The Not-So-Boring Letters of Private Nobody
Page 9
“You know.” Kevin wagged a finger between them. “You know.”
Ella shrunk lower into the cot.
“I mean, it’s fine if you’re gonna go out,” Kevin said, “but I think you should know what you’re getting into. First, you’ll always be trying to maneuver the seating arrangement so you’re next to each other, and I’ll have to pretend I don’t know what’s happening when I really do. Then you’ll be staring into each other’s eyes and we’ll never get any work done. Then you’ll be meeting up without me to make out.”
Half of Oliver’s butt cheek slipped off the desk. He barely caught himself in time to avoid a full-on wipeout.
“And then if you break up, things will get super awkward. You’ll both start bailing on group meetings. The documentary could suffer. Ella might fail social studies and be doomed to repeat seventh grade. Worst of all, I’ll be back in Mason’s Resource choking on her perfume.”
“Kevin,” Oliver said. He had to shut the kid up. “We’re just friends.”
“You know who else was just friends? Everybody who’s ever gone out.”
“We get it,” Ella said. “Nobody goes out with anybody.”
“Whoa, whoa,” Kevin said. “Let’s not get crazy here. I was just shooting up some flares. You two can do whatever you want. I mean, this is America.”
“We get it,” Oliver said. The words came out fast and jumbled. He just wanted to get the heck out of there. “For the sake of the project.”
Kevin gave a big nod, like he’d said his piece, and headed for the door.
He was gone for only a second before he popped back.
“Just checking to make sure you weren’t making out yet.”
A few seconds of silence went by after he left.
“That was . . . weird,” Oliver said.
“Yeah.”
Oliver cut her a quick glance.
“Uh, okay,” Oliver said. “I should probably go to lunch.”
“Okay.”
He heard a hitch in her voice. “I mean, unless you want me to . . . stay.”
Ella was kind of pale again, and shaking a little. “Would you mind?”
The hero feeling was back.
“Friends don’t let friends sit alone in the nurse’s office,” he said.
—CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR—
THE SCORECARD OF EMOTIONS
“No, I do not need any assistance,” Oliver told the annoying customer service chat box that kept popping up on every page of the Weller Bank’s website on his basement computer. It was one of the few good leads that came up when he googled “H. Weller,” but the chat box kept popping up every time he tried to click around on his own, and it gave him nothing when he asked it about H. Weller. It was like a brick wall.
“I will not have a good day,” he told the customer service chat supporter.
Oliver went back to his Word doc.
Theory #3: Stone enlisted in the 68th as a substitute for some guy named H. Weller.
How to prove:
Find more letters from H. Weller Find out who H. Weller was Google the crap out of him
Search on Ancestry.com
After logging in with Ella’s free trial account, Oliver entered “Weller” in the last name field and got a bagillion records. Most of them came from census data, which was basically when America counted all of the people every ten years. Oliver narrowed the search to males from the 1860s who had ever lived in Philadelphia, which helped bring the number down a little.
To three hundred and sixteen.
“Well, crap,” Oliver said.
He scrolled through lots of Jesses and Johns and some guy named Fride until he realized he could filter for anybody whose name started with H. That narrowed it down to sixteen.
Exactly.
Oliver scanned to the bottom.
“Hello, Henry.”
The Ancestry card didn’t have anything other than his wife’s and son’s names, so Oliver went back to Google—this time, with a first name.
And again, the first hit was the Weller Financial Group.
A chat box popped up asking how they could be of service.
“You could tell me who Henry Weller is,” Oliver typed in with 100 percent sarcasm.
It paused for a few seconds. Then, at last, it spit out a real answer.
Henry Weller is the former president of the Weller Bank, the forerunner to the Weller Financial Group. Here is a link to a brief history of his role in the company.
Oliver blinked.
He followed the link to the company’s “About Us” page.
The Weller Financial Group traces its origins to nineteenth-century America. Thomas Weller, a wealthy businessmen and prominent member of the Society of Friends, founded the Weller Bank on 7th and Chestnut Streets in 1848. Generous lending practices and low interest rates quickly made the bank a favorite among Philadelphian merchants and farmers. In 1871, Thomas’s eldest son, Henry Weller, took over as bank president, a position he held until his death in 1938.
Oliver breathed out.
Theory #3: Stone enlisted in the 68th as a substitute for some guy named H. Weller.
How to prove:
Find more letters from H. Weller Find out who H. Weller was Google the crap out of him
Search on Ancestry.com Weller Bank president was also named Henry Weller (says so on their website)
Find out if this is the same H. Weller who wrote Stone’s dad those letters
Oliver’s phone buzzed.
Ella. Hey.
Oliver googled “Why does my stomach feel weird when this girl texts me” and got back a bunch of scary medical conditions.
Hey, he texted back.
I never said thx. For the fainting thing.
Oliver’s chest swelled. It had been pretty awesome.
No prob, he texted.
