Leeva at Last, page 3
Harry Flowers reacted with a look full of such complex emotion that even Leeva couldn’t read it.
“People? What are they for?” he repeated.
“Yes. What is the point of people, please, Harry? What good are they?”
Harry dropped his chin to his hands and studied Leeva hard. He looked so worried that she leaned in and gave him a pat on his shoulder. She’d never given anyone a shoulder pat before, and she’d certainly never received one, but she knew from her soap opera that it was a comforting thing to do.
The pat did it. Harry shook off his worried look. He rubbed his fingers through his hair, which was so tightly curled it looked as if it could spring off his head at any moment. He studied her even harder. Finally he asked, “Can you read?”
Of course, Leeva had taught herself to read years before, and she told him so.
He drew out a chart titled, “Determining Reading Level.” “Starting at the top, read the sentences aloud until you get to one you can’t.”
Leeva did this for a while, but since the sentences were all about someone named Nancy who never did anything interesting at all, she soon grew bored. She picked up the acting librarian’s book instead. “‘This above all: to thine own self be true,’” she read. “‘And it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.’”
Harry stared across the desk at her. Leeva recognized his expression as Stunned Happiness. “Hamlet, by William Shakespeare,” he said. “I guess you can read just fine. How much can you carry?”
“I don’t know. I exercise with Vim and Vigor at Any Age every day, so I’m pretty strong.”
“All right. Say, ten books. Let’s go find some. Wait, no,” he interrupted himself. His eyes darted up toward the ceiling, and he broke into a smile—small, but real. He held up one finger, as if asking Leeva to stay where she was—which she would have done anyway, she loved this place!—and then he rose from his desk, spiraled up the staircase to the third floor, and disappeared.
Leeva heard a faint murmuring of voices, then a few moments later, Harry came back down holding a sheet of paper. He circled the library, consulting the paper and picking books off the shelves.
He returned and stacked the books into her arms. “My aunt feels these will give you a good start on learning what people are for. Read them, then come back and we’ll give you ten more.”
Leeva couldn’t believe her luck. Ten books, all for her! She hurried for the door. But just as she got there, Harry called, “Wait.”
Leeva pulled the books closer to her chest. Reader, now that she had them, she wasn’t going to give them up easily.
“Come back,” he repeated. “But from now on, come in the afternoons. We open back up at one o’clock each day.”
Leeva read all ten books, then returned to the library the next afternoon and got ten more. She did this every day for a week, because once she’d discovered the miraculous world next door, that hedge wasn’t going to keep her from it anymore, no sirree. To keep her outings a secret, Leeva always broke through at the same spot and fluffed the branches back in place, just in case her parents ever prowled the backyard.
But wait. Let’s back up, Reader.
When Leeva walked in that second afternoon, Harry Flowers said, “I’m awfully sorry. I was supposed to get you a library card yesterday.” He pulled out a pen and an important-looking yellow card. “Now, first name?”
When Leeva told him, he said, “Oh! That’s a great name. And I bet it has a great story to go along with it.”
Leeva looked down at the floor. “No. It doesn’t.”
Apparently, when Leeva was born, it had come as a nasty shock to Mrs. Thornblossom that she had to put any effort at all into the business of being a mother.
The maternity nurse, Nurse Blackberry, who was a very patient woman actually, had had it with the mayor’s constant demands—Do this! Fetch me that!—all day long. She was fed up, ready to snap. And now here she was, holding the birth certificate, asking what the new baby’s name was and hearing in reply, “Don’t you know who I am? You do it, nurse!”
Well, Nurse Blackberry snapped. “Look! The last name is filled in already: Thornblossom! All that’s left is …” She rapped her pointer finger sharply on the empty line. “First and middle names.”
Mrs. Thornblossom kicked her stilettos against the sheets and flopped onto her pillow. “I’m famous. You do it!” she ordered again.
Nurse Blackberry would not. She was truly at the end of her patience. She stabbed the document harder. “First name. Middle name,” she read through gritted teeth. “Leave a space.”
