Out on a Limb (18 page)

“It’s karma.” We put the bracelets on, and I felt that we were now officially best friends.

Christmas Day sparkled with snow. Tilley and I got new clothes, which pleased me more than her. My parents were thrilled with the self-adhesive foam pipe insulation. They applied it as soon as we’d finished Christmas breakfast.

Post-Christmas has never been my favourite time of year, and the treehouse didn’t change my mind. Mom and Dad were off from university, and we’d planned to spend the holidays frolicking in the winter wonderland of Great-great-aunt Lydia’s woods, but that’s not what happened. Right after Christmas it warmed up. Snow mush fell past our windows and water flowed in the pipe again. It was too wet to play outside, so we didn’t. Then the temperature dropped back below freezing. With its new insulation the pipe was fine, but the melting snow froze solid. The rungs of the treehouse ladder were so deadly slippery, that Dad rented a mountaineer’s ropes and harness, plus spiked crampons for our boots. The novelty of the mountaineering equipment wore off fast. It was a huge nuisance to get to and from the treehouse. Mom and Dad kept sending Tilley and me out to play anyway, and we hated it. There was nothing to do when we reached the ground. It was no fun clumping along in crampons, and even down there it was hazardous without them. Mom and Dad looked fed up when Tilley and I kept reappearing in the treehouse doorway. I could see why. The treehouse was not designed for four unoccupied people. It got on my nerves too, that wherever I looked or stepped, there everybody was. We all got really crabby, and we were all glad to go back to school.

It was great to see Bridget again, all tanned from Hawaii. Kendra was back from Italy, air-kissing her friends and saying “ciao” to everybody except me and Bridget. She kept staring at our matching bracelets.

Eveline was back, too, and when the first day of school ended Tilley called my cell to say she was going to her house. “Okay,” I said. I had basically forgotten my promise to be nice to Tilley and Eveline in return for keeping quiet about the treehouse. Tilley seemed to have forgotten too: she hadn’t mentioned it once in the three and a half weeks since the promise. I would have thought that Eveline was the most likely of all three of us to forget about it. After all, she was the one who had been away in Italy being all distracted with foreign words, and different food, and statues of naked people. But I thought wrong. Eveline remembered.

When I took Tilley to Sir Combover Elementary the next morning, Eveline was waiting, looking cute as ever. She cupped both hands around Tilley’s ear, and whispered for a long time. She didn’t whisper as loud as most little kids, so I had no clue what was going on. Tilley looked kind of worried. She whispered back for a second, then Eveline lunged for her ear again and whispered some more. Finally, Eveline stepped back.

“Umm,” Tilley said. She stood making clouds of breath. Eveline jiggled Tilley’s elbow.

“Umm. Like. You promised to be nice to us?” Tilley stopped and Eveline whispered at her. Tilley started again. “In ways as we may spe-fi-cy. Is what you said. In that contract thingy?” Tilley stopped and looked up at me.

“Yeah?” I said. “And?”

Tilley bit her lip until Eveline whispered at her again. “So the way we speficy is, we want toffee,” Tilley concluded. “MacIntosh’s Creamy Toffee.”

“And you want me to buy it?” I asked.

Tilley opened her mouth but said nothing. Eveline nodded.

“You do,” I said. “Yeah. Well. Okay, I guess.” It was perfectly natural for little kids to want toffee, I told myself as I headed off to Windward. Still, I had a bad feeling.

The bough money was all gone, and my allowance was very small. Measured in MacIntosh’s CreamyToffee, it was two boxes worth, so buying a box for Eveline and Tilley meant giving up half my treat money for the week. I did it because I
had
promised to be nice to them in such ways as they might specify, but I hoped it wouldn’t happen again.

It did happen again, two days later, on allowance day. It was the same as before. Eveline hissed in Tilley’s ear, and Tilley was the spokesperson. “Umm,” Tilley said. “That toffee? We finished it? And, like. We. Want some more.”

Eveline jiggled Tilley’s elbow. “A box each,” Tilley added.

“A box each! Tilley, that’s my whole allowance!”

Tilley looked at Eveline, to see what she thought of my protest. They whispered to each other until Eveline nudged Tilley forward.

Tilley opened her mouth. “Eveline says one box for two people isn’t enough.”

“That’s not fair,” I said.

Like a snake striking, Eveline went for Tilley’s ear. “Eveline says you promised, so it is fair, Eveline says,” said Tilley.

