Free The Book of One Hundred Truths by Julie Schumacher Page B

time lurking outside the hotel where Celia worked. I didn’t see anything very interesting, but Jocelyn claimed to have spotted Ellen’s car on the street. It might have been Ellen’s; I wasn’t sure.
    “Aren’t you getting tired of secrets and spying?” I asked.
    “No.” Jocelyn swatted a bug on her shoulder. “Celia was talking to someone on the phone last night,” she said.
    “Hmm.” I turned a corner on the trike; we didn’t have enough money for miniature golf, so I was pedaling all the way to the boardwalk again.
    “It was the middle of the night. I woke up because I heard her talking.” Jocelyn held on to the sides of the basket when we came to a bump. “And it wasn’t the first time, either. I bet she’s talked to both our parents.”
    “Why would Celia call our parents in the middle of the night, Jocelyn?” I asked.
    “I don’t know,” she said. “But I heard her.”
    “She wouldn’t have talked to my parents without telling me.”
    “Yes, she would have.” Jocelyn turned halfway around in her seat. “I think I heard her say the name Fred a couple of times. And that’s your dad’s name.”
    “I know what my dad’s name is,” I said. We pushed the trike up the wooden ramp and rode past the haunted house, the spin-paint booth, and the arcades, which, as usual, were full of boys in black T-shirts, all pounding away at a huge assortment of beeping machines.
    Jocelyn said her legs were stiff and she wanted to get down. I parked the trike by the metal railing at the edge of the boardwalk and tied it up loosely with the bungee cord. We sat down on a bench. A lot of the benches had metal plaques on them: the plaque on ours read, IN LOVING MEMORY OF HARRY, WHO LOVED THE SEA . I wondered if Granda would ever have a plaque. Then I tried to erase that thought from my mind.
    Two old women in flowered dresses went into the fudge shop and came out with an enormous cone of blue cotton candy. They tore off pieces of the fluffy sugar with their fingers, then tipped their heads back and laughed.
    “That’s where Aunt Ellen and Aunt Celia were when we saw them. Right over there.” Jocelyn pointed. Directly across from us were a paperback bookstore, a bakery, the frozen custard booth, the fortune-teller’s booth, the man who painted people’s names on grains of rice, and an office that said PORT HARBOR REALTY . “I wonder what they were doing.”
    “Maybe they were buying something to eat,” I said. “They probably both like frozen custard.”
    “They wouldn’t come all the way to the boardwalk for frozen custard.” Jocelyn fidgeted beside me on the bench. I could tell that she itched. She had taken to wearing a pair of thin white gloves with little pearl buttons at the wrist. Nenna had bought them for her with the idea that Jocelyn would wear them only at night, so that she wouldn’t scratch herself in her sleep. But Jocelyn seemed to like wearing them. She wore them all day.
    “Maybe they were buying something to read,” I said, looking at the bookstore. “Or maybe Aunt Celia’s getting married.” I remembered my dream about Mr. Hanover and the bridesmaid fish. “They sell wedding cakes at the bakery. Maybe she’s secretly engaged to a man named Fred, and that’s who she was talking to last night.”
    “Really?” Jocelyn’s eyes were wide. “Do you really think she’s getting married?”
    “No,” I said. “I just made that up.”
    “Oh. What’s a reality office?” Jocelyn asked.
    “Realty,”
I said, looking at the sign between the bookstore and the custard shop. “It’s a place where you go to buy a house. Or maybe to sell one.”
    “Are Celia and Ellen selling Nenna and Granda’s house?”
    “No,” I said. “They wouldn’t sell it. Anyway, they can’t; it isn’t theirs to sell. It’s Nenna and Granda’s.”
    “Probably no one would buy it anyway,” Jocelyn said. “It’s kind of old-fashioned.”
    I agreed that it was. I studied the blue and white sign