Emma-Jean Lazarus Fell Out of a Tree Page 6

  “Really?” Did Emma-Jean mean that she didn’t like Colleen’s own sparkling cheeks? That Colleen looked bad?

  No, she told herself. Remember that Emma-Jean isn’t like other people who say mean things to be funny or to make you feel bad. Emma-Jean just says exactly what she thinks, which is really good because then a person doesn’t have to spend hours—days—wondering if she actually meant something else. Emma-Jean said she didn’t like the sparkling makeup. She did not say Colleen looked bad. So see? There was no reason to feel worried.

  Which was a relief.

  “Anyway,” Colleen said, putting her powder away and getting down to business. “The reason I wanted to meet is . . . did you do something to Laura Gilroy?”

  “What do you mean by do something?”

  “I don’t know, I just wondered, after we talked in the bathroom that day, and I told you about the problem with Laura and Kaitlin . . . you didn’t do anything, did you?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  Colleen blinked.

  “What did you do?” Colleen said, trying to keep her voice steady.

  “I wrote the letter to Laura. The one she showed you the other day. On the blacktop.”

  “On no . . . oh . . . oh my gosh,” Colleen said, easing herself down onto the grass. She hoped she wouldn’t throw up, like she did after getting off the Tilt-A-Whirl at last year’s Pumpkin Festival, which had been one of the top ten humiliations of Colleen’s entire life.

  “You wrote that?”

  “Yes.”

  Colleen had suspected it. So why was she so stunned?

  Because Colleen was always thinking and worrying and obsessing about things. That she’d failed the social studies quiz or that her new jeans made her look huge or that her breath smelled like egg salad. And part of the worrying and obsessing was secretly knowing that really she was wrong, that she’d gotten an A on the quiz and that her jeans looked okay and that her breath smelled minty and everything would turn out fine.

  Except for this time.

  “Oh, Emma-Jean, why did you do that?”

  “Because you said you wanted my help,” Emma-Jean said.

  “Oh, well, I didn’t exactly realize that you were going to, you know, do something. Like this.”

  “The letter was successful,” Emma-Jean said. “You went skiing.”

  “Well, yes, I guess. But now . . . what if Laura figures it out? What if she figures out you wrote it . . . for me? Because I think she knows something. She thinks I had something to do with it. Because Laura’s acting really mean. I mean meaner than usual. I hope you know that if Laura finds out, she’s going to think I told you to do it, and she’ll be really, really mad. And Emma-Jean, she can be so awful—if she finds out I had anything to do with it, she’ll . . .”

  Colleen closed her eyes to stop herself from thinking about the horrible things Laura might do to her.

  “I will not tell her,” Emma-Jean said.

  “I know!” Colleen said. “I know you totally wouldn’t. But she’s smarter than she looks, and I’m worried she could figure it out.”

  “I think it’s unlikely,” Emma-Jean said.

  Colleen nodded. Her body had turned to Jell-O. She wished she could recapture the feeling she’d had the other day at school, when for just a few moments she really didn’t care what Laura Gilroy thought of her.

  But that had lasted no longer than the flavor in a stick of sugarless bubble gum. And now Colleen felt terrified. She might as well leave the state. Did the witness protection program accept thirteen-year-olds?

  Colleen stood up, but she was all wobbly, and Emma-Jean reached out and grabbed her arm. Colleen bit her lip so hard, she tasted blood through her fruity lip gloss. Was she going into shock?

  Emma-Jean was staring at her again. Why did she do that?

  “May I ask you a question?” Emma-Jean said.

  Colleen nodded.

  “Why are you afraid of Laura Gilroy?”

  Colleen tried to laugh, but no sound came out. “I’m not afraid of her.”

  “Yes you are,” Emma-Jean said. “Even the mention of Laura Gilroy’s name causes you to flinch and avert your eyes.”

  “It’s not that I’m afraid. It’s just that Laura can be . . . so mean.”

  “But she cannot hurt you.”

  “Yes she can, Emma-Jean. She totally can.”

  “How? Laura Gilroy is not a physically violent person.”