I stared down at Eveline’s Hello Kitty barrettes. “Fine!” I said, twirling myself off toward Windward.

On Monday morning at Sir Combover Elementary there was another demand for MacIntosh’s Creamy Toffee.

“I can’t get anymore,” I said. “I’ve spent my allowance for this week. The whole thing. Remember?”

They whispered.

“Eveline has money you can use,” Tilley said.

“Then why doesn’t she just buy it herself?”

“Grade Ones aren’t allowed to go to the store by themselves,” Tilley said.

“So why doesn’t she go with her mom?”

“Her mom won’t let her buy it,” Tilley said. “She says it rots her teeth. Same as our mom.”

Eveline gave some change to Tilley, who handed it on to me. When I delivered the toffee at Sir Combover the next morning, Eveline was already digging quarters from her fuzzy bunny pocket, and Tilley was already asking for more.

“Your teeth
are
going to rot,” I said.

Eveline whispered. “Eveline says that’s none of your business,” Tilley said. More whispering. “Eveline says you promised to be nice, and she says we get to decide what’s nice, and we think toffee is nice,” Tilley reported.

I got the toffee, but I was starting to feel like a drug dealer, supplying kids with all this unhealthy stuff. On Thursday, Eveline and Tilley made a new demand.

“Eveline wants you to take us to Lester’s Pizza Hideaway,” Tilley said. “At lunchtime tomorrow.”

“I can’t take you for lunch! That’s way more than my allowance.”

“Eveline says she has enough money,” Tilley said.

“How does Eveline have all this money?” I asked. “She gets it off her mother’s dresser,” Tilley said, and Eveline elbowed her.

I opened my mouth to act shocked. And even though I easily could have kept my mouth closed, I actually was kind of shocked. The angelic-looking Eveline, I was starting to think, had the makings of a young offender. “I still can’t,” I said. “You need a note from your parents to leave the school grounds at lunch.”

Eveline whispered. “Eveline says you can do the notes because you know all the big words and how to spell them and everything,” Tilley said.

“You want me to
forge
a permission note?” I demanded.

Tilley looked at Eveline to see if this really was what they wanted. Eveline narrowed her big blue eyes and nodded.

“That’s dishonest,” I said. “Forget it.”

From her fuzzy bunny pocket Eveline brought out a paper and unfolded it. I made a grab but she balled it up in her fist. It was the old math test that I’d used for the contract. In a flash, I’d seen my printed name and Miss Rankle’s red-pen comments. I suddenly realized that I had supplied Eveline with positive proof of the exact fact I was trying to keep secret. She tucked her evidence back inside her bunny pocket.

“Okay,” I said. I was nearly as mad at my own stupidity as I was at them.

“My mom’s name is Jocelyn,” Eveline said, and I was startled to hear her speak out loud. She handed me a cancelled cheque with her mother’s signature. I shoved it in my pencil case.

That afternoon I practiced forgery on the folding table in the treehouse. I signed the names Jocelyn Smith and Andrea McGrady fifty times each, then burnt these practice signatures in the cast-iron stove. Under the cover of my math textbook I hid the two good-copy forgeries. I tossed in my berth that night, staring out my porthole at the bare oak branches all coated in moonlight. It bugged me that I was about to commit a semi-criminal act. Next morning, I glared at Tilley at breakfast and I said nothing as I walked her through the woods to Sir Combover Elementary. My only pleasure was in ignoring all her tries at talking to me.

At Sir Combover I handed the forgeries over to Tilley and Eveline. I came back at lunchtime and wordlessly led them to Lester’s Pizza Hideaway. Tilley dropped a handful of coins into my hand, and with this stolen property I paid for their food. I brought the paper plates to their table and put them down so hard that the pizza slices leapt in terror. I slammed myself into my own plastic chair. Tilley looked at me nervously and started a conference of whispering. Finally, Tilley spoke. “Eveline has money for you to buy pizza too,” she said.

“No thank you,” I said. “I don’t want to live off the proceeds of crime. Unlike some.” I opened my lunch bag, but before my second bite of smoked oyster sandwich the pizza guy told me that bagged lunches weren’t allowed. I put my sandwich away and sat starving, while Tilley and Eveline ate. I scowled. My strategy was to be so grumpy that they would have no fun at all and would be sorry that they came. Tilley did look uncomfortable, but not Eveline. I think she was totally used to making people grumpy.

