The Pantry Door - Julie Steimle (reading strategies book txt) 📗

“Oh no. That can’t be the reason.” Nissa frowned on Katy’s behalf, shaking her head, finding the idea too ridiculous to entertain. Katy sat with her knees bent, leaning her elbow on one and sticking her chin on her hand while she slumped over on them thinking of the last few months. “Yeah, it can. My mom hates me.”

Nissa leaned over and wrapped her arm around Katy with a new yet familiar warmth. “I don’t believe that. You’re too nice, and talented and—”

But Katy shook her head. “No, I’m not. I’m not nice at all.” She lowered her head more. “I say mean things to her.”

“But why?”

Nissa’s expression had no judgment in it. She mostly looked sorry. For that alone, it felt safe to reveal to her what really had gone on. Katy sat up to look her friend in the eye and said, “She’s mad at me because…because I…I did something…stupid. I listened to my friends—” She let her voice drop as she frowned. “We shoplifted at a store. It was just a game, but—”

“Katy,” Nissa set her hand to her mouth. “Oh. That’s almost like me, only it was with the Gibsons. They wouldn’t leave me alone about it. Kept calling me chicken. Only Dad caught me. You should have seen his face.”

So Nissa knew exactly what that was like. Shaking her head sadly, she knew the guilt as well as the disappointment—though in this case it was from her outlandishly amazing father who knew magic people. Katy lifted her head, wondering how much Nissa was hurting.

“Mom and Dad both think that if I stay near the Gibsons, I’ll end up as nasty as them, which is why they’re sending me away,” Nissa said, frowning. “If your friends are like the Gibsons, then they aren’t really your friends.”

Yes, Katy had heard that before. Her mom said it. Her dad said it. But what was she to do?

“They all make fun of me at school,” Katy said. “All my old friends. They say I’m a goody-goody.”

Nissa let out a low moan, rolling her eyes. “Ooh. I hate that. They’re definitely not nice. Nice people don’t say that to their friends.”

“Yeah, but—” Katy looked up at her with every ache of desperation she felt inside.

Shaking her head, Nissa grabbed hold of Katy’s knees staring her right into her eyes. “Listen to me. We’re friends now. We don’t have to take what those creeps say to us anymore. I’ll back you up, and you back up me. Ok?”

“But you’re leaving, and when this month ends, I’m going back home. And back home they’re going to still make fun of me.” Katy wished that Nissa could come to her school, but her school was just a public school. It was completely unfair to finally find someone that liked her for who she was, only to have that person leave.

Nissa grimaced, nodding with a glance towards the window, her mind turning to her own problems. “Yeah. I know. But, you’ll still be my friend, right?”

Katy lifted her head. It was hard not to smile. She sat up and wrapped her arms around Nissa, hugging her close. “Best friends.”

Outside the window, Katy heard a sound she could not make out clearly, though Nissa perked her ears and frowned.

“That’s my mom. She’s calling me.” Nissa pulled back from their embrace. “I have to go.”

Nodding, Katy helped Nissa out the window, grabbing the top of the ladder to make sure it did not tip as Nissa climbed down.

“I’ll bring some games next time!” Nissa called up as she descended to the grass.

Katy laughed, wiping her eyes of tears that she had not known were there. “I will too!”

Nissa tried to pull the ladder from the wall. But as soon as Katy let go of the top rung, the ladder all of a sudden sunk straight into the ground like it had been standing on the edge of a well and just dropped in, right in front of Nissa who stared bulgy eyed at it. Nissa bent over and patted the stumps where the ladder was deeply buried in the grass. Then wrapping her fingers around the top rung that barely stuck out of the grass, she tugged hard. With a frown, Nissa looked up.

“It’s stuck!”

“How’d that happen?” Katy called down, leaning as far out as she could without falling through the window.

But just as she spoke, a woman in a pink felt hat—just like the one Mrs. Tippets wore when she came that afternoon to visit Grandma Schmidt—trotted out the back door onto the concrete walk. She was chatting with Nissa’s mother in the same manner as Mrs. Tippets used to with Katy’s grandmother. Katy could not see Nissa’s mom, but obviously she stood in the back doorway.

“…Saturday. You have all day tomorrow to prepare.” Mrs. Tippets glanced down at Nissa, not at all raising her head to see Katy in the window. The woman’s voice took on that familiar snide tone. “You can even employ your little girl to help you. She should be old enough to handle something as simple as the raffle.”

Katy watched Mrs. Tippets from the window as Nissa stood up straight. Nissa pretended she hadn’t made her father’s ladder sink into the ground where it was now useless. As Mrs. Tippets trotted off across the trimmed pebble drive towards the gravel road, both girls wished she’d just stayed away.

