Jenny walks past us and hands an envelope to the team of boys with the menus written on their stomachs. They whoop it up and high-five each other. Somehow I can’t picture them choosing the spa treatments.
Jenny waves the second envelope in the air and then heads straight for us. She drops it in the middle of our circle. “Congratulations.” We drop hands and hug each other. The Davis twins join our group hug even though they can’t come with us to the spa.
“I bet if we had just gotten that half-eaten burrito it would have pushed us over the top,” Katy says cheerfully, checking her list. “We forgot about that one.”
“That’s okay, boy bands are so last-century anyway,” says Zoey. Megan holds the envelope high in the air. “Free massages, here we come!”
“Last but certainly not least,” Jenny says, “are our first place winners. They got every item on our list, including what must surely be the last bottle of Gee Your Hair Smells Terrific in the state of Florida, and, to top it off, these!” She holds up a pair of plain white boxer shorts. “Principal Harrison’s boxers!” The team in question jumps up and down, hugging each other. One of the girls is in my math class and she’s pretty nice. I’d love to know how they got the boxers. I glance over at Amelia to see how she’s handling her defeat. If she didn’t look so sad I would gloat.
I drop the Davis twins home with the reminder that lunch is on me tomorrow. After driving around all day I feel like an old pro. As I pull into Katy’s driveway Megan exclaims, “Oh my god, we almost forgot to give Josie her present!” She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a small, unsealed envelope with my name on it. “This is from all three of us.”
I turn the envelope over in my hand. I can’t imagine what’s in it.
For a second I wonder if it could be Katy’s note from earlier, but that wouldn’t make any sense.
“Go ahead,” Megan urges. “Open it.”
I reach in and pull out a small piece of paper. “Wally’s Hot Air Balloons. See the World in a Different Way.” I reread it a few times to make sure I am seeing it correctly. Did my friends just give me something that falls into the category of Things That Fall From the Sky?
As believably as I can muster, I exclaim, “Thank you guys, this is great!”
Katy explains, “We figured this would be something you’d like since you’re always looking up at the sky. We can all go up together.”
Maybe it would have been smart if I had ever explained exactly why I’m always looking up at the sky. The picture of the balloon on the card does look really beautiful, though. “When would we do it?”
“We’ve got a year from today,” Megan says.
A whole year to get used to the idea sounds great to me. By the time we get back to Katy’s house her mother is home from work and offers to drive me the few blocks home. I grab my bookbag from upstairs and climb back in the minivan, this time in the passenger seat.
“Be ready at eight-thirty for the lake,” Zoey calls out as we pull away.
“So,” Katy’s mom says. “What are you girls actually doing at the lake? Katy won’t tell me.”
“I honestly don’t know. No one will tell me anything either.” She looks doubtful.
“So, did that kid recover from drinking the water?” I ask. She nods. “He’ll have a stomachache for a while.”
“What exactly is in that water?”
“Believe me, honey, you don’t want to know.”
“Uh-oh,” I say as my house comes into view. “We have to go back.”
“What did you forget?”
“My spaceship.”
She raises her eyebrows at me. “Teenagers these days,” she says, swinging the car around. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about half the time.”
5:10 P.M. – 6:45 P.M.
Chapter 9B: Everyone
Missy Hiver and her teammates, Tara, Rachel, and Shira, run into the Celebration Deli and almost knock the newspaper stand over in their hurry to grab a paper.
“I’ve got an idea!” Missy says. The other girls glance at each other uneasily. Missy’s ideas could be dangerous. Shira and Rachel didn’t really want to be on her team in the first place. Tara had to convince them that besides an unhealthy obsession with the Olsen twins and a small anger management problem, Missy is really not that bad. Tara doesn’t mind being friends with her because she thinks Missy is very lonely.
“Let’s take all of them!” Missy says, her eyes gleaming. “That way no one else can get one.”
“But that includes anyone who’s not in the scavenger hunt,” Rachel argues. “The regular people in town couldn’t get a paper.”
