The Story Web Read online

  Also by Megan Frazer Blakemore

  The Water Castle

  The Spy Catchers of Maple Hill

  The Friendship Riddle

  -

  The Firefly Code

  The Daybreak Bond

  Contents

  Chapter One: ALICE

  Chapter Two: ALICE

  Chapter Three: LEWIS

  The Animal Council

  Chapter Four: MELANIE

  Chapter Five: ALICE

  Chapter Six: ALICE

  Chapter Seven: LEWIS

  Crow

  Chapter Eight: ALICE

  Waxwing

  Chapter Nine: ALICE

  Waxwing

  Chapter Ten: LEWIS

  Porcupine

  Chapter Eleven: ALICE

  Chapter Twelve: MELANIE

  Chapter Thirteen: LEWIS

  Chapter Fourteen: ALICE

  Mother Bear

  Chapter Fifteen: ALICE

  Chapter Sixteen: LEWIS

  Chapter Seventeen: MELANIE

  Chapter Eighteen: ALICE

  Moose

  Chapter Nineteen: LEWIS

  Chapter Twenty: ALICE

  Waxwing and Cat

  Chapter Twenty-One: ALICE

  Chapter Twenty-Two: MELANIE

  Chapter Twenty-Three: LEWIS

  Chapter Twenty-Four: ALICE

  Chapter Twenty-Five: ALICE

  Luna Moth

  Chapter Twenty-Six: ALICE

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: ALICE

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: LEWIS

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: ALICE

  Chapter Thirty: MELANIE

  Emu

  Chapter Thirty-One: ALICE

  Waxwing and Owl

  Chapter Thirty-Two: LEWIS

  Chapter Thirty-Three: MELANIE

  Chapter Thirty-Four: ALICE

  Bobcat

  Chapter Thirty-Five: ALICE

  Chapter Thirty-Six: MELANIE

  Chapter Thirty-Seven: ALICE AND LEWIS AND MELANIE

  Chapter Thirty-Eight: ALICE

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  For Henry

  (A long, long time ago when she was small)

  When Alice Dingwell was only five years old, she followed a silken strand of thread from her backyard into the woods. It was silver, almost clear in places, and from time to time she lost it in the mottled light that streamed among the oaks and pines of the forest behind her house. She ran her finger along it as she walked and felt its sticky pull. The thread wove around tree trunks and into a gully where the stream gurgled in the spring. On and on and on into the woods she went until none of it was familiar anymore. Not the moss on the ground, nor the lichen nor the boulders on which it grew, not the lady slipper orchids nor the patch of wild blueberries. This was the part of the forest she had been warned against ever entering, where the bigger kids claimed witches, ogres, and sprites lived. Still, she was not afraid.

  The strand dove under the branches of a willow tree and popped out in a clearing. There, stretched between branches high and low, was the biggest spiderweb that Alice had ever seen. Big enough to catch her if she were foolish enough to step inside a spider’s home. It was nearly as tall as the oaks and pines and stretched from one to another across the clearing. Drops of water hung like pearls from the threads and glowed iridescent in the light that filled the clearing.

  Alice’s father found her in the woods long after the sun went down. He hugged her close, and she felt his familiar, rough wool jacket against her cheek. On their way home, he told her that it was a Story Web, that each strand was a tale. The strands laced together, crisscrossing one another to make the fabric that tied the world together. “It’s a precious, fragile thing, this web of ours. It’s what connects us. Few have seen it, and those of us who have must be careful to protect it.”

  Her father was full of stories. As time went on and the memory became hazy, she began to wonder if the web had truly existed. Maybe her father’s story was so vivid the web only seemed real.

  She was wrong to be doubtful.

  There is no such thing as just a story.

  (Now, more or less)

  Alice didn’t follow spiderwebs anymore. She did not go down wayward paths. She went where she was supposed to go and rarely ventured into the forest. She did not believe in magical webs. She did not believe in magic of any kind.