  “You wouldn’t understand,” Colleen said. “She . . .”

  How could Colleen explain how it was with girls like Laura—girls who never told you your haircut looked pretty or your new shoes were cool, who never held out a bag of potato chips and said, “Take as many as you want,” who with one look could make you feel like the tiniest bug, or worse, a bug nobody could see.

  How could a girl like that make everyone want to be her friend?

  Come to think of it, Colleen didn’t understand it either. It just was.

  Colleen stared at the grass and shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “I really don’t.”

  “Do you know anything about chimpanzees?” Emma-Jean said.

  “What?” Colleen said.

  “Chimps are very much like humans. In their communities, certain individuals become dominant. These individuals are known as the alpha chimps. They achieve dominance through intimidation. They bare their teeth and beat their chests and achieve control of the group because the others feel threatened. ”

  “That’s really interesting, Emma-Jean. But why are you telling me this?”

  “Because you think Laura Gilroy is the alpha chimp.”

  “But we’re not chimps. We’re people.”

  “Exactly,” Emma-Jean said. “We are not chimps and thus we possess the mental capacity to understand that while Laura Gilroy might behave in a menacing fashion, she cannot cause real harm because we are humans who live in a civilized human society. We are not chimps in the jungle.”

  Colleen’s heart was racing. She could not focus on what Emma-Jean was saying. Why was she talking about chimps when Colleen’s life was ruined?

  This was a mess. A huge, horrible mess. She needed to get home. Her mother would be waiting for her and would not be happy that Colleen was late. She and her mom were going to stores to collect donations for a church youth group project Colleen had organized. Just because her life was ruined didn’t mean she could forget her responsibilities to the homeless families depending on her. Really, her own problems were so tiny and stupid compared to what so many other people dealt with. People like Emma-Jean, who had lost her dad. Colleen knew all this. She really knew it! So why did her own problems seem so gigantic?

  She wanted to cry, but she flashed a smile for Emma-Jean, who was just trying to help her, right? She couldn’t be mad at Emma-Jean, because poor Emma-Jean didn’t understand anything about anything.

  Chapter 11

  The next afternoon, Emma-Jean was about to leave through the side door of the William Gladstone building when Mr. Petrowski’s voice caught her attention. He was speaking in an angry tone, and Emma-Jean sensed that there was a matter requiring her attention. She followed the sound of his voice until she came to its source. Her instinct had been correct. Mr. Petrowski was standing in the doorway of the gym. He was yelling at Will Keeler.

  Emma-Jean stood back so they wouldn’t see her, though she could see Mr. Petrowski’s jowly profile.

  “You think rules don’t apply to you, don’t you?” Mr. Petrowski was saying.

  “That’s not true, sir,” said Will Keeler, who was as tall as Mr. Petrowski. “I don’t know why you think that—”

  “Well, for that little stunt today I’m taking twenty points off your final grade. Take that to the bank.”

  “Mr. Petrowski, that wasn’t me! I didn’t write that! That’s totally unfair. If you take twenty points off my grade, I’ll get, like . . .”

  “According to my calculations, that would take your grade down to a, let’s see . .
. sixty-one . . . D minus.”

  “You can’t do that! My parents will kill me! They won’t let me go to basketball camp over spring break! This is totally unfair!”

  “Unfair?” Mr. Petrowski said with an unkind smirk on his face. “Maybe it is. But you know what? There’s nothing you can do about it.”

  Mr. Petrowski turned and stormed off. Will Keeler remained hidden in the doorway. Emma-Jean stood very still and quiet, quiet enough to hear the soft sniffling noises coming from where Will was standing.

  She came up behind Will, who was facing the wall.

  “Can I help you?” Emma-Jean said.

  He whirled around, glaring at first. But then his face drooped.

  “Oh,” he muttered. “Emma-Jean.”

  “I’m sorry you are distressed.”

  “Petrowski said I drew a picture of him on the board, a fat guy with the name Mr. Pigtrowski. It’s ridiculous. First of all, I would never do anything so lame. And B, I can’t draw at all.”

  “I know that. I sat across from you in art last quarter.”

