A Big Year for Lily Read online

  “No, I don’t,” Lily said.

  “Lily, you must know that lying is almost as bad as stealing.”

  “But I’m not lying,” Lily said. Why didn’t Teacher Rhoda believe her?

  “Why would someone else exchange food in your lunch box?”

  “I don’t know,” Lily said miserably.

  Teacher Rhoda didn’t seem to know what to say. “Try to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

  But how?! Lily wanted to ask. She went outside but recess had been spoiled for her. The entire day had been spoiled for her. How awful that no one believed she was telling the truth! She almost always told the truth.

  At suppertime, Lily didn’t want to eat very much. When Papa asked her what was wrong, she told him how someone had put Malinda’s cookies into her lunch box and her apple slices into Malinda’s lunch box.

  Papa and Mama exchanged a look. A very worried look.

  Weeks passed. Three more times, someone else’s food turned up in Lily’s lunch box. It was always store-bought food and always from a different child’s lunch. Teacher Rhoda asked each student if he or she knew who was exchanging the food. No one knew. If they knew, they weren’t telling. Lily was sure they were all blaming her. Even Cousin Hannah and Beth, her best friends, had started to treat her differently. They didn’t always include her in recess games or ask her to sit with them or share secrets with her. More and more, Lily sat alone and read books during lunch and recess.

  School was no longer a fun place to be. Lily wished she could just stay home.

  11

  Marshmallow Mess

  After breakfast one Saturday, Mama told Lily that she was going to town with Aunt Mary. “I’ll take baby Paul with me,” Mama said. “Hannah, Levi, and Davy will stay here until we come back. I’m sure Levi and Joseph will be fine, but you and Hannah should keep an eye on Dannie and Davy. You can have all day to play. Papa will be in the shop, if you need anything.”

  Lily was nervous, but excited. Hannah hadn’t come over to play in weeks. At school, Hannah acted a little stiff and uncomfortable around Lily—as if she just wasn’t sure if Lily was or wasn’t a sandwich thief. Maybe a whole day to play together, without anyone else around from school, would set things right between them.

  Aunt Mary drove the buggy up to the house and waited while her children climbed out and Mama and baby Paul climbed in. “Be good, and have fun,” Aunt Mary and Mama said at the exact same time. Lily thought it was funny that they were so much alike. They looked alike, they sounded alike, they even talked alike. Why couldn’t Lily have a sister? It seemed like so much fun.

  Hannah had run alongside the buggy to wave goodbye to her mother, then she turned and walked up to join Lily on the porch. In the quiet, things grew awkward again. “What do you want to do today?” Hannah asked.

  “Anything you’d like to do,” Lily said. She wanted Hannah to have a good time.

  Hannah tilted her head, as if something was whirling in her mind. Lily grinned. She knew Hannah was thinking up something fun and interesting. A little dangerous, but not too dangerous. Hannah had good ideas.

  “Hmmm . . . I wish,” Hannah started, tapping her chin, “I wish we could have another campfire like we had for Joseph’s birthday.”

  Lily’s gaze shifted to the kitchen window. “We still have a whole bag of marshmallows left over.”

  “Let’s toast them!” Hannah said.

  Lily rolled that over in her mind. Too risky. “We can’t make a campfire.”

  “Maybe we can come up with a solution . . . if we think hard enough.”

  A wonderful idea popped into Lily’s head. “I have just the thing! We could light the kitchen oil lamp and put a marshmallow on a fork and hold it above the chimney to toast it.”

  “Great idea!” Hannah said as they both ran to the house.

  In the kitchen, Lily carefully removed the glass chimney of the oil lamp. She struck a match and lit the wick, then replaced the chimney and adjusted the wick until it was burning just right: a nice flame but no smoke.

  She ran into the pantry to fetch the bag of marshmallows while Hannah found forks in a kitchen drawer. She let Hannah toast the first marshmallow. It took a long time until she was satisfied that it was a golden brown. Hannah popped it into her mouth. “Perfect!” she said, opening a mouthful of chewy marshmallow.

