Absolutely Truly

by Heather Vogel Frederick

  “Wow,” I said. “It’s like being inside a snow globe.”

  Calhoun gave a half smile. It made him look almost human. “Yeah, it’s pretty cool,” he replied. Then the smile vanished, and the gruff mask slid back into place. “For a library, I mean.”

  As we started to pass a bronze statue in the middle of the lobby, I did a double take. I’d recognize that nose anywhere! I drew closer and read the plaque on it—sure enough, it was Nathaniel Daniel himself. FOUNDER OF LOVEJOY COLLEGE AND FRIEND TO ALL, the plaque proclaimed.

  “Hey, that’s the guy in the picture over your fireplace,” Cha Cha said, and I nodded.

  “How come his nose is so shiny, compared to the rest of him?” I asked Calhoun.

  “Chester says students rub it for good luck at exam time,” he told me.

  I gave it a swipe too. It felt a little weird, rubbing my ancestor’s nose, but the Pumpkin Falls Private Eyes could use all the luck they could get.

  “So how do we find what we’re looking for?” asked Cha Cha.

  Calhoun led us over to a bank of computers. I pulled the envelope from my backpack, took the letter out, and read the call number aloud.

  He typed it in, then gave me a funny look. “You didn’t tell me you were looking for a Shakespeare book,” he said as the search results flashed onscreen.

  “You didn’t need to know,” I replied.

  “It’s upstairs,” he said, and led us to an elevator behind the marble staircase. We emerged on the fourth floor.

  “How come he knows so much about this place?” I whispered to my friends as we followed Calhoun down a long central aisle.

  “Scooter says he spends a lot of time here,” Jasmine whispered back. “His father’s office is in the building next door.”

  Calhoun stopped and pointed down one of the rows of bookcases. “It should be on one of those shelves at the end.”

  “We can take it from here,” I told him.

  Calhoun turned to Cha Cha. “What time is our first practice?”

  “Saturday at eleven,” she replied. “See you there.”

  He nodded and left.

  The four of us walked slowly down the row, scanning the stickers on the books.

  “Got it!” I said, plucking a thin volume from between two larger ones on one of the bottom shelves. I read the title aloud: “Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare.”

  “Careful, it looks old,” said Cha Cha.

  “Is there another letter inside?” Jasmine asked eagerly, craning to see over my shoulder.

  I riffled through the brittle, mottled brown pages. “Doesn’t look like it,” I replied. I went through the book again, then turned it upside down and gave it a gentle shake. “Nothing.”

  We looked at each other. Was this another dead end?

  “There has to be something!” said Cha Cha.

  “There isn’t.” I couldn’t hide my disappointment.

  “Check the book pocket,” said Lucas.

  “Huh?”

  He tugged the book from my hand. Turning to the very back, he pointed to the cardboard pocket still glued in place. “Lots of old books have them,” he explained. “Mr. Henry showed me. Before computers, it’s where they used to put the book card that kept track of borrowers and due dates. It would make a good hiding place.”

  “Lucas! You’re a genius!” I poked a finger inside, and sure enough, there was something there. I fished it out. It was a piece of paper with two words written on it: Check shelf.

  We did, dropping to our knees and searching thoroughly. Nothing but books and more books.

  “If I were an envelope, where would I be?” mused Jasmine.

  “Hang on a sec,” I said. “I’ve got an idea. Move over, you guys.”

  Lying down on the floor, I inspected the underside of the shelf directly above where we’d found the book. Sure enough, something was stuck to it: an envelope. “Got it!” I said triumphantly, peeling off the duct tape that held it in place.

  I scrambled back to my feet. Like the other envelope, this one simply had the letter B written on the outside. Unlike the other envelope, though, there was no stamp.

  “Open it,” urged Jasmine, and as I did, my friends crowded around to read over my shoulder.

  Just as before, this letter also contained a quote:

  I see, lady, the gentleman is not in your books.

  It, too, was signed simply with a B. I read what was written below: “Wednesday the third, B-4.”

  “So who do you think the Bs are?” asked Jasmine. “And what the heck does that quote mean?”

  I shook my head. “I have absolutely no idea.”

