Free Libby on Wednesday by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

know,” Elliott said. He wiped his hands on the front of his apron, a long canvas affair with a coat of arms with crossed shish kebabs on the stomach, poured himself a cup of coffee, and eased his long, lanky body down into a kitchen chair. “I’ve not forgotten. How did it go this time?”
    Libby poured a glass of milk and joined him at the table. “I read my story,” she said, and paused for effect. “AND THEY LOVED IT.” A slight exaggeration perhaps—but the rest of it wasn’t. “Wendy said it was outrageously awesome,” which was the absolute truth and Wendy’s exact words. Why she said them was another matter, and one that didn’t need discussing at the moment.
    There was no need, for instance, to mention that the workshop members wanted to visit the house, because they weren’t going to get to. Not that Libby wouldn’t be permitted to invite them. Without even asking, she pretty much knew what the family would say.
    Gillian would think it was a wonderfully exciting idea. Cordelia would certainly approve if it could be done properly with formal invitations and suitable refreshments. Elliott would say it wasn’t up to him to decide, since he was only an unofficial McCall House resident. Only Christopher might be more or less against it, simply because he was such a private person. But, on the other hand, Christopher almost never insisted on having things the way he wanted them. So the vote would be two yeses, one “I suppose so if it’s really important to you,” and one abstention.
    However, there wasn’t going to be a family election because the most important vote—Libby’s own—was NO. Aloud and definite NO. And even though Libby hated to admit it, even to herself, Elliott was one of the main reasons for that NO.
    It wasn’t that Elliott wasn’t a great person and a terribly important member of the family, because he was. But it was just that he was one more thing that didn’t fit in to the usual pattern. How many people had an extra adult male family member who was not at all related to anybody? And anything at all unusual was just one more thing for people like G.G. and Tierney to make fun of.
    Elliott was delighted with Libby’s account of the workshop meeting, and Christopher was, too, when he came in from the garden a few minutes later. And at dinner that night, while everyone had an outrageously delicious meal of chicken curry with mango chutney and condiments, there was quite a bit of discussion about how glad everyone was that Libby’s reading of her story had turned out to be such a success. Libby was feeling pretty good herself, although in the back of her mind there was still a little prickling reminder that the jury was still out on just how successful she had been. There was something else that kept prickling there, too, and after dinner some of it came out in a very roundabout way. She was talking to Gillian at the time.
    It was dark by then and raining again, hard and steadily. The wind roamed up and down the long, cavernous verandas of the McCall House, pounced around corners, and drove sheets of water against the tall windows of the Great Hall. It was the kind of night that suited Graham McCall’s castle, the dim shadows hiding its shabbiness and the noisy threat of the wind and rain making it seem a safe, strong fortress against the storm.
    Christopher had built a fire in the Great Hall’s huge stone fireplace, and Libby and Gillian were reading in front of it, curled up together in one chair. One chair was all that was necessary, since Graham’s custom-built leather furniture was so huge and Gillian and Libby were both so small and loose-jointed. It was quite possible, in fact, for one chair to hold all four cats as well, although tonight there was only Salome, curled up in Gillian’s lap, and Ariel, draped over Libby’s armrest.
    Gillian, who was wearing her favorite black sateen harem pants and a madras cloth tunic, was reading a book by Muriel Spark. And Libby, in