  Now it was Lily’s turn. She held the fork with the marshmallow above the chimney. She kept turning it to make sure the marshmallow would toast nicely on all sides. This was taking so long. The marshmallow wasn’t even turning a color yet. She was hungry for a toasted marshmallow right now! If she could only get the marshmallow closer to the heat, then it could toast on all sides.

  Holding the fork, she poked the marshmallow down inside the chimney. It didn’t take long at all before the marshmallow was beautifully golden brown and puffy. As Lily tried to pull it back out, it got stuck against the sides of the chimney. She pulled a little harder. Her fork flew out but the marshmallow stayed stuck. Then it turned black. Lily tried to blow the flame out, but the marshmallow was blocking it. A horrible smell filled the air. Hannah screamed.

  Think quick, Lily! She ran to get a pot holder. Then she removed the chimney and blew out the flame. Problem solved! She carried the chimney over to the sink to clean out the sticky marshmallow that was stuck inside. She opened the faucet and let water run over it. There was a loud cracking noise and the chimney broke into pieces.

  Hannah and Lily stared at the mess. How would she explain this to Mama? She and Hannah were supposed to keep an eye on Dannie and Davy. Mama assumed those little boys were the ones who might get into trouble. Instead, it was Lily.

  “Let’s hide it,” Hannah whispered. She found a paper bag in the pantry and started to pluck pieces of glass from the kitchen sink and drop them into the bag.

  “But where?” Lily said. “Dannie finds everything.” She picked up a shard of sticky, marshmallowy broken glass.

  Hannah’s eyebrows knit together in a frown. “Where is a place Dannie wouldn’t go exploring?”

  Lily rinsed the last slivers of broken glass down the drain, reviewing her hiding places in her mind. Her bedroom was out. Dannie often poked around in her room while she was in school. She thought of hiding the paper bag in the basement, but he would find it while he was supposed to be helping Mama with the laundry. Papa’s workshop wouldn’t work. Then her face broke into a smile. “My old attic bedroom! No one goes up there.”

  The girls took the stairs two at a time, threw open the red door, and went up the last stairwell, a little out of breath. Lily opened the attic door and peeked her head in. She wanted to be sure no bats were swooshing around. She took a few steps inside and turned in a circle, gazing at her lovely room with the purple painted floor. She hadn’t realized how much she missed it—the little window at the far end where she could see over the tops of trees. The quiet—so quiet! No sounds of little brothers galloping by.

  Hannah was hunting for a place to hide the broken chimney. The room was mostly empty, except for a few pieces of furniture. She spied an old dresser in the corner and opened drawers, then closed them. “Too obvious.” Then she dropped to her knees and tucked the paper bag under the dresser. She pushed it far up against the wall, jumped to her feet, stepped back to look at it carefully, then patted her palms together as if she were dusting flour from her hands. “I think we found the perfect spot. No one would ever think to look here.”

  “But what do we do about replacing the chimney?” Lily asked. She wasn’t as quick a thinker as Hannah about these types of things.

  Hannah bit her lip, thinking hard. “You can use the chimney from the lamp in your room. Then, next time you go to town, you’ll have to buy a new one at the hardware store and sneak it home.”

  That sounded expensive. How much did a glass chimney cost, anyway? She had only two dollars and fifty-three cents left in her piggy bank. And how would she read at night without her oil lamp? It also sounded like a
plan in which, very likely, she would get caught. But then they heard Jim’s familiar clip-clop as he turned the buggy into the driveway and they didn’t have time for more brainstorming. Mama was home.

  The girls hurried back down the stairs before Jim reached the barn. On the second floor, Hannah grabbed the chimney from the lamp in Lily’s room. In the kitchen, she placed it on the oil lamp on the kitchen table. Lily glanced around the kitchen, making sure all traces of marshmallow were gone and everything looked normal.

  Then she had a happy thought. Today, everything was normal. Being with Hannah felt easy and natural again! The strain of the sandwich switch was over. Lily smiled. Life was good again.

  12

  Aaron Yoder Surprises Lily

  It was funny, Lily thought as she turned off her oil lamp and climbed into bed on Wednesday evening, how something as silly as a marshmallow could heal a friendship. On Monday and Tuesday of that week, Hannah and Lily had acted like they always did—they sat together at lunch, they played games at recess, they walked home together behind Joseph and Levi. With Hannah acting friendly toward Lily at school, the other girls did too. Even Effie.