  So it was a surprise when she turned invisible after the back-to-school social. It was a strange kind of invisibility—as if she had disappeared completely, while, at the same time, was closely watched by everyone. They sidestepped her in the hallways and turned their heads on the street. The other kids never spoke to her anymore and generally went about their business as if she were a houseplant or a harmless bug in the corner of the room.

  She was even invisible to Izzy and Sadie, who skipped right over her in Mrs. Zee’s closing circle. Mrs. Zee said, “Time to scoot, little newts.” Lewis said, “See you soon, raccoons.” Brady Sykes said, “Hit the road, toads,” and smirked. Before Alice could share her new idea for a goodbye, Sadie said, “Goodbye, butterflies.” Which is what she always said. Izzy jumped right in with “Be sweet, parakeets.” A real ironic one, Alice thought. Izzy and Sadie used to be her best friends. Her group, her squad, her everything.

  That was before the fall social.

  Before the smoke alarms went off.

  Before her dad went away.

  Weird Melanie cleared her throat. “Time to switch—”

  There was a collective gasp. Was Melanie going to say “witch”? Everyone knew the stories about Melanie’s aunt, the witch in the woods. She’d cut off your toes and feed them to her birds. She’d cast a spell on you and turn you into a crow. She was why most kids in Independence never went deep into the forest.

  But Melanie said, “Little twitch.”

  “A twitch isn’t an animal,” Izzy said.

  “And it’s not plural,” Sadie added.

  “No rejections,” Mrs. Zee told them.

  “Mrs. Zee?” Lewis asked. “I think we skipped Alice.”

  “Oh,” Mrs. Zee said, blushing a little. “I guess we did.” Even she wasn’t really seeing Alice anymore. Before Alice could share, Ms. Barton from the front office came on the intercom and said, “Walkers may now be dismissed.”

  Alice jumped up from the circle, grabbed her backpack, and raced out the classroom door.

  There were benefits to being invisible. Back when she was friends with Izzy and Sadie, it could take her twenty minutes to get out of school with all the goodbyes and call-me-laters. Now, she just gave a wave to Ms. Engle, the librarian, and was out the door.

  Alice’s mother worked at the hospital two towns over and didn’t like Alice sitting at home alone after school watching television and eating Lucky Charms. So, Alice had two choices: the ice rink or the Museum. Most days Alice went to the Museum, which was less a museum and more Henrietta Watanabe’s antique shop.

  According to Alice’s father, Henrietta Watanabe had been a spy. “A British spy,” he’d told her. “Back in World War II. Like Peggy Carter,” he said.

  In the Captain America comics, Peggy Carter had been a brilliant secret agent. There weren’t a lot of women in comics, and Alice liked her best of all. There was nothing especially special about her—she wasn’t from some other planet like Supergirl, didn’t have a mutation like Storm or Rogue. All her strength came from her alone.

  “But even cooler,” her dad went on. “Mrs. Watanabe would dress like a man and fly fighter jets behind enemy lines. She’d pose as a simple housemaid, pretended not to speak a word of German, and gathered all their secrets.”

  Alice thought this was highly improbable.

  That was
the thing about her dad, where everyone else saw drab or old or strange, he saw glitter and shine. Like the Museum. It was dusty and dark and nearly impossible to walk through without tripping over something, but her father called it heaven.

  When she arrived, she caught a glimpse of his way of seeing things as the afternoon sun hit a chandelier in the window and fractured, sending out rainbows on the sidewalk. She gasped. Then a cloud passed over, and Independence, Maine, went back to being as dreary as ever. She saw her own reflection in the glass, and the cloudy sky made her white skin look gray as well.

  In the doorway sat a small mouse. It rubbed its whiskers and looked up at her.

  “If I tell Henrietta, she’ll put out a trap,” Alice told it. “You’d better run along.”

  The mouse cocked its head to the side and blinked slowly. Then it ran right over her shoes and disappeared into a hedge in front of the town hall building.

  Alice opened the glass door, setting the bells to jingle, and took her seat at the counter next to Clarice, a mannequin that was always dressed to match the season. Today she had on her witch costume, even though it had been more than a week since Halloween.

