The Secret Book Club

  Despite the conversation, and despite the fact that Olivia wanted to talk about the interesting turn the book club had taken, her eyes began to close. One of the two Olivias on the ceiling disappeared, and the one who was left fell silent. In Olivia’s mind an enormous pink-and-green balloon descended slowly from the skies above Camden Falls, coming to a gentle landing in front of Sincerely Yours. A door in the basket of the balloon opened by itself, and Olivia stepped inside. She was all alone, rising and rising, watching Main Street fall away below her.

  When Olivia awoke the next morning, the first thing she thought of was the balloon. She felt quite peaceful, and she told herself that in the future when she began to feel anxious about something she should call to mind the pink-and-green balloon and imagine a nice quiet ride somewhere.

  Olivia had been up for less than five minutes that morning when the phone rang and Jack shouted, “Olivia, it’s for you!”

  “Coming!” Olivia replied, and was horrified to hear Jack say conspiratorially to Henry, “Make that farting noise into the phone. Flora will think it’s Olivia.”

  “Henry, don’t you dare!” cried Olivia. “Jack, give me the phone!… Flora?”

  “Hi! Did you remember what today is?”

  “How could I forget?”

  “Are you going to walk into town with Ruby and Min and me?”

  “Sure. What time did Nikki say she’d be there?”

  “Ten.”

  “Okay. I’ll be over as soon as I can. I can’t believe we have to wait until ten to open the letters, though.”

  Olivia flew back to her room, dressed in a hurry (in new clothes bought on a shopping spree with her mother the week before), and scanned her room for Understood Betsy, which had turned out to be the final book club selection. Three days earlier, Min Read had arrived at Needle and Thread and found a stack of envelopes by the door. Monday was not the usual day for the arrival of the envelopes, so when Flora phoned Olivia to say that the books had arrived, Olivia’s heart quickened.

  “Something’s up,” she’d said to Flora. “I can feel it. This isn’t usual.”

  Sure enough, when the girls gathered at Needle and Thread later and opened the envelopes, they found that the letter accompanying Understood Betsy said only, “First read the book. Your final letter will arrive in three days.”

  That was it. Nothing more.

  “No list of things to talk about,” said Flora.

  “No Saturday activity,” said Nikki.

  Ruby had squinted her eyes and said in a thickly accented voice, “Veddy, veddy strange.” When she realized that the other girls were staring at her, she added, “I’m a foreign detective.”

  Olivia had spent the next three days reading Understood Betsy, by Dorothy Canfield. At first she had found the story of Elizabeth Ann, orphaned as a baby, who at age nine moves to the Vermont countryside to live with her aunt and uncle, to be old-fashioned (the story took place in the early 1900s) and a bit babyish. But the more she read, the better she liked the story. Betsy, as her relatives call her, might be only nine years old, but the things she does on her own — well, Olivia certainly couldn’t imagine doing them herself. They might have seemed small on the surface, but if you thought about them, they were really rather momentous. Walking to a new school all by yourself without even knowing where the school is! Getting lost at a fair and having to find your way home at a time when there were no telephones or cars.

  Bravery, thought Olivia. Once again, one of the themes of the book club selection was bravery.

  Olivia had read the book with relish, all the time wondering what the final letter would say.

  And now it was Thursday, and she would soon find out.

  Olivia, Flora, Ruby, and Min turned the corner onto Main Street — and Olivia broke into a run. “Come on!” she called, and Flora and Ruby hurried after her.

  The envelopes that lay in the corner of the doorway to Needle and Thread were small.

  “Just regular envelopes,” observed Ruby.

  “I think Understood Betsy was our last book,” said Olivia sadly.

  The girls sat on the couches at the front of the store and stared at the letters. Olivia willed Nikki to hurry. “Come earlier, come earlier, come earlier,” she chanted silently.

  But it was after ten when Nikki ran through the door.

  “Here! Here!” exclaimed Ruby, thrusting an envelope into Nikki’s hand. “We can’t wait a single second longer. One, two, three, open!”

  In a flash, the four letters were opened. Flora let out a gasp.

  “What is it, girls?” called Min from the checkout counter.

  There was a tangle of voices as the four girls tried to answer at the same time.

