Friends till the End (12 page)

“Would the following students please step forward?” Mr. Gibbons called out. He read off some familiar names: P. J. Rigby, Beth Dunfey, Jason Szelewski, and Suresh Dhir. Then he called out some
really
familiar names: Walter Diaz, Drew Maxwell, Madhur Singh, Fiona Waters, Hart Jones, and—unbelievably—Ivy Daly.

Ivy Daly? No way!

This first wave of participants piled into row-boats. There were five boats, with two kids per boat. Teachers had assigned the partners. Madhur partnered with Beth in a faded green rowboat with one cracked oar. Egg and Fiona were put together in a red boat. (Madison couldn’t believe they’d ended up together, the lucky ducks.) Then P.J. paired with Suresh, and Drew went with Jason.

That left Hart and Ivy—together!—in a blue boat.

Madison was the one feeling the real blues, though. She wanted to capsize that boat before letting Hart sail away with her enemy. How could the teachers have thought that Hart and Ivy made sense as boating partners?

Aimee thought it was karma.

“Of course they put those two together,” she said, “for all those Will comments yesterday. I told you.”

Madison punched Aimee in the shoulder when she said that; not hard enough to leave a bruise, but hard enough so Aimee knew Madison was upset.

“Ignore them. Let’s cheer Fiona and Madhur on,” Lindsay said.

“Yes, let’s,” Madison said.

Who was Madison kidding though. She couldn’t ignore them. The only rowboat racer she kept in her sights was Hart. Why were he and Ivy sitting so close together? Why was Hart smiling? And what was Ivy talking about nonstop?

She was probably batting those eyelashes and flipping that hair. And even though Hart said he thought she was a loser, Madison knew that Ivy had ways of making things happen.

The teachers blew their whistles. The race was on. The water on the lake started to get choppy as the kids rowed as fast as they could away from the shore and docks, out to a minicourse with buoys that had been set up a few yards away. Up above the lake, a trio of gulls circled around.

Beth and Madhur’s boat looked as if it were going to tip over, but it stayed on an even keel. Everyone wore beat-up life jackets from the boathouse, just in case of an accident.

“Go, Fiona! Go, Madhur!” Aimee cheered very loudly.

Madison and Lindsay joined in. “Go! Go! Go!”

Nearby, Madison heard Ivy’s drones cheering, too. “Go, Ivy! Go, Hart!”

Hart?

Madison shot them a look. How dare they cheer on Hart—
her
Hart?

In the end, it was Drew and Jason who got back to the docks first and won the big prize, which consisted of two red ribbons that said
YOU’RE THE TOPS
! along the side.

“That’s so cheesy,” Madison commented to Aimee.

It was time for Madison to get ready. She had to peel off her fatigues, down to her bathing suit. The changing rooms at Lake Dora were crowded and had wet sand on the floor. Fortunately she was able to change quickly.

After the first and second races, Madison hoped to talk to Hart, just to find out what had happened out there on the lake, but she couldn’t find him right away. When the third wave of boat riders moved in, her name was finally called, and she was paired up with some kid she hardly knew from her math class named David Smart. But she wasn’t totally stranded. Lindsay was in the same group of rowers, and she kept making weird hand signals to Madison from her place a few boats over. Madison was grateful for the distraction.

Her mood changed for the better when she and David started rowing. Before she knew it, they had raced around their buoys, pulled up to the docks, and won the first prize in their group.

When Madison stepped out of her rowboat, David’s friends rushed over with high fives for him. Madison’s pals did the same. That was when she came face to face with Hart again.

“Nice rowing, Finnster,” Hart said. Madison tried hard to act cool, but she melted at the compliment. Besides, he looked adorable standing there in his damp T, palm-tree-print swim shorts, and backward-facing baseball cap.

From that moment on, it was as if nothing bad or strange or tense had ever happened between the two of them. Hart seemed as attentive as ever.