  “I do,” said Calhoun from the other side of the stacks. He smirked at us through a gap in the books. “But it’s going to cost you.”

  CHAPTER 18

  “It’s a quote from Much Ado About Nothing,” Calhoun told us, after we’d coughed up all the money we had in our wallets.

  “Well, duh,” snapped Jasmine. “We didn’t need to pay you almost twenty bucks for that.”

  Calhoun smirked again. “Not my fault you don’t know your Shakespeare,” he said. “The main characters in the play are Beatrice and Benedick.” He pointed to the initials on the envelope and the letter. “There’s your B and B.”

  I stared at him. “How’d you figure that out so fast?”

  Calhoun shrugged. “My father is a Shakespeare scholar,” he told us. “He teaches classes on the Bard.”

  “Who’s the Bard?” asked Jasmine.

  “Well, duh,” said Calhoun softly, repeating Jasmine’s earlier words. “Shakespeare, of course. Everybody knows that.”

  Jasmine flushed.

  “This quote here,” Calhoun continued, tapping a finger against the letter, “ ‘I see, lady, the gentleman is not in your books’? That means Benedick is on Beatrice’s blacklist—he’s not in her ‘good books.’ Get it? She’s mad at him.” Looking around at our stunned expressions, he grabbed the book away from Cha Cha. “Here, check it out, Act I, Scene 1: ‘There is a kind of merry war betwixt Signior Benedick and her: they never meet but there’s a skirmish of wit between them.’ ”

  “And that is supposed to mean what, exactly?” I asked.

  Calhoun sighed, clearly disgusted by my ignorance. “The two of them spend most of the play bickering with each other. They argue all the time, but it turns out that they’re really in love.”

  My mouth fell open. “Are you telling us that this is a love letter?”

  “Duh,” Calhoun said again.

  I gave him the stink eye.

  Calhoun was smart. Why did he take such pains to hide it, I wondered? I looked over at Cha Cha. “Should we show him the other letter too?”

  She shrugged. “Might as well.”

  “Sorry, kids, I’d like to stay and play but I have to go,” Calhoun told us, before I could fish it out and hand it over. “My sister’s cheering for some wrestling meet tonight, and my father wants me to go along and watch.”

  “Shoot,” I said, glancing at my cell phone. “My family’s going too. I was supposed to be home five minutes ago,”

  “Me too,” said Cha Cha. Her cousin Noah is on Danny’s team.

  “How about you all come over to my house tomorrow after school?” I suggested. “You’re invited too,” I told Calhoun.

  I could tell he was curious. “We’ll see” was all he said, though, playing it cool.

  I ran all the way home. Fortunately, my family was running late, so nobody noticed I’d blown my deadline. Dad had gone back to the bookstore, and my mother tried not to sound disappointed as we all piled into the car.

  “Danny’s first meet of the season!” she said in an overly enthusiastic tone. “Won’t this be fun?”

  I was surprised at how full the gym was at West Hartfield High. I guess there aren’t a whole heck of a lot of other things to do in the heart of maple syrup country on a weeknight in the dead of winter. I spotted Belinda Winchester up in the stands, an
d Ella Bellow was there too, talking to Bud Jefferson from the stamp store.

  “Truly! Up here!” Cha Cha called. She and her mother and Baxter were saving seats for us.

  Pippa and Baxter were so excited to see each other they nearly fell off the bleachers and had to be corralled into a coloring project. Lauren made a beeline for Belinda Winchester, who was sitting a couple of rows in front of us. Belinda reached into her pocket and handed Lauren something—a kitten, most likely. The two of them have bonded over their mutual love of animals. Mom was a little worried at first, since Belinda is, well, kind of odd. In fact, odd is putting it mildly if you ask me, which nobody ever does.

  “She’s nuts, but not nuts nuts, you know?” Aunt True assured my mother, after Belinda invited Lauren over to view the latest litter. Lauren’s dying to have a kitten, but my mother says she has enough pets. “Unless you consider someone who doesn’t own a TV and doesn’t read the newspaper nuts, Belinda’s just your garden-variety cat lady. I’ve spent a lot of time with her over the past few weeks—she’s practically a fixture at the bookshop these days. Lauren will be perfectly safe.”

