The Friendship Riddle (12 page)

“You just shouldn't,” she told me. “I'm trying to help.”

I turned toward the hallway. Could I just walk away?

“If you would just be a little more normal, Ruth, it wouldn't be so bad. You'd see. Melinda's really nice—if you would just—” She stopped. “Never mind. Forget it.” She turned and left me
there standing in the dirty puddle of water that had melted off our boots.

I wanted to be angry, but my heart was pitter-pattering because Charlotte had maybe just told me she still wanted to be my friend.

I stared right into the nonexistent eyes of Ferdinand Frontenac. He seemed to be sleeping, dreaming of his glory days as the great unifier of the peninsula.

The squares on the floor were made up of four smaller squares, two feet by two feet in total. I flipped through Lucas's
Essential Chess
book to the page about how knights can move. They make L shapes. I turned so my back faced the statue, moved two big squares to the left, then forward one. I was about to move forward like a rook, but then I stopped. If Ferdinand was the king, then I should start where the knight would start on a chessboard.

From the gym down the hall, I heard the thump, thump, and squeak of basketball practice. Charlotte was in there. She'd tried out for the team with Melinda, and both had made the cut, though Melinda was on the traveling team, and Charlotte was on the more-junior varsity team, only they didn't call it that, since they didn't want to make anyone feel bad.

I flipped back in the book to the diagram of how the chessboard was set for the start of the game. The knight was to the right of the king, with a bishop between them. I moved so there was one square between me and the statue. I wondered if Coco played chess. I could ask him, but then he might want to know why, and I didn't want to share these clues with anyone. If I found a couple more, I could bring them to Charlotte. Or maybe this would be my solo expedition, like Taryn in
The Riddled Cottage
. Either way, I didn't want anyone else involved, not even Coco.

“What are you doing?” It was Melinda, because of course it was Melinda. Her ponytail was high on her head, and she was wearing a white sleeveless shirt and bright pink short shorts that matched her pink-and-white basketball shoes. In her hand she held a shining mouth guard.

“The latest dance craze. Chess hop. Haven't you heard of it?”

She rolled her eyes.

“My New York City friends told me about it.” I didn't have any New York City friends, but I could. My moms still had friends down there, and some had kids. I even knew their names if Melinda pressed me.

Melinda, though, looked me up and down. My flannel button-down was not tailored to hug every potential curve. It was a man's shirt, from L.L.Bean, with the sleeves rolled up. I wore it over old sweatpants that were a little tight and a lot short but long enough to tuck into my snow boots. Lena approved, but Melinda sniffed out the truth: I had been late for school and my weekend clothes were close at hand.

“Charlotte says you're all right, but I think she's got you all wrong.”

I couldn't stop myself. “She said that?”

Melinda smirked. She was the kind of girl you should never show a weakness to, and now she had me.

“Because I think she's a—” I couldn't bring myself to say the word Melinda threw around so easily in the locker room. “Traitor.”

Melinda laughed. “I'll be sure to tell her that.”

I flinched but didn't tell her not to, because then she'd have me two times over. She spun so her ponytail whipped around, and marched back to the gym.

I stood there wondering how she was going to relay this conversation to Charlotte. I would come off weird, for sure, even weirder than I had actually acted. She would definitely tell Charlotte that I had called her a traitor, and probably embellish it with a few more details. I blew my hair out of my eyes with an exasperated sigh. Stupid. It was stupid to ever open my mouth around Melinda.

I picked up where I had been when she'd interrupted me. I moved like the knight, then I became the rook. Rooks can go in any direction (forward, backward, left, right), as far as they can until they bump into something. So I walked straight forward. I could see the side door of the school in front of me. I didn't know what I expected to happen. A loose tile I could pry up? A clue to drop from the sky?

Of course neither happened. I went back to where the knight turned into the rook and tried again. This time to the left. I brushed by the door to the main office. It was not the same as running into it, but maybe this was what the clue meant. So I opened the door. Dr. Dawes, the principal, was still there, in a back office working with a low light. There was a display of old yearbooks, and I paged through them quickly. Nothing but falsely smiling face after falsely smiling
face. When we did school pictures this year, I didn't smile. The photographer tried in a halfhearted way to cajole me, but I remained straight-lipped. Mom made me get retakes and so I grinned like a monkey. She wasn't happy about that, but she still framed the biggest one and hung it up above the couch in the living room with one of those gallery lights shining on it. I think she was trying to embarrass me, but it wasn't like I had anyone over. The mice and spiders could laugh all they wanted.

Next to the yearbooks was a stand with some brochures. Nothing. A display case with history and awards. I peeked around looking for a telltale envelope shoved somewhere.

“Oh, hello, Ruth. Can I help you?” Dr. Dawes asked.

I shook my head. “I'm okay.”

Dr. Dawes hesitated. “So, what are you in here for?”

“Oh,” I said. “I wanted to check the lost and found.”

Dr. Dawes pointed to a box by the door. “What did you lose?”

“My retainer.”

I didn't wear a retainer.

“Oh, dear!” Dr. Dawes exclaimed. She hurried over to the box and started digging through. “I know how expensive those can be. Did you ask in the cafeteria?”

I shook my head again.

