Chapter 1 Franny Franny liked the tops of things. She liked mountaintops and rooftops, and she wanted to be at the top of her class and a top-notch cartwheeler. Why? Because in first grade Franny became painfully aware of the middle and the possibility that she might be dismally average. Franny sighed. Now spring break was almost over and, to take her mind off the horrible reality of going back to school, Franny stood at the top of #3 Gumm Street. Up there, she didn’t feel average at all. She felt like Sir Edmund Hillary on the summit of Mount Everest or Amelia Earhart buzzing around in her airplane. Up in her tower she was Fearless Franny Muggs, Queen of All She Surveyed. She squinted through her binoculars. No sign of Pru. No sign of Cat. Good, she thought. She swung around in the opposite direction to have a look at #5 Gumm Street. Not a trace was left from the rogue blizzard that had blown in from the west a few weeks before. It had surprised everyone in town—a blizzard in Sherbet? No one even owned a snow shovel. One midnight right after that, Franny could have sworn she’d seen lights flickering about inside the old wreck of a house at #5 Gumm Street. She had ducked behind the railing of her balcony and strained her eyes through the glasses to see, but the lights had disappeared. Probably zombies, Franny had decided. If you believe in zombies (and you should), #5 Gumm Street was the perfect place for them. The house had been vacant for as long as Franny could remember, and vines had taken over to such an extent that from a distance the house looked like a giant hair ball. It leaned so badly to one side that it appeared as if it were caught in a perpetually stiff breeze. There were no signs of zombies today, though. Instead, Franny spied a moving van off in the distance. It came closer and closer and halted right in front of #5! Two men hopped out. They carried a few boxes and some ratty old furniture into the house. A moment later a Ford Fiesta pulled up. A woman and a birdlike girl with a bed pillow tucked under her arm—who, Franny figured, was probably the woman’s daughter—stepped out of the car. After a few quick trips, the moving men pulled themselves up into the truck and drove away. The woman and girl went inside through the double front doors that hung precariously from their hinges. Not five minutes had passed when another moving van arrived. The woman came out of the house, and there was a lot of discussion. The moving men kept pointing and shaking their heads yes, and the woman kept shaking her head no. It seemed like she didn’t want whatever it was, and Franny was afraid the moving men were just going to leave—which would be awful, because she was dying to know what was in the truck. But then the girl came outside and said something to the woman, and she seemed to give in. With much grunting and groaning, the moving men lifted an enormous, gleaming grand piano from out of the truck and gentled it through the front doors. Franny went inside at this point. Her tower room was about the size of a large horse stall. There was a small freezer for her Popsicles, a microwave for her hot chocolate, and a desk with a globe on it. Thumbtacked to the small closet door was a calendar with a picture of Mount Everest and a quotation from Amelia Earhart: “Adventure is worthwhile in itself.” New people moving into the zombie house—nothing as exciting as this had ever happened on Gumm Street! I’ll bet there’s not even any heat or running water inside that house, she thought with a thrill. Maybe in the winter they’ll have to melt snow to drink, like Sir Edmund Hillary and his faithful Sherpa, Tenzing Norgay, when they climbed Mount Everest! It was time to meet the new neighbors face-to-face. Franny hung her binoculars from a hook and clattered down the spiral staircase that wound around and around the outside of her wedding-cake house. Within moments Franny was on the threshold of #5 Gumm Street. She could hardly wait. She’d always wanted to see what this house was like on the inside. From behind the door came the sound of someone playing the piano. Franny remembered her own piano lesson days. The endless practicing, the interminable scales, topped off at the end of each week by . . . The Lesson. It’s true that Mr. Staccato, her piano teacher, was very patient and sympathetic, telling Franny that she wasn’t