Keep It Real (From the Files of Madison Finn, 19) (7 page)

“Gee, Maddie. I remember
your
middle name,” Ivy said. “Francesca, right? Because your mom’s name starts with an F—Francine. At least, that’s what you told me a long time ago.”

Madison almost fell off her chair in shock. How could Ivy have remembered all those facts about her middle name when Madison couldn’t even remember the first letter of Ivy’s middle name? Once again, Mr. Gibbons’s advice rang true. The unexpected was to be expected—even as far as the enemy was concerned.

“What journal question are you working on?” Madison asked. “The one about the scar? The list of twenty things?”

“No,” Ivy said curtly. “I did those already. Mr. Gibbons told me I could write whatever I wanted in between assignments. He gave me an extra list of questions to think about. That’s what I’m writing.”

Madison’s heart sank. This was bad news.

“What do you mean he gave you an
extra
list?” Madison asked.

“He gave me a list of questions like ‘Write about a time when someone made you a promise and broke it’ and ‘Describe a time when you saved someone from getting hurt.’”

“Wow, those are good questions,” Madison said thoughtfully, although she couldn’t begin to imagine what kind of answers superficial Ivy would write.

“Yeah, they are good questions, but it’s hard to write about bad stuff sometimes, because things are just so good in my life, you know?” Ivy bragged.

The words Madison had seen inside Ivy’s journal flashed into her thoughts once more:
My life is just so perfect
. Madison shuddered.

Miss Poison Ivy Renee Daly couldn’t know a single thing about what it meant to feel embarrassed or sad or unliked, could she? It didn’t seem fair that Mr. Gibbons had singled out the enemy for a special writing assignment.

Journals were Madison’s territory, not Ivy’s.

“Um…who else has this other list?” Madison asked quietly.

“I don’t know. Just me, I think,” Ivy said with a toss of her head. She gave Madison a
Just leave me alone
look, glanced back down at her composition book, and started to write once again.

“Wait a second!” Madison interrupted Ivy’s writing. “Wait. I want the list, too. Give me the list.”

“Ask Mr. Gibbons for it,” Ivy replied.

“I was thinking that maybe you could share some of the questions with me,” Madison suggested.

Ivy shot Madison a cruel, piercing look. “Share? Ha!” Ivy said. “You’re kidding me, right?”

“What do you mean, ‘kidding’?” Madison replied. “No, I’m not kidding. Show me some of the questions.”

All of a sudden, Ivy burst into laughter that was loud enough to draw Mr. Books’s attention back to their table. He’d heard them clear across the library.

“Shhhh!” he cautioned as he approached their table, his finger up to his lips. After standing guard for about five minutes near their small library table, he disappeared across the room.

“So now you know how I feel, Maddie,” Ivy said. “Like, you never share science notes with me—so I’m not sharing English questions with you. Besides, these journals are private, aren’t they? What’s mine is mine.”

Madison felt like a teakettle that was just starting to boil. But she could not, under any circumstances, blow her top. If Madison’s voice got too loud, that would raise another red flag for Mr. Books, and she did not, under any circumstances, want to end up in Principal Bernard’s office.

Madison bit her tongue so she wouldn’t invite trouble. She stared at the enemy, wondering what the next move should be.

Ivy looked like a mannequin, sitting in her chair with her legs crossed under the table. She wore red Mary Janes and a flowered skirt and top that Madison had seen in a recent e-mail advertisement from the Boop-Dee-Doop catalog. Around her neck on a beaded choker, Ivy wore a heart-shaped charm. It looked as though she might have gotten her red hair highlighted with streaks of—was that auburn? And there wasn’t a strand out of place. Not only was Ivy’s life perfect on the inside—Ivy looked perfect on the outside.

Even though she told herself not to look, Madison’s eyes wandered from Ivy’s outfit and hair to the pages of Ivy’s journal.

Ivy had written down a new topic at the top of the page. It was a topic that Madison had never seen before. It must have been from Mr. Gibbons’s special list of questions.

Write about a time you had to wait for something you wanted.

What’s the point of writing about this? I am supposed to see M. and H. as soon as possible but I don’t know what will happen. J. didn’t have happy

Madison shifted in her chair.

M.? H.?

