Libby on Wednesday (17 page)

“I see,” Mr. Shoemaker said, taking hold of G.G.’s shoulder and steering him back into the room. “I’m glad to hear that that’s how it’s done. I guess we’re going to have to do something about that drainpipe. And now, if you’ll just take a seat, Mr. Greene, I’ve a sad duty to perform.

“Ms. Ostrowski,” Mr. Shoemaker told them in a solemn voice, “was involved in an automobile accident on her way home from school last night. Quite a bad one, I’m afraid.” Libby felt a stillness inside, as if for just an instant everything stopped working, and then started up again in gasps and thuds as Mr. Shoemaker went on talking.

“Oh, she’s going to be all right eventually,” he said,
“but she has several badly broken bones, and her doctor tells us she’ll be in the hospital for quite a while.”

They sat there, all of them, in stunned silence, staring first at Mr. Shoemaker and then at each other. Libby kept thinking of Mizzo sitting there in her usual place in the circle, looking the way she always did, smiling her enthusiastic smile with her long cat eyes tipping up at the corners. And now there was a new picture in her mind—Mizzo in a hospital bed with huge casts on her arms and legs and … “What bones?” she asked. “What did Mizzo, I mean Ms. Ostrowski, break?”

But Mr. Shoemaker had started talking about something else and didn’t hear her question. “… and since the sponsorship of this club was an added responsibility that Ms. Ostrowski volunteered to take on and not actually part of her job responsibilities, we can’t insist that Mrs. Granger fill in. So I’m afraid, for the time being, you’ll all have to return to your previous Creative Choice assignments.”

No one spoke for several seconds, and then Alex raised his hand. “Mr. Shoemaker,” he said. “Couldn’t we just go ahead without a sponsor? I mean, we all know the routine now, and we could just—”

“No, I’m afraid not,” the principal said. “We can’t allow students to use school facilities without an adult being present. It’s against the rules.”

Wendy stood up. “But, sir,” she said, her smile polished and positive, “we’ve just started this collaboration. I mean, this story that we’re all contributing to, and it’s very important to all of us. Couldn’t we go on meeting just a few more times until we finish the story?”

For a moment Libby felt reassured. It just didn’t seem
possible that anyone could refuse such a confident request. But as it turned out, Mr. Shoemaker could and did, and a few minutes later they were all out in the hall watching the principal lock the door to the reading lab. Then he told them again how sorry he was to have to dissolve the writers’ workshop and that they should all go along now to their previous clubs or lessons and tell the teachers why they were there. “They’ve all heard about Ms. Ostrowski’s unfortunate accident,” he said, “so they’ll understand.” He took a list out of his pocket and after studying it for a moment, he said, “Let’s see. Gary and Alex were in the Journalism Club, Libby was in Great Books, Tierney was in the Historical Society, and Wendy met with the Student Government Club. So, if you’ll all just report back, I’m sure you’ll be given a sympathetic welcome.” Then he gave all of them what was obviously meant to be a sympathetic smile, put the reading-lab key back in his pocket, and hurried off down the hall.

They all stood there for a minute longer, staring at the locked door, the way Gill’s cats always stared at the kitchen door at dinnertime. G.G. was the first one to speak. “Hey,” he said. “I been wanting out of this little”—he made his voice high and fluty and put on what he obviously meant to be a haughty expression—“lit-ter-aree so-ci-itee for a long time. So—no problem. Right?”

“Oh, shut up, G.G.,” Alex said. They all stared at Alex in surprise. It wasn’t the kind of thing Alex usually said. And certainly not the kind of thing he usually said to G.G.

“Hey. Way to go, Lockwood,” Tierney said, grinning, and after a minute Alex stopped frowning and grinned too.

“Sorry,” he said to G.G. “But I’m just so—mad. What gives them the right to say we can’t go on meeting? I mean, isn’t it in the Constitution or something? The right to free assembly, or something like that.”

