by Julie Bowe
So do I.
But all I hear is Rachel plunking on the piano downstairs. “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.”
Jenna rushes back into my room and tries to pick up the flowerpot. “Help me!” she snaps. Then she looks at me and makes her face go soft. “Please?”
“What are we doing?” I ask as we lug the flowerpot downstairs.
“Shhh!” Jenna whispers. “We’re sneaking to the sandbox. STAT!”
“Flowers! Flowers everywhere!” The kitchen door slams open and Rachel bursts in from outside.
Me and Jenna look up from the pictures we’re drawing and do surprised faces.
“Come and see!” Rachel shouts, pulling on Jenna’s arm. A marker rolls off the table and I stoop to pick it up. But before I can toss it back into the bucket, Rachel grabs my arm too and drags both of us out the door and across my backyard to the sandbox.
“See, Jenna?” Rachel says, pointing to the five red flowers that poke up from the sand. “I told you the seeds would grow!”
Jenna’s mouth does a twitch. “It was just luck,” she says, glancing at me. “Right?”
I nod. “Luck and rain,” I say. “Sometimes that’s all it takes.”
Jenna clears her throat and fiddles with her braid. “But they won’t grow for long in all that sand, Rachel. We’ll have to move them to a better place.”
“Where?” Rachel asks.
“A garden,” Jenna says. “A real one.”
“We got a real garden?” Rachel asks.
“We will,” Jenna says. “In a minute.” She gives me another glance.
We run to the shed and bring back the extra flowerpot.
“Oh, look what we found,” Jenna says, doing a surprised face again. “A flowerpot already filled with dirt.”
“Magic!” Rachel says.
We help her plant the flowers in it. They look happy to finally be home.
“Five flowers,” Rachel says, standing up and brushing dirt off her hands. “One for me, one for Mommy . . .” She points to each bloom in the pot. “One for Daddy, one for Jenna, and . . . one for Tiger too!”
She slants a grin at Jenna. “Right, Jen?”
“One for each of us,” Jenna says. “Tiger too.”
Chapter 17
Jenna comes to school the next day and the first thing we do is give her the giant card.
We all crowd around while she looks it over.
Even the boys.
Jenna blinks at the pictures we drew on the front for a long time. Then she opens the card slowly, like she’s afraid the whole thing might crumble in her hands.
“Did Mr. Crow make you do this?” she asks, reading everything we wrote inside.
I shake my head. “I thought of giving you the flowers. Brooke thought of the card. Stacey thought of drawing stuff you like. The boys thought of tarantulas and robotic dragonflies.”
All the boys grin.
I see a smile skim across Jenna’s face.
She glances at Brooke. “It’s nice,” she says. “Thanks for thinking of it.”
Brooke does a quick nod. “I’m always coming up with good ideas. You know that.”
Jenna does a little snort. “Like the time you had the idea to shake up a bottle of soda before we opened it? Root beer city.”
Brooke snorts back. “That wasn’t as bad as the time you had the idea to put regular dish soap in your dishwasher. Remember? Suds city.”
They do a snort duet.
Stacey laughs. “You both know how to come up with good ideas. You’re just the same.”
“Yep,” I say. “Only different.”
Brooke reaches into her pocket and pulls something out. She holds a taped-up lump of pink tissue paper in the palm of her hand. “Here,” she says to Jenna. “This is for you too.”
“Careful,” Randi says, stepping back. “Could be explosive.”
Jenna does that suspicious look she’s so good at. Then she takes the lump and unwraps the paper.
A silver chain slithers out.
A sparkly letter J dangles from it.
“It’s not as good as a half heart,” Brooke says. “And the diamonds aren’t real. But fake diamonds are better than no diamonds at all.”
Jenna looks up from the necklace. “But I told you before,” she says to Brooke. “I don’t want it.”
“I know you don’t want it,” Brooke replies. “But I think you need it.” She glances away and back again. “And I need to say . . . I’m sorry. For fighting. And for saying all those mean things about your family. And for teasing you about liking Tom . . .” She leans in closer to Jenna and whispers, “. . . even though I know it’s true.” She straightens up. “I wish we could be friends again.”
We all look at Jenna. No one says a word even though our mouths are hanging open.
Jenna studies the necklace for a moment.
Then she looks at Brooke.
“I’m sorry too,” she says. “For fighting back. And for always wanting to get my way.”
She puts the necklace on and smiles. “Friends again?”
Brooke smiles back. “Duh,” she replies.
Randi does a big sigh. “Finally.”
Rusty nods. “Yeah, I thought you guys would fight forever.”
“Same here,” Quinn adds.
“Forever, plus two days for me,” Joey puts in.
Brooke rolls her eyes.
Jenna lifts her chin. “That just proves how much boys don’t know,” she says.
All the girls nod.
“There’s one thing we know,” Tom says.
“What?” Jenna replies.
Tom twists up a grin. “We know you’ve got a secret tree house in your woods.”
All the boys nod.
