“Sure,” Maggie said. As she saved the Multi-Tasker and closed the laptop, she tried to shuffle the schedule in her head. Maybe she could shorten her homework time to squeeze in some family fun before bed, and then get up half an hour early in the morning to finish her assignments. Or maybe she could keep the times the same, but read and study in the living room instead of her bedroom so she could visit with her family between subjects. Or maybe Aimee would leave earlier than originally planned, since she’d come over earlier than originally planned, and then Maggie could just swap the Aimee and Family Fun times.
“Maggie?”
Arnie. He was still waiting patiently on the phone. “I’m so sorry,” she said quickly, putting her laptop on the coffee table and jumping up. “Can I call you in a little while?”
“Of course,” he said. “Take your time.”
Even though her carefully planned schedule had just been thrown off, Maggie couldn’t keep from grinning as she followed Aimee down the hallway. Arnie had to be the sweetest, most understanding boy ever, and that made her the luckiest girl ever.
“Feel free to join us for sugar-free hot chocolate and homemade granola bars later,” Maggie’s mom called after them.
“Homemade granola bars?” Aimee asked once they were in Maggie’s bedroom with the door closed.
“I know,” Maggie said, kicking off her sneakers and climbing on the bed. “She’s been like a health-conscious Betty Crocker ever since we moved here. She probably grew the oats herself.”
“That must be nice.”
Maggie watched Aimee’s face as she sat cross-legged at the foot of the bed. Judging by her fleeting frown and the way her normally sparkly turquoise eyes turned down, it was clear Aimee wasn’t in a joking mood.
“Aim,” Maggie said gently. “You okay?”
“No.”
Maggie’s pulse quickened. She’d answered so quickly, something big was definitely up. “What’s wrong?”
Aimee placed her notebook on the bed, opened it, and flipped past the first few pages. When she reached the page she wanted, she took a pen from behind one ear, a freshly sharpened pencil from behind the other, and a blue highlighter from her jeans pocket, then placed them neatly on the bed, next to the notebook.
Maggie stared at the writing instruments like they were weapons. It wasn’t unusual to see them on her bed—she had a few ink stains on the other side of her comforter to prove it—but it was extremely unusual to see them on her bed next to Aimee.
“What’s wrong,” Aimee said, her voice serious, “is that they’re trying to do it again.”
Aimee looked at Maggie like she should know immediately who “they” were. “Who?” Maggie asked when she couldn’t figure it out.
“Them,” Aimee said.
Maggie shook her head as her mind came up blank. Nobody had ever done anything to Aimee. She was too friendly, too well liked.
“The breath-holding bloodsuckers.”
Maggie’s eyes widened. There were few people Aimee ever spoke negatively about, and when she spoke of them, her comments were usually much tamer and along the lines of “Someone must be having a bad day.”
“Anabel. Julia. The circle of floating floozies.”
“Oh.” Maggie nodded thoughtfully. “Floating floozies … I like it. Maybe they can get that printed on their shiny new swim caps after they’ve won over the board.”
“Mags, that’s just it,” Aimee insisted. “They get everything they want, even if they don’t deserve it. You can’t let them have this. It’s too important.”
“I agree. And actually, somehow I’ve been put in charge of making sure that they don’t have this.” Maggie quickly explained what had happened at the swim team meeting earlier.
“That’s great news!” Aimee uncapped the pen and checked off something in her notebook. “So I had some ideas.”
“Ideas?” Maggie hoped she didn’t sound as confused as she felt. It wasn’t because Aimee wanted to help—Aimee was always helpful. It was because Maggie hadn’t even come up with anything yet. And of the two of them, Maggie was the better planner.
“First,” Aimee continued, “I think we should start a petition.”
“A petition.”
“Yes. I think we should get to school early and stay late, and position ourselves by the front doors so we get every single kid coming and going.”
“Okay.” Maggie watched Aimee write something in the paper’s margin. “Petitions are good . . .”
Aimee looked up from the notebook. “But?”
Maggie paused. “But I’m just not sure who’ll sign it. I mean, besides you, me, and the rest of the swim team. I don’t think the board will be swayed by fifteen signatures—especially if they’re all from us.”
Aimee turned to the next page. “We have twenty-three non–swim team petitioners so far. I don’t have their signatures yet, but I will. I’ve already called around and gotten verbal commitments.”
Maggie tilted forward for a better view of the notebook. Aimee had written the names, numbered them, and even included the time of every phone call, apparently so she had proof of the conversations in case people tried to change their minds.
“I’ll make more calls tonight to start spreading the word. Everyone thinks everyone else loves the Water Wings, but that’s not really true. They’re just very good at getting people to think what they want them to—including that they’re more popular than they are. A lot of people know what they’re really like, and after this, we’ll make sure they know it too.”
Maggie didn’t say anything. She appreciated Aimee’s enthusiasm, but thought it sounded more anti–Water Wings than pro–swim team. That wasn’t how Aimee usually operated.
“I also think we need money.”
“To bribe the board members with cold, hard cash?” Maggie asked lightly.
