Stealing Magic Read Free Page A

excuse when Mrs. McVittie spoke up. “I’d like to join you as well, if I may. Dan, what about you? Why don’t you come along?”
    “I’ve got to grade papers,” Mr. Stewart said with a shake of his head. “But you all go without me. You’ll have fun!”
    That was not the word Ruthie would have chosen.

I T TURNED OUT TO BE great that Mrs. McVittie went along with them, for a couple of reasons. First, Ruthie’s mom insisted that they take a cab—something she rarely splurged on—which meant they would arrive at the museum much faster. Second, she gave Ruthie’s mom someone to talk to instead of Ruthie. Ruthie sat squashed between her mother and Mrs. McVittie in the back while Jack sat up in front with the taxi driver, chatting with him all the way.
    Heading up the stairs at the front of the museum, Jack filled her in on new trivia.
    “Did you know they don’t use knives and forks and stuff in Ethiopia when they eat?”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “They wrap their food in bread that’s super thin, like your crepes.”
    “How do you know?” she asked, trying to hide her impatience.
    “The cabdriver was from Ethiopia and he told me. You never know when you might need to know something like that.”
    When they got to the lobby, Ruthie said, “You guys go ahead; I’m gonna check my backpack.” By the time she caught up with them, they had just finished the slow march down the main staircase.
    “So this is it—the famous Thorne Rooms,” Ruthie’s mom said as they stood outside the entrance of Gallery 11, on the lower level of the museum. “I finally get to see what all the fuss is about!”
    “I think you’ll find that they are remarkable,” Mrs. McVittie said.
    Just inside the gallery a docent was giving a tour.
    “Narcissa Thorne created the first set of European rooms, and then made the American rooms, mostly during the 1930s. Note that the rooms are numbered, E1 through E31 and A1 through A37. Some of the objects you’ll see are antique miniatures that she collected from all over the world; others were made to her specifications by skilled artisans in her employ. The scale of the rooms is one inch to one foot, and all the materials are real—the furniture is real wood, the fireplace mantels real marble, the candlesticks real sterling, et cetera. The only fake things are those that would have been alive or might decay—for instance,flowers and food, and the dog lying in front of the fireplace in room E1.”
    Ruthie already knew all of this, inside and out. She gazed past the tour group to see the rooms set into the walls of the gallery, just at eye level. Sixty-eight little worlds, she thought, each so perfect and complete and—perhaps—filled with more secrets to discover. They beckoned to her from behind their viewing windows. Aside from the mystery of the key and its magic powers, the rooms themselves still felt new and exciting to her, the way they had when she’d seen them for the first time on the field trip three months ago. Goose bumps rose on her skin.
    Ruthie did care about her mother’s reaction, but right now she was driven to get to the bento box. She didn’t wait for her mother and Mrs. McVittie, who wanted to look at the rooms one by one and in order. Ruthie had already turned the corner and was walking toward room E31, the Japanese room. Jack was right behind her.
    Ruthie saw it first and gasped. There in the beautiful Japanese room sat Jack’s bento box, in miniature. The box, which Jack had left sitting squarely on the table with the lid on, had been turned. And the lid was askew!
    “I knew something was wrong!” Ruthie said in a hushed voice.
    “I can’t see if the letter is still in it or not.” Jack tried to get a good angle. “Can you?”
    “No,” she answered.
    “Maybe a maintenance person opened the glass front, like to do some dusting, and moved it accidentally. Maybe they didn’t even see the letter.”
    “We’ve got to find out!” Ruthie