Keep It Real

by Laura Dower

  “Madison, you have to help me with those problems for Mr. Danehy’s class,” Ivy said. “After all, we’re partners.”

  Aimee snickered. “Yeah, right.”

  “What is your problem?” Ivy said. “Are you always this…rude?”

  Egg laughed out loud at that comment. “We’re rude?” he said.

  “Ivy,” Madison said, ignoring Egg’s comment. “Let’s just say that I’ll see you in science. Maybe we can figure something out there and not here, in the middle of lunch, okay?”

  “Whatever,” Ivy said abruptly. She turned on her one-inch, stacked heels and walked out of the cafeteria, with her drones following.

  “You know, Ivy looks kind of sick,” Fiona said in a whisper.

  “I think she looks hot,” Chet said.

  Egg and Drew laughed.

  Madison didn’t want to say anything out loud, although she wondered if Fiona was right. For someone who had written My life is so perfect in her journal, Ivy appeared to be anything but perfect today.

  “You should have asked her about the Dunn Manor dude,” Aimee said to Madison. “What better person to confirm the gossip than Poison Ivy herself?”

  “Totally!” Lindsay chimed in.

  “I think you guys have completely lost it,” Madison said. She stood, picked up her lunch tray, and headed back toward the school kitchen to drop off her dishes and trash.

  Madison knew there really was something different about Ivy, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. Was it that boy from Dunn Manor? Had something happened between them at the high school? After all, Ivy had been crying in the bathroom. Was there a connection?

  As Hart, Chet, and Madison walked off toward Mr. Danehy’s classroom together, a bell echoed in the hallway.

  It was like an alarm clock going off.

  Aimee was right.

  Madison would resolve all of the rumors about Ivy herself.

  And science class was the ideal place to do it.

  Chapter 6

  HART AND CHET GAVE each other a way-up high five when they saw a note tacked on the door of Mr. Danehy’s science classroom.

  “What’s the big deal?” Madison asked. Then she read the note.

  Attention, Students in Science Classes 7 and 8:

  Mr. Danehy will not be in school today. Please meet at the regular time in the library. Mr. Books, the librarian, will pass out all assignments. Thank you.

  “Let’s just skip it,” Chet said.

  Hart laughed. “Yeah, and let’s skip town while we’re at it.”

  The boys laughed.

  Madison frowned. “Wait. This isn’t a free period. Mr. Books will be taking attendance. We’ll get in trouble.”

  “So?” Chet laughed. “Since when did you turn into the science-class police?”

  “Good one!” Hart said and laughed again. But at the same time he gave Madison a light nudge that said, Hey, lighten up, we’re just kidding around.

  Of course, no one was serious about skipping. The three friends—along with the rest of the students in class, including Ivy and Rose—walked directly upstairs to the library and media center to report in to Mr. Books.

  The Far Hills Junior High library was a sprawling room packed with shelves, books, computers, and desks, with rows of windows along some walls. Up here, everyone knew they had to obey the not-too-much-talking rule that Mr. Books enforced. Up here, students actually did work. It was a perfect spot to which to relocate classes.

  Once everyone had congregated upstairs, Mr. Books directed the students as to where to sit. Madison had already scoped out her usual table in the back, near the computer monitors. Usually she sat there alone or with her BFFs, but today, she thought she and Chet and Hart might hang out there together. Maybe they’d get some homework done—or just write notes the whole time.

  Unfortunately, Mr. Books wasn’t in an agreeable mood. And he wasn’t into the idea of free seating, either. Instead, he passed out a stack of copies that Mr. Danehy had prepared. They were sheets of new vocabulary words and multiple-choice questions.

  Madison couldn’t believe it.

  “I know this is a little unusual, but Mr. Danehy made up a special quiz for you kids to do in his absence,” Mr. Books said. “There are about thirty questions here, including definitions. Some answers can be found in your books. Some need to be researched a little. That’s why you’re here in the library. Mr. Danehy wanted you to team up and sit with lab partners, just as you would sit with them downstairs in his classroom.”

