A Big Box of Memories Read online

  The Pee Wees liked video games. They all looked interested now.

  “We could divide up and look all over town,” said Lisa.

  “I think the first place we should look is Molly’s house,” said Rachel. “That’s where there would be something personal. Something all Molly’s.”

  The Pee Wees were trying to be helpful. But Molly knew her own house. What could they find there that she hadn’t?

  CHAPTER 7

  The Hunt

  “I guess a treasure hunt would be a good thing to try,” said Molly.

  “What we should do, then,” said Jody, “is hunt for an hour and then bring the stuff back here. Molly can choose what she likes the best.”

  Jody looked at his watch. “Come back here at four o’clock. The one who finds the treasure gets the prize!”

  Jody made it sound so easy! Weren’t friends great? That was what Scouts were for, to help others. And Molly needed help.

  “Will your mom care if we dig around your house?” asked Patty.

  “I don’t think so,” said Molly.

  Molly, Patty, Mary Beth, and Rachel went to Molly’s house. The other Scouts followed. Molly told her parents what they were doing.

  “Good luck,” said Mr. Duff. “I’ll keep my eyes open too.”

  The Scouts went their separate ways. Even Molly looked again.

  At four o’clock the Pee Wees went back to Mary Beth’s house. Mary Beth’s sister gave them some lemonade. Hunting had made them thirsty.

  “What did everybody find?” Mary Beth asked.

  “Look at this!” shouted Roger. “This is the treasure that gets the prize!”

  He held up a rusty nail.

  “This is an attic,” he said.

  The Pee Wees roared. “An attic?” shrieked Rachel. “I’ll bet you mean an antique.”

  Roger turned red. He needs a dictionary, thought Molly. But he probably wouldn’t read it.

  “It’s old,” said Roger. “And valuable.”

  “Pooh,” scoffed Lisa. “It’s not old, it’s just a rusty nail that you can get blood poisoning from if you step on it.”

  “I’m not going to step on it,” said Roger. “I’m going to put it in the time capsule.”

  “Did anyone else find anything?” Mary Beth asked.

  “How about Skippy’s bone?” asked Patty, holding it up with two fingers. It was slimy and wet.

  “It would smell,” said Molly. “Besides, it isn’t mine, it’s Skippy’s.”

  Rat’s knees, Molly sounded fussy. Even to herself.

  “I found this little pinkie ring,” said Rachel. “It’s too small for Molly to wear now anyway. It’s a baby ring.”

  Patty shook her head. “It doesn’t say anything about Molly,” she said. “It could be from any baby.”

  “What have the rest of you found?” asked Mary Beth.

  Jody had found a pair of sneakers. Kevin had found an old doll. Kenny had found a plate of leftover cake Molly had baked. But nothing was right.

  Finally Molly said, “I think I might have found the right thing in a box in the basement.” She held up an old book. “I used this when I learned to read. It’s a teeny-tiny little dictionary. My dad gave it to me. I liked words even then.” She would put the dictionary in the time capsule! It would stand for Molly!

  “It’s perfect!” said Mary Beth. “Can we see it?”

  “I didn’t want to lose it, so I left it at home,” Molly said. “But you’ll see it tomorrow.”

  “Rat’s knees!” said Rachel. “I wanted to find the best thing!”

  The rest of the Pee Wees looked unhappy that they had not found the treasure.

  “You’ll get the prize yourself,” said Patty. “For finding your own treasure!”

  “Someone else can have the prize,” said Molly. “If we hadn’t had the treasure hunt, I wouldn’t have found the dictionary!”

  Molly was relieved. When she got home, she’d put her name and address and the year in the little book. She would get it ready to take to Mrs. Peters’s house the next day. Ready for the time capsule. It was no diary, but it was definitely second best.

  Molly wished she had a prize to give all the Pee Wees for trying so hard to help her. But she couldn’t waste time on that now. She had to get home and get the dictionary ready. It was almost Tuesday. Almost the deadline for the time capsule. Molly had never been a last-minute person. But now she was just under the wire.

