Flipped (22 page)

Six hundred heads turned slowly from side to side, looking at the blockade of teachers on either side of the gym.

“Man,” Darla whispered, “they're not leaving much room for fun, are they?”

Mrs. McClure continued, “Minimum bid is ten dollars, and of course, the sky's the limit, but we don't accept IOUs.” She pointed to her right. “Winning bidders should go directly to the table at the north door when I declare the basket to be sold. And as you're aware, winners and their basket boys have the rest of the school day off and are exempt from tonight's homework in all classes.” She smiled out at the blockade. “Teachers, we appreciate your support on this.

“All right, then!” She put on her reading glasses and looked at a three-by-five card. “Our first basket has been brought by Jeffrey Bisho.” She looked over her glasses at him and said, “Come on up, Jeffrey. Don't be shy!” He inched forward as she continued. “Jeffrey has brought a scrumptious lunch consisting of chicken salad sandwiches, oriental noodles, baby grapes, iced tea, and fortune cookies.” She smiled at him over her glasses. “Sounds delicious, and sounds like fun! Which,” she said, looking back at the crowd, “Jeffrey is! He enjoys skateboarding, skiing, and swimming, but ladies, he also enjoys a day in the park and watching Humphrey Bogart movies.” She turned to him and grinned. “They are a kick, aren't they?”

Poor Jeff tried to smile, but you could tell—he wanted to die.

“All right, then,” said Mrs. McClure as she whipped off her glasses. “Do I hear ten?”

Not only did she hear ten, she heard twelve, fifteen, twenty, and twenty-five, too! “Going … going … gone!” cried Mrs. McClure. “To the young lady in the purple tunic!”

“Who is that?” I asked Darla.

“I think her name's Tiffany,” she said. “She's a seventh grader.”

“Really? Wow. I would never have bid last year! And I …I don't remember bids going up that high, either.”

Darla eyed me. “Which tells me that maybe you
would
bid this year? How much you got?”

I looked at her and almost dissolved right on the spot. “Darla, I didn't bring money on purpose! My neighbor made me take it on the way to school because she owed it to me for eggs and—”

“For eggs? Oh, like Bryce was talking about in the library?”

“Exactly, and—” I looked at her looking at me and stopped cold.

“How can you even
think
about bidding on that boy?”

“I don't want to! But I've liked him for so long. Darla, I've liked him since I was
seven
. And even though I know he's a coward and a sneak and I should never speak to him again, I'm having trouble focusing on that. Especially since Shelly Stalls is after him. And now I've got this money burning a hole in my pocket!”

“Well, I can understand the bit about Shelly Stalls, but if you know that boy's just a big piece of fluffy cheesecake that you're gonna regret eating, I can help you with your diet.” She put out her hand. “Give me the money. I'll hold it for you.”

“No!”

“No?”

“I mean…I can handle this. I've got to handle it.”

She shook her head. “Oh, girl. I'm hurting for you here.”

I looked back at the stage. The auction was happening so fast! They'd be at Bryce in no time. As the bidding continued, the battle in my head got louder and fiercer. What was I going to do?

Then suddenly the gym fell quiet. You could have heard a pin drop. And standing next to Mrs. McClure looking completely mortified was Jon Trulock. Mrs. McClure was scouring the crowd with her eyes, looking very uncomfortable, too.

“What happened?” I whispered to Darla.

“No one's bidding,” she whispered back.

“Do I hear ten?” called Mrs. McClure. “Come on, out there! This lunch is delicious. Strawberry tarts, roast beef and Muenster cheese sandwiches …”

“Oh, no!” I whispered to Darla. “I can't believe I did this to him!”

“You? What did
you
do?”

“I voted for him!”

“Well, you couldn't have been the only one….”

“But why isn't anyone bidding on him? He's … he's so nice.”

Darla nodded. “Exactly.”

That's when I realized what I had to do. My hand shot into the air and I called, “Ten!”

“Ten?” warbled Mrs. McClure. “Did I hear ten?”

