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Authors: Jacqueline Davies

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BOOK: The Lemonade War
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What was Evan's problem?

He'd been acting like a weirdo for two days now. And it was two days ago that the letter had arrived. But why would he be so upset about that letter?

This is a puzzle,
Jessie told herself.
And I'm good at puzzles.
But it was a puzzle about feelings, and Jessie knew that feelings were her weakest subject.

Jessie sat in the cool darkness of the basement and thought back to Monday, the day the letter had come. Everything had been normal. She and Evan were putting together a lemonade stand in the driveway when the mailman walked up and handed Jessie a bundle of letters. Evan never bothered to look at the mail, but Jessie was always entering contests and expecting to win, so she flipped through the letters right away.

"Boring. Boring. Boring," said Jessie as each letter flashed by. "Hey, something from school. Addressed to Mom." She held up a plain white envelope. "What do you think it is?"

"Dunno," said Evan. He was in the garage, uncovering the small wooden table they usually used for a stand. It was buried under two sno-tubes, two boogie boards, and the garden hose. Jessie watched while Evan gave a mighty pull and lifted the table up over his head.
Wow, he's gotten so big,
thought Jessie, remembering what Mom had said about Evan's growth spurt. Sometimes Jessie felt like Evan was growing twice as fast as she was.
Growing up. Growing away.

"It looks important," said Jessie.
It looks like bad news
is what she thought in her head. Was there a problem? A complaint? A mix-up? All the nervousness she'd been feeling about skipping to fourth grade suddenly burbled up inside her.

"This table's really dirty," said Evan. "Do you think we can just cover it with a lot of cups and the pitcher and no one will notice?"

Jessie looked. The table was streaked with black. "No."

Evan groaned.

"I'll clean it," said Jessie. Evan had only agreed to have a lemonade stand because it was one of
her
favorite things to do. The least she could do for him was clean the gunk off the table. "Maybe," she said, holding up the envelope again, "they're postponing school? Maybe the first day isn't going to be next Tuesday? Ya think?"

That got Evan's attention. "Let's ask Mom to open it," he said.

Up in the humming cool of her office, Mrs.
Treski read the letter through once. "Well," she said. "This is a curve ball." She looked right at Evan. Jessie thought her face looked worried. "Evan, you and Jessie are going to be in the same class this year. You'll both have Mrs. Overton."

Jessie felt relief flood her entire body. The same class! If she could have wished for one thing in the whole world, that's what she would have wished for. She would be with Evan, and Evan would make everything easier. He would introduce her to all those fourth-graders. He would show them all that she was okay. Not some puny second-grader who didn't really belong.

But Evan didn't look happy. He looked angry. "Why?" he asked in an almost-shouting voice.

Mrs. Treski scanned the letter. "Well, the classes were small to start with. And now some of the fourth-graders they thought would be attending aren't because they're moving or switching to private schools. So they need to combine the two small classes into one bigger class."

"That is so unfair," said Evan. "I wanted Mrs.
Scobie. And I don't want—" He looked at Jessie. "That is
so
unfair!"

Jessie was surprised. This was great news. Why didn't Evan see that? They always had fun together at home. Now they could have fun in school, too. "It'll be fun," she said to Evan.

"It will not be fun," said Evan. "School. Isn't. Fun." And then he stomped downstairs and locked himself in his room for the rest of the afternoon. They never finished the lemonade stand.

And here it was, two days later, and Evan was still all locked up, even though he wasn't in his room. He wouldn't talk to her, and he wouldn't play with her.

So Jessie went up to her room and did what she always did when she was upset or angry or sad or confused. She started reading
Charlotte's Web.
She had read the book about a hundred times.

She was at the good part, the happy part. Wilbur had just been named "some pig," and he was getting all kinds of attention from the Zuckermans and the whole town. But Jessie couldn't settle into
that happy feeling, the one that usually came when Charlotte said:

I dare say my trick will work and Wilbur's life can be saved.

Instead, she kept noticing an unhappy feeling tap-tap-tapping on her shoulder. And it wasn't the unhappy feeling that came from knowing that Charlotte was going to die on page 171.

It was Evan. She couldn't stop thinking about what he had said.

Jessie could only remember one other time that Evan had said "I hate you" to her. Grandma had been over and Evan needed help with his math homework. He had that frustrated, screwed-up-mouth look that he sometimes got with math or spelling or writing reports. Mom called it his "he's-a-gonna-blow!" look. But Grandma couldn't help him because it was "all Greek" to her. So Jessie had shown him how to do each problem. Well, she'd just sort of jumped in and done the problems for
him. That was helping, wasn't it? Grandma had called her a girl genius, but Evan had ripped his paper in half and run upstairs, shouting "I hate you!" just before slamming his door. That was last year.

Jessie rested the book on her stomach and stared at the ceiling. People were confusing. She'd rather do a hundred math problems than try to figure out someone else's mixed-up feelings, any day of the week. That's why she and Evan got along so well. He'd just tell her, straight out, "I'm mad at you because you ate the last Rice Krispie's Treat." And then she could say, "Sorry. Hey, I've got some Starburst in my room. You want them?" And that would be that.

Evan was a straight shooter.

Not like the girls at school, the ones who had started that club. She rolled over onto her side to get away from
those
thoughts.

Across the room, against the opposite wall, she noticed the three pieces of foam core her mom had bought for Jessie's Labor Day project. Every year,
the Rotary Club sponsored a competition for kids to see who could come up with the best display related to the holiday. This was the first year Jessie was old enough to participate, and she had begged her mom to buy foam core and gel pens and fluorescent paper and special stickers for her display. She was determined to win the prize money: a hundred dollars! But she hadn't been able to come up with a single idea that seemed good enough. So here it was, just five days before the competition, and the foam core was still completely blank.

