Finding Fortune (4 page)

I stared at the photo for a while longer, letting the tears slide down and drip off my chin. Poor Dad. Poor Blue, stuck in that grubby dog pen in Uncle Spence's backyard.

When I finally raised my head, the word on the blackboard was shimmering in front of me.

No, Ren, you can't give up.

I propped the picture on the chair beside my cot and carefully returned everything but the book to my pack, making sure to leave the squished sandwiches on top this time. Then I pulled off my shoes, lay back on the pillow, and settled in. At least I had
Little Women
to keep me company. I knew it was weird. Allison and Kelly never would have wanted to read a book that was written in 1868 and said corny things like “The four young faces on which the firelight shone brightened at the cheerful words…” I turned to chapter 22—my favorite—so I could read about how Marmee and the March girls have the best Christmas ever when Father surprises them and returns home from the Civil War.

 

FOUR

I SHOT UP IN THE COT,
breathing hard. The classroom was bleached with sun. It took me a minute to take it all in—
Little Women
placed neatly beside Dad's picture on the chair, the blanket spread over my feet. Hildy must have come back to check on me and turn off the lights after I had fallen asleep. I swiped my hair out of my face and looked at my watch, still in a haze of disbelief. How could I have done it? Slept straight through till eight in the morning with all my worries about Mom and Rick, not to mention a skull lurking only a few feet away?

I had shoved my feet into my sneakers and was fumbling with the laces when I heard a sharp rap on the door. Hildy swept into the room before I had time to answer. She looked a lot less scary in the daytime, probably because her wig was on straight this morning and she had switched to pink lipstick instead of bloodred. She was wearing an old velour tracksuit that reminded me of dirty peach fuzz, but it was still a big improvement over yesterday's saggy sweater.

“Good. You're alive,” she said. “You had me wondering last night. When I came back to see how you were doing, the light was on, but you were out cold. Must have been exhausted.”

“Sorry about that,” I said. “I can't believe I never woke up, especially after being so scared…”

“Scared?” Hildy's penciled-on eyebrows flew up. “Scared of what, for Pete's sake?”

There was no use beating around the bush. I went straight to the cabinet and flung the door open.
“That,”
I said, and scooted out of the way so she could see.

Hildy stepped closer, lifting her glasses from the chain around her neck and perching them on the end of her nose. She slowly leaned down to take a look. “Oh, lordy,” she breathed. “You poor thing. I forgot all about Bonny's skull.” She straightened up with a dry little chuckle.

“Bonny?”

“Mr. Bonnycastle. He taught here way back when I was in school. Reading and composition mainly, but once in a while he would hold an art class for the seniors. He was a fine artist himself. I remember he nabbed that skull from cranky old Mr. Prescott, who taught the sciences. Then he set it up with the hourglass and the shells so he could teach us about drawing still-life pictures.”

Hildy let her gaze roam wistfully around the room, then shook her head. “I should have pitched those things when I was clearing out this room a couple of months ago. But they brought back so many memories I couldn't stand to throw them away.”

“So that's another thing I was wondering about,” I said in a rush. I pointed at the mysterious word planted in the middle of the chalkboard. “What does
that
mean?”

Hildy blinked. “Oh, that?” She frowned and fidgeted with the zipper of her jacket. “That was Garrett's bright idea. He's my handyman. He's been checking all the rooms for any last repairs that need to be done. If there aren't any, he writes
no
on the board and moves on.”

I felt the knot in my throat loosen. Her explanations sounded so reasonable.

“I should be getting downstairs,” Hildy said. She pushed up her sleeves. “I got a big surprise this morning. My son called at the crack of dawn to say he's driving over from Des Moines today. He's bringing my grandson Tucker with him.”

I waited for Hildy to smile. “Aren't you glad they're coming?” I asked.

“Sure, I am. It'll be good to see them, especially Tucker. I bet he's grown a foot. But to tell the truth,” she said, “my son, Jack, didn't exactly like the idea of me investing in this place. He hasn't bothered to visit or help out since I moved here. And now, all of a sudden, he's got a bee in his bonnet and claims he wants to see how I'm doing.” Hildy's voice sounded like a rubber band ready to snap. “Anyway”—she waved her hand like she was shooing flies—“he says they'll be staying for dinner, so I need to let Madeline know.” She bobbed her head toward the door. “Why don't you come with me and get some breakfast?”

“Oh, no thanks.” I reached up to scrape my tangled hair back into its ponytail. “I brought my own food, remember?”

“Baloney,” Hildy said. “I'm not about to let a young girl starve on my watch. Let's go. We can stop by the washroom on our way down.”

I hurried over to dig my wallet out of my backpack so I could at least pay Hildy what I owed for the room so far. She lit up like she had won the lottery when I pressed my crumpled bills into her hand.

 

FIVE

THIS TIME I KNEW
the piano music wasn't my imagination. There was a slow, waltzy sort of tune drifting from somewhere close by. Before I could ask Hildy where it was coming from, she sped up in front of me. “There he is again!” she cried. “How many times do I have to tell those silly women?” I had no idea what she was talking about until I noticed a cat pawing furiously at one of the closed doors halfway down the hall—the same door where I had seen the sliver of light the night before.

Hildy moved surprisingly fast for an old lady. As she barreled closer, the cat sank into a crouch, poised to scamper away. For a second, I thought Hildy intended to snatch him up by the scruff of his neck. But when she reached him, she only shooed him aside with her foot and knocked sharply on the door where he'd been pawing.

The waltz stopped and the cat sat back on his haunches. I had never seen an animal like that before—tawny gold with black stripes on his legs and black spots on his back. He looked like he had stepped straight out of the jungle, except he was small like a house cat and tame.

