The Sixty-Eight Rooms (3 page)

“Jack!” Lydia said in a loud whisper. “Come out of there. You were only supposed to look!” Jack dutifully obeyed her.

Ruthie opened her mouth to form the question “What did you find?” but Jack shot her a quick look that said,
Don’t ask me now!
The two of them stepped out of the alcove and into the main space in front of Mr. Bell and Lydia. Jack closed the door behind them.

“You know, my little girl used to come back here and do her homework after school when she was young—younger than the two of you. She used a box as a desk. She’s all grown up now. I’ve been working here for that long!”

“Thank you very much for letting us take a look,” Ruthie said.

“Yeah—that was great!” Jack added enthusiastically. Mr. Bell smiled and winked at the two of them. He
reached out to shake their hands and then Jack’s mother’s hand as well.

“I really enjoyed our conversation. I hope we’ll bump into each other again soon,” she said to him.

“The pleasure was mine,” he answered.

“Okay, you two, back to the group,” Lydia declared. The rest of the class had already assembled at the entrance to the exhibit.

“Wait till you see what I found,” Jack said under his breath to Ruthie.

“What? More money?”

“Better!”

“There you two stragglers are!” Ms. Biddle scolded, coming around the corner toward them. “Next time keep with the group, okay?”

“Sorry!” Jack said with a smile.

“Well, all’s well that ends well,” Ms. Biddle answered, smiling back. No one ever stayed mad at Jack when he smiled at them. Ruthie thought that Jack was really smiling about the fact that he had some newfound treasure in his pocket—and it was something he didn’t seem to want anyone else to see. That was how she knew it must be something fantastic.

O
N THE BUS FOR THE
return to school, Jack waited until everyone was busy. He looked around to make sure no one was watching.

“Look!” He pulled a small metal key with lots of decorations on it out of his pocket, like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat. He held it in the palm of his hand. Then he rubbed it a little with his sleeve and it glinted silvery gold.

“It’s beautiful!” Ruthie was impressed.

“It’ll be the best one in my collection by far!” Jack said. “I wonder what it opens.”

“Are those initials on it?” Ruthie could see fancy letters inscribed in the metal, adorned with carvings of leaves and vines.

“Looks like a
C
and an
N,”
Jack said.

“No, that’s an
M,”
Ruthie corrected. Jack turned it over in his hand and the two of them studied it. “It looks valuable,
Jack.” As she looked at it a new thought crossed her mind. “Maybe you stole something important!” At that moment a blueberry muffin came flying across the bus and landed in Ruthie’s lap. Jack quickly closed his fist around the key and put it back in his pocket.

“Sorry about that,” a voice from the front yelled. “I meant that for Ben. Throw it on back, okay?”

“I don’t think so,” said Ms. Biddle, walking down the aisle and holding out her hand for the muffin. “You guys know the rules: no throwing food—on the bus or anywhere else!” Ruthie held up the muffin for her.

“What are you two looking so guilty about? You weren’t the ones throwing food, were you?”

“We were just minding our own business, Ms. Biddle,” Jack said, adding, “That was a great field trip, by the way.”

Sheesh
, Ruthie thought.
He is such an operator sometimes!

“Why, thank you, Jack. And please thank your mother again for being a chaperone.”

“She likes to do junk like that. No problem.” He smiled.

“Okay, class,” Ms. Biddle announced. “We’re almost back at school. Put away your cards, food wrappers, CDs, you name it—I want this bus spotless. Anything you leave on the bus gets tossed!”

As they gathered their backpacks Ruthie said, “We’ve got to get back to the museum. What are you doing tomorrow?”

“I’m going to the museum with you!” he replied instantly.

“Ruth Elizabeth Stewart!” her mother’s voice called to her. “Come and get your backpack off the dining room table. And please set the table for dinner!”

“All right, all right,” Ruthie answered grudgingly. She was using her parents’ computer, which was set up in a corner of the living room, to Google information about the Thorne Rooms. “I’ll be there in a sec.” When a sec turned into several minutes, her mother came over to her.

“Homework?” she asked.

“Uh-uh. I’m looking up the Thorne Rooms,” Ruthie replied. “We saw them today at the Art Institute.”

“I hope you saw more than just dollhouse rooms today! That doesn’t sound very educational.”

“Have you ever seen them, Mom?”

“Not those actual rooms, but I’ve certainly seen miniatures before. I had a dollhouse when I was a little girl.”

“Then you shouldn’t criticize what you don’t know about,” Ruthie snapped. “You always tell me not to.” She immediately felt a little guilty about being so hard on her mother, but she couldn’t help it.

“You’re right,” her mother agreed, but Ruthie could tell she was still feeling impatient with her. “Now please set the table.”

Ruthie absently went to get the knives, forks and spoons, unaware of the scowl on her face.

“You know, sweetie,” her mother said as she came back into the room carrying the salad, “you should take me
through the rooms sometime and show me what you liked about them. I’ll be more open-minded—especially about something you find interesting.”

