If the judge had arrived, that meant the contest was about to begin. I needed to sign in. Now!
I hustled around to the registration line. My heart was racing.
“Next.”
I smiled when I realized that the lady handing out contestant numbers was Mrs. Grimaldi, the tour guide I helped out sometimes.
“Hello, Mrs. Grimaldi!” I said. “Remember me?”
She made a face like I do when I sniff a carton of Chinese takeout food my dad has left in the fridge way too long.
“Good morning, Miss Van Wyck. Do you wish to compete in today’s trivia contest?”
I was so excited I think my cheeks were glowing. “Yep, I sure do!”
Mrs. Grimaldi slowly fingered the pile of official number cards stacked in front of her. Once you were registered, you were supposed to pin your number to the front of your shirt like you would if you were running around Central Park in one of the races sponsored by the New York Road Runners club.
I held out my hand.
Mrs. Grimaldi did not give me a number.
“Did you know that Jonas Blauvelt will be competing today?” she asked, smiling and fluttering her eyelashes.
“Really? The Jonas Blauvelt? The man who wrote The Definitive & Exhaustive Ultimate Guidebook to Central Park?”
“Yes. That one.”
“But,” I said with a smile, “I thought this contest was for kids.”
“That’s right. Eight to eighteen.”
“So how come Mr. Blauvelt is competing?”
“He’s sixteen.”
My jaw flew open so wide Mrs. Grimaldi could’ve given me a dental exam.
“Wow,” I mumbled. Then I gulped. “Sixteen?”
Now Mrs. Grimaldi was the one beaming. “Yes. The young man is a genius. A true savant! His guidebook is the definitive source for all the information we use in our tours.”
I just nodded.
“So, Miss Van Wyck: Would you still like to register for the competition? Or, perhaps, you’d be happier in the audience.”
I hesitated.
But only for a second.
“No. I’d still like a number. I mean, if it’s okay and all. If I’m not too late.”
“Fine,” she said with a self-satisfied smirk. “Good luck.”
I took my number and pinned it to my shirt, careful not to cover up the Imagine graphic. As I turned away from the registration table, I grinned—just a little.
Hey, if Mrs. Grimaldi based her tours exclusively on information she found in Blauvelt’s book, I figured Blauvelt might get some stuff wrong, too!
Chapter 4
Have you ever really, really wanted to do something—maybe sing, or dance, or tell jokes—and then seen somebody do it way better than you ever possibly could?
Welcome to my world.
I was waiting in the wings, at the back of the Bandshell, watching Jonas Blauvelt, the sixteen-year-old Central Park Whiz Kid, answer each and every question in mind-boggling detail.
Blauvelt had curly brown hair that completely covered his ears and the sidepieces of his glasses. He was sort of pudgy with chubby cheeks that might’ve looked cute if he wasn’t frowning all the time. His soft skin was paler than a raw mushroom, probably from staying indoors all day working on his computer so he could become smarter than me.
“When was the Central Park Carousel first put into operation?” asked the quizmaster behind her podium.
“1871,” said Blauvelt, just like I would have. “It was originally powered by a blind mule …”
I knew that.
“… working underneath the floor of the ride.”
Knew that, too.
“The current Carousel, which, by the way, is the fourth, has only been in place since the fall of 1950, when it was moved from Coney Island to Central Park after a fire destroyed the previous carousel.”
Everybody probably knew that.
“Thank you, Jonas,” said the quizmaster.
“I’m not finished,” droned Blauvelt, using one finger to slide his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. “The current Carousel was originally constructed by Stein and Goldstein in Brooklyn for a trolley terminal.”
Okay. I did not know that.
“There are fifty-two jumpers, five standers, and two chariots.”
Even if I knew that, it wouldn’t matter. Over at the judge’s panel, I could see Mr. Drake smiling from ear to ear.
“Is there anything else you’d like to add, Jonas?” he asked cheerily.