When they’d finished I took them back to Sir Combover. On my way back to Windward I pulled out my lunch bag, but a smoked oyster sandwich is hard to eat while walking. The oysters fell out.

Bridget had soccer and Eveline had a dentist appointment that afternoon, so Tilley and I ended up walking home together. “We did paper maché in art today,” Tilley said. Silence from me, except for hard steps on old snow. “I got every single question right on my spelling test,” she said. Again I said nothing. “We might go on a field trip to a space museum,” she said. She sounded timid, but I didn’t feel one tiny bit sorry for her. I wouldn’t speak. “I think I’m getting a stomach ache,” she ventured.

“All the pizza and toffee,” I said. “Serves you right.”

“You don’t have to be so mean,” Tilley said.

“No? But it’s fine for you?”

“
I’m
not being mean,” Tilley said.

“Oh, please.”

“How am I being mean?” she asked.

“How are you being mean?” I asked. “Well now, let me think. You whisper right in front of me all the time, which is totally rude. You extort every cent of my allowance. You make me forge Mom’s signature. You blackmail me.”

“What’s extort?” Tilley asked.

“Ask your little criminal friend. She should know.”

“She is not a criminal!”

“She will be. And you will be too, if you keep on thinking you have to do every single thing she says.”

“I do NOT think I have to do what she says,” Tilley said.

“Well, if these are your own ideas, it’s even worse. You’ll be in a detention centre by the time you’re twelve,” I said.

“What’s a tension centre?”

“It’s a kiddy jail, for people like you and Eveline.”

“We DO NOT deserve to go to JAIL,” Tilley cried.

“Who do you think does go to jail, Tilley? Dishonest people, that’s who.”

“Like you’re so honest!” Tilley yelled. Tears dribbled.

“You pretend to live in a mansion!”

“Well at least I don’t steal. At least I’m not a thief like your little juvenile delinquent friend.”

“Eveline is not a—what you just said. Eveline is really, really nice.”

“Yeah, if you like evil people,” I said.

“
You’re
evil,”Tilley said.

“
You
are.”

“
You
are.”

“
You
are.”

“
You
are.” Tilley stomped off ahead of me, smashing through the old crusts of dirty snow.

NOTEBOOK: #24

NAME: Rosamund McGrady

SUBJECT: Panther-Lamp Day

I was really mad that Tilley was blackmailing me. Tilley was really mad that I called her and Eveline criminals. And we both stayed that way. We started avoiding eye contact, which is hard when you live in a ten-foot-square treehouse.

Like most people, Tilley wasn’t very nice when she was mad. She and Eveline demanded more and more toffee and pizza lunches. They started demanding other things too, like lunchtime trips to the penny candy store, and to the video arcade, and to McDonalds. The more they blackmailed, the madder I got; and the madder I got the more I insulted Eveline; and the more I insulted Eveline the madder Tilley got; and the madder Tilley got the more she blackmailed me; and the more she blackmailed me the madder I got. Etcetera.

Near the end of January, Tilley started making demands of her own, without Eveline even there to egg her on. One Tuesday afternoon after school, I started making dinner. By then, I had a routine: Monday was supermarket deli chicken with boiled potatoes and pre-peeled carrots with dip; Tuesday was fried leftover potatoes, fried Italian sausages and Brussels sprouts; Wednesday was sliced leftover sausages with baked beans and pre-shredded coleslaw; Thursday was some kind of pasta with salad-in-a-bag. I was getting Tuesday’s Brussels sprouts and sausages and leftover potatoes out of our propane fridge when Tilley stuck her head under her bunk curtain.

“I hate Brussels sprouts,” she declared.

“You love them. They’re Barbie cabbages, remember?”

“To look at. Not to eat. And they stink up the whole treehouse. And those sausages are yucky, the way they ooze. I hate them too.”

“Well tough luck for you,” I said.

“No, tough luck for
you
. Cause I want special pasta like at Eveline’s.”

“You’re assuming I care what you want.”

“You have to care what I want.”

“Says who?”

“Says me. It’s what I speficy.”

I stared up at Tilley in the middle bunk. A gang of Beanie Babies surrounded her, backing up her threat. And a threat is what it was.

“What is
this
, Rosie?” Mom asked at dinner that night as she lifted her first forkful of pasta.