Libby on Wednesday Read Online Free Page B

stairway she turned to the left, down the long hallway to her own room.
    Libby’s room, like everything that Graham McCall built during his years of fame and fortune, was extremely large. But unlike the rest of the house, where everything was just the way it had always been except for dust and wear and cat scratches, Libby’s room was in a constant state of reorganization. Crossing the room, she wove a pathway between bookcases, tables, aquariums, terrariums, shelves, and easels, stopping only once to pick up Mercedes’ letter—the most recent of the letters that arrived faithfully every week during Mercedes’ absences and that, until recently, Libby had answered just as faithfully.
    The letter began,
Hi there, my sweet sugar crumpet
. (Libby and Mercedes had made a private joke of thinking up ridiculous pet names to call each other.)
Why haven’t I heard from you?
    “You haven’t heard from me because it’s your fault most of all,” Libby said, giving the letter a punishing shake.“I wouldn’t even be going to Morrison if it weren’t for you. That’s why you haven’t heard from me. Because if you hadn’t come back here and told them that I needed to go out and learn about the real world and be ‘socialized,’ everything would be all right.”
    She shook the letter again, and her anger flared brighter, directed now most of all toward her mother, Mercedes O’Brien, who had gone away to live and work in New York City when Libby was three years old, returning only now and then—to criticize and interfere. Tossing the letter aside, she moved on to pick up a heavy jacket from the foot of her bed, shrug into it, and drop a small flashlight into its pocket. Then, prepared for the cool evening air and deepening dusk, she opened one of the French doors that led out onto the balcony.
    Just beyond the balcony, growing up to tower even above the rooftops of the three-story McCall House, was the great oak, the ancient tree that had been there, already tall and stately, when Graham bought the land to build his castle. And where years ago, when Christopher was a little boy, there had been built a wonderful Treehouse. At this particular moment the Treehouse was Libby’s destination—by a forbidden and dangerous route.
    There was, of course, another way to arrive at the Treehouse, by a curving wrought-iron staircase that circled the oak tree’s trunk. But the faster and more exciting pathway led up over the railing of Libby’s balcony and then by a rather daring jump directly into a network of small branches. From there, if one was small and light and agile, one could climb carefully down to the fork that supported the first level of the Treehouse.
    The Treehouse, Christopher’s Treehouse, as the family still called it, was as large and strange (as overdone, as Gillian always said) as everything else that Graham built. The ornate iron staircase ended at a platform that surrounded the lower level, and from there the multilevel structure climbed up the forking limbs in a jigsaw puzzle of angles, ells, and projections, its exterior covered with a crazy quilt of rough-hewn shingles and decorated with oddly shaped panels and shutters.
    Perhaps it was overdone and senseless, an enormous exaggeration of a treehouse, but it had been many strange and magical things to Libby: a bandit’s hideout, a roc’s nest, Tarzan’s or sometimes Mowgli’s jungle home, or even Baba Yaga’s magical hut. Or just her private hideaway and refuge.
    Today Libby made the climb down from the balcony quickly and carelessly. She was still breathing hard from anger and frustration as she pushed open the narrow door that led into the main room. Once inside, she shoved the door firmly shut behind her, leaned against it, and looked around. Here on the first level the interior walls were paneled and painted with scenes from myths and fairy tales; the paints faded, the figures dim and mysterious—even dimmer now in the evening light and faintly tinged