The Secret Book Club

  “In here?” exclaimed Ruby. “I mean, no offense, but was this room any nicer when it was part of the Underground Railroad?”

  Flora was too astonished by what she saw before her to take much notice of Ruby’s thoughtless remark. The room that had opened before the girls was dank, windowless, and small — about half the size of Flora’s bedroom, which wasn’t very big itself. It smelled of earth and dampness and whatever creatures thrived belowground, out of the way of sunlight and fresh air.

  Mrs. Angrim addressed Ruby. “Well,” she said, “there was some furniture in the room, but that was about it. And remember, there was no electricity then, so this room would have been lit only by candles or oil lamps.”

  “Excuse me,” said Ruby, “but where did the people go to the bathroom? They couldn’t leave this room, could they?”

  “They used chamber pots,” replied Mrs. Angrim.

  Ruby looked helplessly at Min, who whispered to her, “I’ll explain later.”

  Mrs. Angrim said briskly, “Escaping slaves traveled by night, for the most part, and often by boat. They didn’t stay long anywhere, but sometimes they were able to hide out for several days and rest before moving on.”

  “I wonder how many people stayed here altogether,” said Olivia thoughtfully. “I mean, over the years.”

  Mrs. Angrim shook her head. “I don’t know. But it could have been quite a few. There were probably entire families in here from time to time.”

  “Families!” cried Ruby. “You mean there were kids? Kid slaves?”

  “Absolutely,” said Min.

  “Slave owners believed that they owned any children their slaves gave birth to as well as the slaves themselves,” added Mrs. Angrim.

  Ruby didn’t reply.

  From a corner of the room, Flora heard Nikki mutter, “Owning people.”

  “Imagine anyone having to hide out just to survive,” said Flora after a moment. She turned to Min and Mrs. Angrim. “Before we came over here we were talking about Anne Frank and her family and how they hid in the Secret Annex.”

  “How did you get from Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry to that subject?” asked Min.

  “We were wondering whether the Logans — in the book —” Olivia added for Mrs. Angrim’s benefit, “should have left the trouble in the South and moved north. And then we started talking about people who have to leave their homes, and about what happened to Jewish people who stayed in Amsterdam during World War Two.”

  “Ah,” said Min.

  Nikki was digging into the earthen floor with the toe of her sneaker. “Think of all the lives that might have been saved because of this little room,” she said.

  “It’s kind of exciting, I guess,” said Ruby, “but mostly … it must have been so scary.”

  Flora shivered.

  “I suppose,” said Min later, after Mrs. Angrim had closed the trapdoor to the basement and was leading the way through her house once again, “that this was a different sort of adventure than the ones the children had in The Saturdays.”

  “I’ll say,” replied Ruby. “Those kids lived in New York City and got to go to the circus and to an opera house and stuff.”

  “But,” said Olivia, “today was really, really interesting.”

  “It was thought,” Min went on, “that your visit here would make for an unusual adventure.”

  What an interesting choice of words, Flora said to herself. Aloud she said, “Thank you for showing us the room, Mrs. Angrim.”

  “Yes, thank you,” said Nikki and Olivia and Ruby.

  The girls walked back down the path to Harmony Lane, leaving Min behind with Mrs. Angrim.

  “Did you guys hear what Min said just now?” asked Flora when Mrs. Angrim’s door was safely closed. “She said, ‘It was thought that your visit here would make for an unusual adventure.’”

  “Yeah?” said Ruby, who might just as well have said, “So?”

  “She knows who set up the book club!” exclaimed Flora.

  “Of course she does,” said Olivia. “So do my parents and Nikki’s mom. We already figured that out. Min’s being very careful not to give away any clues about that person, including whether it’s a man or a woman. I’ll bet Gigi knows who it is, too. And if she knows, then Poppy does. I have a feeling Mr. Pennington knows, too. And probably a bunch of other people.”

  “But what I think,” Flora continued, “is that Min is the secret person. That’s why she had to be so careful about what she said. And look, there she was at Mrs. Angrim’s house today.”