tone-deaf, just “musically challenged.” But she got worse instead of better, and once she played so poorly she actually thought Mr. Staccato was going to cry. She stopped taking lessons after that. But what she was listening to now . . . well, it made her sound like Beethoven. Franny knocked. The music—if you want to call it that—continued, but the door creakily opened, and the woman Franny had seen earlier appeared. “Hello,” Franny said. “My name is Franny Muggs, and I’d like to be the first one to welcome you to Gumm Street!” “Thanks, hon,” replied the woman. “I’m Pearl Diamond, and that’s my daughter, Ivy.” She hooked her thumb over her shoulder in the general direction of the piano behind her. Only one word came to mind as soon as Franny saw Pearl Diamond—sparkly. She had gleaming blond hair arranged in a complicated way, and on her T-shirt she had rhinestones in the shape of a French poodle. She had sparkly bracelets, sparkly blue eyes, and sparkly white teeth. “Tell me, hon, you know any piano-type people around here?” Pearl said. “I’m musically challenged,” Franny replied. “At least, that’s what Mr.—” “Staccato,” said a man with an English accent from behind Franny. Franny turned around and there was her former piano teacher, Mr. Staccato himself. He was an older gentleman neatly dressed as always in a three-piece suit. With him were two fat little white dogs, who stood solemnly on either side of him looking suspiciously up into the face of this new neighbor. “Miss Muggs,” he said with a nod to Franny. “And Mrs. Diamond, I presume. And that must be Miss Diamond”—he politely cleared his throat—“playing the piano.” “Pearl Diamond—you can call me Pearl.” Pearl extended her hand, and Mr. Staccato took it by the fingers and made a slight bow. “Welcome to Gumm Street,” he said. Pearl thanked him, and her hands fluttered self-consciously to her hairdo. “It’s the darnedest thing. Someone just delivered a piano, and we have no idea who!” At this point the music stopped. Franny heard footsteps and saw the birdlike girl walk over to the door. Pearl put her arm protectively around the girl’s thin shoulders. “This is my daughter, Ivy,” Pearl said. “Ivy, this is Franny and Mr. Stiletto—” “Staccato,” Franny corrected her. “Mr. Staccato,” Pearl said with an embarrassed little laugh, tucking a stray curl back in her hairdo where it belonged. “Um, hi.” Ivy’s eyes darted quickly from Franny to Mr. Staccato to the dogs and finally to her mother, whom she looked at questioningly. “It must be some mistake—the piano, I mean!” Pearl said, her eyes wide like a game show contestant waiting to see what was behind door number three. Mr. Staccato leaned forwards, and for a second Franny thought he was going to whisper something in Pearl’s ear, like who sent the piano, for instance—which would have been really weird, because how could he know? Then again, he knew Pearl and Ivy’s last name, which was weird all by itself. Instead, though, he said in a hushed voice, “My condolences to you both regarding your Aunt Viola.” “Who’s Aunt Viola?” Franny said, but everyone ignored her. “Thank you, but the last time I saw Aunt V, I was Ivy’s age.” Pearl pulled Ivy a little closer to her. “We’ve been on the move the last seven years—kinda had a run of bad luck—but that’s all behind us now, right, baby?” Pearl gave Ivy’s shoulders a little squeeze, and Ivy smiled weakly, as if she were not quite so optimistic. “Most interesting,” Mr. Staccato mused to himself. Franny thought that whoever this Aunt Viola lady was, Mr. Staccato sure seemed relieved she wasn’t around anymore, because Franny could have sworn he had exactly the same expression on his face as when she had told him she was going to stop taking lessons. She glanced at his two dogs, Fred and Ginger, and they seemed to relax as well. They pulled their tails under, seated themselves, and looked off into the distance, bored. “Actually, I only met your aunt once, myself,” Mr. Staccato said. His face momentarily darkened. “Then why are you so interested in her?” Franny interrupted, but again the adults acted like they didn’t hear her. “But about the piano,” Pearl said, shrugging. “We don’t even know how to play this thing!” “What a coincidence.” Mr. Staccato said, and making another little bow, he handed her a card. “Well, I’ll be!” Pearl exclaimed. “If that doesn’t beat all.” “That just really beats