Miss Matched

by Shawn K. Stout

  Kids started laughing as soon as they saw him, until Mr. Bland gave them one of his scary teacher looks. Fiona followed that up with a Doom Scowl, with maximum doom.

  “Harold,” Mr. Bland said. “Your grandmother called this morning and said you would have a note for me?”

  Harold reached into his pocket and handed Mr. Bland a folded paper. As Mr. Bland read the note to himself, Harold looked around the room. When his eyes stopped on hers, Fiona smiled. But Harold just pushed his hat down over his eyes.

  “Just curious,” Mr. Bland said. “A regular knit hat wouldn’t work?”

  Harold shook his head. “Too scratchy.”

  “Of course.”

  When Harold got to his desk, Fiona whispered, “Is it really that bad?”

  “Would I be wearing this if it wasn’t?” said Harold.

  Good point.

  “Mr. Bland,” said Leila Rad, “why does he get to wear that, but you wouldn’t let me wear my beret last month?”

  “This is a special circumstance,” explained Mr. Bland.

  “What kind of—” said Leila Rad.

  “If Harold wants to tell you what happened, he can do that on his own time,” said Mr. Bland. “But I’m done discussing it. Take out your history books and let’s get going.”

  “Is that from your makeover?” Cleo whispered, pointing to Harold.

  Fiona nodded.

  Cleo shook her head. “And I thought I had it bad.”

  Just then Fiona felt something hit her in the side of the head. “Ooof!” It landed on her desk, a paper football with her name in scribbled letters.

  She opened it slowly and read.

  Florida,

  Meet me at recess by the seesaws.

  Minnesota

  Fiona quickly looked over at Milo, but he was busy writing something in a notebook. What did he want? She had never gotten hit in the head with a note from a boy before. She hoped he had heard her say that she didn’t like-like him.

  Finally, when recess came, Fiona left Cleo by the jungle gym and headed for the seesaws. “Any sign of trouble,” said Cleo, making fists, “and I’ll take care of him.”

  Milo waited with arms folded across his chest. Fiona crossed her own arms and said, “I wasn’t trying to hug you at the basketball court.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “Okay, good,” said Fiona. “I just wanted to make sure.”

  “Fine.”

  “Fine.” Fiona tapped her foot. “What do you want?”

  Milo uncrossed his arms and shoved his hands into his pockets. “You can be president of my meteorology club if you want.”

  “Whaagh?” This was the last thing that Fiona expected to hear. “Why would you go and say a thing like that?”

  “I need your help,” he said.

  This boy was a surprise box. “My help?”

  “I know you have this matchmaking club,” said Milo. “But I need your help with matchbreaking.”

  “Matchbreaking?”

  “Yeah,” said Milo. “We need to break up my brother and his girlfriend. She’s your babysitter.”

  “Watcher,” said Fiona. “I don’t have a babysitter. I’m nine.” Then what he was saying sank in. “Wait a second, you mean Loretta Gormley?” Milo nodded. “And your brother is named Jeremy?” Milo nodded again.

  “But why?”

  “Because.”

  “I’m no breaker-upper,” said Fiona. “You’re barking at the wrong door.”

  “It can’t be that hard,” he said. “It’s just like matchmaking but in reverse.”

  “I don’t know how to matchmake,” said Fiona. “Besides, even if I did, I wouldn’t help you. I like Loretta. And she like-likes your brother. So.”

  “But I’ve been thinking about this, and Loretta and my brother are a terrible match. You should see Jeremy. He’s always in a bad mood and doesn’t want to hang out with me like he used to.”

  Fiona shook her head.

  “Look,” said Milo. “If you help me with this, I’ll . . . I’ll join your matchmaking club and tell everybody how awesome it is. Even though it’s not.” He grinned.

  Fiona rolled her eyes at that. “Nope.”

  “Why not?”

  “I told you a gazillion times already. I stink at matchmaking. Just ask Harold.”

  “Huh?”

  “Harold wanted to be popular, that was his match. So I gave him a makeover. And now he looks like his granny.”

  Milo looked around the playground. “Harold wanted to be popular?”