  “You did?

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Well, I gotta go, so . . .”

  “I believe I know why you are having troubles with Mr. Petrowski,” she said.

  “What are you talking about?” Will said.

  “I heard him speaking to Ms. Wright in the cafeteria. He suspected you in the theft of some candy from his locker.”

  “What the . . .”

  “Some of his chocolates were missing, and he observed you eating chocolate in science class.”

  “Someone put that chocolate in my backpack! I swear! I ate one and it tasted like garbage, so I gave the whole box away.”

  “I was able to exonerate you. Mr. Petrowski now knows the truth: The thief was a mouse. However, it is obvious to me that Mr. Petrowski continues to harbor very negative feelings toward you.”

  “What did I do to him?” Will said.

  “You did nothing,” Emma-Jean assured him. “I think this relates to a problem Mr. Petrowski is having with his Cadillac Escalade. I heard him complaining to Ms. Wright about the poor service he is getting at Keeler Cadillac.”

  “What are you talking about? What does that have to do with me?”

  “Maybe you should speak to your father about rectifying the situation.”

  “My dad has nothing to do with that place. He’s a landscaper. It’s my uncle who owns it, and my uncle’s a jerk. He doesn’t care about anything but money. Him and my dad don’t even talk to each other. I never see my uncle, except on those stupid billboards.”

  “That is unfortunate,” Emma-Jean said.

  She studied Will for a moment. His eyes were a striking color, the very same light blue as the cover of the Oxford English Dictionary. She imagined him, for a fleeting second, riding a white horse.

  “Okay,” Will said, stepping into the hallway. “I’ll see you.”

  “If you would like, I could attempt to help you solve this problem.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “I am most serious.”

  Will Keeler laughed. “That’s a good one,” he said. “Really good.” He took Emma-Jean by the shoulders and moved her to the side. Normally, Emma-Jean disliked being touched by people she didn’t know very well. However, Will Keeler was gentle. The feeling of his hands on her shoulders was not unpleasant.

  “Who are you, Nancy freakin’ Drew?”

  “Excuse me?” Emma-Jean said.

  Will Keeler shook his head and jogged away. “Nancy freakin’ Drew!” His laughter echoed through the hallways.

  Later that same afternoon, Colleen and Kaitlin were on the playground of the St. Mary’s Catholic Church, waiting for Colleen’s mom to pick them up. The church youth group had worked for hours putting together toiletry kits for people in homeless shelters. Being homeless didn’t mean you didn’t care about how you looked, did it? When they had finished, Father William had hugged Colleen and told her how proud he was of all of them.

  Colleen had smiled. She’d felt happy and safe in the church. But now, out here in the open, she felt scared again. Even the wind seemed to be whispering to her, trying to warn her about something terrible.

  All day, Laura Gilroy had been acting mean. And not the usual ignoring mean. In language arts, while Ms. Wright was talking about To Kill a Mockingbird,

  Laura Gilroy was staring at Colleen. Colleen smiled and waved, but Laura just kept on staring like her eyes were lasers and she wanted to burn two holes in Colleen’s forehead. And now Kaitlin was telling her that Laura had been talking about Colleen during health class.

  “She asked about our ski trip and if we had a good time.”

  Colleen nodded.

  “She asked if you said anything about tricking her so she wouldn’t go.”

  “That’s paranoid,” Colleen said, trying to sound nonchalant, which wasn’t easy because how could you act like you didn’t care about something when you cared about every single little tiny miniscule thing?

  She was dying to tell Kaitlin the truth about Emma-Jean and the letter. Kaitlin would understand. They’d had so much fun together singing on the chair lift and skiing after that cute snowboarding guy and pretending they were in Switzerland and painting their toenails alternating colors of bright red and light pink. She knew Kaitlin would never tell her secret, or if she did, there would have to be a really good reason, like someone was threatening to hurt Monty, Kaitlin’s cat.

  But she didn’t want Emma-Jean to get in trouble. And wasn’t it really weird that she’d confided in Emma-Jean? Didn’t it mean that she was sort of desperate?

