Read The Sixty-Eight Rooms Online
Authors: Marianne Malone
The Sixty-Eight Rooms
TO JONATHAN —
for everything
.
TO MAYA, NONI, AND HENRY —
for the bedtime stories
.
1.
A Better-than-Average Field Trip
4.
Mr. Bell
6.
The Plan
8.
Jack’s Idea
9.
Sophie
10.
Attacked!
14.
A Wish Fulfilled
16.
Detective Work and Ringing Bells
18.
Solved!
A BETTER-THAN-AVERAGEFIELD TRIP
G
ETTING UP IN THE MORNING
was always a challenge for Ruthie. It wasn’t waking up that was difficult—it was getting out of bed. She had to scrunch down to the end of her bed and climb out through the narrow opening between her desk and her sister’s dresser. Then she had to be careful where she placed her feet on the floor because the under-the-bed storage bin for her summer clothes didn’t quite fit under her twin bed. It stuck out just enough to trip her or stub a toe. The other difficult part was to avoid waking up her sister so Ruthie could claim the bathroom first. Claire was older and seemed to need much more time in the bathroom before school—or before going anywhere—than Ruthie did. Ruthie didn’t understand why that was but it was an observation she had made many, many times.
Claire was nice enough—not horrible like some siblings
Ruthie had heard of. But she took up so much time and space. Mostly space. In their little room, Claire’s stuff dominated by far. She had a computer and a big printer on her already larger desk, all her sports equipment, lots of clothes piled everywhere and a growing mountain of college brochures, SAT study guides and application information. Claire was a junior in high school and starting the process of applying to college. Ruthie counted the days till her sister went away to school. Then she would have her own room.
This morning Ruthie woke up first and made her way through the small path in their bedroom to the doorway without waking Claire. She looked down the hall—great luck! The bathroom was empty and all hers. Among the kids at her school she was the only one whose family shared one bathroom.
Ruthie turned on the shower first to let the water warm up, took her one bottle of shampoo off the wire rack and tried to find a space for it on the shower ledge next to Claire’s and their mom’s gazillion hair care products. It wasn’t easy.
As the warm water ran over her back she stood there for a moment, mulling the fact that the shower was just about the only place in her apartment where she could be alone and think privately. She envisioned the day ahead of her, the field trip and what the chances were of something cool happening today.
Why not today?
After a really exciting or unusual thing happens, do people look back and say, “I thought something would happen today”? Probably not.
But why not?
Ruthie wondered.
Don’t people ever have a feeling, a sign that something great will happen?
Her time alone was interrupted when the door to the bathroom opened, not once but three times.
From behind the map-of-the-world shower curtain she heard her dad say, “Sorry, Ruthie, I’m just looking for a book I thought I left in here last night.”
“Dad, please!” Ruthie said.
“Don’t worry, I can’t see anything! Now, where did I put it?” He closed the door.
Sheesh!
A minute later it was her mom. “Ruthie, have you seen your father’s book on American history?”
“Mom, do you mind? No, I haven’t. He already asked me.”
“Well, don’t take too long in the shower. Your sister needs to get going.”
Right on cue, Claire came in and started brushing her teeth.
“Claire, can’t I have any privacy?”
“Oh, Ruthie. Don’t be a prude. Hurry up, okay?”
Six hundred and thirty-five days till she goes to college
, Ruthie groaned to herself.
An eternity!
“Hey, Ruthie! Wait up!” Jack Tucker yelled as he slid down a patch of ice on the sidewalk outside their school.
“Do you have your permission slip?” Ruthie asked.
“Yup. Right here,” he said, patting his pocket. “I almost forgot it, though! Again!” Jack laughed.
Jack had been Ruthie’s best friend for two years in a row. Sometimes she wondered why. Most of the boys in her class had other boys for best friends and most of the girls had other girls. Maybe it was because they were such opposites. Jack’s mother said the two of them were like complementary colors on the color wheel—colors like red and green that naturally go together. Jack had the kind of personality that could make interesting and unusual things happen and that fascinated Ruthie. Unlike him, she felt as if she was always watching and waiting for things to happen. Her mother said it was a birth-order trait. All Ruthie knew was that she hoped something interesting would happen to her
sometime
in her life and that she wouldn’t have to wait forever.
Ruthie and Jack were in the sixth grade at Oakton, a private school in Chicago. Ruthie had been going there since second grade, when her mom got a job teaching French and Spanish in the upper grades. It was a big deal to get to go there. Her mom used to teach in the public schools like her dad, but her current job at Oakton enabled Ruthie and her sister to go for free. Her mom often described Oakton as a mini United Nations. Ruthie’s class makeup represented every continent (except Antarctica, as Jack always pointed out). Even their teacher, Ms. Biddle, had an interesting background; she told lots of stories about her mother, who was from Nigeria, and her father, who came from England. Compared to Ms. Biddle and so
many of her classmates, Ruthie thought her own family background pretty drab.
As far as Ruthie knew, she and Jack were the only scholarship students in their class. His mom was an artist and they definitely weren’t rich. He had won a brainiac scholarship two years ago but Ruthie didn’t think he was all that smart—he could never remember things like permission slips and homework assignments.
“If you hadn’t called me this morning to remind me, I’d be spending the day in the library—again!”
“Isn’t your mom coming to chaperone?”
“Yeah, but she’s gonna meet us at the museum. What’d you bring for lunch?”
“Tuna. Boring,” Ruthie said flatly.
“Look what I have.” Jack pulled out a beautiful, shiny black box from his backpack. Inside were little compartments filled with cool stuff to eat: Chinese party mix, sushi rolls, M&M’s, miniature chocolate chip cookies and a couple of handfuls of tortilla chips. “It’s called a bento box. One of my mom’s friends just came back from a trip to Japan and brought it for us. It’s how Japanese kids carry their lunch, I think.” He handed her some M&M’s.
Jack closed the bento box and reached into his pocket. “And I found all this change under some parking meters on the way to school this morning. Two dollars and fifty cents!” Jack said, demonstrating his knack for finding money and useful junk. Once again, Ruthie thought, Jack
had turned lunch into an interesting event. The thing about Jack was that everyone else thought he was interesting too. Ruthie imagined that if some other kid brought a bento box to school, people would think he was weird. Certainly she herself couldn’t get away with doing anything too different. But somehow Jack could. He was just that kind of guy. Lucky.
Today would be a pretty good day, Ruthie thought as the class rode on the bus to the Art Institute. No tests. No boring assemblies. No educational films. It was cold out but sunny. And Ruthie liked going to the Art Institute. There were always lots of people walking around, but it hardly ever felt crowded. Each room seemed to feed into the next and she could never quite remember if she’d been in one room before or not. Every corner felt different—like an endless maze.
When they arrived at the museum it was just opening, and Jack’s mother, Lydia, was there waiting for the group. Ruthie thought she was very pretty and young-looking. She dressed young: jeans, tall boots, a cool sweater, long earrings. Ruthie’s mom didn’t dress like that. Her mom wore “serious” clothes.
Ms. Biddle introduced them to the museum guide who would be leading the tour. They were studying Africa, so the tour was of the African art collection. There were a lot of scary and weird masks, sculpted pots and oddly shaped
headdresses. Some of it was funny to Ruthie. She especially liked the animal sculptures.
“What do you think, Ruthie?” Ms. Biddle asked her when the tour was over and they were instructed to (a) answer some questions on a worksheet and (b) make a sketch of one of the objects in the cases.
