Abby and the Best Kid Ever Read online

  “And here,” said Ms. Kellogg, “are a few newspapers from that time. We have a complete archive of newspapers reaching back throughout Stoneybrook’s history, thanks to the generosity of donors.”

  “Thanks,” I said. I had looked at lots of newspaper articles on the microfiche machine at the library, but none of them had the impact of seeing the actual newspapers of the time, of seeing the stories about running-aways (as the slaves running to freedom were called) juxtaposed against the stories of weather and crops, births and deaths, elections and laws.

  The articles were long and wordy and full of opinions, not at all like modern journalism, which (as we’d learned in school) isn’t necessarily objective, even when it appears to be.

  And then it hit me: My project would be a news report. I would take the story of a fugitive and make it into a sort of documentary television report, formatted like the television show 60 Minutes.

  I put the newspapers down carefully, jumped up, and did a little victory dance, right there in the Stoneybrook Historical Society. Then I sat down and got to work. After all, I had a news story to turn in, and I was on a deadline.

  * * *

  “Thank you all for coming,” I said. I looked at the faces of the members of the Railroad Project. Everyone looked back at me. No one spoke. I sensed that the original enthusiasm of the group had waned, thanks in part to my inability to decide exactly what my project would entail.

  “I’ve decided what my project is going to be,” I went on.

  More silence.

  I saw Kristy raise her eyebrows and silently willed her to speak up. But she didn’t.

  Then good old Mal chimed in, “What? Tell us, Abby.”

  I gave Mal a warm smile. I said, “We’re going to do a 60 Minutes–style news report on a fugitive who has made it as far as Stoneybrook, Connecticut. We’ll use some of the stories from our research on the Underground Railroad and create a fictional character to report on. We’ll interview abolitionists, have anonymous interviews with conductors, speak to a Quaker, a free man or woman, and all the other people who might be involved.”

  There was another silence, but this time it wasn’t disinterested. I could practically hear people thinking. Then Vanessa said, “Can I be Dinah Sawyer? Or an abolitionist lawyer?”

  My eyes met Mal’s and then Kristy’s. We cracked up. It was a very good feeling.

  * * *

  “We’re standing in front of the home of Abigail Grey, a Quaker and well-known member of the abolitionist movement here in the little town of Stoneybrook, Connecticut.” Vanessa was dressed (she said) like a “television journalist,” with her hair pulled back and a pair of her mother’s old glasses (minus the lenses) on her nose. She turned to interview “Abigail.”

  There really was a Quaker abolitionist named Abigail Grey who had lived in Stoneybrook. Her house is now on the Stoneybrook Historical Society register of historic places. Of course, we’d gotten permission from the current owners before we shot the scene.

  “Abigail” (played by Hannie Papadakis) was dressed in an approximation of Quaker clothing from the time. We’d borrowed some clothes from the costume department at Stoneybrook High School and Claudia had led an independent clothes-making session involving even more baby-sitting charges, which I had videotaped, naturally. I had also videotaped the session during which we had gathered around to write the newscast and choose who was going to do what.

  I had gotten some fairly spectacular and unplanned footage of Lou in her super-polite and helpful mode. She’d tried running the sewing machine at Mary Anne’s, and in addition to sewing several pieces of different costumes together had almost stitched her finger into the machine. I don’t know who screamed louder — Lou or Claudia.

  This will be cut from the final version.

  Then Lou had tried to help print the draft of the story that I had written up on my computer. She’d hit the wrong button and erased quite a bit of material.

  I only screamed silently. “Don’t worry, Lou,” I told her. “Happens all the time.”

  I stayed up until one A.M. rewriting the story.

  After that, I tried to give Lou assignments that wouldn’t endanger me, her, or anyone else. What I wanted to do, more than anything, was to tell Lou to relax and take it easy. Talk to Hannie, I wanted to say. Hang out with Karen Brewer (who had also joined the project) and with Becca. Although most of the kids were involved in Black History Month projects with their own classes, word had spread that this was going to be cool. My project had become a kid magnet, and I had more volunteers than I knew what to do with.