  “How about if one of you reads the letter aloud to me?” suggested Min.

  “I’ll do it! I’ll do it!” said Olivia. “Well, first there are the things to think about and discuss and stuff. But the last paragraph says, ‘Your fourth and final adventure will take place this Saturday. Please gather at Flora and Ruby’s house at seven-thirty in the morning.’”

  “That’s a little early, isn’t it?” said Ruby, and Min muttered something about sloths.

  Olivia ignored the question. “‘At seven-thirty in the morning,’” she resumed, “‘for a trip to Sands Point. Be prepared to spend the day there. The person who will be taking you on the trip is the creator of the book club.’ And,” said Olivia with relish, “the —”

  “The letter is signed Madame X!” cried Ruby triumphantly.

  Olivia glared at Ruby, but Ruby seemed not to notice.

  “Madame X,” repeated Nikki, eyes narrowed. “So. The mystery person is a woman.”

  “I kind of thought it might be Mr. Pennington,” said Olivia.

  “I wondered if it might be Sonny. He works in the bookstore and everything,” said Flora.

  “I hate to ask this, but what’s Sands Point?” asked Nikki.

  “Yeah, what is it?” asked Flora and Ruby at the same time.

  “Am I the only one who knows Sands Point?” said Olivia. “Well, you guys are going to love it. It’s a town from the early nineteen hundreds. You walk into it and feel like you’ve stepped back in time.”

  “Oh, into Betsy’s time!” Nikki said. “I get it. We’re going to visit the time in which the story took place. Cool.”

  “But even more cool, we’ll finally find out who the mystery person is,” said Ruby.

  “Let’s have our book talk now,” said Flora.

  Olivia and her friends tried hard, very hard, to concentrate on the list of things to talk about, but every few sentences, one of them would cry out, “I’ll bet Madame X is Gigi!” or “Maybe Mary Woolsey is Madame X!”

  Finally, Ruby pointed to Olivia and said, “Maybe you’re Madame X!”

  Olivia laughed. But then she thought, Madame X could be Nikki or Flora. Or Ruby — the one who dared to suggest that the mystery person was one of us. She eyed her friends suspiciously. And then she said, “Forty-eight hours from now, we’ll know who Madame X really is.”

  Nikki was in such a state of excitement about Madame X’s identity and the trip to Sands Point that she asked if she could spend Friday night at Olivia’s house. Olivia then asked if she and Nikki could spend Friday night with Flora and Ruby, so a slumber party was arranged.

  “But,” said Min, “I strongly suggest that you have an actual slumber party — in other words, that you sleep on Friday night. You won’t have much fun at Sands Point if you’ve been up all the night before.”

  And the girls did sleep. Except for ten minutes shortly after three o’clock, when Ruby got up to go to the bathroom, returned to her sister’s room, and woke Nikki, Olivia, and Flora to say, “What if Madame X is Mrs. Grindle!”

  By seven-fifteen the next morning, Nikki and her friends were sitting in a row on Min’s front stoop. At Min’s insistence, each was wearing a hat and had slathered herself with sunscreen since they were going to be outdoors all day.


  “I feel like I’m waiting to go on a field trip,” said Nikki.

  “A field trip conducted by a mysterious stranger,” said Flora.

  “You know, once on I Love Lucy,” said Ruby, “there was a person named Madame X and she was a burglar!”

  “Min wouldn’t let us go off with a burglar,” said Flora.

  “Oh, what time is it?” huffed Olivia, peering at her watch.

  “Twenty seconds since the last time someone asked what time it is,” said Nikki.

  Flora stood and looked up and down Aiken Avenue. “There are hardly any cars out at all.”

  After a short silence, Olivia announced, “It’s seven-twenty-nine.”

  “There’s a car!” cried Ruby. But it drove past the Row Houses.

  “There’s a van!” said Nikki. “And it’s slowing down!”

  The girls stared. The van pulled to a stop in front of Min’s house.

  “Oh, it’s only Aunt Allie,” said Flora in a low voice. “What’s she doing here?”

  “Maybe she’s coming along to Sands Point,” whispered Olivia. “You know, like a volunteer on a field trip.”

  Aunt Allie waved to the girls. She was grinning.