Jonas sighed. “The outside horses are three-quarters the size of actual horses.” He sounded like a sad, sullen robot. “Two Russian immigrants did all the carving. The carousel’s music comes from a Ruth & Sohn 33 band organ—not a Gebrüder—playing Wurlitzer music rolls. The carousel and all its figures are hand painted.”
I’d basically heard enough.
“You can go on in my place,” I whispered to the girl standing beside me.
“No thanks,” she whispered back. “I’m quitting, too.”
We both crept out the Bandshell’s back door. I unpinned my number from my shirt and tossed it into the first trash barrel I could find.
Which, of course, just happened to be standing right outside the registration tent.
Mrs. Grimaldi was still inside, behind the table.
Yep. She was still smirking at me.
Hanging my head, I walked out of the park and headed home to 14 West 77th Street.
“Hey, Mr. Humboldt,” I mumbled when I shuffled past his statue outside the Explorers’ Gate.
Just because I was in a loser mood was still no reason to be rude.
That morning, I had thought winning the Park Smarts trivia contest was where my whole life had been heading. Now, I realized, my “fanatical obsession” had been a colossal waste of time.
Twelve years wasted.
Okay. Only eleven. I didn’t learn too much about Central Park when I was in diapers. Just where all the swing sets were, I guess.
I crossed Central Park West when the light changed but slowed down when I reached the far side of the avenue because I saw Brooke Billingsley and three of her girlfriends strolling out of our building to stand under the emerald green awning while Charlie, the doorman, stepped out into the street to blow his whistle and flag down a passing taxi.
It was a little after one on a Saturday afternoon. I imagined Brooke and her friends were on their way to catch a matinee of a hot new musical on Broadway. Or maybe they were heading over to the Upper East Side and Dylan’s Candy Bar, where they could buy all kinds of sugary treats like chocolate-covered gummy bears. Maybe they were going to another friend’s birthday party or high tea at the Pierre hotel.
When you’re the janitor’s daughter in a fancy Manhattan apartment building, you see all sorts of girls your age with way better hair and clothes—not to mention a ton more money. Usually they don’t invite you to join them for tea and chocolate-covered gummy bears. Usually they try to ignore you and you try to lower your eyes if you accidentally bump into them in the lobby.
After Brooke and her BFFs giggled and squirmed their way into the taxi, I trudged up the sidewalk to 14 West 77th.
“Good afternoon, Miss Van Wyck,” said Charlie, who wore a uniform like the Wizard’s doorkeeper up in Oz.
“Hi, Charlie.”
“Beautiful day.”
I put on my best smile. “Sure is. Well, I better go see if dad is hungry.”
“That’s a neat shirt,” he said.
“Thanks.”
And then he sang. Way off key. “Imagine all the people, living life in peace …”
Okay. Now I was really smiling. Charlie has a way of making you forget how terrible your day has been up until the point you bumped into him.
“Thank you, ladies and gentlemen,” said Charlie, taking a bow. “I’m here all week.”
I laughed and kind of skipped into the building like I was six again.
Yeah. Charlie will do that to you.
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Remember how my father spends his Friday nights drinking beer and sleeping on the couch in front of the TV?
Saturday nights work pretty much the same way.
So, while he snored at his baseball game, I decided what I really wanted was to slip out for some frozen custard up the block at Shake Shack. Actually, I was in the mood for what they call a Concrete—super-dense frozen custard blended with junk like cookie dough and marshmallows.
Unfortunately, a Concrete costs like six dollars and, even though I’d been saving my money for a couple weeks (sometimes, Charlie sends me to the deli to grab him a cup of coffee and lets me keep the change), I didn’t have enough.
So, I decided to settle for a Nutty Buddy ice-cream cone out of the freezer box at the deli up the block from the Shake Shack.
Checking traffic, I dashed across 77th Street so I’d be on the north side when I hit Columbus Avenue. The American Museum of Natural History is right across the street from our apartment building. It always looks magical at night, like Cinderella’s towering castle lit up by spotlights. Well, Cinderella after she and the prince do the whole shoe-fitting thing.
