SPOILER ALERT - the following first chapter explains which band won the Michigan Talent contest from the last book, Daniel's Den.
Over Thanksgiving my husband's brother agreed to work on the cover of the fifth book, Martha Street Market. D.A. Clifford is the artist for the covers of the Saginaw Series Books and I wasn't sure he would want to do another one. But as soon as he said yes, ideas started forming.
Remember, Colleen and her family live above Martha Street Market.
This morning I began to write.
Best Friends, Katy, Jen and Colleen are just entering senior year at St. Mary Cathedral.
Chapter One - ROUGH DRAFT - Martha Street Market
Jen and Colleen walked to the Hoyt Library after school.
They each had a term paper due in a week and they wanted to get them done
before the weekend. They both knew their
parents would never let them do anything over the weekend if the term papers weren’t
finished.
Jen asked her friend, “Have you talked to Katy?”
Colleen grunted.
Jen guessed, “I suppose that means you didn’t.”
Colleen looked like she was going to cry. She turned to Jen to complain, “You know she
isn’t talking to either of us. She’s
furious that we argued with her last week.”
Jen nodded her head in agreement, “I know, but this has gone
on long enough. She stayed home in her
room all summer long. She quit being a
lifeguard at the pool. She wouldn’t do
anything with us and now that school has started you would think she would at
least have lunch with us. No… not the
long suffering, the world is all about me, Katy. You should try living in the
same house with the drama queen! We used
to be the best sisters in the world, but now I don’t think that will ever
happen again.”
Colleen agreed, but she knew that Katy still felt so bad
about letting everyone down when the band came in second in the Talent Michigan
band competition.
It had been a long summer after that ill-fated concert in
Detroit, Michigan. They all had been at
the concert. Katy’s band, the
Lifeguards, performed like pros. They
were so good, but the Wildcats were better.
No getting around it, the band that should have won, did. After losing, Katy’s band broke up and then she
began her summer of wallowing in self pity.
Jen and Colleen did all they could to get her out of the funk she was
in, but nothing worked.
Finally they gave up. Colleen quit calling Katy and Jen just
ignored her. After a few weeks Jen tried
again, but Katy only answered yes or no to all her questions and still wouldn’t
leave their house.
Colleen and Jen walked up the steps to the library
entrance. After taking the elevator to
the second floor they entered the genealogy and Saginaw Historical room. They went their separate ways to gather books
to research for the term papers.
Jen was not happy having to go to the library. She complained to her teacher, Sister Carmelita,
that the topics to choose from were so specific that they couldn’t use the
Internet to get enough sources to use for the term paper. Sr. Carmelita smiled as she explained that
was exactly why the topics were local Saginaw topics. She told the students that not every single
thing in life was on the Internet. While
they could use the Internet as one way to find sources for their term papers
they also needed to learn how to research at a real library, with real
books.
Jen chose the Webber House as her topic; it was a building
close to her heart. The summer before
starting high school she had fallen down the cellar stairs of the old mansion
and had to be rescued! The officer who had been looking for her and the current
owner of the Webber House eventually fell in love and planned on getting
married this year. Jen took credit for getting them together.
Colleen was very happy to be in the historical section of
the library. Her topic was to report on the
Hoyt Library. After looking up Hoyt
Library on the computer system, she pulled out the books she needed and took
them to one of the large oak tables. The
librarian had warned her some of the books were very old and needed to be
handled with great care. After looking
in the index Colleen carefully turned to the pages listed and began to
read. Almost immediately she became absorbed
with the story. After reading a few
pages she motioned to Jen to come to the table.
With excitement she whispered, “Oh Jen, our term papers are
going to be connected. Mr. Webber was
Mr. Hoyt’s lawyer and good friend. Mr.
Webber actually wrote Mr. Hoyt’s will which set up a fund to build the library.
Jen became interested and read over Colleen’s shoulder. Neither of them noticed Katy watching them
from behind the bookshelves. She felt jealous,
left out and angry that they didn’t even notice her. She turned and left the room without saying
anything to her former best friends.
