Give Me a Break

by Laura Dower

  At the final bell, the monitor dismissed everyone. Madison moved to the front of class.

  Was she imagining things…or had Hart hustled over to be next to her as they exited the room? The only thing better would have been if he’d elbowed Ivy into the wall on his way over.

  “Did you finish all the work?” Hart asked.

  “Yeah,” Madison admitted with a sheepish grin. “You?”

  “Yeah,” Hart said. “Looked like Ivy and you were arguing.”

  “Big surprise,” Madison said with a sigh.

  “She gets weirder every day,” Hart said, nodding.

  “I actually thought you liked her,” Madison said.

  “Me? Like Ivy? Uh…not exactly,” Hart said. “She’s pretty and all that, but sometimes she’s just…well, I said it. She’s a big weirdo.”

  “She likes you,” Madison said.

  “Whatever,” Hart mumbled.

  Madison didn’t know what to say next. She considered saying, “Hart, don’t you know I like you? I want to date you. I’m your dream girl.”

  But she said nothing.

  They walked past a few banks of lockers in silence. When they finally reached the staircase, Hart needed to go up, and Madison needed to go down.

  “Later, Finnster,” Hart said. “Er…Maddie. Sorry, I guess I should stop calling you Finnster. I know it bugs you.”

  “Yeah, well…” Madison stopped herself in mid-sentence. “No, Finnster isn’t so bad. I like it. Don’t stop. Really.”

  “Really?”

  Madison nodded. “I just need to think of a good nickname for you.”

  “Uh…Egg calls me Loser sometimes,” Hart joked. “Or Weasel.”

  “I was thinking more like Hunk,” Madison said.

  “Huh?” Hart blinked. “What did you just say?”

  “What?” Madison’s face froze. She wanted to run. Her stomach was like a trampoline inside—bounce, bounce, bounce. Her knees started to quake. She couldn’t take it back. Had she really just called him Hunk? Oh. My. God.

  “I said, ‘Dork,’” Madison replied quickly. “Why? What did you think I said?”

  “Ha! That’s me. Super Dork, actually,” Hart said with a goofy wink.

  Madison’s entire body was on the verge of collapse—she was that embarrassed. She slung her bag across her back and adjusted the shoulders of her pink-flecked sweater so that it wasn’t all bunched up at the shoulders.

  “Gee,” she said a moment later, pushing through the doors to the staircase, “gotta dash. Bye!” She raced down toward the bottom floor.

  Hart barely had time to yell out, “See you later!” before Madison was gone.

  Once she was out of sight, Madison searched for a bathroom stall where she could lock herself in and recover. Or maybe she could stuff her head inside a locker and scream? Conversations with Hart were an endless series of missteps. Either he seemed interested in her and she seemed uninterested in him, or vice versa. Either they had nothing at all to say, or they would start talking and Madison would say all the wrong things. Why couldn’t her life turn out more like a TV movie of the week? Madison was ready for the boy, the sunset, and the big embrace. She just needed to work on her lines.

  After school, Aimee met Madison so that they could walk home together. Madison didn’t mention the Hart/Hunk thing. She was still too embarrassed to tell anyone.

  Aimee seemed down in the dumps. Madison asked what was wrong, but Aimee wasn’t talking much, and she just grunted in reply. Madison started rambling, to fill in the silence between them.

  “How was ballet yesterday?” Madison asked. No reply. “So, you missed a funny time at my house. Egg and Drew and Fiona and Chet and everyone came over. Egg was showing us some new computer game called Disaster Zone. And he made this blog page devoted to it. I didn’t realize there’s this whole BloggerBlurt section on TweenBlurt.com now. Did you?”

  Aimee shrugged. “I’m tired. Do we have to talk?”

  Madison stopped in her tracks. “Since when do you want to stop talking?”

  “Since today,” Aimee said. “My ballet teacher…” She stopped walking, too. And then she dissolved into tears.

  “What’s wrong?” Madison cried, hugging her friend.

  “My classes were canceled for a week. My teacher is sick, Maddie. Real sick.”

  “I’m sorry,” Madison said. It was the only thing she could think of to say.

