Brave Warrior Read Online Free

looking at Felix accusingly.
    “I have a life, you know,” he said to the bull’s head. “We’re not conjoined twins. We’re not even identical twins.”
    His door flew open, startling Felix enough for him to let out a yelp.
    “Felix,” Maisie said, ignoring the fact that he had not only yelped but also jumped off the bed, “you have got to come in my room.”
    “Oh,” Felix said, “
now
you want me to come in your room. Never mind that I stood out there forever and you wouldn’t even answer me.”
    Maisie was already on her way back out, though. Felix sighed and started to follow her. But then he stopped. Was he going to spend his entire life following his sister whenever she said to? His friends were right: Maisie was always bossing him around. And he always let her. If he was going to stand on his own and be just Felix Robbins, an un-twin, didn’t he have to stop doing everything just because Maisie told him to?
    “Hurry up!” Maisie called to him.
    Well, he decided, he owed it to her, at least this once.
    The hallway was empty when he stepped into it. Felix walked extra slowly, just to make a point. Inside the Princess Room, there was no sign of Maisie. Felix stood in the middle of the room and called her name.
    “In here,” she answered from the closet.
    Felix walked across the room to the big walk-in closet where Maisie waited. She had pushed her few dresses over to one side, and stood with her arms folded in the middle of the closet.
    “So I came in here to see if I had anything for my costume,” Maisie began.
    “Costume?” Felix asked.
    “For Bitsy’s stupid party,” Maisie said. “March Madness.”
    Felix’s stomach dropped, like he was on a roller coaster heading down.
    “I was thinking March Madness, March Madness,” Maisie continued. “And then it came to me. I could dress like Jo March.”
    “Uh-huh,” Felix said.
    “You know, from
Little Women
. All I would need is an old-fashioned dress and stuff, and I remembered that there was a trunk of dresses in here just like that, so I came in here and…”
    Maisie paused. Her brother’s face was white, and he didn’t seem to be listening to her at all.
    “What?” she said. “I think it’s clever.”
    Felix nodded. “It is clever,” he said.
    They looked at each other. The air in the closet was stale and smelled vaguely of lavender.
    “Anyway,” Maisie said carefully, “I opened the trunk.”
    She demonstrated, lifting the heavy lid.
    “And look what I found.”
    Felix tried to be interested. But all he could think about was the fact that Maisie was not invited to Bitsy Beal’s party. How could she even think she was, when she hadn’t received one of the fancy invitations Bitsy had mailed? They came in large pale-green envelopes—when you opened them, cherry blossoms fell out. Her father had paid a nursery a fortune to force cherry trees to bloom just so Bitsy could put the blossoms in the invitations.
    “Well?” Maisie said. “What do you think it means?”
    She stood in front of the open trunk, pointing to the lavender silk that lined it.
    Felix went to stand beside her. He tried to focus on the squiggles in front of him, but his mind raced with ways to finagle an invitation for Maisie.
    “Why would someone write all that?” Maisie demanded.
    Felix adjusted his glasses and looked more closely, forcing himself to pay attention.
    There, in beautiful penmanship and with black ink, someone had written:
    Elm Medona Lemonade m
    Madelon me Almond mee
    Omland eem Mamelon dee
    “Well,” Felix said, “it’s gibberish.”
    “No, it’s not,” Maisie said, pointing to the top line. “Elm Medona? That’s not gibberish.”
    “Okay,” Felix admitted. “But
Mamelon dee
is. And
Omland eem
.”
    “I think it means something,” Maisie insisted.
    “Lemonade m?”
Felix said.
    Maisie lifted the folded dresses that filled the trunk to reveal the lavender silk lining beneath them.
    “How about all of this then?” she asked