The Candy Smash

  "What do your hearts say?" Jessie whispered, pointing to the box that sat on the corner of his desk. The box was open and a couple of hearts had spilled out.

  "Nothing," he muttered. He grabbed the box and tried to scoop up the two stray hearts, but accidentally knocked one to the floor. Jessie stooped down to pick it up, and before she handed it back to Evan, she quickly read what it said.

  Chapter 9

  Love Comes in All Shapes and Sizes

  cliché (n) an overused expression that lacks power because it is so familiar; for example: "as bright as a penny" or "love comes in all shapes and sizes" or "one smart cookie"

  After school, the guys wouldn't stop teasing Evan about being in love with Megan.

  "I am not in love with Megan Moriarty!" he shouted at them as he pedaled his bike away from the playground, furious and embarrassed. Suddenly he felt that there were so many things he was ashamed of. He was ashamed that he liked Megan. He was ashamed that he liked poetry.

  And he was ashamed that he was the only one in the class who got store-bought candy hearts when everyone else got special messages written just for them.

  When it had happened the first time on Monday, he hadn't thought much about it. Candy was candy. Who cared if his hearts just said FOR YOU? But now it seemed as if whoever was giving out the candy was purposely pointing out that he was not very special. It made him feel the way he did when his grandmother forgot him but remembered everybody else.

  On the way home, he rode right by Megan, and he didn't even say hello. He rode fast, as if he didn't see her right there on the sidewalk looking at him, one hand raised and smiling.

  And why didn't Jessie know whether Megan had drawn the heart in the girls' bathroom? How hard was it to find that out?

  "Just ask her, for Pete's sake," he'd said to Jessie in the hallway after recess.

  But Jessie had waved the taped-up survey box in his face and said, "I'm a little busy, you know!"

  He decided to loop the long way home so that he could pedal out some of his frustration. More than anything else, he wished he had basketball practice that afternoon. But it was Thursday, so no practice. By the time he got home, Jessie was already there. They walked through the front door together and found Mrs. Treski in the kitchen, pouring hot water from the kettle into a mug.

  "Grab the mail, will you?" she said, so Evan doubled back and pulled a stack of letters and catalogs out of the mailbox by the front door.

  "I've got stuff to do," said Jessie, heading straight for the stairs. "No interruptions!"

  "Yeah, right," said Evan, dropping the letters on the kitchen counter.

  "What's that about?" asked Mrs. Treski, flipping through the mail.

  "Just some extra credit project she's doing," said Evan glumly.

  "Hmm. That's Jessie. Hey, look. Here's something for you." She held up a small square envelope with red lettering on it. Evan's heart did a 360 backflip. Had Megan sent him a valentine? Should he open it in front of his mother? Did he even want it?

  His mom held up another envelope that looked exactly the same. "And here's one for Jessie." She looked puzzled. "I wonder why..."

  Evan tore open the envelope, not sure what he hoped to find inside. It was a card with a picture of Snoopy hugging Woodstock, and the message inside read, "Love comes in all shapes and sizes."

  "It's from Grandma," he said.

  "I know. I could tell from the handwriting."

  "Look what she wrote," said Evan, holding out the card. "Dear Evan, I love you and miss you and think of you every day. Hope you have a great Valentine's Day. See you soon! Love, Grandma."

  Evan looked at his mom, and they both started to laugh. It was hard not to, living with Grandma. Her brain worked in crazy ways these days. Sometimes she thought she was twenty years old. Sometimes she forgot she lived in the same house with the Treskis. Sometimes she didn't even remember who they were. And sometimes she was just fine.

  Evan went to the cupboard and got down everything he needed to make hot chocolate: a mug, a spoon, hot chocolate mix, and mini-marshmallows. As he scooped the mix into his cup, his thoughts returned to the gloom that hung over him on the bike ride home. And that made him think of other things, too, and so he asked his mother, "Did you get a valentine?"

  Mrs. Treski laughed. "Now, who would send me a valentine?"

