Sophie's Secret - By Nancy N. Rue Page 0,15

you.”

“Let me guess who’s spreading it,” Fiona said. She glared past Maggie at the Corn Pops, who currently had their heads all bent over something on their table.

“That’s right,” Maggie said.

“I bet it’s bad if they’re spreading it,” Kitty said. “No, I KNOW it’s bad!”

“You know what?” Sophie said to Maggie. “I don’t want to hear it.”

Maggie gave her an open-eyed look. “You don’t?”

“Nope. If it’s a rumor, then it isn’t true, so what do I care?”

“Sophie’s right,” Fiona said. She folded her arms across her chest. “It stops here.”

“That’s fine with me,” Maggie said. She shoved her chair back and slung her lunch bag strap over her shoulder. “I just thought you’d want to know.”

“Thanks,” Sophie said.

“But no thanks,” Fiona said.

Sophie felt a pang as Maggie trudged heavily away. Maybe if she had listened to what Maggie had to say, she would have stayed and they could have made things up to her —

But Harley banged her on the back and told her she rocked, and Sophie decided maybe that was just as good. Meanwhile, Kitty was gazing, wide-eyed, at Fiona.

“What?” Fiona said. “Do I have a booger hanging out of my nose or something?”

“You stood up for Sophie,” Kitty said.

“Of course I did. We’re Corn Flakes. We do that for each other.”

“Oh,” Kitty said.

That was Friday, the last school day before Sophie’s grounding period was over.

“I’m gonna be so glad when Monday comes,” Fiona told her as they were cramming their books into their lockers after school. “If we don’t start playing again, I think I’m going to go into cardiac arrest.”

Sophie knew that had something to do with dying, which didn’t cheer her up much. “We only get to play if I improve at least a point in everything on my progress report Monday.”

“You’re going to, so quit stressing out. We need to be thinking about WHAT we’re going to play—”

But Sophie suddenly had it. She had just emptied her backpack into her locker—because there was no homework over the weekend. That meant she could devote all her time to the excavation of the attic. What if —

“We could all three of us do our archaeology in my attic!” Sophie said. “This could be so cool—and my mother already said it was okay so we don’t have to worry about my father yelling at us—well, me.”

“Fabulous,” Fiona said. Her eyes took on her deep, intrigued look. “You could develop a plan over the weekend so we can start Monday—”

“No—Tuesday. I have to wait ’til my dad gets home Monday to get off groundation.”

“Okay—Tuesday. I’m going to work on Boppa for some actual hard hats like the archaeologists wear. He’ll want to get out of the house anyway. We have a new nanny for Rory and Isabella, and she has so many rules, she’s even starting to tell Boppa what to do!”

Boppa was Fiona’s grandfather, who was like a mom and a dad to Fiona and her little brother and sister because her parents were WAY busy people and weren’t around much. Sophie was sure Fiona would show up with something close to real-thing hats. Boppa didn’t say no to her very often.

So Sophie went home that day with a lighter heart, and she started in on the attic right away, ball cap on backwards and notebook in hand. It wasn’t an actual clipboard, but a pencil tucked behind her ear made her feel more professional.

Grandma Too was the name Lacie had given their great-grandma as a little kid when she realized she had a grandma—their father’s mom—and HER mother was another grandma too.

Once Sophie opened Grandma Too’s trunk, the rest of the world ceased to exist. Inside were treasures like she never would have found in the backyard, she was sure, and her disappointment at not being able to use the trenching technique slowly faded.

There was a pair of Grandma Too’s underwear, paper-thin and yellowed and as big as the shorts Lacie wore to play basketball in. The tag pinned to them with a rusty safety pin said she had worn them on her wedding day, in 1939.

“Very significant,” Sophie said, and jotted that down in her notebook.

There were dried flowers, now in confetti flakes, from Too’s bridal bouquet, and a gavel from when she was president of the Ladies’ Auxiliary. Sophie wasn’t sure what that was, but it was engraved in the brass plate which she examined with her magnifying glass, so it must be historically important.

“This is the best,” she murmured to herself. “The best,

readonlinefreenovel.com Copyright 2016 - 2024