Keep It Real (From the Files of Madison Finn, 19) (12 page)

“Mom, what’s all this about?” Madison asked.

“I’m feeling good tonight,” Mom answered. “No, I take that back. I’m feeling fantastic!”

“You mean after your date?” Madison asked.

“Date?” Mom said. “What date?”

“Last night’s date,” Madison said. “The one you shipped me off to Dad’s house for.”

“Shipped you off?” Mom burst into laughter. “I thought you said you didn’t mind staying over with Dad and Stephanie.”

“I just mind the fact that you’re dating some guy
seriously
, and you haven’t even told me about it yet.”

“Madison Francesca Finn, what on earth are you talking about? I was
not
on a date last night. I told you that a dozen times. Your dad told you, too.”

“Yeah, but you were just saying that so I wouldn’t feel bad. Why else would you have gotten all dressed up in your best clothes and your expensive shoes? Why else would you want me out of the house?”

“Oh, no!” Mom interrupted Madison’s train of thought. “Aw, honey bear. You have the wrong idea.”

Madison crossed her arms in front of her and looked away.

“Maddie,” Mom continued, “look at me. Please.”

Madison turned back to Mom.

“If I were dating someone,” Mom said, “don’t you think I would tell you?”

“Maybe.”

“No, definitely,” Mom said, squeezing Madison’s shoulder. “I would never keep something that important from you.
Never.
”

“You wouldn’t?” Madison asked.

Mom shook her head. “I promise you.”

Madison took a deep breath—a deep breath of relief—and wrapped her arms around Mom’s shoulders.

“So why were you so nervous about what to wear? Why did I have to go over to Dad’s place? What was going on?”

A huge smile spread across Mom’s face.

“What is it? What?” Madison asked. Her curiosity was piqued.

“I got a promotion,” Mom said. “A big one.”

“You did?”

“Well, it’s not final, but I’m pretty sure that I’ll be named executive producer at Budge Films. I had my last meeting with the head of the company on Sunday. And last week, I had to pull together some portfolio materials for another last-minute meeting. I didn’t want to tell you until I knew it was a sure thing.”

Madison jumped into the air. “So you’re not dating an astronaut?”

“No,” Mom said with a chuckle. “I’m not. But I might make a movie about one someday.”

They both laughed.

“You don’t have to worry about my dating anyone, honey bear,” Mom said. “It’s just you and me and Phinnie—at least for the time being.”

“Why didn’t you tell me what was
really
going on?” Madison sniffled.

“I don’t know, Maddie. I probably should have told you sooner. I just really wanted it to be the right time. I’m sorry,” Mom replied.

“How did Dad know?”

“Well,” Mom said slowly. “I told him.”

“Huh? You told Dad and not me?” Madison flung herself onto a chair in the living room.

“Oh, it shouldn’t matter that I told your father…”

“But it does matter,” Madison said.

“Maddie, don’t be mad…”

“I can’t believe you told Dad and not me…”

“Maddie, please listen. I love you. This is
good
news—my promotion. It means good things for all of us,” Mom said.

“Yeah, but you didn’t tell me first,” Madison said again.

Without another word to Mom, she got up, walked out of the room, and went upstairs. Phin trotted behind her. Mom didn’t stop either of them. She’d obviously decided to let Madison have some time alone.

Lying on top of her butterfly-patterned coverlet, Madison spied her laptop sitting open in the exact same spot where she’d left it that morning. But Madison felt like writing in her composition book instead of typing on the laptop.

She reached for her favorite orange pencil. Although she still hadn’t finished her weekend assignment, she already had another question to tackle.

Journaling #7

Topic: Did you ever run away from home? How far did you get?

Madison laughed to herself. She
always
felt like running away. It was as if Mr. Gibbons had written that question just for her. In a way, she had just run away from Mom.

There was a time, long ago, when Phin had run away from home, too. The pug had gotten a few blocks away on half-frozen paws. He had been chasing something—a cat, a bird, or some other creature—and had lost his way. But that didn’t count. Madison needed to talk about a time when
she
had run away.

She stared down at the blank journal page. All at once, her pencil started moving, but she wasn’t writing. She was scribbling flowers and lightning bolts and three-dimensional cubes. Madison wrote her name a few times, too, in capital block letters with stripes and dots in the middle.

She was making pretty pictures, for sure. But Madison wasn’t answering Mr. Gibbons’s question. Not even close.

