The Secret Book Club Read online

  She was thinking about this as she climbed into bed on the evening of the day on which the secret book club packages arrived. Yet another thing that set Ruby apart from her sister and Nikki and Olivia was her lack of interest in reading. Ruby was a good reader; there was no question of that. She could read and memorize scripts in a jiffy. And when asked to read aloud in school, her teachers always said she read with great expression, which apparently implied that her comprehension was good. But spend a perfectly good summer afternoon curled up reading? Or wake up early in the morning in order to read before it was time to get ready for school? That was not Ruby’s style.

  She glanced at Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH and The Saturdays sitting on her bedside table. The Saturdays was on top, since the girls were supposed to read it first. Ruby reached for it and settled back against her pillows, King Comma under the covers, resting warmly against her leg.

  Ruby lifted the blanket and peered in at King. “It’s, like, eighty degrees outside,” she said to the cat. “How can you stand to be under there? You’re going to melt.”

  King opened his eyes, yawned widely, and closed his eyes again.

  Ruby looked at the cover of the book and then at an illustration inside that showed four kids she guessed were the Melendys.

  “What an odd name,” she said to King.

  At last she turned to Chapter One and began to read. She read determinedly for four pages and decided the book was rather old-fashioned and that if not for the secret club, she probably wouldn’t finish it. (This was another difference between her and Olivia, Nikki, and Flora. The older girls had started the book that morning — and loved it — and Olivia was already on Chapter Seven.) But Ruby persevered. After all, the letter had mentioned Saturday adventures, and the book was called The Saturdays. She was rewarded when, several pages later, Randy Melendy (who, despite her name, was a girl) came up with the idea of a club, which her brother Rush suggested calling the Independent Saturday Afternoon Adventure Club. Well, that was more interesting.

  Ruby reached the end of Chapter One, returned the book to her table, switched off her reading light, and lay in the dark. Through her partly open door she could see that Flora’s light was still on. She was probably sailing through The Saturdays. Ruby rolled onto her side and lay in the sticky night air. She listened to King’s rumbly purr and to the singing of crickets. Her eyelids drooped.

  When the sirens started, Ruby was dreaming that King Comma had escaped from the Row House and was lost in a fierce rainstorm. Ruby could hear him yowling and howling.

  “King!” she called in the dream. “King, I’m right here!”

  The howling became more insistent and Ruby opened her eyes. That was when she realized that the noise was real, only it wasn’t a cat’s howl, it was the shriek of a fire engine — of several fire engines.

  Ruby smelled smoke. She sat up, sniffing.

  Ooooooo-OOOOOOO-ooooooo. The wail of the sirens rose and fell.

  Ruby scrambled to her window and peered through the screen. She could see flames, and they weren’t far away. A fire engine rushed along Dodds Lane and screeched around the corner, making a left onto Main Street. Another one followed it, and then another and another.

  Ruby switched on her reading light and looked at her clock. Two-forty. She leaped from her bed, opened her door, and crashed into a bleary-eyed Flora in the hall.

  “A fire on Main Street!” cried Ruby.

  “I think it’s Plaza Drugs!” said Flora.

  “Min! Min!” called Ruby.

  Min shuffled drowsily out of her bedroom, tying a robe around her ample waist. “Girls?”

  “Fire!” exclaimed Ruby.

  Min and Flora followed Ruby into her room, and they crowded around the window. In the distance, orange and yellow flames roared into the air.

  “It’s noisy. A fire is noisy,” said Ruby in wonderment. She shivered.

  “Don’t you think it’s Plaza Drugs?” Flora asked Min.

  “Maybe. That’s about the right spot.”

  “Can we go into town?” asked Ruby.

  “Now?” exclaimed Min. “It’s the middle of the night.”

  “But I want to see.”

  “Absolutely not. But I think I will just call the rescue squad and make sure the fire hasn’t spread to the next block. We’ll learn more tomorrow morning as soon as we get to the store. If not before,” added Min, thinking of how quickly news spread in Camden Falls.

