The Lemonade War (5 page)

"Evan's little sister?" asked Megan.

Jessie felt like a deflating balloon. "Yeah."

"Oh," said Megan. "I couldn't tell 'cause of the helmet."

Jessie took her helmet off. "So ya wanna?" she asked.

There was a long pause.

"Where's Evan?" asked Megan.

"He's out, somewhere, with a friend," said Jessie.

"Oh," said Megan. Jessie looked down at the ground.

People tell you things,
Evan had told her once,
with their hands and their faces and the way they stand. It's not just what they say. You gotta pay attention, Jess. You gotta watch for the things they're saying, not with their words.

Jessie looked back up. It was hard to see Megan at all, she was so far up and behind the window screen. Jessie sucked in her breath. "Do you want to do something?"

Another long pause. Jessie started counting in
her head.
One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand, four one thousand, five one thousand, six one thousand
...

"Sure," said Megan. Then her head disappeared from the window.

A minute later Megan was at the front door. "Hey," she said, opening the screen.

Jessie raised her hand in something that was halfway between a wave and a salute as she walked in. Her sweaty bangs stuck to her forehead where the helmet had mashed them down. She was so nervous about saying something stupid, she didn't say anything at all. Megan leaned against the banister of the stairs and crossed her arms.

"So," said Jessie. She stared at Megan, who was fiddling with the seven or eight band bracelets on her arm. Jessie counted two LiveStrongs, one Red Sox World Champs, one March of Dimes, and one Race for the Cure. "What's that one?" she asked, pointing to a band bracelet with tiger stripes.

Megan stretched it off her wrist and gave it to Jessie. "It's for the Animal Rescue League. My mom gave them some money, so they gave us this and a
bumper sticker. I've got twenty-two band bracelets."

"Cool," said Jessie, handing the bracelet back. Megan flipped it back on. She continued to play with the bracelets on her arm, running them up and down, up and down.

"So, whaddya wanna do?" asked Megan.

"I don't know," said Jessie. "We could—I don't know. Let me think. We could—have a lemonade stand!"

"
Enhh,
" said Megan, sounding bored.

"Aw, it'll be fun. Come on!"

"We don't have any lemonade," said Megan.

"I've got three cans," said Jessie. She slipped the backpack off her back and dumped out the three cans of frozen lemonade. Her lock box came rattling out, too.

"What's that?" asked Megan.

"My lock box," said Jessie. "We can use it to make change." She felt her face getting red. Maybe fourth-graders weren't supposed to have lock boxes?

"How much money have you got?" asked Megan.

"You mean in change, or all together?"

Megan pointed at the lock box. "How much is in there?"

"Four dollars and forty-two cents. Fourteen quarters, five dimes, three nickels, and twenty-seven pennies." Jessie didn't say anything about the ten dollars she'd left at home.

Both of Megan's eyebrows shot up. "Exactly?" she asked.

What do those eyebrows mean?
Jessie wondered in a panic. Why was Megan smiling at her?
Jessie, those girls are making fun of you. They are
not
nice.

Jessie didn't say anything. She had a sick feeling in her stomach that this was going to turn out badly.

Megan straightened up. "Wow, you're rich," she said. "Wanna go to the 7-Eleven? We could get Slurpees."

"But—" Jessie pointed to the cans of lemonade on the carpeted hallway floor. The frost on them was already starting to sweat off.

"We could do the lemonade stand later," said Megan. "Maybe."

Jessie thought of Scott and Evan, racking up
sales two blocks down. How was she going to prove herself to Evan if she couldn't even get Megan to
have
a stand?

"How about the lemonade stand
first?
" Jessie said. "And then Slurpees with our earnings. I bet we'd even have enough for chips. And gum!"

"You think?" said Megan.

"I
know
," said Jessie. "Look." She held up a can of lemonade. "It says right on the can: 'Yields sixty-four ounces.' So we get eight cups from each can and sell each cup for half a buck, so that's four bucks, and then there're three cans, so that's twelve bucks altogether. Right?" The numbers flashed in Jessie's brain so fast, she didn't even need to think about what she was multiplying and dividing and adding. It just made sense to her.

"Hey, how old are you?" Megan asked, looking at her sideways.

"Eight," said Jessie. "But I'll be nine next month."

Megan shook her head. "That math doesn't sound right. No way we can make twelve dollars from just three little cans."

"Yuh-hunh," said Jessie. "I'll show you. Do you have a piece of paper?"

Jessie started to draw pictures. She knew that other kids couldn't see the numbers the way she did. They needed the pictures to make sense of math.

