The Center of Everything Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  The Beginning

  The Center of Everything

  Destiny

  The Parade Begins

  Wonders

  A Long Line of Cars

  Wheels and Spokes

  The Statue

  Good Days and Bad

  Serious Wishes

  Regrets

  Ruby Will Be Fine

  How Ruby Knew

  Ruby’s Dream

  Wishes and Work

  Inner Gretel

  What You Need to Understand

  The Order of Things

  Asking the Right Questions

  What Matthew Bennet Wishes

  Another Rehearsal

  The Karate Kid

  To Tell or Not to Tell

  Wanting a Circle

  The Hole That Turns Things Inside Out

  One More Time

  Mr. Victor Gomez

  Captain Bunning Said Yes

  The Schoolhouse Approaches

  What Did You Think Would Happen?

  What Ruby Does

  The End

  What Makes You Safe

  Getting There

  The Hole Shebang

  Constellations

  A Note from the Author

  Sample Chapter from HOUND DOG TRUE

  Buy the Book

  Read More from Linda Urban

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2013 by Linda Urban

  All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

  Harcourt Children’s Books is an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

  www.hmhbooks.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available. LCCN: 2012954515

  ISBN 978-0-547-76348-4

  eISBN 978-0-547-76383-5

  v1.0313

  For my mom, Joanne Urban,

  who held the stars in place

  The connections we make

  in the course of a life—

  maybe that’s what heaven is.

  —Fred Rogers

  The Beginning

  In the beginning, there was the donut.

  At first, the donut was without form—a shapeless blob of dough, fried in fat of one sort or another. The Ancient Greeks ate them. The Mayans. Even the Vikings enjoyed a platter of puffy dough blobs between pillages.

  Miss Leticia Chestnut was not a Viking, but hers was an old recipe, and it became legend in southern New Hampshire for both its extraordinary flavor and its tidy, saucerlike shape. A passing sea captain, Cornelius Bunning, heard tell of her wares and upon tasting them offered Miss Chestnut various riches in exchange for the recipe. When she refused to part with it, he married her, keeping his riches and taking her on as cook aboard his ship, Evangeline, where she made her famous donuts every morning.

  This included the morning of June 28, 1847, the day that Captain Bunning turned Evangeline south into a small headwind, which itself turned into a terrifying gale. He had just been handed his plate of morning donuts when the wind turned treacherous. Thinking quickly, the captain grabbed his donuts one by one and rammed them down onto the spokes of the ship’s wheel, thereby preventing them from plummeting to the deck and rolling away.

  The storm raged for hours, and Captain Bunning battled it, wind howling, rain lashing. He never lost faith, nor stamina, for Mrs. Bunning’s donuts kept him strong.

  Upon returning to port, Captain Bunning was met by gazetteers eager to print up his story of bravery in the face of the storm, and Bunning, who enjoyed being the center of all this attention, told the tale in vivid detail—right down to the spokes through his donuts.

  The donut may be timeless, but on June 28, 1847, Captain Cornelius Bunning had invented the hole.

  Ruby Pepperdine has heard this story at least five hundred times. This is not an exaggeration.

  She has heard it twice on the radio just this morning. Of course, it is Bunning Day, and Ruby has been up for hours, folding tissue-paper flowers like Gigi taught her. She has been listening to WNHB as her parents make their phone calls, just as they do every year, to remind her uncles and aunts and driving-aged cousins that they need to be at Pepperdine Motors by noon in order to make it to the parade in time for check-in.

  This year, for the first time, Ruby has a place to be too, though she does not need to be in it until one thirty.

  It won’t be hard to find. A two-foot square has been taped to the sidewalk of Cornelius Circle near the intersection of Main Street. Earlier this morning, Patsy Whelk, assistant Bunning Day Parade coordinator, had stared uncomfortably at the straight lines of the tape and then squatted to draw a chalk circle inside the square, which seemed to her to be more in keeping with the day.