  “She is paranoid,” said Kaitlin, inching her swing closer to Colleen’s so that their shoulders touched. “Then she started asking me if you’d taken any computer classes lately.”

  Colleen’s heart popped out of her body and landed in the sand in front of the swings, where it sank through all the layers of the earth and fell out the bottom into space.

  “Why did she ask that?” she said in a whispery voice that sounded like the total opposite of nonchalant.

  “I don’t know. No offense, but I reminded her that computers weren’t really your thing.”

  “Then what did she say?”

  “That was it.”

  “Why is she so interested in me all of a sudden?” Colleen said. “She never seemed to care so much before.”

  “Maybe she’s jealous of you because you’re so pretty,” Kaitlin said, which Colleen thought was a really, really supportive thing to say even though it wasn’t true and Kaitlin knew it.

  “This is all my fault,” Kaitlin said, her voice a little shaky. “I should never have invited her. Why did I do that?”

  “Don’t beat yourself up!” Colleen said. “She has this power. She’s like . . . the queen chimp.”

  “What?” Kaitlin gave her a strange look.

  “You know,” Colleen said, “she just makes you feel like you have to do what she wants.”

  “I bet she’s jealous because she knows we’re best friends.” Kaitlin put her head on Colleen’s shoulder.

  “Yeah,” Colleen said.

  They sat like that a while until somehow Colleen’s heart came back from space and pushed its way through all the layers of the earth and back into her chest.

  Chapter 12

  It was true that Will Keeler had not asked Emma-Jean to work on his problem. But that didn’t mean that Emma-Jean should rule out the idea of assisting him. He had a serious problem. And Emma-Jean had every reason to believe that she could solve it for him.

  There were subtle indications that he wanted help. He had laughed at the end of their meeting, which suggested that her offer to help him had made him happy. He had referred to her as Nancy Drew. Being compared to Nancy Drew was flattering. Perhaps Will had sensed somehow that Emma-Jean’s superior observational and analytical powers were on par with those of the legendary fictional detective.

  In any case
, Will Keeler never said he didn’t want her assistance, and he could not rationally object if she took it upon herself to help him. Certainly if the outcome was positive, Will Keeler would be pleased. And if she was unsuccessful, he would never have to know that she had tried.

  Emma-Jean decided that she would move forward.

  She sat at her tidy desk, a spiral notebook open in front of her, and focused her thoughts. Was Mr. Petrowski consciously punishing Will Keeler for the wrongs committed by the owners of Keeler Cadillac? Emma-Jean hoped not. She hated to think that any member of the William Gladstone staff would behave in such a way. No. Mr. Petrowski had been driven— quite literally—out of the bounds of rational thinking by his problems with the car dealership. And in this irrational state of mind, he had convinced himself that Will Keeler was a person capable of stealing candy and drawing vulgar pictures.

  The essence of the problem was clear: In order to solve Will Keeler’s problem, Emma-Jean had to solve Mr. Petrowski’s problem, which of course had nothing at all to do with Will Keeler.

  Emma-Jean devised a strategy.

  She relocated to her computer desk and found the Cadillac Web site. She searched the company directory of senior executives until she found the Director of Worldwide Customer Service, whose name was Kevin Kelly. She imported the Cadillac logo into a Quark document and turned it into a piece of authentic-looking Cadillac stationery.

  She then composed a stern letter to Keeler Cadillac instructing them to make immediate amends to a valued customer named Phil Petrowski. She recalled what Will had told her about his uncle— that he cared only for money—and crafted her message accordingly.

  . . . . Those of us at worldwide headquarters will not stand for any dealer who jeopardizes our reputation as leaders in automotive quality and customer service. We will seek monetary damages if the matter of Phil Petrowski is not resolved immediately.

  She finished the letter, read it over twice, and signed Kevin Kelly’s name in her most masculine and authoritative cursive.

  She created a Cadillac envelope and found the address of Keeler Cadillac in the Riverview phone-book. By 5:00, she had mailed the letter and was enjoying a cup of tea and an apple, with Henri dozing peacefully on her shoulder.