Jewel of the East Read Online Free

was a smattering of applause. Great-Aunt Maisie muttered, “Oh please,” under her breath.
    “I don’t want to keep you any longer,” Abby Bain said, “but I wanted you to know that the centerpieces are yours to keep. And to be fair, they go to the youngest person at the table.”
    Maisie and their mother both turned to Felix.
    “Ha,” Great-Aunt Maisie said. “So you’re younger than your sister?”
    “Well,” Felix said, “by seven minutes.”
    Great-Aunt Maisie shook her head sadly. “Just like Thorne and me,” she said.
    “And one final thing,” Abby Bain announced. “When you made your reservations for today, we put your names in this bowl, and one of you will be able to take this big tom turkey with you.” She pointed to the papier-mâché one wearing the pilgrim hat.
    “This is ridiculous,” Great-Aunt Maisie said.
    “The lucky winner,” Abby Bain said, digging into a big fishbowl and pulling out a name, “is Maisie Pickworth. Where are you, dear?”
    Their mother waved to Abby Bain. “She’s right here!”
    Great-Aunt Maisie frowned at their mother and at the people smiling at her for winning and at Abby Bain, who was already cutting the turkey down from the light fixture.
    Then Great-Aunt Maisie’s face softened. She looked at Felix and smiled. “Seven minutes younger,” she said. “Just like Thorne and me.”
    He nodded.
    “He has my shard from the Ming vase,” she said.
    “Maybe?” Felix said.
    “Not maybe,” Great-Aunt Maisie said.
    The last time they time traveled, they learned that they needed to have a shard from a particular priceless vase with them in order to do it. Great-Aunt Maisie’s piece, which she kept hidden in aFabergé egg, was missing. She believed Thorne had stolen it.
    Abby Bain was grinning as she walked toward them holding the turkey. Their mother jumped up to meet her as she approached.
    “So if you can’t get into The Treasure Chest yourselves, the solution is simple,” Great-Aunt Maisie said softly. She got to her feet and opened her arms for her prize. “Find Thorne. Get my shard back. And I’ll just do it myself.” Great-Aunt Maisie was grinning, too. “The preservation society can’t keep
me
out of Elm Medona, can they?”
    Abby Bain deposited the giant papier-mâché turkey into Great-Aunt Maisie’s outstretched arms.
    “Isn’t he darling?” Great-Aunt Maisie said.
    Slowly, she stepped away from her walker, just enough to dip into a stiff but elegant curtsy. As she rose, she turned her icy stare to Maisie and Felix and mouthed one word:
Thorne.

For Felix, it was a relief to stay out of The Treasure Chest. While Maisie schemed and plotted ways to get back into Elm Medona, Felix put time travel and Great-Aunt Maisie’s orders to either do it again or find her long-lost brother, Thorne, far from his mind. Instead, he practiced for the upcoming spelling bee, went to the Jane Pickens Theater on Saturday afternoons with kids from his class, decided to run for student council, and spent his free time daydreaming about Lily Goldberg.
    Lily Goldberg sat one person down and across from him in school, the perfect position for him to study her unnoticed. She was the smartestperson in the class. And, Felix thought, the prettiest girl. Her dark hair was cut short like a pixie’s, and she wore funny dresses from the vintage store with patterns of things like teapots or flamingos on them. Sometimes he got a faint whiff of mothballs from her. Lily was adopted from Hunan, China, when she was a year old. He knew this because she gave a report on it with a slide show of her adoptive parents in China picking her up. Felix loved the pictures of baby Lily, dressed in a purple snowsuit, staring at the camera all perplexed. He loved, too, that she still stared out at the world looking perplexed.
    Felix had made a good friend at school. His name was Jim Duncan, and more and more Felix found himself going off after school with him. Jim Duncan liked going down to