I put my hand up higher and said to Darla, “Say twelve.”

“What?”

“Say twelve, I'll outbid you.”

“No way!”

“Darla! He can't go for ten, c'mon!”

“Twelve!” Darla called, but her hand didn't go up very high.

“Fifteen!” I cried.

“Sixteen!” called Darla, and eyed me with a laugh.

I whispered, “Darla! I've only got fifteen.”

Her eyes got enormous.

I laughed and called, “Eighteen!” then held her arm down and said, “But that really is all I've got.”

There was a moment of silence and then, “Eighteen going once! Eighteen going twice … Sold! for eighteen dollars.”

Darla laughed and said, “Whoa, girl! What a rush!”

I nodded. “Yes, it was!”

“Well, no dessert for you. Looks like you got cleaned out by something a little more …uh… nutritious.” She nodded toward the stage. “You gonna go up to the table like you're supposed to? Or you gonna stick around and see the carnage?”

I almost didn't have a choice. Before Mrs. McClure could say two words about Bryce or his basket, Shelly called, “Ten!” Then from the middle of the gym came “Twenty!” It was Miranda Humes, with her hand
way
in the air. They went back and forth, back and forth, higher and higher, until Shelly called, “Sixty-two!”

“I can't believe it,” I whispered to Darla. “Sixty-two dollars! C'mon, Miranda, come
on
.”

“I think she's out. Shelly's got it.”

“Sixty-two dollars going once!” cried Mrs. McClure, but before she could say, Going twice! a voice from the back of the gym called, “A hundred!”

Everyone gasped and turned around to see who had called the bid. Darla whispered, “It's Jenny.”

“Atkinson?”
I asked.

Darla pointed. “Right over there.”

She was easy to spot, standing tall above the others in the
number-seven basketball jersey she almost always wore. “Wow,” I whispered, “I had no idea.”

“Maybe she'll slam-dunk him for you,” Darla said with a grin.

“Who cares?” I giggled. “She slam-dunked Shelly!”

Mrs. McClure was gushing into the microphone about the record-breaking bid when a big commotion broke out over by Miranda. I spotted Shelly's hair, and my first thought was that there was going to be a fight. But instead, Shelly and Miranda turned to face Mrs. McClure and called, “One-twenty-two fifty!”

I choked down a cry. “What?”

“They're teamin' up,” Darla whispered.

“Oh, no-no-no!” I looked over Jenny's way. “Come on, Jenny!”

Darla shook her head and said, “She's through,” and she was. Bryce went to Shelly and Miranda for one hundred twenty-two dollars and fifty cents.

It was a little strange, meeting up with Jon and walking over to the multi-purpose room for lunch. But he was just so nice, and I think grateful that I'd bid, that by the time we got situated at our table, I wasn't feeling so awkward or silly. It was just lunch.

Things would have been easier if they hadn't seated me in direct view of Bryce and his little harem, but I did my best to ignore them. Jon told me all about this radio-controlled airplane that he and his dad were building from scratch, and how he'd been working on it for nearly three months, and
that over the weekend they were finally going to get to try it out. He told me a funny story about soldering the wires wrong and practically starting a fire in their basement, and I asked him about how a radio-controlled airplane works because I didn't really understand it.

So I'd relaxed a lot and was actually having a good time eating lunch with Jon. And I was
so
relieved that I hadn't bid on Bryce. What a fool I would have made of myself! Watching Shelly and Miranda fawning all over him didn't bother me nearly as much as I thought it would. Really, they looked ridiculous.

Jon asked about my family, so I was telling him about my brothers and their band when a huge commotion broke out over at Bryce's table. Suddenly Shelly and Miranda were rolling on the floor like an enormous furball, smearing each other with food.

Out of nowhere Bryce appeared at our table. He grabbed my hand, pulled me a few feet away, and whispered, “Do you like him?”

I was stunned.

He held my other hand and asked again, “Do you like him?”

“You mean Jon?”

“Yes!”

