Note: I am hoping my publisher agrees to use an illustration at the start of each chapter. Here are some samples.
Chapter One
The Best Day . . . Or Not
New Tacoma, Washington Territory, June 6, 1880
“This is the best day of my life,” Jenny Grant said, picking her way along the sloppy, mud-caked road to school. She tugged the hood of her oilskin rain poncho lower over her forehead and pressed onward.
Nine-year-old Gideon jumped over a puddle, then paused. He squinted up at his sister, blinking against the raindrops. “How do you figure that?”
“Because today is my birthday,” she said. “My twelfth birthday.” She focused on the dingy, two-story schoolhouse in the distance and smiled. “And it’s the last day of school.”
“Aw, you’re nuts,” her brother Micah piped up. “A birthday is just another day.” He shrugged beneath his oilskin. “Only rich city folks fuss over fancy folderols like birthdays. Not folks like us, stuck in this mudhole.”
“Tacoma is not a mudhole!” Jenny’s smile faded as she glared at her brother. How dare he call their hometown a mudhole.
“She ain’t either nuts.” Gideon rushed to his sister’s defense. “I bet nobody in the whole classroom ever had a birthday on the last day of school.” His bright-blue eyes challenged his thirteen-year-old brother. “I can’t think of a better way to celebrate Jenny’s birthday than on this very last day.”
Micah yanked back Gideon’s hood and tousled the boy’s red curls. “You’re both nuts.” But he grinned at Jenny, letting her know he didn’t mean anything by his teasing. Then he took off running as a fresh shower spilled from the thick, gray clouds. “C’mon, slowpokes! We’re gonna be late.”
Jenny kicked at a clump of mud. “I don’t care.” At least not much, she added silently.
“Me neither,” Gideon said. “Besides, Miss Essie might let you off easy, seeing as it’s the last day of school and your birthday.”
Jenny’s mood darkened. “Not likely.” Their teacher was a stickler for rules.
The school bell rang just then. Not even the steady rainfall could muffle the loud clanging that rang out from the tower and echoed through the muddy streets. Children splashed up the porch steps.
Gideon bolted, rain pelting his bare head.
“So much for not caring about being late!” Jenny hollered, then chuckled at the panic etched on her little brother’s freckled face.
Jenny picked up her pace, but she didn’t reach the top of the porch steps until well after the second bell—the tardy bell—fell silent. Inside, she hung her dripping oilskin on a hook in the cloakroom, set her lunch pail on the shelf, and climbed the stairs. Miss Essie closed her big, black Bible just as Jenny slid into her seat.
She glanced at the clock. Exactly ten minutes past nine o’clock. Like always.
Oh, clam shells! Couldn’t Miss Essie begin school a few minutes late just once? Why did she have to be so annoyingly punctual?
“You’re late,” Jenny’s seatmate, Harriet, said. She crinkled her nose. “And you’re wet.”
“You’d be wet too if you had to walk five blocks, instead of living just down the street.”
Harriet scooted away from the damp spot Jenny’s skirt was leaving on their shared seat. The oilskin never did a complete job of keeping the rain off.
“You oughta be used to it by now, Hetty,” Jenny said under her breath. She squeezed water from her damp auburn braid, all the while steeling herself for Miss Essie’s scolding.
It wasn’t long in coming.
The schoolmarm sat at her desk on a raised platform. From there, she had a commanding view of all thirty-five students. She was a small, slender woman, with dark hair parted down the middle and pulled back into a tight bun at the nape of her neck. Round spectacles perched on her nose. Despite her delicate appearance, Miss Essie did not put up with any monkey business. “You are tardy, Jennifer Caroline.”
Jenny swallowed. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Why is that?” Miss Essie asked. “Your brothers arrived on time.”
A twitch of mischief sparked in Jenny’s mind. “My brothers don’t care about tracking mud across the classroom floor, ma’am. I walked slower to keep clear of as many puddles as I could.”
She caught Micah’s shocked expression from across the room and hid a smile.
Gideon gasped. “My boots aren’t—” He clapped a hand over his mouth and scrunched down in his seat.
“Besides,” Jenny added boldly, “today is my birthday.”
As if that excused her from the rules.
“Is that so?” Miss Essie raised her eyebrows. “Many happy returns, Jennifer.”
“Thank you, Miss Ess—”
“In recognition of your birthday falling on the last day of school,” Miss Essie cut in, “you will copy ‘I will not come tardy to school’ one hundred times, instead of the usual two hundred.” She smiled at her errant pupil.
Jenny’s delight at receiving good wishes on her birthday settled in her belly like a lump of cold, sticky mush. Worse, Harriet tittered and shot her a serves-you-right look.
Jenny glared at her seatmate.
“At once, Jennifer, if you please,” Miss Essie said. “Let’s not waste any more time on this last day of the term.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Jenny dug around inside her desk, pulled out her copybook, and flipped to the blank pages near the back. She dipped her pen in her inkwell and began to write.
Half an hour later, Jenny gave her cramped fingers a rest. She’d started the assignment slowly, with perfect loops and tails. Now, the words bunched together in sloppy streaks.
The classroom was silent except for the Third Reader class. Miss Essie had called them up front to recite, and their high-pitched voices rang with excitement.
All but Gideon’s. He stumbled over his piece—as usual. “Citizens must show . . . al-alleg—”
“Allegiance,” Miss Essie said.
“Allegiance to their country and obey its . . . con-con-sti—”
“Constitution.”
