The Friendship Riddle (25 page)

“You ran into me!” I cried out.

“I did not. And, anyway, I called it. It was between us and I called it and you should have stepped aside.”

“I didn't hear you call it,” Lucas said.

“Me, neither,” Coco said.

Ms. Wickersham trotted over. “What's going on here, kiddos?”

Melinda pointed at me. “It was between us. She should have moved. She practically tripped me.” She rubbed her elbow, and then her ankle.

“You okay?” Ms. Wickersham asked. “You hurt your ankle again?”

Of course. Ms. Wickersham coached the girls' basketball team, and Melinda was her star player.

“I don't know. Maybe.”

“Why don't you go get some ice.”

“If I'm sidelined, it's all Ruth's fault. There should be two gym classes. One for athletes, and one for idiots.”

“Did you trip her?” Ms. Wickersham asked. She tried to make her face look soft and caring.

“No,” I said.

“She didn't,” Coco said. “Really.”

“I don't need your help,” I said to him. He recoiled. It was like watching one of those sensitive plants that collapsed in on itself when you touched it. I didn't care. I turned to
Ms. Wickersham. “Either you believe me or you don't, Ms. Wickersham. She crashed into me because she didn't think I would hit the ball. And I probably wouldn't have. So I guess she was right. Because Melinda's always right, isn't she?”

“Ruth—” Ms. Wickersham said. Her voice had a sheen of calm over a layer of panic, like when there's a thaw that just melts the snow enough so it turns to ice, and then it snows again on top. “No one is accusing you of anything.”

I shook my head and pressed my lips together. No one was? Melinda was. Melinda had.

“Put some ice on that, Melinda.” Ms. Wickersham's voice edged closer to anger. Melinda heaved a sigh and limped over toward the first aid box, where she grabbed one of those ice packs that you smash and some sort of chemical process gets going to make it cold. When she smacked it, she glared right at me. “Volleyball is a tough game to get the hang of,” Ms. Wickersham told me.

“Ms. Wickersham,” Charlotte said, barely above a whisper. “It's true.”

“Ruth really tripped Melinda?” Ms. Wickersham asked.

“No.” She stepped closer and leaned her head right into Ms. Wickersham, with her back to Melinda. “Melinda ran into Ruth. She didn't call the ball. I know it was an accident. She's probably embarrassed.”

“It wasn't an accident,” I said.

Charlotte looked up at me with her sad eyes—the sad
eyes she'd worn ever since the library collapsed—and I shut my mouth. I shouldn't ruin her gesture. It just might be the last favor she ever did for me.

During study hall I asked Ms. Lawson if I could go to the library, and then hurried there as fast as I could so Coco wouldn't find me.

Mrs. Abernathy beckoned me over. “No word yet from the professor,” she said. “Sorry about that.”

“It doesn't matter,” I said. “It's just the way things go.”

She pushed her glasses up into her hair, where there was already another pair of reading glasses. “It's a good question. You have me curious now, too.”

“My mom was the one who asked,” I told her. “I just said I would try to find out. I think I'm going to go read now.”

“I still have
The Hobbit
if you want it.”

I shook my head and held up
The Riddled Cottage.

“Harriet Wexler. Got it.”

As I walked back to my spot, I thought I saw Coco at the library door. I tucked my head down and tightened my shoulders. He wasn't an idiot. If he saw me, he would know what my body language meant.

I dropped to the floor under the stairs and pulled my knees up to make myself as small as possible, like a roly-poly bug curling up into a spiral. I knew I should still be studying for the bee, even on my own. When Mum came back, I wanted
to be able to wow her, leave no doubt in her mind that I would win. But instead I opened up
The Riddled Cottage
.

When I'd left Taryn, she'd been in trouble. She'd found the cottage in the woods. Tired, cold, and soaked through from a rainstorm, she'd stumbled inside, and there, sleeping on the floor, she'd found a troll.

Now Taryn stared at the troll. He stood up, stretched his arms above his head, and belched the stinkiest, loudest belch that Taryn had ever experienced. It knocked her right onto the floor. The troll marched over to her and loomed above her. She was sure it was the end of her days. He scooped up a club and held it above him, ready to thrash her. But there was something in his eyes—fear, remorse, panic—and Taryn yelled out, “Wait!”

“Wait?” the troll croaked back.

“I am Taryn Greenbottom, squire to Sir Laudholm the Brave. Who are you?”

“I am Charlak Rapshidir, Troll of the Forest. You have come upon my cottage and, as is my cursed duty, I shall kill you.”

“Cursed duty?” Taryn asked. “Is there no way around this fate?”

“Solve my riddle, and we shall be free.”

Then he told her the riddle:

My visage high above your city,

Shines like gold, but half as pretty.

Arms I've none, but hands I've two:

Mondo, mini, black not blue.

Climb my stairs and have no fears,

All that threatens are my gears.

I stuck my finger in the book to mark my place. Visage. What was a visage? The dictionary was on the other side of the room on a huge stand. If I came out, Coco might still be there waiting for me, so I moved on to the next part: “Shines like gold, but half as pretty.” Silver, maybe.

Arms I've none, but hands I've two:

Mondo, mini, black not blue.

What has hands but no arms? It sounded like something out of one of those old joke books from elementary school.
When is a door not a door? When it's ajar!
Mondo, mini—that was like big and small. Big and small hands? A clock!

I didn't worry about Coco. I scampered across to the dictionary and flipped to the
V
s. “Visage” was a face. A clock has a face and hands but no arms, and, yes, gears!

I sprinted back to my nook and flipped back to the page with the riddle. Taryn pondered it for much less time than I had. “A clock,” she said simply.

