The One Hundredth Thing About Caroline

trouble compiling information and was starting to use stealthier methods than simple conversations. But she said that was a challenge, and investigative reporters welcomed challenges.

Caroline understood that, because there would be a lot of challenges in dinosaur work as well.

On Caroline's calendar, she had written, finally, IMM. Investigate Mystery Man. She wasn't at all sure how she would go about that; sometimes she passed him on the stairs, hurrying up to his fifth-floor apartment, and sometimes he would nod at her, bobbing his head up and down in an awkward way. But he never spoke to her. Maybe tomorrow she could start a conversation about whether the hall light bulbs needed changing, and then she could casually ask him about his past, his future, his hopes, his dreams, his fears.

Caroline set her calendar on the table beside her bed. She stood by the window and looked down into the back yard behind their building. It wasn't much of a back yard, really; it was simply a small fenced area surrounded by other buildings, and now, at night, lights from the downstairs apartments cast illuminated rectangles across the bare earth and the straggly bushes that were trying hard to acknowledge April by growing a green leaf here and there.

Someone once, long ago, had tried to create a real yard, and had planted the few bushes and set out some wrought-iron chairs. But now most of the bushes had died and the others had grown out of control; the chairs had been tipped over and never righted again. A workman had once left behind a paper bag filled with lunch; cats had come in over the fence and eaten the sandwich, but the remains of the forgotten lunch were still there: the faded bag, torn waxed paper, and a rusty thermos on its side.

Caroline sighed. It wasn't a yard that would ever be photographed for Apartment Life magazine. But there were hints there of other people's lives, lives that had moved on someplace else. She wondered if deep down, under the scruffy yard, under the tunnels of the New York subway system, which rumbled beneath the streets and buildings and yards, under the sewers and the buried electrical lines, there might be bones and fossils, hints of the life that had existed long ago in time.

She took off her clothes, dropped them on the floor—tomorrow was laundry day, after all—and put on her pajamas. She thought about brushing her teeth, but going to the bathroom meant walking through the living room of the apartment, and that meant walking past Beastly, who had eaten the eggplant without complaint and was now watching TV. She decided to brush her teeth twice in the morning to make up for skipping tonight.

Caroline got her stuffed Stegosaurus down from her closet shelf. She was careful never to let anyone— particularly her brother—know that she still slept with a stuffed animal. Not even Stacy Baurichter, Investigative Reporter, knew that.

Not that it was just any stuffed animal. Stegosaurus was Caroline's favorite of all the dinosaurs. She felt sorry for him, because he was ugly and dumb. Scientists like Caroline knew that, although the Stegosaurus had weighed two tons, his teeny brain was no bigger than a golf ball. And even though he had had a hundred teeth, they weren't very sharp ones, so he hadn't been able to eat other animals. He was just a clumsy and gentle plant-eater.

But, thought Caroline, as she curled up with her arms around her Stegosaurus to go to sleep, even though he was a plant-eater with a two-ounce brain, he was probably smart enough to hate eggplant.

2

'Don't put this blue blouse in with the white things, Caroline.'

'Mother, for heaven's sake. I'm the laundry expert, remember? Of course I won't put the blue blouse in with the white things. Here, give it to me. It goes in this pile, with the jeans.'

Joanna Tate chuckled. 'That's the thirty-eighth thing I love about you, Caroline,' she said. 'Your laundry expertise.'

'You're positive it isn't the thirty-seventh?'

'Nope. Thirty-seventh is your perpetual ability to wake up cheerful on Saturday mornings. Very few people have that ability.'

'I love Saturdays,' said Caroline. 'There's so much stuff to do.'

Together they sorted the dirty clothes, put them into pillowcases, and loaded them into the wheeled shopping cart. Caroline thumped it down the stairs of their building—sometimes she wished they had an elevator, the way Stacy's building did—and stopped on the first floor to check the mail.

Most eleven-year-old people didn't get mail very often. But Caroline did, because she always sent away for free catalogues. Then her name was on mailing lists: Ms. C. Tate. There was always mail for Ms. C. Tate.

In addition, of course, her membership in the Museum of Natural History brought mail. Today there was a notice about a lecture on spiders; she saved that, even though she wouldn't be able to go because it was a school night. But she would write a note to the lecturer, Dr. Morton Schultz from the University of New Mexico, telling him that she was sorry she couldn't make it. She was moderately interested in spiders. Caroline had a subscription to the National Geographic, which her father renewed every year as a Christmas gift, and she always read the articles about spiders, bees, and ants. Mountain-climbing expeditions didn't interest her much, because she didn't like being cold; and sailboat trips around the world didn't interest her much, because she didn't like being wet. But there was almost always an article about insects or archaeological projects. So she was able every year to write an honest and enthusiastic thank-you note to her father, in Des Moines, for the National Geographic.

Her father didn't interest Caroline much, because he had moved to Des Moines when she was two years old and never wrote her any letters. She went to visit him now and then, and she liked his wife okay, but they made her baby-sit with their little boy. If Caroline wanted to baby-sit, she didn't need to go all the way to Des Moines.

Also in the mail for Ms. C. Tate was a catalogue from Publishers Central Bureau, which she would read later. Reading the descriptions of books was always interesting, even though she never had the money to buy any.

And there was something telling her 'Congratulations C. Tate you may have won the Reader's Digest Sweepstakes.' When she was younger, she used to believe that. Now she just tossed it into the wastebasket by the mail slot. Some of the other people in the building had already picked up their mail, apparently, because there were two other Reader's Digest letters in the wastebasket.

Caroline leaned over and looked at the wastebasket more closely. It could be a good source for investigative reporting. Stacy spent a lot of time in the basement of her building, wearing rubber gloves so that she wouldn't leave fingerprints, going through the trash.

Sure enough, there were two crumpled pieces of mail addressed to Frederick Fiske.

She left her mother's mail—all bills, addressed to Ms. J. Tate—on the hall table. But she stuffed Frederick Fiske's two letters into a pocket of her jeans. Frederick Fiske was the Mystery Man who lived on the fifth floor.

Caroline thumped the laundry down the front steps and out to the sidewalk. Billy DeVito was playing on the sidewalk with two stones and a piece of string. Billy DeVito was five and lived on the first floor.

'Hi, Billy. How's it going?'

Billy wrinkled his nose and thought for a minute. Caroline liked Billy because he always took things very seriously, even things like 'How's it going?'

'Good,' he said, finally. 'I got me this string. It busted last night when it was playing 'Lady of Spain.''

Most people wouldn't have understood what Billy DeVito was talking about. But Caroline did, because she knew a lot about the DeVito family. Investigating them had been easy; Mrs. DeVito liked to talk. Her husband played the violin in a Hungarian restaurant. He gave his broken violin strings to Billy.

Mr. DeVito's violin had cost four thousand dollars, and they had insurance on it. Mrs. DeVito had told Caroline once that she wished her husband's violin would be stolen; then the insurance company would pay them four thousand dollars, and they could buy a new living room set, and Mr. DeVito could get a job in the post office or something, like a normal person.

She didn't really mean that, though. She liked it that Billy's father played the violin in the Little Hungary Cafe. Some nights he brought home leftover food and they would light candles and pretend they were eating in a restaurant themselves, and he would play 'Night and Day' on his violin, just for her. Someone who worked in the post office could never do that for his wife.

Caroline walked on down to the Laundromat on the corner. She loaded three machines, added detergent, put