And I swear on a Bible that I won’t ask you to go out with me.
He instantly regretted hitting SEND.
No response from Ella.
“Great,” he said to the empty basement. He threw his phone on the couch. “Just great.”
Oliver wandered upstairs and ate six Oreos at the breakfast bar. It was mostly quiet because Addie had piano lessons. The only sound was his dad watching Seinfeld reruns in the living room. Oliver looked at the half-eaten sleeve; it looked lonely, so he finished the rest and washed it down with a giant glass of milk, then walked into the living room.
His dad woke from a half nap. “Hey bud,” he said. “What’s up?”
“Nothing.”
It was an early episode Oliver had seen a dozen times—when the storylines and acting hadn’t been as funny, but you could tell it was going to be in the future. Oliver loved it.
“I have a question about girls.”
The La-Z-Boy retracted as Oliver’s dad sat up. “Um—well . . . great. Okay. Where to start—”
“Not that. Basic stuff. Like: How do you tell if you want to be . . . not friends with a girl. More than friends.”
“You mean, if you like them?”
“Uh, yeah.”
Oliver’s dad lowered the volume. He looked a lot more relaxed now that he knew the conversation wouldn’t involve basic anatomy. “Okay. There’s usually some signs.”
“Signs.”
“Yeah. For example: When you see her, what do you feel like? Excited? Happy? Nervous? Or nothing—like when you see Mom.”
“Let’s leave Mom out of this.”
“Right.”
Oliver thought about the question. “I guess . . . happy. I like hanging out with her. She’s nice and pretty cool.”
“Hmm. That could go in the ‘Friends’ or ‘More Than Friends’ column. Let
’s put it in both for now.”
Oliver thought some more. “Sometimes excited and nervous. Like when she texts me.”
“Texting with a friend shouldn’t make you nervous. I’d say that goes in the ‘More Than Friends’ column.”
“Columns. So it’s like a scorecard. Of emotions.”
“I guess you could say that.”
“And I just keep doing this with everything and then whichever one has the most will be the situation I’m in?”
His dad nodded. “Sometimes not feeling something is just as important as what you’re feeling.”
Oliver wished the anatomy talk with his mom had been this clear-cut.
“If the results say ‘More Than Friends,’ what do I do then?”
His dad laughed. “Ollie, you’ve just stumbled upon one of life’s great questions.”
“And?”
“And the answer is: It’s complicated.”
“Anything more concrete? I’m kinda in a . . . a situation.”
“I’ve been in a few situations myself, you know. The last one was with your mother.”
“I was pretty clear on Mom not being in this conversation.”
“Sorry.” His dad rubbed the stubble on his face. “At some point you have to just go for it.”
Oreos and milk sloshed in Oliver’s stomach at that scenario. He really shouldn’t have eaten that whole sleeve. “So I just go up to her and say, ‘I like you’? That sounds like a terrible idea. If she doesn’t like me back, I’ll look like an idiot.”
“But at least you’ll know.”
Oliver wasn’t so sure that was worth the risk. “My friend Kevin says that going out with someone you work with causes problems. He says it has a negative impact on product quality. Do you think that’s true?”
“Maybe . . . but the tension could still be there. When you like someone a lot, it can be hard to spend a lot of time with them and not actually be with them, you know?”
Oliver thought about sitting with Ella in the nurse’s office, and how all he wanted to do was stay there until she felt better. Where did that go on the scorecard?
Seinfeld came back from commercial and they watched for a minute.
“Okay. Thanks, Dad.”
“You got it, bud. Let me know how things progress.”
“Uh-huh.”
Oliver went back down to the basement and eyed his phone from across the room. Had she thought his joke was funny or stupid? And why did he care so much?
Finally, he picked it up and looked at the screen.
“Now what,” he said, “does that mean?”
And then he opened up a new Word doc.
Friends
I think she’s cool
I think she’s nice
I like hanging out with her
I wanted to keep her from getting a concussion
I didn’t want to leave her alone in the nurse’s office
More Than Friends
I think she’s cool
I think she’s nice
I like hanging out with her
I wanted to keep her from getting a concussion
I didn’t want to leave her alone in the nurse’s office
I get nervous/excited when she texts me
Oliver swallowed as he reviewed the data, which actually made him feel better because he could then add “Get nervous when the scorecard tells me I want to be more than friends with her” to the “Friends” column, because why would he be nervous unless he just wanted to be friends?
Okay. So it was a tie.
Which meant he needed more data.
—CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE—
DATA COLLECTION
“I think he’s eaten like five hundred M&M’s since we got here,” Kevin whispered to Oliver.
“Uh-huh.”
Oliver was too busy fighting a migraine to deal with Hal’s weirdness right now. And that was his own fault, really, because he’d offered to read letters with Ella instead of just type for her. The plan had been to be around her as much as possible so he could input more data into his Scorecard of Emotions and arrive at a clear conclusion.
