The Friendship War

by Andrew Clements

  And it feels wonderful.

  I’ve seen Ellie look this way a few times from over there at her own special lunch table, trying to figure out what I’m doing. But she’s too stuck-up to walk over and take a look. And she’s probably not smart enough to send a spy, which is what I’d do.

  Besides, it doesn’t matter if she knows what I’m doing. She can’t stop me, because when it comes to buttons, I’m probably the richest kid in the world!

  And here comes another customer—Brooke.

  “I like your sign! So, what kind of goodies have you got here?”

  “Oh, you know—you’ve seen a lot of these already.”

  She picks up the same bag of fancy buttons that she looked through last Friday, when I got her to trade me for that pinwheel.

  “I love this seahorse! And another one, a perfect pair! I can’t believe I didn’t see these! Want to trade something for them?”

  “Actually, I love that bracelet you’ve got. So, how about taking both seahorses, plus any other six buttons you want. For the bracelet.”

  “I don’t know….This is a great bracelet.”

  “It really is. You should probably hang on to it.”

  “Yeah.”

  And honestly, I don’t want Brooke to get involved again.

  But she’s still poking around in the buttons bag. “Oooh—check out this one—looks like a bluebird. Do you know why this one’s transparent, but the seahorses aren’t?”

  “Hank could tell you.”

  Hank looks up from his cup of fruit salad, and Brooke takes the button to him at the far end of the table.

  “The bird is celluloid. That’s why the color is so bright, but the plastic still lets the light through. And this button is vintage—probably at least seventy years old. The seahorses were carved out of Bakelite, which is much denser. They’re vintage, too.”

  It’s a thorough answer, but he’s not happy that I pulled him into my business. Because Brooke’s cute blue ribbon bracelet with the small white buttons? It’s almost mine. And Hank knows it, and he wants no part of what I’m doing.

  Brooke is back standing beside me, and I make her an offer.

  “How about this: You can take the two seahorses, the bluebird, plus seven other buttons—ten great buttons for that bracelet. Because it’s such a good one.”

  “Um…I think that’s fair. Okay, it’s a deal!”

  And just like that, I’ve got another one of Ellie’s Originals.

  As Brooke walks away, Hank is getting ready to go dump his lunch tray. But instead of standing up, he slides down toward my end of the table.

  “I’ve never seen you wearing bracelets or jewelry, and it’s not like Ellie’s been using anything rare or fancy to make her stuff. So, how come you’re collecting it?”

  “Simple. Because when Ellie figures out that I’ve got all these, she’s going to hate it. And there’s not one thing she can do about it. I’m going to teach her a lesson.”

  “So…this is payback for getting dumped from her lunch table?”

  “That’s part of it.”

  “What’s the rest?”

  “It’s complicated. It would take all day to explain.”

  Hank gives me a look. “I figured out how gravitational orbits work. Do you think it’s more complicated than that?”

  “Actually, yes. Figuring out what’s going on between Ellie and me isn’t the same as working math problems. If it were the same, all the wars in the world could be ended in a week!”

  “So…when does this war end?”

  I shrug. “When I’ve won, and when Ellie—”

  “Hands OFF!”

  I turn to look just as Kevin shoves Cody. They’re two tables away, and they each have a lunch tray covered with buttons.

  “That one’s mine, and you know it!”

  Cody jumps to his feet and shoves Kevin back, then makes a grab for something on Kevin’s tray, but he misses. Both trays fly off the far side of the table, and hundreds of buttons go bouncing across the tile floor.

  “Kevin! Cody! Stop it!”

  Mrs. Casey and the custodian are headed their way, but Kevin stands up and gets both arms around Cody, and they wrestle each other to the floor. As Mrs. Casey and Mr. Roberts pull them apart, kids are yelling and squabbling and chasing the spilled buttons all over the cafeteria. It’s like a riot, and it started in three seconds!

  Hank looks at the chaos around us, then at me.

  “When I did a report on the Klondike Gold Rush last year, I read about how the prospectors and miners began fighting with each other. Looks like the Great Button Rush might be turning ugly. And your little war isn’t so nice either.”

  Then he takes his tray and leaves.

  I hate being scolded, especially when I deserve it.

  Because Hank’s right—I’m out for revenge here, and it’s not pretty.

  I’m glad I didn’t get to finish telling him the rest of my plan, because Ellie’s going to get every one of her “Originals” back—ripped up into tiny, ragged pieces.

  Hank would have been shocked to hear me say that.

  Maybe even disgusted.

  Except, I don’t care. I’m being illogical, and I’m being unscientific—and I know that, and I understand that, and I accept that.

  Why? Because Ellie Emerson totally needs something she has never had—not once in her whole mean, spoiled, selfish life: She needs a crushing defeat.

  And that’s what she’s going to get. From me.

  A question starts to bubble up in my mind.

  I try to push it away, but the words arrive anyway, and I can’t ignore them:

  If I’m doing such a great job winning my war with Ellie, then how come I feel so awful?