“Yes, you’re right,” Wendy said. “I learned about it in civics. Americans are supposed to have the right to have meetings whenever and wherever they want to.”

Libby sighed. “I guess it’s the wherever that’s the problem. We can’t meet on the school grounds without an adult to—”

“Hey!” Wendy almost shouted. “That’s right. We just can’t meet
here
. But we could go on having our workshop
somewhere else
.” She was staring at Libby with what, if you were Alex Lockwood, you would probably call “wild surmise”—a thought that might have made Libby laugh, if she hadn’t begun to have a sneaking suspicion that she knew exactly what Wendy was surmising. And she wasn’t the only one. Alex and Tierney were both staring at Libby, too, with excited, hopeful eyes.

“I don’t know,” she began slowly. “I’ll have to ask. I’ll have to ask the family and—”

“Hey, no problem,” Tierney said, “and you know it. Or you ought to anyway. You’ve got that whole McCall House gang wrapped around your itty-bitty finger. If
you
want us to meet at the McCall House, you got it. Right?”

Libby couldn’t help smiling. “Well, I guess so,” she said.

“Hoo-ray! She guesses so,” Alex said. “Libby McCall, who, by the way, ladies and gentlemen, is a world-class guesser, guesses that we can meet at her fantastic, awesome, humongous house. All in favor say aye.”

“Aye!” they all—except maybe for G.G.—said, and then all of them—even G.G.—crowded around Libby asking her questions about when they could have the first workshop meeting at the McCall House.

   16

So it was decided. The next meeting of the workshop would take place at the McCall House, but that still left the time to be decided upon. It seemed that Saturdays and Sundays were out because so many people went away or had other important plans for their weekends. Thursday afternoons wouldn’t do because Wendy had afterschool cheerleader practice. Tierney’s orthodontist was on Tuesdays. And Alex had a regular clinic appointment on Monday afternoons. So they were back to Wednesdays, but now it would have to be after school instead of during seventh period. But when Libby said, “All right. Next Wednesday. At my house,” Alex grinned and said, “How about this Wednesday, in about”—he looked at his wristwatch—“in about forty minutes. That gives everybody just about enough time to check it out with their parents. Okay?”

So instead of going immediately to their previous Creative Choice classes, as Mr. Shoemaker had suggested, they went down together to the pay phone and started calling home. Everyone except G.G., who went with them but then
just stood around watching and listening. When Libby asked him if he wasn’t going to call, he said, “No. Like I told you, I’ve been wanting to get out of this dweep convention for a long time. And I got better things to do after school.” But for some reason he went on standing around listening while everyone talked to their parents.

They let Libby call first, and Gillian answered and said of course the workshop could meet there and she thought it was a wonderful idea. And the rest of them got permission without much difficulty, except that Wendy had to tell her mother exactly who was going to be there and exactly how and when she’d be getting home.

“Yes,” she said. “Tierney and Libby will be there too. Yes, I have enough money for the bus.” She looked at Libby and sighed and rolled her eyes in a way that said something about nosy parents, but she went on answering all her mother’s questions, and before she hung up, she said, “Bye, Mom. Thanks. See you in a couple of hours.”

Tierney’s conversation was much shorter, and she didn’t ask for permission as much as announce what she was going to do. The last thing she said was, “On the bus. Yeah. Okay. Okay!” And then she hung up and turned the phone over to Alex.

Alex’s parents apparently weren’t at home, but he had an interesting conversation with their answering machine. “Hello there, Machine, old buddy,” he said. “Nice to talk to you again. Would you be so kind as to tell my honorable parents that the writers’ workshop will have to be held after—that’s
after
as in ‘following’ or ‘subsequent to’—the school day, so I’ll be late getting home. Oh, and Machine. The workshop is being held today at the McCall mansion.”
He stopped for a minute and pretended to be listening before he said, “I knew you’d be impressed. But, no, I’m afraid you can’t come along. It’s a very exclusive group. Humans only. No machines allowed.”