“If we raise enough on our own,” Aimee said, “we can convince the board that we take the swim team much more seriously than the Water Wings take their team.”
“Another good idea,” Maggie said tentatively, “but will that really work at this point? I mean, we’ve had fundraisers before, and plus, we only have a month. We’d have to sell a lot of cookies and brownies.”
“A month is thirty days. That’s a lot of time. A person’s whole life can change in thirty days.”
Maggie nodded. She couldn’t argue that.
“Girls?” Maggie’s mom knocked on the bedroom door. “The hot chocolate and granola bars are ready whenever you are!”
Maggie opened her mouth to say they’d be out in a little while, but closed it when Aimee hopped off the bed.
“The last homemade anything I had was the whole-wheat vegetable lasagna your mom made for dinner last week,” Aimee said, shooting a smile over her shoulder as she hurried toward the door. “I’ll get some for both of us.”
Maggie waited until she heard Aimee’s voice mixing with her mom’s in the kitchen down the hall before crawling to the open notebook. There were at least ten pages of ideas about how to kick the Water Wings out of the pool for good. Aimee’s handwriting was as messy as always—her letters sometimes tilted left, other times right, and her O, G, and C all looked the same—but overall, the notes were much neater than those she usually took for school. They were more organized, too, and divided into categories and subcategories. If it didn’t look like they were written by a right-handed person holding the pen with her left hand, the notes could’ve been from one of Maggie’s notebooks.
“Oh, my goodness, it’s amazing, Mrs. Bean! You should totally have your own cooking show, or come out with a cookbook.”
Maggie quickly flipped the pages back. Aimee’s voice was getting louder as she headed back to Maggie’s room.
“Hang on, Aimee,” Maggie’s mom called from the kitchen. “Take a few of these peanut-butter energy bars too. I tried a new recipe and would love your opinion.”
As Aimee’s footsteps receded back to the kitchen, Maggie flipped open the noteboo
k again … and froze when she saw what was written on the first page.
Aimee had said a person’s whole life could change in thirty days. But Maggie hadn’t known that the life Aimee had been referring to was her own.
Because on the very same day that Maggie would find out whether the swim team was saved, Aimee would decide if she wanted to live with her mom or her dad once they were officially divorced.
7. Maggie sat in the middle of Arnie’s bedroom floor surrounded by her laptop, stacks of colored index cards, and about a hundred pairs of socks. While she entered the Patrol This kids’ names, contact information, and weights into the computer, Arnie attacked a stuffed laundry bag.
“Are you winning?” She kept typing as she looked up and smiled.
He threw one more punch, then reached in the bag and took out a clean towel. “In the brutal battle of chubby kids versus exercise, yes. I’m actually so far ahead, I don’t think I can ever lose.”
“Wars have been lost because of overconfidence,” she warned. “You think your enemy’s crying in defeat behind the bushes, sit down for a quick snack, and then, bam—sneak attack. You never saw it coming.”
He turned to her and grinned. “You look cute.”
She looked down as her cheeks warmed. Talk about a sneak attack.
“How’s it going, anyway?” Patting his face with the towel, he stepped carefully around the socks and index cards and crouched next to her. “If you need more time, I can keep myself busy. I still have to record the workout for the Abdominator and come up with its clever name.”
“How about the Knockout?” Maggie offered.
He bumped his shoulder lightly against hers. “I think that might be confusing. Unless we put your picture where mine is on the website.”
“I still have a ton of information to enter.” She pointed to the laptop screen so he wouldn’t look at her face and see the pink in her cheeks traveling down her chin and all the way to her neck. “Unfortunately, Electra doesn’t believe in typing. Or alphabetizing.”
“Why bother, when you can pay someone else to do it?” Arnie asked logically.
“True,” Maggie said. “So, I’ve divided up all the cards into boys and girls piles, and now I’m entering all their information. Eventually, once everything’s in, I’ll sort the list alphabetically and attach the pictures that we took at the last meeting. Then we’ll know who’s who and can find out how to reach them in about two seconds.”
“Brilliant.”
“And it’s so easy to maintain,” Maggie added excitedly. If Arnie were anyone else, she would’ve already stopped herself, but she knew he didn’t mind her enthusiasm for things most everyone else their age considered dorky and boring. “I mean, we had three new kids at the meeting today, and who knows if more will show next week. But if they do, I can just enter a new line, re-sort it, and it will be like they’ve been with us since the beginning.”
Arnie eyed the index cards lined next to the laptop, which were the next ones up for entry. “So I take it I should bust out the digital camcorder?”
She followed his gaze to the cards, and then looked at the laptop screen. She still had seventeen kids to go. She knew the project would bug her until it was finished, but at the rate of five minutes per entry, finishing would take almost an hour and a half. And according to her schedule, this was Arnie time—not Patrol This time. She’d allowed a brief overlap because Arnie had had a stroke of genius during the drive from the meeting to his house and wanted to try out his new laundry-bag-as-punching-bag exercise idea, but now that he was done, she should be too.
“Nope.” She saved the spreadsheet and closed the laptop. “I’m all yours.”
He grinned like she’d just told him Nike wanted to buy the rights to his kid-friendly workouts.