  The circle will already be smudged by the time Ruby arrives with Aunt Rachel and Ruby’s cousins, Willow (six) and Carter-Ann (three and a half) and Baby Amelia (seven months), but the words inside the circle will be easy enough to make out: ESSAY GIRL.

  That’s Ruby. This year’s Bunning Day Essay Girl.

  She has made her wish.

  Her time is coming around.

  She will stand in her circle—her hole in the center of the taped square—and wait for it.

  The Center of Everything

  If you were from someplace other than this particular part of New Hampshire and were driving through Bunning on your way to Canada or to Santa’s Village in Jefferson or simply to take in the autumn foliage, you might not even notice Pepperdine Motors. Actually, unless you were in the market for a great deal on a new or used vehicle, Pepperdine Motors probably would not be of much interest to you.

  It was of great interest to Ruby Pepperdine, however. Not for the low, low prices, or for the box of Delish donuts in the waiting room, or for the twice-yearly Moonlight Madness Sale. Pepperdine Motors was of great interest to Ruby Pepperdine because the roof was flat. And on Sunday nights, after Gigi closed the repair shop and Dad closed the show room and Aunt Lois closed the office, Gigi would turn off the big fluorescent lights that flooded the car lot and she and Ruby would climb the staircase to the roof and they would look at the stars.

  “That’s Orion,” Gigi said one wintry night. “Three stars in a line, that’s his belt. See him, Ruby?”

  Ruby was little back then, and the sky had looked like one big sheet of stars to her. It wasn’t until her grandma Gigi wrapped an arm around her and pointed and Ruby’s eyes followed the line of that arm to Gigi’s mittened fingertip and out beyond that Ruby found those particular stars in the sky and drew the invisible connections between them.

  The next week Gigi’s arm pointed out the same constellation, the tip of her mitten one small degree west of where it had been the last time. The next week it was a little farther west and then a little farther, until Orion and his belt and all the neighboring constellations had made their slow march across the sky and out of sight, and others had come to take their place.

  If you were Ruby Pepperdine, you might have wondered why that was. Why the sky moved the way it did. And because you were with Gigi, you would ask.

  And Gigi would fold both arms around you and explain about orbits and rotations and black holes and the cosmos. She would tell you about big things, bigger than anything you could really understand well enough to explain to your best friend, Lucy, the next day—but while she was telling you, you would have understood it. And while she was saying that the earth moved around the sun, whi
ch was itself a star moving around in a dizzying, centerless space, you would have been able to believe it.

  And to believe the opposite.

  That the center of everything was right here in Bunning, on top of Pepperdine Motors, safe in the circle of Gigi’s hug.

  Destiny

  “Your grandma would have been so proud of you,” Aunt Rachel says. She is brushing powdered sugar out of Carter-Ann’s hair, but she is talking to Ruby. “Like George Washington’s wig.” That she says to Carter-Ann. Some people get confused by the way Aunt Rachel slides in and out of talking to her kids and talking to the people in front of her. Grocery clerks, especially. But Ruby is always able to figure it out.

  “Thanks.” Ruby grins at her aunt. Normally, Ruby would help Aunt Rachel with Carter-Ann, but to do so now would mean stepping out of the chalk circle. Staying in the circle seems like part of the magic. Like this is where fate or the Universe or Captain Bunning will find her. Like this is the spot she’s supposed to be in for her wish to come true.

  All around her, people are claiming their own spots along Cornelius Circle, clanking open folding chairs and setting down coolers. Some moms fold blankets over the edge of the curb, where they hope their kids will sit for the duration of the parade, even though year after year those same kids can’t help but leap to their feet the moment they hear the far-off whoop-whoop of Officer Imus’s patrol car. Often people toss candy from the floats, and the kids want to be ready. Ruby gets that. She wants to be ready too.

  “Willow, use your napkin. Don’t give the baby any more donut, Carter-Ann.” Aunt Rachel has switched to dusting sugar off the head of Baby Amelia. “You know how Gigi loved this parade.”

