We went inside and Franklin picked out some cookies and candy canes while I made the cocoa. Then we worked on our puzzle. There was a lot left, but we worked until all the stars were in place.

In the morning I visited my own, faraway locker and then went back to meet Franklin at his.

Suddenly, Amanda was there. Amanda, who had left me alone for weeks. She was furious.

"Listen, Scab-Picker. What you did is not okay with me. You stole my best friend!"

I stared at her. I knew what she was up to: a big fight in public, with her as the victim, to make me look like the jerk.

"I didn't steal anything!" I shouted. "Caroline is sick of you. She's sick of you because you're mean and disgusting and horrible. I don't know why anyone would want to be friends with you. You don't even care about Caroline. You only care about having people to follow you around so that you look cool. But you are really a big-time loser, and I'm not going to let you make me feel bad anymore."

Amanda looked like she'd been punched. It was even more fun to say all that stuff to her than it would have been to punch her.

I waited for her to yell at me. But she didn't. She just walked away.

Maybe that wasn't the end of it, but even though my heart was racing, I wasn't scared of her anymore.

"Nice," Franklin said.

"Thanks, Franklin."

He spun the dial on his lock, and we headed to cla.s.s.

Keeping the Keys.

With Christmas and vacation coming, it was a very busy week.

On Monday, Caroline and I went Christmas shopping. She helped me pick out something great for Franklin, a model s.p.a.ce shuttle for him to build.

On Tuesday, Franklin and I studied at Caroline's for our big math test. She got us each a pair of reindeer antlers that blinked red and green lights and played "We Wish You a Merry Christmas." Franklin kept taking his off to figure out how they worked. Caroline squeezed mine to start the song again whenever I got the right answer. I must have heard it a hundred times!

On Wednesday, we had our math test and then the school holiday concert at night; I told Uncle Hugh and Aunt Bessie not to come because it was going to sound horrible, particularly the solo by Diana the cat girl, but they came anyway. They always do. Diana's singing turned out to be not completely horrible.

On Thursday, Aunt Bessie and I baked five dozen cookies for me to give to my teachers.

On Friday, we went to Uncle Beau's for a holiday dinner. Jake and Alec taught me how to play their new game system.

The next morning, the first of Christmas vacation, I found Uncle Hugh and Aunt Bessie at the kitchen table having breakfast. There was tons of food, so I helped myself to scrambled eggs, bacon, and Danish. I sat down and poured a mug of coffee. I took a swig and spat it back into the cup. "Ew."

"Allow me," Aunt Bessie said, taking the mug and dumping it out in the sink. She then refilled it halfway with coffee and added milk and Ovaltine. "Mocha." She handed it back.

I tasted it. "Much, much better. Thanks."

Now that school was finally over, I planned to start working on the empty room.

"Uncle Hugh, can you take me to get a few things?" I asked.

"Well, this morning I'm heading out to get our Christmas treea"does that interest you?"

"Yes!" It's very important that I help pick out our Christmas tree, because Uncle Hugh likes his trees short and fat and Aunt Bessie likes hers tall and skinny. I find the most in-between tree I can: medium height, medium plumpness.

Because it was vacation, I stayed in my pajama pants and just threw my vest on over my sweatshirt.

"More than anything else, a tree is what makes it feel like Christmas inside the house. Especially for your Aunt Bessie," Uncle Hugh said fondly in the car.

After about half an hour or so of wandering the rows of trees and debating, we had a happy tree strapped to the roof of our car. While Uncle Hugh and one of the boys at the tree lot were getting it ready, Uncle Hugh let me go to the little red and green stand where you pay, and look at the ornaments for sale. I bought a snowsuited baby in a sleigh that said BABY'S FIRST CHRISTMAS for Ava.

It took me, Uncle Hugh, and Leonard to get the tree in the house. Then we had to set it up straight in the stand, but Annie kept saying it was tipping to the right, and then we'd lean it the other way and Aunt Bessie would say it was tipping left. Finally, when the tree was up, I helped Aunt Bessie find the decorations in the attic.

Then I gave Annie Ava's little present.

"How wonderful!" she said. "This is Ava's first ornament. That was really thoughtful of you, Elise."

"I thought it might be nice, because it's also her first time coming to the family decorating. I thought something should be hers."

Then we tested all the strings of lights and fixed the broken ones.

The day was so busy that I didn't get a chance to think about working in the empty room. But that, I guess, was part of the point.

On Sunday morning, Aunt Bessie decorated the rest of the house. I helped her set out candles and put garlands on the mantels and banisters. Then she started on the next round of Christmas baking. I helped her roll out the dough and used the cookie cutters to press out stars, hearts, Christmas trees, angels, wreaths, bells, and snowmen. I mixed colored icing to decorate them with. Somehow I got covered with flour and confectioner's sugar.

The doorbell rang in the early afternoon.

Franklin!

"Hey! Merry Christmas!"

"Merry Christmas!"

"You're just in time to decorate cookies."

"Awesome."

I got Franklin an extra ap.r.o.n, and I made a big streak of flour across the front of it for him.

"Now it's like you've been here the whole time."

"Thanks."

And we set to work.

