6Stoop-Sale Surprise
-Del-
“Stoop-sale time!” Abuelita said when Del, Alma, and Evie arrived at the Curious Cousins Secondhand Shoppe the next day.
“What’s a stoop sale?” Alma asked. Del lit up.
“It’s when someone puts all their old stuff on the stairs outside their building—their stoop—and we all get to go look through it and buy the best things.”
“Like when we put things we don’t want anymore on the stoop?” Alma asked, thinking of books and coats and old toys they had sometimes put outside the building. The objects would always be taken by someone within an hour.
“Sort of. But more official,” Del said.
“So, like a yard sale?” Alma asked.
“Sure!” Del said.
“I love yard sales!” Alma said.
“Well then, you’ll really love stoop sales!” Del said. Del was practically jumping up and down with excitement. That was normal for Del. But she was excited to see that this time, Alma was practically jumping up and down too.
“Why do we go to stoop sales?” Evie asked. She was wearing a sundress and a hat as if she were going somewhere very fancy. Del had told her stoop sales weren’t like that, but Evie never listened.
“Good question,” Abuelita said. “We go to find special things to share with our customers, with our neighbors.”
“Magical things,” Del said.
“That’s right,” Abuelita said. “Magic is meant to be shared. It doesn’t belong to any one person. It belongs to us all. And stoop sales are the perfect place to find some hand-me-down magic.”
Today’s stoop sale was at the end of the block. There was a stoop sale somewhere nearby at least a few times a month.
“Maybe they collect pianos,” Del said. Del and Abuelita liked to play Guess What Will Be There when they went to stoop sales. It was a pretty easy game to teach Alma. And Alma was turning out to be very good at it. They walked down their tree-lined street naming possible items.
“Maybe they’re selling a bunch of tutus,” Alma said.
“Maybe there will be a unicycle,” Del said.
“Maybe they’ll have moose slippers,” Abuelita said. They passed by the little playground with three swings, one slide, and one almost-too-high set of monkey bars. Someone had turned on the sprinkler, and a few kids were running back and forth through water sprouting up from the pavement. Del figured she’d bring Alma there later. Alma would love playing in the water.
“I bet there’s a pink umbrella,” Alma said.
“A stuffed elephant.”
“A golden picnic basket.”
They walked by the buildings of Twenty-Third Avenue. Each building was brick and about the same height. But every building also had something that made it unique. A heavy brass knocker. Flower boxes with orange flowers in the windowsill. Strings of lights hung around the door. Or, in the case of Alma and Del’s building, a bright purple door.
“I bet there will be a gallon of silver paint.”
“Twenty pounds of peacock feathers.”
“A car!”
“A puppy!”
“Maybe it’s where Oscar’s hiding! Maybe we’ll find him there!”
It was fun to guess what might be there, but stoop sales were also serious business. Abuelita trusted Del to pick out the best things from the stoop sale to resell in the secondhand shop. And Del would have to teach Alma all about that responsibility. Sometimes it meant fixing broken things or painting faded things or seeing something special in something that looked boring.
Today Del was drawn to a huge jewelry box at the top of the stoop. The box itself was pretty: gold satin with little pearls sewn onto the top. But inside was even better. Bangly silver bracelets and long strands of turquoise beads. Huge mood rings and a bunch of friendship bracelets. Del picked out a necklace with a big red stone pendant and a simple gold ring that looked like the one her Dad wore. Alma had found a book of photographs of sunsets and a miniature painting of a bowl of fruit.
“Good work!” Abuelita said when they presented her with their finds. “Now you can pick out something small for yourself.”
Del needed to look very carefully through the jewelry box to find the best possible object. She lifted up a heavy gold poodle brooch and looked underneath a velvet pouch that held one single silver button.
Underneath all that was the perfect treasure. A pair of earrings. They didn’t look exactly like the earrings belonging to Tuesday’s last customer, the part-time invisible woman. But they were similar. They were gold at the top with tiny pink beads hanging from long metal chains. They made the same clinkety-clankety sound the other earrings made. And when Del held them, they made her feel the way Tuesday’s last customer had made her feel.
Del didn’t have pierced ears. She said it was because she liked her ears just fine the way they were, but really it was because Del’s mother didn’t think she was old enough. Del’s mother didn’t think Del was old enough for lots of things. Alma’s ears weren’t pierced either. Del would have to remember to ask why. It was just one more thing the cousins had in common.
And somehow, as if by magic, these earrings were clip-on earrings. The only kind Del and Alma could wear.
Del clipped them to her ears. They didn’t feel light and fake and plasticky the way most clip-on earrings did.
They were heavy and clinkety-clankety and almost certainly magical.
7Rainbow Pants and a Striped Hat
-Alma-
While Del was looking in a dusty old mirror and Abuelita was measuring a grandfather clock with Evie’s help, Alma caught sight of a boy her age across the street.
He stood out because he was wearing rainbow-colored pants and a striped hat that looked like the kind a train conductor would wear. But when Alma saw his face, she scrunched her eyebrows in concern.
When Alma’s face looked the way the boy’s face looked, it meant she was sad. And when she felt that way, it helped to talk about it. So Alma approached the boy across the street.
“What’s
