The Lemonade War (11 page)

She had won. She had really and truly won the Lemonade War.

"Just promise me one thing," said Megan. "No lemonade stand tomorrow! Okay?"

"O-
kay,
" said Jessie. She didn't need a lemonade stand on Sunday if she had two hundred and eight dollars today!

"My dad said tomorrow's the last day before the heat breaks," said Megan. "So we're going to the beach for the whole day. Wanna come?"

"Sure!" said Jessie.

"Maybe Evan wants to come, too?" said Megan.

Jessie shook her head. "No. Evan's busy all day tomorrow. He told me he's got plans."

Megan shrugged. "Too bad for him."

"Yep," said Jessie, thinking of all that money. "Too bad for him."

negotiation
(
) n. A method of bargaining so that you can reach an agreement.

Evan looked up from the marble track he was building when Jessie walked in the front door. She looked hot. She looked sweaty. She looked ... happy. Really happy. Like she'd just gotten an A+. Or like ... like she'd just won a war.

"What are you smiling for?" asked Evan, holding a marble at the top of the track.

"No reason." Jessie put her hands on her hips and stared at Evan. She looked like one of those goofy yellow smiley faces—all mouth.

"Well, quit looking at me, would ya? It's creepifying. You look like you're going to explode or something." Evan dropped the marble into the funnel. It raced through the track, picking up speed around the curves. It passed the flywheel, sending the flags spinning, then fell into the final drop. When it reached the end of the track it went sailing through the air like a beautiful silver bird.

And fell short.

The marble landed on the ground, instead of in the bull's-eye cup.

Evan muttered under his breath and adjusted the position of the cup.

"Raise the end of the track," said Jessie. "You'll get more loft."

Evan looked at her angrily. The marble had fallen into the cup the last ten times he'd done it. Why did it have to fall short the one time
she
was watching? "Don't tell me what to do," he said. Why was she smiling like that?

"I didn't tell you what to do," she said. "I just made a suggestion. Take it or leave it." She turned
to walk up the stairs. "Grumpminster Fink," she tossed over her shoulder.

Evan threw a marble at her disappearing back but missed by a mile. Well, he hadn't really been aiming anyway; he just wanted that feeling of throwing something. He'd been feeling the need to throw something these past four days.

Grumpminster Fink. That was the name of a character he'd made up when he was six and Jessie was five. That was back when Mom and Dad were fighting a lot and Evan and Jessie just had to get out of the house. They'd scramble up the Climbing Tree—Evan had his branch, Jessie had hers—and wait it out. Sometimes they had to wait a long time. And once, when Jessie was thirsty and impatient and cranky, Evan had said, "Be quiet and I'll tell you a story about Grumpminster Fink."

Grumpminster Fink was a man who was cranky and mean and made everybody miserable. But deep down, he wanted people to love him. It's just that every time he tried to do something nice, it turned out all wrong. Evan had made up a lot of stories
about Mr. Fink in that tree. But after Dad left, there just weren't any more stories to tell.

No one in the whole world, besides Jessie and Evan, knew about Grumpminster Fink. And Evan hadn't thought about him in years.

"Hey!" he said sharply. He heard Jessie stop at the top of the stairs, but she didn't come down.

"Do you want to call this whole thing off?" he asked.

"What?" she shouted.

"This ... this ... Lemonade War," he said.

"Call it off?"

"Yeah," he said. "Just say nobody wins and nobody loses."

Jessie walked down the stairs and stood with her arms crossed.

Evan looked at her.

He missed her.

He had spent the whole day—the third to last day before school started—by himself. It stunk. It totally stunk. If Jessie had been around—and they hadn't been fighting with each other—they could
have played air hockey or made pretzels or built a marble track with twice as many gizmos that launched the marble into the bull's-eye cup every time. Jessie was very precise. She was good at getting the marble to go into the cup.

"Whaddya say?" he asked.

Jessie looked puzzled. "I don't know..." she said, frowning. "You see, Megan kinda, well, she..."

Evan felt his face go hot. Megan Moriarty. Every time he thought of her his throat got all squeezed and scratchy. It was like the allergic reaction he had if he accidentally ate a shrimp.

"You told Megan Moriarty about—
everything?
" he asked, feeling itchy all over.

"No. Well ... what 'everything'?" asked Jessie. Evan thought she looked like a fish caught in a net.

"You did." And suddenly Evan knew exactly why Jessie had been smiling when she walked in the door. And why she didn't want to call off the war. She had done it. Again. She had figured out some way to show the world just how stupid he was. Like the time he'd come home with 100 percent on his
weekly spelling quiz—the
only
time he'd ever gotten every word right—to find that Jessie had won a statewide poetry-writing contest. He'd thrown his paper into the trash without even telling his mom. What was the point?

Evan didn't know how, but somehow Jessie'd found a way to earn more than one hundred and three dollars. She was going to beat him. And Megan Moriarty knew all about it. And she would tell everyone else. All the girls would know. Paul would know. And Ryan. And Adam and Jack.

Scott Spencer would know.
Can you believe it? He lost to his little sister. The one who's going to be in our class. What a loser!

"You know what?" he said, pushing past her. "Forget it! Just forget I said anything. The war is on. O-N. Prepare to die."

malicious mischief
(
) n. The act of purposely destroying the property of someone else's business.

