Descriptive, not prescriptive. Like baseball statistics and Coco’s family in the spelling bees. Great. Now I had Coco memories haunting me along with Charlotte memories. Maybe they could hang out—throw a boy-girl party to celebrate my misery.
Lone wolf. I was meant to be a lone wolf, and now here I was surrounded by a pack of hyenas. We’d once visited this zoo and amusement park in the southern part of the state. It was just about the saddest thing you’d ever want to see. All the animals had threadbare patches on their fur and wandered from one side of their cage to another without any life in their eyes. That was what was going to happen to me.
“I’ve gotta go,” I said. I needed to get back inside to think. Back with Taryn Greenbottom on her own solo quest. Sure, Taryn usually traveled with her group, but those fellows were different. They were smart and loyal and brave, and they never, ever, ever let Taryn down. She was always the one leaving them. As usual, I realized, Taryn had the right idea.
Twenty-Two
Nemesis
Because my week couldn’t get any better, on Tuesday we started volleyball in gym class.
Lena and I changed in the supply closet and I noticed that the bin of basketballs was sitting right where the volleyballs used to be—and the volleyballs were gone. I hoped this was the work of a flock of volleyball-loving penguins called to play snow volleyball out on the field, but I knew the truth. “Oh, no,” I moaned.
“Did you forget your gym clothes?” Lena asked.
I shook my head. “Volleyball. Game of death.”
“Really? I kind of like it. I’ll help you out.”
But of course Ms. Wickersham split us up. And it wasn’t just that Lena was on another team. No, her team was playing on a completely different court. And who was on my team? Why, Melinda, Charlotte, and Coco, of course, plus Lucas, which would have been fine, only he was even worse at volleyball than me, so it wasn’t like he could help me out and cover for me.
It didn’t take long for the other team to figure out that we were the weak points, and soon they were firing every serve and spike our way. “It’s like the balls are magnetically attracted to us,” I complained to him.
“At least something is,” Melinda said.
Charlotte looked at me, then looked away. She had just about perfected the move. It almost would have been better if she’d laughed along with the girls on the other side of the net.
On the next serve, though, Dev smacked it so it nearly hit Melinda in the face. That was like flipping a switch. She went from regular, mean Melinda to mean Melinda with a super-competitive streak.
“Come on, Ruth! Could you even try a little?” she yelled when I flinched away from yet another ball.
We were losing three to six. If the game would just end, we’d rotate and our team would be going up against Lena and a bunch of other relatively sane people. Lucas served. The ball flopped into our side of the net.
Melinda threw her hands into the air.
“It’s just a game,” Coco said. Big phony. He was only pretending to be nice to me, so they could finish up their diabolical plan.
Melinda sniffed in hard. “What do you know about it?” she demanded.
He blinked his eyes quickly, as if no one had ever snapped at him before. It almost made me think they weren’t in cahoots.
Melinda picked up the ball and threw it hard at Lucas, who caught it with an “oof.”
“Take your makeup serve,” she said. “And get it over the net this time.”
Lucas held the ball out with one hand, then used his other hand to send it over the net. It slipped over and fell down so close to the net that the other team didn’t have a chance to get it.
“Yeah!” Melinda punched the air.
Lucas had to serve again. This time they were ready for him, with Ashley, one of Melinda’s basketball friends, way up by the net. The serve veered to the left, and Dev popped it back up. Ashley jumped and tried to spike it, but ended up smashing it into her own toe.
She rolled the ball to Melinda, who tossed it to Lucas. “I have to serve again?” he asked.
“You keep serving until we lose the point. And don’t even think of losing the point on purpose.”
So Lucas served again and got it over. This time they returned it easily. Coco bumped it up, then Charlotte pushed it over toward me. I took a deep breath and slapped at the ball. By some miracle it made its way over and landed in a hole among the other team.
“Awesome, Ruth!” Charlotte called out.
“Dumb luck,” Melinda said.
She was right, but whatever.
