The Friendship Riddle (5 page)

She pursed her lips but kept going. “I mean, who knows what word he might get, and what might trip him up. All I'm saying is that you shouldn't let Lucas scare you off from something you want to do. That's all I'm saying.”

“Thanks,” I said, though I wasn't sure what I was thanking her for. It wasn't exactly a huge vote of confidence.

She picked up a colored pencil and sucked on the tip, but she didn't start drawing. I used to give her ideas and she would draw. Like I would say, “That falling leaf could have a whole colony of miniature elves on it,” and she would draw it, and it would be beautiful. Every vein on the leaf would be just right, and each elf would have a different face and expression. We said that when we grew up, we would make books together that I would write and she would illustrate.

“Ms. Pepper is pretty weird, huh?”

I blushed. “I was afraid you might have heard that.”

“You do have a glorious body.” She giggled. She wasn't teasing, though. Her eyes flashed at mine and it was like we were at one of our old sleepovers, with our parents downstairs drinking wine, their voices coming louder and louder while we planned our own grown-up parties.

“As do you,” I replied.

She shook her head. “Ruth Mudd-O'Flanahan, don't you ever forget that you have a glorious, miraculous body.”

“And yet one that is perfectly normal.”

“Perfectly, gloriously normal.”

We were both giggling then, holding our sides, when Ms. Pepper pushed through the creaking door. She beamed at both of us, and that was enough so that we were in peals of laughter. Charlotte laughed so hard that she snorted, and that set us off again. I bet she never snorted in front of Melinda. She got laughing so hard, she wasn't even really making a sound, just wheezing.

Ms. Pepper grabbed her cup of tea from the counter and the rubber cement and went back out into the public part of the library. She shook her head as if questioning her career choice.

It took us a few minutes to calm down. We didn't look at each other. We knew from past experience that would only set us off again. My side ached and my cheeks were sore.

“I was actually wondering if you had a chance to find that note, the one in the book?”

She was still looking down and away from me. “Oh, that,” she said. “Sorry, I forgot all about it.”

“That's okay.”

She shaded something on her drawing. “I'll look tonight if I remember. I'll bring it here to the library to give to you. Will you be here after school again?”

“Probably.”

“Okay, then I'll give it to you here. At the library.”

“You said that.”

Her lips tightened.

“And you only ever found the one?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“I just thought it was odd that there were only two notes.”

“I would have told you if there were more.”

“I know.”

“I did remember something about the book. The cover was red, but it was so old and dirty, it looked brown. It didn't have a dust jacket, and the fabric over the cover was faded around the edges.”

“That's a lot!” I said. “Thanks.”

She colored for a moment longer. “You know all of this is probably nothing. These notes.”

“Sure, of course.”

“We're too old for mystery games, Ruth.”

“I know,” I said. She hadn't looked up at me once since we stopped laughing. “I should probably get your dad the rubber cement.”

“Ms. Pepper already did.”

“Right. Well, I should probably get back outside, anyway. My mom will be here soon.”

“Bye,” she said.

“Bye.”

I hesitated, but there was nothing more to say. Nothing at all.

“Bandersnatch.”

It was Coco. “Excuse me?” It was Monday morning, and I was clutching a stack of
Cobblestone
magazines that Ms. Lawson asked me to organize for her. Her room was full of bookcases overloaded with books, the history and social studies books jammed together with the fiction.

“Bandersnatch. Ask me the definition.”

“What's the definition?”

“It's from Lewis Carroll, and it's a grotesque and strange creature.”

“Okay,” I said. He was grinning, so I felt pretty sure he wasn't teasing me. But he had also called me grotesque and strange. Maybe.

“It was on the Scripps spelling list last year. More precisely, it was the word that my sister got wrong in the state spelling bee.”

The girl who'd gone from our middle school the year before had been tall and willowy with bright blond hair. I hadn't realized she and Coco were related.

“I see,” I said. Although I didn't.

“I thought I could help you study.”

“Study?”

“For the spelling bee.” He reached up and scratched behind his ear. The skin on his neck had started to flush.

“Oh,” I said.

“If you want to, I can quiz you.”

“I think I've got it.” I spread the magazines out on a table in the back of Ms. Lawson's room. She let me come in here during study hall since she didn't have a class. Officially I was her student aide, but mostly it was just an escape. I wasn't sure how Coco knew to find me there.

“I helped my sister study.”

“And she spelled ‘bandersnatch' wrong.”

Coco's skin turned pink starting at his cheeks and diving down to meet the red on his neck.

I kicked my boot into the floor. “Anyway, my mum is going to help me.” She had about flipped when I'd told her that I had signed up for the spelling bee, and promised we could watch
Akeelah and the Bee
for inspiration as soon as she got home.

“Oh,” Coco said. I didn't know someone could make such a little word sound so forlorn, like the sound of the lighthouse on one of these snowy winter nights.

“Except she's British, so sometimes she gets confused. Because, you know, some words are spelled differently. And she always says ‘zed' for
Z
.” I was babbling. Taryn Greenbottom never babbled. I clamped my mouth shut.

