Paperquake (24 page)

It was an old saying her father sometimes quoted, and it seemed particularly appropriate now. The puzzle from the past was connected to the present, with a strange dream at its center. No one could ever be sure what tomorrow would bring—but the dream held a clue to the future. There would be another earthquake; Violet knew that now as a certainty. But when?

After the Halloween Ball was over, most of the students vanished into cars lined up at the curb, but Violet waited for Mr. Koch and his wife. Sam, Beth, Jasmine, and Rose were sitting outside on the stone steps of the school waiting for Mr. Jackstone, who was coming to pick them all up. "I just have to get something from Mr. Koch's house," she told them as the teacher and his wife emerged from the big front doors. "I'll run right back."

"There you are, Violet," said Mr. Koch genially. "Ready?"

"Oh yes!"

"I'm coming with you," said Sam, stuffing his mask into his jacket pocket and hurrying after her through the crisp October dark. A few late-lingering trick-or-treaters straggled past them with bulging sacks of goodies. Sam tucked his arm through Violet's as they walked behind the Koches. "What is he going to give you that can't wait till Monday?"

"Something for my project," she murmured, unsure why she wanted to keep this newest letter to herself until she'd read it.
Maybe,
she thought uneasily,
I'm afraid of what it will say.

The teacher's house was just around the corner. Violet and Sam waited in the front hallway while Mr. Koch rummaged around in the drawers of a desk in the living room and his wife hung up their jackets. It seemed funny to see Mr. Koch inside a regular house, very much like Violet's own, rather than at the front of a classroom.

In seconds he had found what he was searching for, and he handed Violet the long white envelope with a flourish. "Take good care of it, and return it to me on Monday."

"Oh yes. I will." She held the letter securely with two hands in front of her.

"She'll guard it with her life," Sam promised. Then, as they left the house, he whispered to Violet, "And I'll guard yours with mine."

Before Sam could ask again about the letter, Violet took his hand and started running back to the others, the motion of her long skirt sending dry leaves flying. Just as they turned the corner, they saw Violet's dad driving up to the curb in front of the school, tooting the horn.

"What were you getting?" asked Beth as everyone was climbing in.

"Tell you later," replied Violet in a whisper, removing her large hat.
After I've read it myself.
She slipped the envelope into the pocket of her skirt.

But she didn't have a chance until much later. First, before they went up to bed, Lily and Greg had to hear all about the dance over a late-night snack of leftover pizza and slices of apple pie. Rose suggested popcorn. Violet, seeing her chance, volunteered to make it.

She read the letter in the kitchen while corn popped in the microwave. She read it straight through, then read it again.
This is bizarre,
she thought. She knew she had to share the letter now, try to have the others make sense of it for her.

When she carried the big bowl of fragrant popcorn back to the living room, her parents were gone. Sam was rolling out his borrowed sleeping bag on the living-room floor, and Jasmine, Rose, and Beth were all lazing around on the couches chatting with him.

She set the bowl down in front of Sam, then walked to the fireplace and stood in front of it. She cleared her throat, swishing her long skirt dramatically. She pulled the white envelope out of her pocket and waved it in the air.

"Look at Vi," yawned Rose. "Waving the white flag. Are you surrendering?"

"Was there a war? Did I miss something?" murmured Jasmine.

Beth's voice was as sharp" as the point on her witch's hat. "Come on, come on, already. Let's see it!"

"Wait a second—is that
mother
letter?" shrieked Rose, antennae bobbing madly. "Where on earth did you get it?"

"Don't tell me it's from Hal or I'll faint," moaned Jasmine. "I swear I will."

Sam sat down on top of his sleeping bag. He just looked at her, waiting.

"It's not a letter from Hal this time," Violet told them. "It's
to
Hal. It's been in Mr. Koch's family for years."

"Why would it be in Mr. Koch's family?" demanded Beth.