  “Yep.”

  Milo grinned so wide Fiona could see teeth. “Then you can matchmake. Look.” Milo pointed past the swings.

  Fiona looked across the kickball field and could not believe what she saw. Harold, with his hat off and patches of bald spots all over his head, was surrounded by gobs of kids. At first she thought that they must be trying to beat him up. But then, after she looked closer, she saw that he was smiling and laughing. “Oh, Boise Idaho,” said Fiona. “How did that happen?

  “Look, you have to,” Milo said. “I’ve never seen Jeremy so . . .” He stuck out his tongue and crossed his eyes. “Like that. I bet Loretta is the same way.”

  “I’ve never seen Loretta look like that before.” Still, Fiona had to admit, Loretta didn’t seem very happy. She was always looking at her cell phone and wondering why Jeremy hasn’t called. “Maybe,” she said.

  “Jeremy and Loretta are like . . . like . . . I don’t know what they’re like.”

  “Ice cream and soy sauce?” suggested Fiona.

  “Huh?”

  “Lemon juice and milk? Cotton candy and ketchup?” She was on a roll. “Cauliflower and everything?

  “You’re weird.”

  Fiona shrugged.

  “Deal?” Milo stuck out his hand. “But no hugs.”

  Fiona rolled her eyes and shook his hand. “We need a name.”

  “I know, I’ve already got one,” he said. “The Duo Of Ordinary Matchbreakers.”

  Fiona repeated the name to herself and then said, “D.O.O.M.?”

  • Chapter 12 •

  Fiona waited for Milo at Button’s Family Restaurant. Cleo’s mom and dad owned the place, and sometimes Fiona helped Cleo fill the salt and pepper shakers and sugar jars after school. She ordered a strawberry milkshake extra thick and sat in a booth.

  “Why do you want to be president of Milo’s club when you could be president of your own club?” asked Cleo, sliding in beside her.

  Fiona stirred her shake with her straw. “Because a president of a club with lots of people in it is a gazillion times better than a president of a club with zero people.”

  “I’m not a zero people,” said Cleo, cracking her knuckles.

  “I know that.”

  “Then why didn’t you start a meteorology club when Principal Sterling asked you to?” said Cleo. “You could have had lots of people in it.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “What do you mean?” said Cleo. “Look at all the people in Milo’s club!” She started to name them all.

  “I’m not a Milo.” Fiona turned her shake upside down and not a drop spilled.

  “No, you’re a Fiona.” Cleo shook her head. “I have to fill the salt and pepper shakers.”

  Fiona worked on her milkshake and had three brain freezes before Milo got there. “Here,” said Milo, holding out a plastic bubble like the kind you get in the prize machine at Foodland. “If we’re a duo of D.O.O.M., I thought we’d need these.”

  Fiona popped open the bubble and held up the skull-and-crossbones ring that was inside.

  “Cool, huh?” said Milo, holding up his hand and showing off the same ring on his finger. “Like the Dynamic Duo, except we’re the Duo of D.O.O.M.”

  Fiona shook her head and put it on. “Boys are so weird,” she said. “No wonder matchmaking is impossible.”

  Milo made a face and then said, “What’s the plan?”

  “I don’t know,” said
Fiona. “I told you, I’ve never matchbreaked before. Or is it matchbroke?”

  “Just do the opposite of what you did for matchmaking,” said Milo. “Like what you did for Harold.”

  “I put glue and goop in his hair.”

  “Oh.” Milo played with his skull ring. “I don’t think that would work.”

  “No.”

  For a long time nobody said anything. Fiona got out her Thinking Pencil.

  “Is there somebody we could ask for help?” said Milo.

  “Like who? Somebody who has been broken up before?” she said.

  “Exactly!” said Milo. “Now we’re thinking!”

  “Who in the world would that be?”

  “Well, it would have to be a grown-up,” said Milo.

  “Then you’ll have to do the asking,” said Fiona. “I made a declaration of independence that I’m not asking grown-ups for advice on account of the fact that their advice stinks. Besides, I don’t know anybody who’s been broken up.”

