Much Ado About Anne

by Heather Vogel Frederick

  But there aren’t any on the horizon. Mrs. Wong’s stunt last month didn’t quite have the effect she wanted. She got on TV, all right, but her handcuffs weren’t the sensation that Carson Dawson’s flying teeth were. I guess because it wasn’t particularly funny, just weird. My parents got a bunch of phone calls from friends and neighbors offering us their sympathy, and a few people even sent checks. But that was it. And while Dad said it gave our savings account a boost, it didn’t solve the problem. A person doesn’t need to be a math genius to figure that out. Because even if we do manage somehow to come up with the money for the taxes this year, what about next year, and the year after that?

  “Well, we can’t give up yet,” says Emma firmly. “We’ve still got, what, four months to go before the deadline?”

  I shake my head and hold up three fingers.

  “Oh.” Emma stares at the bills and coins again and chews her lip.

  I scoop up the money and stuff it back into the envelope, then give the envelope to Emma. I don’t want to look at it anymore. She puts it away and we eat our lunches in silence.

  Kevin Mullins materializes. “Can I eat with you?” he asks me. He asks me this every single day, and every single day I tell him the same thing: “Of course.” I am Kevin’s security blanket. I guess I can understand why. Middle school is hard enough when you’re a normal kid—or mostly normal—but it’s especially tough on someone like Kevin. My goat Sundance weighs more than he does. Kevin is, like, barely four feet tall and he already knows Latin and Greek and all the constellations and he’s learning calculus in his spare time. Plus he looks like an owl, a really pale owl with dark hair and these huge dark eyes that blink at you when he’s thinking. Which is most of the time. A ten-year-old like Kevin deserves a security blanket.

  Zach and Ethan set their trays down across from us. Ethan slides in beside Cassidy. He looks at our faces and frowns.

  “Who died?” he says. “You three look like you’ve just come from a funeral.”

  Cassidy punches him in the arm. “Shut up, Tater.”

  “Nobody died,” says Emma. “We’re just worried about the Delaneys’ farm.”

  “Oh, yeah, I saw something about that on the news the other night,” says Zach, taking a bite of burrito. “Sorry, Jess.”

  Third comes up behind him and starts to snicker. “Hey, was that really Megan Wong’s mother handcuffed to the tree?”

  Before any of us can reply, the Fab Three stroll over.

  “Oh, great, just what I need on top of everything else,” I mutter. “Josie Pye.”

  “Hi, Zach,” Becca coos.

  “Hi, Zach,” Cassidy mimics, her voice all high and flirty just like Becca’s.

  Zach blushes. Becca glares at Cassidy, but she keeps her distance. Becca is a little bit afraid of Cassidy.

  “Uh, hi, Becca,” mumbles Zach to his burrito.

  Becca looks over at me. She wrinkles her nose in disgust, and I’m suddenly acutely aware of the fact that I’m still in my barn clothes. Becca doesn’t say anything—probably because Cassidy is sitting next to me—but she gives Ashley and Jen a nudge and jerks her head toward me, holding her nose. Ashley and Jen, who had been all smiles a second before, looking at Zach, quickly rearrange their expressions into sneers.

  Beside me, Kevin Mullins turns beet red. He jumps to his feet. Unfortunately, he’s so short nobody notices. “You take that back!” he demands.

  Becca looks at him, startled. So does everyone else. Kevin rarely makes a peep. Becca holds up her hands in mock horror. “It speaks!” she says, and Ashley and Jen laugh right on cue. Becca’s eyes narrow. “Take what back, twerp?”

  “What you were thinking,” Kevin mumbles.

  Becca glares at him. “How could you possibly know what I was thinking? What, are you a mind reader in addition to being a twerp?”

  Kevin plunges on. “I saw you making fun of Jess to your friends. She can’t help it if she smells.”

  Becca’s mouth drops open. Ethan starts to howl, and Third laughs so hard milk comes out of his nose. Zach is biting his lip, trying really hard not to join in. Even Cassidy and Emma are smothering grins.

  I’m wishing I were anywhere but here.

