All the Answers (14 page)

As soon as Ava got to school, she realized that it was the day of the adventure course practice in gym class
and
a math quiz. Double doom.

She slipped into her seat while Mr. Farkley marched up and down the rows collecting homework. He stopped by Ava's desk.

“Thank you, Miss Anderson,” he said, picking up her paper. “Do you also have your permission slip for the field trip?”

“No. I'm going to bring it tomorrow.” Ava had no such plans, but she guessed those were the words that would send
Mr. Farkley and his bushy eyebrows back to his desk. She was right.

“All right then,” Mr. Farkley said from up front, “I hope everyone is prepared with a pencil.”

Ava was prepared with two. One was a yellow Number Two she'd grabbed from the bottom of her locker. The other was the blue pencil. That one she set carefully on her desk, so it wouldn't roll away. She didn't want to use it. She didn't want to
need
it the way she did, but at the same time, she knew she couldn't take the quiz without knowing it was there if she got stuck.

“You may begin,” Mr. Farkley said, and Ava looked at the first question.
Relax. Think
, she told herself.
You can do this. You have the pencil if you need it
.

She picked up the regular yellow pencil. She answered the first question and the second, and worked her way down the page, figuring out problems with parallelograms and right triangles and pi. She looked at the blue pencil a few times but didn't reach for it. Just seeing it there calmed her down, and when she settled in, she found that she really did know most of the answers. There was one she wasn't sure about, but she didn't want to use the pencil, so she guessed.

“Pencils down,” Mr. Farkley said, and Ava smiled. She put the yellow one down next to the blue one and let out a long breath. She'd done it. Simply knowing the pencil was there was enough. She'd taken the test without even picking it up.

When Ava got to gym class, pretty much everyone had gone outside, and Mr. Avery was waving her out to the field where the course was set up. “Let's go! Today, we're going to practice a few challenges you'll see on the field trip. Come on, Ava! Adventure waits for no one!”

Ava wished Adventure would go on ahead without her, but she followed him outside.

“Choose a station and you can get started.” Mr. Avery left her and jogged over to the trees at the side of the clearing where the ropes course was set up. He helped Luke Varnway, Alex Weinstein, and LucyAnn Ward step up onto the low tightrope.

The school's rock-climbing wall was set up at the other end of the field. Mrs. Snell, the other gym teacher, was helping kids get strapped into harnesses to practice, and there were also some low-to-the-ground balance beams set up in the soccer
field. Those didn't look too bad, so Ava headed over, stepped up onto one of them, and started teetering her way across.

It was kind of fun, like walking on the curb. Trying this fifty feet above the ground—harness or no harness—would be another story, but Ava didn't mind practicing. She'd figured out that going along with things was the quickest way to be left alone.

If you protest and squeal, people come swooping in to explain to you why you
must
do the scary thing. They promise it will all be okay even though they know no such thing. But if you pretend you have no problem with the scary thing, then nobody bothers you, and on the actual day of the scary thing, you can just not go. Then it's too late for anyone to do anything about it. After you'd thrown up on a couple of field trips, you learned these things.

Ava was counting on it working out that way for the adventure course. No permission slip, no field trip. But she did have to get through the rest of gym class. She looked around, hoping for another easy, no-climbing-involved obstacle to practice, but everything else involved swinging or climbing or other unstable things.

Ava was about to start over on the low balance beam when Sophie came bounding across the field in her new boots.

Ava laughed. “They let you wear those for gym?”

“They have good, solid tread.” Sophie lifted her foot to show Ava and then spun around. “Aren't they great? And guess
what …” She looked around, then leaned in closer to Ava and whispered, “I've decided that today's the day.”

“For what?”

Sophie smiled, and her eyes got all big. “I'm going to ask Jason to go out with me!”

“You are?” Thinking about what Sophie was about to do made Ava's stomach all twisty. “Why now?”

“Why not?” Sophie did a cartwheel. “That way, we'll be able to sit together on the bus for the field trip. He's probably been wanting to ask me for a while but he's too nervous or something, you know?”

Ava nodded. She understood nervous.

“I've got it all planned out,” Sophie went on. “Look over there.” She pointed quickly to the rock wall. Ava turned and caught a glimpse of Jason before Sophie hissed. “Stop staring! He's going to know I'm talking about him!”

“Sorry. But … you're just going to walk up to him and ask him out? Just like that?”

She laughed. “I already know what he'll say, right?”

Ava stole another glance at the amazing Jason. “Who's that with him?”

“Jessica Bainbridge, maybe?” Sophie squinted, then waved her hand. “It doesn't matter.” And she ran across the soccer field toward the rock wall.

The closer Sophie got, the more Ava wanted to call her back. Because Jason wasn't just talking to Jessica Bainbridge. He was
hanging on her. And she was laughing and twisting her hair and touching his arm and looking a whole lot like his girlfriend.