  Madison’s shoulders drooped. Sit with lab partners? She glanced at Ivy, who wasn’t looking very pleased with the arrangement herself. Of course she wanted to sit with her friend Rose, not with Madison.

  Ivy’s hand popped up in the air.

  Mr. Books scarcely acknowledged it. “Don’t bother asking for seating exceptions,” he grumbled, looking at Ivy and a few others who had also raised their hands. “There will be none.”

  Madison and Ivy walked toward each other reluctantly.

  “Should we just find a place to sit and get this over with?” Madison asked her enemy.

  Ivy looked up at the ceiling. “If we have to,” she said.

  “There’s a table over there,” Madison said, pointing to the darkened area of the library, where she wanted to sit.

  They shuffled over to a small green wooden table very close to the science section and sat down in two white chairs that looked like swiveling spaceship seats from a bad science fiction movie. Madison loved how the parts of the library had different moods. Some areas were light, some were dark. Some were old-fashioned, and some were more modern. Over the years, various pieces of furniture had been inherited by the library. The spaceship-chair area was one of Madison’s favorites. It was secluded and cozy—a perfect place to pull out her laptop.

  If only she didn’t have to share the space with her, meaning Ivy, of course.

  Hart and Chet and the other boys who were paired together sat clear across the room from Madison and the other girls. They made their way for the “mod” section of the media lab. There, they piled their book bags on the floor next to a metal table with shiny metal chairs beneath a wide, sunny window, through which light poured into the room.

  Although Hart’s being so far away meant there would be no obvious flirting during the period, Madison wasn’t discouraged. No distractions meant action—as far as schoolwork was concerned. Up here she wouldn’t get bogged down with pretend work—for example, sitting through an entire period pretending to take notes and pretending to look things up when, in reality, nothing she wrote in her notebook would make any sense later.

  “So,” Ivy said loudly.

  “Shhh,” Madison scolded her. “We have to keep our voices down.”

  “What are you, the librarian’s pet?” Ivy sneered. “I don’t have to be quiet, and I definitely don’t have to do what you tell me to do…”

  “Well, we have to do the assignment together,” Madison said. “Maybe we should try to cooperate.”

  Ivy laughed. “You’re not the boss of me.”

  “What are you talking about?” Madison said. Ivy sounded as if she were back in third grade.

  “Is there a problem here?” Mr. Books asked. He appeared from nowhere, staring over the top of his glasses, which were perched on the bridge of his nose.

  “Oh, no problem here,” Ivy said with a flick of her wrist. “We were just getting ready to sit down. We have loads of work to do, and we want to get right to it. Don’t we, Maddie?”

  Madison wanted to wipe Ivy’s smile right off her face. She was the real librarian’s pet. And it was grosser than gross watching her in action.

  They finally sat down and took out their science books. The quiz, as it turned out, was super easy. Normally, Mr. Danehy’s assignments (and pop quizzes) were marathon study adventures. But, working together, Madison and Ivy actually got the thirty questions completed in almost no time.

  That left half a period with nothing to do
—and nowhere to go. Mr. Books had said that anyone who finished early had to remain seated. His exact words had been: “Use your time wisely, students, and don’t fritter.”

  Madison wasn’t sure she knew what fritter even meant.

  Without consulting Madison on what to do next, Ivy pulled out her princess composition book and a red pen. Madison could see the initials I.R.D. on the side of the pen. I was for Ivy, of course. D was for Daly. But for some reason, Madison couldn’t remember what the R stood for. It felt weird not to remember something important about someone who had been a friend once. Then again, becoming sworn enemies had caused Madison to forget as much as possible about Ivy.

  “What’s the R stand for again?” Madison asked.

  “Huh?” Ivy snorted. “Oh, wow. Are you staring again?”

  “I only asked a question,” Madison said. “I wasn’t staring at you. I just saw your pen…”

  “The R stands for Renee,” Ivy snarled. “After my grandmother. Remember?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Madison said, nodding.