“There. That wasn’t so hard, was it?” muttered Mayor Thornblossom. “Write it in.” She snapped on her satin eye mask, rolled over, and began to snore.
It took the nurse a moment to realize what had just happened: She’d been told to name this darling baby Leave a Space. And the horrid mother had rolled over and gone to sleep!
Well, Nurse Blackberry did the best she could under the circumstances: She spelled it in an attractive manner.
Each time her parents related the story, they cackled in glee. But Leeva knew it wasn’t funny. In fact, it was a pitiful thing to have been named so carelessly. But as a positive person, she consoled herself that it could have been worse. What if Nurse Blackberry had yelled “Get a grip!” or “Print neatly!” or “You’re driving me bonkers!” instead? How about those for names? Clearly it could have been much worse.
Still, Leeva didn’t want to tell the story to anyone, and certainly not to the very nice, but sad-faced, acting librarian. “Leeva,” she repeated, spelling it. “Leeva Spayce—”
Just then came another crash from above, this one accompanied by a growling so loud it could probably be heard on the street.
Harry dropped the pen and sprinted up the broken stairs.
When he returned, he was frowning. “Unbelievable,” he muttered, taking his seat. “No money for the library for three years, but plenty for a statue …”
“Oh, you know about Mayor Thornblossom’s stat—”
“Stop!” Harry swept a warning finger to his lips and pointed up. “Don’t ever let my aunt hear that name. Those Thornblossoms are … Well, never mind. It doesn’t involve you.” Harry picked up the important-looking card. “Now, Leeva … what was it? Space?”
Leeva gulped. “S-P-A-Y-C-E,” she spelled. She pressed her lips together firmly against her forbidden last name.
“Well, Leeva Spayce, this card means you are trusted to take out books and return them unharmed.” Harry held it out.
Leeva’s hands trembled as she reached to take it. A card of trust! Reverently, she slipped it into the pocket of her T-shirt, as close to her heart as possible.
The library card was a treasure, of course. But there was another gift that day.
“Oh, I almost forgot: the reason I wanted you to come back in the afternoon.” Harry sprinted up the spiral staircase again and a minute later came back down. He handed Leeva a small bundle wrapped in a blue-and-white cloth napkin.
Leeva peeled up a corner. Inside were three plump, crumbly cookies that smelled delicious.
“From Aunt Pauline. Chocolate chunk with toasted hazelnuts today.” Harry stacked ten new books into Leeva’s arms, balanced the cookies on top, and Leeva went back to her house and ate the cookies slowly and read the books quickly.
Each afternoon for the rest of the week she returned.
Sometimes there were other people in the library. Leeva greeted them Hello and they greeted her Hello back, which made her feel as if they were on the same team, the team of people who visited this library.
Sometimes the library was empty, which was nice, too, because then Harry wasn’t always dashing up to the nonfiction floor for people who couldn’t use the stairs. Leeva liked having Harry all to herself. Harry really listened to her, which was a new experience. Instead of telling her to stop talking and go away, his whole being seemed to invite her to keep talking and stay awhile.
Either way, she brought back her ten books every day and Harry replaced them with ten more his aunt suggested.
Each afternoon, Leeva also brought back the empty napkin, neatly folded. And each afternoon she received three more delicious cookies.
By the way, Reader, there had not once been so much as a cookie crumb at the Thornblossom home. Apparently celebrities never ate cookies, or if they did, they didn’t tell Celebrities This Week magazine about it. Nor were cookies ever on the Rock-Bottom Sale shelf at Cheap-O Depot Grocery Warehouse. So you can imagine how those cookies brightened Leeva’s life.
More importantly, ten books for seven days is seventy books. And books, Leeva found out, did a whole lot more than merely look good as backgrounds in photographs. Reader, here are some of her favorites:
New Kid; Charlotte’s Web; Where the Mountain Meets the Moon; Bud, Not Buddy; Other Words for Home; One Crazy Summer; Because of Winn-Dixie.
