The Sixty-Eight Rooms Read Free Page A

room displays. It looked like the backstage area of a theater. He came out again. His mom and Mr. Bell hadn’t stopped their conversation and didn’t even seem to notice that Jack had gone in and out of the corridor.
    “That was neat. Thanks,” he said.
    “Lucky!” was Ruthie’s somewhat frustrated reply when Jack came over to her and told her what he’d seen.
    “C’mon. Maybe you can look too,” he said, pulling at her sleeve. By now most of their class was nearly finished viewing all sixty-eight rooms and was congregating out in the hall near the entrance.
    Jack led her back over to the alcove where the two grown-ups still stood chatting.
    “This is my friend Ruthie. Can she look too?” Jack asked without a second’s hesitation.
    “I can’t be showing your whole class, now can I?” Mr. Bell replied at first. Then he observed Ruthie’s disappointed face. Glancing around to see that most everyone in the exhibit had moved on, he added, “Well … Ruthie, is it? I suppose one more look won’t hurt. But just a real quick one.” He had not yet relocked the door, so as he stood facing out into the gallery, he reached behind him. With a subtle movement he opened the door.
    Ruthie couldn’t help feeling a little let down by what she saw—kind of like how she’d felt the first time she saw
The Wizard of Oz
and Toto pulled back the curtain so thateveryone saw the mechanism that controlled the wizard. It spoiled the experience in a way, even though she knew that this corridor had to exist and that ordinary lightbulbs must create the “sunlight” for the tiny rooms. She liked the front view so much more.
    “Excuse me for a moment,” Mr. Bell said as he walked a few feet away to gently stop a young child with very sticky fingers from leaving fingerprints all over the glass windows of the rooms.
    Ruthie’s eyes had barely adjusted to the dim light of the corridor, but Jack, in that same minute and a half, had found something on the floor in the darkened corner behind a stack of boxes and stashed it in his pocket.
    “Jack!” Lydia said in a loud whisper. “Come out of there. You were only supposed to look!” Jack dutifully obeyed her.
    Ruthie opened her mouth to form the question “What did you find?” but Jack shot her a quick look that said,
Don’t ask me now!
The two of them stepped out of the alcove and into the main space in front of Mr. Bell and Lydia. Jack closed the door behind them.
    “You know, my little girl used to come back here and do her homework after school when she was young—younger than the two of you. She used a box as a desk. She’s all grown up now. I’ve been working here for that long!”
    “Thank you very much for letting us take a look,” Ruthie said.
    “Yeah—that was great!” Jack added enthusiastically. Mr. Bell smiled and winked at the two of them. Hereached out to shake their hands and then Jack’s mother’s hand as well.
    “I really enjoyed our conversation. I hope we’ll bump into each other again soon,” she said to him.
    “The pleasure was mine,” he answered.
    “Okay, you two, back to the group,” Lydia declared. The rest of the class had already assembled at the entrance to the exhibit.
    “Wait till you see what I found,” Jack said under his breath to Ruthie.
    “What? More money?”
    “Better!”
    “There you two stragglers are!” Ms. Biddle scolded, coming around the corner toward them. “Next time keep with the group, okay?”
    “Sorry!” Jack said with a smile.
    “Well, all’s well that ends well,” Ms. Biddle answered, smiling back. No one ever stayed mad at Jack when he smiled at them. Ruthie thought that Jack was really smiling about the fact that he had some newfound treasure in his pocket—and it was something he didn’t seem to want anyone else to see. That was how she knew it must be something fantastic.

WHAT JACK FOUND
    O N THE BUS FOR THE return to school, Jack waited until everyone was busy. He looked around to make sure