It was my first Christmas morning with someone younger around. Ava made it fun because there were a lot of Santa Claus presents for her and soon there was crumpled wrapping paper thrown everywhere and lots of noisy baby toys to catch her attention. She had recently learned to scoot around on her b.u.m, but Annie was careful not to let her scoot too far in all the debris. Annie held her fingers so that she could stand up and not go anywhere while I showed her all her new toys.

Christmas dinner was in the dining room. Dresses for all the girls, even Ava, and suits for Uncle Hugh and Leonard. Annie held Ava in her lap, but she got pa.s.sed around from person to person so everyone could eat. I took a turn with her during dessert. They said I could let her taste the cake and ice cream, so I fed her a little. She seemed to think cake and ice cream were the best foods ever, because she kept opening her mouth again and looking at me, and then she gave up waiting for me and stuck her hand right into my ice cream.

"Can I ask some questions?" I asked during a lull in the conversation. "Did Dad build those little rooms? When he was sick?"

Uncle Hugh and Leonard looked at each other.

"Don't forget that his brother's a carpenter and his best friend owns a hardware store," Aunt Bessie said. "Let's a.s.sume he had help. And there's the elevator to move stuff upstairs."

"So you were all in on it, from the beginning?"

"More or less," Leonard said.

"What do you think of it all, Elise?" Uncle Hugh asked. It made me feel grown-up, him calling me Elise and not Cricket.

"I think it was a good idea. I wouldn't have thought about things the way I do now without it. Like all those books would have been just something in the house that I didn't pay attention to, but now they mean something to me. And Miles the bear. You said I didn't like Miles when I was little, and he was about to fall apart back then, so it was nice that he was set aside because now he matters to me. And even the pictures. We have loads of pictures in the house, but I don't really look at them."

I paused for a minute, not sure if I was ready to talk about my secret hope.

"Part of me a wanted to think a that Dad was leaving the keys, that he was still here. But that wouldn't have made sense. He wouldn't have been hiding all that time. You had the keys, didn't you?" I asked Aunt Bessie.

"Two of them."

"And I had two," Uncle Hugh added.

And Leonard: "Me too."

"Whose was from California?"

"That was one of mine. Sent to a friend to send to you to keep you wondering," Leonard confessed.

"And two of them," I realized, "were from Dad himself. One left in the barn and one on the shelf in the library. But then why didn't you just give them to me? Why did you make me wait for years and years?"

"He told mea"I don't know about anybody elsea"to wait until I thought you were ready," Uncle Hugh said. "You started opening the doors yourself, and, to be honest, I wasn't sure that you were ready. It was Bessie who gave you that next key. She said you must have learned what your dad hoped you would from the first room when you went to visit your mom."

"Why do you think he spread them out?" I asked.

"Well, each of us might have had different ideas of when you were *ready,' " said Aunt Bessie.

"Are you all finished, then?" asked Leonard. "Have you gotten all the keys?"

"Yes, but I still have something left to do."

"What's that?"

"Take care of the empty room."

a a a When Christmas was over, it was finally time to focus on my project, and I had the whole rest of break to work on it. I asked Uncle Hugh if he could drive me to a few places and help me pay for a couple things. He took me to a drugstore to have several photos blown up, and then to a craft store to pick out frames and other supplies. Uncle Hugh paid for everything, without even saying anything about what it cost.

I took everything up to the empty room.

It wasn't so empty now.

On the last day of vacation, my friends came over.

Caroline got dropped off first.

"Hi, Elise!" She ran up the steps of the front porch, where I was waiting in my coat and gloves and scarf.

"Happy New Year!"

Soon Franklin arrived.

"Hi, Elise; hi, Caroline."

"I have something I want to show you guys," I said. "Come on."

I led them up to the no-longer-empty room.

On the walls were the pictures Uncle Hugh had helped me blow up and frame. One of him and Aunt Bessie. One of me playing with Ava at Christmas. One of Mom and Dad, and one of me and Dad. Several of me and Franklin growing upa"grinning without our front teeth, playing outside the summer we were seven, building a snowman when we were eighta"and one of me and Caroline that Aunt Bessie had taken at the school holiday concert.

"Maybe we can get some more pictures," I said to Caroline.

"We will!"

On the opposite wall I'd taped artwork and school projects; my poem with Mrs. Wakefield's comment; my terrific science test.

I'd found a small table that Uncle Hugh said he didn't need anymore, so I brought that up in the elevator (finally! I got to ride in that elevator!). On the table, I put a composition notebook collaged with magazine cutouts of food called Elise's Recipes (inside were cooking instructions for things I'd helped Aunt Bessie make) and my sword from Knights.

Hanging above the table was a large key ring with seven keys. The eighth key was still on the chain around my neck.

"How did you know this was what you were supposed to do?" Franklin asked.

"I think Dad was saying, *You can make this room whatever you want. You can make you whatever you want,' " I explained. "So I picked things that were most important to me."

"We'd like to be invited in, too," said Uncle Hugh from the doorway.

"Come in!" I said.

They took a look around. Aunt Bessie folded me into a hug. I could smell something to do with cooking on her clothes, and underneath that, her lavender soap. Her long braid brushed my cheek.

"Bess," Uncle Hugh said. "Come see this."

He had found the plastic paper-stand on the table.

It said: TEN REASONS I AM GLAD TO BE ELISE BERTRAND.

1. I have the Best Family in the Whole World (especially Uncle Hugh and Aunt Bessie).

2. I also have the Greatest Friends (Franklin and Caroline).