(Reader, that last one also shows the incredible, courageous, somber, hilarious, steadfast value of dogs, and after she read it, Leeva resolved to read seventy books about that someday.)
Ten books and three cookies each day. After a week like that, Leeva felt ready.
“I want to go to school and be with people,” Leeva plunged in after dinner. “People are not just for getting money from and being famous to. People are for helping you find your dog who’s afraid of lightning, and for eating pickles with. They are for saving your life if you are going to be killed just because you’re a runt. For pretending to be the family of a hungry runaway boy so he can get a meal. People keep you from feeling lonely or scared or—”
“Where did you get that malarkey?” her mother asked.
“I read seventy books. The people in those books—”
“Books? People in books don’t have money!” her father laughed. He tapped the side of his head, as if he was about to impart something very wise. “So they aren’t real. They are just printed words on paper.”
Leeva realized that her father was both right and wrong. He was right that if you opened up a book, you would see printed words. Not real people. But he was also wrong. Because now Leeva knew that as you read a book, those words became real people, doing real things. By the end of a book, those words left you weeping or cheering or vowing to change your life.
Words had true power, Leeva realized. No wonder she searched the Nutsmore Weekly each Friday to learn a new one.
Before she could pursue this revelation, her mother snapped off her television. She got up. She began to pace. Clink-clink-clink. “Where did you get those seventy books?” she demanded, stopping in front of Leeva. “Certainly not in this house.”
Leeva gulped. Then she straightened up. Her parents lied, but she wouldn’t. “At the library. Next door.”
Her father looked up from his show. “Did you get any money there?”
“Money? Um … it’s a library. They lend you books.”
Mayor Thornblossom ducked to her mirror. She gave herself a wink. “Am I famous in there?”
“Famous? It’s a library,” Leeva repeated. “Some of the books are famous, I think.”
Leeva’s father seemed to lose interest then. But her mother frowned and began to grind her heel. “Didn’t you talk about me in there?”
“I never said your name,” Leeva admitted truthfully. “I can’t.”
Her mother’s eyes widened. Then they narrowed dangerously. “Is that so?” She loomed over Leeva, scritch-scritch-SCRITCH. “Well, then, you’re not to go into that library again.”
Leeva gasped. The something that lived in her chest, the thing that hated unfairness, raised its fists. But she remembered just in time: She had to be on guard now, more cautious. The scritching was getting sharper, a clear warning sign. If handing out punishments were a sport, her mother would have a neckful of gold medals, and she was just getting warmed up. Who knew what she might do next?
Leeva told the thing in her chest to settle down for now, fold its hands on its lap.
Two new programs began on her parents’ sets. “Stop talking and go away,” Leeva’s mother said.
And Leeva did.
She ran up to her room and flung herself on her bed. I should run away, she thought bitterly. Lots of kids in the books she’d read this last week had run away. It made their families sorry, all right. It taught them a lesson.
Leeva rolled over. Who was she kidding? The kids in those books were brave enough to strike out alone. Was she?
And even if she were brave enough to run away, where would she go?
The next morning, for the first time ever, Leeva went back to bed after her parents left for work. She was feeling sorry for herself, and bed is an excellent location for that.
But around the middle of the day, when she couldn’t bear to look at the cracks in her ceiling any longer, she pulled her stack of library books out from under the bed.
It had become clear over the past week that the lives of the characters in the books she’d read had little in common with her own. None of them, for example, checked their Employee Manuals for what they must and must not do. Come to think of it, none of them even seemed to have Employee Manuals.
Leeva had finished A Wrinkle in Time at midnight. Its heroine, Meg, had endured many trials trying to rescue the people she loved. She had bravely crossed galaxies—no hedge boundaries for her!—and traveled through time; she had faced an evil disembodied brain. Through it all, she’d never given up.
