Ola Shakes It Up (15 page)

“So,” I said finally. I leaned back against the church.

“So.” Maria leaned back, too.

“Your dad's the mayor, huh?”

“Yeah, right.” Maria's lips started quirking at the corners. “My dad couldn't run this town. He sells insurance.”

I frowned, wondering if that girl River had given me the wrong information on the first day of school. “Your dad's not the mayor?”

“Heck, no.” Maria had stopped laughing and was looking sort of depressed now. “My mom is. I don't like to talk about it.”

“How come?” I asked. I thought it was kind of cool that Maria's mom was the mayor.

“You ask a lot of questions.” Maria frowned. She turned her head away again to look across the parking lot. I tried doing the same thing, but there wasn't anything to look at except a bunch of parked cars and the fence that went around the back of the church. I was bored within seconds.

I turned back to Maria. “Listen, I need kind of a tour guide.”

“Tour guide?” Maria repeated, lifting one of her eyebrows.

“You don't want to go to dance class and I don't have to be anywhere,” I explained, burying my hands in my pockets. “I need somebody to show me around Walcott so I can figure some things out about it. You could give me your own personal tour of this town.”

“My own personal tour?” Maria's lips were quirking up at the corners again. I wondered if she was laughing at me.

“Yeah.”

Maria's eyebrow came down, and she straightened up and nodded. “Okay, Benson. Just let me go in and tell my sisters. My mom will have a cow if she thinks I've disappeared.”

aria's idea of a first stop on her tour was the cemetery in downtown Walcott.

I stood at the edge of the grass, looking at all the graves nervously. All of a sudden this tour didn't seem like such a great idea. I'd meant for Maria to show me the town of Walcott, not the dead of Walcott. I'd never even been in a graveyard before. Lots of scary stuff was supposed to happen to you in cemeteries. I didn't like how quiet and dark it was. The further we got from the road, the darker it had become. The only noise around was the sound of Maria's shoes crunching on leaves and sticks.

“These are the people who've gotten out of Walcott,” Maria announced, walking around the different-sized headstones.

That was fairly obvious.

“Come on.” Maria stopped and turned back to look at me. She was taking her tour guide duties very seriously.

I walked forward slowly. This graveyard was chock-full of
dead people. There were headstones of all kinds squeezed in close together. Some were made of shiny, polished marble; others were just pieces of rotting wood. As I walked I noticed dates like 1811, 1868, 1922 and 1967. People had been dead in here for forever.

“This is the only graveyard in Walcott. Everybody in this town has family here,” Maria informed me. She stopped in front of a plot that had only a white wooden cross for a marker. “This is one of the oldest cemeteries in the state.”

Oh, brother. It looked like Maria was turning into another person who was gonna give me a history lesson about Walcott. I already had heard enough about this town to write a book about it. “Is that what you wanted to show me? One of the oldest cemeteries in Massachusetts?”

“Who cares about that?” Maria moved on and stopped in front of a huge gray-and-white marble headstone. “These are people who've gotten out of Walcott. That's what's important.”

I swallowed. “But they had to die to do it.”

Maria shrugged. “You gotta get your inspiration where you can, right?”

I wasn't so sure about that.

“When I get out of here, I'm not coming back like Mrs. Felix—I'm getting out for good,” Maria announced. She said it right to the gray-and-white headstone. “Right, Granny?”

I jumped and looked around, expecting to see some little white-haired old lady standing nearby. But there was no one around except us. I moved a little so I could see the words written on the headstone. It had M
ARIA
A
LICIA
P
ONCINELLI
carved on it in large, fancy letters. Below it, in smaller letters, was B
ELOVED
M
AYOR
, M
OTHER AND
W
IFE
. “That's your grandmother?”

Maria nodded.

“She was mayor, too?”

Maria nodded again. The depressed look was back on her face again. “I'm supposed to be the next one.”

My mouth dropped open. “You are?”

Maria sighed. “It's a tradition. The youngest daughter in each generation.”

I closed my mouth. I had a whole new understanding of Maria Poncinelli. “Well, maybe your mama will have another baby.”

Maria shook her head. “She wants to. But my dad's not cooperating. He says I'll have to do.”

I didn't know what to say to that. It must be terrible to have your whole life planned out for you. No wonder Maria wanted to get out of here. She felt as trapped in this town as I did.

“Come on.” Maria turned around and led the way out of the cemetery. Soon we were standing in the town center, if you could call it that. Walcott's idea of a downtown was two cobblestone streets with all these little boutiques and small shops on it. There wasn't a big department store like Fi-lene's or J. C. Penney. There wasn't a swan pond. And there weren't any vendors selling popcorn, pretzels or pizza. Downtown was like stepping back in time fifty years.

I had to admit that the buildings were interesting, though. They all looked real old. Some of them were made of clapboards. Some of them were made of brick, and others
were made of stone. They were old, but they all looked like they were well taken care of. The other thing that I noticed were the houses around the town. They were old, too, but they were all different from each other. Each of them had a different design and different colors. They were much closer together, and the streets were so narrow, you could barely fit two cars in the road at the same time. It was totally different from where we lived.