  “That doesn’t prove anything,” said Nikki as the girls turned a corner. “Besides, if Min is the mystery person, how did she deliver the packages to Needle and Thread the first day? They were already there when you arrived at the store that morning.”

  “She could have arranged for someone else to deliver them,” said Ruby. “To throw us off the track.”

  “Ooh. Tricky,” said Olivia.

  “I like a good mystery,” proclaimed Flora. “It’s not every day one comes your way. Unless you’re Nancy Drew.”

  Ruby clasped her hands together and gazed thoughtfully into the distance. “I wonder what’s going to happen next,” she said.

  Three days a week, Robby Edwards worked as a clerk at Sincerely Yours. His shift started at ten in the morning, when either his mother or his father dropped him off at the store, and ended at three in the afternoon, when someone arrived to pick him up. In between, Robby waited on customers, stocked shelves, made coffee, and occasionally manned the cash register.

  By the middle of July, Robby had been working for almost a month. He was pleased with the way his bank account was growing. But he was even more pleased by something that had happened the previous week: Olivia Walter had decided that four times a year, Sincerely Yours should honor a particularly hardworking employee and post that person’s picture by the cash register. Robby had been selected as the Employee of the Summer.

  “Dad! Dad!” he had cried when his father collected him that afternoon. “Look! I’m the Employee of the Summer! It says so right over there.” He grabbed his father by the hand and tugged him inside the store. “See the sign? That makes it official.”

  “Robby, that’s wonderful!” his father had exclaimed. And that night the Edwards family had celebrated with ice cream at Dutch Haus.

  One sultry morning, when the July humidity had settled oppressively over Camden Falls, making Robby feel as if he were wearing a damp winter coat, Mr. Edwards walked along Main Street with his son.

  “What does today hold for you?” he asked.

  “Always the same,” Robby replied with satisfaction. “First I will check the coffeepot, and if it is empty, I’ll make more coffee. Then I’ll straighten the merchandise. On the shelves. Maybe there will be new items to stock. But if any customers arrive and they need help, then I stop what I’m doing and help. The customers always come first.”

  Robby and his father passed Needle and Thread and peered through the windows. Gigi waved to them from the cutting counter. Robby waved back, then said, “Oh, there’s Flora. She’s going to teach a class, Dad. To grown-ups.”

  The Edwardses passed Zack’s and Heaven and then they were standing outside Sincerely Yours. “Dad, don’t hug me, okay?” Robby said urgently. “Tell me good-bye like a man.”

  Mr. Edwards looked gravely at his son. “Good-bye,” he said. “Have a good day at work. This afternoon Margaret Malone is going to pick you up.”

  “Good-bye,” replied Robby seriously. “You have a good day, too.”

  As Robby opened the door to Sincerely Yours he wished, as he often did, that he was allowed to walk to Main Street on his own. But then he reminded himself that he had a job. And he was earning a paycheck. He had already taken huge steps toward independence.

  “Well! If it isn’t the Employee of the Summer!” declared Mr. Walter, who was carrying a tray of cookies that Mrs. Walter had just made.

  “I’m ready to check the coffee,” was Robby’s r
eply. He made his way to the coffee machine, reached for one of the pots, and knocked over a newly filled pot of milk. “Uh-oh! Uh-oh!” exclaimed Robby as milk pooled on the counter and dripped to the floor.

  “Never mind,” said Mrs. Walter. She bustled out of the kitchen with a dish towel and handed it to him.

  Wordlessly, Robby cleaned up the mess. “Sorry, I’m sorry,” he muttered when he had finished, and a memory flashed through his mind, quick as a snake, the memory of another summer day and of a girl — had she been a friend of Lydia Malone’s? — whispering loudly that he was a retard.

  This day, this stifling day when people in Camden Falls hustled from one air-conditioned building to another and complained about the heat in between, turned out to be a very bad day for Robby Edwards. He became confused when making change for a customer (before Robby had finished the transaction, the customer had handed him a ten-dollar bill and asked if Robby could give him a five and five ones, and also use one of the ones to buy a chocolate-chip cookie), and he was forced to call on Mr. Walter for help. Later, he was hauling a box of wooden picture frames to a display shelf, and just as he reached the shelf, the bottom of the box gave way and forty frames crashed to the floor, the glass in two of them breaking.

