Finding Fortune (5 page)

“So where'd your mother get off to?” Hildy asked.

“She's in the kitchen trying to make muffins.”

“What do you mean
trying
?” a voice said behind us. A woman came in from the hallway with the tail of her filmy skirt swishing along the floor. I tried not to stare. I had never met anyone with dreadlocks before. Hers were strawberry blond and her nose was pierced with a diamond that sparkled like a teeny tiny raindrop. “I made two dozen,” she said proudly, drying her hands on a red bandanna. “And they're bran, so they're extra healthy.”

“Madeline, this is Ren,” Hildy said. “I'm sure she'd be happy to give those muffins of yours a try. She hasn't had breakfast yet.”

“Great.” Hugh's mother studied me with a tired smile. She wiped her flushed face with the bandanna and then used it to tie her dreads into a ponytail. “You can call me Mine, by the way.” I nodded. “How long will you be staying?” she asked.

Hildy answered for me. “Her mother's picking her up this afternoon. But we'll need to set two extra places for dinner tonight. My son and his youngest boy, Tucker, are coming for a visit. They'll be here sometime after lunch.”

“Really?” Mine's gray eyes widened in alarm.

“Really. So I thought I better warn you. That tofu dish we had last night isn't the kind of thing that'll go over very well with my son. He's more the meat-and-potatoes type.”

Mine sniffed. “That's fine, but I guess I'll need to make a trip into Bellefield. We're running a little low on
meat
at the moment.” Her lips curled around the word with distaste. “And sorry, Hildy, but I'm almost out of the grocery money you gave me last week.”

Hildy winked at me as she reached into the pocket of her tracksuit and handed Mine the money I had paid her. But then her expression darkened as she caught sight of the old clock that hung over the library windows. “Holy smokes! I need to get moving. They'll be here before we know it.”

I could feel Mine watching me as Hildy hurried off. I knew she must be wondering where I came from and why I was there, but she didn't ask me any questions. “I can show you where to get breakfast on my way out,” she said as she walked over to unhook her crocheted satchel from the coat tree in the corner. “Hey, mister,” she called to Hugh, “we better get going too if we want to be ready for the carnivores.”

Hugh didn't answer. He was poking along the front of the card catalog, holding the index card from the bird book and studying the labels on the alphabetized wooden drawers. “
R
 …
R
…” I heard him whisper to himself. “
R
for Ren, not
W
.”

I watched as Hugh stopped halfway down the card catalog, stood on his tiptoes, and opened the
R
drawer. From where I was standing, it looked like all the original cards listing the library books had been removed. Without even glancing inside, Hugh dropped his own card into the empty drawer and quietly slid it shut.

“Hey, buddy,” Mine said, louder this time. “Up and at 'em. Time for grocery shopping.”

Hugh whipped around, bursting out of his silence like a boiling teakettle. “Do I have to? Can't I stay here? With Ren?”

Mine looked baffled. “But you love going into town. And Ren … well, she doesn't even know us. And she might not want any company right now.” She glanced over at me with an apologetic smile. “Right?”

“Oh, I don't mind,” I said.

“Are you sure?” Mine asked, once Hugh had run off to put his bird book away. “You don't mind keeping an eye on him while I'm gone?”

“Not a bit,” I told her. Sure, her son might be a little on the strange side. But I was almost certain he'd be better company than Mr. Bonnycastle's skull.

 

SIX

I WAS SO HUNGRY
that anything would have tasted good—even Mine's muffins that made a thud when she dropped one on my plate before she headed off to the grocery store. Luckily she had also poured us glasses of milk to help wash things down. I sat with Hugh at a red Formica table in the kitchen in front of the old serving window, peering out at the giant room on the other side. It was empty except for two picnic tables with benches that had been pushed together end to end. The cafetorium, Hugh called it. “Because it's half cafeteria, half auditorium,” he said. Then he pointed to the stage that stretched across the opposite side of the room. “Hildy lives up there.”