  So I wrote a scene into the script that showed a mob of angry people facing down a posse of slave hunters outside Mary Anne’s house. Now everyone had a role.

  This would have been a perfect opportunity for Lou to make friends, as Jay was doing. He’d lost a lot of his solemn caution during our rehearsals, and he and Linny seemed to be on their way to best friendship, boy-style. (They made lots of gross noises with their noses and punched each other’s arms at every opportunity.)

  But Lou, although she seemed to enjoy Hannie’s company, rarely left my side, volunteering for everything and trying way, way too hard. I liked Lou, but she was beginning to wear me out.

  I wondered if anyone else had noticed, her brother perhaps. Maybe, I thought, I could have a word with him and he could have a word with Lou without hurting her feelings.

  So during a filming break (and after I sent Lou to help Claudia and some of the other kids bring hot cider to the crew), I called Jay over for a conference.

  We sat on a couple of bales of hay inside the barn. “How’s everything going?” I asked.

  Jay looked me over, as if he suspected I was asking a trick question. Then he smiled and said, “This is great. We never got to do projects like this at our old school.”

  “Good. I guess Lou is having fun too?”

  “Sure.”

  Jay wasn’t giving anything away.

  “I wondered about Lou, because she, well, she’s working so hard to help out that she, ah, well, doesn’t seem to have much time to enjoy being part of the project.”

  After regarding me for a long moment, Jay said, “Lou’s trying really hard to be good. It’s sort of weird, I guess.”

  I said quickly, “I’m glad Lou wants to help. But sometimes she seems to be overdoing it.”

  There. I’d said it. I waited.

  “I know,” Jay replied, looking down at his hands. He went on. “Lou wasn’t always like this.” He flashed a smile. “Ask anyone.”

  I nodded.

  “I mean, this isn’t the real Lou. My sister’s nice, but she’s not a fake nice kid or anything. It’s just that she wants to belong to a family.”

  “She does,” I blurted out.

  “I know. I know Aunt Sarabeth and Uncle Mac adopted us, and all. But what if that went wrong? What if they … died? Or had to give us up? I mean, I know it probably won’t happen, but it did happen to us once already, when our mother left us with Dad and then Dad, you know, died.”

  “Oh, Jay,” I said, remembering vividly my own father’s dying.

  And then I thought of something that I, amazingly, had never thought about before. What if something happened to Mom too? What would happen to Anna and me?

  It made my stomach hurt to think about it. I sniffed.

  Jay looked up at me. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Hay,” I said quickly. “Allergies.”

  “Oh.” He smiled a little. “Anyway, Lou’s trying to be perfect, I guess. That way, no one will ever have any reason not to want her again.”

  At that moment, Karen came running into the barn with Hannie. “I want to ride in the box,” she said.

  One of the scenes in my documentary, taken from a true story, was going to show several boxes being loaded onto a wagon in front of the house. We were going to use the wagon from Mary Anne’s barn. (If we angled the camera just right, no one would ever know that there weren’t an
y horses attached to it.) Later, it would be revealed that the fugitive had been in one of the boxes and had escaped right under the posse’s nose.

  “Thanks, Jay,” I said, knowing that Karen and Hannie had effectively put an end to our conversation.

  “Sure,” he responded, jumping up. “I’m going to get some cider. Would you like some?”

  “In a minute, thanks.” Jay had given me a lot to think about. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to do so at the moment.

  “No one is riding in any of the boxes,” I told Karen and Hannie, who had begun to climb aboard.

  “Why not?” Karen asked.

  “Because it would make it too heavy for one person to lift. We’d have to hire Arnold Schwarzenegger, and he’s not in the budget.”

  This headed off the argument, and we went back to work. I only had one more day after this to finish shooting. Then I’d have three days to pull the project together.

  We hauled the wagon out of the barn for the box scene. It was hard work. That old wagon was heavy!

  Lou was right there the whole time, pushing, pulling, and panting. Then she offered to get me a glass of water. When I didn’t want water, she offered cider. “I don’t have time right now,” I told her. “It’ll be too dark to video soon.”