  Ben drops his backpack onto a chair and stands there, looking at the kitchen table. And then at me.

  “What’s up with the festival of weird foods?”

  “Nothing. And mind your own business.”

  Ben studies the wreckage in front of me.

  “A peach yogurt, a box of Thin Mints, a full roll of Ritz crackers, half a block of cheddar cheese, and two little cans of tomato juice. And you snarfed all that in about fifteen minutes. So, yeah, I can see that everything must be totally fine.”

  “Mind your own business!”

  He goes to the fridge. “Hey—one yogurt left!”

  He sits down across the table from me, peels back the foil cover, and begins eating. He’s using a huge spoon and making the most horrible sounds he can. On purpose.

  “Stop being disgusting.”

  “You ate that, and I’m disgusting?”

  He finishes eating quietly and then sits there. I know he’s not going to leave until I talk.

  The truth is, I was waiting for him.

  But I still want him to mind his own business…after I ask him some questions.

  “So, do you know how a fad works?”

  He nods a little, shrugs a little. “I think so, at least the basics—something new shows up, everyone goes wild about it, everyone gets sick of it, and it’s over. That seem right?”

  “Sounds right. But how long does it take until everyone gets sick of something?”

  “Depends. You’ve seen those fidget spinners?”

  “Sure—there were tons at my school a while back, but hardly any now.”

  “Right, same at the high school. As a fad, it’s over. It lasted pretty long because the companies making them kept coming up with changes. Like, the ones with LED lights? They were pretty slick. And another reason it lasted longer is because kids were plugged in to all the stuff about them online. Still, even though spinners were super popular, once a fad starts to die? Click—it disappears!”

  “But let’s say that you wanted a fad to die before everyone get
s totally sick of it. Is there a way to end one?”

  “Oh. So are we talking about buttons again?”

  “Yes. Buttons again—more like forever.”

  “Hmm…Well, first of all, buttons aren’t like Silly Bandz or spinners—which kids have to go and buy. Almost anybody can get buttons, even if it’s just a handful that they pull off some old clothes. Buttons are all over the place, mostly for free.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “And buttons aren’t exactly a new invention either. So I guess a buttons fad is kind of a special case. But you’re the one who’s been seeing the whole thing play out at your school—what do you think is keeping it alive?”

  “It’s partly what you just said, that everybody’s got some, and a lot of kids like trading them. There are so many different kinds, too. But…it’s also that kids keep coming up with new things to do with them—making up games, and making crafty stuff, like bracelets. I heard that some fourth graders have been using wire to make button sculptures. And on the bus home today? I saw this boy, and he’d made a snake by stringing a couple hundred buttons onto a string—tiny buttons at the tail, then gradually larger ones toward the middle, then some different-sized ones to make the head. Kind of creepy, but also cool. And tomorrow button snakes could be all over the place…or little button frogs, or bugs—who knows? Because a spinner does one thing: It spins. Buttons can do anything that a kid can dream up. And everybody keeps wanting more and more buttons. And nobody seems to be getting sick of them either. Except me.”

  Ben sits perfectly still, staring at nothing.

  Sometimes watching Ben feels like looking at myself in a mirror, because right now? I know what he’s doing: He just got an idea, and now he’s working on a theory, or maybe a plan.

  So I wait.

  One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three, one thousand four…

  And now Ben puts a serious look on his face.

  “How much would you be willing to pay to kill the buttons fad?”

  “Pay? What do you mean?”

  “I mean, how badly do you want this fad to die? What would that be worth to you?”

  “It’d be worth a lot.”

  “Okay, good. Next question: How much do you know about economics?”

  “Uh, somewhere between almost nothing and nothing.”

  “Not a problem. But the first thing I want to say is this: I am not telling you to do anything, all right? I’m just going to explain a couple of concepts.”

  “About economics?”

  “Yes, economics. It’s very interesting, and I guarantee that after I explain some stuff, you’re going to get an idea…about doing something. But I am not telling you to do anything.”

  “You’ve said that twice now.”

  “Because it’s important.”

  I narrow my eyes until I’m almost squinting at him.

  “It sounds like this thing that you are not telling me to do might be dangerous. Or get me into trouble. Or both. And you don’t want to be held responsible.”

  Ben gives me a totally blank stare, no expression. “Do you want to learn something about economics or not?”

  “Yes, O Great Teacher—teach me, please teach me!”

  He ignores my sarcasm. “Okay. But remember—”

  “I know: You’re not telling me to do anything at all.”

  “Correct.”

  The windows along the north wall of the cafeteria face the grassy field behind the school, and from the table where I’m sitting with Hank, I’ve got a good view. It was raining this morning, but now it’s sunny, so this is the first time on Wednesday that kids have been allowed outside to play.

  “So, how come Grace’s Gorgeous Goodies isn’t open for business?” he asks.

  “Um…what?”

  “I said, you’re not trading any buttons today—no sign. How come?”

  “Oh, right. Taking a break.”

  Hank studies my face a moment and then turns around to stare out the windows, because that’s what I’m doing.