  Min returned to her bed, but Flora and Ruby, shoulder to shoulder at Ruby’s window, watched the activity (what little they could make out in the distance) until they felt dizzy with fatigue and Flora said she was falling asleep. She crossed the hall to her room, and Ruby finally joined King under the covers again.

  Ruby had thought she might feel tired in the morning, but she was awake before her alarm went off, and was dressed and ready to leave for Needle and Thread while Flora and Min were still sitting groggily in front of bowls of cereal at the kitchen table.

  “Come on! Let’s go!” said Ruby, standing impatiently by the front door.

  “It takes an actual fire to get her up early on a summer morning,” muttered Flora, and Min smiled.

  “Well, I’m going to wait for you outside,” said Ruby, and she stepped onto the front stoop and looked up and down the Row Houses, hoping for the sight of a neighbor who might have a tidbit of information.

  The house on the far left belonged to the Fongs, a young couple, artists, who had recently had their first baby. Flora didn’t expect to see them up at this hour, what with the nighttime feedings Min was always talking about. Next to the Fongs lived Robby Edwards and his family, and on the other side of Robby’s house were Mr. Pennington’s and then Olivia’s. No one in that direction.

  Ruby turned her head to the right. No one there, either. Oh, well. She sat on her stoop, then stood up again when she heard someone call her name.

  “Ruby! Ruby! Did you hear? It was a big fire last night!”

  Robby Edwards had emerged from his house and was running across the lawns.

  Ruby stood up. “I know! I saw the fire engines.”

  “Me, too, Ruby! I like fire engines.” Robby paused. “But I don’t like fire. I’m glad it wasn’t Sincerely Yours that caught on fire. Or Needle and Thread. Or College Pizza. Or Dutch Haus.” Robby Edwards, who was eighteen years old and had Down syndrome, had recently begun his first job working alongside Olivia’s parents at Sincerely Yours, their new store on Main Street.

  “What did catch fire, Robby? Do you know?” asked Ruby eagerly.

  “Yes, I know. We heard on the radio this morning. It was the Marquis Diner.”

  Two thoughts crossed Ruby’s mind at exactly the same time. One was, Why didn’t I think to turn on the radio? The other was, What’s the Marquis Diner?

  “What’s the Marquis Diner?” she asked Robby.

  “It’s next to Plaza Drugs. It’s a new restaurant.”

  “Oh, that place. In between Plaza Drugs and Hulit’s, right?”

  “Right, Ruby.”

  Min and Flora hurried out the front door then, and Ruby and Robby chorused, “The Marquis Diner burned down!”

  Flora frowned. “You don’t have to sound so excited.”

  “But it is exciting,” said Robby. “Well, I have to go get ready for work now. Bye.”

  “Bye, Robby,” said Ruby and Flora.

  “We’d better get a move on,” said Min. “We’re a little poky this morning.”

  “Not me!” cried Ruby, running ahead.

  Min, Flora, and Ruby made their way down Aiken Avenue. By the time they reached the corner, they had stopped to speak with Dr. Malone, Mr. Willet, and Ruby’s friend Lacey Morris, and had heard three different stories about the fire: It had started in Plaza Drugs and spread to the Marquis, and no one was hurt. It had started in the Marquis and spread to Hulit’s, and one person had been injured. It had been contained in the Marquis, and a firefighter had been slightly injured.

&nbs
p; Ruby thought of the flames she had seen the night before and remembered the sound of the sirens in the night. She pictured the fire engines whizzing along. Robby was right. This was exciting, the most exciting thing that had happened in town in ages. Still hurrying along in front of Min and Flora, Ruby reached Main Street, and instead of turning right to go to Needle and Thread, she turned left — and came to a standstill.

  A small crowd of people stood outside the building that housed Plaza Drugs, the new diner, and Hulit’s shoe store. The people were standing in the street, and Ruby saw that a section of Main Street had been closed off.

  “Oh, no,” said Min, putting her hand to her mouth as she and Flora joined Ruby.

  Ruby’s excitement vanished suddenly and a sick feeling crept into her stomach. She stared at the ruined building, the sidewalk in front of it blackened and wet. The windows of Plaza Drugs and Hulit’s were broken and everything inside was covered in shards of glass but otherwise didn’t look too bad. However, between the stores, the newly opened diner was destroyed. From where Ruby stood, she saw nothing inside but a gaping charred room, still dripping with water from the fire hoses. She slipped her hand in Min’s.

