Jewel of the East (4 page)

For Felix, it was a relief to stay out of The Treasure Chest. While Maisie schemed and plotted ways to get back into Elm Medona, Felix put time travel and Great-Aunt Maisie’s orders to either do it again or find her long-lost brother, Thorne, far from his mind. Instead, he practiced for the upcoming spelling bee, went to the Jane Pickens Theater on Saturday afternoons with kids from his class, decided to run for student council, and spent his free time daydreaming about Lily Goldberg.

Lily Goldberg sat one person down and across from him in school, the perfect position for him to study her unnoticed. She was the smartest
person in the class. And, Felix thought, the prettiest girl. Her dark hair was cut short like a pixie’s, and she wore funny dresses from the vintage store with patterns of things like teapots or flamingos on them. Sometimes he got a faint whiff of mothballs from her. Lily was adopted from Hunan, China, when she was a year old. He knew this because she gave a report on it with a slide show of her adoptive parents in China picking her up. Felix loved the pictures of baby Lily, dressed in a purple snowsuit, staring at the camera all perplexed. He loved, too, that she still stared out at the world looking perplexed.

Felix had made a good friend at school. His name was Jim Duncan, and more and more Felix found himself going off after school with him. Jim Duncan liked going down to the docks and looking at all the sailboats, too. The only difference was that Jim knew a lot about sailing and could tell Felix stories about who owned which boats and which races they’d been in. His own father had done the Newport to Bermuda race six times, and Jim told Felix stories about storms and squalls his father had sailed in. Jim liked to read, too, and on cold afternoons they went to the Coffee Grinder on Bannister’s Wharf and drank hot chocolate, looked out at the boats,
and discussed the books they were reading. Jim Duncan liked postapocalyptic stories and Felix liked old novels, but it was fun to trade back and forth and to talk about them.

Of course all of this made Maisie extremely jealous. Once Felix invited her along, but all she did was scowl and complain that the scones tasted stale. Later, at home, she’d accused him of liking Jim Duncan more than he liked her.

“That’s silly,” Felix said. “You’re my
sister.
”

But Maisie stayed upset with him all night and the next day, too.

To keep Maisie happy that week after Thanksgiving, Felix told Jim he had to go straight home after school. He spent the afternoons with Maisie playing Rummikub and listening to her latest schemes for breaking into The Treasure Chest or finding Great-Uncle Thorne.

By the end of the week, he was forgiven.

The student council elections were on December 8, and Felix went to school early to put up posters. He had worked on them most of the night before, writing “F
ORWARD
W
ITH
F
ELIX
” in fat bubble letters on light-blue poster boards. The hallways were still dim when he arrived at Anne Hutchinson Elementary School. The early
morning light cast a golden tone on the empty school that made Felix feel warm and happy. Mr. Hamilton, the custodian, must have just polished the floors because of the sharp smell of lemons and the high shine on the old wood. Humming softly to himself, Felix took the roll of tape from his pocket and began to hang the posters on the walls between classrooms.

From somewhere down the hall, he heard a soft whimpering. He paused and listened. Yes, it was definitely the sound of someone crying.

“Hello?” he called into the emptiness.

The crying stopped.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

No answer.

Felix walked in the direction the sound had come from. At the end of the hall, he saw that the light was on in the supply closet and the door stood ajar. Carefully, he pulled it open. There, among the reams of printer paper, lined paper, math paper, construction paper, and manila paper sat Lily Goldberg.

At the sound of the door creaking open, Lily looked up, her face wet with tears and her eyes puffy from crying.

But her voice was strong and angry as she said, “Get out of here! Now!”

Felix yanked the door shut, but he didn’t walk away. Instead, he pressed his cheek to it and said, “What’s wrong, Lily?”

“None of your business,” she said, just as angrily. “Go away!”

He hesitated. “I can’t leave you in a closet crying,” he said.

“I’m not crying,” she said, then began a new round of sobs.

Felix opened the door again. Lily had her face in her hands, her short, dark hair sticking up on her head and her short fingernails covered in chipped, baby-blue polish. She was wearing her dress with the teacup pattern and a pair of scuffed, black Doc Martens. Felix thought he had never seen a more beautiful sight. Except for the crying.

“Lily?” he said.

“What are you doing here, anyway? It’s like seven o’clock,” she said without looking up.

“Putting up my campaign posters,” Felix said. “For student council,” he added.

Slowly, she lifted her head. The smell of mothballs and fruity shampoo filled the air.

“What are you doing here?” Felix asked her.

“I don’t want my parents to see me cry, so when I feel sad I come to school early and hide in here so I can cry in peace.”

She glared at him.

“If you tell anyone about this,” Lily said, “I’ll kill you.”

“Okay,” Felix said.

He started to walk away, but Lily called after him. “Come back here,” she said.

Felix did. When Lily moved to make space for him on the floor of the closet, he squeezed in next to her.

“Maybe you’ll understand,” she said thoughtfully. “I mean, you had to leave New York, right?”

Felix nodded.

“See,” Lily said, her perplexed eyes gazing away from him, “I was born in China, you know? And my parents, the ones who adopted me, are great. They are. That’s why I come in here to cry, so they won’t hear me. I love them and everything. But I have this…” Her slender fingers plucked lightly at the front of her dress. “This
hole
in me. This
ache
.”

Lily glanced at Felix as if to gauge his reaction. He nodded.

