Free The Curse of the Buttons by Anne Ylvisaker

out and was copying it — with great attention to detail and scale — onto a small sheet of paper. It was hard to concentrate, and if he could think of any other way to get a boat, he would leave Milton and Morris out of the whole plan.
    Drawing the river coming north made Ike think about Mary, and he set down his pencil. The longest he’d ever kept a secret was . . . never. And something like this? It filled his stomach with dread. He hadn’t been able to manage a whole boiled egg for breakfast, much less a biscuit. Usually, the ritual of puzzling out his men on a checkerboard with Albirdie settled his insides. But that was before. He went to the window, hoping to see Milton and Morris coming to get him.
    Ike studied what he’d drawn. It didn’t look as though it could keep them from getting lost, but it would have to do. This is how Palmer must have felt as he set out for the west: like there was no steady ground under his feet, yet a whole new world was before him. No more home problems; no more waiting.
    He had one thing left to do. Mary had said if he did tell, to make sure it was a friend. If he passed it on to someone else, would his secret stop gnawing at him? That was it. Susannah. Susannah was more than a friend. She was family.
    He ventured past the skipping girls into Aunt Sue’s empty kitchen.
    “Susannah!” he called. There was no answer.
    LouLou and Jane and the little girls clamored in.
    “Did you feed Barfoot?” they said. “Let us ride him!”
    “Later.” Ike grabbed the pail from the porch, dodged skipping Jane, and pumped water from the well. He carried the bucket to the lean-to. There was Susannah, nestled between two straw bales, a mug of water in her hand and a book open on her lap.
    “Shhh!” she hissed.
    “What are you —?”
    “Shhh!” she said again.
    Ike sat down beside her.
    “What are you doing here?” he whispered. She held up her nursing book. “Avoiding them,” she said. “Listen to this.
A dark house is always an unhealthy house, always an ill-aired house. . . . Want of light stops growth and promotes scrofula, rickets, etc., among the children.
”
    “Susannah, I’ve got to tell you something.”
    “Not now. Quiz me,” she said. “I’ve got nearly this whole section memorized. She held the book out to Ike. “Just sit down! Don’t let my mother see that you’re talking to someone.”
    Ike sat on the ground, out of sight of the house.
    “Kate heard from Mrs. Hinman that they’ll be taking women as nurses in the field, and I promised not to tell, because her mother and my mother would have fits, but if I learn this, we can join up.”
    Ike studied his cousin warily. He had to tell someone or he’d explode. Someone he could trust. And maybe Albirdie would lend him the compass.
    “I’ll be back,” said Ike. “I’ve got somewhere to be.”
    “Wait!” said Susannah. “Ike!”
    “If Milton and Morris come over, tell them I’ll be right back.”

Ike found Albirdie lying on her stomach on the back pew with a long sheet of paper flattened in front of her, pencil poised above it.
    “Albirdie,” he said. She held up one finger. He stood and waited, peering over her shoulder. She made a mark on the page, then used a straightedge to make another.
    “Albirdie,” he said again. Lines and angles and squares and a tiny person. The compass anchored one corner of the page.
    She shook her head and held up her finger again. Then slapped her pencil down and sat up.
    “There,” she said proudly. “I’m so good at this.”
    Ike slid into the pew, picked up the compass, and turned the page to face him. He felt the weight of the compass in his hand. It was still on the string Albirdie used to hang it around her neck.
    “It’s a map,” she said.
    “I know. But of what?”
    She made a small umbrella along one line, and some small circles across from it.
    “Keokuk,” she said, reaching for the compass. Ike pulled it back.
    “I’m just looking at it.” He set