Jenny winced at Miss Essie’s gentle but firm corrections. Poor Gideon. He trips over his lessons almost as badly as I do.
She copied three more sentences, then glanced out the tall, rain-splattered glass panes. Rain or shine, her second-floor seat offered stunning views. Not even the hundreds of stumps or the steady drizzle dampened her thrill of seeing the dark-green foothills, the circling seagulls, and the shining waters of Puget Sound.
She couldn’t see the dark, deep forests that hemmed in New Tacoma on three sides, but she knew they were there.
From the corner of her eye, Jenny spotted gray smoke billowing up from her family’s sawmill on Commencement Bay. Beyond the roof and smokestack, the masts of a docked sailing ship rose like needles poking the sky. Seasoned stacks of lumber to brace the mines were likely being loaded this very minute. Soon, the ship would set sail for California’s gold country.
Or maybe—Jenny sighed wistfully—the ship was bound for the Orient. Everybody wanted lumber these days, and the Grant family’s Timberland Lumber Company was happy to supply it.
She propped an elbow on her desk, rested her chin in her hand, and gazed at the ships docked at the wharf. What would it be like to sail away to distant places?
A small smile curved her lips, and Jenny’s imagination took off . . .
“Happy birthday, Jenny-girl,” Papa boomed in his deep logger’s voice. “Step aboard the Western Shore. The captain will take you wherever you want to go. California? The Hawaiian Islands? A trip around the Horn to the Atlantic states? It’s our gift to you on your twelfth birthday.”
“Australia! I want to see a kangaroo.” Jenny skipped up the gangplank and waved. All five brothers plus Mama and Papa had come to see her off. “Thank you! Goodbye!”
The captain of the Western Shore bowed gallantly. “Your wish is my command.” His sea-gray eyes twinkled.
“I’d like to climb as high as the crow’s nest and see everything.”
“That might be too high for a young lass like yourself,” the captain warned.
Jenny shook her head. “I can do it.”
“All righty.” The captain waved toward the ropes and rigging. “Have at it, lassie.”
Hand over hand, Jenny scurried up the ratlines faster than she ever climbed the tall Douglas firs at home.
Suddenly, halfway up, a cold breeze blew across her face. Raindrops plunked the top of her head. Then the sky opened, and rain dumped by the bucketload.
The ropes turned slick as grease. Jenny’s fingers slipped, and she lost her grip. “Oh no—”
“Jennifer Caroline Grant.”
With a gasp, Jenny’s daydream-turned-nightmare shattered. She whipped her head around, swiped damp strands of hair from her face, and gaped at Miss Essie. “M-ma’am?” Her heart thudded at her imagined close call.
Miss Essie let out a long, exasperated breath. “Why is it that of all my pupils, your name most often finds its way to my lips?” She shuffled a stack of papers and fixed her dark gaze on Jenny. Through her spectacles, Miss Essie’s eyes looked twice their normal size.
Like an owl’s, Jenny decided.
“Must I send you to the corner on the last day of school—on your birthday—for daydreaming instead of completing your assignment?”
Jenny bit her lip. What had Miss Essie asked her to do? Oh, that’s right—those pesky sentences. She shook her head. “No, ma’am.”
Fourteen-year-old Aaron Kincaid snickered from the boys’ side of the room. “The only way to keep Jenny from dreaming is if you board up the windows.”
The children giggled, and Jenny hid a grin. Know-it-all Aaron was exactly right, and she didn’t care if he teased her about it. Daydreaming about adventures in far-off places like Australia was ten times more fun than reading about those places in her geography book.
And it was a hundred times better than copying lines about being tardy for class.
The schoolmarm rose from her chair without scolding Aaron for his outburst. It was the last day of school, and she appeared to be in an especially good mood. Hadn’t she cut Jenny’s sentences in half to prove it?
The teacher walked up and down the aisles, passing out yesterday’s corrected compositions. When she reached Jenny’s desk, she set the paper down with a frown.
Jenny stared at the “72” marked in red and brightened. “I passed.” Failing a composition on the last day of school would have for sure turned her best day into her worst day.
“Just barely,” Miss Essie said. “If you woolgathered less and focused more on your lessons, you could have scored much higher. Your brother Micah earned a ninety-eight. There is no reason why you should not . . .”
Her words buzzed in and out of Jenny’s ears like flies hovering over a bait bucket. Seventy-two wasn’t failing. And good for Micah. He deserved a ninety-eight. He spent his free time reading books and solving arithmetic problems nobody assigned. Micah would probably grow up to be just like their older brother Caleb, who helped Papa with the company’s books.
Not me!
When Miss Essie moved on, Jenny slid her composition into her desk. Then she picked up her pen to finish the dull I-will-not-be-tardy sentences.
A shaft of sunlight broke through the clouds just then, slanting through the classroom’s high windows. Jenny looked up. A brilliant rainbow arced across the sky from one end of Commencement Bay to the other. The water shimmered blue under the morning sun. Far to the east, Mount Rainier’s snowy peak rose above the foothills.
Jenny’s heart lifted. God had painted that sky for her and her alone. This really is my best day!
And then—through the rain-splattered glass—a familiar shape moved. Coming this way.
White coat. Black spots. Proud, pricked ears.
Jenny rose slowly from her seat, not believing her eyes. She leaned closer to the window.
Oh no! It can’t be!
The spotted shape trotted past the Morris sisters’ rose bushes, splashed through a puddle, and disappeared around the corner of the schoolhouse.
Jenny caught her breath. How could this be happening?
And on my birthday too!