The Hole in the Wall - Lisa Rowe Fraustino [33]
Now I was holding my breath so I wouldn’t miss a word. Eggs? Our petrified eggs? Miss Beverly had used them, and now Boots was mad at her? Why? What had gone wrong? If I wasn’t trespassing I’d have popped out and asked her.
Miss Beverly waited a moment, then sighed, and said, “Okay, Stanley, I’ll leave you alone to work. Dinner’s at six.”
We would have been home free if Barbie hadn’t picked that moment to let out her perfect bloodcurdling scream and bolted out of the closet. Straight into Miss Beverly.
Miss Beverly backed away, covering her face as if she didn’t want to be seen, then uncovered, stood tall, and smiled meekly.
“Barbie!” she said. “Why, you gave me quite a scare! And Sebby! What are you kids doing here?”
I was fighting with the coat I’d been standing in, trying to get out of it, and tripping over all the junk in the closet. Milk crates and pails full of doodads, a bunch of furniture, and office supplies, just to name a few.
Miss Beverly seemed not just surprised, but nervous to see us. Her hand fluttered around the hair behind her right ear. Something about her seemed very different. She looked five inches taller, that’s what! Most of it was her neck, sticking straight up.
“Miss Beverly! What happened to your . . .” Oops, I better not say hump. I didn’t know what to say. Grum had told us enough times to go ahead and lie around the house slouching and not drinking our milk if we wanted our backs to look like question marks without answers for the rest of our lives. There wasn’t any cure for osteoporosis.
From the top of her dahlia bulb nose to the bottom of her long, white, unwrinkled neck, Miss Beverly turned red. “It’s, oh my, ’twas my own fault, really. Stanley warned me not to use the . . . , but, oh dear, I can’t really say, I’ve said too much already. . . .”
She stepped outside, looked nervously around the yard, came back into the barn, shut the door behind her, and said, “You still haven’t told me what you’re doing here.” With her long neck she looked ludicrous, like Alice in Wonderland when she grew tall.
“We actually came to visit you,” I said, “and we—” I looked to Barbie for help, but she was looking warily into the closet. I was on my own. “We were on our way to see you and just stepped in here to get out of the rain.”
Miss Beverly opened the blinds and let the sun in. “Would you like to try that again?”
Hey, when did the sun come out? The only thing I could think of to do next was cock my left eyebrow. A unique charm I got from Pa. He said the ol’ Daniels eyebrow could get a fella anything he wanted from the ladies.
Sure enough, Miss Beverly melted into a smile. Then she looked closer at me and squinted. “Sebby, do you have something hidden under your raincoat?”
“What?” My hand went to Celery’s head, and I imagined those chicken eyes moving. “Oh, that. It’s . . . kind of embarrassing, actually. It’s a . . . rare medical condition.”
“Oh, dear. I’m sorry to hear that,” Miss Beverly said. Then, after an awkward pause, “Look, you children are welcome to visit me at the house anytime, but Stanley doesn’t allow guests in his workshop. He usually keeps it locked when he’s not here. He must have gone off in a hurry. He did leave the place a sight.” She stiffly bent to pick up the empty paint cups.
On her way to the garbage can she paused in front of the map with the swirling patterns sketched under the ocean back to Kokadjo. To turn her head she twisted her whole body around, not just her neck. “Such an imagination he has,” she sighed, tracing her finger along the lines.
And then my sister surprised me. Instead of taking the chance to get out of there unscathed, she started pulling items out of Odum’s closet, saying, “Sorry, Miss Beverly, don’t worry, I’ll put everything back. I just have to find out what bit me!”
Out came a lampshade, lawn chairs, computer