June Sparrow and the Million-Dollar Penny Read online

  Dedication

  For Rebecca, Ruby, Emma, and Pesha,

  best of daughters, best of friends.

  And for Ken, who showed me his penny book

  and took me to South Dakota.

  Contents

  Dedication

  1: A Perfect Tragedy

  2: La Bohème

  3: Another Dakota

  4: Not in Kansas Anymore

  5: The Farm

  6: Barnyard Blues

  7: First Day

  8: Detention

  9: Pennies

  10: This ’n’ That

  11: Moses

  12: The Drop Box

  13: Joe Pye

  14: Don’t Worry, Be Happy

  15: Main Street

  16: Numismatics

  17: Swarm

  18: Make a List and Check It Twice

  19: Bob’s Pantry

  20: Trespassing

  21: Chores

  22: Silo

  23: Roseanne

  24: Snow-Blind

  25: Birthday Penny

  26: Let Gonebyes Go Bye-Bye

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  When June Sparrow’s eyes popped open that morning, there were eight words ringing in her head: Today is the best day of the year! Better than Christmas and better than fireworks. June was turning twelve! She stretched her legs out under the covers and noticed with annoyance that they were the same length as they had been the night before. Then her legs hit a lump followed by a tumble and squeal as something hit the floor. She had forgotten that Indigo Bunting was sleeping at the end of her bed.

  Indigo Bunting was June’s pet pig. And not just any pig, a miniature pig. He was not only the cutest but also the most intelligent animal on the face of the earth according to June, and Indigo Bunting was far too clever to disagree. He couldn’t help being cute because of his diminutive size (he was about the length of June’s forearm and weighed four pounds, three and one-half ounces) and extreme cleanliness (some might even call him fussy). Plus, as June liked to point out, everyone knows that pigs are smarter than dogs.

  Indigo shook himself, jumped right back up, ran the length of the bed to June’s pillow, and gave her a big, snuffling kiss. He hadn’t forgotten her birthday.

  “Thank you, Indigo,” June said, kissing him on the tip of his little pink snout. She picked up the framed photo of her parents on her bedside table and gave them a kiss as well. She always kissed their photo first thing in the morning and last thing before bed. It seemed the least she could do, as they had left her in possession of a very large fortune. June missed her parents, but they had died when June was only three years old, so she didn’t remember them all that well, and June and Indigo were doing just fine on their own.

  June Sparrow had no idea that everything was about to change.

  That night, June and Indigo had tickets to the opera for her birthday. June did not just enjoy the opera; she adored it. Her mother and father had adored the opera as well, and since they lived in New York City, they were able to go to one of the best opera houses in the world, the Metropolitan Opera, or the Met, as everyone called it. One of June’s only memories of her mother was dancing around the living room in her arms before her parents went out. June could remember the feeling of silk against her bare feet as she wrapped her legs around her mother’s waist, and the smell of jasmine perfume. Jasmine had been her mother’s signature scent, and there was still one small bottle in a velvet box tucked inside the top drawer of her mother’s dressing table. June used a drop or two every now and then for special occasions.

  This was certainly a special occasion. For the first time this year, Shirley Rosenbloom, June’s housekeeper, allowed June to go alone, or rather, with only Indigo Bunting as her date. Despite what many adults assume, there are some pets that enjoy getting dressed up in miniature versions of human clothes. Indigo Bunting didn’t just enjoy getting dressed up—he adored it.

  June picked out a silk dress with pink lace along the sleeves and matching pink tulle flaring out below like a petticoat. She pulled it over her head and twirled. Indigo Bunting covered his eyes with his trotters, which was his way of telling her that she looked like she was wearing a Halloween costume.

  “You’re one to talk,” June said, as she fastened the rhinestone clasp on his velvet opera cape and tucked the elastic band for his tiny silk top hat under his chin. June picked up Indigo so that they could admire themselves in the huge mirror by the front door.

  “Perfect!” she said. Indigo wriggled in anticipation and made sure that his top hat peeked out proudly from under her arm.

