The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place Read online

  ATHENEUM BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, New York 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2004 by E. L. Konigsburg

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  Book design by O’Lanso Gabbidon

  The text for this book is set in Bembo.

  Printed in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Konigsburg, E. L.

  The outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place / E. L. Konigsburg.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Upon leaving an oppressive summer camp, twelve-year-old Margaret Rose Kane spearheads a campaign to preserve three unique towers her great-uncles have been building in their backyard for more than forty years.

  ISBN 0-689-86636-4

  [1. Social action—Fiction. 2. Individuality—Fiction. 3. Uncles—Fiction. 4. Hungarian Americans—Fiction. 5. Camp—Fiction.]

  I. Title: Outcasts of nineteen Schuyler Place. II. Title.

  PZ7 .K8352Ou 2004

  [Fic]—dc21 2003008067

  eISBN-13: 978-1-44243-971-9

  The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place

  Also by E. L. Konigsburg

  Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth

  From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

  Altogether, One at a Time

  A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver

  The Dragon in the Ghetto Caper

  The Second Mrs. Giaconda

  Father’s Arcane Daughter

  Throwing Shadows

  Journey to an 800 Number

  Up From Jericho Tel

  Samuel Todd’s Book of Great Colors

  Samuel Todd’s Book of Great Inventions

  Amy Elizabeth Explores Bloomingdale’s

  T-Backs, T-Shirts, COAT, and Suit

  TalkTalk

  The View From Saturday

  Silent to the Bone

  The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place

  This book is for David and for Jean,

  who cheered its conception but sadly left it an orphan

  before birth.

  Contents

  Part I: Bartleby at Talequa

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Part II: Inside the Crypto-Cabin

  Chapter Eight

  Part III: The Towers and the Town

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Part IV: Perfidy in Epiphany

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Part V: Nine Points

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Part VI: Back Inside the Crypto-Cabin

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Part VII: Phase One, Part B, and Phases Two and Three

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Part VIII: Beyond Phase Three

  Chapter Thirty

  Bartleby at Talequa

  The year that I was twelve:

  Sally Ride became the first American woman in space

  and

  El Niño, a warming of the ocean water off the coast of Peru, affected weather worldwide and caused disasters on almost every continent on planet Earth. At El Niño’s peak the day was 0.2 milliseconds longer because the angle of Earth shifted

  and

  President Ronald Reagan signed legislation declaring that Martin Luther King Jr. had been born on the third Monday of every January, and henceforth the day(s) of his birth would be a legal holiday in our nation

  and

  AT&T, the giant telephone company called Ma Bell, broke up and gave birth to several independent low-cost long-distance communications companies

  and

  The Federal Communications Commission authorized Motorola to begin testing cellular phone services in Chicago

  and

  Cabbage Patch dolls were selling so fast, merchants couldn’t keep them on the shelves.

  All of that is history now. And, fortunately, so is the story I am about to tell. It begins when Uncle Alex retrieved me from summer camp.

  one

  Uncle Alex was sweating when he arrived at Camp Talequa. No wonder. The Greyhound bus had left him off at the point where the camp road meets the highway, and it was all uphill from there. The camp road was not paved but laid with rough gravel. It was July, and it had not rained for three weeks. Uncle walked those three dusty miles wearing wing-tip, leather-soled oxfords; a long-sleeved, buttoned-up shirt; suit jacket; necktie; and a Borsalino hat. Tartufo, his dog, walked at his side. He had bought his hat, his shoes, and his dog in Italy. His hat was tan, his shoes brown, and his dog was white with brown spots, but by the time they arrived at the office, all were gray with gravel dust.

  Not until he was standing in front of the camp office did Uncle remove his Borsalino or put a leash on Tartufo. He stood on the bottom of the three steps leading to the office door and flicked the dust from his hat and, as much as he could, from Tartufo’s paws. With his handkerchief, he wiped first his forehead and then his shoes. Having a shine on his shoes was an Old World point of pride.

  Holding his hat against his chest and Tartufo’s leash with one hand, he knocked on the office door with the other.

  Mrs. Kaplan, the camp director, called, “Who is it?” and Uncle stepped inside. He told her that he was Alexander Rose and that he had come to take Margaret home.

  For the best part of a minute, Mrs. Kaplan was speechless. At last she said, “And just who are you?”

  “I am Margaret’s uncle, Alexander Rose. Don’t you remember? We spoke on the phone last night.”

  Mrs. Kaplan had called shortly before nine. After introducing herself she had said, “We are calling, Mr. Rose, because Margaret seems to be having a bit of a problem adjusting to camp life.”

  “What have you done?” he had asked.

  “Everything,” she replied. “We have done everything we know how to do, but she is totally unresponsive. When we ask her to do something—anything—she says,‘I prefer not to.’”