The door cracked open, just enough to see part of a woman's face peering out. “Colette, one of these leopard cats of yours is out here again,” Hildy snapped.

“Oh, naughty Flam,” the woman scolded. “Where have you been?” Her voice was strangely hushed, the way people talk when they're in church or a museum. “Just a minute,” she said through the crack. “Clarissa's catching Flim before he runs off too.”

The door finally swung open a little wider and a second woman appeared behind the first one, holding another cat. I felt like I was seeing double. The cats were identical and the ladies looked like twins—the same plain wide faces, the same straight mouse-brown hair cropped at their chins. They smiled in unison as they watched their missing cat dart back inside.

But as soon as the second woman spoke, I could tell the sisters were completely different. “We've told you, Hildy,” she barked. “Flim and Flam aren't leopards. They're Bengal house cats and I don't know why you're so upset. We should let them get loose more often. They could probably help a lot with all the mice around this place.”

“You know my rules, Clarissa,” Hildy told her. “You can take them or leave them.”

Neither of the sisters had noticed me waiting out in the hall. And Hildy seemed to have forgotten I was there as she continued to argue with Clarissa about the best pet policy for the school. But from where I was standing, I could see a sliver of the room behind them—an old piano in front of a sunny window and a cat-climbing structure covered in bright green shag. And there was a wonderful flowery smell like rose petals wafting through the doorway.

“We'll try to do a better job of keeping an eye on them,” Colette soothed in her feathery voice. “Won't we, Clarissa?” Clarissa gave a begrudging nod.

Hildy thanked the sisters before Colette closed the door, but she was still grumbling as I followed her down the stairs. “They never told me they were bringing those darn cats,” she fussed. “I let them have the music room. I let them bring in a man to tune the piano, and I even let them haul a stove up there so they could make that high-falutin soap of theirs.” She paused on the landing to catch her breath. “The least they can do is keep those animals from prowling around, jumping out and scaring me half to death.”

Hildy must have noticed I wasn't listening anymore. She followed my gaze up to the wall above the landing. “Isn't that a pretty mural?” she said. “That's what the riverfront in Fortune looked like once upon a time.”

Dusty rays of sunshine streamed through the high window over the stairwell, lighting up a large wall painting of girls in aprons and boys in overalls gathered on the banks of the Mississippi. The view was from the water with the school set off in the distance, reigning over the scene from its rise of land. I tilted my head, trying to make sense of the other details. There were two boats heading toward the shore, and the children held buckets. One had what looked like a rake in his hand.

“What are those kids doing?” I asked.

“Clamming,” Hildy said. “When my older brother, Tom, was a boy, he could go down to that spot on the river and scoop up mussels and clams by the bushelful. In those days most of the families around here were involved with button-making in one way or another, and the kids would help out whenever they could. My father had a clamming boat and Tom spent all his summers working on it. He had big dreams of running his own button factory some day.”

“Did he do it?” I asked. “Open a button factory?”

Her watery eyes dimmed. “No, he didn't get the chance. The button business went bust and then he was one of the first soldiers to be called up for the Korean War. Poor Tom never came home.”

“I'm sorry,” I said quietly. “My father's in Afghanistan right now. He's been there for almost a year.”

“Good heavens.” Hildy winced. “That must have been his picture I saw last night next to your cot.”

I nodded, and she patted my arm. “Don't you worry, honey. That mess in the Middle East is nothing like the war my brother was in. Your father's going to be just fine.”

I followed Hildy to the bottom of the stairs. The foyer still looked lonely in the daylight, but not nearly as gloomy as the night before. Someone had brought my bike inside and propped it next to a kid's scooter near a door with a frosted glass window marked
SCHOOL OFFICE
. The trophy case stretched across the other end of the foyer under a banner that I hadn't noticed last night.
HOME OF THE FORTUNE HUNTERS
, it proclaimed in faded green letters trimmed with gold. The words drifted through my head as Hildy led me along one of the wings off the foyer.
Fortune Hunters
. It sounded so glamorous compared to the Bellefield Bulldogs.

Hildy stopped and rapped on another door with a frosted window. This one said
LIBRARY
—
QUIET PLEASE
, but when we entered the rambling space where Hugh and his mother lived, I felt like I was stepping into a genie's den. The wooden floors were covered with a patchwork of worn Oriental carpets, oversize cushions, and beanbag chairs. Even the ceiling, draped in lengths of gauzy fabric, looked exotic. The only traces of a library I could see were a tattered set of encyclopedias lining the windowsill and one of those giant card catalog cabinets filled with row after row of little drawers. Dad had shown me a card catalog in an antiques store once. “Whoa, that's crazy,” I remember saying when he had explained how people used to find books in libraries before computers came along and took over all the dirty work.

“Yoo-hoo!” Hildy called. “Anyone home?”

A wisp of white-blond hair and half of a face appeared around the corner of the card catalog. “Oh, there you are, Hugh,” Hildy said. “Come on out here. I'd like to introduce you to someone. This is Ren.”

Before I could open my mouth to say we had already met, Hugh was zigzagging toward me, dodging around the floor cushions. He dumped the heavy book he had been carrying on a nearby beanbag chair and tucked a yellow pencil behind his ear. “Nice to meet you,” he said, thrusting out his hand.

I hesitated, then took Hugh's hand and gave it a clumsy shake. “Hi there,” I answered. Why was he pretending he had never seen me before? As soon as I let go of his hand, Hugh hoisted up his book again.
Birds of North America
, it was called, and an index card covered in kidlike writing stuck out from the pages.