SummerHill Secrets, Volume 1 (26 page)

Then I remembered. Sunday—church!

Surely Lissa wouldn’t carry her newfound link with Jon through the weekend, drag it right into church, and parade it in front of me.

I must’ve gasped or something because Chelsea said, “What’s wrong?”

“What?”

“Your face is all white, Mer.”

“I’m fine, really.” Then I changed the subject. “When do you want to start working on the family history assignment?”

“Never.” Her sea-green eyes looked sly.

“So, what about tomorrow?” I laughed.

“My house?” She pulled out her schoolbag and found her daily planner. “What time?”

“After lunch?” She wrote my name in the Saturday, May 13 box.

“About one-thirty?”

Chelsea elbowed me. “Hey, maybe you’ll get so absorbed in your past, you’ll forget about your future.” She jerked her head toward Jon.

“What a truly horrible thing to say!”

“Uh, there you go again,” she teased. “Where do you get this, Mer? Truly this and truly that. C’mon!”

I sat up, mostly to create some distance between us. Thumbing through my social studies book, I found the scribbled notes I’d made for the Hanson family tree project.

“Hey, don’t take it seriously,” Chelsea said, her voice softer now. “I was just kidding.”

“Whatever.” I shuffled the papers, frustrated with the world.

“Mind if I take a look?” she asked.

I relinquished my notes, not caring whether Chelsea read the details of my father’s Swiss ancestors. Some of them had survived hideous treatment for their beliefs; other Anabaptists had been murdered.

Chelsea was suddenly quiet as she read through my pages of notes. “This is unreal,” she said, referring to the martyrs, I guess. “How could they do it—I mean, just let someone torture them to death?”

“My dad says God gives people martyrs’ grace.”

“What’s that?” She studied me with intense eyes.

“I think it means God softens the pain of dying somehow.”

She scoffed. “Whoever heard of that!”

“Don’t laugh,” I said. “It’s true.”

“How would
you
know?”

I couldn’t believe it. Just when I thought I was actually getting somewhere with her. In fact, every time I thought I was making spiritual headway with Chelsea, she’d pull out a response like this.

I refused to display my exasperation. “There are many examples recorded in the
Martyrs Mirror
.”

“Martyrs what?”

“It’s a German book about a thousand pages long,” I explained.

“It’s nearly sacred to the Amish. I’ve seen it lots of times at Rachel Zook’s house.”

“Your neighbors?”

I nodded. “Rachel says the book is really sad. It tells about men and women being murdered—their little children, even babies, being orphaned—all sorts of horrible things because of what they believed.”

“Sounds awful.”

She turned back to my notes, poring over them as her thick, shoulder-length hair inched forward and dropped, hiding her face from view.

I stared out the window at lilac bushes in full bloom along SummerHill Lane. Leaning up, I opened the window and breathed in their sweet aroma. Then I settled down to finish off my apple.

Acres of meticulously plowed fields stretched away from the road for miles. Yards of neatly mown grass and elaborate flower beds with deep red and bright pink peonies were evident at one Amish farmhouse after another.

I began to relax as we rode toward the old house on the corner of SummerHill and Strawberry Lanes. There was something peaceful about this three-mile stretch. And after a day like today, I needed
something
soothing.

I glimpsed Rachel Zook, my Amish friend, and her younger sister Nancy working two mules in the field closest to the road. The mules were hitched to a cultivator, weeding the alfalfa—the preferred hay in Lancaster. I’d heard that in one growing season, it was possible for an Amish farmer to get as many as three or four cuttings—something to do with the land’s having a limestone base. I smiled as I watched Rachel handle the mules. She held the reins loosely and, like the mules, could probably perform this job blindfolded.

I wondered how Rachel felt about her younger siblings completing another year of school. Like me, Rachel was fifteen, but the Amish only attended school through eighth grade. After that, girls helped with making and canning grape juice, “putting up” a variety of vegetables, bread-making, quilting, and keeping house. And waiting for marriage.

Rachel and a group of her Amish friends had started a “charity” garden on a one-acre plot on their land. They were in charge of planting and caring for the garden until harvest time, when they’d harvest the vegetables and freeze or can them. Later they would label the fruits of their labor and distribute the vegetables to several “English”—non-Amish—shelters nearby. It was a garden of love.