Aimee noticed the change. “I guess your boyfriend’s back,” she said.

Madison made a face.

Once again, the usual guy and girl friends clustered together for games of volleyball and horseshoes, and for lunch on the picnic tables. There was a momentary scare when Fiona, who was allergic to bee stings, was almost stung by one, but they all kept their cool. The day was hazy and lazy, and there were no more surprises; not even from Ivy or her drones. During lunch, teachers patrolled the picnic area, offering kids cold bottles of water and juice boxes. Despite being dressed in their casuals, the teachers were as officious as ever, wanting the kids to stay properly hydrated.

At the various picnic tables, the topics of conversation were the same: how to feel about the end of school and how to deal with next year. At Madison’s table, Drew started talking up his big end-of-the-year bash, a blow-out party to be held in his backyard. Drew’s parties were always the biggest, loudest, and most expensive. In fact, they’d started seventh grade with a Drew Maxwell party. It hardly seemed possible that they’d reached the end of the year already—and would soon be headed back to his house for yet another bash.

Suddenly, a burst of extraloud thunder interrupted their lunch. Everyone looked up just in time to see (and feel) big, fat raindrops. Egg opened his mouth to drink some; then everyone else followed suit and stuck out their tongues to taste the rain. Madison laughed at the sight of her classmates and friends sitting there at the Lake Dora waterfront, heads thrown back, tongues out.

Mr. Gibbons ruined the picture-perfect moment with a whistle. “Everyone!” he cried. “No messing around! Let’s head indoors! Hurry! This looks like a bad storm.”

Teachers rallied around the picnic tables to collect the kids and their lunches, making certain no garbage was left behind in the downpour. Everyone had to grab their clothing, too, before it got too wet. Many of the boys had on their swimsuits instead of shorts, so they raced for the changing rooms. The girls grabbed their T-shirts and sundresses and did the same.

“Some field trip,” one kid grumbled as he dashed across a lawn in front of Madison. “This bites.”

Madison leaned back and stuck out her tongue again. She disagreed. The rain tasted cool, and she didn’t mind it one bit.

The changing rooms were crammed, and the air felt heavy and humid with everyone crowding in. Lake Dora’s rowboats weren’t the only things in need of repairs, Madison noticed. Several toilets were marked “Out of Order,” and one sink had no running water. But something about the broken-down state of things seemed right. Life, school, and even Lake Dora were imperfect things. And it was okay to be imperfect.

The bus ride home in the pouring rain felt like something out of a movie, with the wind blowing hard outside and darkness moving in even though it was still the middle of the day. Madison and her friends had planned to spend most of the return bus ride playing Truth or Dare, but instead they stared out the wet windows, entranced by the weather.

“Hey, kids,” Mr. Gibbons called out from the front of the bus. “Driver Joe tells me that the weather forecast is for rain until tonight and into tomorrow. So, we’re headed back to the school building for regular dismissal. Since we have about an hour before the school buses and your parents arrive to pick you up, we will unload the buses and have you go directly to your homerooms. Your homeroom teachers will have a snack and activities waiting for you there.”

Kids on the bus booed softly. No one wanted to go back into the school building on a field-trip day. Madison, however, didn’t mind; she was having dinner that night with Dad and Stephanie, and getting home early would give her more time to get ready and do homework—namely, the science project.

The bus lurched over the bumps in the road, and the kids screamed and wailed loudly, playing up the drama of the storm outside with a storm of their own inside the bus.

“Hey, look at that!” Madhur cried out, pointing outside the window to the banks of a river alongside the road. There, the water was rising fast. Parts of the road were beginning to flood.

Madison imagined their bus sliding off the road, taking a deep dive into the water, and floating away on the stormy current. She glanced around at her friends and classmates and at the teachers in the seats around her. She imagined them floating away, too. And then she thought about something Mr. Gibbons had said in English class way back at the start of the year:
expect the unexpected.

