Best Kept Secret

  She was sitting at her seat in her classroom, hands folded, her homework placed in the exact center of her desk, when the morning bell rang and Mr. Apwell closed the door and picked up his attendance book.

  The morning marched on. Francie took a spelling quiz and thought she had spelled every word correctly. (She had checked and rechecked her work, just like Mrs. Pownell taught her to do, and she had even traced the words with her finger, a trick she’d learned recently that helped her decide whether the words “felt” right.) She volunteered to take a folder of papers to the principal’s office for Mr. Apwell. She cleaned out the pencil sharpener at the back of the room without being asked, and helped Jed when he had trouble with a math problem.

  “Francie, you’ve been a model student this morning,” Mr. Apwell said as she and her classmates lined up to go to the cafeteria.

  “Thank you,” she replied. She noted that her stomach felt strangely full, but she ate the entire lunch that Matthew had packed for her.

  On the playground, Francie and Kaycee were watching a game of kick ball when Francie saw Antoine grab a fifth grader by the shoulders and give him a shove. “No fair!” Antoine shouted. “That was out and you know it. Wasn’t it out, Jake? Wasn’t it?”

  “Definitely out,” said Jake.

  “It was not!” cried the older boy. He straightened himself and approached Antoine. Two of his friends stepped up behind him.

  “You guys!” Francie called.

  The boys turned to look at her, surprise on their faces.

  “Don’t fight. Seriously,” said Francie. “Mr. Apwell is watching. So why don’t you just have a do-over? Quickly, before Mr. Apwell decides to see what’s going on.”

  Antoine and the boy looked at each other, then at Mr. Apwell.

  “Do-over?” asked Antoine.

  “Okay.”

  * * *

  At dinner that evening, Francie and her parents were seated around the kitchen table. Francie ate an entire chicken leg before she realized that nobody had spoken since they’d sat down.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked her parents.

  “Nothing,” they replied.

  The silence continued.

  Finally, Dana said, “All I ask for is a little advance notice. Don’t spring these things on me.” She appeared to be talking to her plate.

  “I am giving you notice,” said Matthew. “The event isn’t until tomorrow night.”

  Dana raised her head and looked directly at her husband. “Twenty-four hours is hardly advance notice. How long have you known about this?”

  “Three weeks.” Matthew let out a sigh. “I’m sorry. I forgot to tell you.”

  Dana rolled her eyes.

  “Are you guys fighting?” asked Francie.

  “No,” said Matthew.

  “Yes,” said Dana.

  “I got a one hundred on the spelling quiz and a ninety-nine on the social studies quiz,” said Francie.

  “That’s great,” Matthew told her. “Really. You’re doing so well this year.”

  “Thank you.” Francie turned to her mother. “You know what you should wear tomorrow? To whatever the event is? That blue dress and your paisley scarf. You look gorgeous in that outfit. Doesn’t she look beautiful in it, Matthew?”

  Matthew smiled hopefully at Dana, and after a moment, she smiled back at him. “But for the future,” she said, still smiling, “twenty-four hours is not considered advance notice.”

  “Duly noted,” said Matthew.

  Francie looked from her mother to her father. She let out a sigh.

  That night, she fell into bed, exhausted.

  Francie awakened in predawn darkness to hear something moving across the wood floor of her room. Click, click, click. She lay perfectly still and listened. She could hear breathing, too. Very quiet breathing. She rolled over in bed and tried to stare through the darkness. The movement (footsteps?) stopped and the breathing grew louder.

  Trembling, Francie reached for the flashlight she kept by her bed, and her hand collided with something furry. She heard a yelp.

  “Sadie!” Francie exclaimed. “I’m sorry.” She set the flashlight down and switched on her reading lamp. “I thought you were downstairs.”

  A small golden dog jumped onto the bed and curled herself against Francie. Francie turned the light off and gathered Sadie into her arms. “Don’t do that again,” she whispered. “Don’t sneak up on me.”

