Maisie and Felix followed the man and happily let him buy them each a hot dog. Somehow, Felix thought, this man was going to lead them to Charles Lindbergh.
“Yesterday,” the man continued as if Maisie and Felix were old friends, “I heard Scott Joplin play ‘The Entertainer’ in there. And now, today, John Philip Sousa. It was worth every penny to come here. Every single penny.”
He added under his breath, “Despite what my father-in-law had to say about it.”
“Did you come here from Minnesota?” Felix asked.
But the man shook his head. “Atchison, Kansas,” he said. “You two?”
“Newport, Rhode Island,” Felix told him, half expecting a reaction to this information.
The man let out a low, impressed whistle, and Felix brightened. Now the connection to Lindbergh might somehow become clear.
But all the man said was, “That’s quite far!”
After she finished her hot dog in three quick bites, Maisie stopped paying attention to the man. The sight of cascading water across from Festival Hall had caught her interest and she began to walk toward it, Felix hurrying to catch up with her.
“It’s beautiful,” Maisie murmured as she stared out at a lagoon filled with gondolas, swan boats, and dragon boats all decked out with flowers and flags.
“The Grand Basin,” the man said.
Why in the world had he followed them over here? Maisie wondered.
“At night it’s lit with more than twenty thousand lights,” he continued, his voice filled with awe.
“You aren’t Mr. Lindbergh by any chance,” Felix blurted. “Are you?”
The man shook his head. “You’re looking for this Lindbergh fellow, are you?”
“I think so,” Felix said.
“If he’s performing—” the man began, but he got interrupted by a woman rushing up to him.
“Well, there you are,” the woman scolded.
Maisie looked up into a vaguely familiar face. Where had she seen this woman before?
“Daddy,” a little girl eating an enormous cone of cotton candy said. “Taste this!”
That little girl, Maisie realized, was the freckle-faced kid from before, the one with the ice-cream cone.
The girl’s mother recognized Maisie, too.
“Let’s go see Lincoln’s log cabin, Sam,” she said to her husband. “The girls have been asking all afternoon.”
Her husband let some cotton candy dissolve on his tongue, his eyes rolling heavenward as he did and a small moan of pleasure escaped his lips.
“What is this sugary delight?” he asked.
“Cotton candy,” Felix told him.
“Cotton? Candy?” the man said, obviously displeased by the name.
Meelie scowled at Felix.
“No it isn’t,” she said with a small stomp of her foot. “It’s fairy floss, Daddy.”
Her father grinned. “Yes! Yes, it is fairy floss.”
“Sam?” his wife said impatiently. “Lincoln’s log cabin?”
“Of course,” Sam said affably.
He glanced at Maisie and Felix.
“Have you two seen it yet? The log cabin where Abraham Lincoln was born? They brought it here all the way from Kentucky!”
“No, we—” Maisie began.
“I’m sure their parents will take them at some point,” the woman interrupted.
She gathered her own two little girls and nudged them forward. As Felix watched her acting so motherly, he ached for his own mother. But Maisie only noticed how oddly the little girls were dressed. Instead of the froufrou the other little girls here wore, these two had on strange, navy-blue, one-piece bloomers that reminded Maisie of the uniforms some schools made girls wear for gym class.
“What weirdos,” she whispered.
The one called Meelie turned around, her face sticky with cotton candy.
“Fairy floss,” she said, sounding triumphant.
Maisie and Felix watched the family get swallowed up by the crowd.
“Now what?” Felix asked, dispirited.
“Lame demon?” Maisie suggested.
“Stars and Stripes Forever” played its final notes. A bell in the Floral Clock tolled.
And Felix sighed.
“Lame demon,” he said.
CHAPTER 7
STARGAZING
Maisie gazed up at an inky sky filled with twinkling stars. She had landed on soft grass and, from what she could tell, in someone’s backyard. To her right stood a white house, to her left a shed, and, all around everything, a picket fence.
Crickets chirped. From somewhere nearby came the quiet laughter of children followed by deeper, adult tones. Even though she couldn’t see anything clearly, this place felt homey and familiar.
Felix’s voice cut through the warm night air.
“I feel like we’ve landed smack in the middle of America,” he said.
Squinting, Maisie could see that the lump across the lawn was actually her brother.
“Me, too,” she said. “It feels nice here.”
The children grew excited, and Maisie stood and moved toward the shed, Felix close behind her.
“Up there,” Maisie whispered, pointing to the roof.
Two girls sat perched on the roof with their parents, all of them gazing at the starry sky.
“Are you sure we’ll see one?” one of the girls demanded.