  “I mean it!” squeaks Kevin. His thin chest is rising and falling really fast, and I can tell he’s upset. “Jess doesn’t get to sleep in until the last minute the way you do. She gets up way before all of us to do her chores, and sometimes she doesn’t have time to change her clothes. Sometimes she’s so tired she falls asleep on the bus when we go to the high school for math. She works really, really hard—a lot harder than any of you. And none of you guys have to worry about losing your homes.”

  The boys stop laughing. I stare at Kevin, astonished.

  “Sticking up for your girlfriend, huh?” Becca taunts him. “Why don’t you just go back to your playpen like a good boy.”

  Kevin sits down again and stares at his tray. He looks like he might cry.

  “Leave him alone, Becca,” I tell her.

  “Whatever.” Becca starts to walk away. Then she changes her mind and comes back to the table. “By the way, I just read your article in the paper about Friday night’s basketball game,” she chirps to Zach. “I don’t know anything about basketball, but you made it sound sooooo exciting!”

  Zach looks up from his plate. “The paper’s here already?”

  Becca nods. “They’re by the front office.”

  “Awesome. I’ll pick one up after lunch.”

  “It was an amazing game,” says Ethan. “Really close score, which is the best kind. You should have seen us, in the fourth quarter, when the Buccaneers were ahead by eleven points . . .”

  As he gives her an enthusiastic shot-by-shot account of the game, Becca’s eyes glaze over, but she still pretends to be interested, laughing and tossing her head so her hair flips around and her earrings jangle. Cassidy grabs a handful of carrot sticks off of Third’s tray and spells out PYE on the table. Emma and I giggle.

  Suddenly, there’s a commotion behind us.

  “EMMA HAWTHORNE!”

  Water starts to freeze at exactly thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit—zero degrees Celsius—and the tone in Megan’s voice is far, far colder than that. I turn around to see her standing behind us with her hands on her hips.

  “Hey, Megs,” Emma says, but her smile falters when she sees the expression on Megan’s face.

  Megan slaps a copy of the Walden Woodsman onto the lunch table. “How could you?” she demands.

  Emma stares blankly at the front page. We all do. Right smack dab in the middle is a huge picture of Megan’s mother in the Delaneys’ tree house, waving at the camera. Above it a headline screams “PTA CHAIR LILY ‘HANDCUFFS’ WONG STAGES PROTEST AT LOCAL FARM!”

  “I thought you were my friends,” says Megan, her voice flinty.

  “But—I—I am your friend,” Emma stammers. “I don’t—I wouldn’t—I mean, I didn’t have anything to do with this.”

  “Oh, really?” Megan stabs at the top of the article with her fingernail. “What’s that doing there, then?”

  The byline reads “Emma J. Hawthorne.”

  Emma’s face goes as white as the milk in the carton on her tray. “But I didn’t write it!” she protests. “Honest, Megan, you know I would never do something like that.”

  “And how about you, Carrots?” says Megan, turning to Cassidy. She thrusts the paper under Cassidy’s nose. The photo credit reads “Cassidy Sloane.”

  Cassidy starts to sputter. “That’s a lie! I never took that picture!”

  “I know my mom isn’t a famous supermodel,” Megan says to her, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “And I know she isn’t smart like your mother, Emma, or talented like yours, Jess. She dresses in stupid clothes and eats stupid food and gets all involved in stupid causes, and she embarrasses me to death most of the time and I hate it, but she’s my mom, and now I have to go around school and have everybody stare at me and think she’s crazy.”

&
nbsp; “Megan!” Cassidy yells at her. “Are you deaf? We didn’t do it!”

  A crowd has gathered around our table, including the Fab Three. Megan ignores them all. “Then who did?” she snaps. “The tooth fairy?”

  “You don’t have to get all snotty about it,” I say.

  “Somebody played a prank,” Cassidy tells her. “And it wasn’t us. Honest.”

  “She’s right, Megs, you have to believe us,” pleads Emma. “I would never do something like this, and neither would Cassidy.”

  “That’s not true,” says Megan frostily. “You would do something like that and you did. Or have you forgotten what you tried to do to Becca on Hello Boston!?”

  Behind her, Becca nods triumphantly. So do Jen and Ashley, of course.

  “That’s so not fair!” Cassidy protests.

  “Isn’t it?”

  “This is just ridiculous,” I say. “You know them—you know us—better than that.”

