Needle and Thread (8 page)

“Olivia, I really don't want to talk about it.”

Flora turned to Nikki. “Do you think you could secretly come trick-or-treating with us this year?”

Nikki turned pale. “No! Are you kidding? If I got caught doing something like that, I — I —”

“Nikki, it's okay. Never mind,” said Flora. “It was just an idea. What about talking to your father? What if you told him we really, really want you to come with us?”

“Maybe,” said Nikki.

“Hey, here comes Robby,” said Olivia, looking down the row of houses.

“And Ruby and Lacey,” added Flora, looking in the other direction.

Presently, as often happened at the Row Houses, all the kids except for the Malone sisters soon gathered.

“What are you guys doing?” asked Robby, and Ruby thought he sounded sullen. What had happened to the cheerful Robby she knew?

“Talking about Halloween,” said Olivia.

“Huh. That's for babies.”

“Well, then I'm a baby,” said Olivia, “because I really like Halloween.”

“What are you going to be this year?” Mathias asked her.

Olivia frowned. “I'm still deciding.”

“I'm going to be a ghost,” said Alyssa.

“A ghost!” exclaimed Henry. “Can't you be more original?”

“Well, I wanted to be something else, but my mom said no.”

“What did you want to be?” asked Robby.

“A piece of cake.”

Flora laughed. “That would be a little hard. But I bet we could make you into a cupcake.”

“Or a candle,” said Olivia.

“A candle?” Alyssa grinned. “I like that.”

“How would you make her into a candle?” asked Ruby.

“Simple. Put her in a pink leotard and make her a yellow flame hat,” Olivia replied.

Nikki smiled.

“I want to be Bugs Bunny,” said Jack.

“I want to be a firefighter,” said Travis.

“What about you?” Ruby asked Robby. “Are you going to go trick-or-treating?”

“I don't know. Maybe.”

“Hey, everybody!” called a cheerful voice.

“Oh, no.” Robby let out a groan.

“Robby, it's
Lydia
,” said Olivia. “What's the matter?” She stood up and waved to Lydia, who was striding down Aiken Avenue.

“Hi, Robby,” said Lydia. She shrugged off her backpack and set it on the sidewalk. “Let me just stick this in my house, then I'll go tell your mother I'm here. I hope she didn't think I was going to be late.”

“Late for what?” asked Lacey.

“Baby-sitting for Robby.”

“I told you — I. AM. NOT. A. BABY.” Robby turned a furious face on Lydia. “Didn't I tell you that?”

“Robby, I — I'm sorry. Really.” Lydia looked helplessly at Olivia.

Ruby remembered the many late-summer days when she had seen Robby and Lydia happily walking into town or reading under the ancient maple tree in the Edwardses' yard.

“All right, look, Robby,” said Lydia. “Stay here with the other kids for a few minutes and I'll be right back.”

Lydia disappeared into her house, then reappeared and dashed across the yards toward Robby's. As she did so, Robby muttered, “And I'm not a kid, either.”

“Hey!” exclaimed Henry. “I know what I want to be for Halloween — a pirate.”

“Ooh! Ooh! We have an eye patch you can wear!” exclaimed Lacey.

The younger kids ran to the Morrises' house, leaving Flora, Nikki, and Olivia sitting in the Walters' yard, knees drawn up to their chins. Robby sat alone on Olivia's front steps.

“Hey, you guys. I never told you about the great idea I had,” said Flora. She glanced behind her at Robby, who looked away from her.

“What great idea?” asked Nikki.

“Min was telling Ruby and me how every Halloween she dresses like the Wicked Witch of the West from
The Wizard of Oz
and Gigi dresses like Glinda. So I thought maybe the three of us and Ruby could be Dorothy, the Tin Man, the Cowardly Lion, and the Scarecrow.” She glanced over her shoulder again. “We need someone to be the Wizard,” she added. “I wonder who that could be.”

Robby glared off into the distance.