  When the alarm clock rang an hour later, Sadie was still curled into Francie, and Francie watched her sleep, eyelids twitching, paws flicking. “She’s chasing rabbits in her dreams,” Dana would say, although Francie wasn’t sure Sadie had ever seen a rabbit.

  Francie slid out of her bed and dressed quickly in the outfit she’d chosen the evening before. Today was special and she wanted to look just right. She would be standing before all the students in her school at one time or another that day.

  She heard a gentle knock and turned to see her mother standing in the doorway. “Look at you two,” Dana said softly.

  Francie smiled. “Sadie snuck in here this morning.”

  “She looks pretty cozy.”

  “You know what I was thinking? It’s almost Sadie’s birthday. Her adoption papers say June tenth. I know we don’t know exactly when she was born, but I think we should have a birthday party for her next month.”

  “A dog birthday party,” said Dana. “I like that idea.”

  “It could be an adoption party, too. Six months since adoption day.”

  Francie still couldn’t believe that Sadie had joined their family. She hadn’t asked Dana and Matthew for a dog. She hadn’t even been thinking about wanting a dog, not the way she used to yearn for a dog when she was younger. Then, one evening, early in December, less than a month after the search for Erin Mulligan had been called off, Francie’s parents, looking serious, had asked her to join them in the living room.

  “Am I in trouble?” Francie had wanted to know. She’d been working so hard to be the perfect daughter, the perfect student, the perfect friend that she could think of absolutely nothing she’d done wrong.

  Dana and Matthew had actually laughed at this.

  “Of course not,” Dana had said.

  “We have a surprise for you,” Matthew added.

  “What would you think —” Dana began, sounding very much as if she and Matthew had rehearsed this conversation.

  “If we got —” Matthew continued.

  “A dog!” Dana and Matthew said in unison.

  “A dog?” Francie had exclaimed. “Really?”

  “Really and truly,” said Dana.

  “What, for Hanukkah?”

  “Nope. Not for any occasion,” Matthew replied. “Just because.”

  Dana had grown serious. “You’ve seemed sad lately, honey. And you haven’t been spending as much time with Kaycee and Amy as usual.”

  “But we’re still friends,” Francie had assured her quickly.

  “Okay, good. That’s good. But when you’re at home, you seem lonely.”

  “And sad,” added Matthew. “Like your mom said. We know it isn’t easy being an only child.”

  “So we thought you’d like some company.”

  “Some nice dog company. There’s nothing like the company of a dog. What do you say?”

  “Yes! Oh yes!” Francie had jumped up and hugged her parents.

  The very next day, they had driven to the animal shelter at the edge of town and, after a conversation with a friendly woman at the reception desk, a volunteer had led them down aisles of cages, each holding a dog needing a home. They saw large dogs and small dogs, old dogs and puppies, dogs that frantically tried to stick their noses through the wire mesh in their desperation to be petted, and dogs that plastered themselves against the backs of the cages and wouldn’t look at Francie or her parents.

  Only one dog attracted Francie’s attention. She was small and golden, of uncertain background.

  “I like her,” Francie had to
ld Dana and Matthew. The dog was sitting at the front of her cage, looking hopefully at Francie, her tail sweeping the ground behind her.

  “What’s her story?” Dana had asked the volunteer.

  “Well,” the young man replied, “she’s about six months old. She came here last week. Someone rescued her from a lumberyard, where she’d been living with several other dogs. But I don’t think she’d been on her own for very long. She’s too tame and too sweet. She has a wonderful personality. A bit shy, but I don’t think that will last.”

  Three days later, Sadie had joined the Goldberg family.

  “Her name at the shelter was Angela,” Francie had told Kaycee and George, who dropped by to meet Sadie the day she came home, and were sitting on the floor, petting her and whispering to her. “But I like Sadie better. She looks like a Sadie, don’t you think?”

  “What kind of dog is she?” asked George.

  Francie had shrugged. “Maybe golden retriever and something else? She looks like a little, tiny golden retriever.”