  Henrietta stepped through the beads that separated the back room from the front. She dressed the way Alice had always imagined Mrs. Whatsit did in A Wrinkle in Time: heavy, scuffed work boots with striped knee socks, a full skirt over a pair of shorts—“in case I do some cartwheels, I don’t want all of Independence seeing my skivvies”—a blouse, a sweater, a lacy shawl, and, today, a gauzy purple scarf wrapped around her head. She had a closet full of scarves, and usually Alice could tell her mood by which one she chose. Alice hadn’t seen this purple one before, which made her nervous.

  Henrietta held out a plate with a piece of cinnamon toast on it. The cinnamon and sugar were perfectly melted into the butter.

  “How was school today?” Henrietta asked as she snapped off the television that was blaring campaign ads for the governor’s race.

  “Great!” Alice said, while chewing.

  “You’re a terrible liar,” Henrietta told her.

  “Guess I didn’t get the family trait,” Alice mumbled.

  Henrietta narrowed her eyes. “Storytelling and lying are two entirely different things.” She paused. “Well, mostly entirely different.”

  Alice kept eating her snack.

  Henrietta looked ready to press her, but then a whooshing sound filled the space between them. The sky outside grew dark. Heavy rain fell against the glass windows, and wind whipped the remaining leaves from the small maple tree outside.

  Almost as soon as the storm began, it was over. Henrietta rushed to the door and pushed it open, letting a cool wind blow in.

  “Strange,” was all Henrietta said before returning to the counter where she was examining her latest acquisitions.

  Every object in the Museum was for sale, which made it like a shop. But every object also had a small notecard beside it that listed what it was, how old it was, and who had owned it. On the counter, next to a chipped teacup, was a brass candlestick shaped like a narwhal—you spiked the candle onto the horn. In Henrietta’s handwriting were the words:

  Narwhal Candlestick

  ca. 1912

  Brass

  Owned by:

  Martha Cuthright

  Emerson Downing

  Unknown

  Alice always liked the “Unknown” ones. They’d usually been left on the back staircase by people cleaning out their attics, but Alice liked to imagine more wonderful stories. Her father, of course, would make up terrifically preposterous ones. She wondered what he would make of the narwhal candlestick.

  “Your mother says I’m supposed to go over your vocabulary words with you.”

  “I know all my vocabulary words.” Another benefit of invisibility: plenty of time to learn vocab words and math facts.

  “I know you do. Your precocity, nay your perspicacity for language astounds me. So, I’ve got a task for you.”

  Alice swallowed the last of her toast.

  Henrietta held a small box. Alice read the name on it. Shiloh Marble.

  She shook her head.

  “You’re going to the rink anyway. Remember, it’s my canasta night, so you’re having dinner with Donny. Don’t let him give you hot dogs and baked beans again. You know what’s in hot dogs?”

  “I really don’t want to hear about how there’s like fingernails and mice droppings and whatnot,” Alice told her.

  “Preservatives!” Henrietta explained. “I heard about it on Mary Lawrence yesterday.”

  Mary Lawrence was a local semi-celebrity who had her own television show to talk about the issues of the day. Henrietta loved her and took every word she said as the one-hundred-percent honest-to-God truth, which was funny because Henrietta Watanabe did not believe anyone told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. “She said they are full of nitrites that turn into nitrates in your body. Or maybe it’s nitrates that turn into nitrites. Either way: tumors. Plus, there’s enough sodium in there to make a salt lick. That’s what we should do with them all. Gather up all the hot dogs and put them out for the deer.”

  “Won’t the deer get tumors?” Alice asked.

  Henrietta narrowed her eyes and held out the box. “Go to the rink. Give it to Lewis. Tell him to give it to his mom.”

  Alice didn’t answer.

  Henrietta stepped close. Swirled into her clothes was the smell of sweet lavender and honey. Alice breathed deep. “He’s not mad at you, you know. The two of you have more between you than most brothers and sisters do. He understands. Or he will understand if you’d just talk to him. None of this is your fault. Your father—”

  Alice snatched the box out of Henrietta’s hands.

