The Friendship Riddle (8 page)

“It's more than just fantasy,” I told him.

“What do you mean?”

“A lot of fantasy is about the world and the creatures and all that. But her worlds are simple. It's the characters that are complicated.”

“I see,” he said. And I thought that maybe he did, which was refreshing. Charlotte had once said, “I don't get it. An elf and a human had a baby? How is that even possible?”

I went on: “I think maybe it's more like the quest. The adventure. I don't know, they just make you think, think about what you would do, what your quest would be.”

“Do people go on quests anymore?”

I wished we did, but he was right. “That's why you need to read about them. It's the same as a series like Andromeda Rex. I mean, it's not like you really think you're going to have a world with time stops and teleporting through wormholes and all that, right?”

“Well, that's science fiction,” he said.

“But they're both fiction. They make you think about things, but they aren't actually real.”

“But science fiction
could
be real.”

“Maybe. But the authors are just guessing, don't you think? No one knows what's really going to happen in the future.”

He pushed his floppy hair out of his eyes. “Adam and Dev and those guys don't really talk about books like this. They just talk about what's cool and how they would rule the world if they could stop time or time travel. Adam read
When You Reach Me
and all he could say in the end was that if he figured out how to go back in time, he would bet on all the World Series games.”

“I don't know Adam very well, but he seems pretty financially oriented.”

Coco laughed. “You could say that. Anyway, it's nice talking to you about books. Maybe I could borrow one of those Harriet Wexler books sometime.”

“This one?” I asked.

“Maybe when you're done—”

“
 
'Cause I got this one from Eliot—Mr. Diamond—at the library. It hasn't even come out yet.”

“I thought you might have others at home.”

“I do.”

“Okay.”

“Oh!” I said, feeling like a dunce. “Well, sure, I could bring you one. What one do you think you would like? The Taryn Greenbottom series is the best, but some people like
A River Slowly
better. That's a stand-alone book, and it's more science fiction. It's about time travel, too. You might like that one.”

“Whichever. They both sound good.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

“Do you like riddles?” I asked. I didn't know why. I had no intention of telling anyone else about the notes in the books.

“Sometimes. I don't like dumb riddles like that one about a stranger coming to the door asking for food and you have peanut butter, tuna, and pickles. What do you open first?”

“The door,” I replied.

He grinned. “Of course you got it! I said pickles because you could give the strangers a pickle while you tried to figure out what to give him for a real meal.”

“I didn't mean that kind of riddle.”

“What kind did you mean?”

“Nothing,” I said. I pointed at the book cover. “It's just that this book is called
The Riddled Cottage
, and it got me thinking about riddles. We should get back to studying.”

He stared right in my face for a minute, and I wondered
if he could tell I was lying. Not lying, exactly. I had started down one path and then made a right turn. My riddles. My mystery.

“
 
‘Didgeridoo.'
 
”

“What?”

“An aboriginal wind instrument from Australia.”

“Is that on the list?”

“No. I just like it.”

“Are there any alternate pronunciations?”

“I don't think so, no.”

“
D-I-D-G-E-E-R-I-D-O-O
.”

“Ha! Stumped you!”

“Is that the old, crusty coach coming through?”

“Nah.” He smiled. “I just wanted to make sure you weren't totally perfect.”

He smiled at me again and so I smiled back.

And then the bell rang.

The next afternoon, when I returned to Ms. Lawson's room for the spelling bee participants' meeting, the four eighth graders had already claimed the couch. Coco's sister, Emma, sat to the far left, twirling her blond hair in her fingers and occasionally sucking on the ends. I didn't have any friends there, of course, so I took a seat next to Dev. He had a notebook in front of him with the words “spelling bee” written in straight, square letters. He bounced his pen on the paper,
making the button on the end click, click, click like a playing card in the spokes of a bicycle wheel. I imagined the letters were little soldiers marching to this furious beat.

“So,” Dev said, but then his voice trailed off. It was like he knew he should say something to me, but didn't know what. Was he angry, I wondered, that Coco was working with me?

“So,” I said back. “Do you watch the bee?”

He hesitated. “Well, yes, I went with—I mean, wait, do you mean the county bee? Or the one on television?”

“The one on television. The Scripps National Spelling Bee.”

He shook his head. “I never expected to be here,” he told me. “I don't actually know what I'm doing here at all.”

“Secret speller,” I murmured.

“What?”

“Nothing. Just something Ms. Broadcheck said. About secret spellers. It doesn't matter.”

Dev nodded, though, as if he understood. “When Ms. Lawson said we had to take this test, I figured Coco would be here.”

“Because of his sister?” I prompted.

“Sure, I guess. And his brother, Clint. But more just him. You know, Coco.”

I didn't really know Coco, but I supposed it didn't surprise me that he'd be expected to do well on the test. He was probably the smartest boy in our grade. Smartest after Lucas, anyway, who at that moment was crouched on the
chair of one of Ms. Lawson's chair-desks reading a graphic novel about Zeus and biting his fingernails.

As if he could sense me looking at him, he raised his eyes to look at me. “I'm going to write my own graphic novel of Greek mythology. I'm just checking out the competition.” Then he ducked his head again. I heard a snicker from a seventh-grade boy who was so big, his legs stretched way out into the aisle in front of him.

Dev placed his pen down in the center of his notebook. “Last year I went with him to watch Emma, and he was right next to me writing the words down in a book for her. Only he wrote them before the spellers said them. And he got them all right. Every single one. So how come he isn't here?”