I might not have believed him if I hadn't heard her bumping around behind the red velvet curtains, getting ready for her son's visit. The stage actually seemed like a pretty smart choice for a bedroom, considering how close it was to the kitchen. I glanced around. Nothing in the kitchen matched anymore. There was a gold fridge and an avocado-green stove, and long rows of cupboards painted the color of canaries. And the kitchen felt lots homier than a cafeteria, with its smell of coffee and molasses and the trail of mixing bowls and muffin tins that Mine had left spread across the metal counters.

Hugh gnawed a tiny chunk off the top of his muffin. “Tastes like birdseed,” he said. Then his face spread into a grin, wide enough for me to see his big front teeth. “That must be why you like it. Because you're a wren. Did you know wrens are famous for their loud and complex songs?”

“No, I didn't,” I said through my bite of muffin. “But that's probably exactly how my sister would describe me. Loud and complex.” I took another swig of milk. “Is that what you were looking up in that bird book? Wrens?”

Hugh nodded. “I like to keep notes on people.”

“So how come you didn't tell Hildy and your mom that we had already met last night? Was it because you didn't want them to know I caught you spying on me?”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Hugh said, but I could see a flush of red creeping up his pale neck.

When I raised one eyebrow at him, he turned away, rushing to change the subject. “I wish I could have Lucky Charms instead of this yucky muffin.” He pointed to some cereal boxes that sat on top of the refrigerator.

“Why can't you?”

“Mine only lets me eat sugar cereal on my birthday. They'll probably be stale by then.” He was quiet for a second, studying my expression. “I'm eight. But I bet you thought I was only seven, right?”

I shrugged. He was definitely smaller than the average eight-year-old, but he seemed wiser somehow with his silvery gray eyes and that pencil perched behind his ear. “I wasn't sure how old you were … just like you didn't know whether I was fourteen or not.” I broke into a sly smile. “Come on, admit it. You were spying last night.”

Hugh thumped his muffin down on his plate. “All right, all right, I was spying.” He sighed. “I'm usually really good at it.”

“So it sounds like this is something you do a lot—this spying thing.”

“Yeah, but you're the first person who's caught me since we moved here,” Hugh boasted. “Hildy's never caught me. And Mine, she knows that I wander off sometimes, but she doesn't know exactly what I'm up to.”

“What
are
you up to?” I asked.

Hugh's face grew solemn. “There's a lot of strange stuff going on around this place. I'm trying to figure it out.”

“Really? You mean like those weird things under the sink in my room?”

Hugh sat up straight. “So you saw the skull?” he asked gleefully. “Were you scared?”

“Petrified,” I said. “Until Hildy came in this morning and explained about her teacher and the art lessons.”

“Yeah. Mr. Bonnycastle. He sounds cool. I told Hildy she should put the skull in her museum, but she says it doesn't really fit with her theme.”

“Museum? What museum?”

“It's in the gym. It's sort of hard to explain.” Hugh hopped up from the table. “But I can show you if you want.”

“Sure,” I said. Then I glanced around the messy kitchen. “Right after we do these dishes.”

Once we had finished, Hugh led me back through the foyer to the opposite end of the school. But even when I stood in the doorway of what used to be the gym, staring out at the so-called museum, I still didn't understand. All I could see was a ton of junk spread from one basketball hoop to the other. I gawked up at the narrow balcony that ran around the sides of the sprawling room. In the old days people probably lined up along the railings to look down and watch games, but now even the balcony was jammed with junk.

“What is all this stuff?” I whispered.

“It's going to be a pearl-button museum,” Hugh said. He had already started down one of the cramped pathways that led through the piles, and I followed slowly along, examining the clutter on either side—rusted machinery with cranks and foot pedals, washtubs full of different kinds of shells, clamming rakes, and sawhorses stacked with old metal signs that said “American Maid Button Manufacturers” and “Style Right Buttons—Jewel of the Mississippi.”

“Gosh, my dad would love it here,” I said.

Hugh seemed surprised. “He would? Mine's worried. She says people go to museums to see dinosaurs or mummies or planetariums or IMAX movies. Like they've got in Chicago.” He stopped next to a burlap bag full of discs that looked like miniature checkers. “She doesn't think people really care about buttons.”

