The Penderwicks in Spring (25 page)

Another struggle with tape, and Batty revealed the bounty inside
OPEN ME FIRST
. It was indeed record albums, a pristine set still in its original box and plastic wrapping. Batty traced with her fingers the words on the cover:
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
,
9 SYMPHONIEN
,
BERLINER PHILHARMONIKER
,
HERBERT VON KARAJAN
.

“Von Karajan!” Batty told Asimov.

Jeffrey had once wanted to be an orchestra conductor—long ago, when he first met the Penderwicks. He’d since moved on from that, saying that while a conductor couldn’t make music without a whole bunch of musicians agreeing to be conducted, a pianist needed only his piano. But he’d retained his fascination with the breed and had taught Batty about the famous ones, Bernstein and Muti, Klemperer and Previn, Solti and Ozawa, and about this very Herbert von Karajan, one of the twentieth-century greats.

This had to be an old recording—decades and decades old. Batty marveled at how such a treasure could stay untouched for so many years, waiting for someone to release its magic.

Jeffrey had taped—lightly, thank goodness!—a card to the box. The picture was of a cat playing the piano, which Batty liked very much, although
Asimov swatted at it when she showed him. But the note inside was even better.

“I do forgive you,” she breathed.

But wait, what about the second package?

She groped around the bed and found it, buried under the wrapping paper from the symphonies. This one had its card on the outside, taped underneath
OPEN ME SECOND
. Another cat, another piano—Batty didn’t bother showing this one to Asimov—and another note.

Trembling, Batty ripped away the wrapping. It wasn’t a book—she was almost certain, because she
was starting to remember. Yes, she was right. It was a framed photograph, the one she’d been looking for everywhere, the one—it came back to her now—that she’d kept beside her bed when she was small, until she’d given it away to Jeffrey.

Hound.

That evening after dinner, Ben put the final touch on Minnesota, gluing a final Monopoly hotel to St. Paul. It was due the next day, and Ben couldn’t wait to show it off. His would be the best state in the second grade, except for Rafael’s, whose Florida would be just as good, because best friends don’t compete with each other.

There was this problem, though: Minnesota now held so many rocks that Ben could no longer pick it up by himself. Actually, he hadn’t been able to pick it up since gluing on the Sawtooth Mountains. Batty had told him that she’d help him carry it to school, but Ben thought he’d better remind her.

Her bedroom door was closed and loud music was blasting through—classical music played by an entire orchestra. He knocked hard, and then harder, but when she didn’t answer, he tried pushing the door, but it wouldn’t budge. Something was blocking it.

That was nuts. Blocking doors was what Ben did, not Batty. He pounded on the door until it flew open and Batty yanked him into the room. One glance at her and Ben was ready to leave again. She had an air
of recklessness about her, reminding him of how Rafael had been that time just before he leapt off the jungle gym and broke his arm.

“Changed my mind, good-bye,” he said.

But Batty was already blocking the door again, wedging a chair under the doorknob. Then she turned down the music so that they could better hear each other. “I’m glad you’re here. I’m calling a MOYPS.”

“Another one? We just had one.”

Now Ben saw the pile of money on Batty’s bed, lots of bills. Something big was happening, and he didn’t like it. Maybe the reason Batty had been so strange lately had to do with money. Maybe their parents really had gotten poor—way beyond being-careful poor—and Batty was going to give them her dog-walking money. Ben still had three dollars left from his rock-digging money, which he’d been saving for his first movie camera. But he couldn’t let Batty have all the nobility.

“Are you giving that money to Mom and Dad?” he asked. “Because I have some, too, if they need it.”

“No, I’m using it for myself.” Batty picked up her backpack and dumped it, schoolbooks and pens clattering onto the floor. Then she slid the money into an inside pocket and zipped it shut.

“Then you’re sure you’re not dying? Because you look kind of crazy right now. This is awful.”

“How many times do I have to tell you I’m not dying, you goop? Calm down so that we can start. MOYPS come to—”

“What about Lydia? She should be here if it’s a meeting of the younger Penderwicks.”

“This is really just for you. We’ll call it a MOBAB, Meeting of Batty and Ben, okay? Please?”

Ben shrugged his reluctant agreement, feeling the heavy weight of Penderwick Family Honor.

“Thank you,” said Batty. “MOBAB, Meeting of Batty and Ben, come to order. Both of us swear to keep secret what is said here from everyone, including parents, older sisters, Nick, and even Rafael.”

They bumped fists and swore, and Batty turned the music back up a little, just in case anyone was lurking in the hallway. “I’m taking the bus to Boston tomorrow to see Jeffrey, and no one else knows but you. Not even Jeffrey. I’m going to surprise him.”

Ben had been to Boston. It seemed very far away to him—not so far as Maine, where they went in the summer, but still really far. “You can’t. You’ll get lost or kidnapped.”

“No, I won’t. I have to see Jeffrey.”

“Why?”

Because he’d asked for her forgiveness, and she wanted to give it to him in person. Because he’d sent her a perfect set of Beethoven’s symphonies. Because not only had he kept her photo of Hound safe for years and years, he’d known just when to give it back to her. But Ben wouldn’t understand any of that, except maybe the part about the photo, and Batty had already hidden it away in her closet, where no one could see it and pry into her feelings.

“I just have to,” she said. “Skye might never let him come here again, and I want to see him.”

Ben was learning a painful life lesson about secrets. He’d gotten sucked into keeping Batty’s Quigley Woods adventure a secret, and now she was expecting him to hide a much more dangerous adventure. Not only that, but he’d just promised Nick to report anything he needed help with, and oh, boy, he needed help with this but couldn’t report it because he’d just sworn an oath of secrecy.

