Ellie Makes Her Move Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Epilogue

  Copyright © 2021 by Marilyn Kaye

  Jacket art © 2021 by Tracy Subisak

  All Rights Reserved

  HOLIDAY HOUSE is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

  Printed and bound in December 2020 at Maple Press, York, PA, USA.

  www.holidayhouse.com

  First Edition

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Kaye, Marilyn, author.

  Title: Ellie makes her move / by Marilyn Kaye.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Holiday House, [2021] Series: The spyglass sisterhood ; #1 | Audience: Ages 8–12. Audience: Grades 4–6. | Summary: “Twelve-year-old Ellie moves to a new town, makes unexpected friends, and discovers a magical spyglass”—Provided by publisher.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019045472 | ISBN 9780823446094 (hardcover)Subjects: CYAC: Magic—Fiction. | Telescopes—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction. | Moving, Household—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.K2127 Spy 2021 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019045472

  ISBN: 978-0-8234-4609-4 (hardcover)

  For Alice Clerc, with love, from her Tatie

  WHENEVER I START READING A NEW BOOK, I want to know right away who’s telling the story. I want to know who the main character is, and how old they are, and if the story is happening now or a long time ago. Or in the future, if it’s some kind of science fiction. So before I begin telling my story, I’m going to introduce myself.

  My name is Elizabeth Marks, but everyone calls me Ellie. I’m twelve years old, and the strange tale I’m about to tell you is all happening right now, in the middle of January, in a town called Lakeside.

  You should probably know that none of this could have happened to a more average person. I’m all about average. Average height, average weight, brown hair, brown eyes. Light skin, a few freckles. Not beautiful, but okay-looking. I usually do pretty well at school, but I’m not a genius. I’m fine at sports, but I’ll never be a superstar athlete. I’ve taken piano lessons and ballet lessons, but I’m not going to be a concert pianist or prima ballerina. I don’t have any real talents.

  I’m ordinary. Absolutely, positively ordinary. And a few months ago, I was an ordinary, happy seventh grader at Brookdale Middle School on the other side of the state. I’d lived in Brookdale all my life and I had lots of friends. I liked school, and I got along most of the time with my parents and my older sister, Charlotte. When Charlotte went off to college this past September, I got to move into her much-bigger bedroom. All in all, it was a good life.

  Then my dad did something that made everyone hate us.

  No, he didn’t rob a bank or anything like that. He started a massive campaign to raise money to build a homeless shelter in Brookdale. I thought that was a good thing to do, because I knew people were sleeping on the streets in town and that was really sad. My mom supported the idea too, and so did my sister. But it didn’t work out so great for us, because it turned out that a lot of people didn’t want a homeless shelter in Brookdale. Maybe they thought people without homes were criminals or something stupid like that, I don’t know. Anyway, people started writing nasty letters to the newspaper and leaving nasty notes in our mailbox and making nasty phone calls, and pretty soon, it seemed like nobody liked us anymore.

  Except for the one nice rich man who was on board with Dad’s idea. He jumped in and decided to donate some land and a gazillion dollars or something to build the shelter. People probably hated him too, but he didn’t care. He didn’t have to. He was like a hundred years old, he owned an island somewhere, and he was hardly ever in Brookdale anyway.

  So Dad got the shelter built, but we suffered for it. Dad lost clients. My mom was voted out as president of the PTA. People gave us looks when we went out, and Charlotte didn’t want to come home for Thanksgiving so she wouldn’t run into her old high school classmates. My parents were fed up with Brookdale and decided to move.

  So here we are now, in Lakeside, which already has a homeless shelter so my father can’t get into any trouble. And it’s been okay for everyone else in my family. Dad was bored with his job at a big corporate law firm and had wanted to start his own business anyway. Good for him. My mom, who used to mostly be at home or out doing volunteer work, was seriously thinking about going back to work full-time. Good for her. Charlotte didn’t care about the move because she had left home anyway and was having a great time at college.

  But in the middle of seventh grade, just after winter break, on top of everything else, I had to start a new school, East Lakeside Middle. Not so good for me. Now, I don’t mean to sound like I think I’m more important than the people who needed that shelter, because I’m not. I’m glad it got built. But personally, in my family, I think I was the one who suffered the most from what happened.

  There’s one last thing I want to tell you about myself. I’ve always been a pretty down-to-earth kind of person. I’ve never believed in ghosts, or zombies, or monsters, or anything like that. I like reading books about magic, but I’ve never thought it happens in real life.

  Here in Lakeside, that was all about to change.

  But now I’m getting ahead of myself. It’s time to start the story.

  On my third day at East Lakeside Middle School, I sat alone in the cafeteria at lunchtime, just as I’d done for the past two days. And I wondered if all the middle schools in the whole wide world were exactly alike. Were they all made of yellow brick? Did they all have the same pukey green walls, the same gray metal lockers, the same boring food? Even some of the teachers here reminded me of teachers back at Brookdale. The science teacher, Mr. Clark, was bald and wore wire-rimmed glasses, just like my old science teacher. My English teacher, Ms. Gonzalez, was young and pretty and smiled a lot, just like Ms. Henson, my favorite teacher at Brookdale.

