The Secret Cellar (23 page)

“Wow. That’s scary. What were they doing?” she asks, cringing at what she’s afraid I might say.

I tell her about the scooter, and Winnie, and St. Veronica’s observation about the stars, and then ask, “What do you think it means?
What
is up to me? The answer to
what
is in the stars?”

“Somehow, the Winterbottoms’ fate and yours have gotten … intertwined. Maybe it’s because it’s the winter solstice, but there is definitely some weird, cosmic stuff going on. Very Scrooge and Marley; it’s like the universe is leveling everything out. First Livvy Klack saves your neck, and then Gordon Winterbottom totally pulls off the performance of the year to help us out. Bizarre. But it’s like I said—anybody can see that Gordon and Winnie belong together. Apparently, somebody out there has decided that it’s your job to make it happen.”

“Okay, then … how? Help me.”

“Start with Elizabeth. Call her. I’ll bet she’ll have some ideas. After all, she must know Winnie as well as anyone. Remember how she interrogated us the first time we met? I guarantee she did that to Winnie, too.”

“Hey, that’s a good idea,” I say.

Margaret holds the school door open for me. “It’s funny. After all these years, you still sound surprised when you say that.”

At the morning assembly, our production of Mr. Eliot’s play,
The Merry Gentlemen
, is sandwiched between the two halves of the choir concert: the somber first part and the everybody-sing-along-at-the-top-of-your-lungs finale.

And somehow, despite all Mr. Eliot’s last-minute changes and incessant worrying, we pull it off. After the final bow, the students in his honors English class drag Mr. Eliot onto the stage and hand him a wrapped package, which we insist that he open in front of everyone. He tears off the paper and holds up a leather-bound edition of Charles Dickens’s
David Copperfield
, one of his favorite books.

“It’s beautiful,” he says as he leafs through the pages, his eyes turning moist.

“You like it?” Margaret asks.

“Love it,” he says. “You really shouldn’t have.… Thank you—all of you. I’m going to reread it over the break.”

Margaret pulls Livvy front and center by the arm. “Livvy found it,” she says. “We looked all over, but couldn’t find anything good. Livvy saw this online, but it was only available in England. Lucky for you, her parents just happen to be in London, and she had them send it here.”

“Well, it’s perfect. You chose wisely, Livvy.”

As we scamper off the stage, Livvy beams, glowing with the satisfaction of her good deed. “Are you and your friends going to be at your usual table at lunch today?”

“Yeah, I guess,” I say. “Why?”

“Oh, nothing. I just want to make sure I see you before you leave for vacation,” she says, and then runs off to sit with some of her old friends.

• • •

An hour later, over red-and-green cupcakes and cartons of milk, we hold the first annual RBGGE (Red Blazer Girls Gift Exchange). Back in November, after much debate, we made a historic decision: we would draw names and buy only one gift, “secret Santa” style. The idea, of course, was that instead of spending a gazillion dollars, we would spend only a third of a gazillion.

So, how did that work out? you ask.

Well, smarty-pants, just see for yourself.

When we’ve cleared away our mess, we set the four wrapped packages on the table.

“How do we decide who goes first?” I ask.

Margaret slides her package across the table to me. “How about you? Go ahead, get it started, Soph.”

I’m not about to wait for someone to protest. I yank the paper off the red cardboard box and look inside, where I find a beautiful leather journal (the same one Margaret had seen me admiring), a bottle of ink (red, of course), and my very own fountain pen!

“Oh my gosh, it’s perfect!” I say, throwing my arms around her. “I love it!”

“The pen isn’t an antique,” she says, “but it writes beautifully. The guy at the store let us try a bunch of them. This was our favorite.”

“Okay, enough about Sophie. Leigh Ann is next,” says Becca.

“Yay!” cries Leigh Ann. “Gimme, gimme!”

