Free Harriet the Spy, Double Agent by Maya Gold

out what’s inside.
    It seemed like a very long time until Annie got up to go the bathroom. As soon as she heard the door click, Harriet sprang to her feet and took off the top of the box, covering her fingers with her sleeve so as not to leave fingerprints. Inside was a handwritten note and a long, narrow ticket envelope. She scanned the note feverishly. It read Here’s Mr. Monkey. He missed you. So do I. xx, P .
    Harriet’s heart took a lurch at that xx, P . She had an initial! And everyone knew that x’s meant kisses. Someone whose name started with P had sent Annie kisses—and, of all inexplicable things, a childish sock monkey that didn’t, on closer inspection, appear to be all that clean. Whoever P. was, his idea of what one should give to a sophisticated twelve-year-old girl was wildly off base.
    She lifted the note in one sleeve-covered hand and picked up the envelope in the other. It wasn’t that easy to open it without the full use of her fingers, and before she was able to wiggle the ticket out so she could see it, the toilet flushed down the hall. Harriet scrambled to put the note and envelope back and replace the lid. She was still standing up when she heard Annie’s footsteps outside the door, so she looked out the window to cover.
    “It’s snowing a lot ,” she said. “Maybe they’ll cancel school.”
    “I used to love snow days in Boston,” said Annie, her voice sounding mournful for just a split second before she bounced back with “I bet they get plenty of snow days up north in New Hampshire. Not that that matters to dropouts.” The week flew past. Each day, the Feigenbaums twisted another bulb into the electric menorah in their front window. The girls at the Gregory School were buzzing with Christmas vacation plans, and one teacher after another plastered the walls with seasonal cutouts. Harriet wondered if there was some kind of holiday vest rule: it seemed that every teacher and even the school nurse, Mrs. Kelder, came in wearing a vest embroidered with holly or candy canes.
    Harriet had decided to buy a calligraphy pen like Ole Golly’s and make her parents a limited-edition collection of her favorite poems. She asked Annie if she’d like to make a Saturday afternoon pilgrimage to Jasmine’s Art Supply, but Annie demurred, saying she already had plans.
    I bet you do, Harriet thought. Plans with P. She resolved to keep her eyes glued to the Feigenbaums’ house on Saturday. Right after school on Friday, she went to the bank with her mother and made a withdrawal, “for certain upcoming expenses.” As expected, Harriet’s mother smiled at her fondly and took the bait, saying, “As long as you know that the most special presents are always the ones you make yourself.” It wasn’t entirely a lie, Harriet reassured herself; although most of the money would go directly to her new Emergency Spy Fund, she did plan to buy the calligraphy pen for making her parents’ gift.
    It took her a full hour to pick out just the right pen and paper at Jasmine’s Friday afternoon. There were all sorts of creamy linen and textured rice papers, and deckle-edged cardstocks in every hue. Finally she selected five sheets of a handcrafted paper with small flecks of marigold petals. While the clerk rolled them into a tube, Harriet’s eye roamed a shelf of bound sketchbooks and landed on one with a marbled blue cover. That’s gorgeous, she thought. It’d make a great journal. Not a spy notebook, but something more elegant: notes from a grand tour of Europe, for instance. She picked it up, checking the price. Underneath was a second book, just like the first, except that the marbled design was in shades of deep red. I bet Annie would like that for Hanukkah, Harriet thought. Or for Christmas. Or both.
    “Will that be all?” asked the clerk, a slim Japanese girl with sculptural earrings.
    Harriet paused. She would have loved to buy both of the books, but they cost too much. “And this,” she said,