Ship of Dolls (5 page)

Brushing past Louise, she left the classroom and looked for Jack in the yard. He was with a group of boys watching another do tricks with a yo-​yo. Lexie walked over. “Did you tell?”

“Who?” He glanced at her as if he’d forgotten the doll.

“Miss Tompkins!”

“Tell her what?” He turned back to the yo-​yo.

Lexie almost smacked his shoulder. “You know what!”

“Oh, that.”

Worry had been burning holes inside her all morning. “Jack! Did you tell?”

He gave an appreciative whistle. “That guy’s good.”

Lexie jerked his sleeve. “Jack?”

Finally, he turned his attention to her. “No, your note said not to. Why not?”

Relief washed through Lexie. “Because it’s not like a punishment. All I have to do is sew another dress for Emily Grace.”

Jack raised his eyebrows. “Do you know how?”

She might have felt insulted that he thought she couldn’t do it, except that she wasn’t sure she could. “I’ll learn. And I’ll get to measure Emily Grace and fit the dress on her while I’m making it. I’ll get to know her, Jack. I need that chance!”

She took a big breath, then added, “If you take the blame, I won’t get to know her.”

Looking as if it didn’t matter one way or the other, Jack turned back to the yo-​yo. “Wow! Look at that!”

“Did you hear me?” Lexie demanded. Talking to Jack was like talking to a fence post.

He didn’t take his attention from the yo-​yo, but at last he agreed. “I won’t say anything, if that’s what you want.”

Lexie felt eyes boring into her. It was the way she felt when she frowned over a sentence diagram and suddenly Miss Tompkins asked if she needed help. She glanced around and saw Louise glaring from a corner of the schoolhouse. Laughter bubbled up through Lexie, along with some of Mama’s flapper breeze. Making sure Louise was still watching, she said, “You’re a prince, Jack,” and soundly kissed his cheek.

He looked at her as if she had lost her mind.

Ignoring whoops and whistles from the other boys, Lexie said, “See you around.”

Then she walked directly past Louise to a group of girls playing hopscotch and took her place at the end of the line. As she waited her turn to hop, she glanced at the other girls, studying the dresses they wore. Could she really design and sew a dress for Emily Grace?

I can
, she told herself. Sewing the dress would be easy. The hard part was going to be asking Grandma for help.

When class started again, Lexie considered one girl’s dress after another. Was a bow too fancy for the plain dress the doll needed? Should the material be flowered, or striped, or all one color? How were sleeves put on?

Miss Tompkins’s voice broke in, dismissing class. With relief, Lexie gathered her books. But the teacher spoke over the shuffling sound of the others. “Electra, please remain in your seat.”

Those were the first words from Miss Tompkins that Lexie had heard clearly all afternoon. That might have been the problem. She might have missed hearing the teacher call on her. Maybe she would have to stay after class and write a hundred times that she would pay attention.

It might be even worse. Maybe Miss Tompkins wanted to tell her she wouldn’t be making a dress for Emily Grace after all.

As Jack followed the others from the room, he glanced at her with a look she couldn’t decipher. Then Louise paused beside her. “Bet you’re in trouble!” With a satisfied smile, she joined her friends in the doorway.

L
exie’s fingers curled into fists in her lap. She looked straight ahead at the blackboard, waiting for whatever was about to happen while the last of her classmates left the room.

Miss Tompkins motioned her forward. Feeling as if she pulled each step through clinging mud, Lexie walked slowly to the front of the room.

Miss Tompkins opened a drawer and lifted out the box holding the doll. “You will need to get started with your project. Three weeks is not a very long time.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Was she to measure the doll now? Here?

She looked for a measuring tape on the desk, but the teacher said, “Since I will be away this evening attending a meeting, you may keep Emily Grace over the weekend. Do I have your promise to keep her safe and return her on Monday morning?”

“Yes! Of course! I will.” Lexie cradled the box in her arms, half fearing that Miss Tompkins would change her mind and snatch it back.

“I will,” Lexie said again, clutching the box and doll close as she backed toward the door. She paused to glance again at the teacher. “I won’t let her get in the rain or anything. I promise!”

Wait until Jack saw that she had Emily Grace for the entire weekend! She hoped he would meet her outside, but instead Louise caught up with her. “What’s that?” she demanded, poking the box. “Is that our doll? Are you stealing her?”

Lexie ignored her and kept walking.

Louise stayed beside her, looking at the box with suspicion. Suddenly she reached over and pried open one end. “That
is
our doll! Miss Tompkins!”

Lexie jerked the box away, nearly spilling the doll. “I’m doing a special project.”

“Does Miss Tompkins know about that? Does she know you have the doll?”

Her tone said that Miss Tompkins could not know because she would never let Lexie remove the doll from the school. Lexie put as much scorn as she could manage into her voice. “It’s her project. Of course she knows.”

The look on Louise’s face was almost worth all the worry Lexie had been through during the day.

“I don’t believe you,” Louise said. “What did you do to deserve a special project?”

Again Lexie thought of Mama and the way she faced down anyone who doubted her. “Maybe Miss Tompkins likes my work better than yours.” Head high, she walked down the street toward Grandma and Grandpa’s house.

Her confidence faded as she neared the front gate. All her doubts about setting in sleeves and making buttonholes rushed back. If she made a mess of this, she would never live down the taunts she would hear from the others. And a poorly made dress could not go with Emily Grace to Japan.

As she rested the box on the gatepost, Emily Grace said from inside it, “Mama!”