Rachel and her mother were a team in the female domain of getting garden produce from the soil to the kitchen table. And, at sixteen, like most Plain girls that age, Rachel would begin “running around” with a supper crowd on weekends and attending Sunday night singings, where she could meet eligible young Amishmen.

On the north side of the house, Levi, Rachel’s sixteen-going-on-seventeen-year-old brother, worked the potato field with his younger brother, Aaron. Levi, tall and slender and the cutest Amish boy ever, was well into in his
Rumschpringe
—the Amish term for the running-around years. Amish parents loosened their grip on their teens long enough for them to experience the modern, English world. Most teens eventually returned to their Amish roots, got baptized, and settled down to marry and raise a family of seven or eight children.

Levi took off his straw hat and wiped his forehead on his arm. He must’ve spotted the school bus at that moment, because he began to wave his hat. A wide, sweeping wave.

Surprised, I turned away. Amish boys weren’t supposed to flirt with English girls. But Levi didn’t seem to care about such things.

He was
always
flirting with me—he’d even asked me to ride in his open courting buggy last month. He didn’t know it, but I’d secretly nicknamed him Zap ’em Zook because of his wild and reckless buggy driving.

Living on adjacent properties had had its advantages during our growing-up years. All the Zook kids, except Curly John who was much older and married now, had been my playmates. In fact, once when all of us were swimming in the pond behind our houses, Levi got his foot stuck in a willow root under the water. None of the other kids seemed to notice he’d disappeared, but I had. Being a truly brave eight-year-old, I dove down and untangled his foot—seconds before his lungs would’ve given out.

I’d saved Levi’s life. From that time on, he’d said he was going to “get hitched up” with me someday. Silly boy. Cute as he was, Levi Zook had beans for brains!

I wrapped my apple core in a tissue and stuffed it down into the corner of my schoolbag as the bus approached my house.

Chelsea straightened my family history notes. “Here you go,” she said, handing them to me. “I can’t imagine letting someone set me on fire for believing in God. Too bad your ancestors didn’t know they were dying for nothing.”

She had that unyielding look on her face.

“God is real, Chelsea, whether you say so or not.”

She gave me a half smile. “You’re not gonna preach now, are you?”

It was her standard line. But I wasn’t giving up on my self-proclaimed atheist friend. Not today, not ever!

“Well, here’s my house. I’ll see you tomorrow at one-thirty.” I crawled over her to get to the aisle.

“See ya,” Chelsea called.

I held on to the seat, waiting for the bus to stop. Even though I had to walk past Jon and Lissa, I didn’t let their “Bye, Merry, have a great weekend” comments get to me.

Waiting for the bus doors to open, I realized something amazing. This research project was just what I needed to get my mind off less important things—present parties included! Talking about my ancestors had done the trick.

I hurried down out of the bus and ran up SummerHill to our sloping front lawn, around the side yard to the white gazebo, and collapsed on the steps.

My cats, Shadrach and his brother Meshach, followed by my beautiful white kitten, Lily White, made their appearance from under the gazebo, looking plump and sleepy.

“Where’s Abednego?” I inspected the dark, cool area beneath the gazebo.

My cats were not only beautiful, they were extremely intelligent. Their choice of a cool and carefree place to snooze was just one more indication of that.

I called for Abednego, who was always the last one to show up. Slowly, grandly, he emerged into the sunlight, squinting his eyes as he made his debut.

“Take your time, why don’tcha?” I teased him. But he wasn’t moved by my words and came nuzzling up against my leg. “You think that’s all it takes for an apology, huh?” I scooped him up and carried him to the house in my schoolbag.

Lily White scampered ahead of me, meowing for equal time. She and I didn’t go back as far as the three Hebrew cat children, but beautiful Lily was extraspecial. I had saved her life in Zooks’ barn fire last month—risking mine to do it.

“Come on, little boys,” I called over my shoulder. They did as they were told, obeying their mistress Merry to a tee. I choked down the thought of referring to myself that way—it only reminded me of my jovial Jon, who was probably still sitting next to the light and lovely Lissa.