  “I remember,” Ruby says. Gigi was the only grown-up Pepperdine who didn’t drive a Pepperdine Motors convertible in the parade. She had too many other places she belonged. Some years she sang with the Sweet Adelines, and others she joined the Planetary Society’s Night Owls, all wearing their enormous star costumes, forming constellations as they walked the route. When Gigi was on the city council, she’d had the chance to ride in the back of a Pepperdine Motors convertible, but she marched with Grannies for Groceries instead, handing out flyers about the charity food pantry. Ruby had always loved waving to Gigi as she passed, and having Gigi and all the Night Owls or Grannies or Adelines wave back. It made her feel like she was part of the parade, even if she was only standing to the side of things.

  At the funeral home, people had said they could not imagine the Bunning Day Parade without Gigi in it. But here it is. Or here it is about to be.

  Across the street from where Ruby is standing, someone has set up a row of milk crates with little pillows on them. That’s one of the nice things about Bunning. You can set up your seats for a parade and go off to get a balloon or a bag of donuts, and nobody will mess with them.

  Beyond the crates Ruby can see Memorial Park, which is filled with tall white tents. Many are artists’ booths or have kiddie games like Ring Toss and Fish-a-Prize. Some house food vendors: chowder and falafels and hot dogs. The busiest tent is the one Mr. DeNiro sets up for Delish, the local donut shop. When they’d first arrived, Aunt Rachel had left Ruby in the circle in the square while she went there to buy powdered sugar Snow Wonders and chocolate éclairs for the girls.

  The real Delish, the store, is on the opposite side of the park. On regular days business is pretty brisk there, but on Bunning Day it is the Delish tent that is really busy—so busy that all the DeNiro kids have to work in it. Derek comes down from Dartmouth to help, and Delilah, who runs track at the high school, works the register, as does her sister, Danielle. Even the youngest DeNiro, who is Ruby’s age, has to work. His name is Nero.

  “What if the parade doesn’t come?” Willow asks.

  “It will come, silly pie!” Ruby tells her. “It always comes.” She boops Willow’s nose with her index cards. Her essay is written on those cards. Ms. Kemp-Davie, the school librarian, had suggested that Ruby use very large printing, and so even though it takes only a minute to read her essay aloud, she has fifteen cards in her hand.

  “That says ‘tiny.’” Willow’s finger, which moments ago had popped the last bit of éclair into her mouth, taps a chocolate swirl onto the top card on Ruby’s stack. “Something ‘tiny.’”

  “Close,” says Ruby. She squats down so Willow can see the card better. “It says ‘destiny.’”

  “What’s that?”

  “Destiny? It’s like fate. Like how things are supposed to happen.”

  “Let me see!” Willow tugs at the destiny card, and the entire stack flies out of Ruby’s hand.

  For a moment the world slows down. The cards hang in midair as Ruby reaches for them. It is almost as if she can read the words—

  holes made him famous

  tired of drifting around

  beams from his beloved Evangeline

  —even as the cards bounce off her fingertips and scatter on the sidewalk.

  “Oh, Willow!” Aunt Rachel cries.

  “It’s okay. I’ve got it,” Ruby says, but there are a couple of cards she can’t reach without leaving the circle in the square.

  That couldn’t really mess things up, right? What kind of wish would go flooey just because somebody stepped outside of a chalk circle? Who knows, maybe she is supposed to step outside the circle. The truth is, she still hasn’t figured all this wish stuff out yet—even though she has spent the past four days trying.

  Ruby is careful not to wish that someone would tell her what she is supposed to do. She has read enough about wishes to know that greedy wishers always have things backfire on them. People end up turning their daughters into gold or getting sausages stuck forever on the ends of their noses. No way will she mess up her real wish by asking for something else.

  As much as she’d like to talk to someone about how uncertain she’s feeling, she doesn’t wish for that, either. Besides, who would listen now? Not Nero, she bets. Certainly not Lucy.

  Ruby grabs the last of her index cards and steps back into her chalk circle. Too bad Ms. Kemp- Davie hadn’t suggested she number the cards. Okay, which came first? The one about the empty field or the bit about Evangeline?

