June Sparrow and the Million-Dollar Penny Read online

  “What is it?” she asked, already feeling guilty about even thinking about stealing from Bob.

  “I’m not really going grocery shopping,” he said. Now he was the one looking guilty.

  “You’re not? Where are you going?”

  “Back to school.”

  “School? How come?”

  Now Joe didn’t only look guilty; he looked a little mischievous. “I want to hand in a story about the Halloween dance for the paper. If they take it, maybe it’ll be my first article.”

  “First article!” June repeated loudly.

  “Sshh!” Joe said, though Bob was back on the porch and couldn’t have heard them.

  “That’s great, Joe!” she whispered.

  “Might as well try,” he said, scuffing his sneaker on the grass. Then he looked right at June and smiled.

  “I bet they will take it.” June crossed her fingers and held them up so Joe could see.

  “Thanks,” Joe said. Indigo nudged Joe’s leg with an encouraging snort, and June waved her paintbrush good-bye, splattering paint on the back of one of the hens. Luckily, it was a white one, the same color as the paint. She and Joe started laughing. “I don’t think Bob will notice,” Joe said. “Call you later.”

  “Call you later,” said June. Joe walked off toward his tractor, which had spent the night by the side of the road. This must be what kids who went to school did all the time. June didn’t like school or homework, but she definitely liked the “call you later” part.

  June washed out her brush and put away the paint cans, rags, and brushes in the barn. She still didn’t have any idea how to get the Penny Book, and once Joe left, it was impossible to think about anything else. She had to come up with a plan. Since she’d eaten ice cream for breakfast, taken a ride on the La-Z-Boy express, and traveled inside a beehive, nothing else had happened. She knew that the metal that won’t stick to a magnet had to be the Big One, and it seemed pretty clear by now that the list was all about Red Bank, but that was as far as she and Indigo had gotten. Once she had both the list and the Penny Book in her hands, she was pretty sure that the two of them could figure out what happened to the Big One. She always kept the list in her pocket and had been tempted to tell Joe about it every day and see if he had any ideas. But now that they had gotten into so much trouble about the Penny Book, she was definitely keeping it a secret.

  June made her way up the steps to let Bob know that she was all done, Indigo trotting beside her. It was getting colder and Bob was wearing a woolen cap with ear flaps, though he still sat in his rocker with the paper on his lap.

  “I’m all done, Mr. Burgess,” she said.

  “Bob,” he said. “I mean it—everyone calls me Bob.”

  “Bob,” she said hesitantly. “I finished painting and put everything away.”

  “Good,” he said, eyeing the horizon. “Let’s hope the rain holds off so it will dry faster.”

  June shifted, not sure how to excuse herself. She could walk home from Bob’s place, and it was almost supper time. She could hear Indigo’s stomach growling from here.

  “Would you like to come in for a minute?” Bob asked. “I’ve got something I’d like to show you.”

  June’s heart leaped. The Penny Book! She followed him inside and he led the way into the kitchen. She pulled out a chair, trying not to look at the shelf in the pantry. Bob poured her a glass of milk and put out a plate of cookies with agonizing slowness.

  She took a big gulp of milk and slipped one of the cookies to Indigo as Bob walked into the pantry and reached up to a high shelf. But instead of bringing down the Penny Book, he picked up a large jar of pennies and set it on the table with a smile.

  “This is my coin collection from back when me and your mom collected together,” he said. “I thought you might like to have it.”

  June stared. The only penny she really cared about was the Big One, and there was no way she could ask him about that without giving everything away.

  Bob sat down opposite her, looking a little concerned. “I hope you don’t mind,” he said. “I don’t really have any use for it anymore, and you seem interested in coin collecting, so—”

  June remembered her manners. “No! No, I love it,” she said, reaching for the jar and holding it between her hands. “Thank you so much, Mr.—Bob.” She looked up at him. “It’s so kind of you to give this me. I really appreciate it.”