  She ran all the way home. She opened the door and ran in to pick up the book from the hall table where she had left it.

  But it wasn’t there! The table was empty. It was shiny and clean, and there was nothing on it. Nothing at all.

  Skippy was curled up in Mr. Duff’s chair. He was chewing on something. When Molly got closer, she saw what it was. Molly’s dictionary! Skippy was eating her time-capsule treasure!

  CHAPTER 8

  Night Visitors

  Why was Molly the only one to have lost two treasures? Why couldn’t Skippy have eaten a different book? A scary book, or a boring book that nobody wanted? Why did Skippy have to eat a book at all? He had dog food in his dish that would have tasted much better.

  “It was the leather cover,” said Mrs. Duff when she heard the news. “Dogs like leather. They make dog bones out of leather. Skippy thought it was a dog bone.”

  Molly was sure Skippy was smarter than that. A dictionary didn’t look like a bone. But it probably smelled like one.

  Molly wanted to scold Skippy. But he had such an innocent look on his face. It wasn’t his fault the dictionary smelled like a bone.

  “What am I going to do?” she cried. “There’s no time to find something else now!”

  “You’re going to have to settle for something not quite as good as what you wanted,” said Mr. Duff.

  Never, thought Molly. She would not settle. She would go to the meeting and hope Mrs. Peters would have a good idea. And hope that she could have an extra day to find the perfect thing. The perfect thing was out there somewhere, but Molly had no idea what it was or where it was.

  Molly hardly slept that night. When she did, she dreamed that Skippy followed her to the Pee Wee Scout meeting and ate up the time capsule with all the Pee Wees’ things in it! Skippy became a time capsule himself!

  When she woke up, she was glad to find out it was only a dream.

  At the Pee Wee meeting, Molly told her sad story.

  “Rat’s knees,” said Mary Beth. “You better just take my barrette like I told you to.”

  “I wish there was some way you could put your diary in after all,” said Jody thoughtfully. “But it’s just too big.”

  “I think the time capsule should be bigger,” said Tim. “I want to put in my Snoopy alarm clock. It doesn’t work anymore.”

  Mrs. Peters shook her head.

  “It can’t be bigger,” she said. “The box has to fit into the space in the cornerstone.”

  “Why did they make the space so small?” asked Sonny. “That’s dumb.”

  “You aren’t supposed to put your whole house in it!” said Lisa. “Just a memento.”

  Tim looked as if he was thinking very hard.

  Jody looked as if a lightbulb had gone on over his head. He looked as if he had a brilliant idea. But he didn’t say anything.

  “Well, Molly,” said Mrs. Peters, “I can only give you until tomorrow afternoon to come up with something. We have to get our capsule to the courthouse in time for the ceremony.”

  When Molly got home, she threw herself into a chair on the porch. Suddenly she saw Tim walking by. He was walking fast. And he was carrying a shovel.

  Molly went to her room. When she came down an hour later, Tim walked by again. This time his shovel had dirt on it. So did his jeans and T-shirt. He looked tired.

  Then, after supper, he returned with the same shovel.

  “Where are you going?” Molly called to him.

  “It’s a surprise,” he said. “Tell you later.”

 
What could Tim possibly be digging that would be a surprise for her?

  Night crawlers? Rocks? More treasure?

  Nothing could help her now. She would just have to grit her teeth and take the barrette Mary Beth had offered her. The barrette would have to be her gift to the children of 2100. That was all there was to it.

  When Molly was playing with Skippy in the basement, she thought she heard the doorbell ring. Who would come to visit this late? When she looked out the basement window, she saw a car drive away. It looked like Jody’s van. The one his wheelchair fit into. But why would Jody come to her house? And why would he come at night?

  This was a mystery.

  When she went upstairs, she said, “Who was at the door?”

  “What door?” her dad said innocently. Molly hated it when people answered a question with another question.

  “The front door!” said Molly.

  “Maybe a salesman?” said her father.

  Molly’s mother frowned. “It was Jody,” she said. “He stopped by to say hello.”

