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Shakespeare's Secret

Henry Holt and Company

It was the last day of summer. Hero Netherfield stretched across the quilted bedspread in her sister's room, her feet drifting over the edge of the mattress. She wasn't thinking about their new house. She wasn't thinking about school. She wasn't thinking about stepping off the bus tomorrow into a sea of strangers. If she thought about any of those things, she'd get that old, tight, panicky feeling — and what was the point?

So instead, she rested her cheek against the soft cotton and breathed. The air was thick with summer smells: lawn clippings and suntan lotion and late-blooming roses. She could hear the distant shouts of a tag game down the street. She closed her eyes and made her mind completely blank, as heavy and blank as the summer day.

It took a lot of concentration. Too much. After a minute, she rolled on her side and said to her sister, "You got the best room."

Beatrice's room in the new house was full of angles and alcoves, like Hero's, but it was bigger, with more windows. Beatrice had hung posters on the sloping ceiling, and they floated colorfully overhead, like the inside flaps of a circus tent.

Her sister sat at the desk with one foot propped on an open drawer. She painted her toenails with quick, smooth strokes. "So?" she said. "It was my turn."

That was true. They took turns choosing bedrooms every time they moved, and Hero had chosen first at the house in New York.

"You have a good room, too," Beatrice said. "You just need to put stuff up on the walls."

"Yeah, I know." Hero sighed. But what? She'd finally opened the moving boxes from her old bedroom yesterday. They were filled with stuffed animals, seashells, crunched wildlife posters, all the things she'd collected since she was five. She wasn't sure she even recognized that person anymore. None of it belonged in the room of a sixth-grader. A little wistfully, she'd packed it all up again and shoved the boxes in one of the closets under the eaves. That was the strange thing about moving so often. It forced you to think about starting over every time, whether you wanted to or not.

The only things Hero kept out for her new room were her books and a shoe box of antique bottles she'd found at a garage sale, colorful glass vials that once held medicine, hair tonic, maybe perfume. The books she wedged into the dark corner bookcases, stacking a pile of favorites next to her bed. The bottles she arranged in a cluster on the window seat, thinking about all the places they must have been, all the hands that must have held them. She liked the way they caught the sunlight and scattered soft shadows of green and lavender on the floor. But the walls themselves were still completely bare. Hero couldn't think of anything to hang on them.

She rolled onto her stomach and covered her face with her hands. "I can't believe that school starts tomorrow."

"Me neither." Beatrice fanned her toenails. "But maybe it won't be so bad this time."

"It never is bad for you, Triss."

Sometimes it amazed Hero that she and her sister were actually part of the same family. When she was little, she used to suspect she was adopted, an idea that struck her as both upsetting and exotic — and somehow much easier to believe than the truth.

Beatrice was tall and pretty, with wavy reddish hair and an open, sunny face. She always seemed about to smile, if she wasn't already smiling. Hero, on the other hand, was small and dark. Without meaning to, she wore a worried look much of the time. At the grocery store or the mall, complete strangers would touch her arm and ask sympathetically, "What's the matter, honey? Don't you feel well?"

At school tomorrow, Hero knew exactly what would happen. After a brief sizing-up, Beatrice would be swept into a throng of would-be friends, girls who'd show her the restrooms, save her a place in the cafeteria, share their phone numbers and e-mail addresses. They'd admire her hair, they'd compliment her nail polish. By the end of tomorrow — even though it was only her first day — Beatrice would fit in. Her plans for the weekend would include half the eighth grade.

For Hero, it would be a different story entirely. She'd still be the new kid months from now. She flinched when she thought of what lay ahead: figuring out the lockers, the right clothing to wear, the acceptable food to pack for lunch. Every school had its own customs and fashions, and if she wanted to blend in, she never had long to find out what they were. It was such hard work, Hero thought: that constant, draining effort to slip into the crowd unnoticed. "Blending in" was completely different than "fitting in." It was the difference between camouflaging yourself in the forest and actually being one of the trees.

"Oh, come on, Hero," Beatrice said. "Maryland is almost the South. People seem friendlier here." She laughed suddenly. "Besides, last year everything worked out okay. You had Kate and Lindsey"

"Ugh!" Hero made a face. "Kate and Lindsey. That was totally not worth it."

Kate and Lindsey had been her friends in fifth grade. They had identical blond ponytails and high-pitched, unstoppable squeals. Hero had nothing in common with them. It still amazed her that they'd ended up spending so much of the last year together. It was a relationship based purely on need. Kate and Lindsey, struggling not to fail Language Arts, had needed a third person to help with their Greek myths skit. They chose Hero, who ended up writing the whole play while the two of them huddled together and whispered about their one consuming interest, a boy named Jeremy Alexander. They stalked Jeremy throughout the school day (without ever actually talking to him) and then spent hours in endless, inconclusive conversations about whether he even knew they existed.