Madison was always making and remaking plans for what she wanted at the end of seventh grade: a comfy relationship with Hart; good grades; a truce with Ivy; and so on. But perhaps it was better to look for the great un-expectations that were headed her way, rather than anticipating all the sure things. There were still enormous surprises to be had in the final weeks of school, like possible car accidents by the side of the road; rising, raging rivers; and even secret crushes.

All Madison could really do was hold her breath, brace herself, and go with the flow.

A
WINDOW IN MADISON’S
bedroom had been left slightly open during the rain-filled day. Now it was nearly nine thirty at night, and the air inside felt damp and cool for June.

Phin curled up by Madison’s feet, purring more like a feline creature than a canine one. But he always purred whenever he sensed that there was something wrong with Madison. It was a comforting noise; it was his way of saying, “There, there, it’ll be okay.”

Madison needed a little reassurance. She could never have been prepared for the day—and night—she had had. From the trip, to the way dinner with Dad went afterward, everything had been unexpected.

Dinner was over now and Madison was online. She opened a late-day e-mail from Bigwheels. There was an attachment at the bottom: a poem. It had been a while since Bigwheels had sent one of those. Madison read over the text once, twice, and a third time. The corners of her mouth turned up in a crescent-shaped grin.

For MadFinn


My keypal, you


Always make me smile,


Delivering e-mail day and night.


If I need a shout-out, you’re there


Saying the right thing


Online and never (ever) forgetting me.


Nothing can compare to us,


Fast friends across the miles,


In good mail and bad.


No one gets me like you do,


Now and (friends) forever,
Yours till the web sites.


Madison quickly clicked
COPY
. Then she opened a new file, hit
PASTE
, and saved the poem as its own document. As she reread the words a fourth time, Madison noticed something extraspecial about the poem. The first letters of each line going down spelled something out: it was her name, Madison Finn, except for the
Y
at the end. But she didn’t mind being Madison Finny for one poem.

After hitting
SAVE
, Madison began to type some text of her own. No poems here, though. Instead, Madison reported about dinner.

Moving On (and On)


Rude Awakening
: I‘ve heard of the nuclear family, but this is ridiculous. Dad and Stephanie sure know how to drop a bomb.


Tonight at dinner I was blabbing on (and on) about the Hart-boat-race/jealous-of-Ivy moment. I had to fess up about Will, too, which was sort of embarrassing. And then KERBLAM! Dad butts in about how he and Stephanie have this big—no HUMONGOUS—news.


Of course, I imagine the worst thing right away, like the Big D Revisited. Stephanie laughed and said, “oh no” and got all lovey-dovey with Dad. It was kind of gross. She kissed his ear. My next thought was, “You’re having a BABY!?” She laughed again and said something like, “Not yet.” I was relieved. I mean, one day I’d like a brother or sister (I guess) but not now.


Dad finally spilled the beans. “We’re moving, Maddie,” he said. My whole stomach flops. Where? I feel like shrieking right there in the middle of Tamales Mexican restaurant. Instead, I stuff three nachos into my mouth.


Dad says they decided to sell the apartment in downtown Far Hills and build a house, a big, suburban, house in some development. Here are the facts:


1. They are building a 4,000-square-foot house with central air-conditioning and a central vacuum cleaner (whatever that is) AND a library. That makes the new house
twice
the size of the house we live in now.


2. They will build the house on this big tract of land so they’d have a giant yard where Phinnie can come and run around to play and maybe they’ll even get another dog—or two—and Phinnie would get a brother or sister pooch. Maybe that’ll be like practice for when they decide to have a real baby?


3. They will only be a 15-or 20-minute drive from the house on Blueberry Street. So nothing will change in terms of weekly dinners.


As Dad talked, I inhaled this slice of mocha cake. That helped a lot. Sugar to the rescue again.


Does getting a huge suburban home mean Dad wants me to spend more time at his house than the one I live in now? What will that mean for me and Mom?