The Fog (21 page)
Authors: Caroline B. Cooney
There was a patter of feet from the kitchen.
The Shevvingtons turned, laughing, to see who came.
It was Dolly.
Sweet.
Innocent.
Another Val. Another Anya.
How Dolly danced, red curls free from braids. Her body was elementary school size; a fragile collection of bones in bib overalls. “Isn’t it wonderful?” she cried to Christina. “Can you believe my luck? I’m off-island, too!” She turned her pixie smile into the towering faces of the Shevvingtons. “I get to attend sixth grade here!” She took the Shevvingtons’ hands and swung their heavy arms back and forth like a set from a square dance. “The Shevvingtons have been so wonderful to me, Chrissie,” she said. “I’m going to love living here!” She hardly saw Christina. She beamed into their eyes. Mr. Shevvington’s eyes were as blue as they had ever been, and, like the sky, they were swept clean of the past.
They were nothing, they were blanks.
On which to compose the storm that would take Dolly Jaye.
Christina’s pride dwindled away like a ship vanishing over the horizon. She wet her lips. “I told Miss Schuyler,” Christina began.
Mr. Shevvington’s smile spread wider and wider, exposing more and more teeth, like a crocodile. “Your little math teacher? I’m afraid she found another job, Christina. Out west somewhere. Such a loss.”
Mr. Shevvington put his arm around Christina. It might have been a hug or the beginning of a strangle. “You’ll never be able to replace her, Christina. Will you?”
Fffffffff,
said the house.
But only Christina seemed to hear.
“Now, Dolly, remember, this is a special privilege,” said Mr. Shevvington. How caring he looked. How fatherly and kind. How blue his eyes were. “You must try very hard to prove that I am right to bring you among us a year early, Dolly.”
“I won’t let you down!” cried Dolly eagerly. “I’ll do anything you say.”
“I know,” said the principal.
Caroline B. Cooney is the author of ninety books for teen readers, including the bestselling thriller
The Face on the Milk Carton
. Her books have won awards and nominations for more than one hundred state reading prizes. They are also on recommended-reading lists from the American Library Association, the New York Public Library, and more. Cooney is best known for her distinctive suspense novels and romances.
Born in 1947, in Geneva, New York, Cooney grew up in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, where she was a library page at the Perrot Memorial Library and became a church organist before she could drive. Music and books have remained staples in her life.
Cooney has attended lots of colleges, picking up classes wherever she lives. Several years ago, she went to college to relearn her high school Latin and begin ancient Greek, and went to a total of four universities for those subjects alone!
Her sixth-grade teacher was a huge influence. Mr. Albert taught short story writing, and after his class, Cooney never stopped writing short stories. By the time she was twenty-five, she had written eight novels and countless short stories, none of which were ever published. Her ninth book,
Safe as the Grave
, a mystery for middle readers, became her first published book in 1979. Her real success began when her agent, Marilyn Marlow, introduced her to editors Ann Reit and Beverly Horowitz.
Cooney’s books often depict realistic family issues, even in the midst of dramatic adventures and plot twists. Her fondness for her characters comes through in her prose: “I love writing and do not know why it is considered such a difficult, agonizing profession. I love all of it, thinking up the plots, getting to know the kids in the story, their parents, backyards, pizza toppings.” Her fast-paced, plot-driven works explore themes of good and evil, love and hatred, right and wrong, and moral ambiguity.
Among her earliest published work is the Fog, Snow, and Fire trilogy (1989–1992), a series of young adult psychological thrillers set in a boarding school run by an evil, manipulative headmaster. In 1990, Cooney published the award-winning
The Face on the Milk Carton,
about a girl named Janie who recognizes herself as the missing child on the back of a milk carton. The series continued in
Whatever Happened to Janie?
(1993),
The Voice on the Radio
(1996), and
What Janie Found
(2000). The first two books in the Janie series were adapted for television in 1995. A fifth book,
Janie Face to Face
, will be released in 2013.
Cooney has three children and four grandchildren. She lives in South Carolina, and is currently researching a book about the children on the
Mayflower
.
The house in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, where Cooney grew up. She recalls: “In the 1950s, we walked home from school, changed into our play clothes, and went outside to get our required fresh air. We played yard games, like Spud, Ghost, Cops and Robbers, and Hide and Seek. We ranged far afield and no parent supervised us or even asked where we were going. We led our own lives, whether we were exploring the woods behind our houses, wading in the creek at low tide, or roller skating in somebody’s cellar, going around and around the furnace!”
Cooney at age three.
Cooney, age ten, reading in bed—one of her favorite activities then and now.
Ten-year-old Cooney won a local library’s summer reading contest in 1957 by compiling book reviews. In her collection, she wrote reviews of Lois Lenski’s
Indian Captive: The Story of Mary Jemison
and Jean Craighead George’s
Vison, the Mink
. “What a treat when I met Jean George at a convention,” she recalls.
Cooney’s report card from sixth grade in 1959. “Mr. Albert and I are still friends over fifty years later,” she says.
Cooney in middle school: “I went through some lumpy stages!”
In 1964, Cooney received the Flora Mai Holly Memorial Award for Excellence in the Study of American Literature from the National League of American Pen Women. “I always meant to write to them, and tell them that I kept going!” Cooney says. “I love the phrase ‘pen woman.’ I’m proud to be one.”
Cooney at age nineteen, just after graduating from high school. (Photo courtesy of Warren Kay Vantine Studio of Boston.)