peeled for the guy.
I saw him twice.
Okay, I thought. He's after Rowena. How sad. She's such a little girl.
"Ow!" Rowena cried suddenly. "Mary Anne! You're hurting me." "Oh, Rowena. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to." (I'd been holding Rowena's hand in a grip so tight it would have put Arnold Schwarzeneg-ger to shame. I was petrified that she'd be kidnapped, now that I knew who the spy wanted.) I looked at my watch. It was time to meet up with my friends.
"Rowena," I said, "we have to go back." "But we didn't find a toy store." "I know. We'll go to FAO Schwarz soon. I promise. And I know you'll like it. It has more stuffed animals than I've ever seen. Some of them are bigger than you are!" Rowena walked happily to our meeting place. (The thought of FAO Schwarz had satisfied her.) Stacey and Alistaire were waiting for us, but no one else had arrived yet.
"Stacey!" I cried, just as she cried, "Mary Anne!", "What?" we both said. Then I added, "You go first." "The guy is after Alistaire," she whispered to me. "I saw him three times." "No way. He's after Rowena. 7 saw him twice." Stacey and I stared at each other. "What does this mean?" asked Stacey.
"I'm not sure. . . . He's twins? He's after you or me?" "Well, I don't know about twins, but it's the kids he's after." "Both of them, I guess." I wrung my hands. "We have to tell Mr. and Mrs. Harrington," I said firmly.
Stacey looked pained. "Here come Jessi and Laine," she whispered. I knew she meant, "We'll talk about this later." We didn't have many chances to talk that day, though. Either Rowena and Alistaire were around, or our friends were. But at one point, when the others had walked ahead of us, and Kristy was pointing out something to the kids, Stacey nudged me and said quietly, "We'll tell the Harringtons this afternoon." "Okay." I nodded, swallowing hard.
Near four o'clock, Stacey and I were standing in the Harringtons' foyer, having returned safely with Alistaire and Rowena.
The housekeeper came to meet us. "Mr. and Mrs. Harrington aren't home yet," she said, "but they told me to give you a message. They'll be having some time off. They won't need you again until Friday morning." I glanced at Stacey. All we could do was wait.
Claudia.
Chapter 18.
It was our seventh day of classes at Falny. I had learned to dread them. All Mr. Clarke ever said to me was, "Work slower," or, "Do it over." Once he might have smiled, but I wasn't sure. It could have been a grimace.
When Mal and I arrived in Mr. Clarke's class on Wednesday morning, he said, "All right. Today is our day at the Cloisters." The Cloisters? Oh, right. The Cloisters. Mr. Clarke had mentioned the trip the day before, but somehow I had forgotten. Now I remembered. He had told us that the Cloisters, a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, located in some place called Fort Tryon Park, features medieval art. Only it's not just a building where you go to stare at paintings and statues. I mean, it z's a building, but Mr. Clarke said it's unusual. And it looks out on the Hudson River. (Plus, since it's in a park, you feel like you're in the counitry.) Here's what's in the museum: a collection of art, plus parts of medieval chapels and monasteries — real ones from Europe. The structures had been taken apart, the stones were shipped to the United States, and then the structures were rebuilt.
(In case you're wondering, medieval does not mean "halfway evil," like I used to think. It means "having to do with the Middle Ages," which were the years 1000 to 1400 in Europe. And a cloister is part of a monastery or convent, or the monastery or convent itself. Okay. Enough of this stuff. It's too much like school. If it didn't have to do with art, I would be bored, too.) When our class had assembled, we gathered our sketch pads, our charcoals, and our lunches. Then we boarded a bus. It was a special bus to the Cloisters, and some other people were on it, but most of the passengers were us Falny students. And Mr. Clarke, of course.
Mr.
Laura Locutus
Gertrude Chandler Warner
Donald Harstad
Timothy Williams
Margaret Yorke
Alisa Woods
Jack Ludlow
Deborah Fletcher Mello
Tyler Anne Snell
Anne Swärd