"Look," she said. "Here are three pitchers of lemonade, 'cause we've got three cans of lemonade. And each pitcher's got sixty-four ounces in it.

"Now, when we pour a cup of lemonade, we'll pour eight ounces, 'cause that's how much a cup holds. You don't want to pour less than that, or people will say you're being a cheapskate. So each pitcher is going to give us eight cups. 'Cause eight times eight equals sixty-four, right?

"Now, we'll sell each cup for fifty cents. That's a fair price. That means that every time we sell
two
cups, we make a buck. Right? Because fifty cents plus fifty cents equals a dollar. So look. I'll circle the cups by twos, and that's how many dollars we make. Count 'em."

Megan counted the circled pairs of cups. "...ten, eleven, twelve."

"That's how much money we'll make," said
Jessie. "
If
we sell all the lemonade. And
if
we do the lemonade stand."

"Wow," said Megan. "You're really good at math." She puffed her cheeks out like a bullfrog and thought for a minute. Then she popped both cheeks with her hands and said, "Whatever. Let's do the lemonade thing."

Jessie felt soaked in relief. Maybe this was going to work after all.

An hour later, Jessie and Megan had transformed the little wooden puppet theater in Megan's basement into the hottest new lemonade stand on the block. The stand was decorated with tissue-paper flowers, cut-out butterflies, and glittery hearts. It was a showstopper.

And, boy, did people notice it. Kids in the neighborhood, strangers walking their dogs, moms strolling with carriages—even the two guys fixing the telephone wires. They all came to buy lemonade. And just when Jessie and Megan were on the verge of running out, Mrs. Moriarty went to the store and bought three more cans—free of charge!

So when Mrs. Pawley asked for twelve cups at exactly the moment that Evan rounded the curve and saw her lemonade stand, Jessie felt like she'd just scored a hundred on a test
and
gotten five points for extra credit.

So why did Evan stomp off?

And how come she didn't feel like she'd won anything at all?

competition
(
) n. Rivalry in the marketplace.

Dinner that night at the Treskis' was quiet. So the explosion that followed seemed
especially
loud.

It was Jessie's turn to clear and scrape the dishes, Evan's turn to wash and stack. Evan looked at the pile of dirty plates on his left. Jessie was ahead. She was always ahead when it was her turn to clear, but tonight it felt like she was taunting him. To Evan, every plate-scraping sounded like "Can't keep up. Can't keep up."

Evan was scrubbing the casserole pan when
Jessie stacked the last dirty dish by his elbow. Then she stuck her hands under the faucet to rinse without even saying excuse me and shook her hands
practically right in Evan's face
and said, "So how much money did you make?"

That was it! He couldn't hold it in any longer!

"Why'd you do it, huh? Why'd you have to ruin the one thing I had going?" For a second, Evan wasn't sure if he meant the lemonade stand or Megan Moriarty. In a mixed-up way, he meant both.

And there was
no way
he was going to tell Jessie that after paying back his mother for the four cans of lemonade, one can of grape juice, and one bottle of ginger ale (she'd been pretty irritated when she came down from the office and there wasn't a single cold drink in the house), he had walked away with two dollars and eleven cents. On top of that, he was pretty sure Scott had kept the five-dollar bill they'd earned. Well, what was Evan supposed to do? Ask Scott to turn his pockets inside out? Evan hadn't kept track of the sales, so he couldn't be sure.

"Why'd
I
do it? Why'd
you
do it? Why'd you invite that
jerk
over for a lemonade stand?" shouted Jessie. "And how come you wouldn't let me play? You're the one who was mean."

"You're such a showoff," said Evan. "You always have to let everyone know that you're the smart one."

"I wasn't showing off. I was just trying to have a little fun. Is that against the law? You won't do a lemonade stand with me. Then I won't do a lemonade stand with you. I'll do one with my friend Megan, instead."

"You can
-not
be her friend. You can
-not
be her friend!" shouted Evan.

"Why not?"

"Because you're a little kid. You don't even belong in the fourth grade. And because you're just an annoying showoff pest and no one likes you!"

The words felt like disgusting spiders running out of his mouth. They were horrible. But it felt so
good
to get rid of them.

Then Evan saw Jessie's lip tremble. Uh-oh. Jessie was a howler. She didn't cry often and she didn't cry
long. But when she did, it was loud. Mom would come down from her office. Evan would catch the blame.
Unfair.

But Jessie didn't let loose. Instead, she stood as tall as her runty height would allow and said, "Megan likes me. She invited me over to her house tomorrow. We're going to make another lemonade stand and earn
twice
what we did today."