  Milo tapped his fingers on the table while Fiona started chewing on her Thinking Pencil. “What about your mom?” asked Milo. “Doesn’t she live in California?”

  “How did you know that?”

  “Harold told me,” said Milo.

  “I don’t know what Harold told you, but my mom and dad aren’t broken up,” said Fiona. “My mom’s a TV actress, and California is just where she works. That’s all.”

  “I just meant that a TV actress would know about breakups.”

  “Oh. Maybe.” The character her mom played, Scarlet von Tussle, had been married four or five times already. So she did know at least something about breaking up. “But what about my declaration of independence declaration?”

  “What if the advice she gives you is for me, not for you?” said Milo. “Then you could still keep your declaration.”

  “Okay, fine.” Fiona pulled her cell phone from her backpack and called California.

  “You caught me on the way home from rehearsal,” said Mom. “What’s up?”

  “I was wondering,” said Fiona, “how do you break up people?”

  “What? I’m having a hard time hearing you.” Fiona heard a loud whirring of machines in the background. “There’s a lot of construction on the highway. You want to know how to do what?”

  “Break up people,” said Fiona, louder.

  “Oh, you want to break up people?”

  “Right,” said Fiona.

  “What’s this about? Who do you want to break up?”

  “Loretta and Jeremy,” said Fiona. “You don’t know them.”

  “Okay, excellent. In that case, I would say . . . Hey, watch it! Sorry, Fiona, are you still there?”

  “Yep.”

  “The drivers out here are the worst. Everybody’s in a hurry. Can’t be late. Anyway, what was I saying? Oh, right, the best way to break up a couple is to make one of them think the other one likes somebody else.”

  “That works?” asked Fiona.

  “Like a charm. As a matter of fact, that’s just what happened with Noah Wycroft and Annabelle McGibbons on yesterday’s episode. . . .”

  Fiona stopped listening at that point, because an idea landed right in her lap. She hung up the phone and took a piece of paper out of her backpack. “We need to write a letter from Oliver Piff to Loretta.”

  “Who’s Oliver Piff?”

  “The guy who plays Noah Wycroft on TV,” explained Fiona.

  “Who’s Noah Wycroft?” Milo said.

  “The guy Loretta likes.”

  “She does? Since when?”

  “Since I don’t know,” said Fiona. “She talks about him sometimes.”

  “When does she talk about him?” asked Milo, eyes narrow.

  “Milo,” Fiona said, waving her hand in front of his face, “that’s not important.” She held up the piece of paper. “The letter, remember?”

  Milo nodded. “What kind of letter are we going to write?”

  “An L-O-V-E letter,” said Fiona.

  “No, a D.O.O.M. letter,” he said, smiling.

  • Chapter 13 •

  Maybe it was the two extra thick strawberry milkshakes, but after she got home Fiona felt heavy. And lost. Like the time she wandered around forever in the corn maze at Crumland Farm and had to throw her shoe up in the air to let them know she needed to be rescued. Every turn she made was a wrong one, getting her farther away from where she wanted to be.

  But where was that exactly? And if being president didn’t get you there, then what in the world did? When would she get to be extraordinary?

  Fiona plopped on the couch and pulled off her shoes. Questions filled her brain like buttons in a jar. The biggest of them all was sitting right on top: Why didn’t she start a meteorology club back when Principal Sterling asked her to? She turned that button over and over again in her head.

  She tossed her shoe into the air and caught it. The answer came to her then like it had been there all the time: “I don’t want to be club president,” she said out loud. And as soon as she said it, things seemed to be a little less outer spacey.

  “What are you doing?” asked Max.

  “I’m rescuing myself.” She threw her shoe again.

  Max took off his flipper and tossed it into the air. It landed behind him.

  “Here, catch,” she said, throwing his flipper like a Frisbee across the room. Max dove for it and almost caught it before tripping on the rug. “You okay?”

  He grabbed the flipper and threw it back to her, laughing.

  She caught it and hugged it to her chest.

  “Are you going to give me away to Cleo anymore?” he asked.

  “No,” Fiona said. “I guess you’re stuck with me.”