“Good play,” Coco said to me softly.
“I don’t care about stupid volleyball,” I said back to him.
Lucas’s wrist was turning pink where it smacked the ball when he served. He tossed it in his hands.
“All tied up,” Melinda said.
“I just want to let you know that, even with the marked improvement I’m showing, statistically I am unlikely to get another serve over,” Lucas said. “I’ve never done more than one before.”
“Just serve the ball.” Melinda leaned forward on her toes. She blew her hair out of her eyes.
Lucas tried again and sent it sailing over the net and beyond. It was about to go out, but then Dev did a heroic dive and popped it back in. “Dev!” Ashley cried out. “Let that go!”
Another girl on her team managed to control the ball and get it back into play, and Ashley spiked it over. Straight to me, of course.
Melinda jumped in front of me, her elbow catching me in the ribs. I toppled to the ground and she fell on top of me. Her knee hit my stomach. “Ruth!” she cried as she disentangled herself. “You’re useless.”
“You ran into me!” I cried out.
“I did not. And, anyway, I called it. It was between us and I called it and you should have stepped aside.”
“I didn’t hear you call it,” Lucas said.
“Me, neither,” Coco said.
Ms. Wickersham trotted over. “What’s going on here, kiddos?”
Melinda pointed at me. “It was between us. She should have moved. She practically tripped me.” She rubbed her elbow, and then her ankle.
“You okay?” Ms. Wickersham asked. “You hurt your ankle again?”
Of course. Ms. Wickersham coached the girls’ basketball team, and Melinda was her star player.
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Why don’t you go get some ice.”
“If I’m sidelined, it’s all Ruth’s fault. There should be two gym classes. One for athletes, and one for idiots.”
“Did you trip her?” Ms. Wickersham asked. She tried to make her face look soft and caring.
“No,” I said.
“She didn’t,” Coco said. “Really.”
“I don’t need your help,” I said to him. He recoiled. It was like watching one of those sensitive plants that collapsed in on itself when you touched it. I didn’t care. I turned to Ms. Wickersham. “Either you believe me or you don’t, Ms. Wickersham. She crashed into me because she didn’t think I would hit the ball. And I probably wouldn’t have. So I guess she was right. Because Melinda’s always right, isn’t she?”
“Ruth—” Ms. Wickersham said. Her voice had a sheen of calm over a layer of panic, like when there’s a thaw that just melts the snow enough so it turns to ice, and then it snows again on top. “No one is accusing you of anything.”
I shook my head and pressed my lips together. No one was? Melinda was. Melinda had.
“Put some ice on that, Melinda.” Ms. Wickersham’s voice edged closer to anger. Melinda heaved a sigh and limped over toward the first aid box, where she grabbed one of those ice packs that you smash and some sort of chemical process gets going to make it cold. When she smacked it, she glared right at me. “Volleyball is a tough game to get the hang of,” Ms. Wickersham told me.
“Ms. Wickersham,” Charlotte said, barely above a whisper. “It’s true.”
“Ruth really tr
ipped Melinda?” Ms. Wickersham asked.
“No.” She stepped closer and leaned her head right into Ms. Wickersham, with her back to Melinda. “Melinda ran into Ruth. She didn’t call the ball. I know it was an accident. She’s probably embarrassed.”
“It wasn’t an accident,” I said.
Charlotte looked up at me with her sad eyes—the sad eyes she’d worn ever since the library collapsed—and I shut my mouth. I shouldn’t ruin her gesture. It just might be the last favor she ever did for me.
During study hall I asked Ms. Lawson if I could go to the library, and then hurried there as fast as I could so Coco wouldn’t find me.
Mrs. Abernathy beckoned me over. “No word yet from the professor,” she said. “Sorry about that.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “It’s just the way things go.”
She pushed her glasses up into her hair, where there was already another pair of reading glasses. “It’s a good question. You have me curious now, too.”
“My mom was the one who asked,” I told her. “I just said I would try to find out. I think I’m going to go read now.”
