Keys to the City by Lisa Schroeder
For one of my amazing
high school English teachers,
Mrs. Phillips,
and her granddaughter Eva —
I’m so grateful for your support.
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
My Secret Guide to Paris chapter
About the Author
Also by Lisa Schroeder
Copyright
This is what summer should be: fun family picnics, ice cream cones, trips to the beach, pool time, curling up with a good book, and more ice cream.
This is what summer should not be: a school project in the form of an acronym.
Our middle school principal, Mrs. Lindenberg, is the queen of acronyms. Like a lot of people, I love DEAR: Drop Everything And Read. But at our school, simply one acronym is not enough. In PE, BEE stands for Best Effort is Expected. Ms. Frindle, the PE teacher, occasionally tells us we aren’t being very good bees, even though we aren’t bees, we’re kids. Isn’t that kind of weird? Why doesn’t she just tell us to try harder, if that’s what she means?
And in the cafeteria, there’s FAVE, which means Fruits And Veggies Every day. “Make sure you’ve got your fave,” the lunch lady will tell us. Would it really be so hard to add a few syllables on and just say “fruits and veggies”? I don’t get it.
So when Mrs. Lindenberg told us at our end-of-year seventh-grade assembly that she had a new acronym for us, it did not make us excited.
“Are you ready for it?” she asked as she looked at us over her reading glasses, her brown hair piled into a high bun on top of her head, like always. Maybe she expected us to cheer or something, but the auditorium stayed quiet. “It’s really fun, and it’s going to make this summer unforgettable for you.” Sorry, Mrs. Lindenberg, but unless it’s the latest iPhone you’re handing out, getting seventh graders excited is not easy.
I looked over at my friends Nora and Talia. They shrugged. I shrugged back.
When Mrs. Lindenberg didn’t get the response she expected, she cleared her throat and looked down at her notes on the podium. “Your new acronym is HAT, and this summer you, dear seventh graders, are going to try on different hats and see which ones fit the best. Metaphorically speaking, of course.”
With the microphone in hand, she went to the large whiteboard that had been wheeled onto the stage earlier and wrote:
Heart
Abilities
Talent
Then she underlined each of the words as she talked. “Follow your heart to discover your abilities and talents. In other words, use this summer to explore your interests. Through that process, my hope is that you will discover where your abilities and talents might lie. Please understand, this does not mean you have to be proficient at something by the end of the summer. The goal is to simply discover one or two things you’d like to focus on in the near future. You see, it’s important to know what your HAT looks like so that next year you can apply for the right high schools for you. It’s a very personal decision, and that’s why this project is a personal one as well.
“There are no guidelines, really, but I want you to think big! Get creative. The sky is the limit here, okay? Your first graded assignment, as eighth graders, will be a poster you make and bring the first week. Show us what excites you, what moves you, or what you learned about yourself on this journey of the heart. We’ll fill the hallways with your discoveries! Imagine how motivational that will be as you start your new year. You can draw or paint, you can make a collage, you can show us in words—whatever works best for you. Does everyone understand your assignment?”
Some kids nodded their heads. Others said, “Mm-hmm.” I wanted to cry out, “Don’t do this to us, please!” But I stopped myself.
“Wonderful,” she said. “Now, to inspire you, I’ve invited three of our fabulous alumni to show you how they’ve gone on in life to make use of their talents and abilities. We’ll hear a cello piece, watch a jazz dance routine, and see a science experiment in action. At this time, I’d like to invite onto the stage …”
I turned to Talia, who was sitting next to me, and whispered in her ear, “You’re so lucky. You already know you love to dance. You’re going to apply to that one performing arts high school you told us about, right?”
She whispered back, “Yeah. But it’s not a sure thing.”
Still, I thought to myself, she knew. I wanted some of that knowing.
I turned my attention back to the stage as a young woman sat on a chair with her cello in front of her and raised her bow to begin playing. The only instrument I knew how to play, and not very well, was the ukulele. Dad liked to “jam” with me sometimes—that’s what he called it, anyway. What a joke. Obviously. I wasn’t very good, but it was fun to play with him. I’d never play outside of my house, though. Way too embarrassing. And other instruments didn’t really interest me.
What else was there? Summer hadn’t even started, and I felt anxious and frustrated with this project already.
As the sad cello music floated through the auditorium, I reached into the pocket of my jacket and pulled out my little notebook covered with tiny, colorful hedgehogs. For some reason, when I felt anxious, writing helped me. So I decided that’s what I would do while keeping half an eye on the stage.
The notebook had been one of things I’d bought with the money I received in my red envelope from my grandmother for Chinese New Year. Although my adoptive family is not Chinese, we still celebrate the holiday with a party and gifts. They think it’s important to honor my heritage, and I love them for that.
