Keep It Real

by Laura Dower

  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 find 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

  Madison stopped writing. She quickly tore out the page, crumpled it up, and threw it into the orange plastic wastebasket. Without missing a beat, she turned to the next blank page, rewrote the heading, and wrote a new paragraph de
scribing her ankle scar after all.

  Ten minutes later she brushed her teeth and crawled into bed.

  It was hard to fall asleep. Madison’s mind buzzed with thoughts of Hart gossiping about her (and how lame she was) with the other guys, and of Bigwheels writing in her blog that she hadn’t told Madison about. Just what was autism, anyway? Madison would have to do a dictionary search online. Then she would write an e-mail directly to Bigweels and ask her what was going on.

  Of course, eventually all of those thoughts faded away, or at least morphed into images of the jumping sheep that Madison counted until she fell fast asleep. After a while, Phin was sleeping, too. His little paws danced as if he were running in his doggy dreams.

  When Mom finished her work, some time after midnight, she tucked them both into bed and closed Madison’s laptop. Although Madison was asleep and didn’t hear it, Mom whispered something very real into Madison’s ear.

  “Good night, honey bear. Thank you for being such a beautiful daughter. You are my moon and stars, and I love you more than anything—no matter what.”

  With that, Mom turned out the light and called it a night.

  Phinnie started snoring.

  Chapter 4

  AIMEE WAS IN BETTER spirits by Tuesday morning.

  So was Madison. All of the distressing thoughts of the night before had faded after a good night’s sleep.

  Aimee met Madison out in front of her house on Blueberry Street. She walked over with Mrs. Gillespie and Blossom, their basset hound. The moment that Blossom turned in to the Finn walk, with her snout to the ground, she must have smelled Phinnie, because she charged up the porch steps panting. The two dogs were best friends, just like their owners. They sniffed and chased each other’s tail, as happy dogs do.

  “Morning, Francine,” Mrs. Gillespie called out to Madison’s mom. “I took you up on your offer. It’s been too long!”

  Mom invited Mrs. Gillespie in for a cup of morning coffee. Madison and Aimee enjoyed watching their mothers sit down together to talk. It happened rarely, but it gave the girls a glimpse into what their own friendship might be in twenty or thirty years. Aimee joked that if they never found the perfect guys, at least they had each other. Fiona Waters and Lindsay Frost, their other good friends, were in on that promise, too. The four vowed to be sitting together in rocking chairs, still talking about the enemy, boys, and TweenBlurt.com when they were much older.

  As Mom and Mrs. Gillespie walked inside, they whispered as if they were sharing some kind of secret. For a brief moment, Madison wondered what the fuss was about. But she didn’t dwell on it. She grabbed her orange bag and then grabbed Aimee’s wrist.

  The girls danced back down the path and onto the street as they headed for school, waving goodbye to their mothers and the two dogs.

  “Rowowoworooooo!” Phin howled. Blossom howled, too.

  “So,” Aimee declared, skipping in front of Madison. Aimee could never just walk like a normal person. She skipped, floated, spun—everything a dancer would do onstage. “I heard something that will just make you insane!”

  “Oh, no,” Madison sighed. “I’m not so sure I want to hear this.”

  “I got this information from my brother Doug,” Aimee said. He was the youngest of her three brothers. The others were Billy, a college student, and Dean, a high-school senior. Aimee went to them for advice and sometimes even gossip. This time it had been for gossip.

  “Doug only cares about baseball,” Madison joked.

  “Yeah, well, it’s the off-season,” Aimee joked back. “And he swears that he has good sources. Don’t you wanna hear it?”

  Madison shrugged. “I guess.”

  “Okay. Prepare yourself!” Aimee gestured wildly. “Ivy Daly is dating a high-school sophomore. High school!”

  “What?” Madison’s eyes popped open wide. It was common knowledge that another one of their junior-high-school classmates, Monica Jennings, dated older guys. But Ivy? Madison couldn’t believe it. Was that why Ivy had written in her class journal that life was so perfect?

  “Who is it?” Madison asked.

  “I don’t have a name,” Aimee said. “Doug says he goes to Dunn Manor High. The guys know him from pickup football games or something. He was bragging that Ivy is really hot.”

  Dunn Manor Junior High was the rival school to Far Hills Junior High. Usually Madison saw guys from Dunn when her school played soccer or hockey games with the other school. The guys who went there always seemed cuter than the guys at her school. Gramma Helen would have said that that meant that Madison and her friends had a case of “the grass is greener on the other side of the fence.” They always wanted whatever it was that they couldn’t have. Cute guys were their greener grass.

  Of course, Madison didn’t know any of the Dunn guys personally. She wouldn’t have had a clue as to who Ivy’s guy was even if Aimee had mentioned a name.