  Sadie had fit into the family as if she’d always been part of it. Francie had snapped photos of her sitting beside the menorah, sitting under the Christmas tree, playing in the snow, pawing at a Valentine from George, and sniffing indifferently at an Easter egg. She’d begun a photo album for Sadie. She’d written stories about her, too, and then stories about lost dogs and homeless dogs and brave dogs.

  Excellent work! Mr. Apwell would scrawl above Francie’s compositions. Well thought out. Very imaginative.

  The days following the unthinkable time of the man in the black station wagon had fallen away behind Francie. They’d turned into weeks and then months. Slowly, with Sadie at her side, Francie had begun to feel more like herself. People mentioned Erin Mulligan’s name less and less often. It faded into the recesses of Francie’s mind. Now fourth grade was almost over, and a day she’d been waiting for a very long time had arrived at last.

  “Better get a move on,” Dana said to her. “This is one time you certainly don’t want to be late for school.”

  “I’m never late,” Francie pointed out. “Besides, you don’t want to be late either.”

  * * *

  “Hey,” said Francie as she and Dana turned into the school parking lot later that morning. “Today, you get to park in one of the visitor spaces. We’re visitors! Well, you are.”

  Francie helped her mother unload boxes from the backseat of the car. “Do you promise there are no embarrassing photos of me in here?” she asked as she lifted out the carton that she knew contained a slide carousel.

  Dana smiled. “I promise. Except for that one of you standing naked at the front door.”

  “WHAT?”

  “I’m kidding. There are a couple of cute ones of you — fully clothed — when you were younger, but that’s it. There are also photos of Uncle Peter, Aunt Julia, Aunt Nell, and me when we were little. There are even a couple of photos of Adele and Aunt Rose and Grandma Abby when they were little.”

  “Why?” asked Francie. “What do all those pictures have to do with Peter the Important?”

  “Well,” said Dana, “you’re probably going to hear me say this about a million times today, but most of my picture books are about my own experiences in some way. Peter the Important is based on the experience I had with your uncle in a New York City park when he was little — the time I stuck up for him when an adult was rude about his disability. I want to show your classmates that stories, whether they’re long or short, can come from our own lives.”

  Francie walked proudly along the flagstone path and through the front doors of her school with Dana. They reported to the principal’s office.

  “And I didn’t even do anything wrong,” Francie said.

  “As if,” replied her mother. “You never do anything wrong.”

  Francie didn’t answer.

  * * *

  From start to finish, this Thursday was different for Francie. She didn’t set foot in her classroom until just before the final bell rang, instead spending the day with her mother; with Mr. Phelps, the principal; and with Ms. Clarke, a library aide who had volunteered to help Dana with her presentations.

  “Not many authors have visited our school,” Ms. Clarke commented later. “We’re lucky to have you. The students will be fascinated to see how you work on your books.”

  Francie was standing on the stage in the auditorium, watching Ms. Clarke and her mother fiddle with the slide projector. An easel had been set up on the stage, along with two chairs, a microphone, and a small table holding colored markers.

  Ms. Clarke checked her watch. “Ten minutes until the first presentation,” she said.

  “I think we’re ready,” Dana replied. “Francie? Are you ready?”

  “I hope so.” Francie was going to be onstage with Dana for all three presentations — the first one to the littlest kids, the next one to the second and third graders, and the final one to Francie’s classmates and the fifth graders. Francie wished George could go to one of the assemblies, but he had moved on to middle school. He and Francie wouldn’t be in the same school again until Francie started sixth grade.

  Francie kept an eye on the hallway outside the auditorium. “They’re here,” she whispered to Dana a few minutes later. And before she knew it, she and her mother were standing in front of a sea of tiny faces. Francie felt butterflies take off in her stomach, but Dana stood calmly on the stage.