Madison? Hart?

Who else could it be? And
who
was
J.?

“Um…Ivy?” Madison asked.

Ivy looked over at Madison with her wide blue eyes. She blinked once, then a second time. Ivy wasn’t wearing her usual mascara and eyeliner. In fact, she had no makeup on at all. She looked like a different person.

“What is it?” Ivy rolled her eyes emphatically and let out an enormous sigh. “Do you have a problem?”

“Not me.”

“Then bug off. Mr. Books will come back if you don’t.”

Madison shifted again in her chair, and her green T-shirt with the palm tree and stars on the front rode up. (The shirt didn’t fit quite right, unlike Ivy’s red top with the little bow neckline, which fit Ivy
perfectly
.) Madison pulled the shirt down and tried tucking it into her jeans, but the waist on the jeans was a super-low-rider style, so nothing stayed tucked. It was bad enough to deal with Ivy’s snarly attitude. Now Madison’s clothes were completely malfunctioning.

“Look,” Ivy said. “Why can’t you just write in your journal, and I’ll write in mine, okay? That is…
if
you have anything interesting to say.”

There was no good response to Ivy’s final comment. All Madison could do was sit there, open her own notebook, absentmindedly roll her pen between her fingers, look pensive, and pretend Ivy’s barbs didn’t sting.

But they did sting, a lot, even after all those years of being enemies with Ivy.

They stung so much that Madison couldn’t write anything down. She stared at an empty, white, lined page in her journal for ten full minutes without writing a single word. And by that time, the period was over.

On the walk home that afternoon, the streets and sidewalks seemed emptier than empty. Madison felt empty, too, although she wasn’t sure why. There was a hollow pang left over from the science class study hall and Poison Ivy’s venomous comments, but that wasn’t the whole reason.

Was it because her BFFs were all elsewhere? Fiona had an after-school meeting with the photography club; Aimee had dance; and Egg and the guys were over at Chet and Fiona’s house playing Disaster Zone (since Mr. Waters had finally gotten the computer fixed).

Madison didn’t know.

Upon reaching her porch, Madison opened the screen door to find Phin curled up under the table in the hall. Normally, Phinnie would rush the door and lick Madison all over with happy-dog kisses. But today he just snored. Madison tiptoed past him into the kitchen.

The basement door was wide open.

“Mom? Are you down there?” Madison asked.

“Hello, honey bear,” Mom yelled up. She came to the bottom of the stairs wearing rubber gloves and a ratty T-shirt. “I needed to get my mind off work and some other things,” Mom continued, “so I thought I’d finally clean up this mess down here. You know, there are file cabinets down here with loads of your collages and other stuff. You haven’t looked at those in ages.”

“I know,” Madison said wistfully. Before Dad got her a laptop, Madison had spent lots of time typing on their old computer, tearing up magazines, and doing other things down in the Finn basement. She used to play “school” with only herself as both teacher and students, and she still had the make-believe tests to show for it. Each “student” had special handwriting and special habits; for example, Jorge was a lousy speller, and Emerson liked to draw smiley faces over all of her letter
I
’s. There were so many happy memories of teaching down in that basement that, despite Mom’s pleas, Madison knew it would be impossible for her to clean up or throw anything out from her file cabinets and shelves.

“I’ll deal with it later,” she told Mom abruptly.

“Okay, then,” Mom called back. “I’ll be up in an hour and we can decide on dinner. I have taco mix, broccoli, and tofu tonight.”

Madison grimaced. A few years back Mom had gone vegetarian, thanks to the influence of Aimee’s mom, who always prepared macrobiotic meals. Madison still wasn’t too happy about the switch to vegetarianism, even though she knew it was the healthier way.

After tossing her bag onto the kitchen table, Madison opened her laptop. While it booted up, Madison opened up a container of strawberry yogurt and spooned it into a bowl along with some honey granola and raisins. If she was forced to eat tofu later, she needed a decent snack now.

Madison’s laptop beeped with e-mail.

“Yeah!” she shrieked. It was the one she’d been waiting for.