“Okay, Mom,” she answered. Her mom went back to the kitchen. But Ruthie couldn’t stop thinking about the rooms and how beautiful they were. She looked at the plain silverware in her hand and the paper napkins they always used. Everything she looked at—the plates, the table, the chairs, the room itself—seemed boring compared to those rooms, and she couldn’t help feeling that her surroundings mirrored her life: okay but nothing special. Dull. Then she thought about the key Jack had found and what—or whom—it might belong to. Maybe it was a valuable antique that had been lost and they would get a reward of thousands of dollars for finding it. Now, that wouldn’t be dull! Or perhaps the key had a mysterious but important history. She felt a little shiver of excitement about the unknown possibilities the key might hold.

Ruthie’s parents dropped her off at Jack’s the next morning on their way to watch Claire’s soccer match. When she arrived, Jack hadn’t finished breakfast yet. Meals at his house were served on a table made from an old wooden board that had been sanded and polished smooth but still had lots of dents and grooves in it because it had been used for something else before it was made into a table. The board sat on four tree-stump legs. The chairs did
not match; Jack sat on a science-lab stool that he could spin around and around—as long as no one else was eating at the time, his mother had ruled. This morning Lydia had made blueberry pancakes, and she offered some to Ruthie.

Jack had decided it would be fun to eat with chopsticks. He speared a pancake dripping with syrup and plunked it in his mouth.

“Jack, you know you’re not supposed to hold them that way! Hold them correctly,” his mother directed. Ruthie was surprised that Lydia didn’t make him stop altogether, since she usually insisted he have really good table manners. But she seemed preoccupied this morning.

He ignored her direction. “So, Ruthie,” he said after a gulp, “my mom says she knows that guard guy she was talking to yesterday … what was his name again?”

“You mean Edmund Bell?”

“Yeah, that guy.”

“I recognized his name from his ID tag,” she explained to Ruthie, “and he fit the description of someone I’d heard of. He was a photographer.”

“What do you mean ‘was’ a photographer?” Jack asked.

“He had a great start at a career about twenty-five years ago. Everyone wanted his photos.”

“What did they look like?” Ruthie asked.

“As I recall, Edmund Bell was known for beautiful portraits of people from all over the world. But he was especially praised for a series he made in the African
American community here in Chicago. He was really talented. But then he just stopped working. I don’t know why.”

“I liked him,” Jack said.

“So did I. Do you two have much homework this weekend?”

Jack looked at Ruthie for the answer. “Not too much, thankfully,” she replied.

“We’re going to go back to the museum this morning,” Jack told Lydia as he chewed. “Ruthie wants to see the Thorne Rooms again and I said I’d go with her since her parents won’t let her go by herself.”

“Mmm. That sounds nice. More pancakes, Ruthie?”

“No, thank you. They’re great but it’s my second breakfast.” As she got up and took her plate to the sink, Jack asked his mom something that Ruthie half wished she hadn’t heard.

“Mom, are we gonna have to move?”

His mother sighed. “I hope not, Jack. I really like this loft but … Well, don’t you worry about it. Something will happen, I’m sure.”

Ruthie couldn’t help pondering those words:
something will happen
. That was exactly how she’d been feeling since yesterday.

R
UTHIE AND JACK ARRIVED EARLY
, so they had to wait outside by the big bronze lions that guard the steps leading up to the front entrance of the Art Institute. It was a cold and gray February morning. They were not the only people waiting, but they were the only two kids without grown-ups attached. Ruthie’s parents had just started letting her go to a few places in the city without them, but she wasn’t allowed to go anywhere by herself yet. They liked that she was with Jack. They thought he had street smarts that they hoped would rub off on her. Her parents had recently given her a cell phone, but she wasn’t supposed to use it for any social calls; it was strictly for communicating with them. It was a start, she thought, and it gave her some freedom.

As soon as the doors opened they made a beeline for the central stairs and ran down to the lower level. The
Thorne Rooms were just around the corner. Ruthie felt something in her stomach as soon as they entered—not a bad, sick feeling but a sort of warmth that slowly spread in all directions. It was weird but good. She turned and noticed a look of frustration on Jack’s face.

“Where’s Mr. Bell?” he asked, his tone impatient.

“Why do we need him?” she asked.

“Ruthie, don’t you want to find out what that key belongs to? We need to get back in the corridor.”

“We can’t do that, Jack.” Even though Ruthie was very curious about what the key belonged to, she figured that the answer—if there was one—would be found by looking at the rooms from the front.

“Well, we can’t even think about it till Mr. Bell shows up. Just look interested,” he directed.

“I am interested!” She had been so preoccupied this morning with her own wish to spend more time gazing into these little worlds that she hadn’t really paid much attention to Jack’s desire to get another look in the back.

“I’m going to ask the lady at the information desk what time he gets here,” Jack decided abruptly.