"Just another one of those coincidences," Violet said slowly, "which can't be coincidences at all. It turns out Hal and Laela were his grandparents."

She braced herself for the shrieks and screeches that would surely follow this announcement, but the others were silent. After a long moment, Sam summed up their reaction with a single word:"
Wow.
"

"The letter's really hard to read," Violet continued. "The writing is faint and all sort of cramped up together and blotchy, with ink stains and smudges. It's not handwriting I've seen before." Their silence filled the room with expectancy, and then Violet began to read aloud:

 

"
April 17, 1906, 8:00 in the evening—

"
My dear Hal,

"
I hope you will be able to read this. Always before I have dictated to Laela the letters I've sent you. But this time I must write to you privately.

"
This is a very difficult letter to write to one I hold in such high esteem, but write I must. You have been a stalwart friend to me since we first spoke at length last winter when you came to report the burglary. I have regarded you since then as someone special. I know it may not be seemly for me to write to you in such a frank manner, but I have little time left to waste in mannered conventions. I must tell you what is in my heart.

"
I know you say you love me and want to save me from my family; I know you have planned a wonderful, dashing escape. But I would not be fair to myself or to you—nor, indeed, to our mutual friend, Laela—if I did not tell you right now that I cannot marry you. No, Hal. I shall
never
marry you.

"
I am very ill indeed, though I know you have not wanted to believe this. The unvarnished truth is that I do not have long to live. The doctors have said this—I overheard them telling my father—and I feel it inside. My heart and my blood are so weak, I can barely lift my hand. But I must.

"
You have told me many times you will marry no
one if you cannot have me because to do so would spoil the memory of our 'amazing love'—to quote your own words. Oh, Hal, I need to tell you you have built up a fantasy world. There can be no happily-ever-after for us.

"
I will not live long, but you will. And I want you to marry and be happy in that life. Tour vow to marry no one saddens me, and my love and affection for you compel me to beg you to reconsider. I do not require that sort of sacrifice from you. Indeed, I will be unable to rest in my grave. You have been so good to me. You have brought me much joy. Your letters have been a. wonderful diversion for me in my illness. They, coupled with Laela's company, have helped me to cope with being bedridden and weak for so long now.

"
It is Laela I wish now to discuss.
She
is the woman I want you to marry instead of me. Yes, Hal. Laela loves you as much as or even more than I do. You have had a paragon as your friend for a long time now, but have been blind to her charms. It is time to open your eyes now, Hal, that you may see what perfect happiness you might have together.

"
She knows nothing of this note. I am writing it under great strain. I am so weak that my fingers are as water.

"
I will die very soon, Hal, and it saddens me that I cannot ever become your wife.

"
But Laela can—and it is my most pressing desire that you and she should make each other happy. I beg you, Hal, as my dying wish, to have her as your wife. And I give you both my blessing, and shall watch you from above.

Your V
"

 

Violet laid the letter on the coffee table.

"Wow," Sam said again, very softly. "That's heavy stuff.' He reached for the letter as if to assure himself that the words Violet had read them really were there on the paper. He passed the letter to Beth, who read it and passed it on to Rose and Jasmine. Their twin heads bumped as they bent over it. Violet sat on the floor near the couch and waited.

"What does it mean?" asked Beth finally.

"It explains why Hal married Laela," replied Violet. "It's amazing."

"What's even more amazing," said Sam, "is the way pieces of the story keep falling into your hands. I agree with you now, it
is
too amazing to be chance."

"It's what I keep saying." Violet reached over and smoothed the old letter. "One thing just keeps leading to the next."

"A real paper trail," Beth said.

"And an earthquake trail," said Violet pointedly. "Because all along there have been little quakes or tremors—almost every time I've found something. It's all got to be connected."

"But how can it be?" demanded Rose. She had been sitting silently through all their discussion, her expression tight and worried. "It can't be!"