  Today, Hannah had brought a surprise for her. She’d waited until Joseph and Levi had run past the bend in the road and were out of sight, then opened up her lunch box and handed Lily a paper bag. Inside was a new glass chimney! “We had a lot of extras in the basement,” Hannah said.

  Lily tucked the paper bag in her lunch box. When she arrived home, Mama was upstairs with baby Paul so she was able to tiptoe to her room and slip the substitute chimney back on her bedroom lamp. No lies were told and none were needed. But sneaking around took a toll on Lily. She had let out a big sigh of relief when the new chimney was in place and the story was over.

  Later that night, Lily snuggled down deep in the covers and pulled them up under her chin. The weather was getting colder at night and in the morning. As she drifted off to sleep, she thought about how she had a new appreciation for marshmallows.

  On Thursday morning, during first recess, Lily ran into the schoolhouse to put on her sweater. As she pulled it off the hook, the row of lunch boxes caught her eye. She decided to check her lunch box to make sure there was nothing in it that didn’t belong there. She had helped Mama make an egg sandwich this very morning. But inside her lunch was a sandwich of store-bought bread and deli meat! She pulled it out. She wanted to switch it back and get her own sandwich. But which lunch box had her sandwich in it?

  She opened one and looked inside. It wasn’t there. She checked the next lunch box. Still no egg sandwich on Mama’s wheat bread. She got several lunch boxes off the shelf and knelt on the floor beside them. She opened one. Nothing. She opened the next and breathed a sigh of relief. There it was! The egg salad sandwich. She quickly got it out and put the one that didn’t belong to her into the lunch box. She closed it but before she could put all the lunch boxes back on the shelf, the schoolhouse door opened. There stood Teacher Rhoda, hands on her hips, a shocked look on her pretty face.

  “Oh Lily,” she said in an unfamiliar voice. “I had so wanted to believe you when you said you didn’t know how those things got into your lunch box.”

  Lily scrambled to her feet. “I wasn’t getting someone else’s lunch! I checked on my lunch box and there was someone else’s sandwich. I was trying to put the lunches back the way they belonged.”

  Clearly, Teacher Rhoda didn’t believe her. “Put the lunch boxes back on the shelf. Then I want you to go sit at your desk.”

  Lily put the lunch boxes back on the shelf and walked to her desk. This couldn’t be happening! Her stomach felt all tied up in knots. She was afraid she was going to be sick.

  Teacher Rhoda brought several pieces of paper over to Lily. “You will be staying in at recess until you have written ‘Thou shalt not steal’ and ‘Thou shalt not covet’ one thousand times.”

  Lily started to cry. She couldn’t help it. It simply wasn’t fair. She counted the lines on one piece of paper. Twenty-five. That meant she had to write forty pages. She wasn’t going to get to play outside for a long, long time. She would be a withered old lady by the time she could go back out for recess. Through the open window, she heard her friends play a hand-clapping game out in the yard, their laughter bright as sleigh bells.

  Teacher Rhoda sent another note home from school for Papa and Mama. It made Lily start to cry again.

  At home, Lily showed Mama and Papa the note from Teacher Rhoda. She explained what had happened that day, trying not to cry. Then she waited and waited while Papa and Mama had a private talk in their bedroom. Lily heard the low buzz of their murmuring, and Joseph offered to stick a glass against the wall to eavesdrop, but Lily said no. She was in enough trouble.

  What if Mama and Papa didn’t believe her? She might have to run away and live with Grandma Miller.

  “But of course we believe you,” Papa said when he and Mama returned to the kitchen. “We know our little girl, and we know you wouldn’t do something like that.”

  Lily was so relieved!

  “But—”

  Lily’s heart sank. Anytime a sentence started with but, it wasn’t good news.

  “—we still want you to write those lines for Teacher Rhoda,” Papa said. “She thinks you are guilty. It doesn’t hurt to dwell on the Ten Commandments. It will certainly help you to never be tempted to take something that doesn’t belong to you.”