  “She didn’t want us to know about it, but then she sat us all down after class yesterday and told us the real deal. We were all crying. I’ve felt like crying all day. She has breast cancer. That’s so serious, right? She’s the best teacher in the whole world, Maddie.”

  “Wow,” Madison said. She’d only known one other person who had had breast cancer before that moment. It was a friend of her mom’s from work. The year before, her mom and the friend had walked in a Race for the Cure event together. Madison had tagged along. They’d sprayed fuschia color into their hair and worn pink ribbons on their shirts.

  The girls said their good-byes in front of Madison’s house, and Aimee walked on to her house, a few doors down. Madison climbed up her porch, exhausted by the long day at school and all of the emotional things that had happened since the late-afternoon bell. She tore off her jacket and sweater and kicked off her sneakers. Phin was right there with a few welcome-home doggy snorts. He licked her foot, too.

  “Good dog,” Madison said as she gave him some kisses on the top of his furry head.

  Mom was pacing up and down in the kitchen, talking to herself. Classical music was playing on the radio. She had her hair swept up in a ponytail and was wearing a plum-colored crepe dress and black heels.

  “Hello, honey bear,” Mom said, blowing Madison a kiss.

  “Why are you so dressed up?” Madison asked.

  “Oh, no reason,” Mom said. “I had an afternoon meeting today, that’s all.”

  “Really?” Madison said, climbing into a kitchen chair. She tossed her bag on the table and pulled out her laptop. It was almost out of power, so she plugged it in to charge it.

  “How was your day?” Mom asked.

  “Fine,” Madison said. “Aimee just told me sad news, though.”

  “What?” Mom asked.

  “Her dance teacher is sick. She has to stop teaching for a while. She has breast cancer,” Madison explained.

  “Oh,” Mom said. Her face fell, and she looked away.

  “What’s wrong, Mom?”

  Mom cleared her throat and smoothed the counter with her hand. “Oh, nothing. I was just thinking of Grandma Finn.”

  Madison’s grandmother, on her father’s side, had died before Madison was born.

  “She had breast cancer, too, you know,” Mom said.

  “She did?” Madison wondered how she could have missed hearing that important fact.

  “It just seems like so many women I know have it these days,” Mom said, sounding very sad.

  “Really?” Madison asked. “I remember your friend from work. Who else?”

  “Oh,” Mom said, staring into space. “No one. No one in particular, honey bear. Should we order a pizza for dinner tonight?”

  Madison’s stomach rumbled at the thought of pepperoni. She got off the chair and pulled the Pizza Pie menu out of a drawer.

  From across the kitchen, Phin howled.

  Madison smiled. He’d want a piece all for himself—minus the pepperoni, of course.

  Chapter 3

  FOR A MONDAY NIGHT, Madison was up very late. It was the pizza, she figured. Two and a half slices had given her a whopper of a bellyache. That was twice as much food as Madison usually ate for dinner. All the same, it didn’t stop her from chewing a stick of gum that she had found inside her desk drawer.

  Madison’s computer beeped. She had an e-mail. She tapped the keyboard to retrieve it, but saw that the message was only spam. The uninvited e-mail was addressed to a Mr. M. Finn and advertised a miracle drug to make hair grow. Madison quickly hit D
ELETE and surfed over to TweenBlurt.com.

  At the site menu, there was an option to surf to the pages most recently visited. Madison wanted to check out Egg’s Disaster Zone page again. At school that day, he had claimed that he would be working on it all night, so Madison was curious to see what he had added. Did it look any less like a blank page? Madison couldn’t access the first page link she hit. She went to the BloggerBlurt main menu to find the SEARCH function. It asked her to enter a word, so Madison typed the word disaster. A list popped up, and she scrolled through. People had chosen funny names for their blogs.

  Disaster Area

  Disaster Land: My Life

  Disaster Sister!!!

  Disaster Zone

  Dis Me L8r, Homeboy

  Don’t Ask: The Whole Truth

  Don’t Forget Me

  Don’t Worry Page

  Madison clicked on Egg’s page, but apparently he hadn’t done any work yet. It was still as blank as before. She hit the BACK browser and looked over the list again. What else was on some of those blogs? She double-clicked on Disaster Land: My Life. A blue page popped up. In the background, the blogger had inserted images of raindrops. Each text entry was a poem—a lame poem as far as Madison could tell, although she knew it wasn’t fair to call people’s ideas or work lame when she didn’t know them personally.

