The Candy Smash (5 page)

 

and

 

a heart = love,

 

then

 

M.M. + E.T. inside a heart
=
Megan Moriarty loves Evan Treski.

 

But what did
that
mean?

Jessie decided to go straight to the primary source.

assonance
(n) a poetic technique in which the middle sound of a word (usually a vowel) is repeated in words that are next to the word or near it, such as
silly little chimps

 

Evan was grabbing a plastic spoon at the utensil table in the cafeteria when he saw Jessie walk up to Megan, who was near the front of the line. It was noisy in the cafeteria, the way it usually was, but Evan was close enough to hear Jessie's voice, which was always loud and clear.

"Do you love Evan?"

Evan's head snapped in the direction of Jessie's voice. He saw Megan's back stiffen and her face turn bright red. The dozen or so kids closest in line straightened up and turned their full attention to Jessie and Megan. Tessa squealed, her hands flying to her mouth. Scott Spencer started laughing, and several of the boys erupted in a chorus of "Oooh."

Evan felt his face flame and his stomach drop. He wanted to run out of the cafeteria.

Salley Knight, who was standing right behind Megan, said, "You're not supposed to say something like that!"

"Why not?" Jessie asked, still talking in her usual loud way.

"Because..." Salley threw her hands up, shaking her head.

Evan walked quickly back to his assigned seat at his lunch table, careful to keep his eyes down. The kids at the table hadn't heard what Jessie had said, but by the end of lunch, the news had traveled up and down the aisles. There were lots of jokes about kissing. Malik turned two soggy french fries into lips and squeezed them open and closed while making loud smooching noises. A bunch of girls started to sing "My Heart Will Go On," so loudly that the cafeteria ladies told the whole class that they were the worst group of the day and were in danger of losing recess. Even that didn't stop the snickering and poking. Evan wished the floor would swallow him whole.

When the doors to the playground were finally opened and the horde of noisy fourth-graders ran outside, Evan stayed behind and cornered Jessie at the trash can.

"What are you doing? How come you said that?" He wanted to shake her, as if that would make her understand what she'd done.

"Said what?" asked Jessie.

Evan dropped his voice to a dangerous whisper. "That Megan and me are in love."

"I did
not
say that!"

"Well, that's what everyone is saying now. What's with you, Jess? Come on! Even you—"

"All I did was ask a simple question. All I did was ask Megan if she loves you because that's what it says in the girls' bathroom."

Evan felt his stomach drop to his knees for the second time that day. He tried to ask Jessie what she meant, but it was as if he'd forgotten how his tongue worked. It just lay there in his mouth, unable to form words.

"C'mon! Line up!" shouted one of the cafeteria ladies to the last few stragglers busing their trays and throwing out their trash.

Evan placed both hands on Jessie's shoulders and bent his head down close to hers. In a whisper, he asked, "What does it say in the girls' bathroom?"

Jessie put her hands together, both thumbs meeting in a downward-facing point to form a perfect heart. "M.M. plus E.T.," she said.

Evan felt another wave of heat rise up from his shirt collar. The noise of the cafeteria swirled around him.

"Did Megan write that ... that thing in the bathroom?" Evan asked.

"No. I don't think so. I don't know! How am I supposed to know?"

"Can you find out?"

"Why?" asked Jessie. "What is it with all this love stuff?"

Evan again had the feeling of wanting to shake Jessie. Why didn't she understand things that everyone else did? "Just find out, would ya? Ask her. And then tell me. But don't tell her I asked you to find out. And don't tell
anyone
else. Swear it!"

Evan headed for the playground, wanting to shake off this almost-sick feeling. He pushed open the door and shouted, "Hey!" as Ryan ran by on the blacktop. "Wait for me!"

He could count on Jessie to find out the answer, but how long would that take? Valentine's Day was just four days away, and Evan needed answers.

exclusive
(n) a story that is reported by only one newspaper because that newspaper is the only one with the information

 

Jessie walked home alone that afternoon. It was hard work being around other people, particularly kids in her grade. There were so many things to figure out. She had to watch their faces closely and listen hard to the
way
they talked. Did their eyes open wide? Did they look down at the ground? Did they whisper? Or get loud? It was like trying to solve a math problem that never ended.

Take, for example, what had happened on the playground after lunch.

After promising Evan to find out who drew the heart on the bathroom wall, Jessie had wandered outside in search of Megan.

She found her at the swings, but when Jessie came close, Megan walked away. Jessie tried to follow her, but Megan kept moving, first to the monkey bars and then the slide and then the picnic tables.

Finally, Salley came up to Jessie and said, "Megan told me to tell you that she doesn't want to talk to you right now because she's really mad and she doesn't want to say something she'll regret later."

"Why is she mad?" asked Jessie. "I just asked a question."

Salley shook her head and said, "You're not supposed to ask about stuff like that. Not out loud where everyone can hear you. No one says that stuff out loud. Obviously. You only talk about it late at night at a slumber party after all the lights are out and everyone's half asleep."

But Jessie had never been to a slumber party, so she didn't know about that.

"Why? Is it some kind of secret?"

Salley looked at her sideways, clearly puzzled. "Well, yeah. That's why everyone's so interested. Everyone wants to know who likes who."

