The Candy Smash (8 page)

Evan went to the cupboard and got down everything he needed to make hot chocolate: a mug, a spoon, hot chocolate mix, and mini-marshmallows. As he scooped the mix into his cup, his thoughts returned to the gloom that hung over him on the bike ride home. And that made him think of other things, too, and so he asked his mother, "Did
you
get a valentine?"

Mrs. Treski laughed. "Now, who would send me a valentine?"

"I don't know," said Evan, stirring the hot water and chocolate mix in his cup. "Maybe ... Dad?"

His mom took a sip of her tea and looked at him closely. "No. No valentine from Dad. Were you hoping I'd get one from him?"

Evan shrugged, watching the billows of steam rising from his stirring spoon. "Well, you were married, right?"

"Yep," said Mrs. Treski. "We were."

"So..." Evan dropped a fistful of minimarshmallows into his cup. His mother opened her mouth as if she was going to say something about that, but then she closed it again. "How does that work?" asked Evan. "How can you be in love and then not in love anymore?"

"You know, I'm not sure about that myself."

"Maybe it was never love? Maybe you just made a mistake."

"No, it was definitely love. Believe me. For both of us. But—it didn't last. Sometimes love doesn't."

Evan shook his head. "All the poems make it sound like love is forever. It's bigger than anything and the most important thing in the world. But if it can just go like
that
...just disappear..." Evan threw his hand up as if he was tossing a piece of trash over his shoulder.

Evan's mother paused. "It didn't just go, Evan. It put up a fight. A big, long fight. Do you remember? Were you old enough?"

Evan nodded, then took a short, hot sip of his drink. "I remember the fighting."

"That was love. That was love doing everything it could to hang in there. But in the end, it couldn't. So Dad and I decided to be apart. But I'll always love your father."

"You say that! You always say that," said Evan. "But what does it mean if you're not married anymore?"

"It means it's a different kind of love. There are all kinds in the world, you know."

"Mrs. O. says that, too. She says you can love a song or a forest or a friend or a—you know—a person, a person you're 'in love' with." Evan buried his face in the hot steam rising from his cup so his mother wouldn't see his eyes.

"Mrs. Overton is one smart cookie."

Evan nodded, still keeping his face tilted down. Love was confusing.

"Hey, Mom. I wrote a poem. About Grandma. Do you want to read it?"

"Sure," she said. "Bring it on."

He dug through his backpack until he found the folded-up piece of paper he'd stuck in the back pocket of his binder. He handed it to his mom, wondering why his heart was beating hard, so hard he thought it was going to knock itself right out of his chest.

Mrs. Treski read the poem once. Then she put the paper down on the counter, smoothing over the page with her hand, and read it again. She looked up at Evan, and Evan stopped breathing. It was as if everything inside him stopped—his heart and his lungs and his brain—just stopped. In that instant, he would have given anything to have his poem back, safe and hidden in his binder, where no one would know that it even existed. It was just too hard, having it out there in the world for everyone to see.

"That is the most remarkable poem I've ever read in my entire life, Evan," said his mother. Her voice was quiet, as if she'd just discovered a new planet or found a rare bird on her front lawn.

Evan's heart suddenly flooded his whole system with too much blood; it rushed past his ears with a whooshing noise that made it hard to hear. "You think it's good?" he asked.

"You have a talent," she said, tapping the page. "A rare talent." She shook her head. "I didn't know you like poetry."

"I didn't either," he said. "But I do." Evan couldn't believe he'd just said that out loud. He'd actually admitted to liking poetry.
Next thing you know, I'll start saying that I like Megan Moriarty out loud!
His ears pinked up at the thought.

There was a crash followed by a thud from upstairs, then Jessie yelled down, "I'm okay. I just tripped."

Evan and his mom laughed. Jessie was kind of like Old Faithful, that geyser at Yellowstone Park that Evan had studied in third grade. She could be counted on to blow every few hours.

"I've got a picture frame you can have," said Mrs. Treski, handing the poem back to Evan. "You could copy the poem over and frame it and then give it as a Valentine's gift to Grandma. I bet she'd really like it."

Evan thought of his poem on display for everyone to see.
Everyone.
It made him feel both proud and nervous, both excited and a little sick to his stomach. "Maybe," he said.

Evan walked upstairs slowly, looking down at the poem in his hand. It didn't feel so bad admitting he liked poetry. Maybe he'd show one or two of his poems to Mrs. Overton. Maybe he'd even show one of them to his friends. Not this one. A different one. Maybe. But he would never, ever admit that he liked Megan. He'd rather die than have his friends know that.

He walked into his room, but before he even had a chance to close the door behind him, he noticed that some of the trash from his wastebasket was spilled onto the floor.

snooping
(v.) investigating or searching in a secretive way to uncover private information

 

It had been an accident. Really and truly. The only reason Jessie had gone into Evan's room in the first place was that she'd needed a piece of paper. That's all. She wasn't looking for anything else. She wasn't snooping. She
wasn't.

And even though she wasn't supposed to go in Evan's room without asking, and she definitely wasn't allowed to look in his top desk drawer without permission, she was in a big hurry to count up the results of the survey. And Evan was
all
the way downstairs. And he'd been in such a bad mood when they'd walked in the front door together. And she was in a big hurry. That was the thing. She didn't have time to follow
all
the rules.

But when she grabbed a piece of paper out of Evan's desk drawer and turned to run back out the door—so fast it was as if she hadn't even broken the rule in the first place—she tripped over Evan's wastebasket, which crashed into the floor lamp, and the papers spilled all over the floor. They were like little animals escaping from their cage. The wastebasket was made of wire, just like a cage, and Jessie couldn't help imagining the papers shouting, "Free! We're free! At last, we're free!"

