Miss Matched

by Shawn K. Stout

  • Chapter 15 •

  From the front window, Fiona watched and waited for Loretta.

  “Expecting company?” asked Mrs. Miltenberger.

  Fiona kept her eyes out the window. “Yep.”

  “Anybody I know?”

  “Yep.”

  “Well, don’t leave me in suspense,” said Mrs. Miltenberger.

  Fiona’s brain was set on how she was going to get that letter before Loretta read it. “Yep.”

  “Fiona Finkelstein,” said Mrs. Miltenberger, “are you listening to a word I’m saying?”

  “Yep.”

  Mrs. Miltenberger cleared her throat. “So, then, you’re going to clean your closet right after you scrub the inside of the microwave?”

  “Yep . . . huh?” said Fiona. “Wait a second.”

  “Gotcha.” Mrs. Miltenberger laughed. “So, you’ve got a boyfriend coming over?”

  “Gross nuggets, I don’t have a boyfriend,” said Fiona. “Loretta is coming over.” Then she saw her car coming down the street. “She’s here!” Fiona ran out the front door to meet her.

  “I got your message,” said Loretta, getting out of her car. “What’s the watcher emergency?”

  Fiona looked in the window of Loretta’s car for the letter. “Um, did you get your mail today?”

  “As a matter of fact, I did. Why?”

  Fiona stomped her foot nervously. “Did you read it?”

  “As a matter of fact, I did.”

  “Oh.” A corned beef feeling came over Fiona.

  “Okay if I come in?” asked Loretta. “The watcher emergency, you know.”

  “Oh, right,” said Fiona. “Okay.”

  “Loretta, what a nice surprise,” said Mrs. Miltenberger, greeting her at the door. “Come on in.”

  “So,” said Fiona. “Did you get anything interesting in the mail today?”

  Loretta reached into her corduroy purse and pulled out a piece of paper. Then she did something Fiona didn’t expect. She covered her face with her hands and started making these wheezy hiccupping sounds.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Fiona. She thought she’d be happy to get a letter from Oliver Piff. But then again, maybe she was sad because she would have to break up with Jeremy Bridgewater. Who knew? The mystery of teenagers.

  Loretta held out the letter, and that’s when Fiona could tell she was laughing. “What’s so funny?”

  “Read it,” said Loretta.

  Fiona and Mrs. Miltenberger read it at the same time.

  My favorite and biggest fan Loretia Gormley,

  I am sorry I did not write you a leter before this one. I am very busy on Heartaches and Diamonds where I am character that’s in all sorts of scenes with other people. You’d think I’d be matched up with someone else, because I am very cute and have beautiful eyes, but I am not. When I read your letters, it makes me think YOU are my match, Loretia Gormley.

  Maybe we can meat someday even though you live in Maryland and I live in Californa. If you like-like somebody now, please stop. I can’t bare to think about you like-liking somebody else. Check the box below and sign your name if you agree.

  Okay, I will stop like-liking Jeremy.

  Sign here:________

  Your match 4ever,

  Oliver Piff (that’s Noah Wycroft on TV)

  Before Fiona could get to the end, Mrs. Miltenberger was laughing so hard she had to sit down.

  “I don’t get it,” said Fiona. She looked at the letter again and saw a couple of misspellings and wrong words, but nothing that made her laugh. “What’s so funny?”

  “It’s Lor-ee-sha,” said Loretta, hardly able to talk. “Not Loretta.”

  Oh. So, Milo wasn’t the best typer and she wasn’t the best speller. Still, it wasn’t that funny.

  “Jeremy’s younger brother wrote this to try to break us up,” said Loretta. “Fiona, was this your watcher emergency?”

  Fiona nodded. “Wait a second, how do you know that Milo wrote it?”

  “My admirer,” said Loretta, grinning. “When I called Jeremy and told him about the letter, he had a talk with his brother. He was really very sweet about it.”

  “Sweet about what?” asked Fiona. She was more than confused. She was lost.

  “About me,” said Loretta, putting her hand over her heart. “Milo has a crush on me.”

  “Let me get this straight,” said Fiona, shaking her head clear. “Milo has liked you all this time. I mean, he like-likes you, and that’s why he wanted you to break up? Not because you and Jeremy are a terrible match and you both are . . .” She stuck out her tongue and crossed her eyes. “Like that?”