  They were headed to their favorite juice bar, Gray’s Papaya, for a quick stop on the way to the opera. June weaved her way expertly through the glamorous couples on the street. It was early evening, and the sidewalks were so busy that June pretended that she and Indigo were white-water rafting, leaning into the stream of bodies and breaking through when there was an opening in the crowd, always on the lookout for those annoying people who stopped dead in their tracks to look at their cell phones, creating unexpected boulders in the stream.

  “Good evening, Miss June,” said the man at the juice bar when they arrived. “The usual?”

  “Yes, please!” June settled herself onto one of the tall stools at the counter, put Indigo on the stool next to her, and gave his seat a quick spin. Indigo loved to spin, and he insisted she keep it up until June’s tall, frothy papaya juice arrived with a hot dog on the side. (All beef, of course—for obvious reasons, June never ate pork.)

  “And this is for your date.” The Juice Man cut some papaya into bite-size pieces and put them into a Dixie cup for Indigo Bunting. June gave him a big grin as Indigo tipped his nose into the cup. The Juice Man was not very particular about the “no pets allowed” rule, and after all, the counter was open to the sidewalk. June took a bite of hot dog and sighed happily. Indigo paused in his own gobbling to smile at her. Yes, she thought, taking a sip of juice, this was living.

  “Miss Sparrow?” A familiar voice interrupted June just as she slurped (rather loudly) the last of her drink through a bright pink straw.

  “Mr. Mendax?” June was shocked to see a slightly built and extremely well dressed man standing at her shoulder. Mr. Mendax was the Chief Financial Officer for her parents’ company, and she saw him only once a year, on Christmas Day, when he dropped off a gift basket for June and had a glass of sherry with Shirley Rosenbloom. June wiped a gob of ketchup from the corner of her mouth.

  Mr. Mendax looked extremely uncomfortable. In fact, he looked so uncomfortable that June wondered if he was about to throw up. Maybe it was the sight of Indigo Bunting at the counter, eating his meal right beside her, that was making him turn green. Some people had a hard time understanding pigs as pets.

  “Happy birthday, Miss Sparrow,” said Mr. Mendax, looking even more pale.

  “Thank you.” June exchanged a glance with Indigo. This was getting weirder and weirder.

  “The fact is, Miss Sparrow . . .” He pulled on his shirt cuffs with their tasteful gold cufflinks and looked down at the floor, which was layered with dropped straws and crumpled napkins in a filthy collage of pink and white. “You have no money.”

  “What?” June spun around on her tall stool. “Of course I do!”

  “Do you know much you have?” Mr. Mendax asked.

  “Not really,” June said, surprised. “You’re the one who’s supposed to know that, Mr. Mendax.”

  “No, I mean, how much do you have on you right now?”

  June wo
ndered if Mr. Mendax was there because he needed money, despite his fancy suit and gold cufflinks.

  “I have”—June opened her purse and unzipped the inside pocket, where she kept a roll of bills—“about a hundred and fifty dollars, but we haven’t paid for our snacks yet.”

  “It will have to do,” Mr. Mendax said hurriedly. He pulled out a piece of paper from his breast pocket and handed it to June. It was an airplane ticket in her name to Red Bank, South Dakota. June stared.

  “What is this?” she asked.

  “A boarding pass.” He pressed a large ziplock bag into her hands as well. “And here are some of your mother’s personal possessions, from the safe in my office. Nothing of real value. No cash, I’m afraid. Just a few mementos, but I thought you’d like to have them.”

  June stared at the ziplock bag and the boarding pass.

  “What’s going on, Mr. Mendax?”

  This was the moment when Mr. Mendax burst into tears.

  “It was a Ponzi scheme,” Mr. Mendax said as he dabbed his cheeks with a paper napkin.

  “Ponzi what?” asked June. Mr. Mendax began a very confusing explanation, frequently interrupting himself to sniffle as he wept. He had invested all her money—here, June stopped him: “All the money?”

  “All of it.” He nodded tearfully. “I was going to make you rich.”

  “But I was already rich!”

  “I was conned,” Mr. Mendax sobbed. “Listen to me, Miss Sparrow. I have only a few minutes before I have to turn myself over to the authorities.”

  (June had always thought that Mr. Mendax was The Authorities.)

