Sabrina looked puzzled. “What are you doing?”
“Hold on,” Libby said. “I’ve almost got it.”
She wrote more words, erased a couple, then scribbled down some more. Finally, she sat back with satisfaction and passed it to Sabrina.
It said:
A haiku for Sabrina
Friendship is nifty
when you can just be yourself.
I’m glad you’re my friend.
Friday night, after Libby and Sabrina gave each other manicures and pedicures, they sat in Sabrina’s room, on the floor, listening to music.
“I think I’m ready to call Cedric,” Libby said as she fingered the charm bracelet. She needed it to be lucky now more than ever. “I’d rather call him while you’re here with me.”
“All right,” Sabrina said. She picked her phone up off the floor and handed it to Libby as Libby pulled the piece of paper with Cedric’s phone number out of her pocket. She’d grabbed it when she’d gone home to pack for the sleepover.
Libby started to dial and then stopped.
“When I’m scared to do something,” Sabrina said, “my mum always asks me, what’s the worst thing that can happen? Once we say it out loud, sometimes it doesn’t sound as bad as we think it is.”
“I’m not sure what that would be,” Libby said. “Hang up on me? That would be pretty horrible. Actually, the worst thing that could happen is that he decides to never speak to me again.”
“Just get it over with,” Sabrina said as she picked up a magazine.
Libby nodded. “Yes. You’re right.” She dialed quickly and then held the phone to her ear.
It rang once. Twice. Three times. Libby was about to hang up, disappointed and frustrated, when he finally answered.
“Hello?”
“Cedric? It’s me, Libby.”
“Who?”
“Libby.”
“Oh, you mean the girl who kept the biggest secret in the world from me after I told her all kinds of secrets, like how I have a stamp collection and how I still play with action figures and how I believe in lucky trousers? Do you mean that girl? If so, I’m not sure I really have anything to say.”
Libby closed her eyes and hung her head. “Cedric, please don’t be like that. I’m so very sorry about not telling you about our sweetshop. I still want us to be friends. We can do that, can’t we?”
Silence. And then, very quietly, Cedric said, “I don’t know. You should have told me. I really wish you’d told me.”
“Yes. I was wrong, and I feel so bad. Look, the reason I’m calling is that I have something for you, and I really want to give it to you to show you how sorry I am. Can you meet me at the park tomorrow afternoon?”
“Probably not.” Cedric said. “I’m supposed to help out at the shop tomorrow.”
Libby wasn’t sure if she should believe this or not. Was it just an excuse to make it easy to say no? “Doing what?”
There was a pause. “I can’t tell you. You’ll laugh.”
“I promise I won’t laugh.”
“You will.”
“I won’t.”
He took a deep breath. “Fine. My mum is completely obsessed with all things American, and so, she’s made me a candy cane costume, and I have to wear it to try and bring in customers.”
Of all the things Libby thought Cedric might say, this was not one of them. She bit her lip so she wouldn’t laugh, trying to picture Cedric dressed up as a candy cane, walking along the sidewalk, trying to lure people into The Sweet Retreat.
“Well, it’s very creative,” Libby said. “Especially here in England, where we’re afraid to do anything that might make us look foolish.”
“I guess my mum thinks as long as I’m the one being the fool,” Cedric said, “it’s fine.”
Libby didn’t want him to feel worse than he already did about the whole situation. She tried to sound upbeat and positive when she said, “I’m sure you will look very festive, and it will bring in lots of business.”
“I hope so,” Cedric said softly. “Our shop isn’t doing very well. We saw the ad you’ve been running. I think it’s great. I wish we could find something that works for us. I really don’t think a silly costume is going to do it, but they’re desperate. They’ll try anything.”
Libby felt a knot in her stomach as she thought of his family, struggling to bring in customers. Why couldn’t there be enough business for both of the shops to do well? That’s what she wanted. More than anything.
“Have your mum and dad thought about selling other things too? What’s that called … expanding the business?”