"I'm okay! I just tripped!" she shouted so that Evan and their mother wouldn't come running upstairs to see what the noise was.

She started to scoop up the crumpled-up pieces of paper, still thinking about the animals escaping from their cage, and then one of them really did look like a turtle.
Look at that,
she thought. There was the shell and a leg and a head poking out. Jessie was good at noticing patterns and shapes, and this crumpled-up piece of paper definitely looked like a turtle.

She picked up the piece of paper, tugged on the head, and then pushed on it to see if she could imitate the way a turtle pokes its head out of its shell and then pulls it in when it's threatened. And that's when the paper became uncrumpled and she saw a few of the words on the page.

Words were meant to be read. Everyone knew that! You didn't write a word down on a piece of paper if you didn't expect someone to read it. Otherwise you would just leave that word in your head.

So without really thinking and almost before she knew that she was doing it, Jessie uncrumpled the paper and spread it out in front of her. And then, when she got that feeling in her stomach—that tingle that told her she might be doing something wrong—it was too late, because a question had popped into her mind. And once that happened, there was no stopping Jessie. She needed to know the answer to the question, just as she had needed to know the answers to all the other questions that had come up this year: Who stole the lemonade money? How did Scott Spencer buy an Xbox 20/20? Where did the New Year's Eve bell go? What was wrong with Maxwell? The questions were like math problems, and Jessie couldn't rest until the equation was solved.

Who was
pony girl?
What did these words mean?

Jessie heard a sound from downstairs. She wasn't sure what it was, but it reminded her that she was in Evan's room without having asked him for permission. So she scooped the balls of paper on the floor into the trash can, set the trash can upright, then ran out of Evan's room.

Back in her own room with the door closed, she settled down at her desk and smoothed the wrinkled paper in front of her. A thought flickered through her mind:
Am I stealing something by taking the paper?
But no, that didn't make sense. The paper was trash, and you couldn't steal trash. Besides, Jessie carried the trash out of Evan's room every week. It was one of her household chores. What was the difference between carrying it out today and carrying it out on Saturday?

Still, she opened her door and hung up the Locked sign, then closed her door again and slipped the paper into her top desk drawer. There was no time to think about trash or words or Evan. Right now, she had to tally up the responses to her survey.

Using a pair of scissors, she carefully cut the top off the shoebox and dumped all the surveys onto her bed. Half of them were folded so many times, they looked like square paper rocks. A few of them even rolled off the bed and onto the floor. Jessie carefully unfolded each survey and spread it out on her bed. By the time she'd finished, the entire bed was covered in paper.

But when she counted up the surveys, there were only twenty-six. She looked on the floor and doublechecked her backpack but couldn't find the twenty-seventh survey.

How was that possible? No one had been absent today; she was sure of it. Maybe someone had not handed one in? She wondered who it was.

Jessie was still staring at her bed when she heard Evan climbing the stairs and then
bang, bang, bang,
on her door.

"I'm busy," she said.

"Open up!" he commanded. "Now."

Jessie didn't like the sound of that.

She opened her door a tiny crack, then pressed her face up to the thin slice of the opening. The surveys were spread out on her bed, and she didn't want anyone to see them.

"You can't come in," said Jessie, her lips pressed against the narrow space of the open door.

"I don't want to," said Evan. "Did you come in my room?"

"Yes," said Jessie. "But only for a second."

"It doesn't matter. You're not allowed in my room without my permission. You owe me a dollar."

Jessie knew there was no way out of this one. A rule is a rule. "Okay," she said. "I'll pay the dumb fine."

"It's not dumb. You wouldn't think it was dumb if I came in your room." But Evan never came to Jessie's room anymore. Jessie wished he would sometimes. Especially if it meant he had to pay her a dollar.

Evan stood waiting at the door.

"Now, you mean?" asked Jessie. "You want the dollar now?"

"Yes." Evan didn't move. His face looked like it was carved out of granite.

"Oh, fine," said Jessie. She closed the door and went to get her lock box from its hiding place behind some books on the top shelf of her bookcase. Then she retrieved the key, which was hanging on a small nail that she had tapped into the doorjamb inside her closet. She did all this very quietly, as if she were a spy on a secret mission, so that if Evan was listening at the door, he wouldn't be able to figure out her secret hiding places.

She opened the door again, just a sliver, and handed Evan the dollar through the narrow crack. She hated giving up money, especially when she didn't get anything in return.

"Why'd you come in my room anyway?" asked Evan.

"I needed a piece of paper."

Evan's eyes narrowed to two dark slits. "You mean you went in my desk drawer?"

"Only for a split second!" said Jessie. "I just needed
one piece of paper."
She said the last part as if she was pleading for her life.

"You owe me another dollar!" shouted Evan.

"I do not!"

"Do, too! It's bad enough you went in my room. Now you're snooping around in my desk!"

"I wasn't snooping," said Jessie and meant it with all her heart. She had just wanted a piece of paper. Why did everything have to turn into such a big deal?

"I'm not leaving until you pay me another dollar. And that's the rule from now on."

"Oh, fine," said Jessie. She was starting to get that sick feeling in her stomach when she sensed that something was going wrong but she couldn't figure out exactly what. Was Evan going to ask her about tipping over the wastebasket? Jessie didn't want to talk about that, even though she didn't think she'd done anything wrong.

When she handed Evan the second dollar, he still didn't look pleased. How could anyone who had just gotten two dollars for nothing not be happy?