Since the day I’d brought home the notebook, I’d written something in it practically every day. At first, I treated it more like a journal but that got boring, so I started doing other kinds of writing—poems and short stories mostly. I’d even sent in a story to a magazine our librarian had mentioned to our language arts class one day. She’d told us that very few magazines take story submissions from kids, but this one did. So without really thinking, I typed up my story and sent it in. But I hadn’t received a response. Every time I thought about someone getting my silly little story in the mail, reading it, and hating it so much they couldn’t even send me a letter back, I felt kind of sick to my stomach.
From now on, I’d decided, my writing, like my ukulele playing, would not be shared with the outside world. That way it would stay fun, and I didn’t have to worry about embarrassing myself ever again.
The cello solo ended, and everyone applauded.
Nora leaned in and said to Talia and me, “I loved that so much, I think I want to play the cello.”
I gave her a funny look. “Really? That was fast.”
She grinned. “It was so beautiful! I’ve never heard one before. Maybe when you know, you know? I’m going to ask my parents if I can rent one this summer. Think they’ll let me take some lessons?”
“Probably,” I said.
I wanted to say yes. I wanted to have it be that easy. But the truth was, I wanted to play the cello about as much as I wanted to give an assigned speech in humanities the following week. “I don’t think so,” I said. “But thanks for asking.”
As Mrs. Lindenberg introduced the next person who would be performing, Talia whispered, “You’ll find your thing, Lindy. Don’t worry.”
Hopefully she was right. Still, why did I have a feeling it was going to be a LONG (Look Out Nothing Good is going to happen) summer?
Fresh lemonade.
Golden sun.
Swimming suits.
Family fun.
Purple Popsicles.
Suntan lotion.
Library visits.
Baseball in motion.
(Here I thought the only hat I’d have to worry about this summer was which one to wear to a Mets game.)
Two days later, on Sunday afternoon, Nora and I walked in front of our mothers, just far enough so they couldn’t listen in on our conversation.
“Do you think good dancers are born that way?” I asked Nora.
It was a pretty Sunday in Brooklyn, with a bright blue sky above us as we made our way toward the subway. We’d just come from watching Talia perform a ballet piece at her studio’s spring showcase, and it had been amazing.
“Nope,” Nora said. “You know how much Talia practices. And even when we’re messing around at the park or whatever, she’s always twirling around.”
“But maybe she came out that way,” I argued.
Nora laughed. “Pretty sure babies don’t twirl, Lindy. They cry. They sleep. They poop. But they don’t twirl. Why are you thinking about this?”
I shrugged. “It’s something I’ve always wondered about. When someone is talented, like Talia or her idol, Misty Copeland, where does the talent come from? Like, why don’t I have that kind of talent?”
“You could take ballet, you know,” Nora said. “Just like Mrs. Lindenberg said, it’s never too late to try something new.”
“But I don’t want to take ballet. I wouldn’t be good at it.”
“How do you know?”
In my black pants and red shoes, I stopped and stuck my right leg behind me, trying to do an arabesque. I turned my head, my straight black hair falling in front of my face, and my standing leg wobbled. I couldn’t even hold the position standing still. I was about as graceful as a horse on roller skates.
“See?” I said as I put both feet back on the sidewalk. “Okay, here are the things I know for sure I’m good at. Eating doughnuts. Choosing just the right emoji for a text. And finding the perfect book to check out at the library. Do you think any of those will work for my HAT project?”
Nora laughed. “Emojis? Really?”
“Hey, it’s not as easy as it seems. Pick the wrong face and you might offend someone. Like, I’m pretty sure you only want to use that red-faced, I’m-really-mad one in rare situations.”
“Lindy?”
“Yes?”
“You should see if a comedy club would let you perform.”
“Um, I’m really not that funny.”
“I think you are. And with some practice, you’d get even funnier. I feel like you have what it takes to get up on stage and make people laugh.”
“Okay, so if I did that, then what? Sit back and watch all the high schools fight over the funny Asian girl? I doubt that.”
“But that’s the thing. I bet they’d love you because you’d stand out.”
I groaned. “Why do we have to stand out? I just want to be me. Quiet, book-loving me.”
“Yes, but we’re supposed to follow our hearts and reach for the sky!”
“You’re lucky, Nora. If the cello thing doesn’t work out, you still have a unique talent.”
She stared at me. “I do?”
“Yes! You’re like a walking, talking Paris travel guide. You love Paris, right? The same way Talia loves ballet.”
We stopped at the subway station and waited for our moms to catch up. “Huh,” she said. “I guess you’re right. Mom did mention something to me about a French immersion high school.”
“See?” I said. “You already have two possibilities for your HAT project, which is two more than I have at the moment.”