  “Oh, no,” said Ruby suddenly as she watched her aunt climb out of the van. “Oh, no. You guys, Aunt Allie is” (Ruby lowered her voice to a whisper) “Madame X.”

  Nikki stared at Ruby. Everyone else was staring at Aunt Allie.

  At that moment, Min’s front door opened. Flora turned around. “Min? Is it true? Aunt Allie is Madame X?”

  “True as true,” replied Min. “Everybody ready? I’m going to come with you.”

  “Ha!” cried Ruby. “I knew you were coming! I saw you putting on sunscreen, too.”

  Aunt Allie stood on the lawn facing the girls. For a moment, no one spoke, and Nikki saw disappointment cross Allie’s face.

  Nikki smiled at her. “Madame X,” she said. “Thank you for the book club. We had a wonderful summer.”

  Aunt Allie’s grin returned. “Did you? Did you really?”

  “Oh, it was the best surprise!” exclaimed Flora, recovering.

  “We loved the books you chose,” added Olivia.

  “I read all of them,” said Ruby.

  With that, everyone began to talk at once.

  “You knew about the secret from the very beginning, didn’t you, Min?” said Flora, and Min smiled.

  “It was so hard to keep the secret!” exclaimed Aunt Allie. “You almost caught me buying copies of The Summer of the Swans, Nikki. Sonny was helping me in Time and Again, and in you walked. I had to hide in the store until you left! You almost caught me once, too, Ruby.”

  “When did you deliver the envelopes?” Ruby wanted to know.

  “What did you do on Brave Saturday?” asked Aunt Allie.

  Min held her hands up. “Wait!” she said. “Let’s get in the van and talk on the way to Sands Point. We have a little trip ahead of us.”

  “Hey, that’s another question,” said Ruby. “Where did this van come from?”

  “I borrowed it from a friend,” Aunt Allie replied. “Okay, climb on in, everyone.”

  The drive to Sands Point was nearly an hour and a half long, but there was not a moment of silence as the van whizzed along past pine forests and clear, shining lakes and little spits of land ending in docks or fishermen’s cabins.

  “We had our best discussion of all about Roll of Thunder,” said Flora. “It made us think about The Diary of Anne Frank.”

  “My favorite book was Mrs. Frisby,” said Ruby, “and I almost didn’t finish it! I’ve never read five books in one summer.”

  “We liked having Saturday adventures,” said Nikki. “That was a cool idea.”

  “What did you do on Brave Saturday?” asked Aunt Allie again.

  “I can’t say. Mine’s private,” Nikki replied uncomfortably.

  “Oh. That’s okay.” Aunt Allie glanced in the rear-view mirror at the girls. “You don’t have to tell me what you did. I just thought —”

  “I held a snake!” cried Flora.

  Everyone laughed.

  “She’s been saying that at least once a day since she did it,” said Olivia.

  “Where did you find a snake?” asked Aunt Allie.

  Flora told her how Brave Saturday had started off.

  “Now you tell us something,” Ruby said to her aunt. “When did you deliver the packages to the store?”

  “In the evening. Not long after the store had closed. I figured they would be okay in the doorway overnight.”

  “Sneaky,” said Ruby.

  “We tried to catch you one morning,” Olivia confessed.

  “You mean, I did,” said Nikki. “I played private detective. But you had already delivered the packages.”

  Min, who was sitting in the front with Allie, consulted the map that was spread across her knees. “We’re going to turn onto Route Two Fourteen up here,” she said. “We stay on that for about ten miles, and then we should start seeing signs for Sands Point.”

  “Hey,” said Olivia, leaning forward in her seat and addressing Aunt Allie, “did you know that I’m the only one of us who’s been to Sands Point before?”

  “Min told me that Flora and Ruby hadn’t been there,” Allie replied, “but Nikki, I’m surprised you’ve never been. You grew up in Camden Falls, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” said Nikki. Outside her window the mountains had softened into low hills, and the earth was becoming sandier. “My family, well, we never really got to take trips or anything.” The van rolled by a covered bridge. “But things are going to be different now, I think,” she added. “Anyway, this is nice. Thank you very much for today.”

  Several miles later, Ruby suddenly cried, “Look! There’s a big sign for Sands Point! We’re almost there!”

