The Facts and Fictions of Minna Pratt Read online

  “What?” Lucas turns to look at her. His face is close to hers, so close that she can feel his breath on her cheek.

  “Why are we doing this?”

  Lightning flashes. The lights dim again. Lucas grins at her.

  “Because we love it,” he says simply.

  “Have we always known that?” whispers Minna.

  “Number ten,” announces Mrs. Willoughby-Fiske.

  They follow Mrs. Willoughby-Fiske out into the hall and through a dark hallway until they come to a door with a tiny window.

  “Wait here,” she says, “until I call you.”

  She opens the door and for a moment they hear the sound of music onstage. It is Haydn.

  “Too slow,” says Orson in a low voice. “At least we play to tempo.”

  Minna puts her hand in her skirt pocket and there, forgotten until now, is the envelope.

  “Hold this,” Minna whispers to Lucas, handing him her cello. “It’s a note from Emily Parmalee and McGrew. They told me to open it just before we play.”

  Carefully, Minna opens the envelope. There is a folded sheet of paper inside. She holds it up to the exit light.

  “What does it say?” asks Lucas.

  “It says . . .” She grins suddenly. “It says . . .”

  The door opens. Four silent musicians file out after Mrs. Willoughby-Fiske.

  “Come now,” she says to them.

  “It says,” repeats Minna, “the opera’s not over ’til the fat lady sings.”

  They walk onstage smiling.

  SIXTEEN

  No one has prepared Minna for the applause. The noise surrounds her as she stands and bows with the others. Imelda and Orson look startled, too. Only Lucas stands calmly in the din, smiling slightly as if he awakens each day with it. They sit to the rustlings of the audience, the coughs, the sneezes. Minna sees her mother and father, Porch just in front, Emily Parmalee and McGrew smiling at her. Willie and Twig are on the aisle next to Mr. and Mrs. Ellerby. McGrew points down the row of seats and Minna looks. It is Lewis, the bus driver, wearing round glasses and a suit, studying his program.

  Well, Wolfgang, well,

  See what you have done. Look who has come because of you.

  Minna finds a crack in the wooden floor for her end pin. They tune softly, Lucas stopping to turn a peg. The lights dim, then brighten. The audience quiets. Imelda lifts her bow. There is a tiny beading of sweat on her upper lip. She nods. And they begin.

  It is a bit like dying, Minna thinks, or so she’s heard. All the things she must remember, all the things she has learned pass by in her mind’s eye: the fortes, the pianissimos, the difficult bowing parts she has checked in pencil on her music, the fingering. She nearly forgets the first repeat, somehow. Lucas, next to her, looks at her and smiles because he knows it. The allegro ends, and someone in the balcony applauds and is quickly hushed by a sister, a brother, a wife. Imelda smiles. Orson tunes. Minna takes a breath. The andante. Minna waits through her measures of rests, looking out to find Porch. But she can’t see him in the dark. Minna smiles at this; places her bow on the strings. Begins. Strangely, Minna thinks about it later, the andante seems to come from her fingers for the very first time, not from her head. Her fingers stretch without her telling them to stretch. They have learned the music. They know Mozart. Some hairs come loose from Orson’s bow, and they trail like threads of silver in the light as he plays. She remembers to repeat. And then, two measures from the end of the coda, where Minna feels nearly safe, the lights go out.

  There is a gasp from the audience, a bustle from backstage, a loud noise as something falls to the floor. A flashlight. The audience murmurs become louder as they finish the last chord of the coda.

  No one says it. Not one of them asks what to do. They know. Play no matter what.

  “Ready?” asks Imelda.

  “Yes,” says Orson.

  A small light suddenly appears in the wings.

  “Yes,” says Lucas.

  “Min?”

  “Ready.”

  “Play,” says Imelda.

  They do not start together, but no one else knows. Three measures into the presto the audience quiets. Minna grins in the darkness. You can play the presto with your eyes closed, I bet. And they can. Lucas laughs once beside her, and at the last crescendo Minna thinks about the final two chords. Play them in tune. They do.

  The applause comes at the same moment, surprising them all again. The lights come on—too late or maybe not—and they rise clumsily by their chairs. And it is over. The audience is on its feet, applauding and shouting. The house lights go on and at last Minna sees Porch, standing, too.

  Lucas leans over close to Minna.

  “Was that a small vibrato at the very end of the andante?” he asks, his voice loud over the noise of the applause.

  “No!” says Minna, grinning.

  It is not until Mrs. Willoughby-Fiske barrels on stage with bouquets of red roses, her pearls swinging murderously from side to side, that they realize that they have won.

  They have, Porch tells them later, forgotten to take their final bow.

  “The end was in tune, you know,” says Minna backstage. “No one heard.”

  “I heard,” says Porch fervently, his arm around her. “I heard!”

  There is noise everywhere; platters of food and punch, and laughter. Minna’s mother and father hug her. Mrs. Ellerby holds a moist handkerchief to her eyes. Mr. Ellerby kisses Lucas with a noisy kiss, causing Lucas’s eyes to widen. Imelda’s parents are there, her mother short and serious, her father with red hair. Everything they say seems important. Orson’s parents come with his younger brothers, four smaller Orsons. One brother eats up the entire contents of a dish of chocolate truffles. Lewis waves at Minna. Emily Parmalee’s sequins drop everywhere, like rice after a wedding.