  “What? I don’t know about that last part, but yep, that’s pretty much right,” said Loretta. She picked up the letter again and read, “ ‘Maybe we can m-e-a-t someday.’ ” That got Mrs. Miltenberger’s giggles going again.

  Fiona shook her head. She could not believe Milo had tricked her. She had even worn that stupid skull ring!

  Loretta cleared her throat. “He also said he had a little help with the letter.”

  Fiona felt her face go Valentine’s Day red.

  “So, you and Jeremy are—” asked Fiona.

  “Broken up,” said Loretta.

  “Oh!” said Fiona. Now she had to sit down.

  “We aren’t broken up because of this letter,” said Loretta, laughing even more. “I decided that, like, we just weren’t a good match after all.”

  “Whew.” Fiona put her head down on the table. “All this matchmaking and matchbreaking makes me tired. I’m done.”

  “That’s too bad,” says Mrs. Miltenberger. “I was thinking about giving you a chance to make a match for me. You can’t do worse than the Bingo Broads.”

  “Sorry, I’m out of business.”

  “Well, what’s your next club going to be?” asked Mrs. Miltenberger.

  Fiona shrugged. “I don’t think I’m extraordinary enough at anything to have a club.”

  “What?” said Loretta.

  “Not extraordinary?” said Mrs. Miltenberger, knocking on the table. “Who says?”

  “Me,” said Fiona. “Fiona says.”

  “Phoozywhattle,” said Mrs. Miltenberger. “What do you think ‘extraordinary’ means?”

  “It means the opposite of ordinary,” said Fiona. “Special.”

  “ ‘Extraordinary’ can also mean strange and unusual,” said Loretta, raising her eyebrows at Fiona. “Mysterious.”

  “Mysterious?”

  Loretta nodded.

  “Mysterious,” Fiona repeated, smiling. Just like a teenager.

  “One of a kind,” said Mrs. Miltenberger. “There is only one Fiona Elise Finkelstein. Ballet dancer, snow angel, matchmaker.”

  “Matchbreaker,” added Loretta.

  “And if that’s not extraordinary,” said Mrs. Miltenberger, “then I don’t know what is.”

  “One of a kind, huh?” said Fiona, thinking it over. “Kind of like snowflakes.”

  “Snowflakes?” said Loretta.

  “No two are alike.” Now that’s extraordinary. But Fiona never thought about herself that way before. “There is only one me. And I am pretty good at being her.”

  “The best,” said Mrs. Miltenberger.

  Fiona smiled. “That’s flat-out something.”

  • Epilogue •

  Fiona chomped on her Thinking Pencil. She eyed the clock in Mr. Bland’s classroom and then eyed Mr. Bland. It was the last day of the month, which meant it was Milo Bridgewater’s last day as electrician. Which meant that tomorrow—fingers crossed—could be her first. She had already asked Mr. Bland twice when he was going to draw names for classroom jobs. “I’ll let you know when I decide,” he had said.

  But Fiona couldn’t wait any longer. The day was almost over. She raised her hand again. When Mr. Bland looked the other way, she shook her hand at him. First, she shook it slowly, like a shivering apple. Then, when he still didn’t call on her, she shook it wildly, like a wet
dog. “If you ask me one more time about classroom jobs, Fiona Finkelstein,” Mr. Bland said in a calm voice that had splinters in it, “I’m going to remove your name from the bucket.”

  Some of the splinters stuck. She dropped her hand and gave him a Doom Scowl, an invisible one so that he couldn’t see, with extra Doom. Fiona must have looked like she was about to say something else just then, because Cleo whispered her name and then moved her fingers across her lips like a zipper.

  Fiona nodded. She locked her mouth with her fingers and threw the key over her shoulder. Because she knew that when it came to her mouth, a zipper wasn’t strong enough to do the trick. Her mouth had made a declaration of independence from her a long time ago.

  “Before you pack up to go home,” said Mr. Bland, “remember that tomorrow we’re going to have our first rehearsal for Ordinary Elementary News.”

  “O.E.N.?” Fiona whispered to Milo. “We need a better name.”