“You have all summer,” she said. “And I can help you if you want. Even though it would be much easier if you still lived in the same neighborhood, and not all the way over in Manhattan.”
“I know. But the good news is, Mom told me you can sleep over pretty soon. We’ve just been so busy getting everything ready for the B&B’s grand opening coming up next weekend.”
Nora looked at her mom when she approached. “Can we go to their grand opening? Please?”
“Of course we can,” Faye, Nora’s mother, said. “I can’t wait to see the place.”
Nora and I beamed at each other—she could finally see my new room, up close and personal. She’d helped me make every decorating decision along the way, like best friends do.
When I had showed her a picture of the bedspread I’d picked out, she’d said, “You know what would go really well that?”
“What?”
“Butterflies.” I’d looked at her, confused. “Find a butterfly stencil. Paint butterflies on the wall. It’ll be so cute.”
She knew I had a thing for the fluttery little creatures. I did a report on the migration of the monarch butterflies last year, and I’d talked about them almost nonstop for an entire month.
So I’d done as she suggested with one of the walls in my room. And she was exactly right. I told her she should start a design show for teens. HGTV would be lucky to have her. I was starting to think there wasn’t anything my best friend couldn’t do.
Now, as I turned to say good-bye, I tried not to feel a little jealous of Nora.
“See you at school tomorrow, Lindy. Our last week before freedom!”
“Freedom with a HAT on its head,” I called out as I headed down the stairs after my mother to take the subway back to Greenwich Village. “Hey, if you get bored later, text me!”
“And you’ll reply with the perfect emojis?” she replied.
I laughed. “Of course! It’s my specialty, remember?”
There once was a girl named Lindy,
who met her best friend in kindy.
They’d run and they’d skip
and were glued at the hip,
even when it was rainy and windy!
The train ride back to our new neighborhood in Manhattan was just long enough to make up a limerick about Nora and me. I learned about limericks in fifth grade during our poetry unit. They’re fun to write, but also kind of hard because you have to stick to a certain rhythm while at the same time finding words that rhyme with each other. It’s easiest if you pick a word in the first line that rhymes with lots of other words. I could only think of two words that rhyme with Lindy, so I had to figure out a way to use both of them.
“This is our stop,” Mom reminded me. By now I knew that, but she probably just wanted to make sure. With our old apartment, she never had to tell me. At least as far back as I could remember. Both Mom and Dad had said it would take time to get used to everything about living at the new place, and that it was normal to miss my old home.
It had always been my parents’ dream to own a bed-and-breakfast. They’d taken out a loan and bought the 1880 brownstone over a year ago, and completely renovated the inside by replacing pipes, fixtures, and wiring, updating the kitchen, repairing walls and floors, and installing air-conditioning. During that time, my mom liked to drag me along with her to flea markets, where we’d look for “fabulous finds.” At first, I had no idea what this meant. Then she explained that a fabulous find was a piece of vintage furniture that would look beautiful in the B&B but wouldn’t cost an arm and a leg.
“So cheap but pretty?” I’d asked her.
“Basically, yes,” she’d said.
I
The brownstone had three floors of guest rooms plus the main floor with the library, a large dining room, and the kitchen. Our family lived on the fourth floor, in our own apartment, complete with a small kitchen, a family room, and three bedrooms. Although I missed my old neighborhood, I adored my new bedroom. I finally had just enough space for a bookcase. And when I ran out of room on mine, my mom said I could put books in the formal library downstairs as long as I was willing to share with kids who might want to read one while they were staying with us. I loved the idea of having a library in our home so much, how could I possibly mind sharing?
When we walked through the front door of our house, soon to also be known as the Chorus Inn, we found my brother about to slide down the elegant banister of the staircase.
“Davis!” my mom said. “What are you doing? This isn’t a playground.”
He jumped off and plastered on a big fake smile, walking the rest of the way down the steps. “Oh. Hi, Mom. Hi, Lindy. How was the ballet?”
My brother is ten years old and knows how to turn on the charm like a faucet. It’s almost magical, the way he does it. I see through him almost every time, but my mother loves good manners, so whenever he does his politeness routine, she becomes spellbound. Like I said, magic.
“Oh, it was wonderful,” Mom said. “Wasn’t it, Lindy? The theme was movies, and every age group danced to a song from a film. Like, Lindy’s friend Talia chose The Sound of Music. How was your game?”
Prince Charming continued to smile. “Good. We won. Got home a little while ago. Dad’s making dinner. I helped peel some carrots and potatoes.”
Mom reached out and stroked his head of brown hair, which had lots of natural curl, like our dad’s. “Thanks for doing that, buddy.”
Years ago, they didn’t think they could have any children, so they went to China and adopted me. Then, just as they were getting ready to start the process to adopt another baby, Mom found out she was pregnant. Surprise!