Jenna shoots a look at Brooke. “You told them?”
Brooke shakes her head. “I swear I didn’t. I only told Stacey.”
“And I only told Randi,” Stacey chimes in.
“Don’t look at me,” Randi says. “I only told Meeka. And . . . possibly . . . Dominic.”
Dominic grins.
“It doesn’t matter who told who what,” I say. “All that matters is that everyone is friends again. Right?”
Everyone nods.
By Thursday, we have the tree house mostly de-spidered. We decided to ask Jenna to help us fix it up instead of surprising her. I think that surprised her most of all.
By Friday, Mrs. Eddy has finished sewing all of our handprints to the branches on the tree quilt. She also used her sewing machine to make lots of loops and swirls on the background.
Only, some of the loops and swirls are actually letters that spell out our names in fancy cursive. At first, you don’t even know they’re there. But the more you look, the more you see your friends blowing around in the breeze.
And even though, technically, it’s a friendship quilt, not a crazy quilt, Mrs. Eddy sewed a silvery web on one of the tree branches and stitched a spider to it.
For good luck.
And it worked too, because on Saturday we sold the quilt at our school auction.
Guess who bought it?
Mr. Crow.
Guess how much he paid?
Two hundred dollars.
Can you believe it? I never knew teachers were so rich.
Mr. Crow says he’s going to hang the quilt in our classroom. He’s even going to leave it up after we’re too smart for fourth grade.
We got enough money from the auction and the carnival to finish paying for our new playground equipment. And enough money from the PTA bake sale that Brooke’s mom organized to make Jenna’s mom cry.
Not a sad cry.
A happy one.
I know because I saw her hug Brooke’s mom when she gave her the money at the end of the day.
Five hundred two dollars and sixty-seven cents.
That last part was from me and Stacey. We put some of our spending money in the donation jar and split a giant cookie.
Sunday afternoon, we—me, Jenna,
Stacey, Brooke, Randi, Meeka, and Jolene—meet at the tree house to finish the quilting bee we started at my house. The one that got interrupted because of Tyler being born.
The tree house really isn’t big enough for all of us, so we have to squish together.
No one seems to mind.
We dig our sewing stuff out of our backpacks.
Also, cheese puffs.
And cherry whips.
Cans of soda.
And Choco Chunks.
“I’ve got big plans for this place,” Brooke says, munching cheese puffs and looking around while we sew.
“Just remember,” Randi says, “we agreed to go natural on the decorations.” She beats her fist against her chest. “Cavemen don’t wear tiaras.”
Brooke wrinkles her nose and licks her orange fingers. “We’re fourth-grade girls, not cavemen. Sparkles are a natural part of who we are.”
“A few sparkles would be okay,” Jenna says, reaching for a cherry whip. Her fake diamond J swings and sparkles on its silver chain.
“See?” Brooke says. “Jenna agrees with me.”
“Actually, we won’t be fourth-grade girls for very much longer,” I point out.
Jolene nods. “Fifth grade, here we come.”
“And then middle school,” Meeka adds. “Do they even allow you to wear tiaras there?”
“I bet not,” Jolene says. “I don’t think they allow you to wear anything sparkly when you get that old.”
“Agreed,” Brooke says. “That’s why we should make this place really shine while we have the chance.”
“We could sew a quilt and hang it on the wall,” Stacey says, looking up from the square of cloth she’s stitching. “A friendship quilt, with our names sewn on it in sparkly thread!”
“I don’t need to sew a bunch of names on a quilt to remember who my friends are,” Brooke says. “Besides, Stacey, do you know how much work that would be? To make a whole quilt by ourselves? Ugh. I’d rather marry Joey Carpenter!”
We all laugh.
“I’d rather marry you too, Brookey!” someone shouts from outside.
We gasp.
And rush to the window.
And gasp again.
Joey Carpenter is smiling up at us.
So is Rusty.
And Tom.
And Dominic and Quinn.
“It’s me!” Joey hollers to Brooke. “Your Romeo!” He falls to his knees and spreads his arms wide.
“And me!” Rusty adds. “Your Rusteo!” He falls to his knees too.
Brooke growls like a bear. “Go away!” she shouts. “Girls only!” She throws a Choco Chunk at them. But not very hard.
“Listen to Brooke,” Jenna chimes in. “This is our tree house!” She lets an acorn fly.
Quinn yelps.
Sticks. Twigs. Cheese puffs. Choco Chunks. We throw it all out the window.
The boys duck and laugh and dive. Then they scramble to their feet and crash through the trees, scratching their armpits and screeching like monkeys.
Meeka peers through the branches. “Thank goodness. They’re gone.”
Jenna smirks. “I bet they’ll come back.”
I nod. “They always do.”
When we get bored with sewing, we climb down the ladder and plant the rest of Jenna’s flowers under the tree house.
Then I get out the rocks I collected at Lake Pepin.
We put them in a circle around the flowers.
Seven rocks all together.
I hope they last forever, plus two days.