Friends till the End (23 page)

“Sorry,” Drew said, stifling one of his usual snort-laughs. Through the entire seventh-grade year he had continuously snorted.

“It’s okay,” Madison said. “I’ll get you back.”

“What’s the next attraction, Drew?” Lindsay asked.

Drew threw his arms up in the air. “Karaoke!” he declared. “We set up a machine in the screening room.”

Madison and her friends exchanged smiles. They’d all been over a few times during the school year to watch videos and nosh on flavored popcorn. It was like watching a movie in your own private theater; it was certainly better than renting movies at the store and watching them on a thirty-two-inch TV set like the one in Madison’s living room.

Aimee raced toward the screening room with Madison, Madhur, Fiona, and Lindsay right behind her. But they weren’t the only girls headed that way. Ivy and her drones walked just ahead.

How perfect.

“Hey, Finnster, hold up!”

Hart was right on Madison’s heels. She turned to face him.

“Where’s the fire?” he joked.

Madison smiled. “I can’t believe Poison Ivy is here
with
her drones.”

Hart chuckled. “Yeah, crazy. Right?”

The other boys walked past, leaving Madison and Hart alone on a patch of grass. Everyone else was karaoke-bound.

“We should go,” Madison said, turning back around again. But Hart grabbed her elbow.

“Can we talk?” Hart asked.

Madison nodded. “Sure.”

He sounded so serious.

“I mean,
really
talk. I mean…well…I have to tell you something important.”

“What’s going on?” Madison asked. “Is this the thing you texted me about yesterday?”

“Yeah.”

“Is something the matter? Are you feeling okay?”

“Not really.”

Madison got a lump in her throat.

“What’s the matter?” she asked Hart.

By now, everyone had pretty much disappeared into the house. Madison saw that the only people left outside were her, Hart, and the clown with all the balloon animals. He was working on a giraffe with a very long, orange neck.

“Look,” Hart stammered. “I don’t know how to tell you this”

The lump in Madison’s throat multiplied tenfold. She did
not
like the sound of this. The conversation sounded like one of those soap opera scenes right before the girl gets ditched. All sorts of questions blazed through her mind. Here they were at the end of seventh grade. It made sense that it could be the end of something else, too. Was Hart planning to like Ivy instead? Was there some girl he lifeguarded with at the pool? Had he decided that he’d rather stay “just friends” with Madison instead of staying “in like” with her?

“I have some news…well,
bad
news…” Hart said. “I mean, I think it stinks so much.”

“Stinks?” Madison’s eyes got wide. “What is it?” she asked.

As Hart ran his fingers through his brown, tousled hair, Madison noticed a row of freckles near his ear that she’d never noticed before. She stared at him—hard—and listened close, wanting to reach out and touch those freckles. But she kept her hands to herself.

“Just tell me what it is,” Madison said softly.

She expected Hart to launch into some long-winded explanation, but he didn’t. He didn’t say a word. Instead, Hart leaned very close to Madison’s face, so close that she could practically see his pores.

A few moments passed.

“Um…
Hart?”

“Madison?”

“Hart?” Madison said his name a second time.

What was he doing?

All at once, without warning, Hart leaned forward a little more, right into Madison. He pressed his face into her face, kind of hard, so that their teeth clicked together.

He was kissing her.

Kissing her! Kissing her!

This wasn’t like the other few kisses Madison and Hart had shared that seventh-grade year, either; those had been quick pecks or near misses. This kiss lasted at least ten glorious seconds. Madison was very glad to be wearing her favorite strawberry-kiwi lip gloss just then. Her heart raced like a stopwatch.

“Why did you do that?” she asked.

“Because,” Hart said. “Why not?”

For a brief moment, Madison thought Hart might take her into his arms with another sweeping gesture and kiss her even harder, until her lips went numb, the way they always did whenever she ate Popsicles.

But there was no follow-up kiss.

Instead, they both started to laugh.

“So that’s what you
wanted to tell me?
That’s
the bad news?” Madison said, still catching her breath. She licked her lips. The gloss was gone.

“Well, that’s not exactly what I wanted to say…” Hart mumbled. He had stopped laughing.

Madison’s eyes darted around the yard, but other than the clowns (and, really, who cared about the clowns anymore?), they were alone. In the distance, Madison could hear a drumbeat. Everyone was off doing karaoke.