  “Do I?” she says bitterly, slamming the paper down on the table and stalking away. The Fab Three flounce off behind her.

  “Sheesh,” says Zach. “I’ve never seen Megan get mad like that.”

  Beside me, Emma is shaking.

  “Did you guys really not do it?” Ethan asks.

  Cassidy shakes her head. “No way. That is absolutely not my picture.”

  I look at it more closely. Even if I hadn’t been standing beside her that day, and known for a fact that she didn’t have a camera with her, I would still be able to tell right away that the picture wasn’t Cassidy’s. The pictures Cassidy takes for the Woodsman are full of energy and life, just like her, and this one is flat and dull and out of focus.

  “Somebody must have changed the proofs,” says Zach. “I was the last one at the news meeting last Thursday—well, besides Stewart—right before we turned them in. The front page was completely different. The basketball game was the lead story, and Katie had that big long article about the new lunch menu they’re proposing.”

  “I had to leave early that day, to go to the dentist, remember?” says Emma. “That proves I couldn’t have done it.”

  “And I had hockey practice and wasn’t there at all,” adds Cassidy.

  “So somebody else definitely switched the articles,” says Zach.

  “Who?” Third asks. “Stewart?”

  Emma shakes her head. “Stewart may be a nerd, but he’s not mean.”

  “Yeah,” Kevin pipes up. “He’s even nice to me.”

  Suddenly I know exactly who made the switch. I turn around in my seat. Megan is in the hall outside the cafeteria, talking to the Fab Three. Becca has her arm around her shoulder, the picture of sympathy. She glances back at our table. Our eyes meet. She smiles. It’s not a friendly smile.

  It doesn’t take a math genius to add two and two and get four. I turn back to my friends. “It was Becca Chadwick,” I tell them. “She had her cell phone with her that day, remember? She took the picture. And I’ll bet she wrote the article, too. It’s called payback, queen bee style.”

  “Or Pye style,” says Cassidy, picking up a carrot stick. “You’ve gotta be right, Jess. The only problem is, how are we going to get Megan to believe us?”

  SPRING

  “Oh, Anne, things are so mixed-up in real life. They aren’t as clear-cut and trimmed off, as they are in novels.”

  –Anne of Green Gables

  Emma

  “Sometimes I think it is of no use to make friends. They only go out of your life after awhile and leave a hurt that is worse than the emptiness before they came.”

  —Anne of Avonlea

  I still can’t believe that Megan quit book club.

  She’s really, really mad. She won’t talk to me at school—she won’t even look at me—and she hasn’t returned any of my phone calls. Or Cassidy’s, or Jess’s. It’s like we don’t even exist.

  It’s so unfair! We didn’t even do anything! But of course Becca and Jen and Ashley are busy working overtime convincing her that we did, and that we don’t deserve her friendship and that she’s better off with them.

  I even tried writing a letter. I wrote it on my best stationery—the pink paper with the roses along the edge, which my Aunt Sarah sent me for Christmas—and tucked it inside Megan’s social studies notebook when she wasn’t looking. But I found it in my locker the next day, all wadded up. She hadn’t even opened the envelope.

  And then when she didn’t show up at last night’s book club meeting, and my mom explained to us all that Mrs. Wong had called and said that Megan was feeling too much pressure at the moment with her Flashlite deadline and wouldn’t be joining us, and in fact might not be able to fit book club in any more at all, well, it was like somebody threw a bucket of cold water on our group.

  We still went ahead with the meeting, and we talked about Anne of Avonlea, which Cassidy and Jess finally finished, and ate the homemade shortbread cookies that my dad and I baked, just like the ones that Paul Irving’s grandmother made for Anne in the book. We got our “Fun Facts About Maud” handouts, and learned that Lucy Maud Montgomery’s favorite of all her books was The Story Girl, which I haven’t read yet and want to, and that she didn’t think she was anything like Anne in Anne of Green Gables, but that she was a bit like Emily in Emily of New Moon, which I also want to read. But it wasn’t the same. Mrs. Sloane and Mrs. Delaney and my mom tried extra hard to be cheerful and normal, but you could tell their hearts weren’t really in it. And mine sure wasn’t.

  “Emma?”

  Startled, I blink at Ms. Nielson. She has a worried expression on her face.

  “You look like you’re a million miles away,” she says. “Is everything okay?”