"There were those jolts this morning, right?" Violet leaned toward Rose, her voice hushed. "And now more information has appeared. Laela's dream entry. Hal's name in the book. And Mr. Koch's letter from Verity."

"I don't like this," mumbled Rose. "Things like this can't really happen."

"How do you know?" asked Sam mildly.

"That's right." Jasmine nodded. "Whether they
can
happen or not, they
are
happening."

Violet nodded, too. "And there's going to be another quake. A big one." She shuddered, wrapping her arms tightiy around her knees. "It's part of—whatever all this is about. I
know
it."

"I think this is stupid!" cried Rose, slapping her hand down on Verity's letter. The others jumped. "What's the point of learning all this stuff about Verity and Hal and everything if all it does iswarnusthat there's goingto be a big earthquake sometime? I mean, there's nothing anyone can do about that, is there? It would have made more sense if it was what Vi was worried about in the first place, that somehow the letters were a warning personally for
her
—to keep her from being murdered. At least then we'd have a chance of
doing
something. You know, guarding her with our lives, looking out for killers in the bushes.
Something
.'" Two bright red spots stained Rose's cheeks, signs, Violet knew, that her sister was very upset. "This is all a waste of time. Instead of sitting down here getting scared about something we can't do anything about, we should just go to bed." Rose stood up. "Which is where I'm going. Good night."

The others watched in silence as she stalked out of the room.

"She's scared," observed Beth. "You can't blame her, really."

"And she's probably right." Jasmine sighed, also getting up. "It seems like we're in the thick of some really cool mystery, and the story of Laela and Hal is part of it, but in the end, we don't know why we're getting this story, and the story doesn't really have anything to do with the earthquakes, either. So I'm confused, and I'm exhausted, and I'm on the cleanup committee that has to be at the gym tomorrow at nine o'clock." She yawned. "So I'm going to bed, too. See you guys in the morning."

After her sisters left, Violet turned to Sam and Beth. "What are we supposed to do?"

"That's just it," Sam said gently. "I don't think we can do anything about anything. There's no way to pinpoint when a quake will hit. If Laela's dream were really any use, it would have told us
when.
"

"I think we should just keep researching the story of Laela and Hal," Beth murmured. "We can at least do that. I want to know what happened after Hal got this letter from Verity."

"We
know
what happened," said Violet with a sigh. "Verity was dying and she wrote this totally generous letter to Hal, so even though Hal loved
her,
he went along with her wishes that he should marry
Laela.
And that was nice for Laela, because she'd loved him all along anyway. But we still don't know what Laela felt so guilty about."

"The point is," Beth said wearily, "that there are all these tantalizing bits of information floating around, and they seem to lead to something—but then they don't."

"Is it magic?" mused Sam. "Or is it the ghost of Laela feeling guilty about something and trying to tell her story? Is it some mysterious force of nature that just sort of points out weird parallels between the life of a girl called Verity who lived ninety years ago and the life of a girl called Violet who lives now? Maybe. We don't know."

"Rosy and Jazzy are right," Beth said. "The best thing to do is just go to bed!"

She and Violet said good night to Sam and left him on the living-room floor, stretched out in his sleeping bag. They went upstairs and brushed their teeth in the bathroom, then climbed up the ladder into Violet's attic bedroom.

"I like your new room," murmured Beth, wiggling into her sleeping bag on the floor next to Violet's bed. "It's cozy. I wonder why you didn't think of moving up here ages ago?"

Violet hung the Victorian dress up on a hook in the rafters. She set the big hat on her desk. Then she climbed into bed and lay very still under her lavender quilt. Pieces of the day turned like a kaleidoscope in her mind: Hal's name in the book. Laela's diary entry. The dance. Mr. Koch's grandparents. The letter from Verity.

She thought about her new room.
Why did I move up here?

She'd made her decision to claim the attic for her own when she thought she might not have long to live. She'd invited Sam to the dance then, too. She was making braver decisions—all on her own—since she'd found Hal's letters.