Is She for Real? (5 page)

“You're unbelievable!” Bethany laughed. “Okay, fine.
He's really cute. But this is a girls' night, right? We don't need to talk about boys. Hey, how about
I
interview
you
guys?”

But suddenly they were all startled by a loud scratching at the window. It sounded like branches tapping and rubbing against the window—but there were no trees outside Lissa's room.

“Lady Warwick!” Lily screamed, and the three other girls immediately started shrieking along with her.

The next morning Lissa, Olivia, and Bethany were embarrassed over their outburst. But Lily remained spooked. “It was Lady Warwick!” she insisted. But after saying it a few times in the bright daylight of the kitchen as they munched on waffles, even Lily had to admit that
maybe
they had overreacted.

Then Nate wandered in and asked them what all the screaming the night before was about.

“We heard scratching at the windows!” Lissa and Olivia said at the same time, and then they all cracked up.

“Maybe it was Lady You-Know-Who trying to get in,” Nate said, casually drizzling honey on his waffle. Lissa noticed he seemed to keep one eye on Bethany to see if she was frightened or not.

Bethany saw him looking at her and smiled shyly.

“I'm off to the beach. Bye, screamers,” Nate said to the girls. He proudly held up his metal detector and waved it like a sword.

“Off to hunt for buried treasure?” Lissa asked sarcastically.

Nate was cute and popular, but Lissa felt he definitely had a weird side. He loved to go to tag sales with their mother, which Lissa thought was about the lamest thing imaginable. But Nate secretly felt that going tagging was the most fun you could have. Each tag sale was like its own little treasure hunt, and everything was so inexpensive. Sure, there was a lot of junk, too, but as his grandmother used to say, “One man's junk is another man's treasure.”

Like, for instance, the metal detector that he had bought at a tag sale last summer. It was quite old, probably from the 1980s, and his mother had explained that you used it to hunt for buried treasure on the beach. It looked like a cane with sort of a Frisbee at the end of it. You held the Frisbee part to the ground, and the machine beeped when it detected metal. The metal could be a piece of foil, a coin, or a piece of jewelry.
Who knew when you'd come upon a real find?

Nate had been taking his metal detector to the beach regularly, stopping only in the dead of winter when there was too much snow on the ground. So far he had found a bunch of coins, an earring, and a watch. And lots of bottle caps and tin cans. And, of course, that one piece of buried treasure, the ruby ring.

That night Bethany wrote in her journal.

 

It was a fun sleepover at Lissa's. I'm lucky to have made friends so fast. I make friends pretty easily, but still. The setup is good, with my place and Lissa's being practically next door to each other. Except that old town graveyard in between, of course! It doesn't spook me like people might think. I'm just not that easy to spook. Anyway … we had pizza, and Nate didn't talk to me that much, but I think he likes me. Lily thinks so too. She asked me if I thought he was cute.

Then there was this crazy tapping at the window that scared everyone. Lily was the most scared. Some town ghost story or something that everyone's obsessed with, though
they claim not to be! We're even studying it in history class.

Well, I do think he is cute. That's my answer. I kind of hope he does like me.

Anyway, we made cookie dough, which I had never eaten raw before, but it was totally delicious, and they interviewed me, which was kind of fun, and I got ambushed by Howard the cat. All in all, an excellent sleepover.

Oh. I forgot to write anything about school, ha-ha! It's fine. Nate and I are in history and math together. In history I heard that the graveyard between my place and the Carlsons' place is haunted. But I don't believe it!

The week in school went quickly. Bethany seemed to sail through her classes. When the girls asked her about it, she modestly explained that she had covered a lot of the material already at her old school.

Though Lissa didn't have history class with Nate and Bethany, they had the same unit in local history and the same homework. They were each supposed to choose an aspect of colonial life in Old Warwick that they wanted to explore for the rest of the semester. Lissa chose food, her favorite topic. Nate chose town government, Bethany chose the role of women in colonial life, Olivia chose religion, and Lily chose professions. When they were finished with their research, they would each give a presentation to the class.