“British?”

I slid an issue from March on top of one from May. “Technically, yes. She's from Ireland, but Northern Ireland, and they're British, but she considers herself Irish. The whole island is smaller than Maine, and there are two different countries on it.”

“I know. It's kind of like Hispaniola with Haiti and the Dominican Republic.”

“Exactly.”

“I like geography,” he said.

“Me, too,” I agreed.

“But not as much as spelling?”

“Not as much as spelling.”

“Well, if you want help—”

“She'll help me,” I said, too hastily.

“I could help you at school.”

That actually sounded useful. Who knew when Mum would be home to study with me? And once she got home, she'd just be off again a few days later. “Don't you want to help Lucas?”

“Lucas?” Coco furrowed his brow.

“He's your friend, isn't he?”

“Not really. I mean, I like him fine, but I wouldn't call him a friend. Anyway, he's a genius. He doesn't need help.”

“Oh.” Another foghorn sound.

“I mean, you're smart, too,” he said.

“I know.”

“Okay,” he said.

“Actually, maybe I could use help. My mum travels a lot. And since you have experience—”

“Emma did go out in the fourth round of the state tournament.”

He was still smiling, so I smiled back. “I think we'll be okay.”

“So,” he said. “Your word is ‘bandersnatch.'
 
”

“Country of origin?” I asked. That was what the spellers always did on television. It drove me and Mum crazy because we knew they were just stalling. “Spell it or smell it,” she would say, which didn't make much sense but always made me laugh.

“British, I think.”

I took a deep breath. “Bandersnatch.
B-A-N-D-E-R-S-N-A-T-C-H
. Bandersnatch.”

Ugly books. That was about the only clue I had to go on. The book I found the note in was ugly, and the book Charlotte
found her note in was so ugly that they were going to remove it from the library. Ugly like a bandersnatch. I pictured a grotesque figure with spiky horns and torn wings, sharp teeth and drooling mouth, hunched over an old book.

The conversation with Coco had been about the strangest I'd ever had. I'd thought about it all afternoon. He and I had barely spoken all year. In the fall we'd been paired up for an assignment in math—finding the area of irregular shapes—but that had only lasted for a period and I don't think we said much more to each other than “Draw a line there,” and “I guess that gives us forty-seven.” But now in two days he'd sought me out two times. He had probably realized that I had no friends and was trying to be nice. That was the kind of guy Coco was. With a guy like that, one who was nice to everyone, well, it hardly mattered if he was nice to you, too.

After school I went back to the library to search the stacks. This time I started at the end, in the 900s, which is the history section, pulling out the ugliest books I could find. Books with no dust jackets, books with hints of mold, books with renegade dust bunnies on them. Some of the dust bunnies were so big, they looked like they had grown teeth, which made me think of those stories where people have tumors in them and when they are pulled out, they have teeth and hair and sometimes even legs and hands. It's not like there was another person inside them—the tumor itself grows these extra bits.

Mum told me about those tumors—teratomas is what they're called—even though Mom said I had enough trouble
with my own imagination, and that I didn't need to have gruesome reality added to it.

I shouldn't have said I would study with Coco. I was a lone wolf prowling the halls of Frontenac Consolidated Middle School until I could have an island in a lake just like Harriet Wexler. I was as solo as Han Solo. I was a one-woman band. I decided I would tell him the next day that I didn't need his help, after all.

My fingers started to turn grayish brown from all the dust, and I was beginning to doubt there were any more clues to find. I'd pulled out seventy-three books before, in the 821s, I picked out a book of poetry by someone named J. Samuel Samuelson. When I flipped it open, I saw the telltale origami envelope.

I told my heart not to race. This could be as big a disappointment as the printer paper.

The envelope was wedged into the book, and it tore a little and left a thin line of red behind when I pulled it out. The origami paper was so dry, I was afraid it would disintegrate before I removed the note. But I got it, and pulled out the index card. The same red seal with the sharp-beaked bird on it. I'd really and truly found a second clue! I unfolded the card. This one had a border made of stones that pressed against one another. At the top was a drawing of a sculpture of a man's head. Floating above the head was a golden crown. The picture made me think of Charlotte, and the way she could use her colored pencils to make her drawings alive. I read:

I understood the first part. Ferdinand Frontenac wasn't a king. He was a settler who united the British, French-Canadian, and American Indians on the peninsula. That was why the schools were named after him. Our mascot was the beaver because he traded their fur. There was a statue of him in the school. That had to be the marble man.

The rest was just gibberish. “Miners with a pan”? Like the gold rush? We studied that in fifth grade, and there was nothing that connected that to Ferdinand Frontenac. And
the quote at the end: What could that possibly mean? It seemed like it was giving me a direction, like it was telling me to make a plan and keep going, straight and steady.

I had to remind myself that the notes weren't talking to me. I didn't know who they were talking to. They had to be for someone, didn't they? I wanted it to be me.