  “Oh, my,” whispered Min.

  Gigi joined them. “What a shame,” she said, and Min nodded. “I heard that the drugstore and Hulit’s can be repaired fairly easily — they’ll only be closed for a few weeks — but that the people who bought the Marquis will have to start over from scratch.”

  Someone standing just behind Ruby said, “There they are now.”

  “Who?” asked someone else.

  “The Nelsons. The owners of the Marquis.”

  Ruby stood on her tiptoes, saw nothing but shoulders, then squirmed through the crowd until she had a better view of the building. She saw a tired-looking man, a tired-looking woman, and two dazed children — a boy of about five and a girl about Ruby’s own age — gathered around a police officer. The woman looked as though she’d been crying.

  As Ruby stood staring, she was surprised to see Min and Gigi make their way to the Nelsons, hold out their hands, and introduce themselves. Then Min said, “Our store is just over there.” She pointed down Main Street.

  “Please come by later, all four of you,” added Gigi. “We’ll get the coffee started.”

  “That’s — that’s lovely of you,” said Mrs. Nelson, sounding surprised.

  “You’re part of Camden Falls now,” was Min’s brisk reply.

  Ruby, her earlier excitement completely drained from her body, followed Min, Gigi, and Flora meekly to the safe haven of Needle and Thread.

  On a Friday night in Camden Falls, Massachusetts, population 14,767, some people are wherever they usually are in the evening, and others are not where one might expect to find them. On Friday nights, things and people get shuffled around a little. Come peek inside some of the homes in Camden Falls and find out who’s where.

  Darkness has not fallen yet, so there’s time to take a walk through the still, hot air and stand outside a cottage surrounded by tidy gardens that, during the day, are abuzz with bees. In fact, later in the summer if you were to stand beneath the hydrangea in the front yard, you would find the entire bush humming loudly. This is Mary Woolsey’s house, and Mary is at home, as she usually is. But this evening, instead of eating supper in her tiny kitchen, she’s sitting contentedly in her garden, thinking of the afternoon she spent working at Needle and Thread. Her thoughts are interrupted when she sees a flash of bright blue zip through the murky air and light on a branch of the forsythia bush. She exclaims aloud, “Well, I never! An indigo bunting. What is an indigo bunting doing here?” She reaches for her binoculars to get a better view of this bird, which is most certainly not where it is supposed to be.

  Leave Mary’s and walk several blocks to a street that is unfamiliar to Flora and Ruby Northrop. Standing in front of a plain one-story house with about as much personality as a hen (a saying of Min’s that Ruby thinks is supremely unfair to hens) is a weary family. The father looks ruefully at the FOR RENT sign sticking out of a clump of overgrown grass and says, “I guess we can take this down now.” These are the Nelsons, and they are definitely not where they expected to be this Friday night, or any night at all once they had moved to Camden Falls. They had planned to live in the apartment over the diner, but the apartment had been ruined along with the diner, and they have scrambled to find a house to rent while the diner is being repaired.

  “Can we afford this?” asks Hilary Nelson, who’s ten.

  “You shouldn’t be worrying about things like that,” replies her mother, putting her arm around Hilary’s shoulders.

  Hilary shrugs away from her mother. “You and Dad said that the insurance would pay for the repairs, but this is extra. How can we afford it?”

  Hilary knows that her parents used up almost all of their money in order to leave Boston and start their own business here in this small town, something they’d been dreaming of doing for years.

  Mr. Nelson sighs. “We’re not sure we can,” he says, and Hilary, looking at the shabby house, begins to cry.

  “But we’re going to give it the summer to see what happens,” adds Mrs. Nelson. “We’ll just have to start over again.”

  “We already started over again,” says Hilary, “but this time we don’t have anything to start over again with.” She edges away from her little brother so he won’t see her tears.

  Mrs. Nelson pulls an unfamiliar key out of her pocket and inserts it in the lock on the front door of the house.