  “Emergency!” Robby cried, horrified.

  “Don’t worry. Accidents happen,” said Mrs. Walter. “That wasn’t your fault.”

  And Mr. Walter added, “At least it wasn’t a box of those.” He pointed to a selection of expensive hand-painted glass ornaments that had recently arrived.

  Robby tried to smile, but as he tackled the shards of glass with a dustpan and broom, he had the feeling that people walking by the store at that moment would see him and think, Retard.

  “Time for your lunch break,” said Mr. Walter gently when the mess had been cleared up. “Go relax for a while.”

  Humiliated, Robby ate a solitary lunch in the kitchen. The Walters were too busy to join him, and Robby was relieved. He used the quiet time to have a talk with himself, pointing out that it had just been a bad morning, and that when his lunch break was over, he could start fresh and try to pretend that the events of the morning hadn’t taken place.

  When Robby emerged from the kitchen, he found that Sincerely Yours was as crowded as he’d ever seen it.

  “Everyone’s escaping from the heat,” he overheard Mrs. Walter say.

  Without being told, Robby began to answer customers’ questions. He directed them to new merchandise. He told Mrs. Walter when the chocolates in the candy counter were running low. When he noticed that no one was manning the cash register, he took it over. He rang up purchases and made change for nearly half an hour — without needing any help whatsoever.

  His shift was almost over, the store still crowded, when a young man approached the cash register, reached into a Sincerely Yours shopping bag he was carrying, and removed the tissue paper that was protecting a glass rosebud. “Excuse me,” he said to Robby, “I bought this this morning” (he pointed first to the rosebud and then to the display of painted ornaments) “and, well, my wife said it was too expensive and that I have to return it.” He laughed uncomfortably.

  Robby, peering at the display, saw that sure enough, one of the ornaments was missing. “Okay,” said Robby.

  “So do you think I could have my money back? All the ornaments are the same price, I’m pretty sure. The total came to eighty-five dollars even.”

  “Okay,” said Robby again. He placed the ornament carefully on a shelf below the cash register, then opened the drawer, withdrew four twenty-dollar bills and one five, and handed them to the customer.

  “Thank you, sir,” said the man solemnly, and he left the store.

  Robby carried the ornament back to the shelf and placed it in the empty spot between a glass bell and a glass bird.

  “Was someone interested in that?” asked Mr. Walter.

  “The man who bought it this morning returned it,” Robby answered. “I gave him his money back.”

  Mr. Walter pursed his lips. “I don’t remember selling one of those. I don’t think we’ve sold any of them yet. Did the customer show you his receipt?”

  Robby’s gaze traveled to the floor. “No. But he had the ornament. He returned it,” he said again. “In one of our shopping bags.”

  “Wendy?” Mr. Walter called. “Did you sell one of the new ornaments today?”

  “No,” Mrs. Walter called back.

  Mr. Walter sighed. “Robby,” he said, “I think we’ve been tricked. I think that man probably stole the ornament, then said he had to return it. That’s why we always need a receipt when someone wants his money back or wants to exchange something.”

  Robby felt his face burning. “Oh.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Mr. Walter. “Everyone makes mistakes.”

  But I make more than most people, thought Robby. He looked out the window, then back at Mr. Walter. “I just cost you eighty-five dollars,” he said. “You can take it out of my pay.”

  “What?” said Mrs. Walter from across the store. She joined Robby and her husband. “Why are we taking something out of your pay?”

  Mr. Walter explained what had happened.

  “And I want to pay you back,” said Robby miserably.

  “Absolutely not,” said Mrs. Walter. “We won’t hear of it.”

  “Thank you,” mumbled Robby. He glanced at the door. “Margaret’s here,” he said. “I have to go.”

  Robby made his way to Margaret Malone. As he passed the checkout counter, he snatched the Employee of the Summer sign from the cash register and crumpled it into a tight ball. Moments later, he tossed it in a garbage can on Main Street.