“Mom, I’m home!”

The kitchen smelled like rhubarb pie mingled with the aroma of roast beef. Clean and free of clutter, the kitchen sparkled as though the cleaning lady had just been here. But it was Friday, and Mrs. Gibson came on Tuesdays.

Something was up.

I dumped my schoolbag on a chair. Carefully, I lifted Abednego out of his hiding place and carried him to the counter. “Check this out,” I said as we sniffed two big pies cooling near the window.

Mom came sailing through the room. “How was school, honey?” She kissed the air near my cheek, then scurried off to the dining room.

Lily White let out an irritated, whiny
meow
. Even though she loved me, she was still adjusting to the rest of the Hanson family.

“School? Oh, it was there.” I couldn’t tell Mom how school had really been. It involved talking about Jon, and no one needed to know that secret part of my life. “We’re doing a cool assignment in social studies,” I mentioned, opening the fridge.

“Oh?”

“Yeah, it’s a good way to close out the school year.” I poured some milk and crept into the spacious formal dining room to observe Mom—busy as usual.

“Why’s that, honey?” She glanced up momentarily as though she was interested in a reply, but I could tell her mind was on other things. Like polishing silverware and wiping off her good china.

“Someone coming for dinner?” I asked.

She smiled, completely forgetting about my social studies project. “Some of your father’s relatives are in town. They’re staying at a bed and breakfast in Strasburg but called to see if they could take us out to eat.” She sighed, counting the salad forks. “I thought it would be just as well to invite them here. You know how your father likes to unwind after a long day at the hospital.”

I smiled to myself. Mom sometimes liked to use Dad as an excuse to do things her way. Sure Dad would be tired from making rounds and treating patients, but it was really Mom who preferred to dine at home. Besides, this would be another opportunity for her to be the perfect hostess.

I wandered back into the kitchen, pouring fresh milk for the cat quartet. Eagerly, they crowded around the wide, flat dish, their pink tongues lapping up the raw milk straight from moo to you from the Zooks’ dairy farm next door.

“Oh, Merry,” Mom called from the dining room as though she’d forgotten something. “Someone else called—for you.”

I hurried through the kitchen again. “Who? Someone from school?”

She straightened up, holding a fistful of spoons. “You know, it almost sounded like Levi Zook,” she said, a curious look in her deep brown eyes. “There was background noise, though, like he was calling from town.”

I frowned. “Didn’t he say who he was?”

She shook her head. “I asked if he’d like to leave a message, but he seemed to be in a hurry.”

“That’s weird.” If it was Levi, I wondered what he was up to.

I asked for more details. “What kind of background noise did you hear?”

“Come to think of it, he may have been down at the Yoders’—they have that new carpentry shop over in Leola.” She carried the silverware into the kitchen.

I followed.

“But the Yoders are Amish, too,” I reminded her. “They don’t have a phone, do they?”

“Well, maybe they do,” she said, searching for some silver polish under the sink. “More and more Amish are having phones installed in their businesses, but the way I understand it, they aren’t allowed to use them for personal calls.”

“So you really think it was Levi?”

“Almost positive.”

“Hmm…okay, Mom. Thanks.” Hurrying out of the kitchen, I headed down the long hall to the front staircase, carrying my book bag and a second glass of milk, this one spiked with a touch of chocolate syrup.

What does Levi want?
I wondered.

Inside my room, I emptied my schoolbag, taking time to organize my books and notebooks on my massive white antique pine desk. Mom had found it at an estate auction years ago in disrepair. After stripping and repainting it white to match my corner bookcase, the old piece added charm to my room like nothing else. Except for my wall gallery, of course, on the opposite side of the room.

I’d framed and displayed my best photography there, starting with pictures taken in first grade with my little camera. Cheap as the camera had been, the colors had turned out clear and bright.

Thoughts of Levi and Jon twirled in my head as I surveyed the entire wall. Recounting the pictures of my life was a kind of ritual. I drank in the tranquil scenes of Amish farmhouses, the willow grove, and a covered bridge not far from here. There were before-and-after pictures, too. Like the one of a fresh apple pie made by Miss Spindler, another neighbor, before and after it had been sliced into six pieces.