“Joyeuses fêtes! Happy holiday break, Thomas!” Giselle called out, running over to Thomas and Martin as they came up Thomas’s driveway. “Oh, hello,” she said, pumping Martin’s hand. “I’m Giselle and you must be Martin. Joyeuses fêtes to you, too, Martin.”
“And to you,” Martin said back. “I think.”
“Thomas,” Giselle said, holding out a padded envelope, the kind his father’s manuscripts were delivered in. “Mrs. Sharp gave me a package to give to you before she leaves tomorrow.”
Thomas took the envelope and placed it in his backpack before he opened the side door.
“Can I come in?” Giselle asked Thomas. “I’m starving.”
“I think we have cookies,” Thomas replied. He had seen his father eating some for breakfast.
“That’s odd.” Martin stood rooted to the spot outside the side door. “Normally, it’s four hundred and twenty-seven steps from your bus stop to your house.” Looking over his shoulder, Martin seemed to be retracing the path they’d just walked.
“Four hundred and twenty-seven what?” Giselle asked him.
“Number of steps from the bus,” Martin replied. “I’m usually right on the money.”
“But you went to knock icicles off the lamppost,” Thomas reminded his friend. “Remember?”
“Right.” Martin pressed his thumb against the pad of each finger, counting backward. “That’s it,” he said. “Thank you, Thomas.”
“You know how many steps it is from Thomas’s bus stop to here?” Giselle was curious.
“As long as Mrs. Pinsky is driving. Substitute drivers can account for a variation.”
“Do you count everything?” Giselle asked Martin as they took off their coats and boots on the landing.
Thomas watched Giselle studying his friend.
“Not everything can be counted,” Martin replied, hanging up his coat over Thomas’s.
Thomas called down the stairs, “We’re home. Giselle’s here, too.”
“Remember to clean up your mess in the kitchen,” Mr. Moran called back.
“Where do you go to school, Giselle?” Martin asked as he and Giselle took seats at the kitchen table.
Thomas found a plastic container of molasses cookies and began passing them around.
“I go to the Montessori school,” Giselle said. “I might go to the public middle school next year if I can convince my mom it will be okay.”
“Why wouldn’t it be okay?” Martin wanted to know.
“I had some trouble at my old school. I have trouble with…impulse control.”
“What does that mean?” Martin asked. “Shouldn’t we have plates, Thomas?”
Thomas nodded and got the plates and napkins.
“I bit someone,” Giselle said, sweeping the crumbs from the table into her hand and depositing them on the plate Thomas gave her. “But it wasn’t impulsive at all. I planned it.”
Martin was quiet for a moment. “You don’t plan to bite us, do you?” he asked.
“No, silly! Alexis got what she deserved. Less than, if you ask me.” Giselle had that faraway look that sitting in Helen’s chair seemed to inspire before she launched into the story of how Alexis had teased her since fourth grade, pulled her skirt up once in front of the boys, even used some hairs she took from Giselle’s hairbrush to make a voodoo doll that she stuck pins in.
“I don’t know why she hated me so much,” she said. “She just did. And other girls did because she did.”
Scooting out of her seat, Giselle extracted the envelope Thomas had hidden away in his backpack and handed it to him. “It’s probably because Alexis is mean and dumb. She’ll regret it later when I am a world-famous psychologist. Then, she’ll brag about knowing me. Here, Thomas. You have to open this.”
Glancing toward the door that led to the basement, Thomas opened the envelope. Inside was a cloth-bound journal. As he opened the cover a note fluttered to the floor. Thomas picked it up and read:
Dear Thomas,
Please study this carefully and you will discover a secret. I will see you in January.
Sincerely, Mrs. Sharp
Thomas tucked the note back in the journal. As he flipped through the pages dense with handwriting, Thomas realized he couldn’t read the beautifully curved letters—they were written in another language. As he closed the book, the only word from the title he could understand was “Sharp.” What had Mrs. Sharp meant? How could he study a book he couldn’t read?
“It’s in French,” Giselle whispered, taking the journal from Thomas and examining the cover. “I take French classes on Saturday, but I don’t know this word.”
Pulling her phone out of her pocket, she continued, “Just a sec. I need to look something up. Yes, I think in this case nouvelle means ‘further.’ So it’s The Further Adventures of Mr. Sharp.”
“What’s the French word for napkin?” Martin asked as he bit into his cookie. “Because you need one.” He pushed a napkin across the table.
But Giselle wasn’t listening to Martin. She opened the journal to the first page and began to read: “ ‘Monsieur Sharp était assis sur le train…Mr. Sharp sat on the train…’ ” Thomas, do you know what this is?”
“It’s the story that Mrs. Sharp and her brother made up about her father after he disappeared during World War II,” Thomas said. “Her mother wrote down the story for them. Mrs. Sharp told my father and me about it. But why is it in French? She told us her mother was from Hungary.”