But then Nissa’s mother said to her daughter, “Come on in and help me with the dishes. There are a few things we need to discuss.”

Nissa waved to Katy then gave a shrug. They would most likely meet the next afternoon on the following day. Already the pattern was set. As both girls peered mournfully at the sunken ladder in the grass, they took it as a clear sign that it was time to part.

Katy crawled out of the cupboard and into the kitchen. From there, she tiptoed into the living room to see if Mrs. Tippets was still talking away with Grandma Schmidt. Though neither woman was there, evidence of their previous habitation was. Two crumb-covered plates with forks rested across them. The tea set with two half drunk cups next to the no longer steaming pot of hot water and the uncovered sugar bowl. Even the pamphlets announcing the Founder’s Day celebration on the table showed that business was done. Of course, with how crazy the house was getting Katy wondered if both women had not simply up and vanished when Nissa entered the magic room upstairs.

Exhaling aloud then walking to the back door, Katy found her grandmother waving to Mrs. Tippets who had trotted away just the same as the woman that has just left Nissa’s house. In fact, it was almost as if Mrs. Tippets could have been talking to Nissa’s mother and her grandmother at the same time about the very same thing and only the girls and women were different. Perhaps Mrs. Tippets was one of those mysterious people Nissa’s father knew. It gave Katy chills just thinking about it. Gazing out into the yard, Katy could see their overgrown grasses, the weather worn fence posts and the face corral that was coming apart. This world was like Nissa’s only with no one to tend it. In a way, it was reassuring that some day someone else would take care of the house and yard.

Her grandmother turned and gave Katy a smile. “There you are. Come on inside and help me clean up the dishes. I need to tell you about what we are doing for the fireman’s raffle.”

There was that we again.

She watched Grandma Schmidt as the elderly woman walked through the back door, stepping up with confidence that Katy would follow. There didn’t seem to be any point not to do as her grandma asked, and Katy almost went back inside. But when she stepped near the door, her eyes caught on the grass before the house. There, like she had always seen, were the knobby lumps where the run off from the roof dripped into the lawn every time it rained because they didn’t use rain gutters except over the porch and the back stoop. Stones, little twigs, and whatnot stuck out in this patch of lawn from years of rain dribble, but Katy stepped over to it and stared at two larger looking lumps that in all those years she thought were nothing but rocks. Crouching down, Katy touched them.

Wood.

She brushed off the grassy parts that had grown over it, feeling between those equal lumps a noticeable strip of wood. Katy’s heart rushed. It was the ladder. She looked around the yard to see if the upstairs window was there, but the roof sloped as usual without any sign of the hidden room.

“Katy! Hurry up. Or maybe you don’t want any of this cake.” Grandma Schmidt’s teasing voice came from the kitchen to the outside.

Katy stood up. Her grandfather was right. Every home had a secret. She was beginning to wonder, though, if he knew the land he had built on was more magical than he pretended. He used to say to her in his sonorous voice that in nature there was more magic to be had than in manmade things, and she ought to cling to nature as much as possible. Katy wondered now how true that really was.

She went inside.

All Friday, Katy and her grandmother were kept busy preparing for the fireman’s raffle. Mrs. Tippets had given them a list of items to raffle off. They were printed on a bright orange sheet of copy paper. She also had given them a stack of ticket rolls to sell. It was Katy’s job to decorate the raffle box for the tickets, and her grandmother’s job to collect the money. It wasn’t that her grandmother didn’t trust Katy with that job, but Mrs. Tippets certainly didn’t. That afternoon, after all their gardening and preparation for the raffle, Katy climbed into the cupboard during her grandmother’s nap to relay what she had been doing to Nissa. She brought along the leftover colored papers she had been using to cover the box like a crazy quilt.

“Nissa?” Katy called out, hoping that ladder wasn’t stuck in the ground forever. The idea of a ground that ate up ladders seemed ridiculous, but then so did the idea of a secret passage to a magical room going through her grandmother’s spice cupboard.

“Coming!” Nissa practically ran out the back door, grinning and breathless as she hopped off the concrete walk to the grass. “Katy! You can’t possibly guess what I’m going to do at the Founder’s Day celebration tomorrow!”

Katy gave a shrug as she leaned out the window. “If it’s anything like what I’m doing, then I can guess you’ll be selling raffle tickets.”

Nissa shook her head, her pigtails flopping against her shoulders as her grin widened. “Oh no. Daddy is doing that. I’m handing out the prizes! Mom’s making me a dress to wear for it, and I get to go on stage! Isn’t that great?”

Watching Nissa’s enthusiasm, Katy found it hard not to smile, though she thought Nissa was a little silly about it.

“That sounds scary. But if you like it, ok. This is what I’ve been doing,” Katy leaned