  “Good. Like lima beans and corn?” said Max.

  “Like lima beans and corn,” she said, smiling. And then she remembered. “Loretta!”

  • • •

  Fiona waited for Milo in front of school the next morning. As soon as he rode up on his bike, she bolted at him, almost knocking him down. “Where’s the letter?”

  “Hey there, President,” he said.

  “The letter!” she said. “You have to give me Loretta’s letter!”

  “I can’t.”

  “Yes, you can,” she said. “I changed my mind. I don’t want to be a breaker-upper.”

  “Too late,” he said, smiling. “Mission accomplished.”

  “What does that mean?” asked Fiona.

  “I rode by Loretta’s house on the way to school and put the letter in her mailbox.”

  “You did what? How did you even know how to get to her house?” Fiona scratched her head.

  “I got directions on the Internet,” he said.

  “Ahhh!” Fiona rubbed her eyes.

  “What’s wrong?” he said. “I typed it up on the computer like you told me and then I delivered it. Hey, where’s your D.O.O.M. ring?”

  “Here,” said Fiona. She pulled the plastic ring out of her pocket and handed it to him. “I quit.”

  • Chapter 14 •

  Dad!” Fiona yelled when she got home.

  “In the study!” he called back.

  She ran down the hall and poked her head in the door. “Do you have Loretta’s phone number?”

  “Loretta?” Dad squinted his eyes like he had to think about that one. Sometimes he liked to pretend he didn’t know what Fiona was talking about. Which Fiona usually thought was a fun game to play, but not when she was trying to stop a matchbreak.

  “Come on, Dad!” said Fiona. “You know, Loretta. My watcher.”

  “Should be on the phone list on the refrigerator,” he said.

  “Thanks.” She started back down the hall.

  “Hey, I want to talk to you,” he said.

  “Right now?” she said from the hallway.

  “Suits me.”

  Fiona stuck her head back inside the door. “Yeah, Dad?” She tapped her toe impatiently.

  “Have a seat,” he said. />
  “But . . .”

  “It will only take a minute,” he said. “I’ve hardly seen you lately, Dancing Bean.”

  Fiona sat in the chair across from his desk and waited. She couldn’t tell if she was in trouble or not. Dad was good at springing trouble on you.

  “Remember when I said that a student, Milo something or other, wanted to start a news program at your school?”

  “Milo Bridgewater,” said Fiona. “Also known as electrician, president, and D.O.O.M breaker-upper.”

  “Wow, that’s quite a résumé,” he said. “Anyway, we’ve been talking to Principal Sterling, and she thinks it’s a great idea for WORD to be a partner.”

  “That’s great,” said Fiona, getting up. “Sounds really fun.”

  “Sit, sit,” he said. “That’s not all.”

  Fiona sat in her chair, but she couldn’t stop her feet from moving.

  Dad leaned forward at his desk. “This Milo fellow seems to be really interested in meteorology, and Principal Sterling wants Milo to be involved in producing that part of the news program.”

  “Oh,” said Fiona.

  “Well, since you are the snow angel and give weather reports for the station,” said Dad, “I just wanted to see how you feel about that.”

  Fiona thought about what he was saying. Since Milo was going to still be president of the meteorology club, it made sense that he was part of the news program. She looked at her feet. They didn’t feel stepped on. “I’m fine about it.”

  “Really? You’re sure?”

  “Could I still do my snow angel weather reports at WORD if I wanted to?” she asked.

  “Of course,” he said. “This would only be for your school news program.”

  Fiona nodded. “Then, okay. Yep. Sounds fine and dandy. Can I go now?”

  “I’ll take a kiss first,” said Dad. “And then you can go. Unless you want to tell me more about this matchmaking club of yours and Harold Chutney’s hair.”

  “No, thanks,” she said, and then she kissed his cheek and ran to the kitchen.

  She dialed Loretta’s number and left the following message: “Loretta Gormley, we have a watcher emergency. Please report to the Finkelstein’s house as soon as you get this message. And do not open your mail. I repeat, do not open your mail. This is not a test.”