Leon dragged the match along the black strip on the box. The tip ignited. “It worked!” he yelled. He’d made fire! He was holding fire! Wait. He was holding fire? Without thinking, he dropped the match on the carpet. “No!” he hollered, and then quickly stomped on it. When he lifted his shoe, the fire was out, but left behind on the carpet was a small black burn mark. He wiped at it with his finger, and it smeared. “Yeesh,” he said, moving the candlestick on top of the mark to hide it.

  Leon’s hands were shaky. He forced himself to think Ultra Cool thoughts. Before he lost his nerve, he took out another match and struck it. The match ignited. Hey, he was getting pretty good at this.

  He lit the three candles on the candlestick and blew out the match. The room smelled like smoke. He opened his bedroom window. He knelt by the candlestick.

  The flames flickered. Leon took a deep breath.

  “Grandfather, it’s me. Are you there? Hello? Spirits? I’m trying to reach Milton Monteforte?”

  He looked around the room, listening. David Atten-borough listened, too, from his terrarium.

  “Um, this is your grandson, Leonidas Remy Monteforte. I need help. Actually, Grandmother does. But I need help to help her. So please?”

  A rush of wind lifted the blue curtains, and the flames tilted sideways. Leon swallowed. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. Maybe he shouldn’t have tried this all by himself. “Grandfather?” he whispered. “Is that . . . you?”

  Leon felt a chill on the back of his neck. David Attenborough burrowed under his wood-chip bedding.

  “Mine,” said a voice that creaked like a door. It didn’t sound like his grandfather’s. Leon couldn’t be sure, but it sounded like a woman.

  Had he really done it? Did he really have the Gift? Who was talking to him? “Um.” His heart was in his throat. “What?”

  “Candlestick,” said the voice. “Mine.”

  “Oh crap!” Leon blew out the candles with what little air he had inside him. “Sorry!” He jumped to his feet. “Wrong number!”

  He dropped the deodorant and ran out of his room.

  CHAPTER 21

  Nell

  Nell’s mom was making microwave dinners again while The Real Housewives blared on the small television in the back of the camper.

  Nell stepped outside and walked across the auction house parking lot. The sun was just getting ready to set, and there was enough of a breeze to keep the mosquitoes away. She decided to walk next door past a place called The Spot. Across the street was a bowling alley that appeared to be closed and, next to it, a laundromat called Soapranos.

  She took a picture of the sign and sent it to Marcus. Then she went inside. The place smelled like lavender-scented dryer sheets.

  A man wearing headphones was folding clothes and setting them in a metal basket with wheels. He was bobbing his head and mouthing words to a song.

  Nell sat down on one of the plastic chairs at the end of a row of dryers.

  Her grand plan of not-talking-to-her-mom wasn’t working so great. If she and Marcus were going to be activists next year, she needed to know how to change people’s minds. How to change her mom’s mind. She searched “what activists do” on her phone. She found pages about handing out pamphlets, organizing marches, and calling members of Congress to urge them to make better laws. And then she saw a word that she didn’t even know she’d been looking for. Protest. It was a beautiful word. Powerful.

  She scrolled down to “types of protests” and found a bunch of examples: rallies, marches, boycotts, prayer walks, strikes, sit-ins. Who knew that there were so many ways to protest?

  She texted Marcus, Did you know that there was a Singing Revolution in Estonia in 1988? Did you know that Estonia is a country? I don’t know where. Anyway, the point is people protested by singing for 5 nights and they got what they wanted. Independence.

  Don’t worry, she added, I’m not going to sing.

  She had a terrible singing voice. Besides, her mom would just sing along with her, and that wouldn’t get her anywhere. It had to be something that really bothered her mom.

  Nell scrolled farther down to a section about civil disobedience. “The refusal of a citizen to obey the demands or orders of a government or authority,” she read.

  She thought about the lines she’d drawn. They were sort of like a protest, right?

  Huh. Maybe she’d been protesting already and didn’t know it.