  This was even more mysterious! Why would Jody come at night to say hello to her parents and not her? And why would her father pretend he hadn’t come? What was going on?

  The news was on TV, and her father was watching.

  “Tomorrow will be cloudy with perhaps a few showers,” said the announcer.

  When the weather report said there would be a few showers, there usually was a thunderstorm with lightning. Just like in winter, when they would say snow flurries, and a blizzard would cover Minnesota with three-foot drifts.

  “And now in the local news,” one of the announcers was saying, “we have the town’s youngest criminal! A seven-year-old boy was apprehended this evening for damaging city property by digging up the courthouse lawn! He was taken to the county jail and released into the custody of his mother. Well, we hope that after this the young man will do all his digging in his own backyard!” The three announcers behind the desk all smiled and made little jokes about a child-size jail.

  Molly’s parents stared at the TV. “Could we know that boy?” asked her mother.

  “No,” said her dad. “Molly’s friends wouldn’t dig holes on other people’s property!”

  Molly couldn’t believe her ears. Could the boy be Tim Noon? She had seen him with a shovel. What had Tim done? No Pee Wee Scout had ever been arrested before!

  And why had Jody paid her parents a nighttime visit?

  CHAPTER 9

  Jody to the Rescue

  The phone rang early in the morning. It was Mrs. Peters.

  “We’re having an emergency meeting this afternoon,” she said.

  “Molly will be there,” said Mr. Duff.

  “I wonder what the emergency meeting is about,” said Mrs. Duff.

  Probably it has something to do with Tim, Molly thought.

  When Molly saw Mary Beth on the way to Mrs. Peters’s house, Mary Beth called, “Did you hear about the boy who dug holes? I’ll bet he gets sent away to a school for boys who get into trouble!”

  When they met Tracy, she said, “Someone’s in real trouble! I think his mom has to pay a thousand dollars for the hole he dug.”

  Molly couldn’t hold it in any longer. She had to tell her friends what she knew. “I think the boy in all that trouble is Tim.”

  Her friends gasped. They could hardly believe it. “I’ll bet this meeting is to say good-bye to Tim,” said Patty. “I’ll bet he goes to that island where they put dangerous criminals so they can’t escape.”

  Molly was so worried, she didn’t want to go to the meeting.

  But when they got to Mrs. Peters’s house, Tim was eating a Popsicle and did not look as if he was in trouble. He looked just the way he did before he was a criminal, Molly thought.

  Mrs. Peters tapped on the table with her pencil. The Pee Wees were quiet.

  “She’s probably going to announce the good-bye party for Tim,” whispered Mary Beth to Molly.

  Rat’s knees, thought Molly. She should have brought a present for Tim. A book to read in jail. But Tim didn’t read much. Well, she could have baked a cake with a little saw in it so he could cut through the bars of his cell and escape. You would think Mrs. Peters would have baked a cake. But there was no good-bye cake on the table. No cake at all. And there were no good-bye gifts wrapped up in fancy paper either. If this was a party for Tim, there wasn’t much spirit. Not even any balloons.

  “I called you all here,” said Mrs. Peters, “to be sure everyone has their item in for the capsule. The millennium committee needs our box a bit earlier than they had said.”

  The Pee Wees stared at their leader. That was all? That was why the meeting had been called?

  Roger turned in his rusty nail with his name tied to it on a tag. Some of the other Pee Wees had changed their minds about their items and put different things in their place.

  “Now the only one we are waiting for,” said Mrs. Peters, “is Molly.”

  Molly had nothing.

  Jody waved his hand. “Here’s Molly’s,” he said. And he gave something tiny to their leader.

  The tiny thing looked like a book. Could it be the dictionary, come back by some magic?

  “When Tim said he wished the time capsule were bigger, I thought maybe a better idea was to make the items smaller,” said Jody. “I remembered how important it was to Molly to put her diary in, but it was too big. And then I remembered the copy machine at my dad’s office. It makes things smaller! It makes them as small as you want! So I asked my dad and we went over to Molly’s and borrowed the diary and shrank it.”

