Free The One Hundredth Thing About Caroline by Lois Lowry Page B

about sadness, too. So his wisdom was better wisdom than Santa Claus
wisdom. She believed in what he said. And she knew she would not scurry sneakily up to the apartment to turn on the tea kettle and steam the letter open.
    But when she held it in front of her to read the address once more, the late afternoon spring sunlight glinted off a puddle on the sidewalk. Against the light, through the envelope, she could see writing. Almost without looking, she could clearly see the word "poison."
    When she entered her building, Caroline guiltily passed the front hall table without putting the letter there. J.P. was home; she could see his jacket and books on the living room couch and could hear him puttering in his room, behind the closed door.
    "It's only me," she called so that he wouldn't think a burglar had entered the apartment. He grunted something in reply.
    She took the letter into her room and turned on the lamp beside her bed. Carefully she held the unopened letter in front of the bright bulb. And there it was: a short note, typed, and all of it in one place so that it wasn't folded on top of itself. It was the easiest thing in the world to read. It was also the most horrible. Horrible horrible horrible.
Fred:
    When this goes through and you get paid, would you install a phone, please?
    Have you figured out how to eliminate the children? I know it's tough, but you have to be
brutal—and thorough—and quick . The May 1st deadline is inflexible.
    About the poisons: I'll leave that to you. But best not to use cyanide, not after the Tylenol thing. Find something obscure.
    Carl
    Caroline read it twice. Then she read it a third time, slowly, and copied it onto a page of notebook paper. After she was certain she had copied it word for word, with no mistakes, she took the letter back downstairs and deposited it on the table next to the vase of dried flowers.
    Trudging back upstairs, she thought again about her dream. It had been, after all, the Coelophysis, ratty-looking though he was, who had come to her rescue, who had said, "I'll help you."
    She knocked on her brother's bedroom door and called, "J.P.? Would you come out?"
    "Why should I?" he called back.
    "Because," said Caroline in despair, "I need your help."

    "I have to think, I have to think, I have to think," muttered J.P. nervously, after Caroline had described her suspicions to him and shown him the first note and the copy of the second. "Shut up and let me think."
    "How can I shut up when I'm not even saying anything?" asked Caroline. She went to the kitchen and poured two glasses of orange juice. "Here," she said,
handing one to her brother. He was sitting on the living room couch, his elbows on his knees, his chin in his hands.
    "I'm thinking. I'm thinking," J.P. repeated, taking the glass of juice absent-mindedly. The telephone rang. "Shut the phone up, would you? I'm thinking."
    " KID CALLS PAL ," announced Stacy over the telephone.
    "Hi, Stace," said Caroline. She took the phone into the bathroom so that she wouldn't disrupt J.P.'s thinking process.
    "Anything going on? You dashed away after school, and I've been calling and calling, but you weren't home until now."
    "Stacy," said Caroline in an ominous voice, "things are getting much more complicated. There was another letter to Frederick Fiske from the secret agent. The murder's got to be before May first because there's a deadline. I've asked J.P. to help. I had to."
    " SIBS FOIL CRIME ," said Stacy. "Sibs means siblings," she explained. "Siblings means brothers and sisters."
    "I
know
that," Caroline said patiently. "And right now my sib is figuring out our next move."
    "Caroline, this is going to be a big story. I mean a truly big story."
    "I know that, Stacy. But I won't be around to read it, not if I've been poisoned."
    "No way. You're going to foil it; you and J.P. You foil, I write. This is my big break, Caroline.
Promise
me you won't give it to another journalist."
    "Stacy, I don't