  She wasn’t going to talk to Henrietta about her dad. Because it was Alice’s fault. All of it. It was her fault that Izzy was mad at her. Worst of all, it was her fault that her father had to leave Independence. Nothing anyone said, not all the understanding in the world, could change that fact.

  Lewis Marble watched Alice’s uncle, Donny, drive the Zamboni. The giant overhead bulbs shone spotlights on him. The machine melted the ice, then smoothed it out like shiny taffy being pulled. It used to be Alice’s dad who ran the Zamboni. Alice would ride with him. She’d sit on his lap and adjust the dials. Her dad would do swirls, curling out shiny S-waves behind them. Lewis had always been terrifically jealous watching her ride that Zamboni. Now Alice was nowhere to be seen.

  Lewis hit the ice as soon as Donny finished. He skated the length of the rink back and forth six times, as fast as he could. His body leaned forward. His skates kicked up ice shavings and left thin tracks across the perfectly smooth glass.

  Lewis liked the sharp noise of the hockey stop. He liked the way flakes of ice drifted up like snow in a snow globe. More than that, he liked the sound his stick made when it hit the puck. It was solid and full and sure of itself. He hit puck after puck. When he finished his bucket, he scooped them all back up again before doing sprints one more time. His breath came in heavy puffs, and he sweat through his jersey.

  Alice’s dad, Buzz, had told him that the legs were the most important part of the game. He said the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team—the Miracle on Ice team—skated for hours each day. So Lewis did, too. He wanted to make the Olympic team when he was eighteen. Then college. His dad said UMaine, that’s where all the Marble men had gone, but Lewis wanted one of the Boston schools. It used to be Harvard. He and Alice were going to go together. But he and Alice weren’t making plans together anymore. He had his own plan: Olympics, college, another Olympics, then the NHL. He’d be as big of a star as Buzz himself. Bigger, maybe. People would talk about him like they had talked about Buzz before. “I remember when Lewis Marble was just a kid and scored those three goals against the Orono team. Sent them to states.” Or “I watched Marble’s gold medal goal over and over again. Never seen such a perfect shot in all my days.” Lewis liked to imagine what the town
would name after him. A new school, maybe. Or better yet, Buzz and Donny could decide to rename the ice rink the Lewis Marble Ice Arena. That would be awesome. But none of it would happen if he wasn’t at the top of his game.

  So he practiced.

  Slap! He started on the bucket of pucks again. Right into the net.

  But it wasn’t enough. As good as he got, as accurate as he made his shot, it wouldn’t matter without Alice. Without Alice in goal, the team had no room for error. Without Alice, they could not win the state championship. So, without Alice, he was not a champion. He was just a kid who played hockey well. Very well. But not well enough.

  “Twist your wrist a little more.” The voice came from behind him: Coach Donny. He sounded enough like Buzz for it to be confusing, as if Alice’s dad had suddenly reappeared from wherever he had been and was back on the ice where he belonged.

  “You think?” Lewis asked. He thought his stick handling was pretty good as it was.

  “If you want to hit the corners, yeah. And slide your hand about an inch down.”

  Lewis did what Coach Donny told him to do. Then he lifted his stick and fired a shot that clanged against the corner of the goal before dropping onto the ice at the back of the net.

  “Jim Craig himself couldn’t have stopped that one.”

  Lewis smiled back. “What about Alice Dingwell?”

  Donny’s smile faltered. “She hasn’t been on the ice in over a month, so—”

  Lewis tapped his stick on the ice. “Well, she’s got a lot on her mind what with everything—” He stopped himself. He didn’t really know what was going on with Alice’s family. She wouldn’t tell him. He’d heard rumors, but his mom always said that rumors were lies that had grown legs. He didn’t know what was going on with Alice and the other girls. Or Alice and him. He just knew that things were going on. Things that somehow, someway meant that she didn’t want to play hockey anymore, and he’d lost the opportunity to practice against the best goaltender the state of Maine had seen in decades. Maybe the best ever.

  Plus, he was losing Alice’s friendship, which felt a lot worse. They hadn’t had a real conversation since the night her dad went away. Without her, he felt lopsided.