CHAPTER 31

The Committee Meets

EVERYONE ELSE WAS ALREADY SEATED WHEN TERPSICHORE edged through the door and dropped her overloaded satchel on the floor beside her desk.

Thud! It was only books, but it sounded like a tree felled in the forest. Shock waves traveled the floor, shaking the rows of desks and making every set of eyes turn in her direction. She turned slowly to meet all those eyes. Terrible Teddy opened his mouth to make a rude comment, but one blast of her basilisk eyes made him clamp his mouth shut. Even Miss Zelinsky, who normally would have chided her for being late, just raised her eyebrows.

She felt a splotchy blush spreading from her cheeks, down her neck, and advancing to her chest, over her heart. At roll call, instead of a chipper “Present!” she croaked “Here.” Miss Zelinsky was watching her too closely for her to be able to pass notes to Gloria and Mendel. She’d have to wait for first recess to gather the troops.

Finally, the minute hand of the clock clicked from 10:29 to 10:30. Desktops clapped shut over schoolwork and students lined up to go outside. It took two eighth-grade boys to shoulder the doors open against the wind.

Gloria’s yellow slicker whipped against her legs, and fierce wind cut through Terpsichore’s jacket. Gloria grabbed Terpsichore’s hand. “What is it?”

“We have to get Mendel too,” Terpsichore said.

The good thing about a friend is that she doesn’t need to wait for answers to questions before helping. Terpsichore and Gloria darted into a cluster of boys and pulled Mendel away from his new buddies, which surprisingly included Terrible Teddy. “Come on, Mendel, we need you,” Terpsichore said. “Emergency Library Action Committee meeting.”

“What’s the emergency?” Mendel asked.

“The school is taking over all our work!” Terpsichore said.

Mendel jerked his arms away from the girls’ grasp. “Look,” he told them, “I already quit the library committee, okay? It was something to do during the summer, but now that school has started, I don’t have time.”

Gloria linked arms with Terpsichore. “All right then. Be that way. We don’t care. We girls can take care of it ourselves.”

“Gotta go,” Mendel said, and strode off to join his buddies.

Terpsichore and Gloria huddled on the side of the school building. Terpsichore shouted over the howling wind. “After the storm blew our books all over his tent, Pastor Bingle moved everything we collected to the school, and now Miss Quimby wants to keep the books here permanently and put Miss Fromer in charge.”

Gloria leaned toward Terpsichore’s ear. “Is that such a bad idea?” Gloria shouted. “If the books are here, kids could check them out whenever they’re at school instead of just on Saturday.” She pulled back to read Terpsichore’s expression. Terpsichore was not convinced by this argument. Gloria persisted. “It will be a lot easier for some kids. Don’t you want everyone to have books? I thought that was the idea of a library.”

“But it’s ours,” Terpsichore said, “our library.” She realized she was still shouting, even now that the wind had abruptly stopped.

Gloria finger-combed her hair back into place. “Look, we got what we wanted, a library. What does it matter where the books are or who runs the library now? I’m just as happy to have Miss Fromer do all the work.”

• • •

The next day, Terpsichore dumped nearly twenty dollars in dimes and nickels on Miss Quimby’s desk. She followed the money with the well-worn World Book brochure. “Here’s the money I earned selling popcorn to buy a set of encyclopedias. Since you’re taking over the library, you can figure out how to get the rest of the money.”

She didn’t stay to see the look on the principal’s face.

Terpsichore was glad she was alone in the tent after school. Cally and Polly must have been with Mother and Matthew somewhere. Her father was at work at the mill. She took out the box that had her date-due stamper and her inkpad, nibbed pen and india ink, mending tape and spine labels. She took out the date-due stamper and stamped the back of her hand. Then she stamped a row of dates on up her forearm. She stamped each page of her arithmetic homework.

She looked up when Mother, Matthew, and the twins came home.

“I just got back from the school,” Mother said as she set Matthew down. He toddled over to Terpsichore’s cot and grabbed the stamper. Terpsichore grabbed it back. “That’s mine,” she said. “It’s not a toy.”

“Matty’s toy,” he said, trying to grab it back.

Terpsichore held the stamper over her head.

Her mother sat on the cot next to her. She looked at Terpsichore’s arm, with the row of dates marching up to her elbow, but did not comment on them. “Miss Quimby sent a message to me,” she said. “She said you threw money on her desk and were rather rude. That’s not the way you were brought up.”

“It was nineteen dollars and seventy cents! She should have been happy to get it.”

“It didn’t sound like you were happy to give it, though.”

“Of course I wasn’t happy. I worked hard for that money and I worked hard to get a library started and now the grown-ups are taking it over, like kids don’t know how to do anything right by themselves.”

“I think there’s room for you in the reorganized library, but you might have to apologize to Miss Quimby and show Miss Fromer that you are a responsible young woman and—”

“Me apologize? They should apologize to me. They took everything over without even asking!”

“From what I heard, that was a misunderstanding. Miss Quimby is new here and didn’t know about your library committee. When Pastor Bingle brought over the books, she assumed that the library was something he had started, and that he was turning the books over to the school where they’d be safe.”

• • •

The wind howled again that night and Terpsichore did not sleep well. On the way to school the next morning, she worked out what she would say. She knocked timidly on Miss Quimby’s door. “I’m sorry if you thought I was rude,” she said. “I was upset. Starting the library committee was the biggest thing I’d ever done, and when all the books got moved to the school it was like no one was giving us credit for all our work.”

Miss Quimby stood and came around from the back of the desk to sit in a chair next to Terpsichore so they were eye to eye. “I apologize too. We didn’t know how the library got started. It must have been a shock to see all the books here. Miss Fromer and I have decided we will call the collection the Palmer Action Committee Library. And of course you don’t have to share your grandmother’s books, but I hope you will.”

Terpsichore’s next stop was the eighth-grade classroom. She opened her satchel and put her shoebox of library supplies on Miss Fromer’s desk. “Um . . . here are the supplies the Demco Company sent.” She pulled down her sleeve, covering up the blue ink that hadn’t completely washed off that morning.

“Thank you, Terpsichore,” Miss Fromer said. “It was very generous of you to donate the money you’d raised for the encyclopedia fund. Maybe you can help us come up with ideas on how to raise the rest. I always thought that a dictionary, an almanac, and a set of encyclopedias were the heart of a reference collection. It sounds like we think alike on that.”

Terpsichore felt her jaw unclench.

“Miss Quimby said you used to volunteer in your school and public libraries back in Wisconsin too. Could I convince you to pair with some of the eighth-grade volunteers to teach them during training?”

Terpsichore suppressed a smile. A sixth-grader teaching eighth-graders?

As Gloria would say, “Keen-o!”