The Red Blazer Girls (4 page)

I have a sudden urge to hug my mom. I don't think we've ever gone twelve hours without talking, and this lady hasn't spoken to her daughter in God knows how many
years
.

“They live overseas—or did, until a few months ago. Malcolm tells me that they have recently moved to the city, up in Washington Heights. Caroline is following in her grandfather's and father's footsteps and is teaching at Columbia.”

“So your ex-husband never lost touch with Caroline?” Margaret asks.

“That's what he tells me. I see him once or twice a year and he gives me an update.”

Margaret takes a deep breath. “But don't you want …”

Ms. Harriman smiles sadly. “Yes. No. I don't know. It's been so long. And now this,” she says, holding up the birthday card and placing her hand over her heart.

Margaret looks first at Rebecca and then at me. “What do you think, guys? Up for a little adventure?”

“Always,” I say.

“No problem,” says Rebecca.

Margaret then copies the note exactly as it is written on the inside of the birthday card and hands the card back to Ms. Harriman. “Do you know anything about this play he mentions,
Het Cholos orf Lanscad
by Renidash? The title kind of sounds like it might be Latin, or maybe Greek, but I'm not so sure about the author's name. That doesn't sound familiar to me at all.”

Ms. Harriman shakes her head. “I'm afraid I can't help you there. It doesn't ring any bells for me, either. My father, he was interested in so many things, and Caroline was exactly like him. They were always solving puzzles, or playing chess or backgammon, or reading some obscure poet. I used to feel a bit left out—maybe even a little jealous. From the time she was a little girl, I don't know why, but my daughter and I never seemed to have enough in common.”

“Can you tell us a little more about what she was like
at the time this letter was written?” Margaret asks. “What kind of things did she like to read? What else was she into? You know, like fashion, or photography, dance, whatever. What did she want to be? Anything that might help us with this first clue.”

Ms. Harriman ponders this for a second. “What did she read? Anything, everything. She wanted to be an actress. More than anything. She was the lead in several plays at the school: Juliet in
Romeo and Juliet
, Emily in
Our Town
.”

“That's my absolute favorite play,” I gush.

“Mine too,” Ms. Harriman agrees. “Although I haven't been able to see it, or even read it since Caroline—it hits a little too close to home, if you know what I mean. And I almost forgot—she played the violin.”

“Me too!” says Margaret, who is Mom's star pupil and part of the reason I switched to the guitar a couple of years ago. (She was playing Bach and Mozart when I was still scratching away at “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” while Mom winced encouragingly.)

“Caroline was like that Schroeder character in the
Peanuts
cartoon—she just
loved
her Beethoven. I really miss her music. Margaret, maybe you and Sophie can play for me sometime.”

Quick, change the subject before Margaret agrees to some wacky violin-guitar duet
. “Do you have a picture of Caroline? I don't know why, but I think it might help, just knowing what she looked like.”

Without a word, Ms. Harriman goes to a table behind the sofa and gently lifts a framed photograph from it, cradling it in her hands as if it were her most precious possession—and perhaps it is? “This is Caroline with my father, and her new kitten, on her thirteenth birthday.” She hands the frame to me. “That tiny kitten, believe it or not, is Teazle. He was a gift from my father. Twenty-one years old and still going strong.” Teazle lifts his head briefly at the sound of his name.

“She's beautiful,” says Margaret. “Your daughter, I mean. Not the cat. Not that he's not beautiful, too,” she adds, very Margaret-like, for Teazle's sake.

Everything about this girl in the photograph seems perfect, and suddenly I am overwhelmed with sadness. I hand the frame back to Ms. Harriman without looking her in the eye. “Thank you. It's nice to have a face to go with the name.”

We start to head for the door.

“Girls, thank you. Thank you for listening, and for offering to help.”

“We'll let you know as soon as we find anything,” Margaret says.

“If,” I say, half under my breath.

“When!” Margaret corrects.

And
that
, gentle reader, is how the Red Blazer Girls got their very first case.

All the way home on the subway that afternoon, as Margaret chatters about Ms. Harriman, the note, and our one clue, I can't stop thinking about that girl in the photograph. It is hard for me to process that that amazing-looking girl, confidently posed in her red blazer, is now almost thirty-four years old and has a daughter of her own who is practically our age. And the man she is standing next to, looking at with such love, has been dead for twenty years. I have never even met these people, but I am almost in tears thinking about them. And then there is Caroline's father, Ms. Harriman's ex-husband. She had said his name was Malcolm Chance. Mal Chance.
Mal chance
. That's, well, French for “bad luck.” In addition to hugging my mom when I get home, I resolve to call all my grandparents, even Great-grandmère Henrietta in France, which is always a bit of a linguistic adventure.