  “Lauren!” my mother called a few minutes later, motioning her back. “Honey, you’ve got homework to do. You can visit after you’re done.”

  Lauren slumped down on the bench beside me with a sigh of resignation. Reaching into her backpack, she pulled out her book report on Charlotte’s Web.

  “Will you read what I’ve written so far?” she asked me.

  “Sure.”

  “Aunt True says that if the first edition hasn’t sold by the time I give my report, she’ll bring it to school so I can show everybody,” Lauren told me.

  “Cool.” I started to read.

  Elwyn Brooks White, known to his friends as Andy, was born on July 11, 1899, in Mount Vernon, New York.

  I only got as far as the part where Mr. White and his wife bought a saltwater farm in Maine, when the lights in the gym dimmed and loud rock music blared. A moment later, Danny and his team came running out in their maroon-and-white warm-up suits. The West Hartfield fans clapped and cheered.

  Of all of us, my brother Danny is the most like our father. Same strong jaw, same wiry build. When he’s in his wrestling singlet, he looks almost exactly the way Dad did in his yearbook pictures.

  I waved to Hatcher, who was standing on the sidelines. Scooter Sanchez was there too, along with several other guys I recognized from school. In Pumpkin Falls, the middle school wrestlers attend all the high school meets and tournaments. They help set up and tear down the mats, warm up the team, and watch and learn.

  Danny and Cha Cha’s cousin Noah both wrestle in the 152-pound weight class, so they wouldn’t be up for a while. As Cha Cha and I settled in for the long wait, I noticed that our mothers had somehow gotten onto the topic of how they met their husbands.

  “Harry and I were rivals in a dance competition,” Mrs. Abramowitz said as the music faded and two guys even skinnier than Lucas Winthrop stepped onto the mat for the first match. Watching 106-pounders wrestle always makes me anxious. Their twiggy arms and legs look like rubber bands that might snap at any moment as they flail around trying to pin each other. “I lost the competition but gained a husband.”

  My mother laughed. “J. T. and I sat next to each other in freshman English at the University of Texas,” she said. “When he told me he was from a place called Pumpkin Falls, New Hampshire. I thought he was making it up!”

  “Wasn’t he there on a wrestling scholarship?” asked Cha Cha’s mother. “I seem to remember Ella Bellow saying something about that.”

  “I’ll bet she did,” my mother replied, and she and Mrs. Abramowitz exchanged wry smiles. It’s no secret that our postmistress loves to gossip.

  “So wrestling runs in the family, then?” said Cha Cha’s mother.

  Mom nodded. “My family too. J. T. was the first guy I dated who was willing to take on my brothers.” My mother loves telling this story, and we all love hearing it. It’s practically a legend in our family.

  “I have six of them,” she continued, her Texas twang deepening as she warmed to her tale.

  “You have six brothers?” said Mrs. Abramowitz. Her eyes, which were the same green as Cha Cha’s and Baxter’s, widened.

  My mother smiled her sunflower smile. “A boy for every day of the week and a girl for Sunday, my grandmother used to say. Anyway, my brothers made J. T. arm wrestle each one of them before he was allowed to take me out on a date.”

  Cha Cha’s mother laughed.

  “I’m serious!” said my mother, grinning. “He must have really wanted to ask me out, because he beat every single one of them.”

  “That’s quite an accomplishment,” said Mrs. Abramowitz, glancing over my mother’s shoulder. I looked up and saw my father making his way through the crowded bleachers toward us. Aunt True was with him, bundled up in a sheepskin jacket and another hat from her seemingly bottomless collection of embarrassments—a rainbow knitted number this time, with a spray of tassels on top that looked kind of like Annie Freeman’s braids.

  My mother gave my knee a squeeze, which I knew meant, Don’t make a big deal about your father coming along; just act normal.

  “J. T., True, this is Rachel Abramowitz,” she said. “My boss at the Starlite.”

  “And more importantly, Cha Cha and Baxter’s mother,” said Mrs. Abramowitz. She smiled up at my father. “I hear you’re quite the arm wrestler, J. T. Dinah was just telling me about your exploits back in college.”

  He gave her a brief, polite nod. “Yes, ma’am.”

