changed. Flor remembered each moment vividly. School had let out, and she’d run over to Dr. Pi’s Sky-High Pie Shop—the neighborhood’s favorite bakery. Not only were the pies delicious, but they curved in fantastic spiral shapes that rose as high as two feet tall.
But that day was different: Dr. Pi had suddenly confessed to her that he was a wizard from another galaxy. In fact, his pies were not spiral-shaped by accident. He was in charge of the Spiral itself, throughout the whole universe, wherever it showed up, in pies or seashells or sunflowers. He had to guard the cosmic fire that kept the Spiral spinning. Without him, every spiral would cease to exist. And, he told her, he feared that two brothers from another planet had found him hiding on planet Earth and had come to steal the fire.
That very evening the two brothers had shown up at Flor’s home. Their names were Mr. It and Mr. Bit. They were desperate to find Dr. Pi’s fire, because it was the only thing they knew of that would save Mr. It’s life, for he was dying. And as it turned out, Flor was the only one who could really help. The Secret Spiral was part of her destiny. So was the fire. She had learned how to make special magic with that fire, a magic all her own.
Flor shook her head, remembering how, on that fateful day, she had flown in Dr. Pi’s magic hat across the ocean, landing in a lighthouse in France. She remembered how the hat had taken her right to the café on a busy Paris street where her father had breakfast every morning. She remembered waiting, jittery and full of anticipation, for him to walk in. And she was ready to burst into tears all over again when she recalled the most awful moment of her life—seeing her dad, Jacques, walk through that café door with his French wife and his beautiful six-year-old daughter, Aimée. He had a new family. He had truly put her out of his mind. But it had all turned out okay. She and Aimée had gotten along. Her father had felt terrible for taking the easy way out all those years. They’d been in touch ever since, on the computer and phone. Aimée was learning English in school, and once a week she’d call on her own.
Just then Flor’s cell phone rang.
“Aimée!” Flor said.
“One week until we came,” said Aimée in her halting English.
“Until we come,” corrected Flor.
“I am so slippery excited!”
“I’m slippery excited too,” said Flor, laughing, “whatever that means.”
She talked to her half sister for a few more minutes, and then her mom called her for dinner. They were having a vegetarian meal tonight—a big bowl heaped with spaghetti squash, topped with homemade tomato sauce, and baked potatoes on the side. Her mom liked to fancy herself a “colorful” cook. She had fun with meals, when she wasn’t ordering their favorite Chinese takeout.
“So,” said her mom. “Dig in to our delicious fake pasta tonight. Anything interesting happen at school or the pie shop today? How is Dr. Pi? He seems to have even more business than ever, now that he and Mrs. Plump have gone into business together.”
“Something strange did happen today,” said Flor thoughtfully. “It was kind of freaky, actually.”
Her mom’s fork paused in midair, dripping with yellow tendrils of squash. “Really? What was it?”
“All the pies in the shop went flat. And turned into rectangles. And so did the toast. You know how Mrs. Plump loves her spiral toast. Well, she was hysterical. Then a wind came up out of nowhere and blew the doors of Dr. Pi’s shop wide open. I mean, the wind was so hard the windows were shaking, Mom! And it was raining like crazy, out of nowhere.”
Her mom put her fork down. “Oh no. This doesn’t sound good at all.”
Flor made an instant decision not to tell her mom what had happened next.
“It’s okay, Mom.”
“Oh, really? It’s okay? I don’t think so. I want you to know that you are grounded.”
&
nbsp; “Grounded?” protested Flor. “For what? I didn’t do anything wrong!”
“You’re grounded to save your life,” said her mother firmly. “I have a terrible feeling about what’s coming, and I am not letting you go on another adventure across the world and through the Milky Way galaxy fighting evil. You may indeed have superpowers, and it all worked out last time, but I was beside myself with worry. It’s just not happening again. Do you understand?”
Flor nodded calmly. “I understand, Mom. And don’t worry. That was all that happened. It was weird, so Dr. Pi closed the shop early, and that was that.”
No, she certainly wasn’t going to tell her mom the rest. How a voice had boomed, seemingly out of nowhere, chanting strangely. She shivered when she remembered the odd chant:
One, two, three, four, nevermore and nevermore!
It was the voice of Square Man. A man who traveled through the universe destroying every circle, curve, and spiral he saw. “He’s the true enemy of the Spiral,” Dr. Pi had told her that afternoon. “And it looks like he has finally found me.”
No, Flor wasn’t going to tell her mom any of that at all. And besides, Dr. Pi had told Flor to go home and not to worry.
“It’s our destiny,” Dr. Pi had whispered as he shooed her out the door. “Just like last time.”
She had looked deep into his eyes. He was like an uncle, father, and friend, all rolled into one. And she could tell what he was going to say, and he did say it:
“I can help you, and I will, of course, but it’s going to be up to you and—”
“And?” said Flor.
“And Lucy,” said Dr. Pi. “She’s going to be very important.”
“Lucy who?”
“Lucy Moon. You’ll be meeting her soon. And I suggest you don’t judge her by her looks. She isn’t a fashionable city girl like you.”
Flor had sighed. “I guess you already took a peek into the future?”
“Just a peek,” he admitted.
Then they heard that voice again.
One, two, three, four, nevermore and nevermore! I know your name, your name is Flor!
The Golden Rectangle Page 1