I lock myself in my room and make it through the first ten chapters of
Great Expectations
. It isn't too bad. (“Isn't too bad!” Mr. E cries, clutching his chest in a mock heart attack when I make that very observation in class the next day. “It's Charles Dickens, for crying out
loud
.”) This is my first real Dickens experience, and I am pleasantly surprised at how funny it is. There's this line about Mrs. Joe raising Pip “by hand”—meaning she smacks him a
lot
—and that part where Pumblechook thinks the tar water he's drinking is brandy has me laughing out loud. So, though I'm still not sure it's the “greatest novel ever,” I am definitely getting into it.

After I set Mr. Dickens aside, I resist the urge to go online and dig out my math book. By nine-fifteen, totally confused and desperate for help, I IM Margaret.

George Gibbs. Emily Webb.
Our Town
. She means the scene where George and Emily, who are next-door neighbors, are talking from their bedroom windows.
Emily, the “smartest girl in school,” is helping poor, dim George with what seems to be a pretty simple algebra problem. I'm pretty sure I've just been insulted.

Exactly what Emily tells George.

Oh, good Lord. A monkey could solve it.

Leigh Ann transferred to St. Veronica's from another girls' school and we are just getting to know her. She seems nice enough, I guess.

A few moments later, Rebecca calls.

“Did you get number five in the math homework?” she asks.

“Only after Margaret gave me a hint.”

“What was the hint?”

“Look at angle B—it's sixty-five degrees, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“So …”

“So what?”

“So angle C
has
to be what?”

“Ohhhhh. That
is
easy. Thanks.”

“No problemo. Hey, Becca—what do you think of Leigh Ann? Margaret thinks we should, you know, let her into the club.”

“We have a club? I dunno. She seems okay. Beautiful, that's for sure. And kind of brainy. Is she as smart as Margaret?”

“Is
anybody
as smart as Margaret?”

“Good point. Oh, Soph, you know that Dickens thing you guys talked me into?”

Every fall, Mr. Eliot hosts this wacky event he calls “A Dickens of a Banquet.” He dresses up like Charles
Dickens and reads from his favorite novels, and the cafeteria ladies serve a traditional old-fashioned English meal of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, and Brussels sprouts, and something rumored to be fig pudding for dessert. (My dad raised a suspicious French eyebrow when I explained the concept of the Dickens banquet. “An
English
feast? I think not.”) Parents and other adults have to pay, but students get to eat for free. There's a catch, however: if you want to eat, you have to perform. You can go it alone with a reading or a monologue, or, for the slightly more adventurous, a group of students can write and perform a skit based on a scene from a Dickens story. Margaret, Leigh Ann, and I are in Mr. Eliot's honors English class, and Leigh Ann, who loves to perform, talked us into doing a skit with her. We recruited Rebecca and decided to adapt a scene from
Great Expectations
, since we had to read the book anyway.

“Yeah, what about the banquet?”

“I don't know if I'm going to be able to do it with you guys.”

“What? Why?”

“Because after tomorrow, I'm going to have to start going straight home after school, and I doubt that you guys want to schlep down to Chinatown every time you want to practice.”

“Why do you have to go straight home?”

“To babysit my brother and sister.”

“I thought your mom was working the night shift. Isn't she home in the afternoon?”

“Well, she
was
, but things have changed. As of next month, it looks like she's out of a job, and who knows what's going to happen to us. If she doesn't find a job right away, I'm probably going to have to leave the school. Tuition for three of us—there's no way we can afford that.”

“I'm sure she'll get another job. Your mom is awesome. And can't you talk to Sister Bernadette about financial aid? There must be something the school can do.”

“I already get half my tuition paid from a scholarship, but that runs out this year. Next year, I'll have to pay the whole thing, and there's no way, even if the school comes up with some of the money.”

“Rebecca, you
cannot
leave St. Vs.”

“Believe me, Soph, just the thought of not being with my girls … hey, I have to finish my homework. And, Soph?”

“Yeah?”

“Please don't say anything to anybody. And look, don't worry about it. It's not your problem.”

But I
am
worried. I love our perfect trio. No Rebecca? Unthinkable!

Margaret calls me on my cell the next morning—at
six o'clock
.

“What.”

“Good morning, darling sunshine. Did I wake you?” She actually giggles.

I glance out my window. “It's still dark outside! For Pete's sake, Margaret! Don't you dare be cheerful.”

“Oh, c'mon, just get up. I'll be at your building in eleven minutes,” she says.

Not ten minutes. Not twelve minutes.

“I want us to be there when the school opens. Mr. Eliot always comes in early. He can let us into the library, right? Sophie, are you up yet?”