  “Your mom and I spent a lot of time collecting together,” Bob said. “She was always the ringleader, of course, but I didn’t do so bad myself.”

  “When did you stop?” she asked. “Did you—” She took a deep breath. “Did you ever find any really valuable coins?”

  “Not really, no,” Bob said. “Your mom had a knack for finding the most valuable ones. I just liked to collect them.” He looked at June with a strange expression she couldn’t read. “And spending time with her, of course.”

  “You were best friends, weren’t you?” June asked.

  “We were.” He looked a little sad but smiled gently. “You look quite a bit like her, you know.”

  “I don’t think so,” June said, kicking at the legs of her chair. “She had red hair, and mine is so boring.”

  Bob laughed that big, infectious laugh she had heard at the barn when she threw manure on him by mistake. June giggled without even knowing what was so funny, and all of a sudden she could imagine why Bob had been her mother’s best friend. He must have been fun when he was a kid.

  “Your mom wasn’t a natural redhead.” Bob leaned forward as if somebody might overhear him. “I don’t know if it’s all right to tell her secrets to you now, but I remember when she started dyeing it that color. She had just turned sixteen.”

  “Really!” June was stunned. Her mother had always looked so glamorous with her red hair and cool sunglasses.

  “Oh, yes,” Bob said, still smiling. “When she was a little girl, her hair looked a lot like yours, which is very pretty, by the way.”

  June shrugged and turned the jar of pennies around in her hands. It was heavier than it looked.

  “You can open it,” Bob said.

  June knew the Big One wasn’t in there, but Bob looked at her so expectantly that she opened the jar and tipped some pennies out onto the kitchen table.

  Bob ran his fingers through them, then picked one up that was particularly darkened by sweat and age. He checked the date. “Now, this one isn’t worth that much money,” he said. “But I can tell you about the day that I found it. Your mom and I had stopped to get something at Kleinsaasser’s Drug Store. They had a counter where you could get Cokes and lime phosphates and Green Rivers.”

  June had no idea what those last two things were, but she didn’t want to interrupt him.

  “Everyone stopped there after school. I remember on that day we were exactly one cent short for a couple of soda pops, and the guy who owned the place didn’t like kids very much, so he never cut us a break. We were mooning around, looking at the menu (which we knew by heart, of course), and Roseanne saw the edge of this very penny sticking out from the bottom of one of those red spinning stools they had at the counter.” He laughed again. “Your mom was so excited. It’s a 1974, see?” He held it out to her so she could see the date. “We never got the phosphates, because your mom made me save this penny to trade out for another one from the jar the next day. She said it was our lucky penny. From then on whenever we had to pick a number, you know, for math class or a game or something, your mother always said, ‘Seventy-four!’ It used to drive our teachers crazy. They’d ask us to pick a number from one to ten, and your mom would yell out, ‘Seventy-four!’”

  He passed the penny to June. She looked at it, imagining her mom with dark brown hair and a best friend named Bob.

  “Did she get into lots of trouble at school?” she asked.

  “A bit of trouble,” Bob said. “But everyone loved Roseanne. She was always full of plans and ideas. The whole Penny Book project was her idea. I was lucky
she liked to hang around with me, though it could be just because we grew up next door to each other.”

  “Can you remember something about every penny in here?” June asked.

  “Oh, I doubt that,” Bob said. “That’s a lot of pennies and a lot of years. But I do remember some things.” He shrugged. “You don’t have to keep them all, June. You can take them down to the bank and get some of those paper coin rollers and turn them in for pocket money if you’d like. I don’t mind.”

  “No!” June surprised herself with how vehement she sounded. “I like to think about you guys collecting together,” she said more quietly.

  “Okay,” Bob said, scooping up the rest of the pennies and putting them back into the jar. “These are yours to keep.”

  June thought of something. “Can we keep them here?” she asked suddenly.

  Bob looked at her. “Sure, but—why would you want to do that?”