  She hit the BACK browser once again and selected another page. Dis Me L8r, Homeboy seemed like a funny one. But when she clicked on it, the page listed underneath opened up instead.

  Madison started reading. But she didn’t get very far.

  Don’t Ask: The Whole Truth

  A blog by Vicki (aka Bigwheels)

  Bigwheels?

  Madison’s eyes bugged out. She nearly fell out of her chair and choked on her bubble gum. But she kept reading.

  I know I need to just relax but how can I relax when I don’t get any sleep either? I think I’m going to check out one of the chat rooms Dad told me about. I never knew it affected so many kids. I also found out that I can volunteer down @ the speech center in Seattle. I don’t think I’ll be working with kids who have autism but I will probably learn a lot.

  --BW

  Madison took a deep breath and reread the blog entry on her screen. This was no coincidence. This had to be BW, aka Vicki, aka Bigwheels, her keypal. There couldn’t be two Bigwheelses in the world, could there? Madison’s mind raced with questions. She clicked another key, marked PROFILE.

  Screen Name: Bigwheels

  Home Sweet Home: USA

  Favorite Place: My basement, because that’s where my computer is now!

  Favorite Person: My brother Eddie and my sister Mel and my keypal 2 b/c she’s nicer than nice

  Madison stopped reading. There was no doubt now.

  This was her Bigwheels.

  How could Madison’s keypal have kept a blog on TweenBlurt.com, the place where they had first connected? And how could she have kept it a secret? It was too much to think about. Madison pressed the ON/OFF button on her laptop without even logging off.

  Phin hopped up onto Madison’s bed with a rope chew toy in his mouth. It was frayed and wet at the ends, but Madison started up a game of tug-of-war to take her mind off the blog. Every time Phinnie pulled the rope one way, Madison pulled harder in the opposite direction. Halfway through the game, she yanked the toy right out of Phin’s little mouth. He yelped.

  Madison sat there on the carpet, a little stunned. She’d pulled too hard. But she knew why. She was angry—really angry. She felt betrayed by Bigwheels. She’d been certain that she and her keypal shared all of the important stuff. They talked about boys they liked, teachers they didn’t like, and everything annoying that their parents did. Bigwheels always had funny stories to tell about her family. Madison loved hearing what life was like with a brother and a sister, since she had neither. But she had never heard anything about this blog—or the information it gave.

  Why hadn’t she told Madison she was volunteering somewhere? After all, Madison always told her about her own experiences volunteering at the Far Hills Animal Clinic.

  Phin yelped again. His ears went back, and his little curlicue tail went down. Now he was upset, too.

  “I’m so sorry, Phinnie,” Madison said softly, leaning over. She rolled over, pulled him onto her tummy, and gave him a kiss. He cheered up right away and trotted back to get his chew toy.

  Madison got up off the floor to power up her computer again. She was obsessed with what she’d seen on TweenBlurt.com. She needed to know why Bigwheels had not told her about the blog—and she needed to know now.

  “Maddie, are you busy?” Mom yelled from downstairs.

  Madison yelled back immediately: “Yes!”

  “Well, I need you. Just for a moment. Can you help me?”

  Phin scampered out of the room when he heard Mom’s voice.

  Can you help me? It was Mom’s typical refrain. Madison had often joked that her middle name should have been Help. Since the Big D, Mom often relied on Madison for assistance with things around the house, even though the reality was that Madison wasn’t much good at helping. She couldn’t locate a wall stud on which to hang a picture or find a washer in a toolbox filled with screws. But Mom asked for help anyhow. And Madison obliged. She liked being helpful—usually. Right now, though, she didn’t want to move from this spot. She needed to get back to the blog.

  “Maddie?” Mom appeared at Madison’s bedroom door. “Just for a minute, honey bear. Okay? I know you’re doing homework.”

  Madison hit the STANDBY button on her computer. She didn’t want Mom to see that she wasn’t doing the homework she’d promised to do before bedtime. A Bengal tiger screen saver appeared in the nick of time.