She held up a wrinkled sweatshirt that I knew belonged to Charlotte, but I didn't say anything. She stacked all the clothes on her thigh as she crouched next to the box. “I
don't see it,” she said. “But listen, I can send an e-mail out to teachers.”

“It's okay,” I said.

“Really, I would like to help you find it.”

“You know, the more I think about it, the more I think I just forgot to put it in this morning.”

She cocked her head to the side. “You sure?”

I nodded.

She dropped the clothes back into the bin, and then, in one quick motion, stood and put her hand on my arm. “How are you doing, Ruth?”

“Fine. It's really no big deal. I'm practically done with it.”

“I meant in general. You feel like things are going okay?”

“Sure. I'm excited about the spelling bee.”

She nodded and pursed her lips in a way that showed me she was really listening. I didn't think it was an act, but she still looked a little ridiculous. “And friends? Are you making some good friends here?”

“I'm making friends.” I was making acquaintances, really, like Lena and Coco, but didn't want to get into it with Dr. Dawes.

“I've seen you chatting with Lena. And I heard Christopher is helping you to study for the bee.”

“Yes.”

“He must be a good help. Spelling genes run in that family.”

“He is. Dr. Dawes?”

“Yes, dear.” She leaned in.

“I need to get going.”

She stood up straight. “Of course, Ruth. See you tomorrow.”

“See you tomorrow.”

I eased out of the office and made sure she had gone back to her desk before I tried one last time. Going backward as the rook would just bring me to the wall, so I went right. It brought me to the door of the gymnasium. Through the small window I could see the girls' basketball team practicing. Charlotte dribbled the ball in place while wearing a yellow pinny. Melinda was talking to her. She leaned in close and whispered something into her ear.

I'd have to check out the gym another time. No clue was worth walking into that lion's den.

Mom had to work late, so after school I went to the library. First I checked my e-mail. The account had been a “gift” for my eleventh birthday. Charlotte had gotten the same, and nearly all my e-mails had been from her at first. Now I only ever bothered to check because I was a member of the Harriet Wexler fan club, the Greenbottoms, and they sent out a monthly newsletter that I hoped would have arrived. Instead I had an e-card from Mum. It was one of those retro ones, with a bee holding a bouquet of flowers. The caption said:
“You get my heart buzzing!” Mum's message said: “Sorry I cannot be there to help in person. STOP.” For some reason, Mum thought it was funny to send me e-mail messages that were like old telegrams. “Here is a link to help you study. STOP. Will arrive by soonest aeroplane. STOP. Much love, Mum.” She never wrote “STOP” after she signed off, because once I told her it looked like she meant she was going to stop loving me.

I clicked on the link. It went to Word Central from Merriam-Webster with a bunch of games that you could use to study spelling. Before, it would have seemed like fun, but after a few sessions with Coco, it almost seemed like a sad way to study. I would go back later, I decided, and try some of the games then.

Next I pretended I was still doing the shelf reading for Eliot, but I was just looking for more ugly books that might have notes in them. In the 500s, I found a book called
Chemical Equations and YOU!
It had a puke-green cover with bland red type. When I pulled it out, I saw that the cover had a picture of a test tube with a man and a woman swirling out of it surrounded by smoke. The woman wore a big flower in her hair and the man had an eye patch. I was flipping through it, sure that a book this ugly must have a note in it, when someone said, “Oh, hi, Ruth, I thought that was you!”

Coco.

He carried a stack of books from the tween/teen area and
had his hat pulled on so low that it hid his chocolate-brown hair. “Hi,” I said as I twisted my head to read the titles on the spines. He had the latest Andromeda Rex book (
yuck
), but also two by Harriet Wexler, and one called
Corpses and Skeletons: The Science of Forensic Anthropology.

“
Corpses and Skeletons
?” I asked.

“Yeah!” He tugged the book from the bottom of the pile. “Ms. Pepper got it for me. It's a little old. Hopefully they'll put out a new edition soon.” He stared at the cover with admiration, but when he looked up and saw me staring at him, he gave a sheepish smile. “Forensic anthropology, it's, like, studying the remains of people to learn about history. It's really cool. Not gross.”

“I don't mind gross things,” I said. “In fact, Charlotte and I used to mix up really gross concoctions and then drink them. Only she could never do it. Only me.”

“Really?” He sounded a little impressed. “Anyway, it really isn't gross. It's what I want to be when I grow up, I think.”

“So, like, you'd go around and look at old bodies?”

He nodded. “That's how I got interested in geography. But you can do it anywhere. Like, remember when they were digging up Stewart Street, down by the edge of town, and they found that old cemetery? Well, they had to call in all these forensic anthropologists to figure out who the bodies were and how old and everything.”

It turned out it had been a graveyard for people too poor to pay to be buried. They'd moved all the bodies into the graveyard up the hill.

“They let me come and watch them. It was amazing.”

“That does sound cool,” I said. Because it did. “How'd you even get interested in that?”

“Well, you know, I liked dinosaurs a lot as a kid.”

“Who didn't?” I asked.

“Right. Exactly. But then one day I guess I wondered if anyone studied human bones the same way, and it turns out they do, and that was even more interesting to me.” He shrugged. “Anyway, what about you. What are you looking at? Find something good?”