  She did remember. Ivy’s grandmother, Renee Daly, had been a teen beauty queen back in the 1950s. Ivy had inherited all of her trophies and one tarnished tiara that she kept in a box in her room. Ivy probably thought winning pageants was genetic. That explained the fixation on wardrobe and hair and being the starlet of seventh grade.

  “Gee, Maddie. I remember your middle name,” Ivy said. “Francesca, right? Because your mom’s name starts with an F—Francine. At least, that’s what you told me a long time ago.”

  Madison almost fell off her chair in shock. How could Ivy have remembered all those facts about her middle name when Madison couldn’t even remember the first letter of Ivy’s middle name? Once again, Mr. Gibbons’s advice rang true. The unexpected was to be expected—even as far as the enemy was concerned.

  “What journal question are you working on?” Madison asked. “The one about the scar? The list of twenty things?”

  “No,” Ivy said curtly. “I did those already. Mr. Gibbons told me I could write whatever I wanted in between assignments. He gave me an extra list of questions to think about. That’s what I’m writing.”

  Madison’s heart sank. This was bad news.

  “What do you mean he gave you an extra list?” Madison asked.

  “He gave me a list of questions like ‘Write about a time when someone made you a promise and broke it’ and ‘Describe a time when you saved someone from getting hurt.’”

  “Wow, those are good questions,” Madison said thoughtfully, although she couldn’t begin to imagine what kind of answers superficial Ivy would write.

  “Yeah, they are good questions, but it’s hard to write about bad stuff sometimes, because things are just so good in my life, you know?” Ivy bragged.

  The words Madison had seen inside Ivy’s journal flashed into her thoughts once more: My life is just so perfect. Madison shuddered.

  Miss Poison Ivy Renee Daly couldn’t know a single thing about what it meant to feel embarrassed or sad or unliked, could she? It didn’t seem fair that Mr. Gibbons had singled out the enemy for a special writing assignment.

  Journals were Madison’s territory, not Ivy’s.

  “Um…who else has this other list?” Madison asked quietly.

  “I don’t know. Just me, I think,” Ivy said with a toss of her head. She gave Madison a Just leave me alone look, glanced back down at her composition book, and started to write once again.

  “Wait a second!” Madison interrupted Ivy’s writing. “Wait. I want the list, too. Give me the list.”

  “Ask Mr. Gibbons for it,” Ivy replied.

  “I was thinking that maybe you could share some of the questions with me,” Madison suggested.

  Ivy shot Madison a cruel, piercing look. “Share? Ha!” Ivy said. “You’re kidding me, right?”

  “What do you mean, ‘kidding’?” Madison replied. “No, I’m not kidding. Show me some of the questions.”

  All of a sudden, Ivy burst into laughter that was loud enough to draw Mr. Books’s attention back to their table. He’d heard them clear across the library.

  “Shhhh!” he cautioned as he approached their table, his finger up to his lips. After standing guard for about five minutes near their small library table, he disappeared across the room.

  “So now you know how I feel, Maddie,” Ivy said. “Like, you never share science notes with me—so I’m not sharing English questions with you. Besides, these journals are private, aren’t they? What’s mine is mine.”

  Madison felt like a teakettle that was just starting to boil. But she could not, under any circumstances, blow her top. If Madison’s voice got too loud, that would raise another red flag for Mr. Books, and she did not, under any circumstances, want to end up in Principal Bernard’s office.

  Madison bit her tongue so she wouldn’t invite trouble. She stared at the enemy, wondering what the next move should be.

  Ivy looked like a mannequin, sitting in her chair with her legs crossed under the table. She wore red Mary Janes and a flowered skirt and top that Madison had seen in a recent e-mail advertisement from the Boop-Dee-Doop catalog. Around her neck on a beaded choker, Ivy wore a heart-shaped charm. It looked as though she might have gotten her red hair highlighted with streaks of—was that auburn? And there wasn’t a strand out of place. Not only was Ivy’s life perfect on the inside—Ivy looked perfect on the outside.

  Even though she told herself not to look, Madison’s eyes wandered from Ivy’s outfit and hair to the pages of Ivy’s journal.