  Joseph offered to help Lily, but his handwriting was awful. It was a sweet offer, though. Lily’s hand cramped by the time the last line had been written. She never wanted to write such lines again. Not ever.

  Two days later, Lily sat at her desk to eat her lunch. She found a small bag of potato chips inside and knew that Mama hadn’t packed them. This time, Lily wasn’t going to wait for someone to accuse her. She lifted up the bag for everyone to see. “Someone put potato chips into my lunch box,” she said. “My apple slices are missing.”

  Lavina looked up, shocked. “They’re mine! Here are your apples.”

  Lily traded with her and went back to her desk.

  Aaron Yoder raised his hand. “I know how those chips got into Lily’s lunch box.”

  Lily’s head whipped around to face Aaron. “How?” Teacher Rhoda and Lily asked at the exact same time.

  Aaron looked at Effie. “I saw Effie do it in first recess.”

  Lily didn’t know whether to be suspicious about what Aaron said or amazed that he was sticking up for her.

  “Effie, what do you have to say about that?” Teacher Rhoda asked.

  Instantly, an expression of great boredom fell over Effie’s face. Lily thought she might yawn.

  That only made Teacher Rhoda angry. “Effie, you will stay in after everyone else is done eating. And I think we all owe Lily an apology for blaming her for stealing lunches.”

  It was the best recess of Lily’s life. Naturally, she didn’t gloat. But she was quite satisfied with how things had turned out. Shocked that Aaron Yoder had done her a good turn. She felt light and happy and giggly, even though her hand still hurt from writing all those lines. She hoped that Teacher Rhoda would make Effie write thousands and thousands of lines. Maybe even a million.

  13

  Lily Bones

  Lily stretched her toes to touch the last few leaves left on the branch above her as Joseph pushed the swing as hard as he could. Autumn was under way and soon it would be too cold to swing. They loved to play on the swing Papa had made in the big tree in front of the house. It was fun to sail through the air. Lily felt light and happy all over.

  Joseph stood to the side of the swing. “It’s my turn now.” When the swing slowed down, Lily hopped off. Joseph climbed on the swing and Lily started pushing him—higher and higher, faster and faster. They were having a contest to see who could touch the last red leaf clinging to a branch. As soon as Lily realized Joseph was about to reach it, she stopped pushing. He was close to touching it only because she was a much better swing pusher than he was
. Joseph would just have to pump his legs harder.

  Something caught her eye. The curtain in the attic window ruffled in the breeze.

  She decided to take Sally, her doll, and a book up to the room to play. “I’m tired of swinging,” she said. She ran to the house.

  “Hey!” Joseph yelled. “Not fair! Come back! I still need a few more pushes.”

  Lily ran back and gave him a few more pushes. Then she went to the house and found her doll and book. She ran up the stairs and into the little attic bedroom. Her gaze swept the empty room and she sighed. It was so lovely. Even without her furniture and purple rag rug.

  Lily changed her doll’s dress and rocked her to sleep. She lay Sally carefully on a blanket and swaddled her, the way she had seen Mama swaddle baby Paul when he was a newborn. But playing with Sally wasn’t as much fun as it used to be. Sally had become a little dull.

  Her tummy growled. She thought she might go back down to the kitchen and get a snack when she remembered the glass chimney covered with gooey marshmallows that she had hidden underneath a dresser. It had been only a week. If she were very, very careful, maybe she could scrape some leftover marshmallow off a large piece and eat it for a snack!

  She crouched down on her knees and put a hand under the dresser. She felt cobwebs and dust, then her hand touched the paper bag that held the chimney pieces. She pulled it out from under the dresser and opened the bag—then gagged. What had happened to the marshmallow? There was fuzzy, grayish-green mold covering the chimney. It smelled horrible. She tucked it back under the dresser, as far as it would go, and decided she wasn’t hungry after all.

  Lily picked up her book and soon was lost in the story. A couple of flies buzzed through the open window and circled around her. There was nothing quite so annoying as a fly buzzing around your head when you were trying to read. Though, Lily thought, having a mosquito buzz around your head when you were trying to sleep was equally annoying. She closed the window firmly and heard a thump and rattle outside the door. She paused to listen, but didn’t hear anything more, so she went back to her book.