  Looking around the cafeteria, I saw that boys and girls sat separately, just like at Brookdale. There wasn’t any rule about that, it’s just what they chose to do. And I could spot the same kind of cliques we had at Brookdale. There were the sporty kids, who had short hair or wore running headbands and dressed in T-shirts with the names of basketball teams or sneaker company logos on them. The brains, who all had their heads together and looked like they were very important people discussing something serious. And there were the popular girls, who looked just like the popular girls back home. They wore nice clothes, they had nice hair, and when other kids passed their table, they looked at these girls with admiration and maybe a little jealousy. The girls all seemed very content and sure of themselves.

  Back at Brookdale, I was one of them. Yes, I confess: I was a popular girl. Not the most popular girl, and certainly not one of the mean ones, but definitely in that clique. Maybe it was just because I looked like them and I’d known them since kindergarten, but I sat at the popular table in the cafeteria and I went to the sleepovers and I generally felt pretty content and sure of myself too.

  Then my dad ruined my life. Like I said, people were angry at him, and they passed these feelings on to the whole family. All of a sudden, I started to be excluded—from a birthday party here, a sleepover there, a shopping trip. Friends stopped speaking to me. And one day, there wasn’t a seat for me at the cafeteria’s popular table.

/>   That hurt. I mean, it really, really hurt. I couldn’t believe those girls would act like that. Even Lily, my very best friend. At the beginning, she told me she felt awful about other kids being snotty, and she still came over to my house to do homework together. But then she started making excuses, and she stopped asking me to spend the night like she used to. Finally, she texted that her parents had said she’d be grounded if she hung out with me. And I had a feeling the others in our group told her to quit talking to me or they’d dump her too.

  Thinking about all this now, I had that burning feeling behind my eyes, and I knew tears were forming. So I made myself stop thinking about it by continuing to look around the cafeteria.

  I saw people who didn’t seem to belong to any clique. Loners. We must have had loners back at Brookdale, but to be honest, I never paid much attention to them.

  Now I did. Because I had no intention of seeking out friends here at East Lakeside Middle School, not popular kids or kids in any other clique. I’d seen what friends can do to you. So now, I was officially declaring myself a loner too.

  I recognized three other loners from my English class. Along the far wall, I saw the girl with braided black hair and brown skin who sat in front of me and who had spent the entire period playing with a tablet under her desk. A few tables away, there was the pale, round-faced girl with long, curly blond hair who looked at the floor when she came into class, and who walked out when the bell rang without having said a word. And at the table just alongside mine was the goth girl. I don’t know much about the whole goth thing—there wasn’t a goth crowd back at Brookdale and I hadn’t spotted one here either. To be perfectly honest, the only goth type I’d ever seen was a character in a TV series. The girl at the table next to mine looked like her.

  She certainly didn’t look like anyone else I’d seen in real life, at least, not in middle school. She had long, straight black hair, black makeup around her eyes, and dark red lipstick. Despite all the makeup, I could see that her complexion was a golden tan color. She was wearing a long black skirt with a black T-shirt. Silver skulls dangled from her earlobes.

  I tried to recall her name from roll call—Alice? Alison?

  I know, I know, I’d just decided to be a loner myself at this school, but it was very boring sitting there with no one to talk to, and I didn’t have anything to read. Maybe I was making decisions too fast. And it’s not like I’d sworn to be a loner and signed a legal document or anything.

  I’m not trying to make a friend, I told myself. I just want to stop being bored.

  I got up, lifted my tray, and went over to the goth girl’s table.

  “Okay if I sit here?” I asked.

  She looked up and stared at me as if I was speaking a different language. But she didn’t say no, so I sat down across from her.

  “I’m Ellie. I’m new here.”

  No “Pleased to meet you” or anything like that. She turned her attention back to her food.

  “We’re in the same English class,” I said.

  She stabbed a carrot with her fork and put it in her mouth. I waited till she finished chewing.

  “The teacher seems nice.”

  Was that a shrug?

  “You’re…Alice?”

  “Alyssa.”

  She spoke! Okay, so maybe direct questions would work.

  “Do you know what we’re going to be reading next?” I asked.

  Another shrug. She picked up her spoon and started eating the pudding.

  So I began to eat my pudding in silence too. But I guess I’m just sociable by nature. I couldn’t help myself, I had to talk.

  “There’s something I was wondering about,” I said. “This town, it’s called Lakeside. But I haven’t seen the lake. Where is it?”

  She scraped her spoon around the pudding cup and ate the last bit of it. Then she spoke again.

  “There’s no lake.”

  “Then why is it called Lakeside? That doesn’t make sense.”

  She put her spoon down, rose, and picked up her tray. But at least she offered some parting words.

  “Nothing here makes sense.” With that, she walked away.

  I would remember those words later. But at that moment, all I could do was let out a sigh so loud I could actually hear it. And I went back to my pudding.

