The Romeo and Juliet Code by Phoebe Stone

Author:Phoebe Stone
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2011-10-15T04:00:00+00:00

I decided then I absolutely had to disappear completely and forever. So I held the big hat down over my face and I pushed past Uncle Gideon and I headed for the upstairs. I tore down the hall, passing The Gram’s room, hearing the buzzing of her sewing machine.

I planned to go up to my room to lock myself in forever. I was thinking Derek would have to design some sort of pulley system to send food up to me through the window because I was never going to answer the door, even if Derek came by and said, “Flissy, open up! I’ve got the code figured out.” I was going to stay in there until I became a grown-up and then I would emerge, cool and calm, wearing high heels and red lipstick.

As I was running, I got the terrible feeling that I was about to cry. So I leaned against the wall outside The Gram’s room. The feeling was coming towards me like one of the boats in the Cunard line, like the HMS Queen Anne, huge and gray and all painted over in her war costume, coming into the harbor silently. I knew it was going to happen.

I was truly sorry for what I had done to Aunt Miami. I hadn’t even realized she would be angry or upset. Now all sorts of things were coming to a peak inside me. I could feel everything rolling towards me like floodwater.

I listened to the sound of the sewing machine. It was buzzing along as if nothing in the world was wrong, as if there wasn’t a war across the ocean, as if my life hadn’t been torn into a million pieces, as if Winnie and Danny hadn’t left me here all alone in a strange land, not explaining anything.

The door was open a crack, and The Gram was sitting there sewing away, making something. She seemed to know I was out here in the hall all scrunched up in a heap about to cry. She turned round and waved to me. “Come over here, Flissy,” she said. I waited. She waved at me again. Then I poked my head through the door very quietly. I could see the fabric she was sewing with. There were British flags printed all over the flannel. I went in to the room and stood by The Gram. And as I stood there, she smelled of roses and soap, and it was because of the soap and the smell of roses that I started to cry. If it hadn’t been for the roses, it wouldn’t have happened.

I cried and I cried and I cried and I laid my head on The Gram’s soft shoulder and she hugged me and that made me cry even more.

“Go ahead and let loose,” she said. “You’ve been very brave and you’ve been through a lot.”

“I have?” I said.

“You have,” she said.

“But Auntie Miami’s angry with me and she’ll never speak to me again. And you’re angry with my Winnie.

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