  Later, after Mr. Phelps had greeted the students and introduced Dana and Francie, Dana sat on the stage and read Peter the Important while Francie helped her turn the pages. Then Dana presented the slides and talked about her family and where the ideas for her stories and pictures came from. She used the markers to demonstrate how she created characters. Finally, smiling, she asked the students if they had any questions for her or Francie.

  A forest of hands began waving in the air. Dana called on a little boy, wearing overalls, who said, “I have a dog.” Then she called on a little girl who said, “My father took the bus to New York today.”

  Ms. Clarke borrowed the microphone from Dana and said, “Does anyone have a question about writing stories or drawing pictures?”

  There was silence until the boy in the overalls said, “Could you draw a picture of my dog?”

  Later, as the students filed out of the auditorium, Dana said to Mr. Phelps, “Oh dear. Maybe the presentation was too grown-up for them.”

  But Mr. Phelps replied, “No, no. They loved it! I’ve never seen them so attentive.”

  The second presentation went better. When Dana asked for questions, hands flew into the air, and one after another, the students asked, “How do you know what makes a good story?” “How do you decide what to put in your pictures?” “When did you first start drawing?” There was even a question for Francie: “Do you like to write or draw, too?”

  Francie could feel the butterflies again but she took the microphone from Dana and said, “I write stories all the time. Before I could write, I would tell stories to my parents. I guess we’re a family of storytellers. My grandfather was an author, and my dad tells stories with his paintings.”

  Mr. Phelps and Ms. Clarke took Dana and Francie to the teachers’ lounge for lunch then, and afterward, it was time for the final presentation — the one for the fourth and fifth graders.

  The butterflies swarmed back into Francie’s now-full stomach as she watched her classmates file into the auditorium. There was Kaycee. There were Jake and Jed and Antoine. And sitting with the fifth graders was Amy. Francie drew in a deep breath as her mother began her presentation for the last time. She kept a close eye on Jed, but he didn’t move a muscle while Dana was speaking. When the presentation came to an end, he was the first to raise his hand.

  “Watch out,” Francie whispered to her mother.

  “I just have a comment,” Jed began, “and it’s for Francie.”

  Francie couldn’t believe that she was going to be accused, in front of all the fourth graders and
all the fifth graders — and even the principal and her mother — of not wearing underpants.

  “You’re the best writer in our class,” said Jed, face flushing.

  “I — I —” stammered Francie, who had been about to reply, “I am too wearing underpants!” She glanced at her mother, then looked back at Jed. “Thank you,” she said.

  Other hands were raised.

  “What does it feel like to have a famous mother?”

  “How do you know when you’ve finished editing a story?”

  “How do you remember your childhood so well?”

  “Do people recognize you when you walk down the street?” (At this, Francie could hear Amy giggle.)

  Hands were still raised when Ms. Clarke said, “I’m afraid we’re going to have to stop. One more question and then it’s time to go back to your rooms.”

  Later, Francie and her classmates walked through the halls while Dana and Ms. Clarke packed up the slides and supplies.

  “This was quite a day for all of us,” said Mr. Apwell when everyone had settled at their desks. “Francie, we’re so glad your mother could talk to us. Students, there are only ten minutes left until the final bell. You may have free time until then.”

  Pandemonium followed. Squeals and laughter and shouting, until Mr. Apwell raised his hands and called for decorum. The shouting died down, but a fight broke out over a missing barrette. Francie suggested a search of the room and the barrette was located under a table, ending the fight. In the midst of this, Dana arrived.

  “I wish I had twenty-two Francies in my class,” Mr. Apwell murmured to her.

  Francie, overhearing this, turned away. She banished the image of the man in the station wagon that had sprung into her head and instead began thinking of a story, a story called Telling Tales.

  She began working on it as soon as she and Dana returned home.

  Francie stood in her bedroom, Sadie at her side, and breathed in deeply. “Do you smell that?” she asked Sadie. “It’s turkey. You’re going to smell that almost all day long. And you’re going to get a bite of turkey at dinner. In fact, you’ll probably get lots of treats today. This is your first Thanksgiving and everyone will want to spoil you.”