The Secret Cellar (20 page)

Becca takes a sip of hers and swishes the fake wine around her mouth like she’s seen my dad do a million times. Then she purses her lips and lifts her tiny, un-French nose high in the air.

“A looovely vin-tage,” she says. “I taste wet newspaper … rotten apples … and turpentine. Maybe a touch of day-old chewing gum. Delightful. Delicious. Decontaminated.”

And then, of all the kitchens in all the world, Dad chooses this kitchen and this moment to walk into mine. He gasps when he sees the havoc we’ve wreaked and what seems to be going on. On my left, Becca, her hands stained with splotches of bright green and blue, and with faux wine dribbling down her chin, holds her glass up, about to propose a toast. On my right, Margaret is using all her strength to grip a full bottle of 1949 Château Latour while Leigh Ann struggles to cram the cork into the neck. Flour and spilled Kool-Aid are everywhere, and on the stovetop sits one of his prized possessions—a huge copper saucepan from the best pot-and-pan-maker in Paris—filled with a sticky, turquoise-ish mess.

“My good saucepan! Sophie! What have you done to my kitchen?”

In these situations, I’ve learned, play it cool. Nonchalant, even.

“Oh, hey, Dad.
Qu’est-ce que tu fait?
”

A sudden, horrible idea strikes him, and his face clouds over. He considers us—and the contents of his beloved copper pot—carefully, before asking, “
Mon Dieu
, girls. Are you making … plastic explosives? In my saucepan?” (I’m not sure which was more upsetting to him: the possibility that we were making explosives, or
that we were using his good pan to do it.) “And are you drinking … wine?”

“What! No!” I shout. “No to everything you said. Dad, how could you even think that? Like we’re terrorists or something. Jeez, we’re making our own Play-Doh. And this is Kool-Aid.”

He would like to be relieved, I think, but from the completely blank look on his face, he has absolutely no idea what I have just said. “Play … dough. Why is it that … horrible color? And what does one do with … play dough?”

“Silly, one plays with it,” I say.

“It’s kind of like modeling clay, Mr. St. Pierre,” Margaret explains. “It’s all-natural. It won’t hurt your pan, and we’ll clean it up, I promise.”

“One more question,” he says, pressing a finger into the turquoise blob that has sullied his beloved pan. “Why?”

“Oh, you can use it for lots of things,” I say. “You know, school projects, Christmas decorations. That kind of stuff.” Vague? Definitely. The truth? Absolutely.

Dad smiles, nodding at my nonanswer. “I see. You’re not going to tell me. As long as you’re not going to blow something up, I’m happy. One thing I will say: life is never boring when you girls are around.”

“Thanks, Dad. That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said.”

But before I let him completely off the hook, let’s
tally things up. In the past two weeks, we’ve been called hooligans (Mr. Eliot), delinquents (Marcus Klinger), hoodlums and criminals (Mr. Winterbottom), and now my own father has basically accused us of being the mad bombers of the Upper East Side.

And we’re such sweet girls … really!

Dear Reader
,

Don’t think I haven’t noticed that you’ve been getting a free ride for the past few chapters, while we Red Blazer Girls have been chasing clues all over town in the snow and the cold (and enduring a series of undeserved insults along the way). Well, honey, the party’s over: it’s your turn—time for you to earn your own red blazer. The heavy lifting has already been done for you: thanks to us, you know the combination to Mr. Dedmann’s secret cellar (Julius Caesar, Terpsichore, and Venus). You also know that you need his walking stick, which Marcus Klinger has and is unwilling to part with
.

So, what would you do? Can you come up with a plan to open the vaults in the secret cellar without committing a felony or destroying everything in the house? That means you can’t steal the walking stick!

At your disposal is an imaginary tote bag with a container of homemade Play-Doh, a bottle of fake 1949
Château Latour, a tube of epoxy, and a kidnapped rat—exactly the same tools that we have. Your friends (and Mr. Winterbottom—how scary is that?) await your instructions
.

When you think you’re ready, turn the page
.

Your friend
,
Sophie

I don’t care what they say about these late-December days being the shortest days of the year; Thursday lasts forever. Most of my classmates have already checked out for Christmas vacation, and now it is official: most of the teachers have joined them.

But not Mr. Eliot.

It is dress rehearsal day for
The Merry Gentlemen
, and every second of his class counts. We scramble to get into costumes and then race down the halls to the stage, where he has everything prepared. Exactly ten minutes after the bell, he opens the curtain, and we are on our way.

And … it’s not bad. Not great, maybe, but definitely an improvement over the “dreadful” and “shockingly bad” reviews our fearless director had delivered to us following the Monday and Tuesday rehearsals.

“That was nice,” says Mr. Eliot. “For a moment there, I forgot that I wrote this mess, and actually started to
enjoy myself. Livvy and Leigh Ann—fantastic. Don’t change a thing for tomorrow. They’re going to love you. And great job, everyone else. Um, Miss St. Pierre, a question: what did you have in your coat pocket when you first came onstage? I could swear I saw something moving.”

My hand flies to my pocket in a full-blown panic. “Oh no. No. No. No. Humphrey!”

Margaret, Livvy, and I immediately drop to our knees, crawling around the stage and looking for Humphrey the rat. Leigh Ann? Well, she goes the opposite direction: she climbs onto a table.

“What is going on?” Mr. Eliot demands. “What are you looking for?” When it’s clear we’re too preoccupied to answer, he turns to Leigh Ann. “Who is Humphrey?”