But after three hours of reading Stone’s scribbles, he actually needed her help less and less, until they weren’t talking at all. He had a throbbing headache and absolutely zero new data for his Scorecard of Emotions.
“I can’t believe they played baseball in camp,” Ella said, putting away a letter Stone had sent to his mom. “With bases and bats and everything. That is so cool. Makes me kinda sad Stone was so sick he couldn’t even play.”
Or maybe he was in his tent, counting his substitution cash, Oliver thought. “Most of my letters were about the weather and food and news about the war he heard from other camps.”
Ella nodded like that was awesome. “This will be a great addition to the documentary—really play up the camp life angle.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I could go for some M&M’s right now,” Kevin said. “I wonder how he feels about sharing.”
“I can guess,” Oliver said.
Kevin went back to his script. Oliver typed the last sentence on his mom’s clunky laptop and put the letter sleeve back into the three-ring binder. His eyes burned like someone had forced him to stare into the sun for an hour.
He looked at Ella and cleared his throat.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Huh?”
“You look like someone is standing on your stomach.”
“That’s it, I’m asking him,” Kevin said. He walked across the room to Hal and stuck his hand out. “Kevin Kim: Pleased to meet you. This may sound kinda weird because we don’t really know each other, but I see that you’ve got quite a lot of—”
Hal reached into his pocket and gave Kevin a bag of M&M’s.
“. . . Thanks.”
Hal gave Kevin two more bags and pointed to Oliver and Ella. “For them.”
“. . . Wow, thanks Hal.”
“Yes.”
Kevin blinked. And for some reason did a little bow.
“That wasn’t how I saw that happening,” he whispered when he got back.
“I like sharing,” Hal said.
“He has really good hearing,” Oliver whispered.
“Yes,” Hal said.
Whispering was clearly out.
“We’re taking good care of the documents,” Oliver said to Hal. “Right, Ella?”
She was lost in another letter. “. . . Yeah . . .”
“It’s easier to see if you take it out,” Hal said. “No glare. But you need these.” He put his hand on the box of latex gloves.
“Can you make a copy of this letter?” Ella asked Hal.
“No.”
She frowned. “Why not?”
“Light damages the documents.”
Oliver’s phone pinged. A text from his mom: Ollie, I will be there in five minutes . . . please be outside so I can just pull up and don’t have to beep . . . if you’re not outside I will beep until you come out . . . Love you . . . Mom.
“My mom’s almost here,” he said. “We should pack up.”
Ella had buried herself in her notes. “Gotta focus. Quiet.”
“I have to go to the bathroom. Kevin, will you go out to the car and meet her before she starts—”
Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep-beeeeeeep-beep.
“Crap, she’s early,” Oliver said. “Kevin, go tell her we’re just finishing something so she stops beeping.”
“Leaving me alone with all the M&M’s is going to end with you having zero M&M’s,” Kevin said.
Beeeeep-beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.
“You can have mine,” Oliver said.
“No backsies.”
“Whatever.”
“No backsies is a serious, binding contract that has kept humans from backing out of agreements for thousands of years—”
Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.
“Fine—no backsies.”
Kevin grabbed his stuff and ran out. Oliver stopped by the bathroom and met Ella back at their table.
“Anything good?” he asked
But Ella didn’t answer. She was staring at her phone like it had committed murder. “Dresses suck.” Ella said the words out loud as she texted. She pushed the screen to black and shoved the phone in her pocket.
“Uh,” Oliver said. “What?”
“My sister is coming home from college this week and wants to take me shopping for a stupid dress to wear to the spring dance,” Ella explained as they walked out. “Which I’m not going to because dresses suck and dances suck.”
“Right,” Oliver said, but not because he agreed. He was too busy picturing Ella in a dress, in the gym, walking toward him in slow motion as an overhead disco ball covered her with glittering lights.
There was only one place on the scorecard for that.
Which meant it was official.
He liked her.
—CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX—
THE LOVE NOTE
“Fix bayonets,” Sergeant Tom ordered.
Oliver unhooked the long, sharp piece of metal from his utility belt and slipped it over the rifle. Shunk. It was easier doing it like this—crouched down behind picnic tables meant to represent a stone wall—than standing in formation.
“CHARGE!”
Oliver screamed at the top of his lungs as the 104th Pennsylvania Volunteers clambered up and over the tables. He tuned out the grunts and groans of his fellow soldiers and focused on the bottom of the hill, where a line of trees was standing in for Confederate soldiers.
He charged down the hill, legs pounding, lungs on fire. He was doing it—he was leading the infamous charge of Union soldiers down Little Round Top. Maybe Sergeant Tom would tell the guy in charge of the reenactment how good Oliver was, and he’d be the first one down the actual Little Round Top at Gettysburg in July. According to just about every Civil War historian, the defense of Little Round Top at Gettysburg had been the most critical Union counterattack of the three-day battle. Heroes had been made on that hill.