The Center of Everything (7 page)

“I have to do errands with my aunt tomorrow,” Ruby says.

Nero shrugs. “Another time,” he says as he heads for the circulation desk. The grandfather clock is gone, and Ruby can see that the librarian has returned to her station.

How long has she been talking with Nero? Ruby checks her phone. Dang! He did it. Just like in school, Nero has sucked up all the time she was supposed to be doing something else. Maybe she can come back on Thursday. She has promised Lucy that she won't skip another of her rehearsals (
I do better knowing you're there
, Lucy had said), but maybe she could come by earlier? Nero wouldn't be here to distract her, and she could focus. She had to focus. By then there would be only two more days until Bunning Day.

B home in 5 minutes
, she texts Aunt Rachel. Quickly, Ruby grabs
A Wrinkle in Time
from the
YOU MUST READ THIS
shelf and checks it out. She arrives at Aunt Rachel's at 4:26—exactly when Aunt Rachel expected her.

It isn't until 8:12, after Ruby has gone home and eaten dinner and taken a shower and sat down with
A Wrinkle in Time
, that she thinks again about her wish, and that terrible not-yet-finished feeling returns. Thanks to Nero, she is no closer to figuring things out. Was she supposed to understand tori? Or something else?

In the Pepperdine Motors service center, right next to the time clock, Gigi had hung a poster:
IF YOU'RE NOT GETTING THE RIGHT ANSWERS, MAYBE YOU'RE NOT ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS.

Ruby has been pretty good at knowing what questions to ask in the past. People didn't sigh when she asked them, or shake their heads, or tell her to stay on topic, like they did with Nero.

But what if wish questions are different?
Ruby runs her finger around the edge of the book's award sticker while she thinks. What if figure-out-how-a-wish-works questions are wild, off-topic, spinning-out-of-control questions that she doesn't know how to ask?

And then she understands.

It
was
fate that brought her to the library.

She may not know how to ask those kinds of questions—but Nero DeNiro does.

If Matthew Bennet had known that he would be the only boy his age who was trying out for the play, he would not have done it. He didn't really want to be Hansel. He was thinking maybe he'd be the dad. Or one of those gingerbread kids. But he was loud and a fourth-grader and a boy. So the director said he was Hansel.

Which was kind of okay until he found out that he had to be in the parade, too.

It was like a promotional thing, all the kids from the Hungry Nation Youth Theater walking in the parade and handing out flyers so that people would know about the show. And that was kind of okay too. He had even told a couple of friends that he was going to be in the parade and they could look for him.

That was before he knew about the lederhosen.

Lederhosen are shorts, except not normal shorts. They are dorky green leather shorts and they're scratchy and tight and they have these crazy ladder-looking suspenders with flowers embroidered all over the place. Like the kind an organ grinder's monkey might wear. Only stupider on anyone who is not a monkey. Lederhosen are what Matthew Bennet is wearing as he walks down the middle of Cornelius Circle.

He wishes he had never tried out for the stupid play.

He wishes he had never agreed to be Hansel.

He wishes that there was no such thing as leder-stupid-hosen.

It is not just the lederhosen that look stupid either. His whole costume is stupid. He has on a floofy white shirt and a hat like Peter Pan's—with an actual feather in it. He has on knee socks. Brown knee socks. And brown lace-up shoes, too. He is carrying a fake loaf of bread.

But that's not the worst of it.

The worst of it is all the little kids watching the parade. The ones who can't read yet. Who can't figure out that the words on the banner carried by the gingerbread dancers say
HANSEL AND GRETEL AT HUNGRY NATION YOUTH THEATER
.

The kids who see gingerbread and think only of Christmas.

“Look!” they say. “It's an elf! It's Santa's elf!”

“I'm not a stupid elf!” Matthew had yelled at the first kid who said it. “I'm a stupid German kid!” But his director had dashed up and told him to be quiet and smile and wave.

He was being quiet now, anyway.

