Making It Home

DO YOU KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS?

It’s the turn of the twentieth century, and change is in the air—and over land and on the seas. Railroad tracks are being laid across countries like never before, and steam locomotives are taking people farther than they ever imagined. Steamships are replacing all the old sailing ships, and ocean travel is faster and more common now. You could say the modern world is chugging (or sailing) along at a brisk speed.

Still, life is lousy in a lot of countries. In Europe, there is religious and cultural persecution. Jobs and food are hard to find.

Around this time, millions of people had the same idea—if all these new steam engines and ships are taking people around the world, maybe it’s time I do it too. In fact, close to twenty million people had that idea and immigrated to America between 1880 and 1920. Do you have any idea how many people that is? If all those people joined hands and lined up, they would cross the United States three times! How’s that for a stretch of the imagination?

The busiest port of entry for these millions of immigrants was New York and their first stop was Ellis Island. It was the processing center where everyone was registered, examined and inspected. Authorities used the process to decide which immigrants would be allowed to stay and make America their home.

For a lot of people, that new home was New York City. It was just across the river from Ellis Island, offered plenty of jobs for people who didn’t speak English, and was full of other immigrants who could help the newcomers. Sounds perfect, right?

Wrong. Most immigrants had to live in cheap housing on the Lower East Side, and at the turn of the century, it was the most crowded neighborhood in the world. Cheap housing meant tenements. They were old houses that had been divided into smaller, apartment-like homes for tenants. Put the words tenant and apartment together and you’ll see it wasn’t a leap of genius to come up with the word tenement. It certainly rolls off the tongue easier than house subdivisions.

Tenements that had been made to fit two families were packed with five times that many now. All those people had to eat, sleep, work, and live in just a couple rooms.

Even though living conditions were often horrible, many immigrants were dedicated to the idea that America was the land of possibility. They thought anyone could be successful if they worked hard, and they didn’t let crowded tenement life crush that belief.

PART ONE

Max unlocks the past by mistake, and the children end up in 1892

ONE

THE KEY TO ALL OF IT

There were plenty of popular places to go in town, but Wallingford Antiques & Heirlooms was never, and probably never would be, one of them. Even Prints Charming, the photocopy center that closed years ago, still had more people peeking through its dark windows. Most people figured there was nothing sold, said or done inside the antique store that could be of any interest to anyone under the age of one hundred (or someone younger who might enjoy watching dust settle).

The store wasn’t going to win any award for pushing the boundaries of New England architecture either. It looked like every other old building in the area—quaint in a run-down way, shingled, and in need of more parking. That last detail was the result of being a carriage house two hundred years ago. Whoever built it had no way to know the future was in cars and not hitching posts for horses.

Inside, relics from around the world hung from and overflowed every inch of floor and wall space. A heavy smell—some combination of furniture polish, mothballs, and musty leather—kept everyone but the most serious antique collectors away.

It didn’t matter how uninteresting or unmemorable the rest of Connecticut found it. The store was like a second home to fourteen-year-old Peregrine Gaspar. It was there, upstairs in the office, she curled up to read on a nineteenth-century fainting sofa that was in desperate need of reupholstering.

Of course, Peri (as she was called) hadn’t always loved it. In fact, when she first saw her grandfather’s store two years ago, she was like everyone else in town and thought it was creepy and dull. It took a while for Peri to gain an appreciation for all the strange stuff that had been acquired over the years. By the time her dad took over the store, Peri decided even antiques deserved a place in the world. She liked the idea that everything in the shop had a story somewhere in its past.

It was safe to say her new stepbrothers didn’t feel the same way. Sure, twelve-year-old Henry and nine-year-old Max Hawkins came to the store after school every day, but only because they had no choice. While Henry sat in the back of the store doing his homework or working on his scout badges, Max tried to look busy so he wouldn’t be asked to sweep the store.

From the usual scowl on Henry’s face, Peri knew he believed there was a very, very fine line between an antique store and a garage sale. And by the way Max’s moped around sometimes, spending a few hours at the store was about as exciting as watching tree rings form.

On this particular afternoon, Peri was nestled on her sofa reading when she noticed that there was no sound coming from downstairs. Her first thought was her stepbrothers had finally locked themselves inside the Early American grandfather clock or fallen through one of the old wooden floorboards. She finally decided to check on them…less to rescue them and more to avoid being blamed for some mishap of theirs later.

