Mysteries on Monroe Street (Ernestine & Amanda) - Hardcover

Belton, Sandra

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 068981612X ISBN 13: 9780689816123

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing, 1998

Synopsis

Helping in the opening of a new dance studio, Ernestine and Amanda are on the case when the studio is vandalized and consider putting aside their differences in order to catch the culprit.

About this title

About the Author

A graduate of Howard University, Sandra Belton received her M.A. in elementary education from George Washington University. She lives with her family in Chicago, Illinois.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1

Ernestine

Seems like the more things keep changin', the more they keep stayin' the same.

Grandmother Carroll's saying kept coming into my head while I walked down Fourth Street. Everywhere I walked I saw things that were changing and not changing at the same time. Like Fourth Street Elementary where I had gone to school from first to fifth grade and where Mama would be teaching when school started.

When I was at Fourth Street, Mama hadn't even gotten her teaching certificate yet, and now she was going to be the second-grade teacher. There was going to be a different third-grade teacher, too, and a new principal. But the school looked like it always has. Same old dirty red brick building and playground without any grass left anywhere. Same rusty sliding board with the dent right in the middle that T-Bone Carson's crazy brother made one night, trying to wreck things on the playground because he had been suspended from school for a week.

It was strange to see the playground so empty. There weren't even any of the little neighborhood kids on the swings and jungle gym like there usually are.

Probably too hot.

The weather was one of the reasons I had decided to take a walk. I figured walking under all the big trees along Fourth Street would cool me off. But the main reason was wanting to get away from my house and everything else on Second Street that reminded me so much of Clovis and how lonesome it was without him. Every time I looked at his house, which is next door to mine, I would remember that he wouldn't be coming back from Georgia until Christmas . And maybe not even then.

Things had really gotten bad when I saw Clovis's grandmother picking blackberries from the bushes in her yard. "Hey there, Ernestine!" She had waved at me with a hand full of berries.

"Hey, Gramma Taylor," I said. I waved back at her.

"I'm counting on you to help me finish up this blackberry cobbler I'm making," she called. "With Clovis gone it'll just be sitting there."

"Yes, Ma'am," I said, and waved again.

I couldn't say anything else because I could feel my throat closing up and tears coming to my eyes. That's when I jumped up from the porch where I had been sitting, and told Jazz to tell Mama that I was going for a walk.

"What for?" Jazz yelled from the sidewalk where she was drawing pictures with chalk.

"'Cause I want to," I yelled back. Then I ran out of the yard and across the street before she could say anything else to me.

As soon as I got to Fourth Street, I found out I had figured wrong about everything. It wasn't cool at all under the trees. The heat was everywhere. It even came up from the sidewalk and went through my shoes into my feet. And the whole time I walked, I couldn't think about anything but Clovis. How the two of us had walked down this same street every day for years. Going to school or back home. How sometimes we used to race each other, betting an ice-cream cone for the winner. When he won, Clovis would always get a chocolate cone from Mr. Cleveland's store.

I hope the chocolate ice cream in Georgia stinks!

I tried shaking my head to get all the thinking about Clovis out. But that didn't work, either. Plus I felt kinds dumb, standing there on the sidewalk by myself, shaking my head. Lucky for me there wasn't anybody around.

I walked over to the school to look into my old fifth-grade classroom. Maybe seeing how the room looked now would give me something different to think about.

When I looked through the window, all I saw was chairs piled up on the desks and bare walls. There wasn't even anything across the top of the blackboard. Like the fancy letter cards Mrs. Lawson would tap her long pointer on while she was telling us how horrendous our handwriting was. But it was still the same classroom we had sat in day after day.

Somethin' else changin' and not changin' at the same time.

It was easy to picture how we had been in that room. Clovis's desk was right behind mine in the third row. Sylvia Parnell sat in front of me and Jackson Moss had sat behind Clovis. Mrs. Lawson didn't make everybody sit in alphabetical order like our fourth-grade teacher had. The only reason Mrs. Lawson made anybody sit someplace special was for talking or cheating or making trouble.

My face was so close to the window, I could smell the classroom. Even though it was August and there hadn't been any school for two months, I still recognized the smells. Chalk dust. Stale bologna sandwiches. Sweaty socks. Smells that had been there forever.