Hart rubbed his mouth. It looked a little as if he were wiping off the kiss, as a four-year-old would do, but Madison didn’t care. Her head was somewhere way up in the clouds.

She wanted him to kiss her again.

“You know, I like you,” Hart said simply.

Madison nodded. “I know. Seventh grade has been the coolest year ever, and I like you, too.”

“But I’m so bummed out,” Hart said.

Madison looked at Hart quizzically and then looked away. There was something in his eyes, something sad.

“Why are you bummed?”

“Maddie, my parents just told me something this week…”

Hart looked away. Madison didn’t speak. She waited for him to finish.

“We’re moving,” Hart blurted out.

“Moving on up?” Madison said, giggling at first.

Then she realized Hart was serious.

“Wait. You’re
really
moving?” Madison cocked her head to one side and looked Hart squarely in the eye. “But why? Wait! Don’t tell me…your dad got a job transfer…”

“How did you know that?” Hart said, looking at Madison with narrowed eyes. “Seriously, how did you know?”

“Everyone’s changing jobs, it seems,” Madison groaned. “It’s like the chicken pox or something.”

“Huh?”

“So, what about the summer?” Madison asked.

“I dunno. We’re leaving in three weeks. For Europe,” Hart said.

“You’re moving to Europe? That’s so far away…”

“Dad and Mom need to get over there, they said. We just put our Far Hills house on the market. Dad needs to meet with some people at his new gig.”

“What about lifeguarding at the pool this summer?” Madison asked.

“Well, obviously I won’t be doing that…” Hart said.

“But you just told me the other day…” Madison started to say. Her voice quavered.

Of course he wouldn’t be doing that. Duh.

“My parents didn’t really fill me in until this week,” Hart admitted. “Then they made this big announcement at the graduation party yesterday. I was out of the loop—way out of the loop—before that.”

“Does Drew know?” Madison asked.

Hart nodded. “Yeah, Drew knows. But you know him. He’s Mr. Easygoing.”

“Europe? Wow,” Madison said. For a split second, she had a mental image of Hart standing under the Eiffel Tower; Madison walked up to him in her imagined scene and took his hands and began speaking French while wearing a little blue beret and eating a baguette.

“You can come visit me there if you want,” Hart suggested.

“Yeah,” Madison said. “If I win the lottery. Otherwise, I guess we have to remain long-distance…”

“Why don’t you come with your mom when she goes over to do work on some documentary?”

“She isn’t going to Europe this year,” Madison said. “This summer, she’s off to Japan. Why don’t you move to Tokyo instead?”

Hart grinned. “No problem. Let me just call my dad and tell him.”

Madison reached for Hart’s hand.

“You can’t leave,” Madison said. “Not now. What about eighth grade?”

Hart shrugged. “I know. But at least we can always e-mail.”

They both stared into each other’s eyes—and then away again—off in opposite directions. As they stood there, a few kids came back out onto the lawn. Madison saw Aimee and Madhur out of the corner of her eye.

“Maddie!” they called from across the lawn. Soon, all the party guests were returning from the karaoke. Apparently the game was not as fun as being out in the backyard.

A moment later, Hart went off with Chet and a few other boys. He didn’t really say good-bye. The private moment was over.

It wasn’t the only thing that was over.

Madison tried to hide her disappointment from her friends. But that was a lost cause. Of course, they could tell something was wrong right away. BFFs have special radar for that sort of thing.

“Wait! Did you tell Hart about
Will?”
Aimee whispered to Madison.

“No!” Madison said. “No way.”

“Then what happened? You guys disappeared, and we all went inside. Drew didn’t even realize you were gone, and then he stopped the karaoke and I was looking for you…”

Fiona was babbling. She hardly ever babbled, which meant that just then she was truly worried about Madison.

“Fiona, I’m okay,” Madison said, trying to reassure her.

“Maddie,” Lindsay said, hugging her friend. “Are you
really
okay?”

“Because you look really
not
okay,” Madhur said.

Madison could feel all the emotion in her belly, pressing from the inside out. With Hart’s bad news, seventh grade had just come to its real screeching halt.

“I’ll be okay eventually,” Madison said, thereby admitting that perhaps she wasn’t one hundred percent fine. “It’s just that…Hart told me his family is moving away from Far Hills.”