  Darkness is falling now, but the air is sweet and the night is gentle, and it’s a good time to take a walk in the countryside to the home of Nikki Sherman. On this Friday, Nikki and her little sister, Mae, are at home, but Nikki’s brother is out, and her mother is in town having dinner with an old friend. This is so unusual that Nikki actually cannot remember another time when her mother met a friend for dinner. In the first place, the Shermans have little money for extras and luxuries. In the second place, Mrs. Sherman doesn’t have any friends.

  Well, thinks Nikki, that can’t be true. Her mother must have had friends at some time in her life. But while she was living with Nikki’s father, friendships were not encouraged. Now things are different. Nikki’s father is gone, and the rest of the Shermans are far happier than they were when he was present.

  “Nikki,” says Mae, “something came in the mail for Tobias today. And I don’t think it’s a bill. It looks like a letter.” This is also unusual. The Shermans don’t get a lot of mail apart from bills and flyers. “I wish Tobias was at home,” Mae continues. “I want to see what he got.”

  Nikki examines the envelope on the kitchen table. “Huh,” she says. “The return address is for some college in Connecticut. Why would Tobias be getting a letter from a college?”

  “Let’s open it!” says Mae.

  Nikki smiles. “Nope. Can’t do that. This is Tobias’s personal, private mail. He’s the only one who can open it. And he’s with his friends and won’t be home until after you’re in bed. Asleep.”

  “Oh, bullfrogs,” says Mae.

  Nikki smiles again. “Come on, let’s take Paw-Paw out for one last walk, and then I’ll read to you.”

  The Shermans’ porch light winks on, and Nikki and Mae, hand in hand, step outside into the last of the light.

  The moon is rising and the nighttime creatures have begun their chirping and calling. If you walk down the Shermans’ rutted lane to the paved road now, a breeze will ruffle your hair. Head east back to Camden Falls. When you reach town, turn onto Main Street and stroll past the stores and businesses. Their windows are dark, except for the restaurants’. Walk by Needle and Thread, which looks asleep, College Pizza (Tobias is in there with his friends), and Dutch Haus, where Robby and his parents are sitting around a tippy table with ice-cream cones.

  If you make a left after Dutch Haus and then a right, you’ll find yourself on Aiken Avenue, and ahead of you will loom the Row Houses. In the first one, the on
e on the left end, are the four Morris children. They’re giddy with excitement because their parents are out for the evening, and Margaret Malone, their baby-sitter, has just suggested that they play a game of Airhead. The children don’t know what Airhead is, but if Margaret has invented it, then it’s sure to be wonderful.

  The house next to the Morrises’, the Willets’, is dark. Old Mr. Willet has driven out to Three Oaks to visit his wife. He looks forward to these visits, even though Mrs. Willet is no longer certain who he is. Sometimes she recognizes him as her husband, but sometimes she thinks he’s her brother or, more often than not, just a strange man.

  The Malones’ house is dark, too. Dr. Malone and his daughters are scattered on this Friday night, although Margaret will return home as soon as Mr. and Mrs. Morris do.

  Next to the Malones’, Min’s house is awash in light. In a room on the second floor, Flora has pulled out her mother’s diary, the one she found nearly a year earlier when she moved into the room in which her mother grew up. “Ruby!” Flora calls. “Come look at Mom’s diary with me!”

  “No!” Ruby calls from across the hall. “I’m busy reading The Saturdays.” This is not true. Ruby is not reading or doing anything at all. But she does not want to see her mother’s diary.

  Downstairs, Min sits in the living room with her old friend Mr. Pennington. They are smiling at each other and listening to the skreeking of the crickets through the open windows.

  Next door is another dark house. Olivia and her family have gone to the movies. Mr. Pennington’s house is dark, too (only Jacques, his aged dog, is at home, snoozing on the couch), and so is Robby’s house. But at the last house, the one on the right end, pale light shines from the window of a second-floor room in which Mr. Fong is trying to soothe Grace into sleep. Light also shines from the window of the kitchen below, where Mrs. Fong is simultaneously making dinner and feeding two bouncy dogs. “Hush,” she says softly to the dogs. “Hush or you’ll wake the baby.”