From: Bigwheels


To: MadFinn


Subject: Re: TweenBlurt


Date: Wed 13 Oct 4:10
PM


Thanks for your e-mail & sorry I haven’t written back but I’ve had 3 MAJOR tests on Monday and Tuesday and I’m only now checking my mailbox. I’m in school, in the tech lab and I’m blowing off my HW so--don’t tell anyone! *>)


You know I think we should write in to one of those shows where two people get made over TOGETHER. How cool would that b?


BTW yes I have been on tweenblurt a lot l8ly and I’m guessing (is it keypal ESP?) that you are talking about the new feature BLOGGERBLURT aka BB. Um…did u find my blog there? I knew you would--!!!:>) And I know I should have said something b4 but I wasn’t sure what to say exactly. I mean ur like my BFF online and normally I’d spill and tell u everything but I just can’t this time. Not yet. Sorry.


Pleasepleaseplease WBS.


Yours till the lily pads (we did virtual frog dissections last week!).
Vicki aka Bigwheels


Madison swallowed a few more spoonfuls of yogurt and granola as she scanned Bigwheels’s e-mail again. But no matter how many times she reread the words, Madison couldn’t accept it.

Bigwheels had a BIG secret?

Madison needed to find out exactly what it was. Soon.

From: MadFinn


To: Bigwheels


Subject: Re: Re: TweenBlurt


Date: Thurs 14 Oct 11:20
AM


Now I’m the one in the media lab @ school writing 2 u! Thanks 4 ur e-mail. Is everything ok? U sound different. I know u said u couldn’t talk about it but I wanted to make sure u know that u can always ALWAYS keep it real w/me. Really. I consider u 2 be 1 of my BFs of course even tho ur all the way across the USA. So…


We have this weird project in school. We’re keeping journals. It sounds like my kind of thing but for some reason I am NOT feeling inspired. Un42n8ly Poison Ivy obviously IS inspired b/c she keeps writing (and talking) about how absolutely PERFECT her life is. She has to be THE most plastic person on the planet.


Well, I have to get ready 4 class so I better go.


Ur turn to WBS.


Yours till the book reports,
Maddie


Brrrrinnnnnnnnnnnnng.

UPON HEARING THE CLASS
bell ring, Madison clicked
SEND
, powered down her laptop, and stuffed all of her books, including her journaling notebook, and her laptop back into her orange bag. Although the bag was bursting at the seams, she heaved it over her shoulder and raced out of the media lab, taking two steps at a time down to the next class.

At the bottom of the staircase, Madison took a corner too fast, and the weight of her bag pulled her in the wrong direction.

Wham!

She slammed into someone coming from the opposite direction. Her bag dragged her to the ground. Everything inside spilled onto the floor and the other person’s books went tumbling, too.

“Finnster?”

Madison looked up and saw Hart looking down at her. He was rubbing his shoulder.

“Ouch. Your book bag attacked me,” he said. “What’s in there?”

Madison realized that both his and her stuff was everywhere: her laptop, his wallet, and lots of papers were scattered on the ground. Other kids stepped around the crash site. Kneeling down, she scrambled to get her hands on as much as she could without having her fingers stomped on.

“I’m such a klutz,” Madison said, pausing to put her head in her hands. “I can’t believe I whammed into you like that. I am SO sorry. And now look at this mess…”

Hart laughed. He kneeled down to retrieve his own books and wallet and to help her pick up her papers. “My dad would call this a happy accident. He always says profound things like that.”

“Huh?” Madison blurted out. She felt a blush coming on. Hart was definitely flirting again.
Definitely.
She could see it in his eyes this time. He never stopped smiling.

Madison continued to try to gather the items that had flown out of her bag. As Hart handed Madison a stack of loose-leaf paper, she grabbed her science notebook and a few stray pens.

“I think your laptop survived,” Hart said.

“Thanks,” Madison sighed. “I don’t know what I would do if my laptop was injured.”

“You could take it to a laptop hospital,” Hart said.

“Bah-dum ching!” Madison joked. “Gee, Hart, you should be a comedian,” she added, in her most sarcastic voice. Now she was really flirting, too.

“Is this yours?” Hart asked, holding up Madison’s black-and-white composition notebook from Mr. Gibbons’s class.

Madison gasped. Her journal! The way Hart was holding it she could see a couple of the pages folded over. What did those pages say? Madison strained to peek.