“Not really.”
“You know what?” Libby said. “I’m going to come to the shop tomorrow. I want to see it. Maybe you and I can brainstorm ideas on ways you could make the business more successful.”
“Libby, you don’t have to do that. What if your aunt and uncle find out? They’ll be furious with you.”
There was that “what if” again. Well, she didn’t want to think about that right now. All she wanted was to make things right with Cedric. To help him. Sabrina clapped her hands together, quietly, as if to say, Way to go.
“No, it’s fine. I want to come and see the place. And see you too. I need to give you this thing I’ve made you.”
“It’s not another candy costume, is it?” Cedric said.
Libby smiled. Maybe everything was going to be all right after all. She hoped so. “No. I promise, it is not another candy costume. Not even close.”
“All right. You can stop by. But only if you’ll finally tell me your favorite candy.” Cedric said.
“Swedish Fish.”
“Really?”
“Yep.”
“Those are my mum’s favorite,” he said. “She’ll adore you when she hears that.”
“We’re going to find a way to help your parents,” Libby said. “I promise, Cedric. We will.”
There had to be a way. There just had to be.
After Libby and Sabrina had muffins and juice for breakfast the next morning, Libby headed for home. The night before, while Sabrina slept in the bunk below, Libby had lain awake, thinking about Cedric, The Sweet Retreat, his parents, and her aunt and uncle.
As hard as it might be to tell the truth, she’d decided she must tell her aunt and uncle about Cedric and the business his parents owned. The last thing she wanted was to have another one of her secrets blow up in her face and cause more people to be angry with her.
At home, Libby greeted Dexter with lots of pats and sweet words. Then she went to the kitchen, where she found her aunt and uncle sitting at the table, sipping on coffee and reading the newspaper.
“Oh good,” Libby said. “You haven’t left for work yet, Uncle Oliver. I have something I need to tell the both of you.”
They both looked at her. “Is everything all right?” Aunt Jayne asked. “Did you have fun at the sleepover?”
Libby sat down. “Yes. This has nothing to do with Sabrina. It’s just, I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately, and I really need to tell you something I’ve kind of been keeping a secret. And I really hope you aren’t too upset after you hear what I have to say.”
Uncle Oliver folded the newspaper and set it down. “We’re listening.”
“I met this boy, Cedric, at the park a while back. He goes to Bennett, too. And Dexter really liked his dog, a cocker spaniel named Goldie. And so Cedric and I started talking and —”
Her aunt and uncle looked at each other in horror and then back at Libby before Aunt Jayne interrupted her. “No. No, no, no. Libby, you are too young to have a boyfriend.”
“She’s right,” Uncle Oliver said. “Far, far too young.”
Libby stared at them in disbelief. Then she started laughing. “No, it’s not like that at all. I promise. We’re just friends.”
“Are you certain of that?” he asked. “Because I know boys, and you are a very cute girl, and —”
Libby shook her head. “Please, no
. I’m positive. We’re friends and nothing more.” She paused for a moment, feeling sad about what she was about to say. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed or not, but I’ve had a bit of a hard time in the friendship department lately.” Libby fiddled with her charm bracelet. “Rebecca and I, we aren’t close anymore. And Cedric came along at a time when I really needed a friend.”
Aunt Jayne rubbed Libby’s arm. “I’m sorry, love. I didn’t know you and Rebecca had a falling out. I know that must have been hard.”
Libby looked up again, hoping she could get them to understand. “It was. But Cedric’s really nice. He’s easy to talk to. He makes me laugh.”
“All right,” Uncle Oliver said, taking a drink of coffee. “Well, I suppose having a boy as a friend is all right.”
“That makes two new friends then, yes?” Aunt Jayne asked. “Sabrina seems like a very sweet girl.”
“Yes,” Libby said. “I feel so lucky to have met both of them.” She took a deep breath. “But here’s what I want to tell you. About Cedric.” She paused. “Promise you won’t get mad?”