  “Let me talk to her.”

  “We can’t do that, Mr. Rose. Campers are to have no contact with their caregivers until the two-week adjustment period is over. We cannot make exceptions.”

  “Then how can I possibly help?”

  “We would like your input on how we can help her want to participate. We do not like to force our campers to participate.”

  “I suggest you change your activities.”

  “We can’t do that, Mr. Rose. We cannot tailor our activities to every single child in this camp. As a matter of fact, it is the very nature
of the activities we offer that sets Talequa apart from all the other camps. We want Margaret to fit in, Mr. Rose.”

  “Let me think about this,” he said. “I’ll be in touch.”

  Uncle had thought about it and decided that the best thing he could do would be to go directly to Camp Talequa and bring me back with him.

  Staying with my uncles—Alex, who was an old bachelor, and Morris, his brother, a widower—had been one of my two first choices of “What to do with Margaret” while my parents were in Peru. The Uncles lived in an old house on Schuyler Place. I loved them, their house, and their garden.

  —them

  I loved their Old World habits. Like wearing a Borsalino hat from Italy instead of a baseball cap. Neither one of them owned a baseball cap. Or blue jeans. Or sneakers. Or a sports shirt. They never watched sports on TV and had never been to a football game, even when the home team, Clarion State University, was playing. They could speak three languages besides English. They had wine with dinner every night and ate so late that sometimes it was midnight when they finished. They served coffee with real cream and lump sugar that they dropped into the cup with a tiny pair of tongs. They had never eaten at a McDonald’s or standing up. Even in the summer when they ate in their garden, they still covered their table with a white linen cloth, served their wine in crystal goblets, and their food on china dishes. And they never hurried through dinner. If it got to be too late when they finished eating, they would leave unwashed dishes in the sink and go to bed.

  —their house

  I loved 19 Schuyler Place. It was within walking distance of Town Square, a city bus stop, the main library, and the pedestrian mall downtown. I loved sleeping over. Two years before, when I was only ten, they had allowed me to pick out the furniture for the bedroom that they told me would be mine whenever I came to visit. They took me to Sears in the Fivemile Creek Mall and let me choose. I chose a bedroom suite with only one twin bed (the room was small) in genuine French provincial style, white with gold-tone accents. When it was delivered, Uncle Morris had said, “Very distinguished,” and Uncle Alex proclaimed it, “Quite elegant.” I was so convinced that they approved of everything I did that I believed them.

  —their garden

  Their garden was unlike any other in the neighbor-hood—or the world. Like all the others nearby, theirs had started out as a long, narrow yard that stretched from the service porch in back of the house to the alley, but the resemblance stopped where it started.

  The Uncles had unevenly divided their backyard space lengthwise into two thirds and one third. They further divided the narrower, one-third section, in half, crosswise. In the narrow third closest to the house, Uncle Morris raised peppers. They grew in shapes from bell to cornucopia and in flavors from sweet to jalapeno. Their colors were red, yellow, purple, and every shade of green from lime to pine. The other half of the narrow third was planted with roses. Entirely with roses. Some were trained to grow along the iron pipe fence that separated their yard from their neighbor’s at number 17. Others grew in their own hoed crater of earth. Some blossoms were quiet and tiny as a bud; others were loud and six inches wide. There were many varieties, many sizes, but they were a symphony of a single chord, for all of them were rose colored—blooming in every shade from delicate to brazen, from blush to Pepto-Bismol.

  In the larger section, the two-thirds, wider strip, were the towers. There were three of them. They zigged and zagged along the perimeter of the fence that separated my uncles’ yard from their neighbor’s at number 21. They soared over the rooftop of their house and every other house in the neighborhood. The tallest was Tower Two, so called because it was the second one built, and it was closest to the house. Tower Three was in the slant middle.

  My uncles had been building them for the past forty-five years.

  Even though all of the towers were taller than any of the two-story houses in the neighborhood, even though they were made of steel, they did not darken the space around them. They were built of a network of ribs and struts that cast more light than shadow. Like a spiderweb, they were strong but delicate. From each of the rungs, from each section of each of the rungs, dangled thousands—thousands—of chips of glass and shards of porcelain and the inner workings of old clocks. Some of the pendants were short and hugged the horizontal ribs, while others dangled on long threads of copper. In some places, a single wire held two drops of glass, one under the other; in other places, there were three—dangling consecutively, one beneath the other. Some of the pendants were evenly spaced in groups of three or four. Some were bunched together like the sixteenth notes on a musical staff followed by a single large porcelain bob—a whole note rest. On another rung, or perhaps at a distance on the same rung, a series of evenly spaced glass drops dangled in a rainbow of colors.

  Like gypsy music (my uncles were Hungarian), the pendants hung in a rhythm that is learned but cannot be taught.