“This is it,” Maria said, stopping in front of one of the small shops on the street. The shop had long white curtains in the windows, so you couldn't see inside. There was a small white sign that had WALCOTT THRIFT SHOP painted on it in fancy black letters. “This is where you can find all the stuff that belonged to people who got out of Walcott.”

As we stepped through the doorway a bell jingled above us, but it didn't look like there was anybody minding the store. I looked around at the racks of clothes and shelves of books, kitchenware, and other stuff. “Wowww”

The thrift shop had some really old stuff in it. There was one whole rack full of military uniforms. Each one was labeled with what war it was used in. They had uniforms from the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, and World Wars I and II, and even one uniform as late as the Vietnam War. Another long rack was full of fancy party dresses made of silk, taffeta, and even polyester. There were clothes that farmers, millworkers, firefighters and judges would wear in different time periods. Way in the back I even noticed a couple of old Pilgrim-looking clothes. In Boston, this place wouldn't have been called a thrift shop. It would have been called an antique shop.

“People just donate all this stuff when they die?” I asked, walking over to where Maria was standing by a really old-looking wooden telephone and a pair of crutches.

Maria shrugged. “What else are they gonna do with it?”

“In Boston, all this stuff would be in a museum,” I told her. Maria was fiddling around with the telephone. “So this is where you're gonna donate all your stuff when you leave here?”

Maria nodded. Her bandanna was coming loose and sliding down her forehead. She pulled it back into place. “Yup.”

I nodded. “How come no one's in here watching all this stuff?”

Maria put the phone down and headed toward the door. “Cause no one ever buys anything here. They just donate. Come on, I'll take you to the ice cream parlor. They have the best maple ice cream. They only make it here in Walcott.”

“All right.” I was starting to enjoy this tour of Walcott now that I could understand the theme. “And that'll probably be the last thing you eat before you get out of here, right?”

“Right.” Maria actually smiled. Funny, I hadn't seen Maria's attitude since we left the church. I had a feeling that the bandanna, the torn jeans and the attitude were all part of some twisted plan of Maria's to keep people from thinking of her as the next Poncinelli mayor of Walcott. And it was working, 'cause even I didn't believe she could be a responsible citizen dressed like that.

“What's that?” I asked, pointing. Way out behind what looked like some woods, I could see a cloud of dust rising. I could also just make out what sounded like machines running at a construction site.

Maria looked to see where I was pointing. “That's Walcott Corners II,” she said as we reached the ice cream parlor.

I wasn't surprised to see that it was one of those old-fashioned ones with a soda fountain and booths and a long counter with high stools around it. So far nothing in Walcott looked modern — except for Walcott Corners. “I don't get it.”

Maria waved her hand at the guy who was standing behind the counter. I guessed that she came here so often, they knew just what to bring her. “Don't get what?”

She sat down in one of the long booths near the window and immediately crossed her legs and put her feet up at the end of the table. The attitude was back. I figured it was because we were in public again.

I told Maria about the millions of rules for living in Walcott Corners, and how the houses all looked the same, and how Mr. and Mrs. Stern were always watching people like they were the police, and all the other stuff that bothered me about living there. “I just don't get why a town that's so crazy about its history would let them build a place like that.”

Maria shrugged. “It brings money and people into the town. My mom says that the new houses they're building will bring lots of revenue in.”

“Yeah, but what do you need the money for?” I was confused. Walcott might be an old town, but it didn't seem like a poor town to me. Their schools had swimming pools and tracks and football fields. They had plenty of restaurants and parks. There was hardly any crime, judging by the fact that Otis's bike had been rusting away on his lawn for almost two
months now. And the other thing I had noticed was that there weren't any homeless people in Walcott. In downtown Boston, you see homeless people everywhere, begging for money or just living on the streets.

“You can always use more money. Put it in the school fund or the arts fund. It takes a lot of money to keep this town looking good.” Maria sounded like she knew what she was talking about.

“Yeah, but what about all your history and town character?” I asked.

Maria frowned. “I guess I see what you mean.”

“And it's not like they can't make the money some other way. You could open up two museums with all the stuff in that thrift shop. You could charge admission to go to that graveyard. All those old graveyards in Boston are big tourist places.” I told Maria about all our field trips to places like Salem, where they had held the famous witch trials, and Bunker Hill, where they had fought that famous battle, and the oldest meeting house in downtown Boston, which had been the center of the abolitionist movement. I hadn't even known I remembered all that stuff so well. I guess I had been paying more attention during those school field trips than I'd thought.

The guy from behind the counter finally arrived with our ice creams just as I finished talking. He was wearing a white uniform and a white cap. I noticed that he had a bunch of red pimples on his face and long, greasy blond hair. Gross.

“Two maple ice creams.” He sighed, putting two big sundae glasses on the table. “Maria—you hafta take your feet off the table.”

“Go away, Curtis. I'm thinking,” Maria said, ignoring him. She did look like she was thinking hard about something. Her eyebrows were close together as she concentrated.

“You hafta, Maria—what if my dad walks in here?” Curtis shifted from one foot to the other nervously.

Maria sighed and moved her feet back under the table. She picked up the long sundae spoon and dug into her ice cream. “You're such a baby, Curtis.”