Missy considers this. “What if we promise to return them tonight?” “It’s okay with me,” Tara says. Shira and Rachel agree as well, as long as Missy promises to return them. They pile the stacks onto each other’s arms and hurry out of the store. Missy opens the trunk of her car, and they drop the newspapers next to Rachel’s sister’s rejection letter from Florida State (which counts as college letterhead) and a half-eaten burrito that Missy found by fishing through a dumpster behind Taco Haven. It makes the whole car smell, even though it’s in the trunk.
The girls pile into the car, and Missy drives a few stores past the deli before she stops. “Let’s wait here a few minutes,” she suggests. “Just to see another team go in for the papers.”
“Five minutes,” Tara says. “That’s it.”
Not even a minute later a blue minivan pulls up in front of the deli and a red-haired girl runs into the store. Missy recognizes Zoey right away. And that means Josie Taylor is behind the wheel of that minivan. She inches the car forward for a closer look. Sure enough, it’s Josie. Now she knows she did the right thing by taking all those papers.
Zoey runs back out empty-handed, and even Shira and Rachel have to laugh.
“Let’s go now, Missy,” Tara says, trying to hide her smile.
Missy slowly approaches the minivan as Megan gets out to join Zoey in a fruitless search. As she drives past, Missy looks in the window of the van and sees, of all things, the Davis twins. She almost doesn’t brake in time for the red light ahead of her because she is too busy seething.
“Did you see that?” Missy says, looking behind her at the van. “Those were the Davis twins! I bet they’re the two identical things from the list!”
“Gee,” Shira says. “Ya think? Too bad you couldn’t get Mary-Kate and Ashley, right? Imagine all the bonus points we’d get for them!”
Missy whirls around to face her. Her face is red. “Mary-Kate and Ashley are not identical. Ashley is like, an inch taller!”
Mr. Simon carefully lays the barbell down on the carpet in the spare room he hopes to one day make into a nursery for a baby. He stretches his shoulders and rolls his head from side to side. Before he got married he used to work out much more often. Now he only gets to do it when his wife isn’t home or if she’s upstairs grading exams. He doesn’t really mind, because he doesn’t put too much stock in physical appearances. He knows some of the girls at school have crushes on him, and he thinks it’s sweet. But rather than worrying about looking buff, he’d rather run through the streets of town or on one of the jogging paths. He loves the feel of the earth beneath his feet, the endorphins kicking in just when he needs them most. He appreciates the peacefulness of his town, but could do without everyone knowing each other’s business. Over the weekend he went into Celebration Drugs for constipation medicine, and today three people on the street have asked if his “little problem” was taken care of. Happily, as of second period, all’s clear in that area. He felt bad being gone from class for so long, but the laxative wasn’t going to wait any longer.
He bends down to pick up the barbell for a second round of reps when the doorbell rings. His wife must have lost her keys again. If he didn’t know better, he’d swear she was giving them away to people on the street. He considers taking off his tank top before he answers the door because she told him last week she thought it would be s
exy if he greeted her after school with no clothes on. When he opens the door and sees his student and her friends on the stoop, he is immensely glad he decided to remain clothed. Since they are sophomores, he knows they can’t be trying to hide from Dart Wars. When one of the girls asks him for a newspaper he remembers that the Sophomore Scavenger Hunt is always on the same day. When he comes back from digging the paper out of the recycling bin, he notices one girl is missing. When she comes downstairs with a noticeable bulge in her pocket, he feigns ignorance and wishes he had remembered to check the Web site to see what she could have taken. When the girls leave he goes straight to the Web site, reads the bonus-points section in horror, and races upstairs to his bedroom. Whew, the French maid outfit is still there. It must not have fit in her pocket. He hopes whatever she took was clean at least.
“How long are we gonna sit here?” Grant Brawner asks Stu. They are parked in Stu’s Jeep in front of Rob Taylor’s house. Their dart guns lay in their laps, easily accessible if needed.
“Until we figure out a way to get in there,” Stu says.
“Can’t we just jimmy the lock or something?”
“You know the rules. You can only shoot someone in their house if the door is unlocked or someone lets us in.”