Sophie walked right up to them, stepped in front of Jessica, and tossed her hair.

No, no, no
, Ava thought. She tried sending Sophie thought waves across the soccer field.
Danger! Danger! Step away from the boy
.

But all Ava could do was watch the whole thing play out like a silent movie.

She saw Sophie lean forward, smiling. She saw Jason take a step back and shake his head. She saw Jessica cross her arms, then get right up in Sophie's face and start waving her hands. She saw Sophie step back, then turn and walk away, then run. She ran right past Ava into school, tears streaking down her cheeks.

Ava looked for Sophie in the girls' bathroom but couldn't find her. She didn't need to find her to know what had happened. The pencil had been wrong about Jason.

Sophie showed up halfway through science with a pass from guidance. She was blotchy-faced but not crying anymore. She waited until Mrs. Ruppert was turned to the SMART board and then slipped Ava a note.

Do you have the pencil?

Ava did. But she was a little afraid of what Sophie might do
with it. Was she angry enough to break it in half or throw it out? Ava couldn't very well lie to Sophie, though, so she nodded.

Sophie wrote:

Ask it what the heck happened!

Ava looked up from the note. Mrs. Ruppert was tapping her SMART Board but couldn't get her video to play. She went to call the tech guy, and everybody started talking.

Ava took out the pencil and wrote:

Why doesn't Jason want to go out with Sophie?

“Because he's going out with Jessica Bainbridge,” the voice said.

“What did it say?” Sophie whispered as the tech guy climbed up on a chair to adjust some wires.

“It says he's going out with Jessica Bainbridge.”

“Then why did it say he liked me?” Sophie hissed.

“I … I don't know.” Ava swallowed hard. Sophie sounded mad, like this was Ava's fault. “Maybe it messes up sometimes.”

“You didn't tell me that. I never would have done that if the stupid pencil hadn't—”

“Okay, everyone, it's fixed,” Mrs. Ruppert said. “Let's get back to work.”

Sophie gave a sharp sigh and turned away.

Ava found her worksheet and started filling in responses, but out of the corner of her eye, she saw Jessica Bainbridge's friend Mikayla toss a note onto Sophie's desk.

Sophie blinked at it, then unfolded it and sucked in her breath. Ava only had to lean over a little to read it:

STAY AWAY FROM OTHER PEOPLE'S BOYFRIENDS

Sophie's eyes filled with tears, and Ava understood why. Sophie should have known. It was obvious to every other person within a mile of the rock wall that Jessica and Jason were going out. But instead of believing her own eyes, Sophie had believed the pencil.

Sophie crumpled the note and shoved it deep in her pocket. When the bell rang, she shot out of her seat. Ava figured she'd be waiting in the hall so they could walk home together.

But she wasn't.

Ava walked home alone. She and Sophie had planned to go to the nursing home together to drop off the iPod with Grandpa's songs. Ava didn't want to go by herself, but she thought that was a crummy reason for him not to have music, so halfway home, she changed her mind and took a detour to Cedar Bay. The November wind was getting colder, and Ava's hands were freezing by the time she pulled open the door.

When Ava headed toward the community room, Thomas stopped her. “Hey, Miss Ava! It's not Wednesday. What brings you here?”

Ava pulled out the iPod and headphones. “I wanted Grandpa to have this. We put music on it, like that song he loved last night.”

Thomas looked over his shoulder, down the long hallway. “Your grandpa's asleep right now. He's had a bit of a tough day. But I'll give this to him as soon as he wakes up, all right?”

“Okay. Thanks.” Ava left and headed for home. It really wasn't
okay. She'd wanted to stay and see if Grandpa liked the music. She'd wanted to do that with Sophie, to put headphones on Grandpa and play songs and see his face wake up like it did when she'd played Johnny Hodges. But Sophie was mad at her and Grandpa wasn't even awake and everything was ruined.

What if Sophie stayed mad forever? Ava shivered and zipped up her jacket. She couldn't imagine school without Sophie. Or weekends without Sophie. Without Sophie, Ava would never do anything brave. She'd probably never even have another friend because it was always Sophie who introduced her to people and made her feel okay about being someplace other than her bedroom eating Gram's cookies and reading books.

Lucy and Ethel were out when Ava got home. Ethel lowered her head and started toward her, so Ava veered off into the grass. The mud sucked at her sneakers, and she felt cold wetness seeping through her sock. Nobody would be impressed with her fancy green ladder-laces now.

Ava's eyes burned with tears as she trudged up to the house. Why was Sophie mad at her? Ava wasn't the one who'd told Sophie to start asking the pencil about boys and crushes and
like
-liking people. Ava wasn't the one who'd brought up Jason Marzigliano. She hadn't even known who he was until the pencil mentioned him.

Ava took a deep breath. Maybe Sophie was upset but not mad. Sometimes, Ava couldn't tell the difference. She just assumed that whenever anybody wasn't happy, it was her fault.