  Ten minutes later, Aunt Allie pulled into a parking lot, and soon Nikki and her friends were piling out of the van. “This is so exciting!” said Nikki. “Look at everyone.”

  The parking lot was a sea of cars and vans baking in the August sun. Groups of people, chattering and laughing, walked toward the Sands Point entrance, and soon Min, Allie, and the members of the secret book club joined them.

  “I feel like we’re going to a fair,” said Ruby.

  Aunt Allie grinned. “That’s how I used to feel when Min and Dad would bring your mother and me here.”

  “You and Mom used to come to Sands Point?” asked Flora in astonishment.

  “Almost every summer. Oh, you should have seen our faces when Min would say it was time to go to Sands Point again.”

  “You should have heard their voices!” exclaimed Min. “Such shouting. But it was all part of the fun.”

  At the edge of the parking lot was a sign reading THIS WAY TO TOWN and an arrow pointing to a dirt lane.

  “Follow me, ladies,” said Aunt Allie.

  Nikki, craning her neck to see ahead, followed Allie down the dirt lane. It ended in the center of a small village.

  “Oh,” said Nikki softly, “a town. A whole town. I know you said Sands Point was a town, Olivia, but somehow I thought it would be a little fake town, like you’d find at an amusement park or something. This is real. Well, almost real. Stores, houses, an old-fashioned bank …”

  “Look, there’s a horse and buggy!” cried Flora.

  “There’s someone churning butter,” said Olivia, pointing to a woman working busily on the front porch of a small house.

  “There’s the Sweet Shoppie!” exclaimed Ruby.

  “It’s just pronounced ‘shop,’” Flora told her. “The Sweet Shoppe.”

  “Whatever. Can we buy candy there?”

  “Absolutely,” said Aunt Allie. “But let’s look around before we go shopping.”

  They spent the rest of the morning walking from building to building until Nikki felt as if she actually did live at the turn of the twentieth century. They visited a blacksmith shop, they watched a woman weaving on a loom, and they looked around a
one-room schoolhouse.

  “Just like the one Betsy goes to in Vermont,” said Flora.

  They entered a house at the edge of the town, and Olivia said, “This is the way I picture Uncle Henry and Aunt Abigail’s house.”

  The sun was directly over their heads (“Isn’t everyone thankful for the sunscreen?” asked Min) when Ruby declared that she was absolutely famished.

  “Let’s get lunch, then,” said Aunt Allie. “There are several restaurants here.”

  “Do they have regular food in them?” asked Ruby. “Or the kind Betsy had to eat?” She recalled that Betsy’s first meal at the farm had consisted of baked beans, creamed potatoes, cold ham, hot cocoa, and pancakes, and she didn’t particularly want any of those things for lunch on this hot day.

  “Regular food,” replied Min, and Ruby let out a sigh of relief.

  “Not to mention,” added Aunt Allie, “that there’s a bakery and the Sweet Shoppe, as well as penny candy in the general store. You’ll have plenty of things to choose from for dessert.”

  After lunch and dessert, the girls begged to go off on their own. “Please?” said Flora. “We’ll be safe here. And we’ll stay in pairs.”

  So Aunt Allie and Min set off in one direction, Ruby and Olivia in another, and Nikki and Flora in yet another.

  “This is SO cool,” Nikki said to Flora. “Really. It’s better than any school field trip. And it was so nice of your aunt.”

  “I know,” said Flora, frowning a little. “Who’d have thought … I mean … Aunt Allie … and she’s not forcing us to eat, you know, spinach and bulgur wheat or something. She even bought candy herself. She’s been fun today.”

  “I think she’s trying really hard,” said Nikki. “And I think that’s what the book club has been all about. She wanted to do something special for you and Ruby, something you and she could talk about that would bring the three of you together.”

  Flora nodded. “It’s a little hard to know what to say.”

  “Aren’t you happy?” asked Nikki.

  “Oh, I am. But … Ruby and I haven’t been very nice about Aunt Allie.”

  “She isn’t an easy person to like — which isn’t your fault, Flora. Don’t feel bad. Maybe this is your aunt’s way of saying, ‘Let’s start over.’”