Since it was just after eight on a warm Saturday night, lots of people were sitting on the park benches ringing the museum. The scent of hamburgers and french fries was definitely in the air.
Almost everybody had Shake Shack sacks.
One bench, right at the corner of Columbus and West 77th Street, was particularly crowded. A cluster of maybe a dozen kids hovered around it. Boys and girls, my age or a little older. They were all sucking down Concretes and munching burgers. They were also laughing, flirting, and having fun.
For half a second, I wondered what that would be like.
But then I saw who was sitting at the center of the cluster.
Brooke Billingsley.
Our eyes made contact.
She sneered.
I dropped my head.
“Ewww, hold your noses, everybody. Here comes the janitor’s daughter.”
Chapter 5
“Can you smell her perfume?” said Brooke. “It’s either Pine-Sol or puke.”
Now the sniggering boys and girls surrounded me.
“Excuse me,” I mumbled, as I tried to shuffle forward, my eyes staring straight down at my shoes.
“Wait a second, Janitor Girl,” said one of the boys, stopping me with a firm hand to my shoulder.
I looked up. The boy blocking my path had poofy lips, bouffy hair, and a sinister sneer. Abercrombie & Fitch’s initials were scribbled over every piece of his clothing.
He leaned in and snobbishly sniffed my neck. “It’s not Pine-Sol or puke. It’s poop. From cleaning too many unflushed toilets!”
The crowd howled with laughter. Brooke pressed in tight to playfully squeeze her handsome A&F prince’s beefy arm. “Plus, she shampoos with Liquid Plumr—the only thing strong enough to cut through that greasy clog she calls her hair.”
The kids kept laughing. They tightened their circle around me.
“So,” said the handsome boy as he checked out the graphic on my T-shirt, “who’s Ima Gene?”
Okay. I had to chuckle at that.
“It’s not Ima Gene. It’s Imagine.”
“Huh?” He did not sound like a happy camper.
“You know, from the John Lennon song?” I mumbled. “‘Imagine all the people living life in peace?’ It’s on the mosaic in Strawberry Fields.”
“What?”
“It’s this super dorky place in Central Park,” said one of the other boys. “Old farts go there to burn candles, strum guitars, and make peace signs out of flowers. It sucks.”
“Janitor Girl is a Central Park freak,” said Brooke.
“Really?” said her boyfriend.
“Yunh-huh. Get this: She even wears a stupid piece from a Central Park jigsaw puzzle around her neck instead of like a diamond or whatever.”
The poofy-haired boy snorted out a laugh. “You’re kidding.”
“Nun-unh. I saw her showing it off to our lazy doorman; wasting his time when he should’ve been asking me if I needed anything.”
The boy’s hand slid over to my neck.
His index finger found my necklace’s thin gold chain.
“This it?” he asked.
“I guess,” said Brooke. “She wears it like all the time.”
My mouth was dry. “M-m-my mother,” I stammered.
The boy didn’t wait to hear who gave me my necklace and why it was important enough to wear every day.
He just hooked the chain with his finger and yanked it so hard he snapped the links.
My eyes filled with tears.
“Don’t cry, little girl,” teased the boy. “I’ll give you a buck-fifty. You can buy yourself a new necklace at K-Mart. I just have to see this.” He tossed my charm up and down in his palm. “Unbelievable. It’s actually a piece from a stupid jigsaw puzzle. A map of Central Park!”
“Isn’t that like totally lame?” said Brooke.
“Please give it back,” I said, holding out my hand. It was trembling.
“No way,” said the boy. “This is the one piece I need to finish my Central Park puzzle!”
“Aw, give it back, Brent,” jeered one of the other guys. “It’s her ‘family jewels!’”
As the other kids laughed even louder, the boy named Brent leaned in, and whispered something horrible in my ear: “Stay out of Central Park, Ima Gene. We don’t want your kind in there anymore!”
He pulled back.
“Come on, you guys,” he said to the crowd. “There’s a party we need to be at.”
Some of the kids stuffed their Shake Shack bags into a big trash barrel.
“Guess I better throw out this piece of garbage, too,” said Brent.
