"Leeva at Last" by Sara Pennypacker, Chapters 38–54

Oh, the anguish as they were dragged off. Oh, the loneliness and menace in those dark, bare cells!

Osmund stared at her, mouth agape.
“I am a Thornblossom,” Leeva said. “And I need your help.”
Osmund goggled at her some more and then turned back toward the library.

Osmund nodded gravely. “We’re going to need a lot. And you’re going to need a suit.”

Osmund hesitated, as if he was trying to find a trick in Leeva’s question, then nodded reluctantly.

“The bracken fern is poisonous. It can cause blindness and hemorrhaging.”

“The bracken fern is poisonous. It can cause blindness and hemorrhaging.”

“You don’t have to watch everybody?”
“Not anymore,” Fern said, sweeping the thought away with a dramatic wave of languor. “My great-grandparents have gotten so vimful and vigorous they take care of my brothers and sisters. I’m a lady of leisure now. What’s your mission?”

Well, Bob went through the plaster as if it were frosting, and began gnawing with gusto on the wooden laths beneath.

In a few moments, he breached the wall and disappeared.

Finally Osmund heaved a resigned sigh. “We’ll find out tomorrow.”

Leeva got out to assess the situation up close, then dashed into her house.

Leeva was tempted to use the word alacrity—she’d always wanted to use a word the same day she’d learned it—to describe his driving, but she didn’t because while he did display an admirable readiness behind the wheel, it was by no means brisk or cheerful.

Harry had told her recently that acting could be subtle or broad. He himself leaned to the Subtle school of acting, and he’d demonstrated by lifting one of his eyebrows a fraction of a hair.

Leeva saw that this director was a Broad type, prone to throat clutching and temple grabbing as he instructed the class.

Osmund, go pry off one of those Cheezaroni blocks, bring it here, please.

Bob sprang out and bounded over to the other badger to give it a nuzzly greeting.

Osmund took several sharp breaths in and out through his nose. Finally he straightened up with a decisive shake. He pointed at the comb in Leeva’s hand. “Give it to me.”

After a moment, a short, stout woman in a black-and-white dress opened the door.

“I’ll get Principal Heckstrom,” she mumbled meekly, backing into the building.

“Everyone?” Fern blanched, hand to her throat. “That’s a lot of people! Make sure you sit up front, where I can see you.”

Leeva knew it was him because he wore a large lapel pin that read Principal Buggums.

Also because he was flanked by two men wearing lapel pins that read Principal Buggums’s Staff.

Before she could hide a single incriminating sheet of newspaper, her father stumbled in, red-faced and sweating, with a month’s worth of Cheezaroni.

He nodded with a crafty smile. “Yes, good,” he crooned. “I won.”

She stopped in the center of the kitchen. She gaped at the appliances. She spread her hands in flummoxed bewilderment.

She slogged from room to room picking things up, dusting and wiping, but now it nearly numbed her into a coma.

She duly scissored herself into the air for the opening jumping jacks on Vim and Vigor at Any Age, but when the trainers cried, “You can do it, you are vimful and vigorous!” she sobbed back, “No, I can’t, Jim! No, I’m not, Jilly!” and then snapped off the television.

“I’ll be so famous!” her mother crowed, between glugs of coffee. “Admission, ten dollars!” her father gloated over his Cheezaroni.

Mr. Thornblossom didn’t even look at her when she set his plate down. He was pretending to be fully engrossed in an ad.

Leeva, herself, had been utterly lonely her whole life, until this summer.

The fencing widened into a ring, lit by spotlights, around the statue pedestal. Her mother preened on tall scaffolding beside it and her father clutched a shoebox.

As it grew closer, the dot revealed itself to be a helicopter, whirring and thumping across the night sky.

The helicopter hovered over the park and began its descent, its blades churning the trees’ canopy.

Everyone heeded Osmund’s order.

Everyone heeded Osmund’s order. Except for the one person on the scene who could not abide being told what to do.

Up on the scaffolding, Mayor Thornblossom howled like a wounded hyena, then dove headfirst into the pit after her likeness.

His microphone picked up a torrent of words from the pit, which would have to be bleeped out.

They watched the mayor lunge at the reporters, wielding the giant crystals from the statue’s shoes.

On her face was a hint of Grateful Relief. It was so infinitesimal that only a person who had spent years studying facial expressions could hope to discern it, but Leeva was such a person.

On her face was a hint of Grateful Relief. It was so infinitesimal that only a person who had spent years studying facial expressions could hope to discern it, but Leeva was such a person.