“What should we do?” she asked.
“Well . . .” He stood up and walked over to the closest window. “My parents are at the club all day for some charity golf tournament, and I told Little Mom and Dad Junior that they should take advantage of the absence and enjoy the afternoon. Their cars are gone, so it looks like they both took me up on it.”
Maggie was so busy trying to decide if it was funny or sad that Arnie referred to his nanny and driver as his second set of parents, she didn’t immediately get why he was announcing their whereabouts.
He looked at her. “Which means Casa Gunderson is all ours.”
“Oh.” She wished she’d left the laptop open after closing the document so she’d have something to focus on. Because now not only was her face tomato-red, she was also having a hard time blinking. “So we’re all alone?”
He nodded, and his grin grew wider.
“Great.” She swallowed and tried to force her lids down over her eyes. “That’s really great.”
“You want something to drink?”
“I would love something to drink,” she said, her eyes finally snapping shut as she jumped up from the floor.
She followed him out of the room and downstairs, not sure why she was suddenly so nervous. They’d been by themselves many times before, and it had never bothered her. In fact, being alone together was usually exactly the same as not being alone together. When they were by themselves, they still talked, laughed, and played video games, just like they did whenever parents were nearby.
But being alone felt different now. Probably because they were different now. They were no longer just good friends, or Pound Patrollers allies, or the Patrol This dream team. They went on dates—or, they’d gone on one date, anyway, and planned to go on more. She’d already started silently referring to him as her boyfriend, even though they hadn’t actually discussed their official status yet.
“Water?”
“I love water,” she said, a bit too enthusiastically. She was glad when he took a bottle from the refrigerator and handed it to her without asking why she sounded like she’d just crossed the blazing hot Sahara.
“By the way,” he said, taking a bottle for himself and leaning against the counter, “I meant to ask. Did you change your locker?”
She pressed her lips together to keep the water she’d just swallowed from shooting back out. “My locker?” she said once it had successfully made it all the way down her throat.
“Yeah. Pete said he hasn’t seen you once since school started, and asked if you were okay. He thought you might’ve moved again, to somewhere out of the district.”
“Nope,” she said brightly. “Didn’t move.”
“Well, I know that. I told him I’ve seen you a lot since school started, and that you’re totally fine. So then he thought maybe you’d changed lockers for some reason, because last year, he saw you between classes all the time.”
All the time. That was probably fairly accurate, since last year, she’d made it a point to go to her locker after every class. Nothing had made her happier than the possibility of seeing and talking to Peter Applewood every forty-five minutes.
But that was last year. This year, her happiness had a very different source.
“I just don’t go as much,” she explained. “My classes are scattered throughout the building, so it’s not always easy to make it all the way to one end to go to my locker, and then all the way to the other end for class in three minutes. And I always end up having to take every single book home for homework anyway, so I just carry them with me during the day. That’s all.”
That definitely wasn’t all, but there was no way she was going to tell Arnie the real reason she didn’t go to her locker. She couldn’t tell him that she was scared of what she and Peter would say to each other when they were by themselves (in a crowded hallway) for the first time since she’d told him she liked him. She didn’t even know if Arnie knew that she’d once felt that way about Peter, let alone that she’d told him and been rejected. Arnie and Peter were cousins, and close … but they were still boys. She hoped that when they talked, they stuck to sports and games instead of girls. Not only was what happened between her and Peter painfully e
mbarrassing, she also didn’t want Arnie to ever think that he was runner-up, or her second choice.
He raised his eyebrows. “I’ve seen your backpack filled to maximum capacity. It’s bigger than the Empire State Building, and probably weighs more too. You’re telling me you haul that thing around for seven hours every day?”
She put the water bottle on the counter, pushed her sleeves up to her shoulders, and lifted both arms. As she flexed, she pouted just like his Abdominator picture on the Patrol This website.
He nodded. “Kind of scary that my girlfriend’s biceps are three times bigger than my own, but I can respect it.”
Still flexing, she looked at him.
He was about to take a sip from his water bottle, but stopped. “You’re not going to put those to use right now, are you? And demonstrate their power by shattering the fruit bowl into a million pieces with just one punch?”
“Your girlfriend?” she asked, slowly lowering her arms. If she’d been able to think of anything but that one word, she might’ve tried to tone down the smile that was automatically lifting her cheeks. “Did you just call me your girlfriend?”
He paused, then tilted his head back and drained the water bottle in three big gulps. He kept his eyes on the ceiling for a second. When he looked at her again, his face was scrunched up, like he was nervous—scared, even. “Aren’t you?”
Her head spun. If he thought she was his girlfriend, then it was okay for her to think of him as her boyfriend. Which meant that they were no longer inching along toward couple-dom—they were already there.
“I mean, I know we haven’t actually been out that much, but in a way, it feels like we’ve been together forever. If I’m totally ahead of myself, then we can definitely—”
He stopped talking when she ran over to him, threw her arms around his neck, and squeezed. His whole body was tense at first, but when she didn’t let go right away, he relaxed enough to put his arms around her waist and hug her back.
Maggie Bean in Love Page 5