  Whoop-whoooOOOooop!

  “It is coming!” Willow pushes in front of Ruby to stand at the curb. She cannot see the parade yet. No one near the circle in the square can. Officer Imus is still on Elm Street, whooping his siren to warn people out of the road. It will be two more minutes before he makes a right onto Cornelius Circle, and another five before he makes his way around Memorial Park to the spot in front of the circle in the square. From there he’ll continue to Main Street and turn right again, whoop-whooping for another mile, until he reaches the rec center, where the parade ends and where the floats will remain on display until after The Hole Shebang—the Bunning Day fireworks show—that evening.

  By then Ruby’s wish will have come true. Everything will be fixed, she thinks, and nobody will be mad, and everything will be back to how it is supposed to be. Of course, technically, the wish has until midnight to work, but if she has it figured right, things should happen long before that.

  Then again, ever since the day Gigi died, few things are going like Ruby figures they should.

  She shuffles through the cards, searching for the one that begins her essay—the one with destiny and a chocolate fingerprint.

  Some say it was destiny. A brave sea captain, a freak storm, and a platter of puffy dough balls.

  Across the street, there are people sitting on the milk crates now: a family of redheads is eating donuts and fanning themselves with parade programs. Beyond them, Ruby can see Nero at the Delish tent. He is tall and skinny, with knobby shoulders that make it look like his T-shirt still has a clothes hanger in it. His dark bangs are tucked up under a Delish cap, and he is clacking a pair of metal tongs like castanets, filling waxed bags with old-fashioneds and crullers and éclairs.

  Somewhere near the parade check-in area, Lucy is still fumin
g—Ruby’s pretty sure about that. But Nero doesn’t seem upset. He is wearing the same carefree smile that all the DeNiros wear, watching Mr. DeNiro juggle five cider donuts in his plastic-gloved hands.

  Maybe Nero has forgotten about yesterday. Maybe he isn’t mad after all.

  Ruby watches as Mr. DeNiro tosses the donuts one-two-three-four-five high in the air, one after another, and Nero catches them one-two-three-four in a white waxed bag, each donut landing exactly where it is destined to be.

  Until, that is, Nero glances in Ruby’s direction, and his DeNiro smile slides away. Donut number five drops not into the white waxed bag but at his feet.

  Destiny: squirrel food.

  The Parade Begins

  Twenty yards behind Captain Imus’s whooping patrol car, four flag girls from the high school carry a wide banner with blue felt letters that spell out BUNNING DAY. Behind the banner is the rest of the flag squad: six girls in matching sleeveless sweaters and pleated skirts. In November they will wear those sweaters over turtlenecks and wave their flags at football games and wish that they were warmer, but now, in the late-June heat, the girls have lobster-red faces and each is using her own favorite curse word to swear she will never try out for flag again. Next year, thinks their captain, Talia O’Hare, I am joining show choir instead.

  Behind the flag girls marches the school band, playing a nearly recognizable version of “Louie Louie.” Behind the band are (in no particular order) eighteen floats, nine Pepperdine Motors convertibles (decorated with Ruby’s tissue-paper flowers) carrying a slightly larger number of local dignitaries (undecorated), ten more bands, the Greater Bunning Sweet Adelines, a set of Shriners in tiny cars, thirty-four horses, two Brown Swiss calves, three Scout troops, an array of antique tractors, a shopping cart brigade from the local food co-op, four different daycare groups, two dance schools, one gymnastics studio, a couple of unicyclers, several veterans organizations, Okeda Martial Arts (where Lucy is), the Hungry Nation Youth Theater (where Lucy would have been otherwise), a formation of belly dancers, two magicians, the Bunning Humane Society Dogs of Distinction, a drumming group, the Night Owls, a dozen fire trucks from all over southern New Hampshire, and—near the end of the parade—a replica of Bunning’s original one-room schoolhouse, settled on a flatbed trailer and equipped with a powerful sound system.