And then a magical thing happened, as magical things are wont to do in Harriet Wexler books.

The troll collapsed in on itself.
I've won!
Taryn thought.
I've defeated the troll!
But it was stranger still than that. For in the place of the troll, a man seemed to grow up out of the ground. The troll's clothes were far too big for him and hung off him like bedsheets. “Lord Charlesmoore!” Taryn called out,
for that was who the man was: a noble knight who had been missing for years. He had entered the Forest of Westbegotten and never returned, presumed dead.

“Taryn Greenbottom!” he exclaimed. “I knew it would be you who answered my call.” And then he kissed her.

And I threw the book against the stairs.

My luck—as little of it as I had—ran out on Wednesday. Coco caught me on my way to the library.

“Ruth,” he said, just as I was reaching for the door. He had a stack of word cards in his hand.

I wished for one of Taryn's vials of invisibility juice.

I turned. “Oh,” I said. “Studying. I forgot.”

“You didn't forget.”

“We don't have to do this,” I said.

“Do what?”

“Study. I'm really prepared.”

“You are. But you can be more prepared.”

Outside, the snow was shiny and hard across the playing
fields, reflecting back the dull, flat sunlight. “I can study on my own.”

He hitched his backpack up onto his shoulders. It was blue and perfectly clean, unlike mine, or anyone else's, for that matter. My red one had a black stain all up one side from where a pen had broken.

“You heard. The other day, you heard me and my dad.”

I nodded.

“I didn't mean it.”

“You do,” I told him. “You said you don't even care who wins. You and Melinda are just—”

“Melinda?”

“I saw you talking to her outside the room that day. With Charlotte.”

He turned red. Not slowly like normal, but instantly, brightly. “She thought,” he began. Then again: “She said—” He shook his head. “I'm not working with Melinda on anything, and I tried to tell you before—”

“Well, even if you're not working with Melinda, you still think spelling bees are stupid. So stupid you purposely messed up on the test so you wouldn't have to be a part of it.”

“I don't think spelling bees are stupid. I was angry with my dad.”

“What was that thing about the geography bee?”

“Some schools do them. It's a lot like the spelling bee, I guess, but through
National Geographic
. And he was trying
to convince the school to do one. I guess he thought that I could win.”

None of this sounded especially awful to me. “So?”

“So, I don't care about winning.”

“Then why are you helping me beat Emma? I mean, if you think it's so stupid, why not just help your sister win again?”

“It's
all
my dad cares about. Winning.”

His voice had that foghorn quality to it again, so loud yet forlorn, and I realized that even if I didn't understand exactly what was bothering him, it pulled as heavy as an anchor. I didn't know what to do with my hands. They felt like they were hanging off my body, weighing a million pounds. I didn't know what to do at all. Mom would reach over and pat his forearm, maybe even give it a squeeze, but I was not my mom and he was not my son. He was my friend. Maybe. “Oh.”

“I'm better than Emma. A lot better. I would've beaten her. And so my dad would've backed me. He would've cheered for me, not her. He wouldn't care about her at all.”

“That still doesn't explain why you wanted to help me instead.”

“I know it doesn't make sense,” he conceded. “In my mind, it did. Sort of.” He shook his head. “My dad was a great athlete. Soccer, basketball, baseball. He went to college on a scholarship. He won and won and won. And then along came us kids, and none of us are very good at sports. But we're good at spelling. And geography. And math. My
brother is the top scorer on the math team, and he's only in tenth grade. And for my dad, it's like, well, he can't be the dad cheering in the stands at the big game, but he can still be on the winning team.”

I nodded.

“I just wanted him to see that sometimes you do things just because, you know. Just because it's fun. Like when you are spelling, figuring it out, it's fun.”

I wasn't sure if “fun” was the right word. “I guess it's more satisfying if it's not a word I have memorized, and I figure it out from the roots and origin and all that.”

“Exactly,” he said. Then again: “Exactly. Sometimes I wonder if my dad even liked playing those sports. He doesn't play them anymore, not at all. He doesn't even watch them on television unless he's going to someone's house for a Super Bowl party or whatever.”

“So how was my beating Emma supposed to help with that?”

“I don't know.” He shook his head. “It was never a clear plan. I just wanted him to see—this is what I tried to tell you before—
he's
the reason they flubbed. The pressure and the enthusiasm. But it would have been so much worse for Emma if he didn't care, you know?”

“And worse for you,” I said.

“I thought that if he saw me helping you, and if you won, he'd get so mad that we'd have to talk. He'd have to stop and look and see what he was doing, and we could
actually talk about it.” He held the cards in his hands up to his chest as if he were hugging them, and himself. The one on top said
OUGHT/AUGHT
, and I guessed we were supposed to be working on homonyms again. “Ought,” as in should, an obligation, versus “aught,” or everything, the opposite of naught. He sighed. “I'm sorry, Ruth. I really am. I was using you, I guess, but I thought it was okay because I was also helping you. And now we're friends, and—” As he spoke, his face got redder and redder, so his cheeks were taking on a purple hue.

“He was right, though. It would help you with your Harvard camp application.”

Coco shrugged, but it was more like his head sinking down into his chest than his shoulders coming up to reach his ears. “It was stupid.”

“It wasn't so stupid,” I told him. “Sometimes you can want and want something so much from a person, and you just can't get them to do it.”

He lifted his brown eyes. “Like what?”

I could have told him about Mum, how she was never home. Or about how Mom always talked big but never followed through—or worse, would decide to do something and make a big mess for me, so now I was stuck changing in the supply closet. Instead, I reached into my bag and pulled out two origami-paper envelopes.