  As they walked toward school, the brisk air whipped around Madison’s neck and ears. She pulled her sweater tighter, wondering why she had not worn a warmer jacket. But, of course, her denim jacket with the cool embroidered lining was in the wash, and her other favorite, a brown coat, had a splatter of Freeze Palace’s chocolate-cow milk shake on the front. Mom still hadn’t taken that one over to the dry cleaner.

  Aimee had clearly accepted the news of her dance teacher’s illness by now. She was definitely back to her old self again. Translation: she wouldn’t shut up. After a while, Madison stopped listening.

  Aimee noticed.

  “Maddie? Maddie! Are you ignoring me?” Aimee said very loudly, waving her arms in front of Madison’s face.

  “Huh? No way,” Madison replied. “I totally heard every word you said…”

  “Get real,” Aimee said. “You were spacing out on me. Thanks a lot. I have vital information about our classmates and you’re spacing? That’s great!”

  “Vital information?” Madison asked. She giggled. “Nothing about Ivy is vital except the fact that she is terminally evil.”

  “And don’t forget, fashion-challenged,” Aimee added.

  They both cracked up.

  They met Fiona and Lindsay at the lockers before heading off to their English classes. Madison couldn’t wait to hear what Mr. Gibbons had to say. She was eager to review the last journaling assignment and to get the new one. Fiona joined her on the way to Mr. Gibbons’s classroom, and Aimee and Lindsay trotted off toward Mrs. Quill’s classroom.

  “Good morning, students,” Mr. Gibbons said when all the members of the class had taken their seats and settled down.

  Madison sat back in her chair, a smile on her face. She was loving school these days, especially this class. Was it possible for one class to make everything right with the world? After yesterday’s surprise downers, she hoped so. She needed the cheering up.

  “Let’s start with…Lance,” Mr. Gibbons said, pointing to one of Madison’s classmates, an annoying guy (as far as Madison was concerned) who, along with Egg and Drew, was on the computer team that was responsible for inputting information and updates for the school website. Lance cleared his throat and began to read aloud from one of his journal entries.

  When he started, Madison expected to laugh. She expected everyone to start laughing. But what he read wasn’t funny at all. No one laughed. No one breathed.

  “My scar story,” Lance read, clearing his throat again, “is gross and weird, at least I think so. When I was a baby, like, way before I was even born, I had special surgery.”

  The class let out a collective “Oooh!”

  “Like, I had this problem with my heart,” Lance continued. He bent his head as he read directly from his composition notebook.

  Madison listened intently. She played with the edges of her own journal pages, ruffling them with her fingertips. Was this really Lance talking?

  “That is very personal,” Mr. Gibbons said, when Lance had finished reading. “Very impressive detail.”

  Madison nodded silently. She was impressed
, too. Not only because Lance had read aloud from his journal (something she wasn’t sure she was ready to do), but because what he had to say was so…real.

  Long ago, at the start of school, Mr. Gibbons had told his class that there was only one thing they could be sure of in his seventh-grade section. He said that his students should expect the unexpected.

  Madison couldn’t believe how true that was.

  After class, Fiona had to run off to the nurse’s office to get an icepack for her headache. Madison ducked into the bathroom and hooked her orange bag on the door of the stall.

  While she was in there, a group of girls came in, whispering. One of them was crying.

  Madison gasped.

  It was Poison Ivy.

  Madison listened intently, trying hard not to make noise. She tried peeking through the side of the door, but she couldn’t really see.

  It sounded as though Rose Thorn and Phony Joanie, Ivy’s two drone friends, were trying to comfort her. Madison listened closely.

  “I just don’t think I can deal,” Ivy announced dramatically.

  “Yes, you can,” Rose said. “You are so strong, Ivy. Everyone knows how strong you are.”

  Ivy hiccuped. She was crying again. Madison hadn’t heard her cry like that since they were younger.

  “I can’t…” Ivy sniffled. “I can’t believe I’m getting like this at school…”

  Joanie leaned down. She was peeking under the stalls! Madison lifted her feet up so they wouldn’t see her. Then she put a hand over her mouth.

  “Don’t worry,” Joanie announced. “No one’s here.”

  Rose turned on the faucet. “Here, take this. Wipe your face.”

  “I can’t…” Ivy sobbed. “I’ll ruin my makeup.”

  Madison rolled her eyes. Her makeup? Of course, even when she was upset, Ivy wanted to look good. And what kind of problem was she crying about, anyway? Madison guessed it was the Dunn Manor guy. It had to be. That would be just the kind of problem that would make Ivy break down in the bathroom at school. Guy stuff.

  Madison clenched her fists together and held her legs up higher, just in case someone peeked under the stalls again. She couldn’t risk getting caught and branded a spy.