THE SPY CATCHERS OF MAPLE HILL by Megan Frazer Blakemore

The

Spy

Catchers Maple Hill of

Megan Frazer Blakemore

1 Instrument Day

Hazel Kaplansky flew down the Monument Street hill with her feet held out wide from the pedals, one hand raised in the air like a rodeo rider. She coasted so fast she believed she could lift off and fly right into outer space. People would watch her through their telescopes as she shot higher and higher into orbit until she landed on the moon. She’d be the first person to walk on its silvery gray surface.

Instead she landed at Adelaide Switzer Elementary School.

Placing her bike’s front wheel between the slots of the bike rack, she checked her school skirt and saddle shoes for grease, and then headed toward the door. She stared down at the cracks in the sidewalk, so she almost walked right into Maryann Wood.

Maryann’s hair was long and straight and so blond it almost looked white. Hazel thought it looked like dead, bleached-out grass, and knew her own short haircut was much more

2

Megan Frazer Blakemore

practical, but all the other girls said it was so pretty and they were so jealous. Hazel would be lying if she said she didn’t fantasize about cutting it off at least once a day.

Just now Maryann stood at the bottom of the stairs, spinning a long strand of blond hair around her finger. Who would she be without that hair and her watery blue eyes? Hazel wondered. Would she still be Maryann?

“Hey, shrimp,” Maryann said. Now that Hazel’s best friend, Becky Cornflower, had moved to Arizona, Maryann was the tallest girl in the class, and thin as a wisp. Hazel was the third shortest, practically average, yet Maryann still insisted on calling her a shrimp.

“Good morning, Maryann,” Hazel said, trying to sound chipper. “Lovely autumn weather we’re having here, isn’t it? I simply adore the fall in Vermont.”

Maryann pursed her lips. “Why are you so weird?”

Hazel decided to keep up her strategy of being overly friendly. If nothing else, it would confuse Maryann. “I prefer the word ‘unique.’ ” “Square,” Maryann said.

Hazel decided not to point out that being square meant being boring and she didn’t think someone could be both weird and boring. “See you in class,” she said cheerily.

Maryann rolled her eyes.

Hazel trotted up the stairs, opened the big metal door, and made her way down the hall to Mrs. Sinclair’s classroom. She walked into the room and announced, “Mrs. Sinclair, I have

The Spy Catchers of Maple Hill

3

arrived!” Mrs. Sinclair stood at the chalkboard writing “Friday, October 23, 1953” in her perfect, curly cursive. Her white chalk letters never smeared, and unlike many teachers—especially Mr. Hiccolm in fourth grade— she did not wind up with chalk dust all over her clothes by the end of the day. She looked up and said, “Why, good morning, Hazel!” as if the same thing didn’t happen every morning. Hazel hung her backpack and coat in the cubby area and then sat down in her assigned seat in the second row. She preferred to sit in the front row, but she knew that Mrs. Sinclair needed to put the hooligans there to keep an eye on them.

Hazel took out a piece of paper and began drawing a diagram of a human cell. This was not part of the regular curriculum. Hazel much preferred things that were outside of the usual school program.

Before Becky left, Hazel and Becky would stay by the cubbies until the last possible second, getting each other up-todate on all the things that had passed since they’d parted the afternoon before—Becky’s cat’s hairballs and what they looked like (Becky thought her cat was trying to communicate through them), Hazel’s adventures in the graveyard, and if they needed to add any total rainfall to their yearlong tally (each girl kept a jar with a ruler outside her house). All that had ended when Becky had been plucked away for a new life in Arizona, where it hardly ever rained.

Mornings like these Hazel missed Becky the most. She could always help Hazel feel better, usually by making creepy

4

Megan Frazer Blakemore

faces like pulling down her lower eyelids and sucking her bottom lip in so far it looked like she didn’t have any teeth at all.

A moment later, Maryann arrived with Connie Short. The two were locked at the elbow, just the way she and Becky used to walk, only it hadn’t been annoying when they’d done it. Maryann and Connie were in deep discussion of a television show they’d seen the night before. Hazel knew the name, but she had never seen it. Her family had a black-and-white television, but they hardly ever used it. All her parents liked to watch were the news and educational shows like You Were There.

Hazel did watch the cartoons, though, when she got up before her parents on the weekend.