She tears the wrapping from the custom-made, one-of-a-kind scrapbook that Becca has been working on for weeks. The cover, cut from a thin sheet of plywood, is painted with images of the four of us: Margaret playing the violin, Becca behind an easel, me with my guitar, and, in the center, Leigh Ann in an elegant ballet pose.

“You made this? Becca, it’s amazing!”

“Look inside,” I say.

Leigh Ann turns back the cover. Inside are four pages, front and back, covered with pictures and mementos from her first four months at St. Veronica’s, followed by a couple of dozen more blank pages waiting for her to fill them in.

“Remember what Frodo told Sam at the end of
The Lord of the Rings
?” Becca says. “The last pages are for you.”

Leigh Ann’s eyes well up with tears and she practically tackles Becca. “Thank you so much. I’m going to fill it up and keep it forever. Here, Margaret, open this. I can’t be the only one crying.”

“Uh-oh,” says Margaret, shaking the small box. “I don’t want to open it if it’s going to make me cry.”

“Tough,” says Becca. “Open it.”

Margaret removes the paper without tearing it, folds it, and sets it aside. She takes a deep breath and lifts the lid from a small wooden box, revealing a pair of simple,
yet elegant men’s cuff links, made of gold and onyx. Her brow wrinkles as she ponders them silently for a few seconds.

“Look underneath,” says Leigh Ann.

Margaret pulls up the velvet divider and removes a wrinkled black-and-white photograph. It is a picture of her grandparents on their wedding day.

“Now look really close,” I say.

Margaret bites the first knuckle of her right hand to prevent herself from crying, but it’s a battle she’s going to lose. Once she realizes the significance of the cuff links, she can’t take her eyes off them.

“Are they really …? But how?”

“When your grandmother was here, we asked her if there was anything of your grandfather’s that you could have,” Leigh Ann explains. “She told us about these, but said that one was broken. We got her to send them, and then I got the broken one fixed. So, I guess they’re kind of from your
babcia
and me.”

“Well, thank you … both. I love them. Now that I see them, I remember him wearing them … to my birthday party. It was the first time I ever saw anyone wear a shirt with cuff links.”

I hold up Becca’s gift. “Last again, Becca.”

“Just hand it over, St. Pierre.” She grabs it from me and rips the wrapping off in one swipe. She stares at it for a second, speechless.

“No way,” she says, finally.

“Let me see,” says Leigh Ann. “I’ve heard about it, but I never got to see it.”

Becca holds up an antique silver picture frame containing a beautiful photograph of her father. He’s standing amid the machinery of his print shop—so young and handsome that it’s impossible to believe that he’s been gone for five years.

“I’ve never even seen this picture before,” she says. “Where did you get it?”

“Well, your mom helped us out a little,” I admit. “It was kind of dumb luck. I asked her about pictures, and she found a few, but then she found a roll of film from your dad’s camera that had never been developed. She’d completely forgotten that he had asked her to take some pictures of him: they were going to be for an ad in one of the Chinatown papers. She couldn’t believe it when she got them developed. We liked this one best, so we took the negatives to a photo lab, and they made us this print. And the frame came from Mr. Winterbottom’s shop. I saw it the first time we were in there. It’s silver, so Lindsay said you’re going to have to keep it polished. Do you like it?”

“It’s …”

And then … well, I think you can guess what happens next. And that way, Becca can’t get mad at me for divulging her deepest, darkest secret.

• • •

The wrapping paper and ribbons have been thrown out and the tears wiped away when Livvy joins us at our table and opens her laptop.

“Is … everything all right?” she asks as she takes in our red eyes and runny noses. “Did something bad happen?”

“No, we’re fine,” I say. “We just exchanged gifts and it got a little—”

“Oh, right,” she says. “Well, that’s good timing. I have something for you guys.”

Panicky looks zigzag around the table, and Livvy holds up a hand. “Don’t worry,” she says, laughing. “I didn’t expect you to get me anything. And this is just a little … thank-you, for helping me get my … act together.” She spins the laptop so the screen is facing us.