It was just a little later, while they were all checking to be sure they had enough money to take the bus, that G.G. disappeared. Libby didn’t notice him leaving, but one minute he was standing there watching and the next moment he wasn’t. But when she said, “What happened to G.G.,” the others just glanced around, shrugged, and went back to counting their money. Nobody said anything except for Tierney, who said, “Good riddance—twenty-three, twenty-four … Hey, I’m a penny short. Anybody got a spare penny?”

They split up then and went off to their old Creative Choice assignments, but right after school let out, they met again on the front steps and walked to the bus stop together.

The bus was crowded that day and they weren’t able to sit close enough to do much talking, but at one point Tierney, who was sitting several rows ahead of Libby, climbed over the large man who was sitting next to her and came down the aisle. She stopped to whisper to Wendy, who immediately turned around and began nodding her head frantically. Then Tierney came on down to Libby’s seat and, putting her hands around her mouth, whispered, “The Treehouse. We’re going to have the meeting in the Treehouse, aren’t we?”

Libby’s immediate reaction was to shake her head. It wasn’t anything rational or planned, as much as it was an almost frightened feeling. A quick, deep negative feeling about having something so public in such a private place.
But, on second thought, when she realized that there would only be three people besides herself, and two of them had already been in the Treehouse, she began to change her mind. So eventually the head shake turned into an uncertain, tentative nod.

Immediately Wendy bounced up and down, doing her best wide-screen smile, and Tierney yelled, “All right!” so loudly that several people nearly jumped out of their seats. Alex, who couldn’t have known what they’d been talking about, turned around and echoed Tierney’s “all right.” All of which, for some reason, inspired a bunch of elementary school kids in the back of the bus to start yelling “all right!” too. So then Tierney stomped back up the aisle, making okay signs over her head and chanting, “All right, all right,” until she got to her row and climbed back over the large man into her seat.

The people in Libby’s row were staring at her, making her feel embarrassed but at the same time rather pleased with herself. Pleased that they were probably wondering about all the “all rights” and what she had said or done to set them off.

She still didn’t feel entirely at ease about having the meeting in the Treehouse, however, but there was no chance to discuss it any further. The only other conversations on the bus were a few remarks that were passed around from one person to another about how much more peaceful the workshop was going to be minus “you know who.”

But then, just as they arrived at the McCall House, “you know who” suddenly showed up again—like an evil genie who kept escaping just when you thought he was cooped up forever in his bottle. They were just going in the
front gate when they became aware of someone shouting, and there he was racing toward them on his bicycle, yelling, “Hey! Wait up! Wait for me!”

As they waited, with Tierney groaning and Wendy saying something to Alex about being afraid it was too good to be true, Libby discovered that she was experiencing a strange mixture of feelings. There was the angry exasperation she would have expected over G.G.’s managing to upset things as usual. And there was also the anxiety about having him see the house and meet her family, all of which would just give him that much more to sneer about. But there was something else. Another reaction that felt more like relief. Relief that she’d get another chance to find out something—to satisfy a strange, urgent kind of curiosity that had been tickling somewhere inside her head ever since the day that G.G. read the unfinished story called “Eric.”

The others came back out onto the sidewalk, groaning and shaking their heads, and a minute later Gary Greene skidded his bicycle to a stop almost on top of them. His freckled face was red and sweaty, and he was grinning triumphantly.

“Well, well,” Tierney said. “To what do we owe this honor, G. Man? Something happen to all those better things you had to do?”

“Yeah, that’s it,” G.G. said, in between panting breaths. “When I got home, I found out I didn’t have some other things to do after all. So I just decided to see if I could beat the old bus over here. I almost made it too. Get out of the way, Lockwood. I want to put my bike inside the fence so it won’t get stolen.” Shoving his bike toward the gate, he
bumped it into Alex, making him stumble back against the fence.