“But,” said Nikki, “I don't know if I can dress up. Like I said.”

“It's okay. It was just an idea.”

“If I can, though,” Nikki went on, “Mae will probably have to come trick-or-treating with me. I couldn't leave her behind.”

“Mae could be Toto!” cried Olivia.

“Well …” said Nikki.

“Do you really think you might be able to come?” asked Flora.

“Maybe.”

“We don't want you to get in trouble,” added Olivia.

Nikki let out a huge sigh. “If I'm going to ask about this, I'll have to do it very carefully. I'll talk to Mom first.” She sighed again. “The problem is that Mom can't really stand up to my father.”

“I'm back!” said Lydia. “Robby, your mother's leaving now. She said your dad will be home in two hours. Guess what. We get to start dinner. What do you want to make?”

Robby brightened. “Can we have pizza?”

“Frozen pizza? Sure. We'll make a salad, too, okay?”

“Okay.”

Lydia sat on the lawn with Olivia and Nikki and Flora. Every so often a maple leaf drifted to the ground. Lydia sniffed the air. “Smells good,” she said. “Isn't it weird how you can actually smell the seasons? You know — how spring smells different from summer, and autumn has its own smell, and winter smells like snow, even though snow doesn't have a smell?”

“Mmm,” said Flora.

“Robby, come join us.” Lydia patted the ground beside her.

“All right.” Robby left the steps and plopped onto the grass between Nikki and Lydia.

Around them, Ruby and Lacey and Henry and Jack and Travis and Mathias and Alyssa ran and shouted and laughed.

“A firefighter needs a hose!”

“I know what we can make your flame hat out of — felt.”

“Who has a wand? I need a wand!”

“Maybe I should be a princess instead. That way, I would get to wear a crown and oh, oh! I could wear my ballet slippers!”

Robby looked seriously at Lydia for several moments. At last he said, “Lydia, could you please not call me a kid? Or talk about baby-sitting?”

“Okay,” said Lydia. “But, Robby, won't you tell me what's wrong? You never minded when I sat for you before.”

“That was when I went to high school. Now I go to the little kids' school again. It just … makes me feel like a baby.”

“Oh,” said Lydia. “I see.”

“Are
you
going to go trick-or-treating?” Robby asked her.

“Well … no.”

“Are you going to wear a costume?”

Lydia looked at the ground and flushed. “Um, I don't know. I got asked to this Halloween party. But I'm probably not going to go.”

Flora glanced at Nikki and Olivia, and Olivia raised her eyebrows.

“Okay, here's the thing, Robby,” said Lydia. “Halloween is a fun holiday. You should do whatever you want. If you want to get dressed up, you should. If you want to go trick-or-treating, you should. Don't worry about what other people think.”

“That's easy for you to say,” muttered Robby.

“Not really,” replied Lydia.

“Flora! Flora! Can you sew me a flame hat?” cried Alyssa as she ran out of Olivia's house. “Ruby said you're really good at sewing.”

“Can you sew a penguin head?” asked Travis.

“I'm going to need a tail,” said Jack.

“I'll try anything,” said Flora.

When Ruby Northrop entered a room, people usually noticed. Ruby was used to this and made the most of her entrances. On the day of the auditions for the school play, Ruby strode through the door of her classroom, smiling.

“Hi, Ruby! Hi, Ruby!” called several voices.

“Hello!” Ruby waved to her classmates.

Ava Longyear, who was already seated at her desk, jumped up and ran to greet Ruby. “The auditions are today. Are you really going to try out for the biggest part?”

“Yup,” said Ruby. “I definitely want to be Alice Kendall.”

“Ooh, the worst witch,” said Ava.