Madison’s friends all gasped.

“And you thought
we
were moving,” Fiona said. “That’s terrible. Hart’s moving? Oh, Maddie, I am so, so,
so
sorry…”

“You can have a long-distance relationship, can’t you?” Madhur said.

Madison frowned. “I guess. But everyone says those things don’t work.”

“Seriously, it can! You can text and e-mail and visit on school vacations and…” Lindsay was trying to be upbeat, but it wasn’t really working.

“He’s moving to Europe,” Madison said flatly.

For a moment no one said a word. Maybe longdistance
was
out of the question.

“Well,” Madison finally said. “I’ll live.”

“You’ll
live?”
Aimee shot back. “How? Maddie, you’re talking about the guy you’ve crushed on forever. You’re talking about Hart Jones!”

Madison covered her mouth. Aimee was right. This was a bigger than big deal. But she didn’t want to cry.

So now what?

The only thing capable of holding back her tears was a very strong dam. So everyone pressed together in a group hug. No sooner had everyone huddled together than they heard a loud “Puh-leeze!” from nearby.

There was Ivy, flanked by her drones.

Madison stepped back with her arms crossed in front of her. Her friends did the same. Now they really looked like a dam, ready to block anything—especially the enemy.

“Back off,” said Aimee.

Ivy started to laugh. “Oh, like I’m so scared of you guys,” she said.

“You should be,” Madhur said.

“As if!” Rose Thorn snapped. She and Phony Joanie stepped forward a bit. For a moment, Madison thought they might actually get into a real fight.

“Look…” Madison started to say.

Ivy interrupted. “No, you look. Seventh grade may be over, but we are so not over, Madison Finn…”

“Remember what you said to me a few weeks ago, Ivy?” Madison interjected. “About how I would never be the class star…”

“And I was so-o-o-o right,” Ivy huffed.

“Well…uh…you know…stars
fade,”
Madison said. She wanted to say something cleverer, but she couldn’t think of anything.

Drat.

“Um, did you just say stars
fade?”
Phony Joanie grunted. “Good one, Madison.”

The drones and Ivy looked at one another and laughed.

“I don’t know why you’re laughing, Ivy,” Aimee said. “That was a real ‘star’ move up there on stage at assembly yesterday…”

Ivy looked instantly embarrassed. She smoothed down her skirt as if she were remembering what had happened up there at MUD.

“Hey, what’s going on over here?” Drew asked. He had appeared, wearing a black magician’s cape, carrying a top hat and wand. “You’re going to miss my show.”

Ivy and the drones finally backed away, rolling their eyes.

The rest of Drew’s party was fun and games, and a spectacle—as usual. A couple of the clowns did an acrobatic act, jumping around on a trampoline. After they finished, the party guests got a turn on the trampoline, too.

Madison, Fiona, Aimee, Madhur, and Lindsay decided to jump at the same time, holding hands. At one point, Fiona’s knees locked. It was a chain reaction: the five friends tumbled down at the same time.

“Attention!” Mrs. Maxwell’s voice boomed across the lawn. “Time for lunch, kids!”

Madison and the others hopped off the trampoline and headed for a large tent set up at the side of the Maxwell lawn. On a pair of tables was a buffet fit for a king, queen, and half of an entire kingdom: hamburgers, hot dogs, fifteen kinds of salad, fresh fruit, rolls, cookies, and much more. Eyes and mouths watered at the sight of the spread. Kids dived in with forks, spoons, and fingers. Just when it seemed as if Mrs. Maxwell had served up more than anyone could have dreamed, a couple of clowns rolled onto the lawn with a cart, to make personalized ice-cream sundaes.

“Check it out!” Drew said. “It’s a portable Freeze Palace!” he cried, referring to their favorite icecream spot in Far Hills.

Kids clambered for the hot-fudge brownie blast and cookies-and-cream explosion, two special recipes prepared expressly for the seventh-grade grads. Madison noticed that Ivy and the drones stayed as far away from her as possible.

Music blared from speakers on the Maxwell patio; the party went a lot longer than anyone expected.

Mrs. Maxwell didn’t seem to mind one bit. She floated from one group of kids to the next, serving more cans of soda and little bags of popcorn. Everyone was getting stuffed.