  “You didn’t get your vibrato, did you?”

  Minna turns.

  “No,” she says, smiling at McGrew.

  “I didn’t think so,” says McGrew, matter-of-factly.

  “McGrew?”

  “What?”

  “The note helped.”

  “I know,” sings McGrew.

  Lucas beckons to Minna and they walk out of the noise into the quiet hallway, where, tucked into the instrument cases and coats and umbrellas, Willie and Twig stand with their arms around each other.

  “. . . and in the evening,” says Willie, “when Mama is asleep and the stars are out, I go out in the cornfield to play. The corn stalks are like an audience of music lovers, like the people on the street of the city. I can almost see the music winding down the rows, from stalk to stalk. Will you come with me? As soon as we have the money?”

  “Yes,” says Twig, reaching up to touch his hair. “As soon as we have the money.”

  Minna and Lucas stand there, not daring to move, as Willie and Twig kiss. They kiss for so long that finally, with a sigh, Lucas takes Minna by the hand and they leave.

  Hidden behind the stage curtain, Minna takes out the envelope that Mrs. Willoughby-Fiske has given her. A one hundred dollar bill is tucked neatly inside.

  “Tomorrow?” Minna says to Lucas.

  Lucas nods.

  “You’ll have to do it,” says Minna, handing him the envelope. “He always gives me back the money.”

  “I’ll do it,” says Lucas. He takes his money out and adds it to Minna’s. “For Twig,” he says. “Now they can both go.”

  They walk into the hallway again, where everyone is leaving.

  “Good-bye, luv,” says Minna’s mother to Mrs. Ellerby.

  “Good-bye, luv,” echoes Mrs. Ellerby, startling herself.

  “Call if you get a vibrato,” whispers Lucas to Minna.

  The house is still when Minna wakes in the night. But it is not dark. Moonlight streams in the window. It falls across her bed and onto the rug, and touches the mirror on the wall. For a while Minna watches it. Then, suddenly, she leans over the edge of the bed to touch her cello, lying by he
r bed like a sleep-over guest. She plucks a string. Slowly she sits up, sliding out from under the covers. She picks up her cello and bow and pulls a wooden chair over into her closet. She adjusts her end pin and tightens her bow. She pulls the light cord so that the light goes on above her. She begins to play, very softly at first, then a bit louder. Minna smiles at the new rich sound. She turns to watch her hand, vibrating on the strings. Finally, after a while, she stops, sitting silently in the lighted closet. She reaches up and turns off the light. She lays the cello by the bed again, the bow across it, and slips back under the covers. For a moment she doesn’t move. She lies there staring in the moonlight. She looks at the clock on her night table. Twelve thirty. She hesitates, then picks up the phone and dials.

  On the first ring a phone is lifted.

  “Congratulations,” says Lucas.

  About the Author

  Photo by John MacLachlan

  PATRICIA MACLACHLAN is the celebrated author of many timeless books for young readers, including Sarah, Plain and Tall, winner of the Newbery Medal. Her novels for young readers include Arthur, For the Very First Time; The Facts and Fictions of Minna Pratt; Skylark; Caleb’s Story; More Perfect Than the Moon; Grandfather’s Dance; Word After Word After Word; and Kindred Souls. She is also the author of many much-loved picture books, including Three Names; All the Places to Love; What You Know First; Painting the Wind; Bittle; Who Loves Me?; Once I Ate a Pie; I Didn’t Do It; Before You Came; and Cat Talk—several of which she cowrote with her daughter, Emily. She lives with her husband and two border terriers in Williamsburg, Massachusetts.

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  Other Books by Patricia MacLachlan

  Sarah, Plain and Tall

  Skylark

  Caleb’s Story

  More Perfect Than the Moon

  Grandfather’s Dance

  Arthur, For the Very First Time

  Through Grandpa’s Eyes

  Cassie Binegar

  Seven Kisses in a Row

  Unclaimed Treasures

  The Facts and Fictions of Minna Pratt

  Word After Word After Word

  Kindred Souls

  Mama One, Mama Two

  All the Places to Love

  What You Know First

  Three Names

  WRITTEN WITH

  EMILY MACLACHLAN CHAREST

  Painting the Wind

  Bittle

  Who Loves Me?

  Once I Ate a Pie

  Fiona Loves the Night

  I Didn’t Do It

  Before You Came

  Cat Talk

  Credits

  Cover art © 2002 by Barbara McGlynn

  Cover design by Andrea Simkowski

  Cover © 2002 by HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

  Copyright

  THE FACTS AND FICTIONS OF MINNA PRATT. Copyright © 2013 by Patricia MacLachlan. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  * * *

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  MacLachlan, Patricia.

  The facts and fictions of Minna Pratt.

  p. cm.

  “A Charlotte Zolotow book.”

  Summary: An eleven-year-old cellist learns about life from her eccentric family, her first boyfriend, and Mozart.

  ISBN 0-06-024117-9 (lib. bdg.) — ISBN 0-06-440265-7 (pbk.)

  EPub Edition March 2013 ISBN 9780062285737

  [1. Musicians—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.M2225Fac 1988

  85-45388

  [Fic]

  CIP

  AC

  * * *

  12 13 LP/BR 20 19 18 17 16 15

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