Alexander Graham Bell: Master of Sound #7 Read Free Page B

room.
    “On inventors?” Maisie said.
    “Please look at me when you speak to me,” Mrs. Witherspoon said.
    Hadley was almost at the door, and Monica Shea was making a move toward her. Monica was smart and pretty and quiet, someone Hadley might actually like.
    “Mrs. Witherspoon,” Maisie said as Monica reached Hadley and the two of them walked together right out the door. “I love inventors. And inventions. And I’m so excited to start this section.”
    She gazed up at Mrs. Witherspoon’s baffled face.
    “Well…,” Mrs. Witherspoon said.
    “And also,” Maisie said desperately, “I’m so hungry that I think I might faint if I don’t eat something superquick.”
    “Well…,” Mrs. Witherspoon said again.
    “Thanks for understanding,” Maisie said, and she practically ran across the classroom and out the door.
    “Go inventors!” she called over her shoulder for good measure.
    Maisie stopped as soon as she left the room. The hallway had already emptied. Hadley Ziff was gone. And Monica Shea was nowhere in sight. Disappointed, Maisie began her slow, lonely walk toward the cafeteria, the same slow lonely walk she made every day. Sometimes Felix was waiting for her at a lunch table. But most times he had presidential duties to tend to—selling gross, chalky candy bars or raffle tickets, or taking a survey to measure the dissatisfaction of the sixth grade over lunch food or vending-machine goods or some other unimportant thing.
    Maisie rounded the corner of the hallway that led to the cafeteria.
    “There you are!” someone said, and of courseMaisie didn’t look up or pause because no one was ever waiting for her.
    “Maisie?” the someone said.
    The someone, Maisie saw, was Hadley Ziff, who stood in front of her, grinning.
    “I can’t wait to hear everything you have to say about absolutely everything,” Hadley said.
    She crooked her arm in Maisie’s.
    “Go,” Hadley said. “I’m all ears.”

CHAPTER 3
BREAKING AND ENTERING
    “S ometimes,” Maisie said to Hadley Ziff, “I think my entire family is deaf. I mean, I talk and talk and talk, and either they just have blank expressions on their faces or they say
Mmmm-hmmm
in a totally fake way.”
    As Maisie spoke, Hadley nodded. They were standing on the corner of Bellevue Avenue and Memorial Boulevard, right where Jim Duncan had waited for Maisie and Felix just that morning. Hadley had to go right and Maisie had to go left, but neither of them wanted to part.
    “Sometimes,” Hadley said, “Rayne listens. But lately she’s all into being popular and becoming the head of this and the head of that.”
    Now it was Maisie’s turn to nod.
    “My brother,” Maisie said, lowering her voice, “is class president.”
    “My sister,” Hadley said, also in a low voice, “was a cheerleader at our last school.”
    “What is wrong with them?” Maisie said sadly.
    “There are times when I’m embarrassed that we share the same DNA,” Hadley admitted.
    They stood in a companionable silence. The trees had all sprung new green leaves and buds. On one block, a row of pink and white dogwoods had bloomed, and the petals looked pretty in the spring sunshine. Maisie remembered how much she used to like when the trees along Bleecker Street blossomed in the spring. Imagining it made her homesick.
    “Do you miss San Francisco?” she asked Hadley.
    “Kind of,” Hadley said. “We move a lot. We’ve lived in Moscow and Tel Aviv and Virginia and Panama.”
    “I went to China once,” Maisie said.
    “We lived in Beijing, but just for six weeks,” Hadley said.
    She glanced around—nervously, Maisie thought.
    “My father isn’t in the navy,” Hadley whispered.
    “He’s not?”
    “He’s in the CIA,” Hadley said. She giggled. “I just told you my biggest secret. We’re not allowed to tell people. For security reasons.”
    “CIA?”
    “Central Intelligence Agency,” Hadley explained. “It’s top secret.”
    “What do people in the CIA do?”