Welcome to Camden Falls

  “Come on and sit with us,” said Olivia. “Our grandmothers gave us a job. There’s a kids’ patchwork pillow class coming up, and we’re supposed to make up designs for some easy pillows. You can help us.”

  Nikki sniffed pointedly at her underarms. “If you’re sure I won’t oh-fend you,” she said, and was pleased to note that Olivia’s cheeks reddened slightly.

  Three couches were arranged around the table. Olivia and one of the girls sat on one, and the third girl, the youngest-looking one, sat on another. Nikki sat down by herself in the middle of the remaining couch. She eyed Olivia’s friends.

  “Um,” said Olivia, “do you want to help us? Our grandmothers —”

  “Am I supposed to know who your grandmothers are?” asked Nikki.

  “They own this store,” spoke up the girl who was sitting next to Olivia.

  “Wow,” said Nikki. “The owners.”

  After a brief pause, the girl spoke again. “Do you know how to sew?”

  Nikki hesitated. She frequently mended the clothes that got tossed into a wicker basket sitting in the corner of the kitchen, but she had a feeling this wasn’t the kind of sewing the girl meant.

  “I can sew a little,” she said at last.

  “Have you done any quilting?” asked Olivia.

  “No.”

  “Well, that’s okay.”

  “I know it’s okay.”

  “Hey!” exclaimed Olivia after a few moments, during which Nikki had sat glaring at the fabric pieces and no one had spoken. “I just realized we haven’t introduced ourselves. Well, you know me. I’m Olivia Walter.” (Oh, Walter, thought Nikki.) “But you don’t know Flora and Ruby. This is Flora, and this is Ruby,” she said, pointing to each of them. “Flora and Ruby Northrop. And this” (she pointed to Nikki) “is Nikki Sherman. She’s in my grade. Flora and Ruby just moved to Camden Falls. Flora is going to be in our grade, too, Nikki. Ruby will be in fourth.”

  Nikki, looking desperately at the pieces of fabric being arranged on the table and having no idea what to do with them, finally said, “So how come you guys moved here? Did your father get a new job or something?”

  At this, silence fell. Flora went still as stone, then began arranging the fabric again, her eyes boring into the table. Ruby slid back onto the couch for a moment, then moved forward and whisked a triangle of blue calico away from Flora. Wordlessly, Flora grabbed it back from her.

  “That’s mine!” cried Ruby.

  “No, it isn’t. I was using it.”

  “But I had it before and I need it to go right here. See? I’m making a star? SEE?”

  “Then cut your own triangle. That’s why we have scissors. Anyway, a star pattern is going to be too complicated for beginners.”

  “I’m a beginner, and I’m making a star.”

  “Well, stop.”

  From across the couch, Olivia eyed Nikki. “Nice move,” she said.

  “What? What did I do?”

  “Flora and Ruby moved here because their parents … their parents …”

  “Go ahead and say it. Our parents died.” Ruby grabbed a pair of scissors and cut a sloppy triangle out of the calico fabric. “We’re orphans,” she added, slamming the triangle down on the table.

  “I’m sorry,” said Nikki, and now she could feel her own face flushing. “I’m really sorry.”

  “It’s all right,” said Flora.

  “You didn’t know,” added Olivia. “Okay, come on. Here. Cut all these pieces of fabric into four-inch squares.”

  Nikki took the fabric and scissors that Olivia held toward her, but she said, “Are you always so bossy?”

  “Pretty much.” Olivia turned back to Flora and Ruby. “Now, I think that all the pillows should be made up of squares only. That’s easier for beginners. Nine squares will make up into a very nice pillow.”

  Flora let out a sigh. “Okay. Half the fun is in choosing the fabric anyway, seeing which ones look best together. Ruby, quit working on that star. Put the triangle pieces away.”

  “No!” Ruby slid away from the older girls, and for a while, Nikki, Olivia, and Flora concentrated on laying out squares.

  “With squares you could make theme pillows,” commented Flora. “You could use this fabric with the Eiffel Tower on it, and this one with the globes, and this one with the French poodles to make a Paris pillow.”

  “You could do the same thing with stars,” muttered Ruby, coming back to the group. And after a moment, she added, “I’d much rather be in a tap class right now.”

