Heaven Is Paved With Oreos Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  My Journal

  Journal #2

  Il Giornale

  Acknowledgments

  Sample Chapter from DAIRY QUEEN

  Buy the Book

  Read More from the Dairy Queen Trilogy

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2013 by Catherine Gilbert Murdock

  All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

  Houghton Mifflin Books for Children is an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

  www.hmhbooks.com

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

  Murdock, Catherine Gilbert.

  Heaven is paved with Oreos / by Catherine Gilbert Murdock.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Fourteen-year-old Sarah keeps a journal of her pilgrimage to Rome with her eccentric grandmother, Z, her evolving relationship with best friend Curtis, and daily conversations with Curtis’s sister and star athlete, D.J.

  ISBN 978-0-547-62538-6

  [1. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 2. Pilgrims and pilgrimages—Fiction. 3. Grandmothers—Fiction. 4. Diaries—Fiction. 5. Rome (Italy)—Fiction. 6. Italy—Fiction. 7. Wisconsin—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.M9415He 2013

  [Fic]—dc23

  2012039969

  eISBN 978-0-547-62539-3

  v1.0913

  To D.J.

  Darling Sarah!

  This journal is for you—isn’t it glorious? I saw it & thought of you instantly! Now you can record all your thoughts & your genius & your experiences-to-come! (And are you going to have experiences!) Someday, when you’re a creaky sixty-three-year-old granny, you’ll read this & remember every one of your marvelous adventures. I am so excited! Have fun writing!

  Peace forever—Z

  Wednesday, June 12

  Wow. My very own journal. What do you write in a journal? Because I don’t really have marvelous adventures—not like my grandmother Z. My grandmother Z could have an adventure just shopping for pencils. One time she left her apartment to buy milk and she didn’t make it home for seventy-one hours. That’s a marvelous adventure. My big adventure for today was making sure my best friend didn’t throw up.

  Curtis Schwenk—he’s my best friend—is exceedingly shy. He does not like being the center of attention or even the perimeter of attention. In school he never talks at all. If he went out to buy pencils, he would be too shy even to ask where the pencils are located and he would go home empty-handed. A huge public thing like graduation is not a place he would ever happily be, even if he was one of the people graduating, which he is not because we have only finished eighth grade.

  This year, though, Curtis’s older brother Win was the speaker at the Red Bend High School graduation ceremony. Curtis’s brother got intensely hurt playing football last year, and now he is recovering. Crowds of people came to hear him talk about overcoming the odds and being a fighter while Curtis sat next to him onstage in a necktie looking 100% queasy. I spent the whole speech sending Curtis morally supportive brain waves.

  Then they gave out diplomas and graduation was over. Everyone said congratulations to everyone else even if there was nothing to congratulate them for. I myself got four congratulations just for standing there. The fourth time, I congratulated the fourth person right back and he did not even mind.

  For a while I lost sight of Curtis, but then I found him again. Curtis is actually quite easy to find sight of because he is so tall. He saw me and smiled a huge relief-filled smile. “Hey,” he said, lifting up his hand. We Palm Saluted. A Palm Salute is where one person touches his or her left palm to the other person’s right palm. It is an amazingly fantastic gesture of greeting. Curtis and I invented it. We are, I think, the only people in the world who do it. Curtis’s hands are so big that my fingertips only reach his middle phalanx. (That is the scientific name for the middle set of bones in your fingers. I looked it up.)

  “Hey,” I said, smiling at him. Every time we Palm Salute, I smile. “How’s Boris?”

  “Okay, I think. I haven’t lifted the cover.”

  “How bad’s the smell?”

  Just then Emily Friend squeezed in next to Curtis. Note that she appeared as Curtis and I were discussing odors. “Hey, Curtis!” she said with that voice she has. “You looked very cool up there.”

  Curtis did not say anything. But he quickly took his eyes off me and instead stared at the ground. He would not even share an eye roll.

