Keep It Real

by Laura Dower

  Chapter 2

  MADISON STUCK HER HAND down into the bottom of her orange bag, but she couldn’t find a pen. She was hoping to take a few minutes before the start of science class to finish her homework. It was a biology work sheet, and she was supposed to fill in definitions for words like DNA, RNA, and genome. Naturally, she’d spent most of the night before writing in her journal instead.

  Mr. Danehy stood up at the front of class, coughing. His eyes watered, and his nose was running. He had a clump of tissue in his hand. No one wanted to approach him—or even talk to him, not even Ivy (who had proclaimed that she had a crush on him once—Go figure!).

  Nope. Mr. Danehy was grouchy enough on a good day. No one would risk his wrath on a day when he was sick.

  With only moments before the second bell rang, Ivy squeezed herself onto her stool next to Madison at the lab table.

  “Did you finish the homework?” Ivy asked. She snapped her mint gum, even though gum was against the rules in the classroom.

  Madison didn’t answer. She knew that would irritate Ivy. And it did.

  “Did you hear me?” Ivy said in a huff. “I asked you if—”

  “I heard you,” Madison said. She didn’t need chewing gum to snap back at Ivy. “And I haven’t finished the homework, but even if I had, I wouldn’t share it with you.”

  “You don’t have to be so nasty,” Ivy growled.

  She muttered something else; Madison was pretty sure she had said, “You must have wicked PMS,” but Madison didn’t know how to respond, since she hadn’t actually gotten her period yet. Was it physically possible to have PMS before having started to get your period? And why was Madison the only girl in the seventh grade who hadn’t gotten hers?

  Ivy flipped her red hair. It smelled like hair spray and some kind of perfume that made Madison’s nose itch.

  “Fine,” Ivy said, snapping her gum again. “Be that way.” She reached into her own leather bag and pulled out a composition notebook.

  Madison eyed the notebook carefully. It was Ivy’s journal for the class assignment. On the cover Ivy had applied a sticker that read: “Princess.” Madison knew she shouldn’t look, but she couldn’t help herself. She squinted to read the inscription next to the sticker.

  Ivy turned the page.

  Mr. Danehy crossed his arms, cleared his throat, and gazed at the class with watery eyes. He seemed to be sweating, too.

  “Can we please put away our personal items? I have something important—” Mr. Danehy tried to finish his sentence but started coughing again and rushed out the door of the classroom. As the second bell rang, Mr. Danehy’s loud, hacking cough echoed up and down the corridor. Kids snickered. Madison was convinced that students in the next building could hear.

  The whole time, Ivy kept writing in her journal as if she didn’t see or hear any of the commotion. Madison was tempted to glance at Ivy’s page again, but she resisted. She turned her head.

  From across the room, Hart caught her eye. He had been talking to another kid at his lab table, but he smiled when he saw Madison look at him. She had never noticed how crooked Hart’s teeth were on top. How could she have never seen that? she wondered. She was seeing a lot of things from this angle, like the word “Sk8r” on his sneakers. She knew that that was Hart’s screen name.

  Hart smiled again.

  “Dis-as-ter zone,” Madison mouthed, tipping her head as if to indicate Ivy—and Egg’s game, of course.

  “What did you just say?” Ivy asked, looking up. She flipped her hair again.

  Madison tried not to smirk. “Um…nothing.”

  “Oh. Right,” Ivy said. She glanced over in Hart’s direction and then back at Madison again. It was always the same between Madison and Ivy—like a competition that had been launched the moment junior high school began. Who would get Hart? Who would Hart like better?

  Madison was pretty sure that she’d won the first leg of the race to get Hart’s heart. Everyone, including Egg, Fiona, Aimee, and Drew (who was Hart’s cousin, so he really knew the deal), said that the crush feeling was mutual between Hart and Madison. Then there was the almost date. Madison and Hart had almost gone to the movies as a couple. Ivy hadn’t had any of those experiences. She and Hart never went to any movies—or anywhere—together except maybe the school lunchroom, and that didn’t count.

  While Ivy simmered and tried to make Hart look at her (and not at Madison), Madison glanced down at her journal again. It lay open, uncovered, on the lab table. Her brain said, “Look away! Look away!” But it was as if Madison’s eyes were magnets drawn to a magnetic field.

  Madison read the words My life is just so…

  Ivy’s hand was partly covering the page.

  Just so what?

  At that moment, Mr. Danehy came back into the classroom, his hands still over his mouth. His face looked blotchy, as if he’d been coughing a lot. And of course, he had. He looked sweatier than ever. Although Madison wasn’t a huge fan of her science teacher, she was a teeny bit worried.

  “Class, I need to walk down the hall for a moment. Would you please open your books to chapter six? I want you to memorize all the terms on page ninety-one. I’ll have the hall monitor come in and watch the class while I’m gone.”

  Madison was relieved. Now he wouldn’t be collecting the homework right away—and maybe not even until tomorrow. It gave her a chance to finish, and to spy on more of what Ivy had written.

  But the moment Madison glanced over again, that voice inside her head screamed, “Stop looking at Ivy’s journal!” She put her head down on the table with a thud.

  Ouch. Madison’s head throbbed. She hadn’t meant to bonk it.

  “You okay, Maddie?” Ivy asked, her voice feigning niceness as if she were the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood. “Look. You don’t have to hit your head just because Mr. Danehy’s leaving. I mean, I know you like him and all that…”

  Ivy laughed, but Madison heard it as more of a witch’s cackle. Ivy was like the wolf and the witch rolled into one.

  “You look a little pale, Maddie,” Ivy continued. “Hey, you’re not going to throw up or something, are you? Because I just can’t deal with barf.”

  Madison lifted her chin off the table and peered into Ivy’s green eyes. “You can’t deal with anything,” Madison said softly.

  “Right. Whatever.” Ivy clucked her tongue. “I wish I didn’t have you for a lab partner. I mean, it’s not even worth copying your homework. It’s not like you get all As.”

  Madison tried hard not to snarl when Ivy said that. She turned to say something clever. But what she saw was the journal. And this time, Ivy’s hand wasn’t blocking the words.

  My life is just so…perfect.

  Just so perfect. That was what Ivy had written? Perfect?

  Now Madison really did feel like throwing up. She felt bad that she’d looked at the page to begin with. Sneaking a peek was the wrong thing to do, and she knew it. But Madison now felt sick because of what Ivy had written, too.

  What was it about Miss Poison Ivy’s life that was so perfect?

  Ivy grabbed her journal and moved next to her drone friend Rose, leaving Madison alone at the corner of the lab table.

  It was a good thing. Without the distraction, Madison managed to finish her homework questions and read the assigned chapter. Thankfully, Mr. Danehy never returned. If he had, there surely would have been a surprise pop quiz or something equally painful.

  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.

&n
bsp; “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 DELETE 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 funn
y 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