  Nikki glanced at her, then back at the table, where she halfheartedly began arranging squares of fabric again.

  “What’s your theme?” Olivia asked Ruby a few moments later.

  “I don’t know, okay? I’m just experimenting.”

  “Hey,” said Nikki, “didn’t you say you were supposed to come up with several patterns for the class? Now you only have the pillows made from nine squares.”

  “And the stars!” cried Ruby.

  “Would you forget about the stars?” shouted Olivia.

  “Girls, what’s going on over there?” called Min.

  “Nothing.”

  Half an hour later, when Mrs. DuVane’s embroidery class ended, Nikki, Ruby, Flora, and Olivia were still sitting on the couches, but they were sitting as far from one another as they could manage.

  “This store,” said Nikki, getting to her feet, “should be called Sew What?”

  “Ha-ha,” said Olivia as Mrs. DuVane appeared, smiling and clutching a square of muslin adorned with ribbon flowers and bees.

  “Well, that was a wonderful class, just wonderful,” said Mrs. DuVane. “I hope you girls had fun. Nicolette, let’s buy you a few supplies and then we should be on our way.” She turned to Flora, Ruby, and Olivia. “We’ll be back again next week.”

  “Goody,” muttered Olivia.

  Olivia, leaning against the counter in Needle and Thread, wrapped her fingers around the bills in her pocket. One five and two ones. Olivia felt like spending them. And she felt like doing it alone. The previous afternoon was still fresh in her mind, and desperate as she was for friends, she found herself tired of Ruby’s whining and Flora’s moods. The three of them had spent a tense morning together at Needle and Thread, nobody wanting to admit that they had actually had a fight. But now Olivia was ready for an escape. Also, she was fearful that Ruby or Flora would ask her what Nikki had meant by “If you’re sure I won’t oh-fend you,” and she did not feel like having to explain it.

  After a morning spent affixing price tags to the fabric remnants that were being added to the sales bin, Olivia wanted to wander around downtown before returning to Aiken Avenue, so she called to Gigi, “I’m going now!” and headed out into the heat that had returned to Camden Falls.

  She nearly collided with Scary Mary Woolsey, who was on her way in.

  “Sorry! I’m sorry!” said Olivia quickly, and she held the door open for Mary, who ducked her head and hustled inside the store.

  Olivia closed the door and let her breath out in a rush. She stood in front of the bench and glanced up and down Main Street. Her fingers closed over the seven dollars again. Seven whole dollars. What did she feel like doing with her money? There were many possibilities.

  Town was quiet. Olivia was thinking about going to Camden Falls Art Supply for butterfly stickers when she heard shouting and laughing. She glanced down the street and saw a group of older kids, boys and girls. They were sauntering along Main Street in a pack, whooping and high-fiving one another.

  Olivia plopped down on the bench. She eyed the kids.

  “Give it,” said one, snatching a baseball cap away from another.

  “Ooh, tough guy,” said one of the girls.

  “Let’s get something to eat.”

  “Samuels won’t let us in his store anymore.”

  “Forget him. We’ll go get pizza.”

  The kids were all talking at once, and Olivia felt threatened by them, even though they hadn’
t noticed her.

  “We can swipe something from the grocery store,” one was saying. “Samuels won’t notice us.”

  “Why don’t you stop talking about it and actually do it?” said a voice, and the voice was familiar. Olivia realized it belonged to Lydia Malone. Sure enough, there she was in the middle of the group of kids.

  “Look,” said a girl whose name, Olivia thought, was Brandi. Brandi grabbed Lydia by the wrist and pointed to a sign advertising the 350th birthday celebration for Camden Falls. “Oh, cool. Whoa. Three hundred and fifty years. Let’s celebrate! Par-tay!”

  “Don’t you want to enter the photography show? Or how about the art show?” said the boy who had grabbed the baseball hat. “Mommy, Mommy, look at my painting!… Hey, we could have our own float in the parade. We could dress up as Pilgrims!” The boy ripped the sign off a lamppost and threw it in a trash can.

  Brandi now pointed down the street. “Look, it’s the retard, you guys,” she said. She let her tongue protrude from her mouth and she loped around the sidewalk in a circle. “Duh, one plus one makes, duh, I don’t know.”