  “Maybe . . .” June hesitated and Indigo whined, looking up at her face. He knew her better than Bob did, but June rushed on without looking down at him. “Maybe I could come by again, you know, hear some more stories about my mom.”

  Indigo whined loudly and she nudged him with her foot to be quiet. Indigo knew what she was really thinking: it would give her a good excuse to come back to the house and take the Penny Book when Bob wasn’t looking. How did Indigo always know everything?

  Bob looked surprised but happy. “I’d like that very much,” he said. “Anytime you want to come over, you’re more than welcome.”

  “It’ll be kind of like a game,” June said brightly, feeling like a terrible person as Indigo’s whine turned into a sort of low growl in his throat.

  “It certainly will,” Bob said, a big smile lighting up his face. “A memory game.” He seemed about to say something else, and June thought she saw his eyes flick to where the Penny Book was sitting on the shelf behind her, but she couldn’t be sure. Indigo growled even louder and Bob looked down at him.

  “That little pig is ready for his supper, I think,” said Bob. “We’d better get you home.”

  He got up and put the jar on the counter near his tins marked “Flour” and “Sugar.” “But it’s your collection now. It’ll be right here waiting for you.”

  Bob gave June and Indigo a ride home, since it looked like it was about to thunder, and in fact the sky opened up with rain just as they started up Aunt Bridget’s driveway. Bob came inside to wait it out, and Aunt Bridget insisted that he join them for supper. June managed to avoid being alone with Indigo until Bob went home and she was headed up to her room to do homework. Once she shut the door to her bedroom and plopped him onto the bed, Indigo gave her a long, hard look.

  “Oh Indigo, I’m not that bad,” she said. “I do like hearing the stories, and he likes telling them. And if I get a chance to get back what belongs to me . . .” She stared him down. “There’s some reason Aunt Bridget wanted to get rid of the Penny Book, and there’s some reason that Bob isn’t taking it down to the This ’n’ That. I know it has to do with the Big One.”

  Indigo raised his eyebrows.

  “Okay, I’m not one hundred percent sure. But think about it, Indigo. Traveling in the beehive and the La-Z-Boy express were both about meeting Moses—and now Moses is making sure that the Penny Book will come back to me if Bob drops it off like he was supposed to. So that means my mom wanted me to meet Moses and go to the This ’n’ That shop. Aunt Bridget is the one who knows about ice cream for breakfast, so Mom wanted me to meet Aunt Bridget so that I could find out what she did with the Big One, especially if Aunt Bridget’s the one who ripped those pages out of the Penny Book! The Big One was probably on one of those missing pages, Indigo, don’t you get it? Maybe even the page she wrote the list on!”

  Indigo looked a little skeptical.

  “Do you have any better ideas?” she asked, a little annoyed. Indigo thought for a minute, then slowly shook his head.

  “I’m going to get back Mom’s Penny Book, Indigo—I don’t care what it takes! Come on, let’s take one more crack at the list before bed.”

  She pulled it out of her pocket and spread it flat on the bedspread for the hundredth time.

  “Here’s what’s left,” she said. “Now think!”

  J.S. 2 R.B. 4 B.D.

  “June Sparrow plus a some weird numbers and letters. Do you know numerology, Indigo?”

  Indigo shook his head.

  “Me neither,” said June. “I don’t even know what it means, but we’ve got to crack the code! Here goes:

  Climb a ladder to the top of the world

  Hug my oldest friend

  Find metal that won’t stick to a magnet

  Indigo looked up at her.

  “Okay, we know what that last one means, but we still haven’t found the Big One, so I’m keeping it on the list,” she said. “When we cross that off the list, we’ve got our ticket out of here.”

  Indigo sighed and put his head down on his front trotters.

  June read the last item out loud: “‘Let gonebyes go bye-bye.’ That’s a weird one. I’ve heard of bygones, but not gonebyes. Maybe it means the same thing, kind of like a clue in a scavenger hunt. What do you think?” Indigo’s long eyelashes were shut tight. “Indigo?”

  Indigo had apparently decided to go bye-bye himself.

