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should let you know he’ll be here on Saturday.”
    Batty almost fell out the window with excitement. “When? When on Saturday?”
    But Skye had already turned away, dribbling the ball back into the game.
    Well, Saturday was good enough, no matter whattime he arrived. Jeffrey! Jeffrey, Jeffrey, Jeffrey! A teenager, yes, but one of the few outside Batty’s family that she was always delighted to see. Indeed, he wasn’t truly outside the family, having been brought in as an honorary member one summer years ago when the four original Penderwick sisters first met him. They would have gone further if they could, adopting him even, to get him away from his selfish and awful mother, but because such matters are more easily dreamt of than done, the second choice—making him an honorary Penderwick—had been settled upon. And so Jeffrey had remained all these years, even after he’d found his missing—and quite wonderfully unselfish—father, making life much nicer for both of them.
    But for Batty, Jeffrey was even more than an honorary brother. That first summer—she’d been little, only four years old—he’d rescued her twice, first from being stomped on by an angry bull, and again when she was about to run in front of a speeding car. Some of the family (Skye, for example) had thought that Batty shouldn’t have put herself into situations from which she needed rescuing, but others felt that Jeffrey’s selfless courage had bound him more closely to the family, which made the rescues a good thing. Mr. Penderwick even said that because Jeffrey saved Batty’s life, he would forever own a piece of her soul. Batty hadn’t understood what that meant when she was four, and she still didn’t, but she liked it nonetheless.
    Jeffrey and Batty had another special bond notshared by the rest of the Penderwicks—music. A brilliant and dedicated musician, he’d been the first to recognize that Batty, too, had musical talent, the first to teach her the piano, the first to believe she might someday be as brilliant and dedicated as he was. It was Batty’s dream to make this come true.
    And now he was visiting! It had been too long since he’d come—weeks and weeks. He would drive his little black car out from Boston, where he was in boarding school, and they would play the piano together and talk about music—or at least they would do as much of that as Batty could manage, since he would also want to spend time with everyone else in the family, especially Skye. They all loved him, and he was Skye’s best friend.
    His upcoming visit called for celebration! For music!
    On Batty’s desk was an old-fashioned record player that Iantha had found for her several years ago at a garage sale. It was one of Batty’s most prized possessions, along with the ever-growing collection of secondhand albums she played on it. Many were of classical music, and also musicals—Batty adored musicals—plus a trove of Frank Sinatra, Lena Horne, and Judy Garland albums that Jeffrey had found in his mother’s attic and passed on to Batty. And sometimes he would send her records, discovered in vintage shops, by all sorts of artists, like Johnny Cash, Joni Mitchell, and the Beatles, and lots of Motown. He’d promised that whenshe turned twelve, they’d start on a serious history of rock and roll, and when she was fourteen, he’d move her on to jazz, but for now, he wanted her listening to anything and everything and soaking it in.
    What was just right for tonight? Batty flipped through her pile of favorites. Here was what she wanted: Marvin Gaye and her very extra-special favorite Marvin Gaye song, “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.” She slipped the album out of its sleeve, set it on the turntable, and carefully set the needle down on the song’s first groove. The opening notes came, the rhythm, the shake of the tambourine, and Batty snatched up Funty and Gibson and spun them around the room, the groundhog book and its unwritten book report