“I still have The Hobbit if you want it.”
I shook my head and held up The Riddled Cottage.
“Harriet Wexler. Got it.”
As I walked back to my spot, I thought I saw Coco at the library door. I tucked my head down and tightened my shoulders. He wasn’t an idiot. If he saw me, he would know what my body language meant.
I dropped to the floor under the stairs and pulled my knees up to make myself as small as possible, like a roly-poly bug curling up into a spiral. I knew I should still be studying for the bee, even on my own. When Mum came back, I wanted to be able to wow her, leave no doubt in her mind that I would win. But instead I opened up The Riddled Cottage.
When I’d left Taryn, she’d been in trouble. She’d found the cottage in the woods. Tired, cold, and soaked through from a rainstorm, she’d stumbled inside, and there, sleeping on the floor, she’d found a troll.
Now Taryn stared at the troll. He stood up, stretched his arms above his head, and belched the stinkiest, loudest belch that Taryn had ever experienced. It knocked her right onto the floor. The troll marched over to her and loomed above her. She was sure it was the end of her days. He scooped up a club and held it above him, ready to thrash her. But there was something in his eyes—fear, remorse, panic—and Taryn yelled out, “Wait!”
“Wait?” the troll croaked back.
“I am Taryn Greenbottom, squire to Sir Laudholm the Brave. Who are you?”
“I am Charlak Rapshidir, Troll of the Forest. You have come upon my cottage and, as is my cursed duty, I shall kill you.”
“Cursed duty?” Taryn asked. “Is there no way around this fate?”
“Solve my riddle, and we shall be free.”
Then he told her the riddle:
My visage high above your city,
Shines like gold, but half as pretty.
Arms I’ve none, but hands I’ve two:
Mondo, mini, black not blue.
Climb my stairs and have no fears,
All that threatens are my gears.
I stuck my finger in the book to mark my place. Visage. What was a visage? The dictionary was on the other side of the room on a huge stand. If I came out, Coco might still be there waiting for me, so I moved on to the next part: “Shines like gold, but half as pretty.” Silver, maybe.
Arms I’ve none, but hands I’ve two:
Mondo, mini, black not blue.
What has hands but no arms? It sounded like something out of one of those old joke books from elementary school. When is a door not a door? When it’s ajar! Mondo, mini—that was like big and small. Big and small hands? A clock!
I didn’t worry about Coco. I scampered across to the dictionary and flipped to the Vs. “Visage” was a face. A clock has a face and hands but no arms, and, yes, gears!
I sprinted back to my nook and flipped back to the page with the riddle. Taryn pondered it for much less time than I had. “A clock,” she said simply.
And then a magical thing happened, as magical things are wont to do in Harriet Wexler books.
The troll collapsed in on itself. I’ve won! Taryn thought. I’ve defeated the troll! But it was stranger still than that. For in the place of the troll, a man seemed to grow up out of the ground. The troll’s clothes were far too big for him and hung off him like bedsheets. “Lord Charlesmoore!” Taryn called out, for that was who the man was: a noble knight who had been missing for years. He had entered the Forest of Westbegotten and never returned, presumed dead.
“Taryn Greenbottom!” he exclaimed. “I knew it would be you who answered my call.” And then he kissed her.
And I threw the book against the stairs.
Twenty-Three
Freebooter
My luck—as little of it as I had—ran out on Wednesday. Coco caught me on my way to the library.
“Ruth,” he said, just as I was reaching for the door. He had a stack of word cards in his hand.
I wished for one of Taryn’s vials of invisibility juice.
I turned. “Oh,” I said. “Studying. I forgot.”
“You didn’t forget.”
“We don’t have to do this,” I said.
“Do what?”
“Study. I’m really prepared.”
“You are. But you can be more prepared.”
Outside, the snow was shiny and hard across the playing fields, reflecting back the dull, flat sunlight. “I can study on my own.”