  “I have spoken to your aunt Bridget, in South Dakota—”

  “Aunt Bridget!” June had never met her aunt, though she received a Christmas card every year.

  “Your mother’s sister is named in the will, should anything happen to me, and now, I’m afraid—something has.” Mr. Mendax began to weep copiously. “I will be taken to prison, and you will go to your aunt in South Dakota.”

  “I will do no such thing!”

  “I am so sorry—it’s all I can do for you. Please, go directly to the airport.” Mr. Mendax glanced out at the street. “You’ll have to get a cab there. I—I haven’t any money to give you—everything will be sold—even their coin collection—priceless!”

  Just then two police officers walked over and took Mr. Mendax rather roughly by the arm. They had been standing at the other end of the counter for quite a while, but June hadn’t paid any attention to them.

  “Time’s up,” one of them said, while the other put a pair of handcuffs on Mr. Mendax’s slender white wrists.

  The first officer finished his shake and left a few bills on the counter. “Tough break, kid,” he said to June, and they marched Mr. Mendax out onto the street and into the back of a squad car.

  “Don’t go home!” Mr. Mendax called out as they were taking him away. “Go straight to the airport. Nothing I can do! Ruin! Bankruptcy! Catastrophe!” He was still sobbing when the policemen shut the door and turned on the siren, speeding away into the night with Mr. Mendax’s tearstained face pressed against the window.

  As soon as the police car sped away, Indigo tugged the boarding pass out of her hand. The plane would be leaving in six hours. Indigo looked very worried, but June Sparrow was not the kind of girl who simply did as she was told.

  “Six hours,” she said thoughtfully. June asked for the check, and the Juice Man told her it was on the house this time. Under the circumstances, she decided it was the appropriate moment for a gracious thank-you.

  Just then, the Juice Man pulled out an enormous bouquet of white roses from under the counter.

  “Happy birthday, Miss June,” he said.

  June was stunned. “How did you know?”

  The Juice Man smiled. “I’ve been making papaya shakes on this corner for a long time, Miss June.”

  “They’re beautiful,” June said softly. “Thank you.” She jumped down off the stool with her bouquet in one hand and Indigo in the other.

  “What should we do, Indigo? Am I really ruined? Should we still go to the opera?” Indigo looked at her long and hard, then pushed his snout into the bouquet and snuffled deeply.

  “You’re right,” June said. “It’s still my birthday, and I am not going to spend it at the airport!”

  June carried the roses into the opera house with Indigo Bunting hiding behind them. It was perfect camouflage, as pigs weren’t technically allowed to attend the opera, and this seemed like the best way to make an entrance. June settled into her box surrounded by white roses with Indigo Bunting on her lap, and as the curtain rose, she thought that if it was really and truly her last night in New York, this was as nearly perfect as it could get.

  La Bohème was one of their favorite operas. It was over-the-top romantic: fantastic costumes and arias, bucketfuls of snow falling from the rafters, and the glorious grand finale when the young heroine, Mimi, dies in the arms of her lover, Rodolfo. When the curtain came down, June and Indigo had both soaked their handkerchiefs with satisfying tears for Mimi (and maybe a little for themselves). June thought that she wouldn’t mind having a handsome poet mooning over her, but to be perfectly honest, Indigo Bunting was much better company than Rodolfo.

  When they stepped outside the opera house, the fountain at Lincoln Center was shooting high bubbles through the beams from the spotlights, and even though she knew they really had to get to the airport, June couldn’t help herself—she kicked off her ballet flats and ran around the cement rim of the fountain in her bare feet. Indigo Bunting raced ahead of her. He was small enough to occasionally throw in a tiny pirouette without falling off the edge. After three times around he was panting hard, and June swept him up and kissed him right between his little pink ears.

  “We have to to say good-bye to New York, Indigo!” June said. “We have been dealt a harsh blow by fate.” (Going to the opera always made June feel very dramatic.) “But our story is not yet over; in fact, it is only beginning!” Indigo started wiggling his curly tail in agreement. “June Sparrow and Indigo Bunting are as New York as bagels and cream cheese! We’re as New York as King Kong and the Empire State Building!”