  Molly was so surprised, she didn’t know what to say.

  “I didn’t read it,” said Jody quickly. “Not even one word. My dad took it back to her house right away.”

  Rat’s knees! No wonder she wanted to marry Jody, Molly thought. He was one friend in a million. A friend who had saved her badge. A friend who had good ideas. Molly decided she loved Jody. She felt like giving him a big hug, even a kiss—but that wouldn’t be a good thing to do at a Pee Wee Scout meeting.

  Everyone clapped and cheered.

  Roger whistled and shouted. “Let me have a look at that diary,” he said, trying to grab it. “I just want to see how small it is,” he said.

  But Molly knew he really wanted to read it. She couldn’t risk that. And she couldn’t risk anything happening to it this time. She wanted her diary in that capsule as soon as could be!

  “Yay for Jody!” called Kevin. “Why didn’t I think of that? My mom has a copy machine too.”

  “Well, the important thing is that the problem is solved,” said Mrs. Peters. “Jody was thoughtful and generous and saved the day. Now we all have something memorable in the time capsule, and we can all get our badges for this project.”

  As the Pee Wees ate the treats Mrs. Stone brought down to them, Molly looked at the tiny diary. It had no hard cover or lock, but none was needed. The important thing was that all the words were there! It was better than the one she had copied over in tiny letters! It was an exact picture of her real diary!

  Everyone looked at it and told Jody how smart he’d been to think of it.

  “Hey,” said Roger. “Can you make me smaller if I sit on that machine? Or could you make me bigger, like a giant?”

  Rachel groaned. “The only thing worse than Roger would be another Roger,” she said. “A bigger one.”

  “Maybe Jody could shrink him till he was real little, and we could step on him!” said Patty.

  Mrs. Peters frowned when Patty said that, and the Pee Wees stopped making jokes. But Molly secretly thought it would be fun to step on a teeny-tiny Roger. After all, Roger stepped on the Pee Wees when he had the chance.

  Molly thanked Jody over and over again. She knew he hadn’t read her diary, because he was so honest. And she was glad, because she had written things in there she didn’t want him to see. She didn’t want him to know she was going to marry him. It was too soon. They were too young.

&n
bsp; CHAPTER 10

  Badges and Prizes

  “I guess this isn’t going to be a party for Tim after all,” Lisa whispered to Molly. “But I know he’s going to be locked up,” Molly whispered back.

  “They have to have a trial first,” said Lisa. “My uncle is a lawyer, and that’s the way it works.”

  Rat’s knees, Molly thought. They had to save Tim. The Pee Wees couldn’t sit by and watch a police car take him off to be locked up. Molly wondered how much time she had to solve this problem.

  She sighed. It seemed as if it was just one problem after another. The time capsule problem had just been solved, and she’d hardly had time to enjoy it. She had to work fast now to solve the next worry—how to save Tim.

  She hoped she wouldn’t have to go to court and sit in that box the way they did on TV. She’d have to swear to tell the truth, so help her God.

  Well, that would be easy enough. She could truthfully tell the judge and the jury that Tim was a good Scout. How he’d taken home a cat that had no food and fed it. How he’d learned to spell some words even though they were hard. She’d tell them how he had never been in any trouble in his whole life. Well, as far as she knew. Molly hadn’t known him as a baby, but what was the worst thing a baby could do? Throw toys or bite someone. She didn’t think Tim had bitten anyone. She was almost positive.

  After the treat some Scouts told about the good deeds they had done. Then Mrs. Peters clapped her hands.

  Molly jumped. She had been thinking so hard of what she would say about Tim in the courthouse, she’d forgotten the meeting. She wanted to write her ideas down so she wouldn’t forget them.

  But their leader had something else to say.

  “I’m sure you all heard the news last night,” said Mrs. Peters. “And lots of rumors get started when something is on TV. Sometimes things that are not a big deal seem bigger when they’re on the news.”

  “You mean like making mountains out of molehills, Mrs. Peters,” said Rachel. “That’s what my grandmother always says.”

  “That’s exactly right,” said Mrs. Peters.