CHAPTER 11

SMUDGED

As soon as my jobs were done I sprinted out the front door and over to the island. Nobody was there. I heard Trevor yelling at me from the direction of Janae’s house. I couldn’t see anyone, but stepping up to her house, I could hear my friends in the tree next to Janae’s driveway.

I climbed up in the tree and sat on the branch next to Aaron. Jack and Rourk were both holding two big garbage bags stuffed with inflated balloons. Teddy explained that they had filled the balloons with the notes and now they were waiting for Janae to come home from her tennis lessons so that they could …

I explained to them that the idea was to make Janae like me, not hate me more. They all looked disappointed.

They all nodded. It had been Jack’s idea. He thought that the messages would have more of an impact if they were in water balloons.

My talking was interrupted by the sound of Janae’s mom’s car pulling into her driveway. All of us froze.

Janae got out of her car with two of her friends. Her mom, who had been driving, got out and went inside the house. Janae stood near the tree, talking loudly to her friends.

As Janae’s friends talked, Rourk began to whisper about how much his butt hurt sitting in the tree. I whispered that all of him would hurt if he didn’t keep quiet. Teddy sneezed, but luckily Trevor covered it up with a birdcall he had learned in Scouts. Janae and her friends looked up, but from where they were they couldn’t see us. We might have gone unnoticed, but a bird flew into Aaron’s big hair and began to make a nest.

The bird pecked around at Aaron’s head, and he let loose with a huge scream. Rourk fell from the tree, hollering and pulling Aaron down with him. Teddy shifted to avoid Aaron, and the branch beneath him snapped. All the balloons fell from the bags as Jack and Teddy pulled me and Trevor down with them. Balloons splattered everywhere as Janae and her friends screamed almost as loud as we did. Rourk rolled a good ten feet, knocking Janae’s friends over like bowling pins. By the time we were all done falling, we were just a big pile of wet arms and legs. Janae was the only one still standing. She stared at me, and her mouth did that thing that is the opposite of smiling:

Janae looked at all the popped balloons and the little pieces of white paper littering the ground. I could see a few of the messages around me. They were smeared because my brilliant friends had filled the balloons with water. Janae bent down and picked up one of the notes.

Janae looked at me like I was a piece of moldy meat that someone had dipped in barf and then sneezed on.

She helped her friends up as I tried to apologize. She wasn’t listening. Her friends left, and Janae slammed the door on me and my friends as she went inside her house.

We were all just sitting there like babies when the shadow of someone drifted over us. I held my hand in front of the sun to see better.

The arrows gave her away. I guess Kat was thinking about shooting the gong soon. All my friends were suddenly jumping up and clearing their throats. Trevor said Kat’s name, and as I got to my feet, she grabbed him by the right elbow and gazed into his eyes. Trevor had never looked happier.

Kat let go of a very sad-looking Trevor. She looked in my direction. I thought about saying something clever, but I had nothing clever to say. Then she took off running. I was going to chase her, but she was a much faster runner, and I had a good idea where she was going. We all watched her disappear down a far alley as we dusted ourselves off and shook water from our bodies. Trevor was pretty shook up about Kat saying he wasn’t the one.

Trevor began picking up the little slips of paper and bits of balloons. He was mumbling something about how he probably needed a siesta. Jack started to make fun of me for trying to impress Janae. Remembering it was his idea to fill the balloons with water, I turned and confronted him.

The gong in Mr. Foote’s backyard rang out. I had been right about where Kat was going. We all looked at each other with a new sense of panic. It was one thing to have Janae and her friends mad at us. It would be even worse if Mr. Foote thought we were the ones abusing his gong. All of us took off running in separate directions to our houses. Five of us screamed in English as we ran.