  “I know it,” he said.

  After the Loretta L-O-V-E Letter Incident, Fiona and Milo declared world peace. Fiona gave up on starting any new school clubs, for now. (Especially after Mr. Bland declared that from now on, all new ideas for school clubs had to be approved by him.) Milo gave up on Loretta on account of the fact that teenagers were too mysterious. And they both gave up on D.O.O.M.

  Like soy sauce and ice cream, there were just some things that didn’t go together.

  “Milo,” said Mr. Bland, “do you have some announcements you want to make?”

  Milo stood at his desk gripping a clipboard and a pencil. “Everybody knows what they are supposed to do for tomorrow?”

  Fiona stared at the bucket marked ELECTRICIAN underneath the job board. If only she had X-ray eyes so she could see the paper with her name on it. And if only she could talk to trees, she thought, then she could talk to paper—since paper is made from trees. She could sing a lullaby to that piece of paper with her name on it and tell it to latch on to Mr. Bland’s fingers so that when he reached into the bucket, she would finally get to be . . .

  “Fiona?”

  “Huh?” she said, turning to the front of the room.

  “Your interview with Principal Sterling.” said Milo. “Do you have the questions that you’re going to ask?”

  Fiona shook her head.

  “You don’t?”

  “I changed my mind,” she said. “I had a big idea this morning when I checked my lunch box and saw that Mrs. Miltenberger had packed me a peanut butter and strawberry jelly sandwich.”

  “Fiona,” said Mr. Bland, rubbing his head, “we only have a few minutes before the bell.”

  Fiona sped up her words. “So instead of interviewing Principal Sterling, I was thinking about a news report on the history of food couples.”

  “Food what?” said Milo.

  “You know,” she said, “food couples. Partners. Buddies. Like macaroni and cheese, spaghetti and meatballs.”

  “Pork and beans,” said Harold.

  “Good one,” said Fiona, writing that down. “And how they got to be matched up.”

  “What about Principal Sterling?” asked Milo.

  “I’ll do it,” said Cleo. “I’ll interview her. I’d rather do that than operate the camera.”

  Milo shrugged and then nodded. “Leila, do you want to be the cameraman?”

  “Cameragirl,” Leila corrected. “Okay.”

  “All right, Florida.”

  “Thanks, Minnesota,” Fiona said.

  Milo grinned. “Harold, you’re the stage manager. You got your checklist?”

  Harold wiped his finger on his pants and then gave the a-ok sign. “You betcha.”

  While Milo went on to check in with others about their jobs, Fiona whispered to Harold, “Want to come over after school and help me find more food matchups for my report?”

  “Can’t,” said Harold. “Leila invited me over to her house to help her rearrange her stuffed animal collection. Sorry.”

  “That’s okay.” The new, popular Harold was something she still had to get used to.

  When Milo finished, Fiona looked quickly at the clock and then at Mr. Bland. He was headed in the direction of the Job Center, and by the time he reached it, Fiona had all of her fingers crossed.

  Mr. Bland reached into the first bucket and said something, but Fiona’s heart was beating so loud in her ears, she couldn’t tell what.

  He reached into the second, and then the third. Fiona wanted to stick her fingers in her ears to quiet her heart, but she didn’t dare uncross them.

  Finally, he got to the electrician bucket. Fiona repeated her name, at first to herself, and then out loud and over top of her thumping heart. Mr. Bland took a gazillion years to unfold the piece of paper and she tried really hard not to leap out of her chair.

  Then, finally, Mr. Bland looked right at Fiona. Her heart stopped making noise as he sighed. Then he shook his head and said, “Extraordinary.”

  And she knew it flat-out was.

  The True L-O-V-E Story of How Peanut Butter Met Jelly by Fiona Finkelstein

  Peanut butter was invented in 1890. A doctor in St. Louis, Missouri, made peanut paste for his patients with bad teeth who couldn’t chew meat. Peanuts have a lot of protein in them, kind of like meat, but peanut butter is a lot easier to chew.

  This doctor went up to George A. Bayle Jr., who owned a food company, and asked him to package his peanut paste. Mr. Bayle must have thought that was a pretty good idea, because he started selling peanut butter out of barrels for about six cents a pound. Can you imagine a whole barrel of peanut butter for just six pennies?