“Well, the mother just left, so I say we try again later.”
Stu shakes his head. “This is the guy who stole your girlfriend, remember?”
“Anne was my girlfriend in fifth grade. For two days!” Grant argues. “And we don’t even know for sure he’s in there.”
“Trust me, he’s in there. I can smell it.”
“I can smell a lot of things in this car, too, and none of ’em are too pretty.”
Stu watches in the side mirror as a blue minivan pulls past him. “Speaking of pretty, guess who’s home? Little sister.”
Grant watches as Josie pulls into the driveway and her friends empty out of a minivan. “There’s no way we’ll get in now, with all those people.”
“You got it wrong, bro. We’re totally in now. Just tell your new girlfriend we need to use her bathroom. She’ll totally buy it.”
“I’m gonna look like a schmuck when she figures it out.” “Dude, it won’t be the first time.”
Rob and Danny are sprawled on the couches in Rob’s den, watching an old Speed Racer cartoon on Nickelodeon. Danny now has a new reason to add to the list of why he doesn’t want a girlfriend. It sucks when they break up with you. “When did it happen?” he asks Rob.
“After lunch.”
“Did you have any clue it was coming?”
“Nope.”
“Do you, you know, want to talk about it?”
“Nope.”
Danny is relieved. He probably wouldn’t be much help. He kicks a couch pillow off to make more room for his legs and as it falls, he hears a noise somewhere in the house. He sits straight up. “Did you hear that?”
Rob shakes his head. “You’re paranoid.”
“I don’t think so,” Danny says as the front door opens and a bunch of voices fill the front hall. A second later they hear Josie directing someone to the bathroom. They gape at each other in a panic. Danny runs into the bathroom in the hall and locks the door. Rob swings himself over the top of the couch in an attempt to hide behind it.
Unfortunately, he’s not fast enough, and that jerk Stu nails him in the butt. He knows he shouldn’t be so mad at Josie, but he can’t help it. He was counting on winning Dart Wars and gaining some of his self-respect back after being dumped. At least Danny’s still safe to fight another day. He can always ride his coattails.
Zoey volunteers to go to Amelia’s group to ask about the bra. She doesn’t really care one iota whose bra it is, but she wants to see if Sara is okay. She feels very protective of her now. Amelia stops twirling long enough to tell Zoey the bra belongs to Ms. Connors. She only half-listens to Amelia’s story of how they got it. She’s busy trying to catch Sara’s eye, but Sara is busy peeling a blade of grass with her fingers. Their other two team members sit as far away from Amelia and Sara as possible while still being on the same team. Zoey leaves, feeling sad for Sara and even a little sad for Amelia. And very grateful for her own friends.
Surrounded by the crowd in Jenny Waxner’s backyard, Katy is struck by how comfortable everyone else seems. She’s never liked crowds. It makes her feel lonely to be one of so many. She much prefers just being with Josie and Megan and Zoey, or even just Josie. She doesn’t mind places like Disney World, where everyone is so spread out (except for weekends and holidays, when she avoids it like the plague). Katy doesn’t remember the time she was three years old and her parents took her to a James Taylor concert. Sometime during “Up on the Roof,” she wandered off and couldn’t see above the knees of the fortysomething baby boomers who had rushed the stage. It wasn’t until halfway through “Fire and Rain” that a security guard returned Katy to her parents at the lost-and-found booth. On some level deeper than memory, she is still affected by this experience.
Katy thinks Amelia and her friends crossed the line of fair play when they spied on Ms. Connors. Katy bets that if they had asked, Ms. Connors would have let them borrow the bra. She is glad that Amelia’s team didn’t even win a free dinner at Sizzler. When the judging is over, everyone is so busy gathering their scavenger hunt items and talking to each other that Katy wanders off unnoticed. She keeps the red bra in her line of sight at all times. As she passes by Amelia’s area, she bends down to scratch her knee and scoops the bra into her fist, glad for the first time that her hands are so large. Pivoting on her heel, she makes her way back to her own team. She will make sure that Ms. Connors gets her property back, a promise she bets Amelia wouldn’t keep.