“My head is going to explode,” he said.

“There’s no reason for your head to explode.”

He tried reason. “Mom and Dad will be furious. Just think about the trouble you’ll get into, especially if you’re kidnapped. They might not be poor, but they don’t have enough for ransom money.”

Batty didn’t like the idea of making her parents worry. She was almost certain that she could make it into Boston and back home before they noticed. Or so she told herself, in order to keep her courage high.

“Ben, I promise I won’t get kidnapped, and Mom and Dad—I’ll call them if I’m going to get home later than they do. Does that make you feel better?”

“No, it does not. What about school? You could get thrown out for cutting.”

“Not for doing it just once. Anyway, let them throw me out,” she said, and almost meant it. “Then I won’t have to write those stupid, horrible, idiotic book reports, never, ever—”

Batty paused, listening, and now Ben heard it, too,
over the music. Across the hall, Skye was knocking on Ben’s door and telling him it was time for his bath.

“Tell her you’re going to Boston,” he whispered urgently to Batty.

“Haven’t you been listening?” she hissed. “Skye is the last person I’d tell, and if you tell her, you have no honor, Ben Penderwick.”

Skye was now knocking on Batty’s door. “Ben, are you in there?”

Ben looked at Batty, who nodded, but with a face full of warning.

“Yes, I’m here,” Ben called back. “I’ll have my bath soon. Thank you.”

They listened for more—but Skye had gone away.

“Tell Jane, then,” said Ben. “Or Rosalind. Call Rosalind and tell her.”

“No,” said Batty. “And no. They’d try to stop me, and I won’t be stopped.”

Ben suddenly remembered what had brought him here in the first place.

“If you cut school,” he wailed, “how will I carry Minnesota?”

Batty had this already worked out. “I’ll walk you to school like normal, then not go in. Someone else can help you get Minnesota inside, and I’ll run back to the bus stop. But in the afternoon, you’ll have to ask Rafael to walk home with you. He’s as goofy as you are, but between the two of you, you should be okay.”

Ben felt like he was aiding and abetting a great crime. “I wish you wouldn’t go.”

But she plowed on, relentless. “If something goes wrong and I don’t get back in time, you might need to help with Lydia. Like telling her a bedtime story.”

“Batty! What story would I tell her?”

Here Batty’s planning had failed her. Everything else she’d figured out in detail: bus schedules and ticket prices, how to get from the bus station to Jeffrey’s school (subway and trolley), and whether or not the Beethoven symphonies would fit in her backpack so that she and Jeffrey could indeed listen to the
Eroica
together. (No, they wouldn’t fit.) She’d even already informed Duchess’s and Cilantro’s families that she wouldn’t be doing a dog walk tomorrow. But it was painful to think of leaving Lydia behind, more so than her parents, even. Lydia was now used to having Batty sleep in the big-girl bed in her room. If Batty didn’t get back in time—

“If you don’t know any stories, just sing ‘The Itsy Bitsy Spider’ for her.” Batty reflected that it might even be a treat for Lydia after having witnessed the wreck of Batty’s voice. “But I’ll do everything I can to be back home in time.”

“You’d better,” he said. “Because if I end up having to sing ‘Itsy Bitsy Spider’ to Lydia, I’ll never forgive you.”

She looked at him sadly. There was a lot of that going around in their family.

“All right,” she said. “Thus concludes the MOBAB.”

W
HEN
B
ATTY WOKE UP TO RAIN
, her courage almost failed her. This wasn’t just normal rain, but the kind of driving rain that comes at you sideways and drenches you in an instant. Suddenly the journey to Boston seemed more difficult and scarier than she’d planned. She had to go today, though, rain or no rain. It wasn’t fair to expect Ben to keep such a big secret for too long, and if he did end up telling someone, their parents would find out and talk to her and she’d end up promising never again to even think of going to Boston alone, and she’d never see Jeffrey—or not until Skye decided she could, which could be forever.

So after breakfast she stuffed an extra shirt and pair of jeans into her backpack, just in case she got soaked and had to change, hoping no one would notice that
the pack was fuller than usual. And for the thousandth time, Batty made sure she still had the address of Jeffrey’s school—torn off the box her birthday presents had come in—though by now she had it memorized. And the money—yes, it was still in the zippered pocket. It was every penny she’d earned so far from walking Duchess and Cilantro, except for her share of Skye’s
Doctor Who
sweatshirt, and it was enough for bus fare to and from Boston—she’d sneaked onto Iantha’s computer to look up bus fares—plus plenty left over for subways, trolleys, and food. Yes, she was ready. She went into her closet to kiss the photo of Hound good-bye and—gently and shyly—touch the photo of her mother, then slung her backpack over her shoulder and went downstairs.

Ben, too, was upset about the rain. Minnesota would never survive it, and after all his hard work, this seemed almost as awful as Batty running away to Boston. He went to his dad for help.

“No, you’re right, we can’t take the chance of drowning the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes,” said Mr. Penderwick as he carried Minnesota downstairs.

“Not lakes, mountains,” said Ben, wishing that his dad were paying more attention.

“We can cover Minnesota in plastic, Ben, and then we’ll figure out who can drive you to school. How’s that?”

Ben saw Batty waiting at the bottom of the steps, already in her raincoat and holding an umbrella. She
was frantically shaking her head at him—she meant that he should turn down the ride to school, because the driver could end up being Skye, and Batty couldn’t stand getting into a car with Skye this morning. But Ben didn’t know why she was shaking her head—he didn’t understand anything she did anymore. His hope was that the head shake meant she’d changed her mind about going to Boston.