  Ivy had written down a new topic at the top of the page. It was a topic that Madison had never seen before. It must have been from Mr. Gibbons’s special list of questions.

  Write about a time you had to wait for something you wanted.

  What’s the point of writing about this? I am supposed to see M. and H. as soon as possible but I don’t know what will happen. J. didn’t have happy

  Madison shifted in her chair.

  M.? H.?

  Madison? Hart?

  Who else could it be? And who was J.?

  “Um…Ivy?” Madison asked.

  Ivy looked over at Madison with her wide blue eyes. She blinked once, then a second time. Ivy wasn’t wearing her usual mascara and eyeliner. In fact, she had no makeup on at all. She looked like a different person.

  “What is it?” Ivy rolled her eyes emphatically and let out an enormous sigh. “Do you have a problem?”

  “Not me.”

  “Then bug off. Mr. Books will come back if you don’t.”

  Madison shifted again in her chair, and her green T-shirt with the palm tree and stars on the front rode up. (The shirt didn’t fit quite right, unlike Ivy’s red top with the little bow neckline, which fit Ivy perfectly.) Madison pulled the shirt down and tried tucking it into her jeans, but the waist on the jeans was a super-low-rider style, so nothing stayed tucked. It was bad enough to deal with Ivy’s snarly attitude. Now Madison’s clothes were completely malfunctioning.

  “Look,” Ivy said. “Why can’t you just write in your journal, and I’ll write in mine, okay? That is…if you have anything interesting to say.”

  There was no good response to Ivy’s final comment. All Madison could do was sit there, open her own notebook, absentmindedly roll her pen between her fingers, look pensive, and pretend Ivy’s barbs didn’t sting.

  But they did sting, a lot, even after all those years of being enemies with Ivy.

  They stung so much that Madison couldn’t write anything down. She stared at an empty, white, lined page in her journal for ten full minutes without writing a single word. And by that time, the period was over.

  On the walk home that afternoon, the streets and sidewalks seemed emptier than empty. Madison felt empty, too, although she wasn’t sure why. There was a hollow pang left over from the science class study hall and Poison Ivy’s venomous comments, but that wasn’t the whole reason.

  Was it because her BFFs were all elsewhere?
Fiona had an after-school meeting with the photography club; Aimee had dance; and Egg and the guys were over at Chet and Fiona’s house playing Disaster Zone (since Mr. Waters had finally gotten the computer fixed).

  Madison didn’t know.

  Upon reaching her porch, Madison opened the screen door to find Phin curled up under the table in the hall. Normally, Phinnie would rush the door and lick Madison all over with happy-dog kisses. But today he just snored. Madison tiptoed past him into the kitchen.

  The basement door was wide open.

  “Mom? Are you down there?” Madison asked.

  “Hello, honey bear,” Mom yelled up. She came to the bottom of the stairs wearing rubber gloves and a ratty T-shirt. “I needed to get my mind off work and some other things,” Mom continued, “so I thought I’d finally clean up this mess down here. You know, there are file cabinets down here with loads of your collages and other stuff. You haven’t looked at those in ages.”

  “I know,” Madison said wistfully. Before Dad got her a laptop, Madison had spent lots of time typing on their old computer, tearing up magazines, and doing other things down in the Finn basement. She used to play “school” with only herself as both teacher and students, and she still had the make-believe tests to show for it. Each “student” had special handwriting and special habits; for example, Jorge was a lousy speller, and Emerson liked to draw smiley faces over all of her letter I’s. There were so many happy memories of teaching down in that basement that, despite Mom’s pleas, Madison knew it would be impossible for her to clean up or throw anything out from her file cabinets and shelves.

  “I’ll deal with it later,” she told Mom abruptly.

  “Okay, then,” Mom called back. “I’ll be up in an hour and we can decide on dinner. I have taco mix, broccoli, and tofu tonight.”

  Madison grimaced. A few years back Mom had gone vegetarian, thanks to the influence of Aimee’s mom, who always prepared macrobiotic meals. Madison still wasn’t too happy about the switch to vegetarianism, even though she knew it was the healthier way.