Then he tossed my necklace into the trash can.
Right before a passing dog walker dropped in a plump plastic bag filled with dog poop.
Brooke, Brent, and the rest of the preppy pack waltzed up Columbus Avenue, laughing.
At dorky me and my dorky necklace and my even dorkier “Imagine” T-shirt.
That’s when the wind began to stir. The leafy limbs at the tops of the trees lining the sidewalks began to sway. I saw some papers and Shake Shack bags fly up out of the trash barrel, like someone was inside the can, sorting through their rubbish.
Something freaky was definitely going on.
But I needed to find my mother’s charm. So I stepped up to the garbage can.
“Gross,” I mumbled as I shoved aside the sagging bag of dog poop.
I went up on tiptoe and basically stuck my head down inside the garbage can but I couldn’t see the necklace.
Just a newspaper. A tabloid with the strangest headline I have ever read:
IT’S NEARLY NINE!
Backing my head out of the barrel, I glanced at my watch.
The headline was right. It was 8:55 p.m.
Interesting, but I needed to find my necklace. So I pulled up the newspaper and uncovered an ad from some kind of travel agency:
ADVENTURE IS CALLING! GO EXPLORING!
Peeling back the flyer, I finally found the necklace.
It was sitting on top of a stained copy of New York Moms magazine.
When I picked up my charm and chain, a howling wind whipped around inside the barrel, sending up a mini-cyclone that flipped open the magazine pages until they landed on a very interesting article:
WHAT WOULD YOUR MOTHER DO?
This time when I looked up from the garbage can, I saw a beady-eyed raccoon hunkered on his hindquarters on the far side of the fence penning in the museum’s lawns. The raccoon was staring at me. Its hands were folded in front of its chest so it could tap its fingers together, impatiently.
“All right, already!” I said to the raccoon. “I can take a hint.”
I tucked my broken necklace into the back pocket of my jeans and headed east.
I was hurrying to the place I figured all “the signs” in the magical
trash can (plus one raccoon) were sending me: the Explorers’ Gate where, at nine p.m., I was supposed to meet up with Garrett Vanderdonk and his brother Willem.
Yeah. It’s what my mother would have done.
Chapter 6
I made it to the Explorers’ Gate in two minutes flat, so I was actually a little early.
Garrett and his brother weren’t there yet, so I said a quick hello to Mr. Humboldt and slipped into the dark shadows under the sprawling tree whose massive roots had rumpled up the pavers circling the heroic bust’s pedestal.
Interestingly, the Explorers’ Gate is also called the Naturalists’ Gate. Good thing Humboldt was both.
There are twenty different gates leading into Central Park, which was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux (you don’t really meet many Calverts these days, or guys whose middle names are Law.)
Why the odd names for all the entrances?
Well, if I had been asked that at the Park Smarts trivia contest, I would’ve said the gate names were chosen to represent the professions of the working-class people coming into the park in the 1870s. That’s why they’re called stuff like Farmers’ Gate, Hunters’ Gate, Merchants’ Gate, and Scholars’ Gate.
And, as soon as I was through giving my answer, Jonas Blauvelt would’ve launched into a whole blah-blah-blah about Olmsted and Vaux wanting Central Park to be “a democratic oasis,” not a private playground for the city’s richest citizens. So, even though some snooty, high-society types (the Brookes and Brents of the 1800s) wanted to enter the new park in their horse-drawn carriages through Buckingham Palace–style gates, Olmsted and Vaux wanted low stone walls like you’d see bordering a farmer’s field out in the countryside.
Okay. Maybe I do know as much about Central Park as Jonas Blauvelt. I’m just not very good in competitive situations. I kind of choke under stress.
At exactly nine p.m., I looked up the sidewalk and saw the silhouette of a giant moose in a floppy stocking cap. Garrett Vanderdonk. He was walking with a short guy, also in a stocking cap, whom I pegged to be his brother, Willem. There was a big dog with a bushy tail walking between them. The dog was not wearing a hat. He was wagging his tail.