  June reached under the bed and felt around for her purse. She checked that her birthday penny was still inside, along with her mother’s old driver’s license. Then she checked the numbers on the license, just in case they matched up to J.S. 2 R.B. 4 B.D.

  No such luck. None of it made any sense.

  June shoved the purse back under her bed.

  “I just want to find the Big One and bring us back home,” she said, snuggling up to Indigo. “I know we can do it. We’re going to find the Big One and go straight back to New York, just like my mom did.”

  Indigo nuzzled her cheek. He knew she sounded braver than she felt.

  Over the next several weeks, June got into the habit of stopping by Bob’s place, picking pennies from the jar, and hearing stories about her mom. She liked hearing the stories, and despite the fact that it was all part of her master plan to get the Penny Book when his back was turned, she had to admit she liked spending time with Bob, even if he was a grown-up. Thanksgiving was coming, and Aunt Bridget was planning on having everyone over for a traditional dinner. She had invited Bob and Moses along with Joe and his mother. Aunt Bridget seemed to be looking forward to hosting, even though this meant that she was even grumpier than usual. She went over the menu every morning, though June didn’t think that turkey giblets were exactly breakfast conversation.

  The best thing about Thanksgiving was that it meant June wouldn’t have to go to school for two whole days that week. She had made no progress with the list or with stealing the Penny Book. Now that she’d started having cookies and milk with Bob on a regular basis, going into the house when he wasn’t home didn’t feel as easy as it had before she knew him, and besides, Indigo didn’t approve.

  They let everyone out of school early on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, and when June got off the bus, she decided to go over to Bob’s place instead of straight home. Indigo was waiting for her down at the end of the driveway as usual, wearing a red plaid dog coat June had found for him at the This ’n’ That. He thought it made him look country. June didn’t have the heart to tell him that nothing made Indigo Bunting look country.

  “Let’s go to Bob’s first,” she said to Indigo. He loved going to Bob’s, as it always meant cookies before dinner. June was trying to get into the holiday spirit, but she knew that Aunt Bridget would be in a state. As soon as June got home, her aunt would start her chopping celery and cleaning counters that were already spick-and-span. June tossed her schoolbag behind a bush at the end of the driveway and picked up Indigo. He licked her ear in the cold. “I know, Indigo,” she said. “I should try to be excited about Thanksgiving.”

  They both sighed.

&
nbsp; In New York it was their favorite holiday. They always watched the Thanksgiving Day parade from their windows at the Dakota. The huge balloons floated right by their windows at eye level, Clifford the Big Red Dog and Mr. Potato Head. They’d be watching the balloons get blown up in person tonight if they were still in New York, June thought with a sigh. Aunt Bridget planned to watch the parade on television as they cooked, but the thought of this only made June more homesick than ever.

  Whenever June was thinking hard about something, she found it helpful to take a walk. Back in New York she could cover many blocks thinking as fast as she was walking, and she kept going over the list as she walked along the road to Bob’s place. She still thought the Penny Book must have some hints to help her to crack the code, and she was certain there was a way to get the Penny Book if she could only hit on the right idea. Bob’s truck was in the driveway, but June walked past the house toward the barn. She wanted to keep thinking just a little longer.

  There was a gleaming metal silo towering next to the barn with a tall ladder leading up the outside that she hadn’t noticed before. Perfect! She could climb up to that slot on the roof that was open like an observatory to the sky and think things through. What really mattered when she was searching for a solution to a problem was simply changing the view. There must be a great view from the top of the silo, she thought, as she stared up at the metal rungs. Joe had explained to her that the open slot in the silo roof was where farmers filled the silo up with grain, and there was a door at the bottom to collect the stored grain as needed through the winter. But it was a lot more fun to pretend the roof was open to the sky so that an astronomer could observe the wheeling of the stars.

  That’s when it hit her:

  Climb a ladder to the top of the world.

  “Indigo! This is it!” June shouted. “The ladder to the top of the world!”