Jessie reached for her book. She didn't want to think about the girls at school and she didn't want to think about the competition. She started reading again.

Wilbur and Charlotte were at the fair, and Charlotte was beginning to show her age. Jessie read the words that Wilbur said to his best friend.

I'm awfully sorry to hear that you're feeling poorly, Charlotte. Perhaps if you spin a web and catch a couple of flies you'll feel better.

Well, the second part didn't apply at all, but Jessie imagined herself saying the first line:
I'm awfully sorry to hear that you're feeling poorly, Evan. It
sounded about right. At least it would show him that she cared, and Jessie knew that this was important when someone was feeling upset. She decided to go downstairs and give it a try. She would do just about anything to get Evan back to the way he was before the letter.

Jessie looked in the kitchen and the backyard—no Evan. She was halfway down the steps to the basement when she heard a noise coming from the garage. She opened the door and felt the full heat of the day on her skin. It was like some giant had blown his hot, stinky breath on her.

In the garage, she found Evan and Scott Spencer.
Weird,
she thought.
Evan doesn't even like Scott Spencer.
They'd been on-again, off-again friends from kindergarten. But ever since Scott had purposely put Evan's bike helmet under the wheel of the Treskis' minivan so that Mrs. Treski ran over it when she backed out, the friendship had definitely been
off.

Jessie looked from Evan to Scott and back again. Now she had no idea what to say. I'm awfully sorry to hear that you're feeling poorly, Evan, didn't seem to make much sense when Evan was obviously having fun with his friend. She tried to think of something else to say. All she could come up with was "What're you doing?"

The boys were bent over a piece of cardboard. Evan was writing letters with a skinny red felt-tipped pen. The purple cooler was in the middle of the garage and two plastic chairs were stacked on top of it. On the top chair was a brown paper bag.

"Nothing," said Evan, not looking up.

Jessie walked over to the boys and peered over Evan's shoulder.

She said, "You spelled
lemonade
wrong. It's an o, not an
i.
" But she thought,
Oh, good! A lemonade stand. My favorite thing to do!

The boys didn't say anything. Jessie saw Evan's mouth tighten up.

"You want me to make the lemonade?" she asked.

"Already made," said Evan.

"I could decorate the sign," she said. "I'm good at drawing butterflies and flowers and things."

Scott snorted. "
Huh!
We don't want
girl
stuff like that on our sign!"

"Do you want to use my lock box to keep the money in? It's got a tray with separate compartments for all the different coins."

"Nope," said Evan, still working on the sign.

"Well," she said, looking around. "I can clean the table for you." The small wooden table, still covered in black streaks, was pushed up against the bikes.

"We're not using it," said Evan.

"But we always use the table for a stand," said Jessie.

Evan pushed his face in her direction. "We don't want it."

Jessie took a couple of steps back. Her insides felt runny, like a fried egg that hasn't cooked enough. She knew she should just go back into the house. But for some reason her legs wouldn't move. She stood still, her bare feet rooted to the cool cement.

Scott whispered something to Evan and the two boys laughed, low and mean. Jessie swayed toward the door, but her feet stayed planted. She couldn't stand it that Evan wanted to be with Scott—who was a real jerk—more than her.

"Hey," she said. "I bet you need change. I've got a ton. You could have all my change. You know, as long as you pay it back at the end of the day."

"Don't need it," said Evan.

"Yeah, you do," insisted Jessie. "You always need change, especially in the beginning. You'll lose sales if you can't make change."

Evan capped the pen with a loud
snap!
and stuck it in his pocket. "Scott's bankrolling us. His mom keeps a change jar, so we've got plenty."

The boys stood up. Evan held the sign for Scott to read, turning his back on Jessie. "Awesome," said Scott.

Jessie knew that the sign was not awesome. The letters were too small and thin to read from a distance. (Evan should have used a fat marker instead of a skinny felt-tipped pen. Everybody knew that!) There weren't any pretty decorations to attract customers. And the word
lemonade
was spelled wrong. Why wouldn't Evan take a
little
help from her? She just wanted to help.

Scott turned to her and said, "Are you really going to be in fourth grade this year?"

Jessie's back stiffened. "Yep," she said.

"Wow. That is so freaky."

"Is not," she said, sticking her chin out.

"Is too," said Scott. "I mean, you're a
second-
grader and now you're gonna be a
fourth
-grader. That's just messed up."

Jessie looked at Evan, but he was busy taping the sign to the cooler.

"Lots of people skip grades," said Jessie. "It's not that big a deal."

"It's completely weird!" said Scott. "I mean, you miss everything from a whole year. You miss the whole unit on Antarctica, and that was the best.
And the field trip to the aquarium. And the thing where we sent letters all over the country. Remember that, Evan? You got that letter from Alaska. That was so cool!"

Evan nodded, but he didn't look up.

"It's not that big a deal," said Jessie again, her voice stretched tight like a rubber band.

"It's like you miss a year of your life," Scott said. "It's like you're gonna
die
a whole year earlier than the rest of us because you never had third grade."

Jessie felt cold and hot at the same time. Part of her wanted to yell, "That doesn't make any sense!" But the other part of her felt so
freakish
—like Scott had just noticed she had three legs.

Evan stood up and tossed the paper bag to Scott. Then he grabbed the plastic chairs with one hand. "Come on. Let's go." He reached down to grab one handle of the cooler. Scott grabbed the other, and together they lifted it and began to walk out of the garage.

"Hey, Evan," said Jessie, calling to their backs. "Can I come, too?"

BOOK: The Lemonade War
3.45Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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