  Lou apologized for not realizing that and then vanished. As Vanessa “Sawyer,” Nicky (the head of the posse), and Byron (the owner of the house) went nose to nose, Karen, Hannie, and Adam began to bring boxes out of the house and load them onto the wagon.

  At that moment, Lou trotted out the front door with a thermos and headed toward me.

  “Here,” she said. “I put some hot cider in the thermos so you can drink it when you have time.”

  She ruined the shot.

  I turned off the camera and said, “CUT!” To Lou I said, “Lou, you just walked right into the middle of a scene.”

  Lou looked around and then said, “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. Is it ruined forever?”

  I looked up at the sky. “I think we’ve got time to shoot it once more. Everybody, back to your places. And hurry!”

  Everybody hurried. Lou said, “Are you mad, Abby? Please don’t be mad at me. You won’t tell my aunt and uncle, will you? I’m really, really sorry.”

  I was staring through the camera, trying to concentrate. But it was hard. I lowered the camera once more. “Lou,” I said. “Will you lighten up, for Pete’s sake? It’s no big deal. So quit making it into one.”

  Lou’s eyes widened. “I’m … I’m sorry,” she stammered.

  “And don’t apologize. You don’t need to. You’ve done enough of that already.”

  I’d meant to be kinder and gentler when I said that, and much more tactful and understanding. As you can see, I wasn’t.

  Lou took a step back. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “I mean, it won’t happen again.” She kept backing up as she spoke, as if she wanted to put a safe distance between us.

  “We’re ready!” Karen called from just inside the front door of the house.

  I wanted to call Lou back. But there wasn’t time.

  With a heavy heart I raised the camera. “Action!” I called.

  The weather held for the last day of the shoot. I’d spent the whole night working on my project. The more I worked, the more I could see what needed to be done.

  I was going to try to get in a few key scenes that afternoon, including the big finale, in which the crowd fends off the posse, giving the fugitive in the box time to escape. We’d even included a harrowing moment when the leader, Nicky, demands that the wagon be searched to make sure it doesn’t have a false bottom.

  We got to work. At first, things went smoothly. Mal had returned with Vanessa and her brothers. Kristy had come too, along with Claudia. We had a good ratio of baby-sitters to kids, which proved to be an excellent thing.

  Why? Because Lou had decided she no longer had to be the Best Kid Ever.

  At first, when the actors kept giggling and goofing around, I thought it was because they were tired of all the work. “Just a little while longer,” I said.

  The giggling continued. “The more you goof off, the longer we’ll be here,” Kristy announced in her drill-sergeant voice. That helped, but only for a little while.

  The cameras rolled. “Check the wagon,” Nicky (in character) cried. “Make sure it doesn’t have a false bottom. I’m wise to the tricks of these lawbreakers!”

  Everyone turned toward the wagon. Karen stood there, holding a box, looking suspiciously innocent.

  Hannie (as Abigail) said indignantly, “We break no laws of any civilized country.”

  “Step aside,” Nicky roared.

  Suddenly, the box on the wagon popped open and Lou jumped up. “Surprise!” she said, and burst out laughing.

  All the other kids laughed too.

  I lowered the camera in shock. “Lou,” I said. “What are you doing?”

  Lou kept bowing to her audience, ignoring me. Claudia stepped up to the wagon, caught Lou under each arm, and lifted her down.

  “Good one, Lou,” said Adam.

  Even Jay was smiling.

  “Lou,” I said, “I don’t have much time here. So don’t do that again, okay?”

  “Okay,” Lou said carelessly, and scooted back into the crowd.

  I kept a close eye on Lou after that, at least for a while. Then I became so involved in the project that I forgot about her.

  Even then, I didn’t associate all the little things that kept going wrong with Lou. After all, she was no longer right under my feet, trying to help out (and getting in the way).

  I didn’t think of Lou when I looked through the camera in Dawn’s room (which we’d tried to make look as much as possible like a room from the Underground Railroad era) and noticed that mustaches had been drawn on all the pictures we had hung on the wall. (We’d copied sepia photographs from the library and put them in borrowed picture frames.)

