by Laura Dower
“Let me know what happens with Hart,” she whispered to Madison on her way out. No one else heard.
“Huh?” Madison said. “What are you talking about?”
“He totally likes you,” Susie said. “Does anyone know you like him?”
Madison stood there like a mannequin.
“Keep in touch,” she said. “I’ll call if I’m home from school. And we’ll have to hang over the summer.”
She leaned in and gave Madison a small hug. But Madison was still too stunned by Susie’s comments to move.
“Bye,” Madison said, managing a one-word response.
“Bye!” Susie chirped back.
Everyone helped Chet and Fiona’s parents clean up the mess around the house. Most of the food had been eaten, but no one had watched any videos. Everyone said their good-byes and bundled up to face the cold outside.
“Wanna walk home?” Madison asked Aimee. She needed some fresh air.
Aimee nodded and called her brothers to tell them she didn’t need a ride home. It took them a little longer than usual to make it over to Blueberry Street with all the black slush and puddles around the neighborhood, but the pair of BFFs made it.
“When Fiona got picked by Egg, I thought I would DIE,” Aimee said. “And by the way, what was all that stuff you said about having a crush on him? Are you nuts?”
“He knows it’s not true,” Madison said.
“Maybe, maybe not,” Aimee said. “I heard him ask Drew if you were serious.”
Madison smiled. “Now, that’s funny. Aimee, he knows the truth. He’s one of my oldest friends.”
“Yeah, but sometimes friends can change,” Aimee said.
Madison stopped. They were standing in front of Aimee’s place. They embraced, and Madison walked on.
“See you at school tomorrow!” Aimee called after her.
Madison nodded. She thought about Aimee’s last words.
Sometimes friends can change.
Inside her pocket, the Ivy letter was now permanently warped, torn, and smudged. Madison took it out.
She ripped open the seal and read it.
Finally.
Do Not Open Till 7th Grade
Top Secret FOEO (For Our Eyes Only)
We Madison Francesca Finn and Ivy Elizabeth Daly do swear that we will be bestest friends until seventh grade and after that, too.
1. We will go to Far Hills Junior High like Janet, and we will be the coolest friends in the whole school.
2. We will always share everything and borrow each other’s clothes.
3. We will get discovered by a famous TV agent and become TV stars in seventh grade. But no matter how famous we get, we will always be friends.
4. We will get married someday and have kids at the same time so they can grow up and go to school together like us.
5. We will have a farm out in the country with all kinds of animals.
6. We will travel around the world on our own plane and go swimming in all the oceans.
7. We will never be mad at each other.
After reading the letter, Madison raced home. Even though they’d been enemies now for a few years, Madison suddenly felt a blank space inside where her friendship with Ivy had been. They had all those plans together, and the only thing that had come true was their being at the same junior high school together. She knew they’d had a falling-out, but how did it get so ugly? What had really happened?
When Madison came inside, Mom was in her office, working on the Brazil documentary.
“Hey, Maddie!” Mom called out. “Remember those tree frogs we saw in Brazil? You have to come see the footage. It’s amazing!”
Madison slunk into Mom’s work space and collapsed on the floor.
“How was your party?” she asked. “You look glum.”
“Huh?” Madison grunted.
“How was the party at Chet and Fiona’s?”
Madison rubbed her eyes. “Okay, I guess.”
Mom turned off the frog video and turned on the overhead light.
“Are you crying?” Mom asked Madison gently.
“No.” Madison sniffled, wiping her nose with a tissue. “Why do you say that? I am not crying.”
“What happened, honey bear?” Mom asked.
“Nothing. Everything. Oh, it’s just that I think I’ve lost my mind, Mom. If you find it, will you let me know?”
Mom laughed. “Sure thing. You want to talk?”
“Not really,” she said.
Mom nodded. “Well, I’m here when you need me.”