In return for putting up with this, Hero found herself with a lifeline of sorts. She had someone to sit with at lunch, to hang out with at recess, and to join for team activities in gym. Of course, if the game ever called for partners, it was understood that the pair would be Kate and Lindsey, and Hero would be on her own.

"They were awful," Beatrice said, still laughing. "Remember how obsessed they were with that boy?"

"Remember? That was my life." Hero raised her voice several octaves. "He looked at me! Did not! Did too! In Social Studies! Sideways or did he turn his whole head? Whole head! No way!"

Beatrice mimicked their earsplitting scream. "Remember how Dad always used to forget Lindsey's name?" she asked.

Hero smiled. "He called them 'Kate and the other Kate.' How could he forget a regular name like Lindsey?"

Beatrice shrugged. "It didn't come from Shakespeare."

Hero and Beatrice were both named for characters in the play Much Ado About Nothing, thanks to the English literature class where their parents met in college. Naturally, Beatrice had gotten the familiar name, one that lent itself to bouncy nicknames like Trixie, or Bea, or Triss. Hero's name was inevitably misunderstood, questioned, and laughed at. For several months at the last school, one of her teachers had called her Nero.

Of course, she hadn't told her parents that. Her mother loved Shakespeare, but her father actually lived it. It was his job. For as long as Hero could remember, he'd been reading, studying, and writing about Shakespeare. When she was little, she used to wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of his voice floating through the darkness. She would pad through the sleeping house to find him, usually at the dining-room table, hunched over the wings of a book, reading out loud. He would always let her listen for a while before he carried her back to bed. The words didn't make any sense — Hero never understood what was happening — but the language was musical and full of feeling. She liked sitting in the dim room and hearing the rhythm of it.

Her father's years in graduate school and a string of teaching and research jobs had taken them from Illinois to Massachusetts to New York, and finally here to Maryland, where he would be working as an archivist at the Maxwell Elizabethan Documents Collection in Washington, D.C. When the whole family had visited the library last week, Hero thought its stained-glass windows and vaulted ceilings made it look like a cathedral. It was filled with books and long, shining wood tables. There were glass cases everywhere, which held old, curling brown manuscripts.

"Dad seems to love that Maxwell place," she said to Beatrice. "And everybody there looks just like him. Sort of rumpled and tweedy."

"Yeah," Beatrice said. "Even the women have beards. It's perfect for him."

It was amazing to think of a place that was perfect for their father. He was so weird, and not just in the way all parents were weird. He used words like "Fie" and "tetchy," and he could quote long passages from Shakespeare by heart. He never did the things that other dads did, like play golf or watch football on TV. He had no idea how to grill a steak. But Beatrice was right: Compared to the rest of the staff at the Maxwell, he seemed normal.

"Do you think that's how it is for everybody?" Hero asked. "Do you think even the weirdest people seem normal if you put them in the right place?"

Beatrice thought for a minute. "Are you talking about Dad or yourself?"

Hero grabbed the pillow and hurled it at her, almost knocking over the nail polish.

"Hey!" Beatrice said. "I was just kidding. Relax, school will go fine tomorrow. You worry too much."

Hero shook her head. "No, I don't. When you're me, it's not possible to worry too much."

At that moment, their mother appeared in the doorway. She was holding a large pair of pruning shears, and her cheeks were streaked with sweat. From the expression on her face, they could tell she'd been listening.

"Well," she said to Hero, "I suppose if you worry too much, you'll always be pleasantly surprised."

Hero's mother was the kind of steady cheerful person who was determined to find hidden advantages in the most unlikely situations. She did graphic design work, mostly freelance because they moved so often, and she knew all the differences between typefaces with funny names like Garamond and Desdemona. Even in her work, she never seemed to have a bad day. Sometimes Hero longed for her to be bored and depressed just so they'd have something in common.

"Please, Hero," her mother said. "Don't spend the whole day feeling sorry for yourself. It's beautiful outside. Do me a favor and run these clippers back to Mrs. Roth."

"Aw, Mom," Hero protested. Mrs. Roth was the old woman who lived next door. Hero had seen her outside in her overgrown garden, but she'd never spoken to her. "I don't even know her. Make Triss do it."

"No, I want you to do it. This will be a chance for you to get to know her." Her mother leaned the shears against the doorjamb and disappeared down the hallway.

For a minute longer, Hero lay staring at the ceiling, at the cracks and water stains, and at the old glass light fixture with its pattern of vines and flowers. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see that Beatrice was now painting her fingernails, brushing shimmering layers of pink over each one.

"What color is that?" she asked indifferently "'Ballet Slipper.' Do you like it?"

"I guess."

"Want to try it?" Beatrice brightened. "I could give you a makeover."