Journals, blogs, e-mails—Madison needed time and inspiration to write things that really mattered. But for the second day in a row, Madison had nothing to write, nothing to say.

Nothing.

She couldn’t be all out of words, could she?

Not when there were so many things that still needed explaining.

“D
ID YOU SEE WHAT
Ivy was wearing today?” Lindsay blurted out at the lunch table on Tuesday.

Aimee nodded. “She is looking terrible these days. I think we should alert the fashion police.”

Lindsay made a whirring noise like a speeding ambulance.

All the girls cracked up.

“What if she’s doing drugs with that Dunn Manor guy?” Fiona suggested.

Madison shot Fiona a look. “No way,” Madison said. “Drugs? Come on. I know she’s bad, but she’s not into that.”

“It could happen,” Aimee said. “My brother Doug said that the guy Ivy was dating at Dunn was suspended this week for bad behavior. Maybe Ivy’s been spending too much time at his place. It’s like an after-school special gone wild…”

Lindsay started giggling uncontrollably.

“Yeah? Can you imagine if Ivy got suspended? It would be like an FHJH national disaster,” Fiona said.

“What would the drones do without their fearless leader?” Aimee said.

“I’d love to see the look on Rose and Joanie’s faces,” Lindsay said.

“Maybe Ivy is just tired,” Madison said. “She has bad weeks, too.”

“Are you defending her?” Aimee asked.

Madison held her hands up in a pose of surrender. “No, no!” she insisted. “But I just think…that maybe…we’re being a little harsh…”

Lindsay, Aimee, and Fiona burst into laughter.

“What is so funny?” Madison asked.

“Maddie, we’re talking about the Queen of Harsh here, Poison Ivy Daly, remember? How could we possibly come near her level of mean?” Aimee asked.

Madison nodded. “You’re right. I know.”

She was beginning to feel a little self-conscious in front of her BFFs. The last thing she wanted her friends to know was that she felt sorry for the enemy. Then again, they might feel sympathetic, too, if they had only known the whole truth. If they had known that Ivy’s mom was suffering from cancer, they might have had second thoughts about the way they were behaving.

As the girls sat there thinking of more names to call Ivy, Egg and Drew strolled up to the orange table at the back of the cafeteria and sat down on some benches nearby. Their arms were loaded with binders and books. Egg looked mad.

“Maddie!” Egg growled. “What are you doing sitting here?”

“Having lunch,” Madison said.

“Haven’t you forgotten something?” Egg asked.

Madison blinked twice. She had no idea what Egg was talking about. But then she remembered. They were supposed to have met up in Mrs. Wing’s classroom during lunch to work on the school webpages.

“Oops,” Madison said.

She picked up her tray with its unfinished ham-and-cheese sandwich, unopened bag of chips, and carton of chocolate milk. After saying good-bye to her girlfriends, she followed Egg and Drew up to the tech lab.

Mrs. Wing was waiting. She’d pulled up the home-page screen. Madison, Egg, Drew, and Lance’s mouths fell open.

“That is so
amazing
!” Drew said.

“You reformatted the entire site?” Madison asked in disbelief.

“In only a week?” Lance said.

Mrs. Wing stood back and tipped her head to the side. “I’ve been promising Principal Bernard for weeks that I would get this done,” she said. “And now I finally have done it. Surprise!”

“This is tripping me out,” Egg said. “It’s not like some boring school webpages. Wow.”

On the screen was a full-sized photo of the exterior of FHJH. In the corner of the photo, at the top of the actual flagpole, Mrs. Wing had added an animated blue-and-white flag (the FHJH school colors, naturally). It said,
ENTER HERE
.

When Egg clicked on the flag, the screen dissolved in a flash of blue and white. Then a menu appeared.

“This is fantastic,” Madison said.

A scrolling marquee went across the top of the page underneath the name Far Hills Junior High, printed in bold, blue letters. And underneath that, Mrs. Wing had created a menu of hypertext links for each page on the site: Sports and Extracurricular Activities; Teacher Resources; Homework Café; and more.

After a tour of the site’s many pages, Madison and her friends were feeling quite overwhelmed. But they were also excited by the challenge. Working on the site would be more fun than ever before.

Mrs. Wing was happier than happy, too. “I think our recent journaling project in the seventh grade has gotten you students more interested in writing,” she said. “I’m thinking about adding a bulletin board on our site—and having links, for all of the teachers to post homework assignments. What do you think?”