  Fortunately, the mustaches wiped easily off the glass.

  “Who did this?” I asked.

  Everyone turned and looked at Lou. She grinned.

  “Lou, cut it out,” I said.

  “It was funny,” Lou said. “Besides, you told me to lighten up.”

  Before I could continue, four of the kids blew huge bubble-gum bubbles in Nicky’s face and made him start laughing.

  Where had they gotten the gum?

  “Lou,” I said, without even asking.

  “It was just for fun,” Lou said. She looked at me from under her eyelashes. “Lighten up, Abby.”

  Great. I’d created a monster. I shot Kristy a Look that said, “Help me.”

  “Why don’t you come stand over here with me, Lou?” Kristy suggested.

  That worked until Kristy was distracted by an argument between Linny and Jordan. I was videotaping the “posse” as they walked around the house, “searching” each room.

  Nicky and Hannie opened a closet door, and Lou jumped out, screaming “BOO!” at the top of her lungs.

  It’s one of the oldest, dumbest tricks in the book. I guess that’s why it works every time.

  We all jumped and screamed. I jumped the highest and dropped the camera.

  I watched it fall in super-slow motion, a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.

  It landed on my toe. I shouted “Ouch,” but at the same time I instinctively flipped my foot up. The camera rose in the air again — and Jay caught it.

  We all stood there, frozen. Then Kristy said, “Nice move, Jay, Abby.”

  I thanked Jay in a faint voice. “I owe you one, big-time.”

  Jay smiled. “Cool.”

  Linny punched Jay’s arm. Jay punched Linny’s arm.

  For one moment, Lou looked almost sorry. Then her chin went up.

  Mine did too, and I think I must have looked like I was about to lose it. Claudia stepped in, grabbed Lou by the hand, and said, “Come on, Lou. Let’s start putting things back in their places.”

  Before Lou could p
rotest, Stacey had swept her out of the room and out of certain danger. As Lou left, she looked over my shoulder and gave me a sweet, wicked smile. “Lighten up, Abby,” she said again.

  That’s when I realized that I had to have a talk with Lou — before she once again became the Worst Kid Ever.

  When Stacey arrived at the Addisons’, many of the boxes had been filled, taped, labeled, and moved to the dining room.

  Mr. and Mrs. Addison welcomed Stacey warmly but seemed surprised to see Mary Anne and Jessi as well. “We just wanted to say good-bye and good luck,” Stacey explained.

  “Thanks,” said Mrs. Addison. “I know Corrie and Sean are going to miss you all.”

  Maybe, thought Stacey. Maybe not.

  “We’re going to the bank to close our accounts,” explained Mr. Addison, “and to run a few errands. We shouldn’t be gone long.”

  “No problem,” Stacey assured him.

  Stacey, Mary Anne, and Jessi found Sean and Corrie in the den. But Sean wasn’t watching television. He was actually sprawled on the floor next to Corrie, trying his hand at an art project.

  That was because the television had been boxed, as had almost everything else in the den except the chairs, a lamp, and the rug.

  Sean looked up and scowled. “What are you doing here?”

  “Well, we had a special game we wanted to play, and it takes more than one friend to play it.”

  Stacey half expected Sean to say You’re not my friends, but he didn’t. He kept scowling, although he looked sort of interested.

  “What’s the game?” Corrie asked.

  “It’s a Sean game,” said Jessi. “Stacey, Mary Anne, and I have taken a vote and elected you King of the Hour.”

  “Yeah? So?” The scowl had almost disappeared.

  Corrie looked up warily. “What does that mean?”

  “It means that Sean gets to be king for an hour. He can do anything he wants to, within reason. We’re his loyal and obedient subjects,” Jessi explained.

  “I don’t know about that,” said Corrie.

  Mary Anne said, “Don’t worry, Corrie. It’ll be fun.”

  Meanwhile, the game had definitely gotten Sean’s attention. “King,” he said. “King Sean.” He clearly liked the sound of that. Then he looked at Stacey. “Anything?”