  "I don't know," said Evan, stirring the hot water and chocolate mix in his cup. "Maybe ... Dad?"

  His mom took a sip of her tea and looked at him closely. "No. No valentine from Dad. Were you hoping I'd get one from him?"

  Evan shrugged, watching the billows of steam rising from his stirring spoon. "Well, you were married, right?"

  "Yep," said Mrs. Treski. "We were."

  "So..." Evan dropped a fistful of minimarshmallows into his cup. His mother opened her mouth as if she was going to say something about that, but then she closed it again. "How does that work?" asked Evan. "How can you be in love and then not in love anymore?"

  "You know, I'm not sure about that myself."

  "Maybe it was never love? Maybe you just made a mistake."

  "No, it was definitely love. Believe me. For both of us. But—it didn't last. Sometimes love doesn't."

  Evan shook his head. "All the poems make it sound like love is forever. It's bigger than anything and the most important thing in the world. But if it can just go like that ...just disappear..." Evan threw his hand up as if he was tossing a piece of trash over his shoulder.

  Evan's mother paused. "It didn't just go, Evan. It put up a fight. A big, long fight. Do you remember? Were you old enough?"

  Evan nodded, then took a short, hot sip of his drink. "I remember the fighting."

  "That was love. That was love doing everything it could to hang in there. But in the end, it couldn't. So Dad and I decided to be apart. But I'll always love your father."

  "You say that! You always say that," said Evan. "But what does it mean if you're not married anymore?"

  "It means it's a different kind of love. There are all kinds in the world, you know."

  "Mrs. O. says that, too. She says you can love a song or a forest or a friend or a—you know—a person, a person you're 'in love' with." Evan buried his face in the hot steam rising from his cup so his mother wouldn't see his eyes.

  "Mrs. Overton is one smart cookie."

  Evan nodded, still keeping his face tilted down. Love was confusing.

  "Hey, Mom. I wrote a poem. About Grandma. Do you want to read it?"

  "Sure," she said. "Bring it on."

  He dug through his backpack until he found the folded-up piece of paper he'd stuck in the back pocket of his binder. He handed it to his mom, wondering why his heart was beating hard, so hard he thought it was going to knock itself right out of his chest.

  Mrs. Treski read the poem once. Then she put the paper down on the counter, smoothing over the page with her hand, and read it again. She looked up at Evan, and Evan stopped breathing. It was as if everything inside him stopped—his heart and his lungs and his brain—just stopped. In that instant, he would have given anything to have his poem back, safe and hidden in his binder, where no one would know that it even existed. It was just too hard, having it out there in the world for everyone to see.

  "That is the most remarkable poem I've ever read in my entire life, Evan," said his mother. Her voice was quiet, as if she'd just discovered a new planet or found a rare bird on her front lawn.

  Evan's heart suddenly flooded his whole system with too much blood; it rushed past his ears with a whooshing noise that made it hard to hear. "You think it's good?" he asked.

  "You have a talent," she said, tapping the page. "A rare talent." She shook her head. "I didn't know you like poetry."

  "I didn't either," he said. "But I do." Evan couldn't believe he'd just said that out loud. He'd actually admitted to liking poetry. Next thing you know, I'll start saying that I like Megan Moriarty out loud! His ears pinked up at the thought.

  There wa
s a crash followed by a thud from upstairs, then Jessie yelled down, "I'm okay. I just tripped."

  Evan and his mom laughed. Jessie was kind of like Old Faithful, that geyser at Yellowstone Park that Evan had studied in third grade. She could be counted on to blow every few hours.

  "I've got a picture frame you can have," said Mrs. Treski, handing the poem back to Evan. "You could copy the poem over and frame it and then give it as a Valentine's gift to Grandma. I bet she'd really like it."

  Evan thought of his poem on display for everyone to see. Everyone. It made him feel both proud and nervous, both excited and a little sick to his stomach. "Maybe," he said.