Bright red letters pop up on the screen:

What follows is a remarkably professional-looking music video of us, pieced together from some of our Friday-night performances. We’re playing the “hit song” that I wrote—“The Apostrophe Song”—inspired by Mr. Eliot’s lesson and group project on apostrophes. (That was also, ironically, the project in which Livvy burned us to the ground when she “accidentally” told us the wrong
day for our class presentation. When Mr. Eliot called on us, she was the only one prepared. What followed was not pretty.)

“How did you do this?” I ask as I watch myself play the song’s final chord. “I never saw you at Perkatory, and definitely not with a camera.”

Livvy smiles. “It wasn’t me. I got your friend Malcolm Chance to do it. He filmed it two weeks in a row, and then I put it all together. Do you like it?”

“It’s great,” says Leigh Ann. “We look—and sound—like a real band.”

“You
are
a real band,” says Livvy. “And I was, um, kind of hoping you would let me try out. I’ve been playing piano for six years. I’m not great, but I learn new stuff pretty quickly. You don’t have to answer now; just think about it, and maybe after vacation I can show you what I can do.”

“We
have
been thinking about adding a keyboard,” says Becca. “You know, to give us more sound. We’d have to get an electric piano, though—there’s no room for a real one at Perkatory.”

“So … you guys will think about it? Seriously?”

“Yeah, absolutely,” I say.

“That is awesome!” Livvy says, beaming. “I’m gonna practice all your songs over the break. I can’t wait!”

The bell rings—Christmas vacation has officially begun! We all have something else on our minds, though, as we pack up our bags and exit the building for a two-week break: today we learn the truth about Mr. Dedmann’s secret cellar. The codes have been broken, and the walking stick has been duplicated. All that remains is for us to enter the combination—and hope.

We’ve invited Livvy and Raf to join us for the great unveiling, and after a quick hot dog at the Papaya King on Eighty-Sixth, we walk back down to Dedmann’s house on Eighty-Second. Shelley lets us in, and as I kneel down to pet Bertie, she introduces us to a middle-aged man in a camel hair overcoat.

“This is Mr. Garrison Applewood, Mr. Dedmann’s lawyer,” she says. “And these are the girls—and some friends—I was telling you about. They’ve been a huge help.”

Margaret holds up her right hand, her fingers crossed. “Let’s just hope that we’ve been right about everything.”

“Nice to meet you girls … and boy,” Mr. Applewood says. “I understand that you have been working on this day and night. I’m sure you realize by now that Mr. Dedmann was a bit of a character. I knew him for thirty years, but I can’t say I know anything about him. He had all this, but I can’t tell you how he got it. Never had a job that I knew of. Lived incredibly simply—he didn’t travel, didn’t eat out. When Shelley told me what you’d discovered—that he was actually someone named Kaspar Neuner, who was a notorious World War II spy—I was shocked. I had no idea.”

“Well, I suppose everybody has some secrets,” Shelley says. “His were just … bigger than most.”

The doorbell rings; Bertie barks once, and everybody jumps. We’re all a little on edge.

Shelley looks out the peephole in the door. “It’s a man.… I don’t recognize him.”

“Let me see,” I say. “It’s probably my dad.” A quick peek confirms it, and I open the door. “Hey, Dad!”

Dad comes in, and when Bertie finally leaves him alone, I introduce him to Shelley and Mr. Applewood. “I thought it might be nice to have someone here who knows something about wine,” I say. “Dad’s kind of an expert—he’s a chef, and he’s from France. He’s the one who told us about that bottle that Shelley found.”

Dad shakes his head at the memory. “Château Latour, 1949.
Fantastique
.”

I suppose I should mention that poor Dad knows next to nothing about why I asked him to come. I told him about Curtis Dedmann and Shelley, but I may have left out a few teensy details—like the fact that Dedmann was a German spy, and somehow had enough money to build a huge house with an even bigger wine cellar, which might just be full of expensive wine. That’s all.

“Sophie didn’t tell us that she invited you,” says Margaret.