  We all fell silent as he took his seat. I couldn’t help but notice as Cha Cha’s mother’s gaze wandered to the hook at the end of his shirtsleeve.

  My father’s arm-wrestling days were over.

  CHAPTER 19

  “I can’t believe Hatcher did that to you!” Mackenzie’s shocked face looked out at me from my laptop screen.

  Disaster had struck after the wrestling meet.

  As we were heading to the lobby, Hatcher came bounding over and slung a sweaty arm around my shoulders. He knows I hate this, which of course makes him do it even more.

  “Eew, get off!” I cried, shoving him away. “Go take a shower!”

  “What’s the matter?” he teased. “Just trying to share the love.” He hoisted his elbow in the air and fanned his armpit in my direction.

  “Mom, make him stop!” I protested.

  My mother shot him a look.

  Hatcher dropped his arm. “Jeez, Drooly, can’t you take a joke?”

  I froze. Scooter Sanchez was standing directly behind him. At first I thought maybe I was in the clear, but then I saw a slow smile slide across Scooter’s face, and I knew he’d heard my brother, and that I’d be hearing about it too, for as long as I lived in Pumpkin Falls.

  I ran up to my room when we got home and slammed the door. Miss Marple whined to be let in, but I ignored her. Flinging myself on the bed, I shoved my head under my pillow to muffle the noise as I let out a howl of rage and humiliation. Angry tears spilled over, and I let them.

  “Go away!” I hollered a little while later when someone knocked on my door. It was probably Hatcher. He’d tried to apologize in the car on the way home, but I wouldn’t listen. I didn’t plan on ever speaking to him again. Scooter would never let this go.

  “I don’t know what to do,” I wailed to Mackenzie.

  “Maybe your parents will let you come live here with us,” she replied. “You know, like the witness protection program or something.”

  “Fat chance.”

  “Well, you’re going to have to deal with it, then.”

  She was right. I needed a plan. The problem was, I couldn’t think of one.

  The next day at school I tried to keep my distance from Scooter, but, of course, that didn’t work. Somehow he managed to pop up at every turn, with the same stupid grin on his face that had been there at the gym last night.

  “Truly Drooly,” he sang to me s
oftly in math class.

  “Could you pass me that beaker, Truly Drooly?” he asked in science class.

  “Pardon me, Truly Drooly,” he said when he bumped into me on purpose in the lunch line.

  Things took a turn for the worse during our ballroom dance class, when he started calling me “Drooly Gigantic.”

  I stomped on his foot then, hard. Unfortunately, Cha Cha’s father saw me. He frowned. “Miss Lovejoy? Pumpkin Falls manners, please.”

  The heck with Pumpkin Falls manners, I thought bitterly and stomped again the second Mr. Abramowitz’s back was turned.

  “What’s your problem?” Scooter whispered angrily.

  “You know exactly what my problem is!” I whispered back.

  Somehow, I managed to make it through the day. At least I had the Pumpkin Falls Private Eyes to look forward to.

  Nearly twenty-four hours had passed since we’d all met at the college library. My parents had left for Boston early this morning, so my tutoring sessions had been canceled for the rest of the week. My father was finally ready to get fitted for a more permanent prosthetic arm, and Aunt True was going to look after my brothers and sisters and me while he and my mother were away.

  Dad would actually be coming home with two new prostheses: a flesh-colored silicone one that’s strictly for show, and a high-tech one made of black titanium and polymer that’s controlled by electrical impulses sent from his brain. It’s the latest technology, and unlike the one he’s been wearing, there’s no harness; it’s held on by suction and is supposed to be much more comfortable. Mom showed us a video of it online, and it looked pretty awesome. Hatcher and Danny have already dubbed it “The Terminator.”

  Ever since that day in the bookshop, all of us had been calling his temporary prosthesis “Captain Hook.” Dad rolls his eyes when we do, but Pippa thinks it’s funny, so he puts up with it. We can tell he’s relieved he doesn’t have to hide it in a gym bag anymore.

  I had the house to myself until dinnertime. Hatcher and Danny were at their wrestling practices, Lauren had gone up the street to visit Belinda Winchester and her menagerie, and Pippa had a playdate with Baxter over at the Abramowitzes’.