  But it wasn’t enough. Now she needed to do something bigger.

  The man with headphones twirled in a circle with his arms out. He sang out loud, “You could have been more! You could have been more!”

  That’s right, Nell thought. More.

  She scrolled down and read on. “Some examples of civil disobedience are public nudity—oh, that’s so gross!—silent protests, photobombing, and sit-ins.”

  Sit-ins. That wouldn’t be so hard, she figured. She remembered what her mom had said about joining her in the park to stretch her legs. “Come on, Nell,” she’d said. “Don’t be such a drag. The whole point of this trip is to get away and experience some intrigue. You can’t do that if you stay in the camper all the time.”

  She texted Marcus. Where r u? Answer soon. You still owe me an N.

  Nell walked back to the camper. She would do a sit-in, refusing all things intriguing. Do a sit-in? Was that right? Have a sit-in? No, do sounded better.

  Her mom would see that she was serious, she’d get tired of her being (in her words) a real drag, and then she’d have no choice but to go home.

  This was her new line.

  Nell would not take a single step outside the camper until her mom agreed that they would go home.

  “That’s one good thing about you not talking to me,” said Nell’s mom, sitting down at the table and scooping microwave macaroni onto two paper plates. “You can’t complain about the food.”

  Nell sat down across from her. She took a bite of her dinner. “I’ve decided I am talking to you now. And I have two things to say.”

  Her mom put down her spork. “Oh man. Let’s hear it.”

  Nell cleared her throat. “First, I’ve decided instead of not talking to you, I will stay inside this camper at all times no matter how bad it smells or how bored I get until you say we can go home.”

  Her mom put her head down on the table. “Do I have to know what the second thing is?”

  Nell nodded. “This macaroni is terrible.”

  CHAPTER 22

  Tildy

  In her room, Tildy pulled out her anatomy notebook and examined the list of people who’d bought one of Frederica Verne’s dog paintings. One of them had to have her amber necklace.

  The first name was Roscoe Pendleton. Tildy grabbed her blue doughnut phone from her nightstand. Besides Leon, Tildy was the only kid her age who didn’t have a cell phone. Daddy Lou wasn’t a fan of modern technology, and he operated under the belief that no person under the age of sixteen had a legitimate need for such a thing.

  So instead, Daddy Lou gave her a 1974 Sculptura landline phone, which was shaped like a doughnut, that he’d gotten from the Landarini estate.

  Tildy dialed the number for Roscoe Pendleton. It rang once. Twice. Then a man’s gruff voice said, “Yup?”

  “Sorry,” said Tildy, her voice cracking. She wasn’t used to calling people she didn’t know. Or talking to them. “I mean, uh, hi.”

  “Is this Lou?”

  “Uh, no.” Tildy took a deep breath and wound the phone cord around her finger three times. “This is—”

  “The name Gubbers came up on my phone,” said Mr. Pendleton. “And the only Gubbers I know is Lou.”

  She began to think this was a mistake. What if Mr. Pendleton told Daddy Lou that she’d called him? Tildy cleared her throat. “Um, this is Tildy. Lou’s—”

  “Lou’s girl?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I was just over at Lou’s this morning,” said Mr. Pendleton. “Got a heck of a deal on a box of doilies. But I was outbid on embroidered throw pillows. You tell your daddy to let me know next time he comes across more of those.”

  Tildy swallowed. “The reason I was calling is there might’ve been a necklace that ended up in your box of stuff that wasn’t supposed to be there.”

  “A what?”

  “A necklace?” she said.

  “In my box of doilies?”

  “Uh-huh,” she said. “Maybe. I don’t know?”

  “Nope,” said Mr. Pendleton. “I already went through my box and laid out everything on my dining table. That’s the first thing I do when I come home from a sale. I like to look real close at all the things I bought and admire them for a while.” He laughed. “And then I decide where I’m going to put them in my house. That part usually takes me most of the day. The deciding. That’s what I was doing when you called me. But there’s no necklace here. I’m looking at everything I brought home right now. Thirty-eight doilies, various sizes, and one painting of a dog floating on a raft in a bowl of soup. No necklace.”