  Evan walked upstairs slowly, looking down at the poem in his hand. It didn't feel so bad admitting he liked poetry. Maybe he'd show one or two of his poems to Mrs. Overton. Maybe he'd even show one of them to his friends. Not this one. A different one. Maybe. But he would never, ever admit that he liked Megan. He'd rather die than have his friends know that.

  He walked into his room, but before he even had a chance to close the door behind him, he noticed that some of the trash from his wastebasket was spilled onto the floor.

  Chapter 10

  Snooping

  snooping (v.) investigating or searching in a secretive way to uncover private information

  It had been an accident. Really and truly. The only reason Jessie had gone into Evan's room in the first place was that she'd needed a piece of paper. That's all. She wasn't looking for anything else. She wasn't snooping. She wasn't.

  And even though she wasn't supposed to go in Evan's room without asking, and she definitely wasn't allowed to look in his top desk drawer without permission, she was in a big hurry to count up the results of the survey. And Evan was all the way downstairs. And he'd been in such a bad mood when they'd walked in the front door together. And she was in a big hurry. That was the thing. She didn't have time to follow all the rules.

  But when she grabbed a piece of paper out of Evan's desk drawer and turned to run back out the door—so fast it was as if she hadn't even broken the rule in the first place—she tripped over Evan's wastebasket, which crashed into the floor lamp, and the papers spilled all over the floor. They were like little animals escaping from their cage. The wastebasket was made of wire, just like a cage, and Jessie couldn't help imagining the papers shouting, "Free! We're free! At last, we're free!"

  "I'm okay! I just tripped!" she shouted so that Evan and their mother wouldn't come running upstairs to see what the noise was.

  She started to scoop up the crumpled-up pieces of paper, still thinking about the animals escaping from their cage, and then one of them really did look like a turtle. Look at that, she thought. There was the shell and a leg and a head poking out. Jessie was good at noticing patterns and shapes, and this crumpled-up piece of paper definitely looked like a turtle.

  She picked up the piece of paper, tugged on the head, and then pushed on it to see if she could imitate the way a turtle pokes its head out of its shell and then pulls it in when it's threatened. And that's when the paper became uncrumpled and she saw a few of the words on the page.

  Words were meant to be read. Everyone knew that! You didn't write a word down on a piece of paper if you didn't expect someone to read it. Otherwise you would just leave that word in your head.

  So without really thinking and almost before she knew that she was doing it, Jessie uncrumpled the paper and spread it out in front of her. And then, when she got that feeling in her stomach—that tingle that told her she might be doing something wrong—it was too late, because a question had popped into her mind. And once that happened, there was no stopping Jessie. She needed to know the answer to the question, just as she had needed to know the answers to all the other questions that had come up this year: Who stole the lemonade money? How did Scott Spencer buy an Xbox 20/20? Where did the New Year's Eve bell go? What was wrong with Maxwell? The questions were like math problems, and Jessie couldn't rest until the equation was solved.

  Who was pony girl? What did these words mean?

  Jessie heard a sound from downstairs. She wasn't sure what it was, but it reminded her that she was in Evan's room without having asked him for permission. So she scooped the balls of paper on the floor into the trash can, set the trash can upright, then ran out of Evan's room.

  Back in her own room with the door closed, she settled down at her desk and smoothed the wrinkled paper in front of her. A thought flickered through her mind: Am I stealing something by taking the paper? But no, that didn't make sense. The paper was trash, and you couldn't steal trash. Besides, Jessie carried the trash out of Evan's room every week. It was one of her household chores. What was the difference between carrying it out today and carrying it out on Saturday?

  Still, she opened her door and hung up the Locked sign, then closed her door again and slipped the paper into her top desk drawer. There was no time to think about trash or words or Evan. Right now, she had to tally up the responses to her survey.

  Using a pair of scissors, she carefully cut the top off the shoebox and dumped all the surveys onto her bed. Half of them were folded so many times, they looked like square paper rocks. A few of them even rolled off the bed and onto the floor. Jessie carefully unfolded each survey and spread it out on her bed. By the time she'd finished, the entire bed was covered in paper.