Jessie was all in knots. Evan was madder than ever at her, and she couldn't figure out why. He had said, "Do you want to call off the war?" and she had said, "Sure, let's call off the war." Or
something
like that. That's what she'd meant to say. That's what she'd
wanted
to say.

But what had she
really
said? She'd mentioned Megan. Oh! She'd almost spilled the beans about Megan giving her the $104. But she hadn't! She'd kept her mouth shut, just in time.

Jessie smiled, remembering that.

So why had Evan acted like that? What was the matter with him?

Jessie lay down on her bed. The world was a confusing place, and she needed Evan to help her figure it out. If this is what fourth grade was going to be like, she might as well just give up now.

And there was something else that was tying her up in knots. That two hundred and eight dollars—it wasn't
really
hers. Megan had given it to her to make a donation. She hadn't given it to Jessie the way Evan's friends had given their money to him. (That still made her so mad when she thought about it. Oh, she wanted to get even with him for saying she didn't have friends!) So even though it looked like she had two hundred and eight dollars in her lock box, only half of that was money she could honestly call her own.

Still ... if push came to shove and she needed it all to win—

Sure, she'd use it all! This was a war!

But if she pretended that all the money was hers—

Hey, what if Evan has even more than that?

So if she lost, even
with
Megan's money—

Gulp!

Jessie hadn't thought of that. If she lost, even with two hundred and eight dollars. If she lost.
Oh my gosh. Winner takes all.
She would lose all of Megan's money to Evan. How could Jessie explain that to her friend?
You see, I took all the money you earned to help rescue animals and I lost it to my brother, who's going to buy an iPod.
Megan would hate her. All the girls who were friends with Megan would hate her. And Evan already hated her. So that was that. Goodbye, fourth grade.

She couldn't use Megan's money to try to win the bet. It was too risky. But did she have enough to win on her own?

Jessie felt desperation rise in her throat. How much money did Evan have? She had to find out.

Jessie tiptoed upstairs to the attic office. She listened at the closed door. Her mother was on the phone. Then Jessie snuck downstairs. Evan was watching TV in the family room. Like a whisper,
she crept back upstairs. And into Evan's room.

There was a strict rule in the Treski house: No one was allowed in anyone else's room without an
express invitation.
That was the term. It meant that Jessie had to say, "Evan, can I come into your room?" and Evan had to say, "Yes," before she put even one toe over the line.

So even though Evan's door was wide open, just crossing the threshold was a direct violation that carried a fine of one dollar. But that was the least of Jessie's concerns.

She snuck over to Evan's bookshelf and picked up a carved cedar box—Evan's chosen souvenir from the family summer vacation. The orange-red wood of the box had a scene etched into the top: a sailboat sailing past a lighthouse while gulls flew overhead. The words "Bar Harbor, Maine" were painted in the sky. The box had brass hinges and a clever latch. What it didn't have was a lock.

Jessie flipped open the lid, immediately smelling the spicy, sharp scent of the wood. She couldn't believe her eyes.

Her hands started pawing through the bills. Dozens of them. There was a ten and a bunch of fives and more ones than she could count. She sat on Evan's bed and quickly sorted out the money.

Evan had one hundred and three dollars and eleven cents.

Eighty-nine cents less than she had.

Eighty-nine cents. He could sell one lousy cup of lemonade tomorrow and beat her. And there was nothing she could do about it because she'd be at the beach.

I can't let him win,
she thought.
I can't.
She had gotten to the point where she couldn't even remember what had started the whole war. She couldn't remember why it had been so important to win in the first place. Now she just had to win.

She messed up the money and stuffed it back into the box.

That night in bed, she lay awake trying to think of some way to stop Evan from selling even a single glass.

Sometimes in the dark, dark thoughts come.

Jessie had a very dark thought.

The next morning was Sunday, and the rule in the Treski house was that everyone could sleep in as late as he or she wanted. But Jessie awoke to the sound of the electric garage door opening. She sat up in bed and checked the clock: 8:00 a.m. Then she looked out her window just in time to see Evan pedaling away on his bike, his backpack on his back. She quickly dressed and hurried down to the kitchen.

Her mom was making scrambled eggs and toast. "Hi, Jess. Want some?" she asked, pointing with her spatula at the pan of sizzling eggs.

"No, thanks," said Jessie.

"I washed your blue bathing suit last night. It's hanging in the basement. What time are the Moriartys picking you up?"

"Nine o'clock," said Jessie. "Mom, where did Evan go?"

"He went to the store to buy some lemonade
mix." Jessie's mom scooped the eggs onto a plate and put the pan in the sink. When she turned on the faucet, the pan hissed like an angry snake. A great cloud of steam puffed into the air and then disappeared. "What's going on, Jess? What's with all the lemonade stands and you and Evan fighting?"

Jessie opened the pantry cupboard and pulled out a box of Kix. "Nothing," she said. She watched the cereal very carefully as she poured. She didn't want to look at her mother right then.

Mrs. Treski got the milk out of the refrigerator and put it on the counter next to Jessie's bowl. "It doesn't seem like nothing. It seems like there's a lot of bad feeling between the two of you."