  No necklace. Tildy winced. “Okay then, thanks.”

  “No problem at all,” he said. “Just remember to tell your daddy about those throw pillows.”

  Tildy hung up the doughnut phone. Then she drew a line through Roscoe Pendleton’s name on her list.

  All of a sudden it was hard to breathe. She stared at the other names in the notebook. Maybe one of them had her necklace. But what if they didn’t?

  And there was another problem. What if she called those people and they didn’t answer? They’d see the name Gubbers on their phone like Roscoe Pendleton had, and then what if they called back wondering why a Gubbers called them? And then what if Daddy Lou or Mama answered? And what if—

  There was a knock at her door. She froze.

  “It’s me,” said Marguerite.

  Tildy opened the door. Marguerite was holding a white stick with a thin strand of blue cotton candy hanging off it. “Here,” she said, shoving the stick at Tildy. “Take it before I eat any more.” Her hands and lips were blue.

  “Thanks,” said Tildy, looking around her room to see where she could put it.

  “Me and Mama had a good day,” said Marguerite, flopping on Tildy’s bed. “You should’ve come.”

  Tildy sat down beside her.

  “We went to a movie and then to an art museum and then had pizza and cotton candy.” Marguerite licked her fingers.

  Tildy could always depend on Marguerite to tell her things without having to ask. She lay back onto her pillow. Marguerite moved closer so that their arms were touching.

  “Mama said that the pizza wasn’t as good as the pizza in New York City, but I thought it was way better than the frozen pizza Daddy Lou gets from the store.”

  Tildy glanced at Marguerite. She was looking up at the ceiling, where the orange butterfly lights were bouncing under the whirring ceiling fan.

  “What else did she say about New York City?” Tildy asked, keeping her eyes on the butterflies.

  “Nothing,” said Marguerite. “I didn’t want to know any more. So I didn’t ask.”

  Tildy wasn’t sure she wanted to know any more, either.

  “She said she missed us,” said Marguerite. “A lot.”

  Tildy wanted that to be true, but if it was, why didn’t she call? Why didn’t she come back sooner?

  The hole inside her widened. As if all the nothing that was in the hole needed more space.

  “Oh, I almost forgot,” said Marguerite. “We got to meet the camper lady who’s staying in the parking lot at the auction house. She has purple hair. And a daughter who’s twelve.” She turned toward Tildy and pointed at the cotton candy. “Are you going to eat that?”

  Tildy handed her the stick.

  Marguerite licked off the last of the blue string. “They’re coming for dinner tomorrow. Mama’s making spaghetti. Make sure you don’t say anything about the meatballs this time.”

  “What?”

  “The last time Mama made spaghetti and meatballs, what you said, remember?” said Marguerite. “About them being burnt?”

  Tildy searched her memory. “I did not.”

  “Yes, you did. Remember? It was a couple of days before she left,” said Marguerite, balancing the stick between her nose and upper lip.

  Tildy sat up in bed. She thought hard. She tried to remember anything before the 186 days when her mama was gone. She kind of remembered a spaghetti dinner, but she didn’t remember the meatballs being burnt. And she definitely didn’t remember saying the meatballs were burnt.

  “Do you remember anything else about the days right before she left?” Tildy asked. Maybe there had been signs that their mama was going to leave, but Tildy didn’t see them. When you looked backward in time, you could see a lot more than when you were right there watching it all happen in front of you. When you didn’t know something terrible was about to happen.

  If there were signs before, they could be on the lookout for them now. Then they’d know if she was going to leave again.

  Marguerite said, “She would go off by herself sometimes. For long walks. Remember?”

  Tildy did remember that. A couple of times she went for a walk after dinner and didn’t get home until after Tildy was in bed.

  Marguerite squeezed Tildy’s hand. “I don’t want her to leave again.”