  “Hey, Sarah.” Emily always says my name as though she is just remembering it, even though we have been in school together since kindergarten. “Did you tie Curtis’s necktie for him? My cousin taught me how to tie ties, and it’s very important, you know, knowing how to tie your boyfriend’s tie . . . If you ever need anyone to tie it for you, Curtis, I can do it. I know how.” Then she gave me a look and she left. A look that means, I don’t care what everyone says: I know the truth. I’m onto you.

  Curtis kept staring at the ground. I tried to think of what I could have said back to Emily. For example: Curtis and I would rather hang out with a dead calf than with you. Or Your name is Emily Friend, but you’re really Emily Enemy. But neither of these responses would work. No response works if you only think it up after the person has already left.

  Finally I said, “So . . . Library? Tomorrow?”

  Curtis nodded. “After practice.” He looked like he wanted to say something else, but I waited and he didn’t. Mom was talking to Curtis’s sister, D.J.—probably saying congratulations because there weren’t any graduates nearby to say it to. Paul stood behind Mom looking dazed. My brother is a little obsessed with Curtis’s sister. He has articles about D.J. Schwenk playing boys’ football and girls’ basketball taped all over the inside of his closet. He is 100% in awe of her.

  Then Curtis went off with D.J., and I went off with Mom and Paul, and Mom said Emily seemed nice because Mom = clueless. Dad was home from work by the time we got there. He asked about graduation. “In three more years,” Dad said to Paul, “that will be you.” He clinked his slice of pizza against Paul’s, like people in movies do with champagne. “And here’s to four more years for Sarah,” he added, and clinked his pizza with me. Four years! That’s how long it is until my very own high school graduation. I am worried about high school, but not too worried. Curtis will be there.

  Z is coming for supper tomorrow night—that’s why I’m writing now. She will be immensely thrilled with my journaling. She will say that watching graduation is an adventure too. Good night!

  Thursday, June 13

  Today I’ll write until Curtis’s baseball practice ends and the library opens and we can go work on Boris. It’s either write or listen to Paul practice guitar. I have < 0.00% interest in that.

  Curtis Schwenk and I didn’t used to be best friends. We were always in the same grade, but we moved in different circles because he is exceptionally athletic and I am exceptionally not. You could say Curtis moved in circles and I moved in uncoordinated blobs.

  Then one day at recess in seventh grade I found a dead robin. I should have ignored it, because whenever I pay attention to things like that, it always ends badly. Which happened this time too. I was not even touching the robin but only studying it when three boys came by.

  “That’s disgusting!” said Brett Ortlieb. “Kick it!”

  I tried to stop them, because nothing that was once alive should be kicked, b
ut my blocking them only made them try harder while Emily Enemy and her friends made grossed-out expressions at me.

  That’s when Curtis showed up. He was the tallest kid in school even in seventh grade. All of a sudden he was leaning over Brett and staring at him. “Stop,” he said. One word.

  “It’s a dead bird!” Brett said. “It’s disgusting.”

  Curtis didn’t say anything, but he clenched his fists. Even if you were looking only at his face, you could see the clenching. He stared at Brett, and Brett stared back until finally Brett muttered “whatever,” and he and his friends walked away.

  I stood there. So did Curtis. At last I said, “I was trying to figure out how it died.”

  Curtis studied me like he thought I was teasing him. Then he pointed to the gym windows. They were shiny and high—bird high. The robin must have flown into the window and broken its neck.

  “Oh,” I said. “I should have figured that out.”

  At that moment the bell rang and we had to go inside. Curtis was late, though, I noticed. He didn’t show up until ten minutes into class. Out of the corner of my eye I watched him sit down. He was holding something longish, with dirt stuck to one end. It was a ruler, I could see finally. He slipped it into his backpack.

  Curtis had buried the robin. He had dug a hole with a ruler and buried it. Which is exactly what I would have done . . . but I never would have been brave enough to be late to class to do it.

  I was so impressed by all this that I did not think about anything else for the entire rest of the day.