Hero rolled her eyes. Beatrice had a book called The Sum of Your Parts that was full of advice on how to highlight your best features. According to Beatrice, Hero's best features were her dark eyes and her long brown hair. They were just begging to be accentuated in a makeover.

"No way," Hero said, sliding to her feet. "Then I'll look totally different tomorrow, and the next day when I look like myself, everyone will go, 'Ew! What happened to her?'" She picked up the pruning shears. "Besides, it's the last day of summer vacation and apparently Mom wants me to spend it with a total stranger."

Sighing, she tripped lightly down the stairs, flung open the screen door, and stepped into the blaze and trill of the summer day.

Mrs. Roth's house was a yellow cottage with peeling paint, a wide porch, and a dense, colorful front garden. There were flowers everywhere, clusters of roses, bright pockets of marigolds, petunias, geraniums, snapdragons. But the flowers tumbled out of a mound of weeds and thistles. Hero picked her way gingerly along the flagstone walk, the hard metal pruning shears banging her leg. She hesitated in front of the porch steps, eyeing the thick shrubbery on either side. It almost blocked her path. Why, she wondered, had her mother even thought to ask Mrs. Roth for pruning shears? It didn't look like they'd ever been used in this yard.

"Mrs. Roth?" Hero called out, hoping to avoid actually knocking on the door. Maybe she could just leave the clippers on the porch. She didn't particularly want to be drawn into a conversation, or, worse yet, invited inside. She never felt comfortable around old people. She didn't like their papery skin, or the way they always launched into long, pointless anecdotes.

To her dismay, Hero heard footsteps approaching the door.

"I brought back your pruning shears," she called, dropping the clippers on the porch. "Thanks a lot."

She turned and started to jog back over the flagstones, but the door swung open and a voice called out, "You're very welcome. Tell your mother she may borrow them anytime."

Hero answered over her shoulder, "Okay thanks, I will."

She was almost to the gate when she realized unhappily that the old woman was coming down the front steps into the garden.

"Now, let's see ... are you the younger daughter?" Mrs. Roth asked.

Defeated, Hero turned around. She walked back a few paces and awkwardly held out her hand.

"Yes," she said. "I'm Hero."

Mrs. Roth stood in the middle of her unkempt garden, thin and strangely elegant looking. Hero noticed that she wore a long-sleeved blouse and trousers despite the sticky heat. Her hand was cool and she shook Hero's firmly. She had short silver hair cropped closely around her face, and her blue eyes were full of friendly interest.

"Hero. Yes, of course. Your sister is Beatrice, isn't she? Much Ado About Nothing. Hero's a lovely name. 'Who can blot that name with any just reproach?'"

She's as weird as Dad, Hero realized.

Mrs. Roth smiled. "It's from the play. You've read it, haven't you?"

Hero shook her head. "Uh, no."

Of course that's what people always assumed, since she was the daughter of a Shakespeare expert. But she'd never read any of the plays herself. Never wanted to. That was her father's specialty As far as Hero was concerned, it belonged to him completely. In families, things seemed to get sorted out that way. It was like choosing tokens in a board game. Her father got Shakespeare. Beatrice got popularity. Her mother got good humor. You could never have two people share the same token. That would be too confusing.

But Mrs. Roth looked disappointed. "Oh, you must read it, it's wonderful. Of course, Beatrice is the stronger character, witty and resourceful. Hero's just a pretty fluff. But she is honorable. That's the point. And it's an excellent name to live up to."

"I guess." Hero looked away uncertainly. "Well, I'd better get going."

"Why don't you take some flowers with you? I have so many. They could stand to be cut back a bit."

"Oh, that's okay." Hero could see that Mrs. Roth was already walking purposefully toward the house.

"I'll just fetch a pair of scissors. You'll have to cut them yourself, if you don't mind. My arthritis keeps me from doing much gardening, I'm afraid."

Hero shifted from one foot to the other, trying to think of some excuse that would justify a speedy exit.

But a minute later, Mrs. Roth returned with the scissors. She directed Hero toward the roses. "I'm Miriam, by the way."

Hero couldn't imagine ever calling her that, but she tried to smile politely. She drew back the prickly stems and began clipping the rosebushes, tossing the heavy blossoms on the walkway. Mrs. Roth hovered behind her and gathered the flowers into a loose bouquet.

"Has school started yet?" she asked.

"No," Hero said. "Tomorrow."

"And what grade are you entering?"

"Sixth. Beatrice is in eighth."

"It must be difficult for you, adjusting to a new school."

Hero snorted at the understatement before she caught herself. "Yeah, it is, sometimes. But I guess I'll find out tomorrow."

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Excerpted from Shakespeare's Secret by Elise Broach. Copyright © 2005 Elise Broach. Excerpted by permission of Henry Holt and Company.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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