I didn't have a chance to ponder the question. Dr. Dawes, our principal, and Ms. Lawson came into the room together. Ms. Lawson carried a stack of papers. As she began passing them around, I realized Charlotte wasn't there. So maybe she had dropped out, after all. Good.

“Welcome, spellers!” Dr. Dawes exclaimed. “This is going to be an exciting few weeks for you!”

I don't know if she expected us to break into applause or war whoops of excitement, but we remained silent. The big seventh grader—Max, I think that was his name—scuffed his work boot against the floor. That was about it.

The door opened, and there was Charlotte, small and tentative. She surveyed the room. There were two open seats in the circle that Ms. Lawson had created. One next to me.
One next to Lucas. I saw her weighing her options. Her gaze drifted over to the couch. She was small. She might be able to fit there. If they let her in. She took a deep breath and then slid into the desk next to mine. I guess that meant I was the lesser of two evils.

“Hi,” I whispered.

“Hi,” she whispered back.

And suddenly my mind exploded with a new vision, warm and familiar as the summer sun down by the water, racing together toward the ice-cream stand. Charlotte and I could do this together. We could quiz each other. I could teach her the tricks I had learned from years of watching the bees on television. She would help me to be more poised in front of the crowd. I could practically feel our shoulders pressed together as we studied the word list, her long black hair falling down toward the paper. And when we weren't studying, we'd be chasing the clues in the books. She was curious. She had to be. It wouldn't be like old times. Not exactly. But maybe it could even be better.

Ms. Lawson put a packet down on Charlotte's desk. “Sorry I was late,” Charlotte said.

Ms. Lawson just nodded.

Dr. Dawes explained how the school bee would work. It would be a morning assembly, which made Maybe-Max groan, and ask, “Really?”

“Yes, really.”

Dev wrote the words “school assembly” in his notebook.
Then, underneath, he wrote: “Wear tie.” His pen hesitated over his paper before he added: “Ask Adam how to tie a tie?” Then he crossed that last bit out with a single straight line.

“In your packet you'll find all the rules of a spelling bee,” Ms. Lawson said. “I will be the head judge, and as you all know, I am a stickler, so make sure you know those rules. I am fond of you all, of course, but I'm not going to bend the regulations for you. No mumbling. No backtracking. No corrections. Got it?”

We nodded. Dev wrote down: “Read all rules. Follow precisely.”

“What if we run out of words?” Lucas asked.

“Wouldn't that be wonderful!” Dr. Dawes said cheerfully. “But I don't think you need to worry about that. The list is quite long.”

“It happened,” Lucas said. “In Kansas. At a county bee. They went through so many rounds, they used up all the words the spelling bee people had sent them, and then they went to the dictionary. And it went on so long that they sent everyone home and had to finish it another day.”

“I suppose we'll tackle that problem if we come to it,” Ms. Lawson said.

“I just think you should have a contingency plan in place. I know a lot of words.” He pushed his glasses onto his face with the heel of his hand. “Then again, what am I saying? I could spell all day. The question is, can any of these people keep up with me? And the answer is, I think not.”

“Lucas,” Ms. Lawson said.

“Humility,” Lucas mumbled back to her without much conviction.

Charlotte played with the staple in her packet, wiggling it back and forth like a loose tooth. We could study in the library, I decided, after school. I went there most every day anyway to wait for my mom. And of course that would give us plenty of time to look for clues, too. And it would mean she wouldn't have to give up any time with Melinda, though I hoped—well, it was too much to hope, wasn't it, that she would give up Melinda altogether.

Dr. Dawes and Ms. Lawson explained some more about the bee and the best ways to study. Dev wrote it all down in his neat handwriting, and I did feel a little bad for stealing away the person who could really help him. Maybe if things were going well with Charlotte, I could tell Coco that he should go help Dev, after all.

When they finished, I reached down to pick up my backpack, then turned to ask Charlotte if she wanted to meet me at the library to study, but she was already hustling to the door. She had left her packet on the desk, though, so I wrote her name on it. I started to put it into my bag to give to her in homeroom, but Ms. Lawson saw and said, “Thanks, Ruth. I'll make sure Charlotte gets that tomorrow.”

“Okay,” I said. “That's probably for the best.”

I walked out of the room as solo as I had come in.

Friday in the locker room, Lena wasn't wearing a bra. She flipped off her T-shirt for gym class—it was an old one with a faded Wild Thing doing the Wild Rumpus on it—and pulled on a shirt and then a sweater. Melinda noticed. She wrinkled her nose, that's how I knew. But she didn't say anything.

“You didn't have to do that,” I said to her in the hall.

“Melinda is a witch,” Lena said. “She's a witch and the word that rhymes with it.”

“
 
‘Twitch'?” I asked.

Lena raised her eyebrows as if she had misjudged me, and then saw that I was joking. “Actually, I was thinking ‘stitch,'
 
” she said.

“Or ‘switch.'
 
”

“
 
‘Fibbledegitch.'
 
” She grinned.

“Still, you didn't have to do it for me.”

“Maybe I didn't do it for you.”

“Oh,” I said. And blushed.

“Or maybe I did,” she said back. She was smiling. She didn't make any sense at all. “You know, women used to burn their bras for women's rights.”

“I know,” I said.

Lena put her hand up in the air. “Solidarity, sister.”

Somehow I didn't think our not wearing bras was going to bring down the tyranny of Melinda. Lena wrapped a silk scarf around her neck and tied it in a big, beautiful bow all while we walked to our lockers.