  Olivia rose to her feet. She could feel her face burning. If that girl was talking about Robby …

  And at that moment, Olivia was greeted by a shout. “Olivia! Olivia! Hello, Olivia!”

  Robby, accompanied by a sitter, was hurrying along Main Street. He skirted the crowd of older kids in his rush to reach Olivia.

  “Hi, Robby,” said Olivia. She turned to glare at Lydia. Lydia lowered her eyes, but Brandi danced up and down behind Robby, like Squirrel Nutkin in one of Olivia’s picture books. And she inscribed circles in the air with her index finger, pointing at his head. Crazy.

  Well, thought Olivia. It just goes to show. Brandi doesn’t know a thing about Down syndrome. Robby isn’t crazy.

  “We’re on our way to Zack’s!” exclaimed Robby. “We need sandpaper, Olivia.”

  “Have fun,” Olivia called as Robby and his sitter turned toward the hardware store.

  Olivia, feeling braver, glared at Lydia and her friends, but they had passed her by now, too, preparing to cross Main Street. Olivia could hear Brandi say, “There must be a way to sneak into the movie theatre without paying.”

  “Isn’t that cheating?” asked one of the boys.

  “No, dolt,” said Lydia. “Cheating is like when you look at someone else’s paper when you’re taking a test.”

  “But we’re cheating the theatre out of money.”

  “So go home,” replied Lydia. And the kid broke away from the group and walked angrily down the sidewalk.

  Olivia didn’t feel like shopping anymore. She walked along Main Street and turned toward Aiken Avenue and the Row Houses. When she reached her own house, she hesitated, then crossed the lawn to Mr. Pennington’s stoop.

  “Olivia!” exclaimed Mr. Pennington when he answered his door. “How nice to see you. How are you doing?”

  “I’m fine,” said Olivia, doing her best to put Lydia and her friends out of her mind.

  “Really? You don’t quite seem fine.”

  Olivia sighed. She followed Mr. Pennington into his kitchen, checking along the way to make sure things were as they should be. The hallway was tidy. That was a good sign. And Jacques’s water bowl was full. The sink didn’t look too bad, either, but Olivia decided she’d clean it up before she went home.

  Olivia sank into a chair in the kitchen. “Some kids were teasing Robby in town,” she said. “I don’t think he noticed, but …” Olivia paused. “That just makes me so mad.”

  “Lots of things are unfair,” said Mr. Pennington, sitting down across the table from Olivia. “You should have heard what kids called me when I was going to school.”

  Olivia could imagine. “No one’s ever called me anything too bad,” she said, “but once in third grade this girl said I looked like I had stuck my finger in a socket. You know, because of my hair.”

  “That isn’t even very original,” said Mr. Pennington, and Olivia smiled.

  It was later, when Olivia was tidying up Mr. Pennington’s kitchen, that he disappeared for a few minutes, then returned with a small box. “Olivia,” he said, “I’d like for you to have this.”

  Olivia turned around. She dried her hands, then picked up the box, which was made from dark wood, with a carving of an iris on the top. “It’s beautiful,” she said.

  “It belonged to my wife. Before that, it belonged to her mother. I think you should have it. Let me tell you how Mrs. Pennington used it. At night, she would tell her worries to it before she went to bed. She banished them to the box, and she said that in the morning, they were always gone.”

  “A worry box!” said Olivia. “Thank you!” She threw her arms around Mr. Pennington’s waist and hugged him.

  Later, as she walked back to her house, Olivia’s fingers closed over the box in her pocket. She was still fingering it when she noticed her father’s car in the street. Hmm. Too early for that. Why was he home from work so soon?

  Olivia stepped through the door of her house and found her parents standing together in the front hall.

  “What’s wrong?” Olivia asked. “I know something’s wrong.”

  Her parents turned to face her. “Olivia,” said her father, “I lost my job today.”

  Main Street, Flora had often heard Min say, was unpredictable. You could never tell when it was going to be quiet and when it was going to be busy. If a rainy day was quiet, someone was bound to say, “It’s the weather. Everyone just wants to hole up at home.” If a rainy day was busy, someone else would say, “It’s the weather. Everyone’s bored so they’ve all come into town to shop.” If a weekend day was busy, especially during the summer, someone would say, “It’s all the tourists.” If a weekend day was quiet, someone else would say, “There’s just no telling. Everyone has so much to do these days. Nobody has time for shopping.”