Madison decided she would go online to surf the Internet for a pre-algebra homework helper program instead of obsessing anymore about Ivy. Thoughts of a now imminent math test were giving Madison huge tummy flip-flops. She had to get studying—fast. There were no more snowstorms to save her from the test.
The TweenBlurt.com search engine gave Madison a few different sites where she could practice. They had a helpful hints section with special ways to remember rules and the order of things. Madison was looking for fast and easy tricks since she had so much to learn and so little time to learn it!
She learned an acronym to help her solve algebraic equations: PEMDAS (Please Eat My Delicious Apples Soon).
Instantly the whole process seemed to make sense. The letter P was for “parentheses,” E was for “exponents,” M was for “multiplication,” D was for “division,” A was for “addition,” and S was for “subtraction.” When she followed this order to finish her simple-variable equations, Madison felt more confident about the order of operations. Not only could she take this test, but she could ace it! Madison wondered why this part of math hadn’t seemed clear before now.
What was different now?
After studying for a half hour, Madison opened up her files.
Lost and Found
Rude Awakening: I know why math is hard for me. Sometimes things just don’t add up.
Why can’t people stay the same? Ivy used to be so sweet. Hart used to be annoying. Life was easier a couple of years ago, before they switched places. Now Hart’s the nice one, and Ivy is evil. Seventh grade has been one gigantic algebra problem, and my head is spinning.
When school at Far Hills started, they talked about how this year would be like a transition year and we’d all feel out of place and out of sorts but that would end. It would END. Well, guess what? Endings are a joke. Nothing ever really ends.
Like this letter thing. Now that I’ve read the pact I made with Ivy, I can’t just throw it out. It’s like a part of me. I can even remember that we signed our names with fruit-scented markers.
She closed the file and went into her e-mailbox.
FROM
SUBJECT
Jeff Finn
Fw: This is SNOW funny
TRAVELUSA
Special Onetime-Only Offer
Flowr99
Science
The note from Dad turned out to be blank.
TRAVELUSA was spam.
And Flowr99 seemed familiar at first, but Madison couldn’t place the address. She scanned the e-mail.
From: Flowr99
To: MadFinn
Subject: Science Lab Notes
Date: Sun 21 Jan 5:11 PM
I got your e-mail from Egg hope you don’t mind. It’s Sunday and I can’t find any of my notes since before vacation and I need your science notes tomorrow. Bring your notebooks to class. L8R
Ivy hadn’t signed it, but Madison knew the person who had written this.
Or at least she used to.
Chapter 13
MRS. WING WAS ALL smiles in Monday morning’s technology class.
“This is a fabulous shot, Drew!” she said, looking at the computer screen in his station. Drew was downloading digital photos from the snowstorm onto the school Web site.
“Oh no, you didn’t put that one up there,” Madison said when she saw the photo of her and Ivy struggling just before Madison had been “ice tagged”
out. “I look so weird. Ick.”
“No, you don’t look weird at all, Maddie,” Mrs. Wing said. “You look like you’re having fun with your friends.”
“Isn’t that Ivy Daly?” another kid asked. “Since when are you friends with her?”
Madison dropped her head. “Since never, okay? We were on opposite teams. Look, Drew, please take that photo off.”
“But you look nice,” Egg said, in his best trying-to-impress-the-teacher voice. Egg had an itsy-bitsy crush on Mrs. Wing, and when he was trying for her attention, he would often exaggerate. “Really, really nice.”
“Well put, Walter,” Mrs. Wing said, taking the bait.
He just grinned and crossed his arms smugly. “I know,” he said.
Madison groaned.
After almost a whole week out of school, Madison and all the other students had loads of work to catch up on. It was amazing how much work seventh graders had to do. The snow days had been like frozen time—literally. But that time was long over.
Now Madison was thrust full speed ahead into schoolwork, after-school commitments, the school Web site, interschool social situations, and even gym class (which she was dreading more now than ever before).
“What about this picture?” Drew asked Madison. She looked at it close-up because she couldn’t tell at first who was even shown. It was a close-up of two people who were standing on the ice, just milling around.
