Age:
Middle School
Reading Level: 4.1
Chapter 1
Have you ever noticed that there are two kinds of secrets?
First, there’s the kind that are hard to keep. You want to tell someone because the secret is too big or maybe too scary for one person.
Then, there’s the kind that you want to hug to yourself because it makes you feel special. Like a treasure that is all yours until you decide to share it.
That kind of secret can make you smile every time you think of it.
That kind of secret… the treasure kind… is what Angela had.
Chapter 2
Angela rolled the little bottle from Adam Zimmerman’s Rewind Shop between her fingers.
She held it up to the light streaming through her bedroom window.
Closing one eye, she squinted at the little bottle.
The sunlight broke into bars of color as it passed through the glass, painting a rainbow on Angela’s bedroom wall.
The wall-rainbow was pretty, but it couldn’t compare to the first time she'd seen the bottle.
Mr. Adam Zimmerman, owner of Adam Zimmerman's Rewind Shop, had given it to her. The colors swirling inside the bottle had amazed her.
It had been three days… and nights!... since Angela’s adventure in Seattle’s Pike Place Market.
She was still having trouble believing the world of magical strangeness she had found there. Magic seemed to take over the Market at night.
And she was already planning her return.
The only thing that bothered Angela was that she hadn’t told anyone about it. Not even her best friend, Mindy.
She wasn’t sure why, but every time she was about to tell anyone, something stopped her.
The words sat on the tip of her tongue. That’s where they remained. Unspoken.
So the Market at night stayed Angela’s secret treasure. It made her smile when she thought of it.
She couldn’t wait to go back.
Chapter 3
“You wanna come over and study tonight?”
She and Mindy were sitting at a table in the school cafeteria. Mindy was poking at the salad she’d brought for lunch.
She made the invitation sound like anything but fun.
Angela frowned as she unwrapped the sandwich she’d brought for her own meal. “Study?”
“Yeah. History. You wanna?”
Angela’s frown deepened. “History.”
“We have that test. Local history. Remember?” Mindy stabbed a cherry tomato with her fork, taking out her dislike of tests on the poor vegetable.
She popped the wounded tomato into her mouth and chewed. “What’s with you, Angie? Last few days it’s like you’re on another planet or something. Anyway, Nana Ree’s gonna visit some friends, so I’ll be pretty much alone until late. Be kind of nice to have someone over.”
Angela had only been half-listening. Most of her mind had been on Pike Place Market and how she really wanted to go back. How she wanted to see if it was all still there.
The after-dark Market, that is. Not the everyday, normal Market. That Market was wonderful, of course. But it wasn't the night Market.
Mindy and her grandmother, Nana Ree, lived in one of the apartments in the Market offered to disabled senior artists in the Seattle community.
And that apartment was across the street from the shop with the neon green eye in the window.
And that was the shop that contained the entrance to the mystical, magical, marvelous nighttime Market.
And it would be so easy for Angela to tell her parents she was studying with Mindy and staying the night.
And it would be so easy to sneak out when Mindy and Nana were asleep…
And why couldn’t she just tell Mindy that?
But the words stuck on the tip of Angela’s tongue. The only words that were allowed to pass were, “Sure, Min. I kinda forgot about the test. And I really need to study. Maybe I could even spend the night?”