“You mean
what
is Humphrey? He’s a rat,” says Leigh Ann. “Sophie kinda, er, borrowed him from some guy. She’s been taking care of him for a few days.”

A whole gaggle of girls scream, “Rat!” and run to the back of the auditorium, where they stand on the seats.

Mr. Eliot, flabbergasted, slaps his forehead with the palm of his hand so hard that everyone stops to see where the noise came from. “You brought a rat to school, Sophie? Even for you, that’s impressive.”

“Just help us find him, George. You can yell at me later,” I shout from the far corner of the stage.

“Did she really just call me George?” Mr. Eliot asks
Leigh Ann. “What is going on here? Aren’t you going to help?”

“Don’t look at me,” Leigh Ann says from the safety of her tabletop. “I hate rats.”

“We have to find this thing before anybody else comes in here,” says Mr. Eliot.

From stage left enters our beloved principal, Sister Bernadette, probably wondering why Mr. Eliot’s students are screaming.

Unfortunately, I don’t notice her unscripted entrance, and that, of course, is the moment I choose to shout, “It’s okay, I found him!” and run to downstage center—holding Humphrey high so everyone can see him.

More screaming. Much more screaming.

Sister Bernadette raises her hand for silence and clears her throat. “Miss St. Pierre!”

My mouth is as dry as the Sahara and my tongue suddenly feels like a fat slab of bologna as I ever-so-casually slip poor Humphrey into my pocket. “Y-yes, Sister?”

“Don’t you ‘yes, Sister’ me, young lady,” she glowers. “What did you just put in your pocket?”

“Well, it’s a, um, a … rat. But he’s tame! He’s a pet! He wouldn’t hurt anybody.”

“A pet. Rat. Miss St. Pierre, let’s talk, shall we? My office!” She spins and starts to walk away.

“No!” says Livvy, stepping forward and standing next to me. “He’s mine. It’s my fault.”

Sister Bernadette stops and turns back to face us, her eyebrows raised.

“What are you doing?” I whisper at Livvy.

“Remember that broken nose?” she asks under her breath. “And all that other mean stuff I did to you? I owe you.”

“Are you sure?”

She nods. “It’s no big deal.”

“Okay,” I say, “but if you get into serious trouble, I’m going to tell her the truth.”

“Miss Klack?” Sister Bernadette says. “You were saying?”

“I said, he’s my rat,” says Livvy.

Sister Bernadette moves closer and closer to her, until her face is mere inches from Livvy’s. “Humph. We’ll see. Meet me in my office.” When Livvy is gone, she turns back to me. “I don’t know what’s going on here, Miss St. Pierre, but I have a feeling that I have not yet reached the bottom of this story.” She scowls at my pocket, where Humphrey is snacking on some sunflower seeds. “You have exactly five minutes to get that into a cage of some kind, or I will take care of it the way we usually deal with rodents around here. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, Sister!”

With Margaret and Leigh Ann hot on my tail, I run up to the fourth floor and knock on the door of the biology
lab, where Ms. Lonneman is enjoying the last few quiet minutes of her free period.

“Oh, thank God,” I say when she opens the door. “Ms.​Lonneman​you​have​to​help​me​do​you​have​a​cage​I​can​use​for​a​few​hours?”

“Slow down, Sophie. All I got was something about a … cage.”

While trying to catch my breath, I take Humphrey from my pocket and hold him up. “Need a cage … for … the rest of the … day … for him.”

“He’s beautiful,” she says unexpectedly. She holds out her hands. “Let me see. What’s his name?”

“Humphrey,” I say, gently passing him over the desk to her.

“Rattus norvegicus,”
she says, holding him right in front of her face. “About a year old, I’d guess. In college, I worked in the labs with hundreds just like him. Where did you get him?”

“That’s, um, kind of a long story,” I say. “I’m sort of taking care of him for a few days. But Sister Bernadette found out, and if I don’t get him in a cage in the next … two minutes …”

“I have just the thing,” says Ms. Lonneman, retrieving a small hamster cage from the storage room and setting it on her desk. “I don’t know if you realize this or not, but your friend Humphrey here is, or was, a lab rat. See, he has these two notches on his ear. Those are for identification.”

“What does that mean?” Leigh Ann asks as she cautiously leans in for a closer look. “They did experiments on him? That’s terrible.”

“It’s not always what you think,” says Ms. Lonneman. “Lots of them are used in psychology classes, to show how they learn, how they behave in certain—” The bell rings, cutting her off.

“Can we leave him here for now?” I ask. “So I can tell Sister B. that he’s, um, safe.”

“Sure, he can keep me company this afternoon,” she says. “Undoubtedly, he’ll be more attentive in class than most of my students.”

At lunch, Margaret and I take turns telling Becca the “Humphrey Goes to Dress Rehearsal” story, which has her falling out of her chair laughing.

“It’s not funny, Rebecca,” says Leigh Ann. “I think Sister Bernadette was serious. I hate to think what she would have done to poor Humphrey if we hadn’t found a cage.”

“Listen to you,” I say. “Suddenly he’s poor Humphrey. An hour ago he was just a rat. You hate rats.”

“That was before I found out he was an innocent victim.”

“Aren’t we all?” says Becca earnestly.

Livvy joins us at our table, smiling sheepishly.

“I got a week’s detention, but it doesn’t start until after vacation,” she tells us. “Sister B.’s not even calling
my parents. I think she’s given up on trying to get in touch with them.”

Livvy’s parents travel almost constantly for business, and Livvy ends up spending a lot of time with friends and relatives around the city.

“I still can’t believe what you did for Sophie,” says Margaret admiringly. “That was so … brave.”