Halfway down the creaky stairs, Peri peeked over the railing to find Henry assembling his first aid kit. It was going in a metal lock box he’d found in the shop. Beside him sat Max, rubbing his itchy eyes and playing with a bunch of old skeleton keys. He was trying each of them in the lock on Henry’s box.

None of those are going to fit, Henry told him. I bet they’re a hundred years old. Look how rusty some of them are.

It was at that moment Peri saw the mistake she had made. The gigantic, irreversible mistake. On the table beside the boys was Roger’s Encyclopedia of Antiques and Extraordinary Curiosities. It was a thick, heavy book of photographs and details of every antique imaginable. Peri cringed. She had forgotten to put it away.

Her grandfather had locked it away in a mid-century teak credenza before he left for an extensive picking expedition. It was an invaluable and influential source of information that needed to be protected, he said. It didn’t take long for Peri to pick the lock and find the encyclopedia. Influential didn’t even begin to describe it though.

Max took a closer look at the keys. What do you think they go to?

Henry shrugged as he rolled up a gauze bandage. Probably nothing anymore.

Max nodded his head while he sneezed. Just as he was about to set the keys down, Peri yelled over at him.

Whatever you do, she said, "don’t put it on Roger’s Encyclo—"

Which was exactly what Max did. Which is when it happened.

TWO

WHAT HAPPENED BEFORE IT HAPPENED

In the long and growing list of things weighing on Henry’s mind (including the upcoming test for his scout badge, having to recite a poem in front of his class next week, and losing his backpack again), Peri kept bubbling up to the top of it.

That’s because she appeared one day and Henry’s normal life came crashing down, just like the time he rode his skateboard down a sidewalk in Wallingford, not realizing there were stairs at the end. Their parents got married, and overnight Peri became the oldest child in the family. Henry was demoted to middle child, squished between the top (Peri) and bottom (Max) for the rest of his life. If Peri and Max were the bread in a sandwich, Henry was the leftover meat shoved inside. He wasn’t important anymore.

He would have gone on thinking about how complicated his life had become if Max didn’t interrupt his thoughts now.

Sometimes I wish we never moved here, Max blurted out. So we wouldn’t have to come here every day after school. It smells like a vacuum bag. His runny nose made everything he said sound like he was in another room with a pillow covering his face.

No such luck, Henry thought. Instead, his brother insisted on sitting right beside him. And sitting next to Max at the antique store was like being near a gurgling brook and a dog with fleas.

It was the dust in the shop, their mom said. Max was a little allergic to it. A little as in it made his eyes itch, his nose drip like their bathroom faucet, and his throat sound hoarse.

It wouldn’t be this way if Mom hadn’t gotten married again, Max added.

Yes! Henry wanted to scream, but he generally preferred not to agree with his little brother so eagerly.

So Henry only nodded instead. Having their mom remarry and move them to a new town was not high on his Best Things to Happen This Year list. In fact, it was somewhere between getting underwear for Christmas and having the stomach flu on his birthday.

Out of the corner of his eye, Henry suddenly noticed someone walk in the room. Peri got out of school later, so she was always the last one to get to the store. But now here she was, hearing things she probably didn’t want to hear.

Oh…hey, Henry stammered. Max only meant… He tried to think of something else to say, but no words came out.

That’s okay, Peri said.

Henry couldn’t tell if she was uninterested or bothered right now. She didn’t seem too surprised by what she’d just heard. Maybe she didn’t like they way things were around here either.

But there was a good chance she didn’t notice any of it, Henry thought. Sometimes, it was hard to tell if she was even paying attention. Her nose was always in a book and she ended up reading upstairs on that old sofa. There were some days Henry didn’t even see her until her dad came into the back to close up the store for the day.

Then again, there was that goofy way she looked at him and Max sometimes. It was like she was looking at two little broken antiques that needed someone to patch them up and take care of them. It was incredibly annoying. She acted like the role of big sister was some big deal, like it was up to her to help them with the ways of the world.

Moving to a new place is hard, Peri said now. It was for me too.

Seriously? was all Henry managed to say in his surprise. Since when did she understand how hard moving was?

After my mom died and my dad and I moved here to be with my grandfather, I was sure it would never feel like home.

An awkward silence settled on the room. Finally Peri turned away and started up the stairs. Well, I’ll be up in the office reading.

For your information, Henry called out to her suddenly, I don’t really need a babysitter. I’m almost old enough to be left alone.

I know. She turned around to answer.

When I’m at my dad’s house, I practically take care of myself.

It’s more that I’m here anyway, so if there is some emergency, I can take care of it.