  BACK IN BROOKDALE, WE HAD A NICE HOUSE. It was modern, mainly on one floor, but there was a basement that had been turned into a rec room, with paneled walls and a comfortable sofa and a big-screen TV. I had sleepovers down there, and we could make as much noise as we wanted without bothering anyone.

  Mom and Dad wanted something completely different in Lakeside, so they bought a house that’s more than a hundred years old. It’s got two floors, but really three, because there’s this weird sort-of round tower on top of the house. I haven’t been up there yet because the stairs are falling apart and my parents said it was too dangerous to climb them.

  In this old house, the floors creaked, the windows made noise when you opened them, and there was old-fashioned wallpaper everywhere. Mom called it charming. I thought it was creepy, and if I believed in ghosts (which, like I said before, I don’t), I’d think it was haunted.

  When I came home after school that day, I could hear my mother on her phone in the kitchen.

  “That’s wonderful, Charlotte, what great news! I’m so pleased.” There was a pause. “No, he’s in a meeting right now, but I’ll tell him when he’s finished.” Another pause. “All right, darling, we’ll talk later. Bye!”

  She was hanging up her cell when I came into the kitchen.

  “What’s so wonderful?” I asked.

  “Your sister got into that special film seminar she wanted to take, the one that was already filled. Someone dropped out and she got a place!”

  I was not surprised. In my humble opinion, Charlotte always got everything she wanted.

  “That’s nice,” I said, in a way that made it clear I couldn’t care less.

  Mom ignored my tone. “How was school today?”

  “Same as yesterday.” I opened the refrigerator door, even though I wasn’t hungry.

  “There are cookies,” my mother said.

  I shut the door. “No thanks.”

  “I’ve got some news too,” she went on. “They called me back for another interview at the Lakeside County News.”

  When my parents got married, my mother was a reporter. She quit her job when she had kids, but she’s always talked about her old career a lot. Now that Charlotte wasn’t home much, she’d decided to go back to work, and she was excited about this. I guess she figured I didn’t need that much attention anymore.

  “That’s nice,” I said again, with no more enthusiasm than I’d showed the first time I said it.

  Mom looked at me in silence for a few seconds. Then she said, “Tell me about school.”

  “Nothing to tell,” I said. “It’s just like any other school.”

  I knew I was being obnoxious, but I couldn’t help myself. Then my father came in.

  “Hi, kiddo,” he greeted me.

  “Hi.”

  Back in Brookdale, when Dad worked at a firm with a hundred other lawyers, he used to come home late almost every night, and he traveled a lot. When we moved, he announced that he wanted to change his life. He was going to set up his own private practice, in an office right here at home, and work with people who really needed his help.

  “How was your meeting?” Mom asked. “Who were those people, anyway?”

  “A couple of local bigwigs. They want me to serve as legal consultant for the new town planning committee. They have some really exciting ideas, and it’s a great opportunity to get involved.”

  He looked very happy. My mother looked happy too. And away at school, Charlotte was happy. I knew I should be glad they were all happy. Instead, I opened the refrigerator door again. Nothing had changed since the last time I looked. And I slammed the door shut.

  I didn’t realize it would make so muc
h noise. Both my parents stared at me.

  “Ellie, are you all right?” my father asked.

  “Fine,” I snapped. “Just fine.”

  They exchanged looks, and my mother’s lips tightened. I knew that expression. I took a step back.

  “You know, Ellie, this hasn’t been easy for any of us. We’re all starting over here.”

  I said nothing.

  Then she took a deep breath and spoke brightly. “The carpenter finished repairing the stairs today. You can go up and see the turret. There’s an old telescope in there. Find out if it still works!”

  What a thrilling idea, I thought sarcastically, but somehow managed not to say it out loud. I wondered if I could shrug as well as Alyssa-the-goth-girl did. I tried. And then I walked out, climbed one flight of stairs, went into my room, and threw myself on the bed.

  I knew I was feeling sorry for myself, and I was acting like a spoiled brat. It was all so wrong, and really not like me at all. But I couldn’t help myself. Life was just so unfair sometimes!

  I lay there for a moment, staring at the blank walls and the boxes on the floor. I should start unpacking, put some posters on the walls, make this place feel like home. But I wasn’t in the mood. On the night table, there was a book I was in the middle of, but I didn’t feel like reading now. And I also had some homework. I didn’t want to do that either.

  So I got up and went down the hall to the stairs that had just been fixed. They were steep and narrow and curved around in a spiral, so I held tight to the rail. At the top, I opened the door and entered the tower thing. The turret, my mother called it.

  It was a strange little room, round, with small windows. The floors were bare and there was no furniture. The only thing in it was a telescope, mounted on a stand in front of a window. It looked like the stand was nailed to the floor.

  It wasn’t ours. It must have belonged to the people who lived here before. Maybe they were bird watchers, or they looked at stars. I walked across the room and examined it more closely.

  I had to admit, it was pretty cool. You could tell that it was really old. There was the kind of design on it that you don’t see on modern stuff, shapes and swirly things. But for something so old, the brass was still really shiny.