all!” Franny said cheerfully, trying again to be part of what was going on, whatever it was. “Doesn’t that just beat all, sugar?” Pearl laughed and showed the card to Ivy. Ivy read out loud, “Mr. Staccato, number seven Gumm Street, Sherbet, piano lessons.” She raised her eyes from the card and for the first time looked straight at Mr. Staccato. “You could teach me to play the piano?” “You never know. . . .” He held Ivy’s gaze for a moment while the dogs’ ears twitched forwards and back. “You may even have a unique talent for it.” Fred and Ginger jumped to attention. “Good day, ladies.” With that, he and his dogs turned on their heels and went briskly down the walk. “What do you think, baby? Would you like to take piano lessons?” Franny couldn’t believe it when Ivy nodded her head. Better her than me, Franny thought. Noticing Franny once again, Pearl said, “Why don’t you girls get to know each other?” Her bracelets jingled as she put on a sequined headband and freshened up her lipstick. “I’m just going to talk to Mr. Staccato again for a moment. Show Franny my Miss Venus Constellation of Stars crown, baby,” she called out over her shoulder as she hurried down the steps. Without a word, Ivy turned and went into the house. Franny followed. While Ivy rummaged through a few boxes, Franny took the opportunity to steal a look around. It was wonderfully creepy, she thought. The first floor sloped off to the right just like in the fun house at the Sherbet amusement park. In one corner, on the uphill side, was the piano. Its wheels were locked tightly in place and clung to the ancient floor for dear life, so that the piano wouldn’t roll and throw the house any more off-kilter. Crooked stairs with some of the banister missing twisted up to the second floor. On the wall halfway up the stairs was a painting of a lady with a bright pink chiffon scarf around her neck and a beehive hairdo. She wore large earrings in the shape of cherries, or strawberries—it was hard to tell in the gloomy light of the house, but clearly they were meant to be some kind of fruit. “Who’s that?” Franny asked Ivy. Popping her head out of the box for a moment, Ivy said, “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe it’s Aunt V—Aunt Viola—she’s . . . um . . . dead, but she left us this house.” “Oh?” said Franny, climbing the stairs to get a better look. A portrait of Aunt Viola, mysterious and dead, no less, was interesting. Maybe Aunt Viola was one of the zombies Franny was sure lived in the house. But as she got closer, Franny suddenly noticed something: a white envelope wedged in the corner between the painting and the frame. The name Pearl was scrawled across it in fancy handwriting. “Look what I found!” the two girls said at the same time. Ivy walked over and handed Franny the rhinestone Miss Venus crown. Franny handed Ivy the white envelope. “Wow,” said Franny. She put the beauty pageant crown on her head and looked around for a mirror. “It’s heavy!” Ivy didn’t say anything. She stood biting her lip, frowning at the envelope. She’d never known one not to contain bad news. “Aren’t you going to open it?” Franny asked. She decided that Ivy Diamond was just about the skinniest kid she’d ever seen, not to mention one of the quietest. She had nice friendly eyes, but her ears poked out through scraggly dirty blond hair, and her narrow face was an unhealthy shade of tapioca pudding. “It’s for my mom,” Ivy said, and quickly shoved it into her back pocket. A second later Pearl came bustling back into the house. “Baby, get ready for some piano lessons!” she said to Ivy. Then she ushered Franny to the door, saying, “You’re gonna have to leave now, honey. Ivy’s got a lot of practicin’ to do, doncha, baby?” Ivy stood on the porch and watched Franny make her way down the street. Franny left this first meeting greatly impressed. None of the other mothers were as sparkly as Pearl, and she’d never known a real beauty pageant winner. Franny liked Ivy, too, even if she didn’t have much to say. She thought Ivy was pretty brave to live in a house that had a picture of a dead person on the wall (no way would Pru ever do that), and Ivy didn’t seem at all stuck-up like Cat. “Hey, Ivy?” Franny waved and called to her from the street. “Can you do a cartwheel?” Ivy shook her head no and waved back. “Good!” said Franny happily. “Neither can I!” Art © Elise Primavera