"Everyone?" said Jessie. "Does everyone like someone?"

"Pretty much," said Salley. "I mean, it's fourth grade. We're not little kids anymore."

But Jessie didn't understand what it meant to like someone in
that
way. And when she tried to smile and wave at Megan from across the playground—which she
knew
was the right way to tell someone "I want to be friends with you"—Megan wouldn't look at her.

Walking home after school, Jessie got to thinking. If what Salley said was true—that everyone liked someone and it was all a big secret—then
here
was a hot topic that 4-O was interested in. She would need to collect data, of course. In just four days! But when she did, she would have a newspaper article that everyone would want to read.

Jessie imagined the headline of her front-page story:

 

Who Likes Who—A 4-O Forum Exclusive!

slant rhyme
(n) two words that have the same final consonant sound (such as "stopped" and "wept") or two words with the same middle vowel sound (such as "barn" and "yard"). They sound almost like rhyming words, but not quite.

 

The plan had been to go to Ryan's house and shoot hoops, but then Evan suggested they walk uptown to get slices of pizza. So they'd all called their mothers using the school office phone, and now they were walking up the hill to Town House, which didn't have the best pizza in town, but it was the closest.

Evan was dribbling the ball as they walked, and the bounce of the ball seemed to keep time to the words that kept drumming in his head: "nudgers and shovers in spite of ourselves." The words made a steady beat that sounded right with the pounding of the basketball on the frozen pavement. And "nudgers" and "shovers" together was an example of slant rhyme, which Evan thought was pretty neat.

Just as they reached the door of the pizza shop, Ryan said, "Hey, look!" and elbowed Evan so hard that Evan half stumbled in mid-dribble. When he looked up, he saw Megan and her mom walking right toward them. The ball bounced out of his reach and went rolling into the street. There was a lot of afternoon traffic, and several cars had to jam on their brakes to avoid running over the ball. Evan waited until everyone had stopped and then sprinted across the street to grab the ball, angry at it the way a mother would be mad at a kid for running into the street without first looking both ways. Mostly, though, he was embarrassed. Embarrassed to be making such a scene in the middle of town, embarrassed that he'd flubbed his dribble in front of Megan, and embarrassed that his friends had seen the whole thing.

When he got back to the curb, Megan and her mom were gone, but Paul and Ryan were laughing so hard, they'd sat down on the bench outside of Town House. Adam wasn't laughing, but he hadn't offered to help Evan, either.

"Oooh, Megan!" said Paul, clasping his hands and pressing them to his heart. "I love you! I love you! I love you! Ooops! I dropped my basketball. Excuse me!"

"No, no, it's like this," said Ryan, who could barely get the words out of his mouth because he was laughing so much. "Oh, Megan! When you're around, my hands turn to Jell-O!" and he started jiggling his hands in the air.

"Just shut up, would you?" said Evan, and he pulled back the arm that was loaded with the basketball and looked like he might fire it right at their heads.

"Come on," said Adam, pulling open the pizza shop door. "You're acting like a bunch of idiots."

"What's with him?" Paul muttered to Ryan as they followed Adam inside. Evan brought up the rear, the basketball pressed against his hip, wishing he'd never suggested going uptown that afternoon.

After they'd finished their pizza slices and decided it was too cold to play basketball, they all went home. Evan climbed the stairs to his bedroom, hung the Locked sign on his door, then closed it firmly and pushed the edge of his desk in front of it so there was no way anyone could "accidentally" come in. He sat down and pulled out the stack of Post-it notes from his top drawer. It was easy to come up with the first six words. He'd been thinking about them on the walk home.

 

 

But after that, he couldn't think of what to do.

He heard Jessie's door open, and then came the sound he dreaded: her impatient knocking at his door. Sometimes he wondered whether there was some kind of magnetic force field around the Locked sign. Every time he hung it up, Jessie appeared immediately.

"Busy. Can't talk right now," Evan called through the door.

"I need you to look at something." Jessie's voice was matter-of-fact. Evan couldn't tell if she had even heard him.

"I said I'm busy. Come back later."

"But later is too late. I need you to look at something
now.
"

"Not now. And not later, if you keep bugging me!"

"But what are you
doing?"
Evan could hear her knocking her shoe against the jamb of the door.

Evan buried his head in his hands. "I'm
thinking."

"Thinking about what?"

Evan slammed a book down over the Post-it notes, pushed the desk roughly away from the door, and flung the door open. "Why are you always such a pest?" he shouted.

"I'm not
always
a pest," she said. "Just when I really need something." She held up a single piece of paper in her hand. "Can you look at this and tell me if it's good?"

"No! I really can't. That's why I said later. Because later means later, Jess. You've gotta learn that!" Evan retreated back into his room and slammed the door shut. He heard Jessie's voice from the other side.

"Your sign flipped around. Do you want me to fix it for you?"

"Yes!" said Evan.

There was a slight scraping noise, and then Jessie said quietly, "Okay, I did it."

"Thanks," said Evan tightly, sitting back down at his desk.

And it was funny, because something about the interruption or yelling or maybe just getting up from his desk and moving around suddenly made it easy for Evan to fill his entire desk with Post-it note words.