All week, Lissa researched colonial food. She had to admit a lot of it didn't seem too appetizing. Salt pork! She was glad she'd been born when she was. The major similarity she found between now and then was that people would fish for food.
Nate would have been right at home back then
, Lissa thought.
He totally thinks he's a real fisherman when he's on the pier, even though he never catches anything!

Another Friday night, another sleepover
, Lissa thought happily as she helped her mom make spaghetti sauce. The two chopped onions and talked.

“You'll love this, Mom,” Lissa said, wiping the tears from her eyes. The onions were making them water like crazy. “We started the unit on local history in class.”

“Finally!” said her mom, smiling widely. “I bet you'll love it too. It includes a field trip to the graveyard at the end of the year, right?”

“Yup,” Lissa said. “And the historical society museum.”

Her mom could barely contain her pleasure. “Do they need chaperones?”

“You wish.” Lissa grinned. “Bethany's researching the role of women in colonial Old Warwick,” she went on as she finished the onions and moved on to the zucchini.

“Oh, that sounds so interesting,” her mom said as she sautéed the onions. “I'll have to ask her about that. And how about you, miss?”

“Food, of course!” Lissa said.

“Really?” her mom asked. “That's neat. What about your brother?”

“Government, of course!”

“Of course.” Mrs. Carlson smiled. “Nate's getting more and more interested in politics, isn't he? You know, we have some old Yankee cookbooks in the B and B library if you'd like to use them in your research. Hey, I have a great idea. If you give me a list of things that the early settlers made, based on your finished research, we'll make a special menu of them for the guests.”

Lissa rolled her eyes. “I'm doing research online. Anyway, I don't think many of the guests would like salt pork!” She laughed. “But maybe a fish dinner would work. Speaking of dinner, Bethany, Lily, and Olivia are coming at seven, so they'll be eating with us, okay?”

“Sure,” her mom said. “So what's Bethany like?”

“She's great,” Lissa said. “She's kind of a city kid, but she's not snobby about it. She has cool clothes and seems to know everything we're learning in school because she already learned most of it at her old school. But she's really nice. Lily and Olivia think so too. Oh, and it's her birthday on Sunday.”

“Are you going to make her a cookie dough cake?” her mom joked.

“Actually, yes,” Lissa said. “And we got her red lip gloss because she likes to wear lip gloss. She usually wears pink, but we found this cool red color that's supposed to taste like strawberries, and I happen to know she loves strawberries.”

“That's sweet,” her mom said, adding a large can of chopped tomatoes and some big pinches of Italian seasoning to the sauce. “I'm sure she'll like that.”

Everyone lined up in the kitchen to help themselves to the big bowl of pasta and the giant steaming pot of sauce on the stove.

“Everyone
must
love this sauce,” announced Lissa. “Because I made it.”

“You and
Mom
made it,” Nate corrected her.

“True,” Lissa said. “But notice how beautifully the vegetables are chopped. That's my handiwork right there.”

“They
are
quite beautiful,” said Bethany.

They took their plates to the table. Once everyone had their big piles of spaghetti in front of them, they all dug in.

“Olivia and Lily, you know about our Friday night tradition whenever we sit down together, right?” Mr. Carlson asked.

“Where everyone says a good thing about this past week?” Olivia asked, impaling a large chunk of zucchini on her fork.

“Right. We go around the table,” Mr. Carlson said. “I'll start. The highlight of my week was driving up to Hartford for an antique show and finding the perfect small table for one of the guest rooms.”

Mrs. Carlson smiled. “You really love those antique shows, don't you, Ed? Okay, mine was picking all the basil I've been growing in the garden and using it in this sauce, which I must admit came out really well.” Everyone nodded in agreement.

“It's really good, Mrs. Carlson,” Bethany said with a smile.