It would be easier if Gretel were here. More people would know they were Hansel and Gretel if they walked together, probably. Even if he and Lucy looked nothing alike. They'd be dressed the right way, and, anyway, Lucy was such a good actor, everybody would know just from looking at her who she was.

It wasn't fair that she got to do karate instead.

He didn't blame her, though. He'd be kicking stuff if he could.

At least he knew his lines. Lucy didn't yet. She was always messing them up onstage. One minute she'd be all Gretel-like, and the next minute her face would crack like one of those boards she was kicking and someone would have to tell her what to say. And then she'd say it six different ways, like she was hoping one of them would stick. But then she'd forget again.

If that happened in front of an audience, it'd be really embarrassing.

Almost as embarrassing
, he thinks,
as wearing lederhosen.

“Hey, elf!” yells a kid.

I'm freakin' HANSEL!
Matthew wants to scream.
I've got a stupid fake loaf of bread!
That's it. The next kid who says anything about Santa or what they want for Christmas, he is chucking the loaf at them. He doesn't care.

“It's Santa's elf!” someone squeals.

Matthew tightens his grip on the loaf and looks for the source of the squeal. It is a little girl with chocolate on her face. She is grinning ear to ear. Rats.

And standing behind the chocolate-faced girl is that friend of Lucy's who comes to some of the practices. Double rats.

Matthew sees Lucy's friend bend down to say something to the little girl. “He's Hansel,” it looks like. The kid's face changes from a grin to a frown.

“Elf!” she yells at him.

This parade cannot end soon enough.

The stage lights are on, but the Hungry Nation auditorium lights are not. Ruby covers her phone so that when she checks the time, the actors won't see its glow. In three minutes Nero should be at the library.

For the past two days Ruby has been thinking that his crazy questions might be the key to figuring out what else she might need to do to make her wish come true. But yesterday she had been stuck helping Aunt Rachel with her errands, and as soon as Ruby woke up this morning, Lucy had called, reminding her about that afternoon's rehearsal.

“I'll be there,” Ruby had promised, and she had kept her word. She is here.

Up on the stage, Inner Gretel shivers. “It's getting late,” she says.

“But you mustn't go,” says the witch. “I have more treats for you inside.”

Lucy's Inner Gretel looks cautious, but her pretend brother dashes across the tape line that indicates where the door to the witch's gingerbread house will stand once the tech department has finished painting it.

“Hansel!”
Inner Gretel calls. She peers around the imaginary door frame as if she cannot see Matthew Bennet's Inner Hansel standing right there in front of her. A long silence follows.

Ruby checks the time again. Nero is at the library now.

“‘Don't go in there,'” the director says in a tired voice. “Lucy, your line is: ‘Hansel, don't go in there.'”

Lucy blows out a deep breath. “Sorry. Okay. Hansel, don't go
in
there. Hansel, don't go in
there.
”

Ruby should go to the library. Obviously, she isn't helping Lucy by sitting here. And if she's quick, she can be back before Lucy even notices she's gone.

She finds a flyer for violin lessons on the floor under one of the theater seats and scribbles a note on the back of it, just in case.

Returning library book. Be right back!

 

When she gets to the library, she spots Nero at one of the round tables, reading intensely.

She shouldn't interrupt him—but Bunning Day is only two days away. This might be her only chance. Ruby picks up a copy of
When You Reach Me
from a nearby display. Okay. If she drops the book, then Nero is bound to look up. If he says hi, then that is a sign that she should go over to his table and talk to him and listen to his questions and—

“Hey, Ruby Tuesday,” Nero says.

Dang! She hasn't dropped the book yet! Does that mean that Nero saying hello is
not
a sign? Or that it is such an
important
sign that fate or the Universe or Captain Bunning or whoever is in charge of signs didn't even need her to drop the book to send it?

“Did you like that one?” Nero asks.

“Huh?” Ruby says. It takes her a second to realize what he is talking about. “
When You Reach Me
? It won a Newbery.” There is a gold sticker on the front of the book that says so. “This one did too,” she says, pulling
A Wrinkle in Time
from her backpack.