On the left side was Aimee and their newest friend, Susie, and then Madison in her rainbow cap, a boy behind Madison, and Egg, hamming it up for the camera. Madison looked a little closer and could see that the unidentified boy was actually Hart, and he had his hand on Madison’s shoulder.
Wait just a minute! Madison thought. I don’t remember Hart Jones putting his hand on my shoulder or anywhere else.
She felt giddy inside.
“Skip to the next picture,” Egg said, reaching for the computer mouse.
“No, I wanna see this one!” Madison said. “Can I get a copy of this one, Drew?”
Drew nodded and then scrolled through the rest of the pictures.
There was a great shot of Aimee, Rose, and Ivy. (Madison hated it, though.)
Another photo showed Chet doing a glide on only one skate. He looked like a professional. That was selected by Mrs. Wing to appear on the site.
“What did you do during the snowstorm, Mrs. Wing?” Madison asked her.
The teacher shrugged. “Not a lot. I went to help my husband over at the clinic. Have you been around there recently? They’ve got a bunch of brand-new cages.”
“That’s nice,” Madison said sweetly. She missed all the animals.
Computer class zoomed by. Mrs. Wing helped everyone in class work on their graphing skills in anticipation of the big math test. Madison was feeling more and more confident about the test—especially when she repeated her newest “simple-variable equations” mantra.
Please Eat My Delicious Apples Soon.
Please Eat My Delicious Apples Soon.
Upon entering math class, Madison sat in the front row and dumped her bag onto the floor. Taking a deep breath, she rolled up her sleeves, poised her sharpened pencil, and prepared for the worst.
But she knew the first answer right away.
And she knew the second answer, too.
In no time, Madison was whizzing onward through equations, graphs, and other algebraic mazes. She finished the dreaded math test ten minutes early, feeling more confident about her math skills than ever before.
On the way to lunch, Madison was in such a good mood that she stopped in to visit with Mr. Montefiore, the music teacher who led the school band. Her snow day discovery of the old flute in the attic inspired her to talk to Mr. Montefiore about taking up the instrument again.
The attic exploration had not only helped Madison to rediscover truths about friends and parents. It also helped her to find out stuff she’d forgotten about herself.
She was a good flute player. And—like it or not—she had a lot in common with her mom.
Mr. Montefiore was surprised by Madison’s visit. He hadn’t thought she liked to perform. But when she pulled the old flute out of her bag and played a few notes, he changed his tune.
“We’ll get you up to speed with your band mates in no time,” he reassured her. “I am very excited about this.”
Madison played a little more and then put her flute back into her bag.
As she shoved it in, she saw the Ivy letter was there in the front pocket. Madison hoped that her resolve wouldn’t fail.
Poison Ivy Daly would see that note today.
Everyone was still buzzing about the snow days during lunch period. Once lunch was over, however, the buzz had died down. It almost always seemed true that on the day after a school break, everyone’s brains got tired more quickly. By the time science class rolled around, Mr. Danehy was dealing with a bunch of space cases.
“Did you bring the notes?” Ivy asked as soon as Madison walked into the classroom door. Madison pretended like she hadn’t heard the question.
“I asked you if you brought the notes, Maddie?” Ivy asked again, a little more firmly.
“Notes?” Madison played dumb.
“I sent you an e-mail. Didn’t you get it?”
“Huh?” Madison was making Ivy frustrated, but she enjoyed it.
Ivy wrinkled her eyebrows and glared at Madison. “Maddie, I have asked you the same question like seven times. Do you have the stupid science notes or what?”
“Oh!” Madison said at last. “No, I don’t.” She smiled.
Ivy frowned. “Aren’t we supposed to be partners?” she asked.
“Yeah, so?” Madison replied.
“Well, partners help each other out. So if we have this pop quiz, then I can look on with you because you’re my partner, right?”
“Pop quiz?” Madison’s voice dropped. “When?”