  But when she counted up the surveys, there were only twenty-six. She looked on the floor and doublechecked her backpack but couldn't find the twenty-seventh survey.

  How was that possible? No one had been absent today; she was sure of it. Maybe someone had not handed one in? She wondered who it was.

  Jessie was still staring at her bed when she heard Evan climbing the stairs and then bang, bang, bang, on her door.

  "I'm busy," she said.

  "Open up!" he commanded. "Now."

  Jessie didn't like the sound of that.

  She opened her door a tiny crack, then pressed her face up to the thin slice of the opening. The surveys were spread out on her bed, and she didn't want anyone to see them.

  "You can't come in," said Jessie, her lips pressed against the narrow space of the open door.

  "I don't want to," said Evan. "Did you come in my room?"

  "Yes," said Jessie. "But only for a second."

  "It doesn't matter. You're not allowed in my room without my permission. You owe me a dollar."

  Jessie knew there was no way out of this one. A rule is a rule. "Okay," she said. "I'll pay the dumb fine."

  "It's not dumb. You wouldn't think it was dumb if I came in your room." But Evan never came to Jessie's room anymore. Jessie wished he would sometimes. Especially if it meant he had to pay her a dollar.

  Evan stood waiting at the door.

  "Now, you mean?" asked Jessie. "You want the dollar now?"

  "Yes." Evan didn't move. His face looked like it was carved out of granite.

  "Oh, fine," said Jessie. She closed the door and went to get her lock box from its hiding place behind some books on the top shelf of her bookcase. Then she retrieved the key, which was hanging on a small nail that she had tapped into the doorjamb inside her closet. She did all this very quietly, as if she were a spy on a secret mission, so that if Evan was listening at the door, he wouldn't be able to figure out her secret hiding places.

  She opened the door again, just a sliver, and handed Evan the dollar through the narrow crack. She hated giving up money, especially when she didn't get anything in return.

  "Why'd you come in my room anyway?" asked Evan.

  "I needed a piece of paper."

  Evan's eyes narrowed to two dark slits. "You mean you went in my desk drawer?"

  "Only for a split second!" said Jessie. "I just needed one piece of paper." She said the last part as if she was pleading for her life.

  "You owe me another dollar!" shouted Evan.

  "I do not!"

  "Do, too! It's bad enough you went in my room. Now you're snooping around in my desk!"


  "I wasn't snooping," said Jessie and meant it with all her heart. She had just wanted a piece of paper. Why did everything have to turn into such a big deal?

  "I'm not leaving until you pay me another dollar. And that's the rule from now on."

  "Oh, fine," said Jessie. She was starting to get that sick feeling in her stomach when she sensed that something was going wrong but she couldn't figure out exactly what. Was Evan going to ask her about tipping over the wastebasket? Jessie didn't want to talk about that, even though she didn't think she'd done anything wrong.

  When she handed Evan the second dollar, he still didn't look pleased. How could anyone who had just gotten two dollars for nothing not be happy?

  "You have to clean up the mess you made, too," said Evan. "You left trash on the floor."

  Jessie closed the door behind her with a defiant slam, then walked across the hall. She was just about to cross the threshold to Evan's room when she froze in midstep. "Wait a minute," she said. "Is this a trick?" It was just the kind of trick she would have thought of to earn an easy dollar.

  "No, for Pete's sake!" Evan said. "You have permission to go into my room to clean up the mess!"

  There were two scraps of paper on the floor, and Jessie was kicking herself for not having noticed them before. Evan watched her pick up the papers and throw them in his trash can. He still had that look on his face. The one that Jessie couldn't quite figure out. Was it anger? Frustration? Impatience? Suspicion? Maybe Evan was having mixed-up feelings, in which case Jessie knew she couldn't figure them out. One feeling was hard enough to decipher; a whole bunch of them left her completely confused.