“Oh,” Lexie whispered. “You want a new dress, don’t you?”

She lifted the lid, and Emily Grace smiled up at her, the doll’s blue eyes looking interested and happy. Lexie could almost hear her saying that she knew she was going to love the new dress. She would love it even more than the fancy dress the ladies had made, because Lexie would put her heart into making it.

“I can do it,” Lexie told the doll. “Mama said we can do almost anything if we want it enough. And I really want to make the dress.”

Gently, she touched Emily Grace’s rosy cheek. She tried to picture the doll wearing the dress she would make. But the picture in her mind didn’t work. Instead of a pretty dress, she saw lopsided sleeves and a collar where the two sides didn’t match. Even if she could make a dress, what would she use for material?

There was only one answer. She had to tell Grandma what had happened from the very beginning and somehow convince her to help. Worry pooled in her stomach, but she marched up the stairs and into the front hall.

She found her grandma in the parlor, dusting furniture that already looked polished. Putting it off never made a bad thing better. “Grandma,” she began, bracing herself to get the worst over with as fast as possible, “I have to tell you something.”

“Not now, Lexie.” Impatience crackled through Grandma’s voice. “The ladies in my reading circle will be here tonight. Hurry upstairs and change your dress. I want you to sweep the front stairs and the walk.”

For a moment, Lexie felt she had been given a chance to escape, but she had already decided against postponing her confession. She tried again. “Grandma, something happened and —”

“I said later!” Grandma tugged a chair away from the window and busily dusted the sill. “Why are you still standing there?”

Grandma wouldn’t feel ready for the ladies until she had polished everything twice. This was not the time to upset her by admitting sneaking into Miss Tompkins’s room and taking the doll.
I can make the dress by myself
, Lexie decided.
I know I can. Mama was right. I can do anything if I just try hard enough.

She put the box with the doll on a hall stand, then hung her coat and scarf on a hook. Mama had given her the scarf before sending her to stay with Grandma and Grandpa. Lexie slid the soft pink wool through her fingers, thinking of girls she had seen wearing knit dresses. Maybe finding material for the doll’s dress wasn’t a problem after all.

With a cautious glance into the parlor, she hurried to the sewing cabinet at one side of the kitchen for a pair of scissors. Grandma’s big treadle sewing machine hung inside the cabinet, turned wrong side up so the bottom made a flat table with a bowl of flowers on it. Lexie didn’t know how to use the machine. She wasn’t even sure how to turn it right side up and make it stay that way. But she was sure she could sew by hand.

The kitchen smelled of Grandma’s spice cookies, tempting her. No. She needed to keep her mind on the doll dress.

The scissors were in a small drawer at one side of the cabinet. Near them, she found pins and needles in a pincushion and a spool of white thread. Pins would keep the dress pieces from shifting while she was sewing. She shoved them into her pocket, then carried everything upstairs to her room.

H
er soft doll, Annie, leaned against the pillow on the bed. Lexie put Emily Grace beside her. “Emily Grace is visiting,” she told Annie. “Soon she will be sailing all the way to Japan.”

After giving Emily Grace a gentle pat, she picked up the scarf. She held it against her cheek for a moment, remembering when Mama chose it for her. Perching on the side of the bed, she placed the soft wool over the doll. “Do you like the pink, Emily Grace? It matches your cheeks.”

Lexie stretched the scarf on the bed and placed the doll with her feet over one end. Then she pulled the rest of the scarf over her to see how long it should be. Taking the scissors, she carefully cut off the extra length.

“There, Emily Grace. Now you just need a hole for your head. I’ll sew up the sides and tie a ribbon around your middle. Look, Annie. Isn’t she going to be pretty?”

A rattle against the window startled her into looking around. Was it hailing? No. Jack Harmon was in the cherry tree between their houses. That was his signal.

As she walked to the window, she saw Jack make a face and throw another twig against the glass.

She shoved the window open. “What?”

“You got me laughed at. Why’d you do that?”

For a moment, she couldn’t think what he was talking about, then remembered kissing his cheek. If that was his worst problem, he was lucky. She stuck out her tongue, closed the window, and went back to the dolls.

He threw another twig, but she ignored him.

When she folded the scarf in half, the cut end looked ragged. “I’ll sew a hem all the way around the bottom,” she assured Emily Grace. “First, we need a hole for your head.”

When she cut into the scarf, the scissors caught in the knit. She pulled them loose and tried again. At last, the hole looked big enough. She held it up to check, stretching out the knit.

The stitches began running from the cut part on, leaving empty trails like ladders down the scarf. Lexie grabbed the wool to stop the runs, but the loops kept unknitting, like a row of dominos that kept right on falling.

When Grandma knit something, she complained of dropping stitches. With her heart sinking, Lexie realized this was what Grandma meant. Maybe she could weave the loops of yarn back through the ladders.

Laughter from outside the window startled her. She looked up and saw Jack peering in. She jerked the scarf against her chest, trying to hide her mistake. “Go away!”

“Lexie!” Grandma called from downstairs. “Don’t forget to sweep that walk!”

Jack must have heard Grandma, too. He scrambled back along the branch.

“Coming!” Lexie ran to the window and pulled the blind down in case Jack came back. She shoved the ruined scarf beneath the mattress, then quickly pulled off her school dress and hung it in her closet. She took a cotton dress from a peg, then paused to spread out the skirt. It was white with tiny blue blossoms all through it. “There’s enough cloth in this to make a dress for you, Emily Grace. Do you like the flowers?”