“They speak Hungarian in Hungary.” Martin regarded his cookie. “These are good, by the way.”
“But France was their adopted country.” Giselle bent over the pages once again. “Mrs. Sharp told me they never went back to Hungary, so they had to learn how to communicate. Maybe this was a way for them to all practice their French. Mrs. Sharp speaks four languages, you know.” Giselle took another bite of cookie. “I would let France adopt me in a heartbeat.”
“So her father just disappeared? What happened to him?” Martin’s gaze traveled from Thomas to Giselle. “Is someone planning to fill me in?”
“No one knows,” Thomas said. “He didn’t come back.”
“Oh.” Martin left his seat so he could look at the journal over Giselle’s shoulder. “I wonder how she expects you to read it, Thomas.”
“I can help,” Giselle said.
“But she didn’t give it to you, did she?” Martin reminded Giselle. “Mrs. Sharp gave it to Thomas.”
“Well, yes, but he can’t read French.”
“There must be a reason,” Martin insisted.
“You’re right.” Sighing, Giselle pushed the journal across the table to Thomas. “You’ll figure out the reason, and when you’re done I will translate it for you. My French teacher will help me. Or Mrs. Sharp will.”
Thomas took the journal from Giselle and put it back into his backpack. He knew immediately where it belonged: in UnderLand in the metal box with the old coins and the DVD.
That evening, at dinner, Mr. Moran told Thomas he would be getting out the outdoor Christmas lights and checking them. Aunt Sadie was coming over in a couple of days to help put them up. Did Thomas want to help?
Thomas did not. After the dishes were cleared, he excused himself and went to his room.
“I’ll be up to say good night,” Mr. Moran said.
Lying on his bed, Thomas paged through the story of Mr. Sharp’s adventures. The handwriting was even and measured until he reached the middle of the book where the print began to blur. It was as if someone had spilled liquid on the pages.
No. Someone had been crying and their tears had dropped on the ink, causing it to blur. How strange it was that he could not understand a word and yet Thomas knew that the writer was crying.
His father’s voice intruded in his thoughts: You don’t have nearly enough information to make such an assumption. They could be drops from a glass of water. Or snow. Or rain. Or even drips from an umbrella. Work from what you know, Thomas. The rest is just conjecture!
Was it possible to know something without sufficient proof?
Thomas pondered this as his eyes scanned the pages, the letters becoming one long string of shapes. But then he noticed a word written in a different handwriting. It was his name: Thomas. He began to scan the unfamiliar words more carefully, running his finger over each line of handwriting. He found another word he recognized. Look.
Now his finger moved more rapidly, looking for words that had been written into odd open spaces, like the pieces of a missing puzzle. This must be the way Mrs. Sharp was trying to communicate with him.
He ran his finger along line after line, page after page, and a prickle ran down the back of his neck as he found the words in her stuck to the end of a paragraph.
Several pages on, he found teardrops again and the word favorite at the end of the page. With only two pages left, Thomas found the last word, place.
He closed the journal and opened the blank book Giselle had given him. Carefully, he wrote all the English words in it. Thomas look in her favorite place.
“Her” had to be his mother. And what was her favorite place? At the kitchen table? Thomas didn’t know if the kitchen table was her favorite, but that was surely her place. Without leaving his room, he imagined her chair—but how could he look in a chair? Maybe Mrs. Sharp meant the birdbath? His mother had told Aunt Sadie she sat in that chair so she could see the birds. Could something be in the birdbath right now besides frozen water?
Thomas couldn’t risk going into the backyard with his father downstairs stretching lights across the living room floor. If his father discovered what Mrs. Sharp had left for him…Thomas did not know what would happen, but he didn’t like to suppose.
Staring up at the ceiling, he felt the fluttering sensation in his stomach and tried to calm Dave by slowing his breath.
“Follow your breath,” his mother used to tell him as they lay together on his parents’ bed.
“To here,” she said, placing her hand on his stomach.
Thomas closed his eyes. That’s when he had another strange and magical thought. It was almost as if his mother were in the room, lying next to him.
Once, when they’d been breathing together, he’d opened his eyes and found her watching him. She’d rolled over on her side and propped herself up on her elbow, her face cradled in her hand. Humming softly, she regarded Thomas with a very satisfied look, as if she’d just taken a bite of something delicious.
Thomas tried to remember the words to the song she hummed; it was one she sang to him before he went to bed…
Sleep my child and peace be with you all through the night…
“You’re not following your breath,” he’d said to her.
“I don’t have to, silly. I’ve found something else to relax me.”
“What?”
“You.”
Now Thomas did not open his eyes or turn, as he had then, to scoot close to her. It would mean waking up from this moment. He didn’t want his eyes to say his mother was not there when something bigger and deeper told him she was.