Sneak Peek at Fool's Errand

Thought I would share a short excerpt from Fool's Errand, which is book TWO of the Beat Street Series. If you don't know much about it, the series focuses on a young girl named Ruby Tabeata growing up in the Beat-Generation world of 1958 in New York's Greenwich Village. 

Fool's Errand opens when Ruby realizes her best friend Sophie is missing. Ruby convinces her older brother Ray to go to Grand Central Station and search for her best friend.

Excerpt of Chapter One - 

"Under a Bridge" - Fool's Errand

...A cab stops when we’ve only gone a little ways and a lady gets out. We rush inside before the cabbie can turn around.

“What the—“

“Grand Central,” I tell him. “And step on it.”

I’ve just always wanted to say that.

But the cabbie gives me more than I bargained for. He’s weaving in and out of streets and nearly runs into three other cabs trying to get us there. I don’t even know what streets we’re on because he’s going so fast. All I can do is cringe when I hear his brakes squealing, which happens every other second. When he finally pulls up to the curb at Grand Central Station, I’m practically drenched from sweating buckets, but Ray is laughing hysterically. He pays the cabbie and I jump out, fighting the urge to kiss the ground.

“Keep the change,” Ray says, and I grab his hand and pull him towards me. I don’t want either one of us near that cab again for the rest of our lives. Ray lets me drag him into Grand Central before he drops my hand.

“Where—“

“This way,” Ray says, pointing towards the central ticket booths.

“No,” I tell him. “If they’re here, they’ll be in the waiting room.”

We walk through the station, edging closer to the benches. It looks like there are mostly single people waiting for their trains, but here and there you can spot families, with kids wailing or trying to go to sleep. A guy is feeding dog biscuits to a German shepherd and someone else is cooing to what seems like a guinea pig in a cage. For some reason, it’s not noisy even though a ton of people are here. In fact, it’s not noisy at all.

Sophie, Sophie, where are you?

“Look, Ruby!”

Ray’s voice shatters the quiet and I stop in my tracks to look at him. Wouldn’t you know it, he’s pointing upward at the ceiling.

“What are you—“

“Just look!”

Twinkly yellow stars and constellations in a turquoise sea meet my eyes.

“Zodiac,” Ray says, and for once I don’t want to tease him about being obvious, because I never learned much about stars at Blue Skies. I was hectoring Sky and Blu to take me to the Planetarium, but they never got around to it. This zodiac mural has a lot of cool stuff, like Aquarius, the water carrier; Pisces, the fish; Aries, the ram; Taurus, the bull; Gemini, the twins; and Cancer, the crab; plus constellations like Orion, the hunter.

Normally I’d stand here staring at this stuff for hours, but I’m just too worried right now. “It’s great, Ray,” I tell him, “but we’ve got to find Sophie.”

“Just for a second, Ruby,” says Ray. “See Pegasus?”

I’ve read about Pegasus in a comic they had at Blue Skies. I think he was Sophie’s favorite, because she loves horses and this one could fly. I can’t help but think of her looking up at him tonight.

“Just wanted you to see,” Ray says, and then for some reason, or no reason at all, my eye falls on a bench with a mother and daughter at the opposite end of the station room. Maybe it was Pegasus; maybe it was just taking my eye off the benches for a while; or maybe it was just the color blue they used on the zodiac that perked me up, but I felt like I could see more clearly now than I had since Sophie disappeared.

The woman had dark chin-length hair like Mrs. T and her daughter’s was only a teeny bit longer—like Sophie’s. I couldn’t tell if the girl had glasses, but it looked like she had a royal-blue sweatshirt the exact same color as my friend’s, and the back of her head—leaning on her mother’s shoulder—was exactly the same.

I ran like the wind, faster than Pegasus, with Ray right behind and then overtaking me. He practically flew at the bench, blocking my view until I grabbed at his shirt and he stopped, suddenly, his sneakers squeaking on the marble tiles of the floor.

“Soph?” I call, but when the woman looks up at me all I see are the tired eyes of a stranger. I can tell Ray is staring at me but I don’t want to look at him. If I do, I’ll have to admit something, and I don’t want to own it right now. Both of us know it anyway.

Sophie’s gone.

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