Friday’s vocabulary word had been Persist—to continue firmly in a course of action in spite of difficulty, opposition, or failure. The way Meg had persisted inspired Leeva now.
She got out of bed. She crossed to her window. She rested her cheek on the glass and reached into her pajama top to stroke her library card, which she wore in a little plastic bag tied with twine around her neck so it would be close to her heart.
The card trusted her to bring back her books, and so she would do that today, along with her cookie napkin. But today, and from now on, she could not go inside.
No more greetings. No more books. No more cookies.
No more Harry Flowers.
Thinking about this made her arms and legs feel too heavy to move. She could barely lift her head off her chest.
Nevertheless, she persisted.
She washed her face. She brushed her teeth. She dressed. She went outside, pushed through the hedge, and placed the books and the napkin on the table on the back stoop. And then she knocked on the door. Even her knuckles felt heavy.
“Come on in, Leeva,” Harry called.
Hearing his voice made Leeva’s throat tighten. She had to fight to hold back her tears. She opened the door a crack. “I can’t,” she sniffed. “Not anymore.”
When Harry came out, she told him the news. “My mother won’t let me. It’s a punishment.”
“Forbidding you to come into the library is a punishment? That seems awfully unfair.” Harry looked even sadder than usual.
Leeva picked up the napkin and wiped her eyes. And doing this, she realized something important: Although nothing in her situation had changed, she felt better. While she’d read in many of the seventy books that sharing sadness was one of the things that people were for, she’d just experienced it herself.
And then, with her newly sharpened wits, she realized something else. Something quite astonishing: Yes, her mother had forbidden her to step inside the library, but she hadn’t said a word about her leaving the yard. In their disappointment at not becoming richer or more famous, her parents had missed Leeva’s bigger offense!
“Maybe, Harry,” Leeva said, brightening a little, “maybe we could visit out here sometimes?”
Harry nodded. “How about this? The library is closed between noon and one every afternoon. You come here at that time, and we’ll have lunch together. And then I’ll bring some new books out, and it will be almost the same.”
Leeva held up the napkin. “Also the cookies?”
“Sure, also the cookies.”
“Could we start today?”
Harry checked his watch. “I’ll go up and make lunch.”
He left and returned a few moments later with a tray of food: two egg salad sandwiches with tiny sweet pickles on the side, two plump plums, and a jug of lemonade with two cups. He shared it all with Leeva. It was the most delicious meal she had ever eaten. Sitting on the sun-warmed boards of the stoop, Leeva felt as if she were being warmed too, but from Harry’s kindness.
Just then, a third-floor window creaked open. A woman popped her head out.
Harry pointed up. “That’s my aunt.” He motioned toward Leeva. “Aunt Pauline, this is the girl I’ve been telling you about.”
Leeva squinted up. Pauline Flowers wore a scarf that fluttered in the breeze and earrings that flashed silver in the sun. Purple hair crowned her head and her glasses were pink as flamingos.
Leeva cupped her hands to her mouth. “Thank you for all the cookies,” she called up. “They are the best things I have ever tasted. They are …” She searched for a word up to the task. “Deluxe!” she finished.
“Harry told me you can’t come inside.” She held up a just-one-minute finger. She ducked away, but quickly reappeared with a tin bucket. She lowered the bucket on a rope until Leeva could reach it. Inside was a bundle of still-warm cookies.
Leeva took it out, tucked yesterday’s napkin in the bucket, and bowed as Mrs. Flowers hauled it up. “And thank you for the books. They are …” Even after years of learning new words, Leeva couldn’t express how much the books had meant to her.
Mrs. Flowers seemed to understand. She crossed her hands over her heart. “Were they the right ones? Were they what you needed?” she called down, looking hopeful.
“Exactly the right ones,” Leeva assured her.
For an instant, Leeva saw a look of satisfaction shine on the librarian’s face. But then she heard the growl she’d heard in the library often during the past week. “The fact that I can’t do it myself just infuriates me,” she heard.