“I just wish I could go back there. To China. And see where I came from, you know? Maybe even see my birth parents.” She paused. “You probably think that’s totally dumb, right?”

“No,” Felix said. “Not at all. My father lives
halfway across the world, and every day I wish I could see him.”

“He does?” Lily said.

“Qatar,” Felix told her.

She nodded, clearly impressed.

“Want some help hanging your posters?” Lily asked softly.

“Yes,” Felix said. He stood and held out his hand to help her to her feet.

Side by side, they hung the posters along the sixth-grade corridor, outside the cafeteria, on the preapproved campaign bulletin board in the library, and on the gymnasium walls. They finished just as the first bell rang. By now, the school was awash with the sounds of students arriving, their voices and footsteps and locker doors slamming.

“Well,” Lily said, slinging her backpack onto her shoulders. “See ya.”

“Wait!” Felix said, not ready to let her go.

She turned her perplexed face toward him.

“We’re having a Christmas party at our house tomorrow. Want to come?”

To his surprise, Lily didn’t take any time to consider. Instead, she just said, “Sure,” as casually as anything.

“You did
what
?” Maisie said angrily to Felix.

She couldn’t believe that her brother had invited someone to the VIP Christmas party without even asking her if it was okay. And Lily Goldberg of all people?

“I like her,” Felix said.

“Well maybe I don’t!” Maisie snapped. Now Felix would be fawning all over Lily Goldberg at the party, and Maisie would be all by herself, miserable.

“She’s really nice,” Felix said.

Maisie flopped onto the sofa, her skirt puffing out around her as she did. They were both dressed for the party, waiting for their mother to emerge before they went downstairs. Maisie had on the chocolate-colored silk skirt she’d worn to bar mitzvahs last year and a black cashmere T-shirt. Felix wore khakis and a white button-down shirt with a clip-on red bow tie and a slightly too big navy-blue blazer their father had bought for him for those same bar mitzvahs.
You’ll grow into it
, their father had said. Felix was still waiting for that to come true.

“I cannot believe my life,” Maisie moaned.

Their mother appeared in the living room doorway. Maisie had grown so used to her in her work clothes, slightly rumpled suits in neutral
colors and low heels, that she gasped when she saw her in a slinky black velvet dress, sheer black stockings, and high heels.

“Come on,” their mother said. “I don’t look that bad, do I?”

Felix grinned up at her. “You look gorgeous!”

She smiled her shiny, lipsticked lips. “You two dress up pretty nice yourselves.”

“Do you know that he invited someone?” Maisie said.

“You could have asked someone, too,” their mother told her.

“Like who? I don’t have even one friend here.”

“You will soon, sweetie. I promise,” their mother said gently. “Come on. It’s time to go.”

On their way downstairs, Felix stopped to pick up something shiny on the landing between the third and second floors. The shard! Maisie must have dropped it when she’d raced upstairs earlier to get ready. He remembered her taking off her winter layers as she’d run, her scarf and then her mittens and then her puffy purple jacket. Felix held the shard in his palm for a moment. There was no time to go back up now and put it somewhere, and Maisie had no place to keep it in that outfit. He shoved it in his jacket pocket and caught up with Maisie and their mother on the next stairway.

“I so wish Great-Aunt Maisie could have come. Don’t you?” their mother was saying.

Felix did not wish that at all. Every time they’d seen her since Thanksgiving, she’d pestered them to find Thorne. Or to go back into The Treasure Chest.
I’m losing my patience,
she’d told them just a few days ago.

“But she hasn’t been doing so well lately,” their mother continued. “Poor thing.”

Felix got a heavy feeling, like he’d swallowed rocks. It was their fault Great-Aunt Maisie wasn’t doing well.

They arrived at the bottom of the stairs on the first floor, exited the way they would if they were getting into their car, then walked around to the front of Elm Medona to enter.

White lights twinkled in every shrub and tree. Oversized wreaths hung on the enormous front doors where two red-uniformed butlers stood, ready to open them for guests. Shiny cars filled the circular driveway in front of the house and valets scurried to open doors and help elegant ladies and tuxedoed men step out. Standing there, Felix could almost imagine what it must have been like a hundred years ago, when Phinneas Pickworth threw lavish balls and people came from all over Newport and
beyond, dressed in fancy clothes and jewels. Great-Aunt Maisie had told them that her father kept peacocks that opened their glorious tails almost on cue for guests. Often, the parties had themes: the White Party, where everyone dressed in white and ballerinas danced excerpts from
Swan Lake
for the guests; the Masked Ball, where guests wore elaborate costumes and masks and Phinneas Pickworth had jesters perform for them; even Night on the Nile, with women dressed like Cleopatra, snake charmers, and a real sarcophagus that Phinneas had acquired on a trip to Egypt was opened, revealing a shriveled mummy inside.
Seven of the guests actually fainted,
Great-Aunt Maisie had told them, her blue eyes shining with delight at the memory.

Maisie and Felix followed their mother inside. Immediately, butlers with heavy, silver trays filled with champagne glasses appeared. Their mother took one, her face glowing in the candlelight. The smells of a dozen different perfumes filled Felix’s nose.

“Can we go find the buffet?” Maisie asked.

“Don’t get into any trouble,” their mother warned them.

“We won’t,” Felix promised.

Their mother disappeared in a swirl of velvet.

“Come on,” Maisie said, clutching Felix’s arm. “With so many people and so much excitement, no one will even notice if we sneak upstairs.”