“But that's just the thing. She wasn't a witch at all,” said Ruby, who had read the script for the play several times and had listened carefully when Mr. Lundy talked to her class about witches and witchcraft in New England in the 1600s. A handful of women and a couple of men, Ruby learned, had been tried and even executed as witches for nothing more than talking in their sleep, making an unfortunate comment, or being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And this had happened right here in Camden Falls! Alice Kendall wasn't one of those people, since she was a made-up character. But the things that happened to her in the play were the sorts of things that happened to people accused of practicing witchcraft in colonial Camden Falls. In the play, Alice Kendall is the neighbor of a man named John Parson, whose two young children have recently died of the flu. When Mr. Parson's cow also dies, and he then recalls that one day he dropped and broke a china plate just as Alice was walking by his window, he begins to suspect that she's a witch.

His suspicions grow when he passes Alice in her garden one day and hears her talking to herself. John then notices a large crow, which he calls a “familiar,” perched on the roof of the Kendalls' house. This is the beginning of Alice's troubles. Her family is shunned, and eventually Alice is executed after a supremely unfair trial, to Ruby's way of thinking. One witness says he saw a crow follow Alice Kendall across her yard. Another says that one day when her husband was ill, she asked to borrow some grain from the Kendalls. Alice Kendall said they had no grain to spare and the next day the woman's husband took a turn for the worse. These incidents are cited as further evidence of witchcraft.

Ruby's mind wandered as she lost herself in the world of seventeenth-century Camden Falls.

“Ruby?” said Ava. “Earth to Ruby.”

Ruby blinked. “Sorry. I was thinking about Alice Kendall.”

“Why would you want to play a witch?” asked Ava. “That's not a good character.”

“Yes, it is. It's the best kind,” said Ruby. “Alice was accused of something she didn't do. That's a great role for any actor.”

“But in the end she dies.”

“I know. I've always wanted to do a death scene.”

Ruby sensed that if her sister could hear her, she wouldn't approve of what Ruby was saying. Not at all. Flora's mind was a complicated muddle of experiences and memories and thoughts that swirled around like the whirlpool above a drain. If Flora heard the words “death scene,” her mind would immediately turn to the car accident and the death of their parents. But Ruby was able to put things in separate compartments in
her
mind. The death of her parents was sorted into one spot, the death of a fictional witch into another. And Ruby desperately wanted the chance to cough and gag and fall down onstage before an entire auditorium full of people.

The sound of clapping hands drew Ruby's and Ava's attention to the front of the room.

“Good morning,” said Mr. Lundy as he stood up from his desk. “Find your seats, please, people.”

Ruby slid into her chair, stuffing several books and a small china crow into her desk as she did so. Ruby had a large collection of china animals at home and she had brought the crow to school that day for good luck. She knew that a crow had gotten Alice Kendall in trouble, but she felt
her
crow might be a good-luck charm.

Ruby was thinking how lucky she was to live in the twenty-first century, when it was okay to carry goodluck charms and to like crows without being accused of witchcraft, when she heard Mr. Lundy say, “Ruby? Are you with us?”

Ruby straightened up. “Yes.”

“Good. Because I was talking about the three hundred and fiftieth birthday festivities, and I know they're of interest to you.” (Ruby nodded.) “Now, as you know,” Mr. Lundy went on, “there are plenty of birthday events that you can participate in. The town will be holding an exhibit of art and another of photographs, and each will include work done by students at Camden Falls Elementary. Also, the auditions for the school play will be held this afternoon.”

Ava raised her hand. “Ruby's going to try out for the part of the witch,” she said, and Ruby smiled at her teacher.

“For the part of Alice Kendall?” asked Mr. Lundy.

Ruby nodded. “I think I would make a very good witch,” she said.

“I'm sure you'd do a fine job, but I'm not sure you'll be able to try out for specific roles,” said Mr. Lundy. “I think everyone will be asked to read a few lines, and small groups will be asked to perform scenes. Then the roles will be assigned. In other words, after the director has seen you, Ruby, she'll decide which role will be the best for you. Do you understand? You won't be able to try out just for the part of Alice Kendall. And remember, kids in all the grades will be trying out for the play. Sixth-graders, too.”