“Where have you been?” Ivy chided. “Mr. Danehy said last week…”
Madison turned to face the blackboard. She hadn’t even cracked her textbook open in days. Everything in the classroom slowed down. Madison started noticing that half the kids had their books out to study.
Hart came into the room just as the final bell rang. “Hey, Finnster! Ready for the quiz?”
Ivy crossed her legs with a huff. “Great, now we can both fail.”
Mr. Danehy entered a moment later, but he wasn’t carrying any copies of a test. Madison closed her eyes and said a private thank-you.
“Lucky thing.” Ivy snorted.
“Now, class.” Mr. Danehy grabbed his pointer and directed it skyward. “There are many things in this class I’d like to point out to you.” He aimed the pointer at the students. “For example, you.”
Chet raised his hand. “Uh, Mr. D., are we having a pop quiz or—”
“Shhhhhhhhhhhhh!” the front row shushed him.
Mr. Danehy shook his head. “Nope. I want to talk to you about an opportunity instead. I have an opportunity for you kids to improve your grades and make an impact on your community.”
“Oh no, not another community service pitch.” Ivy groaned.
Madison turned to look at Hart.
When she turned, he was looking right back at her. She saw him lean into his notebook and scribble something on a sheet of paper.
Mr. Danehy kept talking. “Now, as you may know, the Far Hills Annual Science Fair is coming up soon. And I’m eager to have all of you kids involved. Please give me a show of hands. Who’s interested?”
One kid in the front row raised her hand.
“That’s it? Tsk! Tsk!” Mr. Danehy moaned.
Madison was listening, only at some point everything Mr. Danehy said turned into gibberish.
Madison just stared at Hart. She blinked a few times, waiting to see what he was doing. All at once, he raised his hand, stood up, and started to walk toward Mr. Danehy’s desk.
On the way there, he dropped a note onto Madison’s counter.
Ivy’s eyes were on the note like glue the moment it left Hart’s hand.
Madison thwacked her palm over the torn piece of paper and pretended like nothing had happened.
“I saw that,” Ivy whispered.
“Huh?” Madison played dumber than dumb.
“I saw.” Ivy poked her nose over into Madison’s airspace. “Hart dropped something right there. What was it?”
“Excuse me?” Madison asked. “I don’t think that’s any of your business.”
“Yeah, well, I do,” Ivy said.
Madison kept her palm firmly planted on the note. She wasn’t going to risk Ivy seeing this—whatever it was.
Meanwhile Mr. Danehy was oblivious. He was still droning on about the science fair. Hart interrupted him to ask to go to the bathroom.
How can I read the note without Ivy seeing me? Madison thought. She looked around the room and then back over at Ivy.
Ivy hadn’t taken her eyes off the hidden note.
“You’re not supposed to pass notes in class, you know,” Ivy whispered. “I can turn you in.”
Madison laughed. “Go ahead.”
Ivy raised her hand, and Madison panicked. She reached out for Ivy’s arm. They ended up in a mini-tussle over the note.
“GIRLS!” Mr. Danehy yelled. “What on earth is going on back there?”
Neither Ivy nor Madison said a word.
“Madison started it,” Rose spoke up from the other side of where they were sitting. “I saw her.”
Ivy got a big grin on her face.
Stupid drones.
“Excuse me, Mr. Danehy,” Madison said. “But I believe that Ivy Daly was passing notes, and I wouldn’t pass it along for her, so she got a little—”
“You are such a liar!” Ivy huffed.
Taptaptaptaptap.
Mr. Danehy hit his desk with a ruler. “That is QUITE enough, girls,” he said. “I want to see both of you after class.”
Madison and Ivy sank onto their lab stools.
And Madison still hadn’t seen the note!
As Hart walked back into the classroom, Madison noticed that Ivy got distracted, so she took that opportunity to shove the note into the front pocket on her bag. She hadn’t read it yet, but that wouldn’t matter. She’d have plenty of time to look at it later in study hall or up in the media center or after school.