  A few weeks later, Curtis and I ended up partners for a big project on the scientific elements. We picked hydrogen because it is number 1 (that is a chemistry joke). Curtis brought in pictures of the Hindenburg, which is a famous zeppelin from the 1930s that caught fire because it was filled with hydrogen, which burns extremely easily. When hydrogen burns, it turns into water—and yet the water doesn’t put the fire out! Even as Curtis was showing me the pictures and talking about it, he was so shy that he kept stopping, and I was so psyched about his pictures that he looked like he thought I was teasing. Then he was pleased. He tried to hide it, but I could tell.

  Our display was amazing. I will not lie. We had models of hydrogen and H2 (because hydrogen likes being in pairs) and H20 (water) and H202 (hydrogen peroxide), and video of the Hindenburg burning, and the formula H2 (hydrogen) + O2 (oxygen) = H20 (water) + O (oxygen) + heat (burning zeppelin). Our project was so amazing that a high school teacher told us we should make something for the science fair. So last year we made “Desiccation and Its Effects” using dried rats from Curtis’s family’s farm, and we came in third in the state! Also we started going out.

  Now we are preparing for the high school state science fair, which is a much bigger deal because we will be only lowly freshmen. Our project is “Skeletal Taxidermy and Bovine Osteology: The Process of Discovery.” We are assembling the skeleton of a calf from Schwenk Farm that was born dead. Out of respect we have named him Boris, and we have put him in a burial chamber with lots of dirt over him for the worms and ants and other decay-positive life forms, and a cover on top of the burial chamber so coyotes don’t get to him, and now we are waiting for nature to do her work and eat up everything but the bones. It will take about two months, we think. In the meantime we are making the rest of the exhibit.

  I am extremely certain Emily could never prepare a calf skeleton. I am not so certain that Curtis thinks that’s a bad thing.

  Thursday, June 13—LATER

  Curtis and I work at the Red Bend Library. The children’s librarian likes me because I try to read every book in the kids’ section, so we get to use a For Library Use Only room that is closed to the public because it does not have exit signs.

  Today we spent two hours talking about which pictures to use in the science fair display and what the text blocks should say. We had our usual discussion about what is scientific versus what is gross, which both of us have a problem with. We tend not to notice the grossness. Is it gross to have a “before” photograph of poor little Boris? We are not sure.

  At one point Curtis said, “What would Emily Friend think?”

  I know he was only bringing up someone who is the opposite of scientific, and I tried not to mind that he used her when there are so many other people to name . . . But I will be honest and say that it hurt my feelings. Because for one thing, Emily finds everything gross, particularly everything related to me, and also she is Emily Enemy.

  It did not help that after we finished and put our papers away and walked back to my house, we passed Emily Enemy herself with several other kids hanging out on the bench for the cool kids (= kids who think they’re cool). Emily was sitting on one boy’s lap with her legs on another boy’s lap, and she said hello to Curtis but not a word to me. Actually, that is not true: she said, “You two are very cute together!” But she laughed when she said it.

  We did not laugh. Curtis scowled at the ground, and I wanted to say how not every girl needs to lie across two boys just to show she’s popular. I wish I could beat her at chess and make that the end of it. Is everyone in high school going to be like Emily?

  Curtis and I did not say anything else for the rest of the walk.

  When we got to my house, Curtis’s sister’s car was parked in front of our sidewalk. She wasn’t in the car, though. The only person visible was my brother, who was on our front steps looking 100% miserable.

  “Wow,” I said. “What’s wrong?” Curtis went over to the garage and started shooting baskets. Curtis does not like “what’s wrong?” conversations.

  Paul looked at me with crazy wide-open eyes. “You know those guitar lessons Z set up? Mom hired her to drive me to Prophetstown!” He grabbed my arm. “D.J. Schwenk!”

  “D.J. Schwenk is driving to Prophetstown?” Prophetstown is where Z lives.