  As usual, Mom was still working. Madison thought it was cool to have a mom who made movies—well, documentaries. But sometimes it was a drag that Mom worked so much, especially late at night. Madison wished her mom would take time off. It had been a long time since she and Mom had spent an entire day hanging out, just the two of them.

  “We need to move these cartons…” Mom explained. “The boxes are too heavy to move by myself.”

  Madison was glad that the job took only a few minutes. By the time she climbed back upstairs, her e-mailbox was blinking with two new messages.

  The first was from Dad.

  From: JeffFinn

  To: MadFinn

  Subject: Dinner Times Two for Four?

  Date: Mon 11 Oct 8:49 PM

  Hey, honey—I want to do dinner twice this week if that’s ok. Tomorrow it’s just you and me. Let’s go to French Toast, just the two of us? I know you liked their crispy-chicken basket. Then, Stephanie and I want you to come over again this Sunday. Stephanie’s making something special for dinner. You can even bring Phinnie if you like. That makes four of us. It’s up to you.

  BTW: here is a joke that made me think of you!

  How does a smart kid spend hours on her homework every night when she sleeps for 12 hours? She puts the homework under her mattress!

  Let me know when we should pick you up Sunday. I think your mom may have other plans, so we’ll coordinate.

  Love,

  Dad

  P.S.: We’re thinking about getting a pet. Got any leads from the animal shelter in town?

  Maddie clicked REPLY and sent Dad a note saying that she was looking forward to dinner. She didn’t go into too much detail, however. She was way too eager to get to the next e-mail in her mailbox and then get in touch with Bigwheels.

  FROM SUBJECT

  Sk8ingboy DZ

  Madison gulped. The second e-mail was from Hart. Her eyes skimmed over the header and went right to the body of the message.

  From: Sk8ingboy

  To: TheEggMan, Wetwins, W_Wonka7, MadFinn

  Subject: DZ

  Date: Mon 11 Oct 9:12 PM

  Hey, guys, my dad just called the FH rink and the dude there said we can play next wkend which is cool so let’s fin
d other guys and we’ll be hooked up. I was thinking maybe we could go over to Drew’s to play the Zone again b4 we sk8 since the game @ Maddie’s was so lame. OK. E-me l8r.

  --HJ

  The game at Maddie’s was so lame.

  Madison squinted to make sure she had read that correctly. Lame? She felt the hairs standing up on the back of her neck. As far as she was concerned, as of that very moment, Hart was the lame one.

  Madison scanned the names at the top of the e-mail. He obviously had sent the note to Madison by mistake. She couldn’t exactly be mad at him for that. But as usual, the doubts started to creep in. She’d come upstairs after dinner and logged on to her laptop as she did every other night, expecting to surf around casually and check out the blogs and her e-mail. But now Madison was utterly thrown. Bigwheels didn’t want to share. Hart thought she was lame.

  Was this how people really felt? Why couldn’t they tell her the truth? Why couldn’t everyone just keep it real?

  Instead of opening up a new file, Madison reached for her FHJH composition notebook. She was inspired to write something by hand—and it fit in perfectly with the second topic Mr. Gibbons had doled out in class that day.

  Journaling #2

  Topic: Everyone has a good scar story. Tell all the details about how you got your best scar.

  At first, Madison was thinking she would write about the long scar she had on her left ankle. She had gotten it when she was eight, when her foot had gotten wedged in the chains on her bike and she had yanked her leg out too fast. Even after it had started to heal, the scab kept pulling off whenever she rode her bike—which was every day. As a result, it had left a spaghetti-thin scar around the circumference of Madison’s ankle.

  Although that was a fun scar story, Madison now knew the ankle scar wasn’t the scar she would write about.

  She picked up her purple pencil. Even though the end was gnawed, it still worked fine for writing.

  My Scar

  It’s hard to admit this to anyone except my dog, but my best scar (really the worst) comes from when my parents got divorced. It seems like since the Big D, it got harder to know what I could trust. I’m not totally insecure (only sometimes), but this year in seventh grade I wonder all the time who really likes me and who is telling me the real deal. Do people sometimes make up stuff just to be nice? I guess I even do that sometimes. But whenever it happens (like now) I feel like someone is ripping off a big scab and what’s left is my scar. Does that make any sense or am I