Wilhelmina and the Watuisi Wig Factory Excerpt

Book 1 in the Willy and Tommy Series

Prologue

The three co-conspirators sat in the Victorian parlor on the third floor of the old brick building at the end of Walnut Alley. The youngest member of the group was named Athena and while she looked like a young girl of about twelve, she would have been well past one hundred years old, were she still alive. She exclaimed, “I’m so relieved that we’ve finally found a member of our family who can help us! When is she due to arrive?”

Her Grandmother Bella, who strangely looked to be only in her mid-thirties answered, “Patience Athena. I’ve only just arranged for her father to be offered the job in Watusi. Now we have to wait and hope he accepts it.”

Aurelia, the third member of the party, looked like another twelve-year-old. Oddly, she was also Athena’s Mother. She added, “I hope he does. It’s not like we can’t enlist the help of Tomasina Andretti. It’s just that this plan really should involve one of our own.”

Athena sighed, “My poor Georgie. Who would have thought that she would have closed the factory down when I died? I only wish she’d had a daughter to pass things on to.”

Aurelia contributed, “That would have been ideal but it wasn’t meant to be. Now all we can do is wait. But with a little luck on our side, Wilhelmina Snodgrass will be here soon, and with her comes the future of ‘The Watusi Wig Factory.’

Bella agreed, “Yes, we’ll wait for a bit, but if things don’t work out with Wilhelmina we’ll have to come up with a different plan fast. I just learned that there’s another reason this factory has to reopen by the end of the summer. Someone very important will need our help.”

Aurelia stood up and walked over to the tea cart. She refilled her cup before saying, “We had better get in touch with our other helper then. Is everything set?”

Her daughter Aurelia answered, “Yes. He’s got everything under control. He’s just waiting to hear from us.”

Bella smiled at her daughter and granddaughter. “What a life we’ve had, girls!”

Smiling, Aurelia added, “Not to mention, what an afterlife…”

With those words, the three family members sat down and finalized their plan.

Willy

Wilhelmina Snodgrass has red hair she hates, freckles she loathes, and with a name like Wilhelmina Snodgrass, why not just paint a target on her forehead and back and be done with it? Willy, as her friends call her, just moved to Watusi, Texas with her Mom, Dad, and little brother, Wendell. The first eleven-and-a-half years of her life were spent in a small farming town in central Illinois where the Snodgrass family was well known and well-liked, so much so that no one in Mason even thought Snodgrass was a funny name anymore. Willie’s Dad worked for the John Deere tractor company in Mason, but curse her luck, he got a promotion that moved them all to Texas. Did anyone ask Willy if she wanted to move? Nooooo. Did anyone think how hard it was going to be to make new friends in the summer time? Nooooo. It was like her vote didn’t count for anything. So much for democracy, she fumed.

Willy was sitting on the stoop in front of her new house sad, rejected, and madder than a wet hornet. The more she thought of it all, the madder she got. Wendell was already making new friends with a couple of boys down the street. But you know how boys are; they are not in the least discriminating with their taste in friends. Boys will play with anything having two hands, two feet, and a head, and in the case of Robbie Jakes back in Mason, one hand. To this day, Wendell won’t even think of playing with fireworks. Such is the effect that Robbie’s misadventure had on him.

Willy sat on the stoop watching the movers unload the truck with a feeling of dread. Why did they have to move? Her life in Mason was just perfect. She had two best friends, Betsy and Nettie. She had a great bedroom and she was a shoo-in for the summer swim team. She had been practicing her backstroke for the past six months at the high school swimming pool and was better than any of the freshman, and here she was just going into the seventh grade.

Was there a worse time to move than the seventh grade? If there was, Willy couldn’t imagine it. In Mason, the seventh and eighth grades were in their own building. Willy couldn’t wait to go to the Junior High, directly across the street from the high school. But here in Watusi, the sixth, seventh and eighth grades shared a building. Being new, she was sure everyone would think she was a sixth grader. Red hair, freckles, unfortunately named, and mistaken for a sixth grader? Life couldn’t possibly be any worse!