  June put one arm into the air and Indigo wrapped himself around her elbow, baring his teeth and trying to look like an enormous gorilla—he wasn’t very convincing, but she knew what he meant.

  Suddenly there was the sound of applause, and they looked up, surprised to see that a small crowd had gathered. A woman wearing a feather boa dabbed her eyes, and someone yelled, “You go, girl!”

  June picked up her flowers from the Juice Man and threw them out to the crowd like a wedding bouquet. It scattered into a dozen white roses in the air. People scrambled to catch them, and there was more applause.

  “Now that’s what I call an exit!” June whispered to Indigo as they jumped down from the lip of the fountain.

  “There’s still two and a half hours before the plane leaves, Indigo,” June said when they reached the sidewalk. “I think we have just enough time to go home.”

  Indigo gave her an incredulous look, but she picked him up and ran. Home was the Dakota. The most fabulous address in all of New York City. The building where Leonard (¡¡West Side Story!!) Bernstein had lived. The building where John Lennon had been shot and Yoko Ono still lived. June had never lived anywhere else in her life, and she swore that she never would. As she liked to say to Indigo Bunting, the Dakota was opera.

  But when June arrived, there were four police cars with their lights flashing pulled up in front of the building. Antonio, the night doorman, came running out to meet her.

  “Miss June”—he was stuttering with anxiety—“don’t go in, Miss June. Mr. Mendax said—”

  “I know what he said,” June said desperately. “I just need five minutes.” She glanced at the police cars. “Hold them off, Antonio! Five minutes!”

  Antonio stared helplessly as she ran past him into the building and up the stairs to her
apartment. Luckily, Shirley Rosenbloom hadn’t come home yet from her weekly movie night. Indigo glanced at the hall clock with a worried expression, but June ran straight back to the library. She had almost forgotten her birthday present.

  The library was June’s favorite room, filled with the comforting smell of old books and lemony furniture polish. There was a fat globe that spun smoothly on its axis and a ladder on wheels that went along a metal railing so that you could reach the books on the top shelf and push yourself around the room. But tonight June didn’t have time to zoom around on the ladder. She went straight to the back corner of the library with Indigo trotting behind her, making anxious noises about the time.

  Of course, no great library could be complete without a secret door. June removed a copy of Alice in Wonderland from the far right bookshelf to reveal a small bronze handle set into the wall. June turned the handle and the bookshelf swung open like a door, into a tiny room with a glass case set upon a small table.

  June went straight over to the case and flicked a switch, illuminating it from the inside. She paused for just a moment. Though she had seen it before, this always took her breath away: her parents’ priceless coin collection. June didn’t know what all these coins were worth, but she knew that this was why they were kept hidden in the secret room. There were gold sovereigns and some very old silver currency from other countries, but rare American coins had been her parents’ specialty. Mr. Mendax had been horrified to find June playing with some of these coins when she was a little girl of seven, and he had put them right back into the case while explaining to her that (a) these were not toys, and (b) her parents had gotten the money to start their very successful stationery company from their collection of rare American coins.

  June stared down at the collection. “Why didn’t you give me the key?” she moaned as if her parents could still hear her.

  Only Mr. Mendax could unlock the case with a special key that he always carried with him, and that key was probably with The Authorities by now!

  June tore her eyes away from the coins inside. She was there for a small, pale blue envelope leaning on top of the case. It had her initials, “J.S.,” written on the front in her mother’s loopy cursive. It always made her feel funny to see her mother’s handwriting. She knew her parents best from photographs, and their handwriting made them seem closer and more real. June already knew what was inside the envelope. Shirley Rosenbloom had told June that her mother placed this envelope holding twelve pennies on top of the coin case on her very first birthday, and June received one birthday penny every year. Each penny came inside a clear plastic coin protector that snapped over the penny like a tiny, flat box, and June kept all her birthday pennies in a small silver dish shaped like a scallop shell. June loved her birthday tradition, but a few years ago she couldn’t help but ask Shirley Rosenbloom why her mother gave her a penny every year, instead of one of the gold coins that looked like it was from a dragon’s lair.