I scooped up a handful of the discs. They were white on one side and brown on the other. “Those are button blanks,” Hugh said. He sounded like a tour guide. “That's what buttons used to look like before they polished off the outside part and drilled in the holes.”

So these were the missing pieces—the circles that had been punched out of all those shells in the alleyways of Fortune and the little pile of shells in the cabinet upstairs. I rubbed my finger over the white side of one of the blanks in my palm. It was smooth and let off a little gleam of light like a pearl, which probably explained how the buttons got their name.

“You can keep one if you want,” Hugh offered. “Hildy won't mind. She says she's going to give a button blank to every single person who visits her museum.” He rooted in the side pocket of his cargo shorts. “Here's mine.” He opened his fist to show me the one he'd been carrying. “It's my lucky charm.”

“Way better than cereal,” I joked. “Never goes stale.”

Hugh smiled crookedly. “Hey, that's a good one. I gotta write that down.” He reached for the pencil behind his ear and pulled a fresh index card out of his pocket. As Hugh wandered ahead scribbling, I hung back and sifted through a few more handfuls of button blanks, searching for one that struck my eye. I'd never had a good luck charm before and suddenly it seemed like something I desperately needed.

After I had chosen my favorite blank and tucked it in my pocket, it took me a while to find Hugh in the maze of cardboard boxes. “Ahoy!” he yelled when I came around a stack of storage bins. I laughed in amazement. He was standing inside a boat—a big one—that looked like it had run aground on the only island of empty space in the gym.

“This is the best part of the whole museum,” Hugh declared. “It's a clamming boat. It used to be Hildy's dad's.” The wooden boat sat about three feet off the ground on a makeshift platform. It was long and flat-bottomed and smelled like it had a fresh coat of paint—emerald green with bright white trim.

“Isn't it great?” Hugh asked me. “I just wish we could name it something different.”

“Why, what's it called?”

Hugh didn't answer. He rolled his eyes, jerking his thumb toward the back of the boat. I walked around to read the name that was painted across the stern in white capital letters. “What's wrong with
Little Miss
?” I asked. “I think it's cute. It's short for Mississippi, right?”

“That's the problem. A boat shouldn't sound
cute
. Why couldn't Hildy's dad have called it something like
Sea Witch
? Or
Discovery
. That's what Lewis and Clark named theirs. Those guys never would have gone exploring in a boat called
Little Miss
.”

He had a point. The name sounded too sweet, especially considering the scary contraption full of long hooks that ran along the length of one side. “That's the clamming rig,” Hugh told me, slipping into his tour guide routine again. He explained how the clammers used to drag all those hooks along the bottom of the river and the dopey mussels and clams got fooled into thinking the hooks were something tasty or an enemy floating by, so they chomped their two halves down on them. “And
whammo
,” Hugh said, smacking his hands together. “After that, they got their insides boiled out and their outsides cut into buttons.”

“Yuck.” I grimaced.

Hugh swung his legs over the side of the boat and hopped from the platform to the floor. “Come on,” he said. “I have to show you one more thing.” I scrambled after him as he ducked under another set of sawhorses. I flinched when we popped up next to a pair of spooky mannequins with yellow hair like straw. They were wearing matching vests decorated in a gleaming assortment of buttons, but I couldn't stop to take a closer look. Hugh had already disappeared again. I squeezed past another row of old-fashioned machines, wrinkling my nose at the smell of engine grease. Hugh was on the other side holding a photograph in a silver frame.

“Guess who?” he said, handing me the picture. I stared at the pretty girl who waved from the black-and-white photograph. She wore a puffy white dress and a tall crown, and she sat on a throne tucked inside a giant fake clamshell. It looked like she was riding on a fancy float like the ones in the Macy's parade that Nora and I watched on TV every Thanksgiving.

“Is that—?”

“It's Hildy!” Hugh pointed to the words engraved on the bottom of the frame.
Queen of the Fortune Button Festival—June 1950
. “She says she was the last queen ever because the river ran out of shells and they stopped having the festival.”