  The towers were painted. Not solemnly but astonishingly. Astoundingly. There were carnival shades of mauve and violet, ochre and rose, bright pink and orange sherbet, and all the colors were stop-and-go, mottled into a camouflage pattern. Lavender pink met lime green in the middle of a rung, or cerulean blue climbed only halfway up a vertical axis until it met aquamarine.

  On top of the tallest tower, fixed in place, were four clock faces, none of which were alike. Atop the other two towers was a single clock face on a swivel that rotated with the wind. The clock faces had no hands.

  I loved standing under the towers—choose any one, depending on the time of day—looking up and farther up, until the back of my head rested on my shoulders. I would hang there until a certain slant of light caught the pendants and made them refract an endless pattern of colors. And then, and then I would spin around and around, making myself the moving sleeve of a kaleidoscope. And when I stopped, I would look down and watch their still-spinning shadow embroider the ground.

  I had always loved spending time at 19 Schuyler Place, and I thought that my uncles loved having me. I expected them to jump at a chance to have me spend the four summer weeks that my parents would be gone. But they had not.

  My other first choice of “What to do with Margaret” had been to go with my parents to Peru. They had always taken me with them before. I had assumed they would want me along because as an only child, I had spent a great deal of time among adults, and I was an excellent traveling companion. I never required extra bathroom stops—my mother always carried empty cottage cheese containers as an emergency portable potty—never demanded special foods, and regardless of how endless the car ride was, I never asked, “Are we there yet?”

  Since I was not given either of my two first choices, the only remaining alternative was summer camp. That being the case, I decided that the choice of camp would be mine and mine alone. So it was with a bruised heart and wounded pride that I set about making my selection. I decided that I would choose such a wonderful camp and have such a wonderful time that my parents and my uncles would be sorry that they had not come, too.

  I invested many hours in making my decision. I sent away for thirty-six brochures, read them all, and sent away for thirty-two tapes, of which I watched a total of nineteen all the way through. I chose Talequa.

  After recovering from the shock of Uncle’s unannounced appearance, Mrs. Kaplan asked, “Why, Mr. Rose, did you not give us notice of your arrival?”

  “Because if I had, Mrs. Kaplan,” he replied, “you would have told me not to come.”

  That was true, but she did not have to admit or deny it. “How did you get here?” she asked.

  “I walked.”

  No one walked into Camp Talequa. Visitors arrived by car or minivan and by invitation. Mrs. Kaplan had heard that once, long before she had bought the camp, an elderly couple had arrived in a taxi, but there were no living witnesses to that story, so she placed it into the category of creation myth. But even if there really had once been a couple who had arrived in a taxi, no one had ever walked into Camp Ta
lequa. There was no rule against it because who would have dreamed that such a rule would be necessary? Actually, there were no rules at all about how to arrive, but the Talequa handbook made it clear that there were definite rules about when. One strict rule was: No visits from friends or relatives for the first two weeks of a session, which, in Mrs. Kaplan’s interpretation, made Alexander Rose a trespasser. There were other rules—rules about what you could bring with you. Alcohol and drugs were explicitly forbidden, of course, but it was just as clearly written, so were dogs. The punishment for bringing a dog was not as well defined as that for alcohol or drugs (immediate, nonrefundable expulsion), but the basic animal rule was: Dogs were not allowed in camp. Never. Paper trained, potty trained, K-9 trained: No. Even if they were trained to flush, they were not allowed. There was to be no Lassie, no Pluto, no Scooby-Doo. Never. Not as visitors. Not with visitors.

  And this man had brought a dog!

  Collecting her wits, Mrs. Kaplan presented Uncle with her best varnished smile. “We are most willing to discuss Margaret’s problem with you,” she declared, “but, Mr. Rose, we cannot permit dogs on our premises.”

  Alexander Rose knew that any smile that registered as high on the gloss meter as Mrs. Kaplan’s came from well-practiced insincerity. Uncle also knew that Mrs. Kaplan did not object to Tartufo as much as she objected to his disobeying one—no, really two—of her rules. He could have told her that Tartufo was a working dog and allowed to go where no dog had gone before. He could have asked her, Would an ordinary dog be allowed on a Greyhound? But, wisely, he didn’t tell, and he didn’t ask. Instead, he said, “Tartufo is here, Mrs. Kaplan. I’m not a magician. I cannot make him disappear.”

  With her smile lashed to her teeth, Mrs. Kaplan replied, “Then we must insist that it wait outside.”

  Uncle had learned long ago that obeying a rule in fact but not in spirit was very hard on people who say we for I and who do not allow dogs on their premises. So without hesitation, he led Tartufo to a spot just outside the front door of the office cabin. With the door open so that Mrs. Kaplan could hear, he told Tartufo to sit. Then he removed Tartufo’s leash and carried it back into the office.