Everything being so much the same and different was making me feel worse.

Maybe I'll walk over to Du Bois. There're probably kids all over that playground.

W.E.B. Du Bois Elementary is where I went for sixth grade . All the Fourth Street Elementary kids have to go there. Fourth Street only goes to fifth, but Du Bois goes all the way to eighth. After that, everybody goes to Banneker High School.

At first it was horrible being at Du Bois. The school is a lot bigger than Fourth Street, and I figured that would make it a lot harder. But everything turned out okay. I even entered the W.E.B. Du Bois Festival they have every year. The oratorical contest part.

Another good thing about Du Bois was being in the same school with Alicia Raymond. She's been at Du Bois since first grade, but I haven't known her that long. We met from taking piano lessons together. We don't take lessons on the same day anymore, but we're still good friends. Alicia is almost a best friend.

But nobody can take Clovis's place. Not even Alicia.

I really wanted to stop thinking about Clovis. But it seemed like I just couldn't.

It'll probably get worse if I walk to Du Bois. Then I'll remember how lonesome I'm gonna be practically the whole entire year!

I was at the corner of Fourth and Jackson, waiting for the light to change. Looking up at the Jackson Street sign made me think of Wilhelmina.

Maybe she's back from visiting her parents in North Carolina.

Wilhelmina Washington had been new to Du Bois just like I was. Only she was new to Carey, too. She had lived in New York City before. She had come to Carey to stay with her aunt while her parents moved to North Carolina and found a house for them to live in.

Wilhelmina went to North Carolina to spend the summer with her parents, but she was coming back to stay with her aunt when school started. That's what she told me in the letter she had written from North Carolina.

I had almost fallen over when I got the letter from Wilhelmina. Not because I didn't want to hear from her or anything like that. It's just that she and I aren't really all that close, although she is a friend. She's the one who helped me the most with my speech for the oratorical contest.

Wilhelmina is one of the smartest people I know. She's also one of the most peculiar. Sometimes it feels like I want to be her friend and don't want to at the same time. Once when I talked to Mama about how I felt, she started explaining how things in life are never just one color or another but a lot of colors all mixed together. And that people are like that, too.

"All people," Mama had said, looking at me. "Including you and me."

It was one of Mama's explanations that kinda caused confusion instead of ending it. I didn't say anything else to Mama about it and decided that one day I'd be able to figure it out.

Thinking about Wilhelmina and her letter made it hit me! I almost wanted to kick myself because I hadn't thought about it sooner.

Ernestine, you're a dummy!

I didn't have to just keep missing Clovis like crazy and feeling awful from seeing things that were changing and not changing at the same time. I could write Clovis a letter. I could write him a ton of letters. I could write to him every single day.

And he'll answer every letter. It'll almost be like havin' him here.

I figured I hadn't thought about writing to him before because I hadn't felt much like writing to anybody the whole summer. It wasn't like last summer when I had been at camp. There had been lots to write about at Hilltop. Nothing much happened at Grandmother Carroll's, so I didn't even think about writing letters.

I stopped at the intersection of Fayette and Second Street. If I turned right I would be on my way to Du Bois; if I turned left I would be headed home. I turned left.

After I crossed the street I couldn't keep myself from remembering how the Second Street corner was one of our favorite starting places for a race home. I could almost hear Clovis and I yelling to each other.

"Last one home is a fool without ice cream," I would say.

"Yeah, 'cause you gonna have to spend your money on ice cream for me," Clovis would yell back. "And I want chocolate!"

"It's Clovis who's gonna be buyin' today," I would say, calling him "CLO-vis," the way he hates to have his name pronounced. He pronounces it "Clo-VEESE."

As hot as it was, I started running. Just like we always had. I knew I would start sweating like crazy, but I didn't care. I had to get home to write my first letter to Clovis. To make myself go faster, I pretended Clovis was right behind me, trying to win that chocolate ice-cream cone.

Grandmother Carroll sure is right: The more things keep changin', the more they keep stayin' the same.

Copyright © 1998 by Sandra Belton

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 068981612X
• ISBN 13: 9780689816123
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 176