  “She’s got some basketball thing there . . . Help me, Sarah. I can’t sit in a car with D.J. Schwenk.”

  I wanted to be sympathetic—Paul looked so upset!—but I could not help being reasonable. Reasonableness is the byproduct of a scientific mind. “Paul, Prophetstown is, like, forty-five minutes away. If Mom drives, that’s an hour and a half twice a week—”

  “Plus dog walking,” Paul added. “Z wants me to walk Jack Russell George.”

  “Jack Russell George?” Paul doesn’t even like Jack Russell George!

  “Trust me, I don’t want the money—”

  “You’re getting paid to walk Jack Russell George?” Walking Jack Russell George would be such a great job for someone who loves dogs (= me)! It’s not like I have anything better to do this summer—all I’m doing is reading and baby-sitting and waiting for Boris to decay. “That is so unfair! I’m the one who should be walking him—”

  Suddenly I stopped talking because a fantastic idea came into my head—and from the expression on his face I could see that the same fantastic idea came into Paul’s head too. We looked at each other. “Could you—?” Paul asked, just as I said, “I could—” We went inside.

  There was D.J. Schwenk in our kitchen, sitting in Dad’s chair with a pop and a bowl of ice cream and talking about a basketball club she’s playing in for this summer. Mom was listening while also reading the cookbook Z gave her on wheat-free desserts. Mom seemed a lot more interested in D.J. than in the cookbook.

  Paul saw D.J. and stopped short. I did too. Curtis’s sister is exceedingly intimidating. I mean, she is a nice person—nice to me and nice to Curtis, and last year when Paul was a freshman and some kid was picking on him, she beat that kid up with one hand. That’s the thing: she is nice, but she is tough. She is so tough that she plays varsity football with boys. She was MVP at the girls’ basketball state tournament this year and already has a full scholarship to play basketball at the University of Minnesota, even though she still has a year of high school left. When she walks onto a basketball court, she looks like a lion picking out which zebra to eat for dinner.

  D.J. saw us and grinne
d. “Hi, Sarah. Hey, Paul. How are ya?”

  “Hi, D.J.,” Paul said with enormous effort. “Um, Sarah, can you, um, ask them . . . ?”

  “Hey, D.J. Hey, Mom. Um, what would you think—what if I walked Jack Russell George?”

  “So she could ride to Prophetstown with me and”—Paul made a strangling sound—“D.J.?”

  “Huh,” Mom said. She frowned in a not-a-bad-idea kind of way. “D.J., you okay taking Sarah, too? Oh, cripes, I don’t have oat flour.”

  D.J. smiled. You can tell she likes Paul. “Car’s going to the same place . . . But you’re not going to talk about that calf, are you?”

  I shook my head. Curtis and I have learned that hardly any people share our thirst for knowledge when it comes to dead things.

  Now I get to go to Prophetstown and walk Jack Russell George!

  Prophetstown is hugely different from Red Bend. It has art galleries and yoga and a cool hippie restaurant called Harmony Coffee where you can sit for hours without ordering anything and a street named after Laura Ingalls Wilder, who was born nearby. I know all this because Z works at the Sun & Moon Art Gallery and at Little House Yoga and at Harmony Coffee on Laura Ingalls Wilder Avenue. Prophetstown is as different from Red Bend as a town can get and still be in Wisconsin.

  The other thing Prophetstown has is music. All year long it has concerts and performances and festivals. Z loves this because she is a lifelong lover of anything musical, especially anything from the 1960s and 1970s, when all the best songs in the world were created, according to her. Other music-loving people live in Prophetstown too, including a man with a long gray ponytail who used to play with famous musicians in California. He and Z are friends, and so he has offered Paul music lessons. For free. Which is an enormously large deal because lessons are expensive and money does not grow in cans (that is a family joke). Paul is also into music, and all day long he is either practicing or listening. When he is doing his music, he is so focused that he cannot even hear people calling his name. We say he is on Planet Paul.