  The heat in Camden Falls was unrelenting that July, and Nikki, whose house had no air-conditioning, spent a great deal of time in town with Olivia, Ruby, and Flora. Sincerely Yours was air-conditioned, Needle and Thread was air-conditioned, the Row Houses were air-conditioned. And Min and the Walters were allowing the girls to stay at home alone more and more often.

  “A good thing, too,” said Olivia, “since I want to start baby-sitting for Grace. I wonder when the Fongs will decide I’m old enough to do that.”

  Nikki regarded Olivia, grateful that her old friend seemed to have returned. She had no idea why, but ever since the day of their last Saturday adventure, the day they had visited Mrs. Angrim’s house, Olivia had been her sunny, bouncy self — as long as no one mentioned Tanya, her party, barbecues, swimming pools, or Camden Falls Central High School.

  “Have you ever taken care of a baby before?” Nikki asked.

  She and Flora were sitting on Olivia’s bed, watching Olivia remove every article of clothing from the wardrobe in the corner of her room. Olivia was growing (much to her relief), and her mother had told her it was time to try on all of her clothes in order to weed out the ones that no longer fit. When that chore had been accomplished, they would go shopping for new clothes.

  “Well,” Olivia replied, “I helped take care of Henry and Jack when they were babies.”

  “I don’t know if that counts,” said Flora.

  Olivia tossed a shirt onto a pile in the middle of the room. She had barely been able to squeeze her head through the neck hole. “This is boring,” she said, but she reached for another shirt. “You know what? We should be getting our next book any day now.”

  “I was just thinking the same thing!” exclaimed Nikki. “Also … I was getting an idea.”

  “You look awfully sneaky,” observed Flora.

  “Wait until you hear my idea. Okay, did you guys notice that both times we got books, they arrived on the same day of the week?”

  “Yes,” said Olivia and Flora.

  “And that they arrived early in the morning?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, if my calculations are right —”

  Olivia let out a laugh.

  “Ahem,” said Nikki. “If they’re right, then the next packages should come in three days.”

  Flora ju
mped to her feet, peered at the calendar on Olivia’s wall, and said, “I’ll bet you are right!”

  “So here’s my sneaky idea,” Nikki continued. “You know how the packages were left at Needle and Thread before it opened? Well, what if, three days from now, we went into town really early in the morning and hid somewhere nearby so we could see who leaves the envelopes?”

  “Ooh,” said Olivia. “That is sneaky. Except I don’t think Mom and Dad will let me do that.”

  “I know Min won’t let Ruby and me do that,” said Flora.

  Nikki frowned thoughtfully. “Okay. How about if I go into town?”

  “All by yourself?” said Olivia.

  “If I have to.”

  “Will your mother let you?” asked Flora.

  “She won’t know anything about it. She’s already started her new job. She leaves the house before eight o’clock. And she takes Mae with her so she can drop her at day care. Tobias sleeps late — the whole house could fall on him and he wouldn’t wake up. I figure if I’m ready to go when Mom leaves, I can get on my bike the moment her car is out of sight and be on Main Street by eight-fifteen. That’s forty-five minutes before Needle and Thread opens. Maybe I’ll catch the mystery person in the act.”

  “Ooh, I like this idea,” said Olivia. “Where are you going to spy from?”

  “That’s a good question. I have to be able to see Needle and Thread, but I don’t want to be out in the open. I don’t want anyone to see me.”

  “I hate to suggest this,” said Olivia, “but what if you hid across the street in the doorway of Stuff ’n’ Nonsense? You’d be out of sight, and you’d have a great view of Needle and Thread.”

  “Stuff ’n’ Nonsense?” cried Nikki. “The Grinch’s store?” Nikki and Mrs. Grindle had a sorry history stemming from the previous summer when Mrs. Grindle had accused the innocent Nikki of stealing a necklace from her store.

  “She won’t be there at that hour,” Olivia pointed out. “Stuff ’n’ Nonsense doesn’t open until ten that day. She’ll never know.”