The rowboat could spend the winter on the bank, upside down, but not the inboard. While the crew worked, Franny and Rosamund drove the inboard over to Moore’s ramp where Brick waited with a car and a boat trailer. The three of them then drove the inboard into Moore’s big, echoey warehouse for the winter, and Brick and Rosamund acted as if this were a jolly end-of-summer ritual. Franny went along, but secretly wondered if her father ever had paid his bill at Pynch Marina, and if he now ran up a bill at Moore’s. The day after Labor Day, Roosevelt Junior High opened, and Franny found she felt some of the old excitement of school starting again. She carried a new three-ring binder and a vinyl pouch holding four as yet unsharpened pencils and one pen. She wore a clean, white oxford cloth shirt with a button-down collar. I’m Rip Van Winkle, she thought as she hurried down the familiar halls and into the familiar morning light of her homeroom, #112; that is, I’m me, but a me who’s been through an experience nobody else knows about.
