Read Online Finding Fortune by Delia Ray - Free Book Online

us?”
    â€œShe won’t. She won’t even know we were here. Come on,” Hugh pleaded. “You’re the only one who can help me.”
    â€œOh, all right,” I said, scraping my sweaty hair back from my face. “I’ll try. But only if you stand out there and warn me if you hear somebody coming.”
    â€œAye, aye!” Hugh saluted me and marched over to plant himself a few feet outside the closet.
    I approached the safe and stood on my tiptoes to study the dial. Just last week my whole sixth-grade class had trooped down the street to the junior high to take a tour and practice opening lockers. I had opened mine on my very first try. But this dial was lots different from the one I had practiced on, and there was a brass lever next to it, instead of a skinny silver latch underneath.
    â€œFive … ten … sixty-two,” Hugh reminded me from the doorway.
    I reached up, grasped the knob, and spun it around three times.
    â€œAren’t you going to blow on your fingers first?” Hugh asked.
    â€œShush. Let me concentrate.”
    â€œSorry. That’s what I saw a guy do in a movie once and it worked for him.”
    â€œFive,” I breathed. “Ten … sixty-two…” I bit down on my lip as I gripped the lever and tried twisting it left, then right. It wouldn’t budge.
    Hugh had stepped back inside the closet. “Try again,” he said.
    I let my arms dangle helplessly at my sides. “This is silly. It’s not going to work.”
    â€œPleeeease,” he begged. “Just once more, and then we’ll leave, I promise.”
    â€œOne more try,” I said. “And that’s it!”
    This time I wasn’t even pretending to be precise as I spun the dial clockwise and counterclockwise and back again, so I was shocked when I grabbed the lever and it turned with a satisfying click.
    Hugh wedged in beside me as I pulled the door open. “You did it!” he cried. I grasped the inside edge of the safe and stretched as tall as I could, straining to see all the way to the back of the steel compartment.
    â€œWell?” Hugh demanded. “What’s in there?”
    â€œNothing,” I said. “It’s empty.”
    â€œNo way.” He pushed in front of me. “Lift me up.”
    This was getting ridiculous. I had never met such a stubborn kid. I grabbed Hugh under his armpits and with a loud grunt hoisted him high enough to peer inside. He reached his arm into the safe and snatched at something.
    â€œI told you!” Hugh crowed as I bumped him back onto the floor. He whirled around, waving an envelope in my face. “I told you it wasn’t empty.”
    I don’t know what I’d been expecting—a bag full of jewels maybe or a few stacks of hundred-dollar bills—but definitely something more than an old letter. Hugh examined the front of the envelope. “Here,” he said, thrusting it toward me. “I’m not very good at reading other people’s writing.”
    â€œLet’s go out to the office where we can see better,” I said.
    Hugh watched my every move as I hurried to the window and held the envelope up to the sunlight. There were some foreign-looking stamps on the front, but no return address. “It’s written to Miss Hildy Larson. Care of Mr. Jonathan Bonnycastle at the Fortune Consolidated School,” I told Hugh, starting to catch a tingle of his excitement. “Hey, that’s the teacher Hildy was telling me about.” Fortunately the seal on the envelope had already been broken. I carefully opened the flap and pulled out a folded piece of tissue-thin paper. The handwriting inside was small and precise, penned in blue ink.
    I glanced down at the signature at the bottom of the page. Tom . “It’s from Hildy’s brother,” I said breathlessly. “She was talking about him this morning too.”
    Hugh gave an impatient