I can't remember
what
I said. He was looking into my eyes, holding my hands tight, and then he began pulling me toward him. My heart was racing and his eyes were closing and his face was coming toward mine…. Right there, in front of all the other basket boys and their dates and the adults, he was going to kiss me.

To
kiss
me.

I panicked. I'd been waiting all my life for that kiss, and now?

I yanked free and ran back to my table, and when I sat down Jon whispered, “Did he just try to kiss you?”

I turned my chair away from Bryce and whispered, “Can we please talk about something else? Anything else?”

People were whispering and looking my way, and when Shelly Stalls came back from cleaning up in the washroom, everyone fell quiet. Her hair looked awful. It was sort of oiled to her scalp and still had little chunks of food in it. She glared at me so hard it looked like she was trying to get laser beams to shoot from her eyes.

A couple of adults steered her back to her seat, and then everyone started whispering double-speed. And Bryce didn't even seem to care! He kept trying to come over and talk to me, but either he'd get intercepted by a teacher or I'd dash away from him before he had a chance to say anything.

When the dismissal bell finally rang, I said a quick goodbye to Jon and bolted out the door. I couldn't reach my bike fast enough! I was the first one off campus, and I pedaled home so hard it felt as though my lungs would burst.

Mrs. Stueby was out front watering her flower bed and she tried to say something to me, but I just dropped my bike in the driveway and escaped into the house. I certainly didn't want to talk about roosters!

My mother heard me slamming doors and came to check on me in my room. “Julianna! What's wrong?”

I flipped over on my bed to face her and wailed, “I am so confused! I don't know what to think or feel or do…!”

She sat down beside me on the bed and stroked my hair. “Tell me what happened, sweetheart.”

I hesitated, then threw my hands up in the air. “He tried to
kiss
me!”

My mother struggled not to let it show, but underneath her composed expression was a growing smile. She leaned in a little and asked, “Who did?”

“Bryce!”

She hesitated. “But you've always liked him….”

The doorbell rang. And rang again. My mom started to get up, but I grabbed her arm and said, “Don't get that!” The bell rang again, and almost right after that there was a loud knocking at the door. “Mom, please! Don't get it. That's probably him!”

“But sweetheart …”

“I was over him! Completely over him!”

“Since when?”

“Since last Friday. After the dinner. If he had vanished from the face of the earth after our dinner at the Loskis', I wouldn't have cared!”

“Why? Did something happen at the dinner that I don't know about?”

I threw myself back onto my pillow and said, “It's too complicated, Mom! I …I just can't talk about it.”

“My,” she said after a moment. “Don't you sound like a teenager.”

“I'm sorry,” I whimpered, because I knew I was hurting her feelings. I sat up and said, “Mom, all those years I liked him? I never really knew him. All I knew was that he had the most beautiful eyes I'd ever seen and that his smile melted my heart
like the sun melts butter. But now I know that inside he's a coward and a sneak, so I've got to get over what he's like on the outside!”

My mother leaned back and crossed her arms. “Well,” she said. “Isn't this something.”

“What do you mean?”

She chewed the side of one cheek, then moved over to chew the other. At last she said, “I shouldn't really discuss it.”

“Why not?”

“Because …I just shouldn't. Besides, I can tell there are things you don't feel comfortable discussing with
me
….”

We stared at each other a moment, neither of us saying a word. Finally I looked down and whispered, “When Chet and I were fixing up the yard, I told him how we didn't own the house and about Uncle David. He must have told the rest of the family, because the day before the Loskis' dinner party I overheard Bryce and his friend making cracks about Uncle David at school. I was furious, but I didn't want you to know because you'd think they were only inviting us over because they felt
sorry
for us.” I looked at her and said, “You just seemed so happy about being invited for dinner.” Then I realized something. “And you know, you've seemed happier ever since.”

She held my hand and smiled. “I have a lot to be happy about.” Then she sighed and said, “And I already knew they knew about Uncle David. It was
fine
that you talked about him. He's not a secret or anything.”