The Secret of the Painted House by Marion Dane Bauer

1
The Playhouse
    E mily pushed out the screen door and let it slam behind her. She stood on the top step, gazing in every direction.
Trees! Nothing to see except trees!
Why did her parents think she would love it here?
    This place was just a few houses set in a patch of trees. Beyond the trees stretched Illinois cornfields. The nearest town, where Emily would go to school when schoolstarted, was miles away. The nearest kid must be miles away, too, except for her little brother.
    But Logan didn’t count. He was four years old. When you are nine, a four-year-old is almost a baby.
    “I’m going,” she called back over her shoulder.
    “Going where?” Her mother came to the door.
    Emily shrugged. Where was there to go?
    “I guess I’ll check out the ‘forest.’”
    That’s what Logan had called it yesterday. “Cool,” he’d said when they’d pulled up behind the moving van. “We’re going to live in a forest!”
    But “cool” was hardly the word for this bunch of trees.
    “Okay,” Mom said. She sounded a littleuncertain. “Just be careful, will you? Don’t go too far.”
    Emily sighed. At home in Chicago, Mom worried all the time. She was afraid someone might snatch Emily off the sidewalk. What was she going to worry about here … bears?
    Emily set off without looking back. She didn’t need to. She could “see” her mother in her head. Mom was hot and tired. Her dark, springy curls were pulled into a ponytail. Her T-shirt was wrinkled. Moving a whole house was hard work. Boxes waited everywhere. Last night they had to search for sheets before they could fall into their beds.
    This morning Dad had gone to his new job. Before he went, he’d told Emily, “Be sure to help your mom.” And she
was
going to help. But not just yet.
    Emily stepped off the gravel road into thetrees. The leafy branches closed around her.
    She rubbed at the goose bumps that sprang up on her arms. Should she go back? But then she thought of the piles of boxes. That kept her moving. This was just a patch of woods, after all.
    The land sloped down, so she followed the slope. At the base of the hill, a creek bubbled over a stony bed. Emily stopped at the edge of the water. Maybe she should go back. She had promised her father. And she didn’t much feel like wading.
    But then she saw stepping-stones. Flat stones crossed the creek right in front of her. She stepped onto the first one. It was solid. The next one wobbled a bit. The one after that was steady again. She made it all the way across the creek without even wetting her sneakers.
    The other side of the creek was the same. It was trees and more trees. Why cross the creek to see more trees? The creek itself would be fun to play in, though. Maybe she could bring a friend to play. But she had no friends here.

    Emily was about to turn back when she glimpsed something white. What was it? Even staring hard, she couldn’t tell. White seemed an unlikely color to be part of a tree or bush. She made her way toward it.
    She didn’t know what to expect. Certainly not what she found.
    A house stood in a small clearing. It was a real house, but small. Maybe it was a child’s playhouse. A girl her size could walk right into it. A grown-up would have to duck to get in through the door. The walls were painted white. The roof, the door, and the shutters at the windows were a rich royal blue.
    The playhouse wasn’t new, though. It had been standing here for a long time. The white paint had peeled. One blue shutter hung crooked. A branch had fallen and punched a hole in the roof.
    A rusted padlock held the door shut.
    Emily tried the handle, anyway. She couldn’t help trying it, even though she could see the lock. The lock hung there, saying, “Keep out!” The playhouse said something else. It said, “I’ve been waiting for you for a long, long time. Please come in!”
    Of course, the door didn’t budge.
    Emily circled the house. She found no other way to enter. The shutters were all