  And then he sees what I’m seeing.

  About thirty fifth and sixth graders are half walking, half running around on the grass, then stopping to stoop down, and then repeating that process, over and over.

  “What is going on out there?”

  “Yeah, looks weird, doesn’t it?”

  I really can’t say more than that, not without lying to Hank. Which I don’t want to do.

  Because the fact is, I know exactly what’s going on out there.

  * * *

  —

  Ben was right about economics—it’s interesting. Especially the part about supply and demand, which was all he really wanted to explain.

  He was like a college professor or something, completely serious, and yesterday after school our kitchen was his lecture hall.

  “The concept of supply and demand is simple. If the supply of something is low, that means there’s not much of it around, so it’s scarce—and that makes it feel more valuable to people. And the idea that something is valuable? That’s called demand—which is basically just the feeling that you want or need something.”

  I had no trouble understanding that, and Ben could tell, so he kept talking.

  “Let’s use doughnuts as an example. Imagine there was just one doughnut shop in our town, and that one shop made only two doughnuts each morning. That would be a very low supply, right? And because people really love delicious doughnuts, there would be a lot of people who wanted those two doughnuts—which means there would be very high demand. And instead of paying ninety-nine cents, a person might be willing to pay much more, maybe even five or ten dollars for one doughnut. Also, a lot of people might try to be the very first person at the door of the doughnut shop in the morning to buy a delicious doughnut—because there are only two in the whole town!”

  I was still following along fine, but Ben wanted to be sure, so he flipped the situation around.

  “But…what if there were fifteen doughnut shops in our town, and each shop made one thousand delicious doughnuts every morning? That would be a very high supply of doughnuts. So, would people feel like they had to rush to a doughnut shop to try to get one? No. And would people be willing to pay five dollars for one doughnut? No, because now there’s a very high doughnut supply—fifteen thousand every morning! And if the supply gets really high like that, what happens to the demand—to that ‘I’ve got to go get a doughnut right now!’ feeling? It dies. There might even be so many doughnuts around that people would get sick of them. So, here’s the most important idea: A very large supply of anything will kill the demand for that thing, no matter what it is.”

  Which was my favorite sentence of his whole economics lesson.

  Then Ben stopped, and he looked me right in the eye, and he said that same sentence again, but much more slowly: “A very large supply of anything will kill the demand for that thing, no matter what it is.”

  As he’d been talking to me, Ben had also been doodling on a piece of notebook paper, drawing pictures of doughnuts and shop windows and trees and stuff. Which was a little distracting. But I was ready for the rest of his lecture.

  “So that’s the end of your economics lesson,” Ben said with a smile.

  “What? But…but you told me that I would get an idea, that I—”

  He put up his hand. “Nope. I’m done. And I didn’t tell you to do anything.”

  And then Ben slid his doodle paper across the table to me, grabbed his backpack, and walked out of the kitchen.

  I was left sitting there, trying to remember everything he’d said and looking at the dumb little pictures he had drawn.

  Ben’s a terrible artist. A tree isn’t that hard to draw, and neither is a shop window, but his pictures were so inaccurate. And I saw that he even messed up draw
ing something as simple as doughnuts, because two or three of his doughnuts were ridiculously small, and not only that, they had two holes instead of one.

  Then I saw what my very smart big brother had done: Those weren’t small doughnuts with two holes—he had drawn some buttons!

  Just as Ben had promised, I got an idea. About doing something.

  And it was sort of risky, and it was definitely scary.

  But I did it anyway.

  Last night, just after dark, I sneaked out of the house to our garage. I had carried four boxes of buttons down there from my room before dinner—three boxes of small gray buttons, plus one box of mixed bright colors. I loaded buttons into my camping backpack, strapped it on, and rode my bike seven blocks to school. Then I spread those buttons all around the playfield, throwing big handfuls again and again. I rode home, refilled my pack, and rode to school to fling buttons a second time, and then a third time, and a fourth time. The whole process took more than an hour—and I got back upstairs to my room just before Mom came to say good night.

  So why did I scatter more than one hundred and fifty thousand buttons all over the playground? Because of economics: I did it to change the supply of buttons at Avery Elementary School!

  * * *

  —

  By the time I finish my lunch, a crowd of fourth, fifth, and sixth graders are outside, grabbing up buttons—including Hank. It looks like one of those Easter egg hunts on the lawn at the White House. Even from this far away, I can see some bulging pockets stuffed with buttons.

  According to my brother the economics professor, increasing the supply of buttons will kill the demand for buttons—that’s the theory.

  And I have successfully launched my real-life experiment.

  So, now I have to wait and see what happens.

  * * *

  —

  At the end of the day on Wednesday, it’s a fact that now there are many, many more buttons at school, but they’re mostly small and gray—except for about twenty thousand of the larger, brightly colored ones.

  The final bell rings, and three fifth-grade girls come rushing up to me in the hall outside Mrs. Lang’s room to trade their best Ellie’s Originals for some of my special buttons.