Free A Tangle of Knots by Lisa Graff Page A

heard the thud from the main storeroom floor. She scuttled out of the kitchen and looked to the top of the stairs just in time to make out the Owner’s surly face. He growled at her and then slammed shut his bedroom door.
    Toby was right about him—he was a grumpy old man.
    Flung carelessly atop the circular counter in the center of the room was the thing that Cady assumed must be the source of the Owner’s rage (as well as the thud )—a single powder blue suitcase, with three small dimples near the left clasp. It looked exactly like the suitcase the curious man in the gray suit had unstrapped from his bicycle (and also quite a bit like the other powder blue suitcases Cady had noticed under the countertop—some sort of collection of the Owner’s, she figured).
    Cady stood on her toes at the counter and pried the suitcase open carefully, wondering what about a piece of old luggage could possibly have made the Owner so furious. But all she found, inside one of the pockets, was a small ceramic bird, its yellow beak wide open in a whistle.
    Perhaps the Owner really hated birds.
    As Cady moved to snap closed the top, something fluttered out of the ripped lining, just flittered to the floor, as though Fate had wanted her to find it. A slip of paper. Cady picked it off the ground. It was brown like a fallen leaf, and brittle with age. Its creases were raised like scars. As she slowly unfolded it, one corner crumbled completely to bits.
    PERFECT PEANUT BUTTER
    That’s what was written across the top of the paper. Cady bit her bottom lip as she read the recipe. If anything could make a person less of a grump, she thought, it was a cake baked specifically for him. And maybe, if the Owner were just a little less grumpy, Toby might want to stick around a while longer.
    He might want Cady to stick around, too.
    Cady hadn’t so much as finished the thought, however, when the words of the man in the gray suit scampered into her head. It’s the way we deal with what Fate hands us that defines who we are. Cady shook them free. With the recipe clasped gingerly in her fingertips, she shut the suitcase and slid it underneath the countertop with its brothers. Then she headed to the kitchen. There were only a few hours before the bakeoff, and she had a cake to make.

20

    Zane
    Z ANE HEARD THE THUD ON THE COUNTERTOP OF THE MAIN storeroom floor, but he ignored it. Tucked away in the electronics corner, Zane did his best to tread lightly, quietly. It was silly, perhaps, to think he could keep ahead of the trouble he knew was coming, but darned if he wasn’t going to try anyway. Because even if the letter from that old bat Principal Piles seemed to have disappeared in the chaos of the move (his parents had yet to mention it, and in Zane’s vast experience with trouble, when parents read such letters, they usually mentioned them right away), Zane’s problems hadn’t disappeared. Sooner or later, one way or another, Zane’s parents were going to hear from the principal. They were going to have to decide whether or not to send him to boarding school. And there was a chance—slim perhaps, but a chance nonetheless—that Zane could cut the trouble off at the pass.
    Zane pulled a pair of expensive-looking headphones off a shelf and examined them carefully before tucking them inside his pocket. They would fetch a pretty fair price at Louie’s Pawn Shop (well, as fair a price as Louie ever gave). And with enough trips to Louie’s, Zane just might (perhaps, maybe) be able to cover some of the cost of the repairs for that stupid hole in his family’s apartment wall. Nobody would send a thoughtful, supportive boy like that to boarding school. Well, it was worth a shot, anyway. As long as Zane’s parents didn’t figure out how truly  . . .
    WORTHLESS.
    When Zane’s pockets were stuffed almost to bursting, he searched the store for the perfect container to store his goods in. If he remembered correctly, under the circular counter there was