He hitched his backpack up onto his shoulders. It was blue and perfectly clean, unlike mine, or anyone else’s, for that matter. My red one had a black stain all up one side from where a pen had broken.
“You heard. The other day, you heard me and my dad.”
I nodded.
“I didn’t mean it.”
“You do,” I told him. “You said you don’t even care who wins. You and Melinda are just—”
“Melinda?”
“I saw you talking to her outside the room that day. With Charlotte.”
He turned red. Not slowly like normal, but instantly, brightly. “She thought,” he began. Then again: “She said—” He shook his head. “I’m not working with Melinda on anything, and I tried to tell you before—”
“Well, even if you’re not working with Melinda, you still think spelling bees are stupid. So stupid you purposely messed up on the test so you wouldn’t have to be a part of it.”
“I don’t think spelling bees are stupid. I was angry with my dad.”
“What was that thing about the geography bee?”
“Some schools do them. It’s a lot like the spelling bee, I guess, but through National Geographic. And he was trying to convince the school to do one. I guess he thought that I could win.”
None of this sounded especially awful to me. “So?”
“So, I don’t care about winning.”
“Then why are you helping me beat Emma? I mean, if you think it’s so stupid, why not just help your sister win again?”
“It’s all my dad cares about. Winning.”
His voice had that foghorn quality to it again, so loud yet forlorn, and I realized that even if I didn’t understand exactly what was bothering him, it pulled as heavy as an anchor. I didn’t know what to do with my hands. They felt like they were hanging off my body, weighing a million pounds. I didn’t know what to do at all. Mom would reach over and pat his forearm, maybe even give it a squeeze, but I was not my mom and he was not my son. He was my friend. Maybe. “Oh.”
“I’m better than Emma. A lot better. I would’ve beaten her. And so my dad would’ve backed me. He would’ve cheered for me, not her. He wouldn’t care about her at all.”
“That still doesn’t explain why you wanted to help me instead.”
“I know it doesn’t make sense,” he conceded. “In my mind, it did. Sort of.” He shook his head. “My dad was a great athlete. Soccer, basketball
, baseball. He went to college on a scholarship. He won and won and won. And then along came us kids, and none of us are very good at sports. But we’re good at spelling. And geography. And math. My brother is the top scorer on the math team, and he’s only in tenth grade. And for my dad, it’s like, well, he can’t be the dad cheering in the stands at the big game, but he can still be on the winning team.”
I nodded.
“I just wanted him to see that sometimes you do things just because, you know. Just because it’s fun. Like when you are spelling, figuring it out, it’s fun.”
I wasn’t sure if “fun” was the right word. “I guess it’s more satisfying if it’s not a word I have memorized, and I figure it out from the roots and origin and all that.”
“Exactly,” he said. Then again: “Exactly. Sometimes I wonder if my dad even liked playing those sports. He doesn’t play them anymore, not at all. He doesn’t even watch them on television unless he’s going to someone’s house for a Super Bowl party or whatever.”
“So how was my beating Emma supposed to help with that?”
“I don’t know.” He shook his head. “It was never a clear plan. I just wanted him to see—this is what I tried to tell you before—he’s the reason they flubbed. The pressure and the enthusiasm. But it would have been so much worse for Emma if he didn’t care, you know?”
“And worse for you,” I said.
“I thought that if he saw me helping you, and if you won, he’d get so mad that we’d have to talk. He’d have to stop and look and see what he was doing, and we could actually talk about it.” He held the cards in his hands up to his chest as if he were hugging them, and himself. The one on top said OUGHT/AUGHT, and I guessed we were supposed to be working on homonyms again. “Ought,” as in should, an obligation, versus “aught,” or everything, the opposite of naught. He sighed. “I’m sorry, Ruth. I really am. I was using you, I guess, but I thought it was okay because I was also helping you. And now we’re friends, and—” As he spoke, his face got redder and redder, so his cheeks were taking on a purple hue.
“He was right, though. It would help you with your Harvard camp application.”
The Friendship Riddle Page 17