Miss Matched (4 page)

“Can I have a glass of milk?” yelled Max from the living room.

“If you come in here and get it,” answered Mrs. Miltenberger.

Max waddled into the kitchen on the heels of his flippers. “Milk me,” he said in his Captain Seahorse voice.

“I thought you were Captain Seahorse, not Captain Seacow,” said Fiona, and Harold snorted.

Max cocked his head. “I don't get it.” He took the glass from Mrs. Miltenberger with both hands and gulped it down.

“So,” said Mrs. Miltenberger. She sat down at the kitchen table across from Fiona and Harold. “Where were we?”

“A question that costs a million big ones,” said Harold.

“Right,” said Mrs. Miltenberger. “A long time ago, when I was a sweet young thing—and don't look so surprised because as I said, it was a long time ago.”

Fiona and Harold looked at each other. Fiona forced her eyebrows to lower, and Mrs. Miltenberger continued. “Anyway, when I first met Mr. Miltenberger, rest his soul, I wouldn't give him the time of day. I'm not exaggerating. He would ask me for the time, and even though I always wore the Timex that my mother and father had given me for a high school graduation present, I wouldn't tell him.” She smiled and then tapped her chin with her finger. “I wonder whatever happened to that watch.”

“Why wouldn't you tell him what time it was?” Fiona asked. “Didn't you like him?”

“Did I like him?” repeated Mrs. Miltenberger. “He was the only boy that could make strudel as good as my mother's and knew how to do his own laundry.”

“My grandma showed me how to make strudel,” said Harold.

“And you're a catch,” said Mrs. Miltenberger, with a wink.

“Then why were you mean to him?” asked Fiona. “To Mr. Miltenberger, I mean.”

“What are you all talking about?” asked Max, wiping away his milk mustache with his bare arm.

“
Amore,
” said Mrs. Miltenberger.

“Huh?”

“Love,” she said.

“I'm out of here,” said Max, handing the empty glass to Mrs. Miltenberger and waddling away.

“Wait a second,” said Fiona. “Love? Gross! I'm in fourth grade. Nobody is talking about . . . I can't even say it. L-O-V-E. Yuck.”

F
iona had to
stand on her head and sing “On Top of Spaghetti” twice all the way through to get Mrs. Miltenberger's gross-out L-O-V-E talk out of her brain.
Bleck.
And she had to stay in the bathtub for a gazillion years until she passed Mrs. Miltenberger's stink test.

Fiona hoped that Harold had gotten it all wrong about Milo's club. After all, Harold got confused about things almost as much as Fiona did. Like the one time when he thought that dust bunnies were a real kind of rabbit that lived under the couch.
She figured he could be wrong about this, too.

But at school, a gigantic poster hanging on the back of the classroom door proved that Harold could be right some of the time.

Fiona had heard people on TV say that when they got mad they saw red. Just like bulls did when they saw a red cape. Until now, Fiona had wondered if that was real. But the more she looked at Milo's poster, Fiona was certain. She had the urge to snort and stomp her feet and charge. . . . Did her itchy brain mean that horns were growing?

It didn't help that everybody in Mr. Bland's classroom was talking about joining Milo's stupid club. Fiona couldn't figure out why they were suddenly interested in meteorology. They thought that meteorology had to do with outer space before she had set them straight.

Besides, it was Fiona's dad, not Milo's, who was the chief meteorologist at the news station. And it was Fiona, not Milo, who was on TV giving weather reports. Nobody seemed to care about the weather before. But now, all of a sudden, Milo from Minnesota was the weather superstar?

Fiona didn't talk to Milo all morning. And Fiona was glad that his books finally came in, because she was all done with sharing.

“The world has really gone mixed-up,” Fiona said to Cleo in the lunch line. “I feel like a fruit smoothie.”

Cleo walked up and down the line checking to make sure everybody had their lunchboxes and milk money. “And did you see what his poster says?” Fiona said when Cleo came back to the front of the line. “The part about the costume?”

Cleo nodded. But Fiona could tell she was more bothered about being line leader. Fiona looked at Milo at the end of the lunch line. He was talking and laughing with Harold and Leila Rad and others.

She scratched her head. And then she marched right over to him. “What's the part about ‘no costumes allowed' supposed to mean?”

Harold picked at the tip of his nose. “Hi, Fiona.”

She growled “hi” back and folded her arms
across her chest. “That's supposed to be about me and my tutu, isn't it?” she said to Milo.