  My gaze darts over to where Becca is sitting with Katie Malone, then back to Ms. Nielson. “Uh, yeah,” I lie. Everything is not okay, everything is horrible in fact, but I’m not going to let Becca Chadwick know that. For once, she’s not going to get the better of me.

  We’re at our first newspaper staff meeting since the “Handcuffs Wong” article. Becca’s brother isn’t here this afternoon because he’s home with a cold. But everyone else is seated around the table, including Zach Norton.

  Ms. Nielson shuffles some papers. “As you know, people, we had a little incident with last month’s issue of the Walden Woodsman, an incident about which there is conflicting information.” She gives Cassidy and Becca and me a significant look. “While I realize that it was all probably meant as a harmless prank, I just want to reiterate that from now on, our agreed-upon guidelines must be followed, including obtaining my approval for any last-minute changes. No exceptions.”

  “But Ms. Nielson!” I start to protest.

  She holds up her hand. “What’s done is done,” she says briskly. “Let’s move on, shall we?”

  What’s almost as bad as Megan not believing me is the fact that Ms. Nielson doesn’t either. Somehow, Becca managed to cast enough doubt on the whole thing that Ms. Nielson said she wasn’t sure what to think. So she decided we’d all have to face the consequences.

  “I’ve found that the best way to deal with these kinds of disagreements is to tackle them head-on,” she continues. “Therefore, I’m assigning a special team of reporters to cover a new story about one of our students here at Walden Middle School.” She glances down at her notes. “Apparently Megan Wong and her fashion designs are going to be featured this summer in the premiere issue of a new magazine called Flashlite. This is certainly newsworthy, and I’m sure our readers would like to hear more.”

  Uh-oh, I think. Somehow I know what’s coming. Sure enough, Ms. Nielson looks straight at me.

  “Emma, I want you and Becca to work together on this piece. You’ll need to interview Megan, and possibly try to get a quote or two from the editors at Flashlite. And Cassidy, you’re in charge of taking the pictures.”

  Cassidy groans. “Who’s going to cover the basketball playoffs?”

  “I’m sure Zach can handle it, right, Zach?”

  Zach d
oesn’t look happy to be caught in the middle. “Uh, sure, I guess.”

  “You can borrow my digital camera if you need to,” Ms. Nielson tells him. “It’ll be a snap.”

  “Can’t I team up with Katie instead?” pleads Becca, who looks equally horrified at the prospect of us working together. “She knows a lot more about fashion than Emma does.”

  “Now, Becca, I’m sure you didn’t mean that the way it sounded,” says Ms. Nielson.

  Obviously Ms. Nielson doesn’t know Becca very well. Of course Becca meant that exactly the way it sounded. I look down at my clothes, baffled and frustrated. This whole fashion thing is maddening. Honestly, what’s wrong with purple corduroy pants? Or with my sweater? They’re not even hand-me-downs, for once.

  “Emma is perfectly well-equipped to write about fashion,” continues Ms. Nielson, giving me an encouraging smile. “She’s one of our best reporters.”

  My pleasure at this compliment is quickly punctured when I see Becca lean over and whisper something to Katie. The two of them look at me and laugh, and I feel my face turning red. So much for not letting Becca get the best of me.

  Cassidy leaves early because she has to go home and get changed for Courtney’s birthday dinner—“My mom’s making me wear a dress,” she reports glumly, “because Stan the man is taking us to some fancy restaurant”—leaving me stuck by myself with Becca as she and Ms. Nielson and I draft some interview questions for the article about Megan.

  Later, as everyone files out of the room after the meeting, Zach pauses by my chair. “Cheer up, Emma,” he whispers. “Just remember what Cassidy always says—buzz, buzz, buzz.”

  He grins at me. After Megan’s meltdown in the cafeteria about the “Handcuffs Wong” article, Cassidy explained all about queen bees to him and Ethan and Third.

  “Buzz buzz,” I reply halfheartedly.

  “That’s more like it,” he says, punching me lightly on the shoulder.

  I reach down to gather up my jacket and backpack, then stand up and smile shyly at him. In that instant when our eyes meet, I suddenly know two things for sure. First, I know that Zach likes me. Second, I know that he doesn’t like like me. Not that way.