Jeff Grand stops walking in front of Jenny Waxner’s house and sees all the cars parked out front. Some of them have parents or older siblings waiting at the wheel. He knows a lot of kids in his grade are at Jenny’s right now. If his parents could have adjusted their shifts at the Animal Kingdom, maybe he’d be there too. Chances are he’ll need to ask Josie for her homework again, since he’ll be watching his sister for the rest of the day. Right now he is pulling her behind him in a red wagon that she has almost outgrown.
“Is a pahty?” Sage asks, looking up at him with her wide blue eyes. “Yes,” Jeff tells her, kneeling at the side of the wagon. “It’s a party.” She reaches out her hand and grabs his chin. “Home now?” Jeff stands up and grabs the wagon handle. Without another glance at Jenny’s house, he says, “Yeah. Home now.”
When Tom and Tyson return home, Tyson heads for the fridge and Tom goes up to the room that the two of them share. Next year, when their next-older brother goes away to school, they’ll each get their own room. Tom knows that’s supposed to be a good thing, but he worries he’ll be lonely. He takes out the small sketchbook that he uses as a diary and begins writing his daily entry. He is very proud of his penmanship.
February 29th. Leap Day. Except for my negatives being blank in photography class this morning, it’s been a really good day.
I didn’t throw up.
I didn’t get a splinter.
I didn’t say anything stupid.
I didn’t poke myself in the eye with the end of my pen.
I didn’t fail the surprise math quiz.
I didn’t trip on my shoelaces in gym.
I didn’t have pizza stuck in my teeth after lunch.
I didn’t blush when girls spoke to me, except for a few times but that really couldn’t be helped because of all the girls around me this afternoon at the scavenger hunt which really isn’t the usual scenario.
It doesn’t occur to Tom to write the things that he did do today. He won’t start writing those things in his diary until next year, when he’ll start calling it a journal. He’ll have had his own room for months by then, along with a new appreciation of why a teenage boy might want his own room.
Katy decides not to go along for the ride while her mother takes Josie home. She wants to take a bath and th
ink for a while before she has to go out again to the lake. She smiles to herself as she climbs out of her shorts. Out of twenty teams, she and her friends tied for second place. That’s a pretty amazing achievement. Katy loves that the four of them don’t compete with each other for the leadership role. They all compliment each other. This willingness of Katy’s to step up to the plate, to see the greater picture and to break it down accordingly, will serve Katy well for the rest of her life. She helps others to be their best, without anyone consciously realizing it.
Katy climbs into the tub and lets the water cover everything except her face and ears. Luckily the tub is extra-long, so she can almost completely straighten her legs. She loves the peacefulness of the bath and the thick weight of the water on her skin. She goes over the day in her mind. That whole thing with the note and Mrs. Lombardo was surreal. Seeing Josie’s dad, the mild-mannered accountant, working at Disney World was even more surreal. Katy wonders if Josie realizes how lucky she is that her father actually asked for her help. Her own father is a surgeon at Orlando General, and she rarely sees him. She can’t remember the last time the two of them did anything together. His birthday is coming up in a few weeks. Maybe she’ll surprise him and write him a poem. She lets her whole head sink under the water for a second until she hears the roaring in her ears. Nah. I’ll just get him a tie, as usual.
7:00 P.M.– 9:00 P.M.
Chapter 10A: Josie
The first thing I see when I walk up to my front door is a big poster with CONGRATULATIONS, NEW DRIVER! written in red marker. Underneath is a drawing of the Shark that looks like it was done by a five-year-old. If Dad’s latest career doesn’t work out, at least he can cross “professional artist” off the list. When I get inside I’m greeted with the sight of Grandma holding the end of a piece of yellow yarn. The rest is pulled taut around the corner.
“Whatcha doing, Grandma?” I ask, giving her a kiss on the cheek. I lay the piñata and my books against the stairs.
“Hi, baby,” she says. “Rob asked me to hold this end of yarn while he measures something down the hall.”