  “Remember what Daddy Lou told us?” said Tildy, squeezing back. “He said that children aren’t the reason that parents leave.”

  “Can they be the reason they stay?”

  “I don’t know.” Tildy laid her head on her sister’s shoulder. She thought about finding her necklace. “Maybe.”

  CHAPTER 23

  Leon

  There wasn’t enough Ultra Cool Breeze–scented deodorant in the world to make Leon sleep in the same room as that candlestick. Not after that woman’s creaky voice said “Mine!”

  Before getting into bed he had stuffed it in the laundry room closet in between the extra blankets and his grandfather’s electric heating pad. Even from all the way down the hall, though, the candlestick still haunted him.

  He thought, Whose voice was it?

  He thought, Why did that voice talk to me?

  The next day, Leon waited for Tildy at the auction house. “I need to talk to you,” he said as soon as she got out of Daddy Lou’s truck. “Something happened with that candlestick you gave me. Something very, very strange.”

  Daddy Lou came around to the front of the pickup. He patted Leon on the back. “How’s Weezie doing?”

  “Not so good,” said Leon.

  “Aw, that’s tough. I sure hope she opens the tavern again soon. Nobody makes a better Salisbury steak, let me tell you.”

  Leon nodded.

  Then Daddy Lou said to Tildy, “I’ll see you inside.”

  “What about the candlestick?” Tildy asked Leon as soon as her father was gone.

  “It belonged to Frederica Verne, right?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “I think she might want it back. Yeesh.”

  Tildy eyeballed Leon. “Huh?

  “I was trying to contact my grandfather yesterday,” said Leon. “Using the Gift. And then the flames flickered and the curtains blew and a creaky woman’s voice said ‘Mine!’ and I think it’s got to be that Frederica Verne lady.”

  “Or maybe it was your imagination,” said Tildy.

  “That’s a negative.” He picked up his pet cockroach from his shoulder. “It was real. Even David Attenborough heard her. But the thing I want to know is,” said Leon, “was Frederica Verne troubled?”

  “Troubled?”

  Leon nodded. “She might be one of those restless spirits who wants to take over my body and make me rob a bank or something. I’d want to steer clear of her if that’s the case. But if she wasn’t troubled, then she’s probably just a spirit who wants to communicate with the living. Which is fine with me, because maybe she can help me get in touch with my grandfather.”

  “Why didn’t you just ask her?” said Tildy.

  Leon moved his hair out of his face. “Uh, well, I was taken by surprise. And when you’re taken by surprise, you don’t always think of the things you want to ask. So was she?”

  “I don’t know,” said Tildy. “I never met her. I just know she collected a lot of stuff. Maybe she was troubled.” Then she thought, Maybe everybody is.

  “My grandmother says that if I don’t know somebody, I should always assume positive intent, so I’m going to believe that she’s a good spirit. Hey, maybe she can help find your necklace.”

  “About that,” said Tildy. “I need a favor from you.”

  “From me?” He smiled. Tildy had never asked him for a favor before.

  “I need you to call a couple of people and see if they got my necklace at the auction by mistake.”

  “Why do I need to call them?”

  “Tildy!” called Daddy Lou from the door of the auction house. “I’ve got a job for you!”

  “Be right there!” she hollered back. Then she turned to Leon again. “Because when I called Mr. Pendleton, he knew that it was me before I even said it was, because our number and Daddy Lou’s name showed up on his phone. And I don’t want it getting back to Daddy Lou or, worse, Mama. If you call from your house, and your grandmother’s number showed up on their phone, they could call you back and it’s no big deal. You just say you lost a necklace at the auction, and do they have it? Okay?”

  “Okay,” said Leon. Although he wasn’t sure it was okay. “What if my grandmother answers? She’s been very particular about things lately, and I wouldn’t want to upset her nerves any more than they already are.”

  Tildy’s face fell. “Oh,” she said. “I didn’t think about her answering.” She sighed. “What I need is somebody with their own personal cell phone.”

 

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