“Just tell us, please,” her uncle said.
Libby stuck her finger in the air. “Wait. I think I need a couple of things to help explain all of this. I’ll be right back.”
She rushed to her room, grabbed Mae’s poem along with the haiku she’d written after Cedric had been upset with her, and went back to the table.
“This is quite suspenseful,” Aunt Jayne said with a smile. “I hope you aren’t going to tell us you’ve decided to run off to the circus with Cedric.”
“Hey, that’s a great idea,” Libby teased. “He can be a clown, and I can stick my head into the lion’s mouth.”
“Now anything you tell us will pale in comparison to running away with the circus,” Uncle Oliver said. “Job well done, Jayne.”
“All right, so, after I met Cedric,” Libby explained, “I learned he loves comic books. He loves reading them and he loves making them himself. He’s a very good artist. And I learned he has a pair of lucky trousers, and he was willing to loan them to me at one point, that’s how nice he is.”
Aunt Jayne raised one eyebrow. “They wouldn’t have fit you, would they?”
Libby smiled and continued. “Anyway, what I mean by all of that is I learned all of these things about him, and I decided I really liked walking our dogs together. I’d already made up my mind that I wanted to be his friend. Do you see?”
Uncle Oliver scowled. “Yes. But what’s the bad news? I can tell it’s coming.”
Libby talked quickly. “When he told me his parents owned The Sweet Retreat, I didn’t tell him about our shop. I kept it a secret from him, because I didn’t want it to ruin our friendship. Except he found out about it, and he got very upset with me, and last week he wouldn’t speak to me. I wrote this haiku after he found out and got mad, that’s how sad I was about the whole thing.”
She finally took a breath as she pushed the piece of paper with the haiku out in front of them so they could see it, but they didn’t even look at it. They simply stared at Libby looking very, very confused.
“His parents own The Sweet Retreat?” Aunt Jayne asked.
Libby nodded.
Her aunt and uncle looked at each other, as if trying to figure out what to say next. Then Aunt Jayne reached down and picked up the haiku and read it aloud.
“The last yellow leaf.
Winter is the enemy.
It falls. The tree cries.”
“In case you can’t tell,” Libby said, “I was extremely sad when I thought our friendship might be over for good.”
“Yes,” Aunt Jayne said. “I can tell. It’s very well written, Libby, and I could feel the sorrow you felt as you wrote it.”
“You see,” Libby said, looking at her uncle, who had yet to say anything, “I don’t think it should matter that our families are competitors. We’re just kids and it’s not our fault, right?”
“You said Cedric got upset with you,” Uncle Oliver said. “Is he still not speaking to you?”
“That’s why I’m telling you all of this,” Libby said. “I called him last night, and I want to go to The Sweet Retreat today. I have a comic book that Sabrina and I made for Cedric, and I want to give that to him, so he knows how sorry I am. But it’s more than that. Their business is struggling, and I think Cedric and I should brainstorm ways to help his family. Like, maybe they should sell something else besides just sweets.”
“Libby, I know your heart is in the right place,” Aunt Jayne said, “but I’m not sure it’s wise for you to get involved in their business.”
“They might think you have an ulterior motive,” Uncle Oliver said.
“I don’t know what that means,” Libby said.
“It means,” her aunt said, “that they might believe you’re doing it to benefit our own sweetshop in some way. They might not believe that you’re simply doing it out of the kindness of your heart.”
Libby narrowed her eyes. “But I am.”
“Yes, we know that,” Uncle Oliver said. “But they don’t. After all, they don’t know you at all.”
“Well, I’m not planning on telling them anything, just Cedric. And then he can talk to them if he wants to. Anyway, is it all right if I go there this afternoon? After I do my work, refilling the jars?”
Uncle Oliver pointed to the other piece of paper, turned down, on the table. “What’s that?”
