Free Eight Keys by Suzanne LaFleur

because I could never get her to myself. I didn’t want to spend extra time with Annie and Ava. Especially not since Annie had been talking with Bessie about working for her catering company. Would I get any time with Aunt Bessie if that happened?
    “Did I see you with a big list of homework before I interrupted you?”
    “Yes.”
    “Go get it. And all your books and stuff, too. We’ll set you up here in the kitchen. It’ll be easier. We’ll be here.”
    That night, I stayed up wondering about what Uncle Hugh had said about how things don’t change on their own. I’d been waiting to be twelve like I would miraculously be different. But I wasn’t.
    Then I thought about Dad’s letter. He’d written something kind of like what Uncle Hugh had said. I got the letter and found the spot again: “in great part we mold ourselves.”
    Then I was stuck on something else: on the words “discover and unlock.”
    Unlock, unlock, unlock, unlock …
    All of a sudden I remembered it—the key in Uncle Hugh’s workshop.
    Was that what Dad meant by unlock? I would literally
unlock
something?
    But
what
? What was locked?
    As I got sleepier, I pictured things that were locked with keys. Houses. Old trunks. Cars. Padlocks. Doors.
    I sat up in bed, suddenly awake.
    There were
eight
locked doors upstairs in the barn.
Eight
of them!
    Could
those
be for
me
?
    But the feeling of excitement disappeared almost as quickly as it had come.
    Those doors were off-limits. They always had been.
    I checked Dad’s letter again: “discover and unlock
when you are ready.
”
    Maybe I just hadn’t been ready.
    But now I was ready for
something
to be different. For
anything
to be different.
    Tomorrow I’d take a chance and see what that key opened up.
    It had my name on it, after all.

Part II

The First Little, Secret Room
    After a night of not much sleeping, I woke up, raced through the world’s shortest shower, and found just what I wanted to find: Uncle Hugh and Aunt Bessie having morning coffee in the kitchen.
    “You already have your backpack on, ready to go!” Aunt Bessie seemed very surprised to see me. She and Uncle Hugh were still in bathrobes. Even on days when neither of them is going to leave the house, they both insist on getting dressed before eight a.m.
    “Yeah,” I said, swinging my wet ponytail over my shoulder as I grabbed a scone from a plateful on the table. “You know … I’m trying not to be late anymore.”
    “Good for you, Cricket,” Uncle Hugh said.
    “Well, bye!”
    “Well, bye,” echoed Uncle Hugh. I headed out the front door.
    I had time to visit the barn without worrying that Uncle Hugh would be working there or that Aunt Bessie would be out loading up the van or watering her flowers.
    I ran across the driveway and into the barn. I didn’t thinkI’d been spotted. I darted to the little room where I’d seen the key. Still there!
    A shiver of excitement ran through me as I lifted the key.
    I wasn’t going to use the key right away, I decided, slipping it into the pocket of my jeans. I was going to hold on to it, just for the day. For now, the key had infinite possibilities. It would be nice to have a day of infinite possibilities.
    School was okay. There was the usual trouble with Amanda, but most of my homework was done, thanks to Uncle Hugh. Franklin had found some boys to hang out with—the one who shares his locker and his two friends—which hurt less, somehow, than if he’d had lunch with Diana. He and I sat together silently on the bus home. I kind of wanted to tell him about the key, and I even, just a little, wanted him to come with me on a treasure hunt to discover what it unlocked, but something kept me silent. He hadn’t been interested in the key when I’d found it, just in making that castle. Why would he be interested now?
    At our stop, we headed in separate directions.
    Uncle Hugh was out at a customer’s house, and Aunt Bessie was inside baking for an event. Perfect, perfect.
    I