  It was on an unaccountably quiet Saturday, a glorious summer morning with insect wings whispering through the soft air and birds calling from the ash trees, that Min and Gigi looked at each other in their deserted store and shook their heads. “I thought this would be one of the busiest weekends of the summer,” said Min. “Except for the holiday weekends.”

  “So did I,” said Gigi.

  “Well, I’m glad it’s quiet,” said Flora. “I feel like sewing. There won’t be any classes here today, will there?”

  “No,” said Min. “So I suppose this will be a good time to take care of all those things we never seem to get around to.”

  “Do you have any sewing for me to do?” asked Flora.

  “As a matter of fact, yes,” replied Min. “And Ruby, you can help Flora, if you’d like.”

  “What do you want us to do?” asked Ruby.

  “Look around the store,” said Min. “See all the sample projects we’ve displayed?” She indicated a crib quilt hanging from the ceiling, a mannequin modeling a woman’s lacy blouse, another modeling a boy’s summer suit, and here and there smaller projects: a quilted eyeglass case, an embroidered pillow, a set of linen placemats. “Guess where they came from,” said Min.

  “You and Gigi made them?” guessed Flora.

  Min nodded. “Mary, too. Now it’s time to change the displays, though. They’ve been up for a while. We need autumn ones. We’ll put out the vest and skirt you made, Flora, but we need a few other things. Would you two like to work on some?”

  “Can we make anything we like?” asked Flora.

  “Pretty much.”

  “Could I choose a pattern and make a jumper?”

  “Absolutely. That’s a great idea.”

  “I’m not good enough to make any of those things by myself,” said Ruby. “I’d need help.”

  “I have an idea,” said Gigi. “How would you like to make new signs to place around the store? We need some cards to describe the displays and to advertise specials and new items that have come in. If I told you what to write on the cards, would you make them? You could decorate them wi
th markers and buttons and rickrack, anything you like.”

  “Yes!” said Ruby. “Cool! Signs for the store.”

  So Min and Gigi gave Ruby some paper and other materials and set her up at a table.

  Flora, meanwhile, feeling the surge of happiness that accompanied any new project, sat down with a stack of pattern books and began to page through them. As far as she was concerned, this was the best part of any project — planning it: figuring out what she wanted to do, gathering her materials and supplies, and looking ahead to the fun she would have and the sense of satisfaction she would feel when the project had been completed.

  “Why don’t you make the jumper in your size,” said Min, “so you can wear it when we take it down next month.”

  “Really?” said Flora. “Thank you. That would be great. Oh, Min, I just thought of something. I’m going to need to wash the fabric before I cut out the pieces.”

  “You can run it over to the Laundromat behind the grocery store,” said Min. “That will be the fastest way.”

  Flora returned to the pattern books. Fifteen minutes later, she had narrowed her choices to two jumpers, and when she went looking through the pattern drawers and found that one wasn’t available in her size, her decision was made.

  “Look, Min,” she said. “I’m going to make this one. Do you think I can do it?” Flora held out the pattern. It was for a loose jumper with a low neckline and a slightly raised bodice.

  “I do think so. This is a good decision, Flora. You don’t need to put in a zipper, since you can unbutton the shoulder straps. You’ve made straps before, haven’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And buttonholes?”

  “Yes. With the machine.”

  “You’ll need to line the bodice. Do you think you can do that?”

  “I might need a little help,” confessed Flora. “And also, I want to pipe the edges of the straps. I’ve seen that in pictures, but I haven’t done it before.”

  Now came another of Flora’s favorite tasks. Pattern in hand, she wandered through the racks of fabric and tried to envision her jumper. Of course, she could make it look just like the one on the cover of the pattern, but she wanted to be original. Flora was poring over the selection of quilting cottons, in all sorts of colors and prints, when she was startled to discover that she could hear her mother’s voice in her head. “It’s all about the fabric,” her mother reminded her, something she had said many times. Mrs. Northrop hadn’t taken as great an interest in sewing as Min or Flora did, but every now and then, Flora remembered, her mother would suddenly be struck with an idea for something she wanted to make and would rush off to the fabric store and return with everything she needed for her latest creation.