“Oh, it’s another poem. It was written by a friend of Grandma Grace’s. It’s called ‘Friendship is the Sweetest Thing.’ And to me, that’s true. Friendship is even sweeter than candy.” Libby smiled. “And more important too, I think. So can I go? Please?”
Uncle Oliver read Mae’s poem and then handed it to Jayne to read.
“Friends are important,” Aunt Jayne said when she finished reading. “It’s absolutely true.”
“That they are,” Oliver agreed. “You can go, but only if you let your aunt drive you there. It’s across town, and that would be a pretty long bike ride for you.”
Libby flung her arms around her uncle’s shoulders and said, “Thank you.”
When they separated, Uncle Oliver said, “Maybe you should suggest an entirely different business all together. Tell them they should sell luggage or something.”
Aunt Jayne wagged her finger at her husband. “Now, now. Let’s have none of that.”
“I’m sorry, that wasn’t very nice of me,” Uncle Oliver said. He looked at Libby. “You’re a smart girl. I bet you’ll come up with a brilliant idea.”
Libby rubbed the charm bracelet for luck and said, “I sure hope so.”
Libby’s aunt dropped her off across the street from The Sweet Retreat. “I’m going to run some errands, then I’ll be back to pick you up,” Jayne told her. “I won’t be gone long, maybe thirty minutes or so.”
“All right. See you soon.”
Libby hopped out with her canvas bag that held the comic book and went to the crosswalk. As she waited to cross the street, Cedric came out of the store dressed in his costume. He wore a big, puffy white one-piece suit of some kind, with red diagonal stripes and a tall red-and-white hat that curved at the end, just like a candy cane.
Libby couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. He looked pretty ridiculous. He hadn’t seemed to notice her walking across the street as he made his way down the sidewalk. Libby stood in front of the candy store entrance, waiting until he turned around and started walking toward her.
She waved and he waved back.
“I think I like your lucky trousers better,” she said when he reached her.
“You and me both,” Cedric said. “Although with all the stupid things happening lately, I don’t think I can call them lucky anymore.”
“I’m really sorry,” Libby said as she reached into her bag. She pulled out the comic book and handed it to him. “This is for you. I know you probably can’t read it right now, because you’re working, but maybe later?”
He stared a
t the front of the comic book, with the funny title and the amazing artwork Sabrina had done.
“You did this?” he asked. “For me?”
“Well, my new friend, Sabrina, helped me. She drew the dogs, since I’m not very good at animals. I drew some of the other things. And I wrote the story.”
“Wow,” he said softly. “I’m impressed.”
Just then, a woman stepped outside. “Cedric, is everything all right? Why’d you stop walking?”
“Oh, Mum, this is my friend Libby. Libby, this is my mother.”
“Hi, Libby. I’m Mrs. Arnold,” she said. “It’s so nice to meet you. Would you like to come in and see our shop?”
“I’d love to,” Libby said. She felt relieved Cedric hadn’t mentioned Mr. Pemberton’s to his mother. It made coming into their shop a lot less awkward.
When they walked in, Libby almost gasped because it was so very different from Mr. Pemberton’s. It was bright and modern. Instead of old-fashioned jars, all of the candy was spread out across the shop in tubs with bags so customers could help themselves.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Libby said.
“Yes,” Mrs. Arnold said, “it’s quite different from what we’re used to here in England. Shops like this are much more common in America. We wanted to try it, and see if people liked getting the candy themselves rather than having someone else do it for them.”
Libby walked around, looking at the different types of candy they had. When she found her favorite, she took a scoop and counted out ten of the colorful fish and put them in a bag. She’d brought along some of her allowance, because she didn’t want to be rude and not buy anything.
“Ah, a girl after my own heart,” Mrs. Arnold said when Libby took her bag of candy to the register. “Is there anything else you’d like?”
“This is all for now, thank you,” Libby replied as she reached for her wallet.
“Oh no, it’s my treat,” Mrs. Arnold said. “I’m glad you came to visit us and see our shop.”