“I can see that,” says Nero. “But I can't see if you liked them. You have to tell me that part. Or make your own sticker that says so and put that on the book.”

Ruby laughs. “That'd be all right,” she says, imagining her face on a shiny gold seal. “The Pepperdine Prize.”

“So,” says Nero, pushing his hand through his hair, “would those books win the Pepperdine Prize?”

In her years as a Bunning Elementary student, Ruby has been asked whether or not she liked a particular book seventy-four times, although she could not tell you this number exactly. What she could tell you is that if you said you liked this part or that part, people would fill in the rest. If they liked the book, they would think you did too. And if they didn't, that you didn't either, and they'd think the one part you mentioned was the
only
part you liked. Most of the time, Ruby figured, people just wanted you to agree with them. And so most of the time she found a way to do so.

But for some reason, Ruby isn't so worried about that with Nero. “Yeah, they'd win a Pepperdine Prize,” she says. “Except both those girls—Meg and Miranda—they have this stuff happen to them that doesn't happen in real life. Time and Mrs Which and aliens and all that. Miranda is more regular, but there's still that yelling man and living in New York City.”

“People do live in New York City in real life,” says Nero.

Ruby knows this, of course. But to her, New York City is the Empire State Building and those lions in front of the library and people selling hot dogs from carts. It seems impossible that kids really live in New York City. That they walk home from school and play soccer with their friends and eat apple crisp, just like kids do in Bunning.

“You ever read
Holes
?” Nero asks.

Ruby nods. “I loved it.”

“I didn't read it for a long time. I thought it was going to be about a donut shop. Once I found out it was about something else, I was mad that I hadn't read it sooner.”

“I know,” Ruby says. “You get this idea of what something is like, and that gets in the way of finding out what it's
really
like.”

“Exactly.” Nero looks straight at Ruby. She gets this feeling he's not just talking about books and that he's going to ask some sort of crazy Nero DeNiro question, and suddenly Ruby understands how all her teachers must feel, torn between curiosity and the fear of losing control of things.

“Did you know that a donut is not a circle?” Ruby says quickly. “It's a torus. Like an inner tube.”

“See? You might think you know all about Ruby Pepperdine, but then she pops out this weird little fact and you think, how'd she know that? And why?”

Poke. Poke.

“It's just this thing I'm sort of interested in, maybe.”

“
Maybe
you're interested in it?”

“Tori—that's the plural of torus—they're . . .” What were they? “They are unchanged by homeomorphisms, such as bending or stretching.”

“Homeomorphisms,” Nero repeats.

“Such as bending or stretching,” Ruby says. She waits for Nero to say something, to ask the right question so she'll know whether homeomorphism has anything to do with making her wish come true.

“Why are you interested in homeomorphisms?” he asks.

That is not the right question.

Ruby tries something else. “Have you ever thought about time travel?”

“Every day at seven a.m. I wish I could travel to two thirty so I could go play Frisbee. Or come here.” He looks at Ruby in that Nero way again.

Poke.

“What about backwards? Did you ever want to travel back in time?”

“Sure,” says Nero. “Lots of times. I'd go check out the real ancient wonders, for one thing. Have a chat with Callimachus.”

“Anything else? Would you go back in your own past?”

“Do I have a time machine? Can I go back as often as I want? Or is this more like a wish thing? Can I only go back once?”

“Once,” says Ruby. “Just for a minute or two, and then you're back to now.”

“A minute or two?” Nero shakes his hair out of his eyes, and Ruby can see his forehead crinkle. “So really you're asking what I'd want to relive—like the very best minute of my life?”

Or the worst
, Ruby thinks.

“Can I reserve the wish for when I'm older? Like maybe when I'm a geezer I'm going to want to relive the moment I became the president of Pixar or I scored the winning goal at the World Cup or I met my first girlfriend, or, um, you know, something.” Nero's face is suddenly red. “I should go,” he says. “We've got a paper-goods delivery today. I need to help my mom.”