IVY WAS GONE, AND there was no way to change that; but other things went right on changing. Spring came and the big musical, and Martha’s small part was padded because she did it so well, until it turned out to be one of the things everyone liked best about the play. The play ran for three weekends, and Martha discovered how great it was to face and work her way through the terror she felt before every performance—to the place where applause, like warm wonderful thunder, told her she had won.
Later, probably because the stage had been such a great discovery, she decided to try to write a play for an English class assignment. It turned out to be a short one-act skit, but good enough to be staged as part of the fund raising assembly put on by the eighth grade class to raise money for the graduation party.
So the eighth grade finished a lot better than Martha had ever expected it would, and summer came and went and high school began. Martha had always hated to think about starting high school. A new school, much larger, much farther from home, and full of new people had always seemed like a terrifying prospect. But somehow it turned out not to be as bad as she expected. For instance, new people turned out to have certain advantages, such as not remembering that Marty Abbott, the tall slim girl with the long blond hair, had once been the fat and silent Marty Mouse of Rosewood School.
At home, at number two Castle Court, things changed too, but only a little. Martha’s father was made a full partner in his law firm and started working about an hour longer every day; and Martha’s mother won the Spring Tournament Trophy and began to spend an extra day a week on the golf course. Tom went into his Senior year in high school, and Cath went away to college. Grandmother Abbott spent more and more time in Florida since she had gotten interested in raising orchids. Everyone seemed much less worried about Martha, either because there was less to worry about or because they all had less time to do it in.
Martha had less time, too. Weeks and months rushed by for Martha that year, and like the rest of the Abbotts she began to have to keep calendars and schedules. Schedules such as: Tuesday and Thursday afternoons at 4:00—play rehearsal; Wednesday at 3:30—Conservation Club meeting; Saturdays at 10:00—voice lessons in the city.
Summer came and went, mostly in a long trip by automobile across the country with her family, and then right after the beginning of her Sophomore year, Martha met Rufus. It happened because Martha had allowed herself to be signed up for a course in biology. She had signed up, against her better judgment, when she was pressured a bit by a hurried counselor, because biology happened to fit neatly into a hole in Martha’s schedule. The counselor was feeling bad because nothing Martha wanted to take would fit, and because there was a long line of kids waiting impatiently to be counseled. So Martha had told herself that, after all, biology was a life science and the life part sounded interesting—forgetting that she’d actually stopped believing in science at a rather early age. Forgetting, too, the rumors she’d heard about the kinds of things that went on in laboratory classes. Things like cutting up poor little defenseless creatures in cold blood.
Sure enough, almost immediately the teacher announced that the atrocities would be starting in a week or two, and that same day Martha waited after class to talk about dropping. While she waited, she noticed the frogs in a big glass tank at the back of the classroom. Drawn by a mixture of pity and fascination, she drifted over to stare at the condemned. Most of the victims crouched resignedly on the tank floor, but not all. Just one, a lovely greenish-brown frog with tragic eyes, stood up on his hind legs, rested his chin on his delicate fingers, and looked Martha right in the eye.
“Then he asked me to help him out,” Martha told Rufus afterwards.
“He asked you to help him out?” Rufus asked. “In so many words?”
“Of course,” Martha said grinning. “How else would he ask me?”
“In that case,” Rufus said, “I’m glad I helped. I always rescue talking frogs, every time I get the chance.”
Martha hadn’t known who was helping at first. There had been a small mob of students crowding around, waiting to see the teacher, who was standing only a few feet away, but with his back turned. Martha shoved aside the tank cover, slipped her hand inside, and was slipping it out full of cool damp frog, when the teacher turned around. She put her hands, frog and all, behind her back.
Looking suspicious but uncertain, the teacher walked towards her. “What do you have there, Miss—ah, Miss—”
“Abbott,” Martha supplied, stalling for time. “Martha Abbott.” Behind her she felt urgent deliberate fingers touching hers, and the frog was gone. She wiped her damp hands on the seat of her skirt and held them out, empty. She didn’t find out until later where the frog had gone—to a safe hiding place in Rufus’ pocket.
Soon afterwards, Martha dropped biology without regrets, because she’d discovered that Rufus was also in her drama class. Another thing that Martha discovered about Rufus was that he had friends of just about every kind imaginable. Rufus knew and got along with kids from every group, from the “plaid-and-crew cut” set of Kelly Peters and her friends to the shaggy almost dropouts who smoked pot in the school parking lot during lunch hour. Knowing Rufus meant getting to know a lot of other people in a hurry.
By the spring of her Sophomore year, Martha Abbott knew a lot of people, and more important, she’d begun to know who she was in a way she never had before. She knew, for instance, that if you asked nearly anybody at Roosevelt High who Marty Abbott was, they would probably say, “You know, the tall chick who’s in all the school plays.” Or even, “The cute blonde who’s been going around with Rufus Greene lately.” It was great—if still a little amazing to Martha—to know that people thought of her that way, instead of—instead of the way she sometimes still felt inside.
Inside—there were still times when some little thing could send Martha sliding back into the kind of quiet panic she had lived with as Marty Mouse Abbott. But those times didn’t come often anymore, and they didn’t last long. Now that she had learned the way out of the Mousehole, she never stayed in it for long. And even better than getting out of it quickly was not getting in, and the way to do that was to shut the door. Shutting the door on the Mousehole meant shutting the door on a lot of the past—dozens of silly fears, and the lonely comfort of too many tears, and too many sweets, and too many endless daydreams. And maybe it even meant shutting the door on Bent Oaks Grove—and the memory of Ivy Carson.
Martha hadn’t meant it to happen. When Ivy first left, she had thought of very little else. She had worried and wondered and written—even though she had no place to send letters to except to Harley’s Crossing, where not even Aunt Evaline lived anymore. But time passed and things kept changing and new things began to happen.
So, by the spring of her Sophomore year, it had been a long time since Martha had been to Bent Oaks Grove, and even longer since she had done much thinking about Ivy Carson.
And then, suddenly, it was the seventh of April and Martha knew all day long that something was about to happen. But it wasn’t until after dinner that her father calmly announced that the Carsons were back in Rosewood Hills.