“He fainted,” Hadley said, her voice full of wonder.
He had fainted, she told herself. The first time anyway, as soon as he heard her say that she met Amy Pickworth. So if Great-Uncle Thorne died, then it was all her fault. With this realization, Hadley, too, began to cry.
At the sight of his mother standing in the doorway, Felix also burst into tears.
His mother patted Rayne on the back, touched Hadley’s shoulder, and smoothed Felix’s hair as she moved across the threshold and into The Treasure Chest, where Maisie sat sobbing on the floor in the same spot Great-Uncle Thorne had lain. Behind her, broken glass glittered like diamonds in the dying light.
“Mom,” Maisie said, but that was all, because what was there to say?
Her mother looked at Maisie.
Then she looked up at the stained-glass window sending the day’s last breath of light across the room. She looked at the window with the same expression she wore when she did a jigsaw puzzle. The expression seemed to say, Ah! I see now how it all fits together.
Her gaze drifted from the window to The Treasure Chest itself.
Like everybody who walks into The Treasure Chest for the first time, she could not take it all in. Her eyes flitted from test tubes to talismans to hunks of quartz and amethyst to the shelves groaning with objects; the cluttered desk; the tabletops obscured by stuff.
“What?” she began. But she couldn’t articulate what she wanted to say.
She swallowed, took a breath, looked at Maisie.
“What is this room?” she finally managed to ask.
Maisie lifted her tearstained face to her mother.
“The Treasure Chest,” she said.
CHAPTER 4
RENAISSANCE MEANS REBIRTH
“Renaissance means rebirth,” Miss Landers said.
Except she wasn’t saying it to Felix’s class. She was saying it to the entire sixth grade. A special assembly had been called, and all of the sixth-graders were sitting in the auditorium where The Crucible would be performed in a few weeks.
“We are about to begin an exciting unit,” Miss Landers continued. “It involves art, science . . .”
But Felix couldn’t listen to what Miss Landers was saying.
Renaissance means rebirth.
Would Great-Uncle Thorne, lying in a coma at Newport General Hospital, be reborn?
Would his parents’ marriage, despite Bruce Fishbaum, finally be reborn?
Would Amy Pickworth, whose story still remained untold, be reborn?
How could he possibly listen to Miss Landers talk about something that happened centuries ago when right now his whole world needed to be reborn?
While Felix considered all of this, somehow the art teacher, Ms. Silva, had appeared at the microphone.
Ms. Silva wore long flowing caftans. Her hair, long and wavy, was streaked with gray. A large woman, she somehow managed to move gracefully, as if she were floating. Even when Felix, who did not take art, saw her in the hallways, she seemed to float in her colorful clothes, her multitude of bangle bracelets and bells around her ankles making a sound track to Ms. Silva.
“Oh, sixth-graders!” she crooned, clapping her hands together in front of the microphone and releasing more jingles and jangles than usual. “Oh, sixth-graders! The Renaissance! I will be your guide through Florence. I will show you art. And artists. And”—here she paused dramatically and took a breath so deep that the sound of it magnified through the microphone made everyone titter.
“And! Sixth-graders! You will learn the names of artists, like my personal favorite, Piero della Francesca. Artists so magnificent that . . .”
Ms. Silva became overcome by the magnificence of the Renaissance artists, and without finishing her talk, was led from the stage.
Miss Landers recovered quickly.
“Together, we will have a Renaissance fair, to which all of your parents will be invited. Jennifer Twill will play the lira da braccio, which is a Renaissance violin she has mastered.”
The class snickered. Jennifer Twill did only odd things.
“Now, class, I want to remind you of Jennifer’s hammered dulcimer performance at last year’s Christmas party, and her wonderful contra dancing at the end-of-the-year talent show.”
This only led to more snickering, but Miss Landers continued.
“This year, at the end of the unit, we will hold our own Renaissance fair. Ms. Silva will do workshops on masks, and Mrs. Witherspoon will hold cooking classes so that you can prepare a feast for the fair.”
Miss Landers sighed happily.
“The Renaissance,” she said.
Dear Lily,