Milo shrugged, all innocent-like. And that made Fiona grit her teeth. “Principal Sterling told me after she saw my first weather report on TV that I should start a meteorology club, you know,” she said.

Milo raised his eyebrows. “So why didn't you?”

That stung. “What? Well . . . but . . . you're only starting this club because you saw me on TV doing the weather.”

“You're not the boss of the weather,” said Leila Rad, twirling a strand of her dark hair around her fingertip.

“Yeah,” said the other kids.

“But . . .” said Fiona. Didn't they see? Milo didn't care about the weather. The only thing he cared about was making her miserable.
Maybe Mom was right,
she thought.

“Why would I start a club just because I saw you on TV?” said Milo.

And in front of everybody, Fiona said to him, “Because, Milo. Because I think you like me. I think you
like
-like me. And that's why you are so mean.”

Milo's face got Valentine's Day red. “You think I
like-
like you?”

Fiona nodded. She looked at all of the surprised
faces around her. Including Milo's. They started laughing then, and Fiona wondered how she could be so sure of something one minute, and the next minute, what she was so sure of didn't make any sense at all. “You don't?”

• • •

In the front seat of the Bingo Bus, Fiona
sat quietly, thinking. Why were grown-ups always giving her bad advice? When Fiona had stage fright, Mrs. Miltenberger told her to picture the audience in their underwear when she felt nervous. But when she tested the experiment on Mr. Bland, her giggles got her sent to the principal's office. Then, just the other day, the Bingo Broads told her to kick Milo with kindness, but that didn't even get her the job of assistant electrician. And then Fiona's mom told her that boys only pick on girls they like. Well, that was the whopper of them all.

What's the point of being a grown-up if they don't know any more than I do?
Fiona wondered. She decided
that she would be better off on her own. Just like in the olden days when all those colonials signed the Declaration of Independence. They were tired of getting bad advice from the king of England, and they told him so. Plus, she bet they didn't have to take baths if they didn't want to.

After they picked up Max from swim practice and were heading to the American Legion, Fiona knew what she had to do. “I am making a declaration of independence,” she announced. “I am never following another grown-up's advice as long as I live. From now on, I'm on my own. Independent.”

“Oh, my,” said Mrs. Miltenberger from the driver's seat. “We've steered you wrong?”

“That's right,” said Fiona.

“It's an uprising,” said Mrs. Lordeau.

“She's gone indie on us,” said Mrs. Huff.

“Flying the coop,” said Mrs. O'Brien.

“Me too,” declared Max, chewing on a corner of his towel cape. “I'm done with grown-ups.”

“What happened to you?” Fiona asked.

“Coach wants me to learn the breaststroke,” said Max.

Fiona shook her head. A six-year-old's problems were small potatoes. “What's wrong with that?”

“I can't do the breaststroke,” said Max. “I'm no good at it.”

“But you're the best dolphin on your team,” said Mrs. Miltenberger. “Maybe you just need to—”

“Don't listen to them, Max,” said Fiona. She quickly grabbed his hands and put them over his ears. Then she covered her ears with her hands and kept them there the whole ride home.

F
iona chewed on
her green Thinking Pencil with the fierceness and underbite of a bulldog. She spit out the bits of wood that came from thinking too hard.
First there was electrician and now meteorology. What was next? Ballet?
Fiona had to admit, Milo doing a
pirouette
would be hilarious.

“If you don't mind me saying so,” said Mrs. Miltenberger, sitting next to Fiona and Max on the couch, “and this isn't really advice, so I'm not
interfering with your declaration of independence, I don't think. But if you keep chewing like that, you could break a tooth. Or get a splinter in your tongue.”

Fiona chewed harder. Until her pencil snapped in half. “I've got it!” she said, removing the pieces from her mouth. Milo seemed to like being a toe-stepper. Maybe she should be a toe-stepper too.
A toe-flattener.
“I'm going to start my own club.” It was her second declaration of the day, and it tasted like melted marshmallows on toast.

“Sounds like a bold idea to me,” said Mrs. Miltenberger. “Now, does your newly declared independence include dinner? Or are you still counting on grown-ups for that?”

“Grown-ups are still good for food,” said Fiona. “And I'm starved.”

“Yeah, same for me,” said Max.

“Well,” said Mrs. Miltenberger, “it's in the oven, and I've got to get ready for my date.”