Connie, with her wide green eyes and bouncy brown curls, was prettier than Maryann, though no one, least of all Connie, would ever say so. She said she was plain because she had a dusting of freckles across her nose. Pretty as she looked, she was also pigeon-toed, which made her waddle when she walked.

Sometimes Hazel wondered if Maryann had built Connie like some sort of Frankenstein-type monster. Connie was a shadow of Maryann: paler, quieter, not as smart, and not as cruel. She was Maryann’s echo. If Hazel hadn’t known both of them her whole life, the artificial-creation theory would be hard to dismiss. They’d been best friends since forever, and both of them had a dark, solid center that made them mean. Not everyone else could see it—not all the other kids and certainly not the teachers, who seemed to think that

The Spy Catchers of Maple Hill

5

Maryann and Connie were just about as perfect as perfect could be—but Hazel could.

Maryann and Connie didn’t even have a chance to ignore her before Mrs. Sinclair asked them all to stand to say the Pledge of Allegiance. Their words all ran together, and Hazel didn’t think it was respectful. The Pledge was their way of saying they stood with their great nation against Communism and dictators and everything else awful in the world, and they just rushed through it. Hazel wondered how many of her classmates even knew what the word “allegiance” meant.

Next came music. Hazel hated music, and she found it particularly unfair that she had to start off Friday morning with it. Friday should be a day of celebration, but for Mrs. Sinclair’s fifth-grade class at Adelaide Switzer Elementary, it was Instrument Day. Hazel took her seat on the rust-colored rug knowing that today would be just the same as every other day. Mrs. Ferrigno liked to make a big dramatic deal about handing out the instruments in music class, but it always ended up the same.

Big and polite Anthony got the largest set of cymbals, and his friend Timmy got the smaller ones. Another set of boys got vibraslaps. None of the boys could manage to sit still and quiet with their instruments, so as Mrs. Ferrigno kept going, her voice was accompanied by metal sliding on metal and the occasional soft boinggggg of a vibraslap hitting a knee.

As Mrs. Ferrigno made her way through the instruments, Hazel knew the inevitable was coming: Maryann and Connie

6

Megan Frazer Blakemore

would get the two glockenspiels, and of course they would react to this news with squeals of delight. Just once, Hazel thought, I would like to get the glockenspiel. I would react with dignity and take the mallets from Mrs. Ferrigno’s outstretched hand and sit behind my instrument like I was getting ready to play Carnegie Hall.

Hazel imagined herself standing center stage at Carnegie Hall. She had never been there, but she had seen pictures. The vaulted ceiling would arch high above her head, making her look small on the stage. But once her mallets hit the glockenspiel, there would be no denying her power. In her mind she played Bach. She played Chopin. She played “The Flight of the Bumblebee,” with her mallets flying over the bars. At the end of her per for mance, her hair would be wild around her head and there’d be beads of sweat on her brow. She would nearly collapse from the exertion of it all. And the audience would burst into applause, rise to its feet, and declare her a star.

Hazel shot her hand into the air. The time had come to set herself on the path to glory. Time to stand up to the Maryanns and the Connies of the world. Hazel knew that information was power, and she was about to wow Mrs. Ferrigno with all the information she had. She had spent hours in the library reading up on percussion instruments, in par ticular the glockenspiel.

“Yes, Hazel?” Mrs. Ferrigno said.

She sat up straight and sucked in her belly as she took a deep breath. “Did you know that ‘glockenspiel’ is German for ‘play of the bells’? And that’s because at first there were bells

The Spy Catchers of Maple Hill

7

that people would hit. But then they started to be made out of metal bars instead.”

“That’s interesting, Hazel. Thank you for illuminating us.”

“My pleasure. Also, did you know that Mozart used the glockenspiel in his work? Perhaps we could challenge ourselves to do one of his pieces.”

“I’ll take that under advisement.”

“Great!” Hazel said. She was getting somewhere, she was sure of it. Before she knew it, Mrs. Ferrigno would be handing her the mallets, and then she’d finally have her chance to shine.

Mrs. Ferrigno reached out the hand holding the mallets.

“Today let’s have Maryann play first glockenspiel.” She hesitated for a moment and glanced at Hazel, who could feel her heart beating faster in anticipation. “And Connie play second glockenspiel.”

Squeals of enjoyment from Maryann and Connie.

Hazel slumped as Mrs. Ferrigno said, “So, Hazel, that leaves the triangle for you.”