  A few years later, another doctor named John Harvey Kellogg and his brother, W. K. Kellogg, got into the peanut butter business and got a patent in 1895 for the “Process of Preparing Nut Meal.”

  The first nut cookbook, called The Complete Guide to Nut Cookery, came out in 1899.

  As for jelly . . . people have been eating jelly in America for hundreds of years. Colonials in the 1600s even used jelly as icing for cakes.

  Nobody knows for sure when peanut butter and jelly first met. But some people think it happened during World War II. American soldiers ate a lot of peanut butter. And everybody knows that eating a lot of peanut butter can be a good thing if you like peanut butter. But after eating it for a gazillion days, it can get kind of old. So some people believe that American soldiers added jelly to their peanut butter to make it taste better. When the war ended and the soldiers came home, peanut butter and jelly was a big hit!

  Now peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are in school cafeterias, on menus at restaurants, and in vending machines. There’s even a peanut butter and jelly sandwich eating contest and a peanut-butter-and-jelly-of-the-month club!

  Maybe it’s because jelly is so sweet. Or maybe it’s because peanut butter is just flat-out nutty. Who knows? But it’s just like Mrs. Miltenberger says: They are a match made in sandwich heaven.

  Here are some other peanut butter and jelly facts:

  1: It takes about 540 peanuts to make one 12-ounce jar of peanut butter.

  2: In September 2002, the world’s largest peanut butter and jelly sandwich was made. It weighed 900 pounds and contained 350 pounds of peanut butter and 144 pounds of jelly.

  3: Ninety-six percent of people spread the peanut butter on the bread first, and then the jelly.

  4: The average child will eat about 1,500 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches before finishing high school.

  5: The most common jelly used is grape (which is okay, but my favorite is crab apple). The second most common is strawberry.

  There are lots of foods that you might think would be good together, but matchmaking is a lot harder than it looks. Believe me. Tune in next time to find out how spaghetti met meatballs. Well, I’ll tell you this: They didn’t meet at the movies, that’s for sure.

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks go to my husband, Andy, first and forever foremost, for telling me that I don’t stink (even when I do), for
keeping me from burying my head in a pillow, and for always managing to make me laugh (even at myself). He is the mustard to my cheese sandwich on toast.

  Thanks to my family, who puts the extra in extraordinary, for their love and encouragement. And for believing in me. And for not holding my teenage years against me. And for showing up at my book signings even when there aren’t any cupcakes.

  If I had the world’s biggest peanut butter and jelly sandwich, I’d share it with all my friends as thanks, and would never declare independence from: Jess Leader, Ana Tavakoli, Annemarie O’Brien, Gene Brenek, Allyson Schrier, Amy Cabrera, Ellery Scott, Jennifer Tisch, Martha Sasser, Carol Lynch Williams, Debbie Gonzalez, Sarah Aronson, Tami Lewis Brown, and Theresa Fitzgerald.

  For Sarah Davies of Greenhouse Literary Agency, a brightly colored bouquet of gratitude for saying the words all writers want to hear; and for my editor, Kate Angelella, a beautifully wrapped box of appreciation and admiration for her creative guidance, wit, and most of all, patience.

  Read more about Fiona’s not-so-ordinary adventures in

  Don’t Chicken Out

  Fiona Finkelstein was flat-out tired. Talking to grown-ups always made her that way. Especially when their answer was NO SIRREE BOB, NO WAY JOSÉ, NOT ON YOUR LIFE YOUNG LADY. That was their answer a lot of the time lately.

  It wasn’t the “no” by itself that was so bad. It was all of the other stuff that always and forever came along with it.

  For example, just this morning, when Fiona asked her dad if they could get a real live monkey named Mr. Funbucket that she could keep in her room, Dad didn’t just say no. He went on and on forever and ever about how monkeys are not pets and how they belong in the jungle and how speaking of jungles, had she cleaned her mess of a room yet? But what she wanted to know was, why did everything have to do with her mess of a room?

  Even when she pointed this out, Dad said, “Well, if you cleaned your room more often, maybe we wouldn’t have to talk about it all the time.”