Emma Jean Snodgrass watched her daughter mope on the front stoop. She was quite sympathetic to her. A move was hard at any age, but eleven she thought, was a particularly difficult time in a girl’s life. Not quite a child and not quite a teen, those tween years were a killer. She remembered all too well. Maybe she would take Willy to the mall and get her some new play clothes for the summer. That ought to cheer her up. When Emma Jean suggested shopping for them to Willy, she responded with “Geez Mom, I’m almost twelve. We don’t call them play clothes anymore.”

“Okay hon, let me rephrase. Would you like to go shopping with your thoroughly ignorant, un-hip Mom and buy some cool new summer threads?”

Willy rolled her eyes, “Sure, why not. It’s not like I have any friends to hang out with.” So off they went, Mother and daughter on an expedition to make life better through shopping. The movers continued to move and John Snodgrass, Willy’s Dad, continued to direct the action. Wendell ran around the yard with his new friends screaming like a herd of banshees. Life in Watusi, Texas was now a reality.

On the drive through town, Willy realized two things. First off, Watusi wasn’t that different from Mason. Both towns were pretty small, under three thousand people. Both towns had a bunch of churches, a park with a swimming pool, and the roads on both main streets were made of brick, from back in the horse and buggy days. Just as she was starting to feel a little at home, Willy realized the second thing. As familiar as the town looked, she didn’t know a soul in it. It was like an episode of that old show on cable that her parents loved, “The Twilight Zone” everything the same, but totally different. “Doo doo doo doo,” she heard the show’s theme song running through her head and she imagined a funny man in a dark suit walking out from behind a building saying, “You have now entered the Twilight Zone.”

Willy’s Mom parked their station wagon on the street right in front of a store called ‘The Glad Bag.’ The store looked pretty cool with a collection of low slung jeans in the window, belly shirts, and lots of fun jewelry. Willy started to think the outing wasn’t going to be so bad. When they walked in, a blast of cold air hit them and ever so slightly cooled her bad mood. A radically dressed teenager introduced herself as Charlene and told them that if they needed any direction with sizes and the like that she would be happy to help. Just when they started toward a rack of denim, Charlene looked Willy up and down and said, “Hey Red, that is some of the coolest looking hair I’ve ever seen. That your real color or do you rinse it in henna?”

Shocked and pleased by the attention, Willy fibbed, “It’s a henna rinse. I’m really a blonde.” Emma Jean looked at her daughter like she had grown a second head, but kept quiet and watched as her tween and this wild teenager continued their dialogue.

“No way, that is soooo cool! I love to do stuff with my hair. I just dyed my sister’s hair blue with blueberry Jello and it’s totally radical. Tommy’s about your age. What are you, twelve?”

Willy answered, “I’ll be twelve in October. I’m going into the seventh-grade in September.”

Charlene brightened and said, “Then you must know Tommy. She’s going to be in the seventh grade too.”

“Well,” Willy explained, “we just moved here from Illinois, so I don’t actually know anybody yet.”

Charlene started to refold some sweaters and said, “Listen Red, you gotta meet Tommy then. She is one of the hippest kids in the junior high. She knows all the ins and outs and she’ll give you the scoop on the Watusi social scene. Where do you live, anyway?”

Willy looked at her Mom and answered, “We live on Mongoose Road, but I don’t remember the house number.”

Emma Jean cut in, “We live at number 231. It’s the two story white farm house with the wrap-around porch.”

Charlene interrupted with a, “NO WAY..... We live at 238 Mongoose! Oh well, that just settles it. I’m gonna have Tommy come over this afternoon to introduce herself. You guys’ll hit it off like crazy.”

All of a sudden, Willy felt like there might be hope for her in Watusi, Texas. She and her Mom spent the next 45 minutes shopping for summer clothes. In the end she took home a new hot pink bikini, two pairs of cropped pants, a belly shirt, and even a fake bellybutton ring. It was the bellybutton ring that made her realize that her Mom felt bad for her about the move. If they still lived in Mason, there was no way she would have approved that purchase.

Wilhelmina Rhonda Snodgrass started to think that there may, just may, be a light at the end of the tunnel.