“More homework?” Lance groaned.

Madison laughed. “Lance,” she said, “what Mrs. Wing means is that teachers can post homework online in addition to giving us work sheets or whatever.”

“Welcome to the twenty-first century, Far Hills Junior High,” Egg said.

Mrs. Wing chuckled.

Of course, the very best part of the site redo was the fact that it helped Madison to forget, however briefly, the events of the past few days. For an hour or so, she completely forgot Ivy, Bigwheels, and even Mom.

Then, with her head feeling unfuzzy for the first time in days, Madison exited Mrs. Wing’s classroom and breezed through the rest of her classes. At three o’clock she met up with Fiona and Aimee by the lockers. Fiona’s soccer practice had been canceled. Aimee had finished a last-period makeup science test.

Outside, the sky was one enormous gray cloud that followed the trio all the way home. Was rain coming again?

“That was hands down the easiest science test I’ve ever taken,” Aimee bragged. “I think Mrs. Wayne makes the questions easier now because she can’t deal with grading hard tests. She’s older than my grandmother.”

“Sometimes she just stops in the middle of a thought, and I think it’s because she forgot what she wanted to say,” Fiona added. “It’s funny.”

“I bet you wish you had our science section instead of yours with Mr. Danehy, right, Maddie?” Aimee said.

Madison nodded. “Yeah. Science class without Mr. Danehy and without Poison Ivy. I wish.”

“Speaking of Ivy…” Aimee said, “did anyone see her this afternoon?”

“Why?” Madison sighed. She couldn’t believe that Fiona and Aimee wanted to continue the Ivy gossip from lunch.

“No biggie,” Aimee said. “I just saw her
crying
outside one of the bathrooms. Can you believe it? Ivy never cries. She’s more like an emotional freezer. She doesn’t care about anyone else except herself.”

Madison felt a twinge inside her chest.

“What was she crying about?” Fiona asked.

“Herself,” Aimee joked. “She ran out of lip gloss. Oooh! Poor me!”

Fiona laughed.

Madison felt another twinge inside. She wasn’t laughing. This wasn’t funny…at all.

“Look at me, I’m Ivy,” Aimee said, prancing away, flipping her hair and then stopping on the street to pose. “Do you like my new outfit? It only cost ten million dollars, and I have it in eleven different colors, including leather. Oooh!”

Fiona was normally the one who refrained from bad-mouthing anyone, especially people at school. This time, however, she couldn’t stop laughing. And so it was up to Madison to say something…nice.

“I think Ivy’s got a problem,” Madison started to say.

“No kidding!”
Aimee yelled.

Fiona laughed harder.

“No, you two, I’m serious. I think maybe she has a real problem,” Madison said.

Aimee and Fiona stopped laughing.

“You’re serious,” Fiona said.

“Like, what problem?” Aimee said. “What do you know that you aren’t telling us?”

“I just…” Madison remembered her promise to keep Mrs. Daly’s condition a secret. “I don’t know anything for sure. But I just think that maybe Ivy is really sad. Maybe she’s not being a drama queen for once.”

“I guess you could be right,” Fiona said hesitantly.

“Come on!” Aimee cried. “Please! I can’t stay for this pity party.”

Madison cracked a little smile. “I didn’t mean to be
so
serious…”

“Then don’t be!” Aimee said.

“Hey, I know her!” Fiona said, pointing across the street. She raised her arm and waved. “Hello, Mrs. Reynolds! How’s Pete?” she called out.

The woman smiled and waved back.

“Who is that?” Aimee asked as the woman walked away.

“Oh, she’s just this lady. My mom tutors her kid, Pete. He’s three, and he has autism,” Fiona explained.

Madison stopped short. “Did you say ‘autism’?”

“Sometimes he can’t stand being touched. And he flaps his arms like a bird,” Fiona explained. “But Mrs. Reynolds is the most incredible mother.”

“What is autism?” Aimee asked.

Madison started to answer but she bit her tongue. The truth was that after reading Bigwheels’s blog, she’d already researched the complete definition of autism and all of its symptoms online. But she didn’t want to sound like a know-it-all, so she let Fiona do the talking.

Fiona thought for a moment. “Autism has something to do with your brain. Sometimes kids don’t talk right away, that kind of thing. At least that’s what my mom tells me,” she said. “Of course, I know it’s more complicated than that.”