I was so mad at Elena, Chloe, and Sissy. I was so mad. After I screamed, Atticus found me covered in milk in the Coopers’ backyard. The girls were long gone and my Princess Leia hair and gown were completely ruined.
Note to self: Infinity Year power DOES NOT help with spilled milk, PERIOD! I should have known when I’d seen Mrs. Brightwell dressed like a black cat that things were going to go bad.
Atticus walked me back to his house and I tried not to cry. It was a low point. I was still soaked when we got back to the Brightwells’ house. Atticus brought me inside and I dripped milk all over Mrs. Brightwell’s hardwood kitchen floor. While Mrs. Brightwell was trying to call Caroline (and her phone kept ringing in Atticus’s pocket), I caught her looking at me. I could see it in her eyes. Mrs. Brightwell was adding another item to her list of Reasons Not to Like Avalon.
When my mom picked me up, I told her everything that happened. She called Elena’s mom right when we got home. Of course, Elena’s mom couldn’t believe her angel, Elena, could ever do such a thing. But she would ask her about it when she came home from trick-or-treating.
I knew what would happen next. Elena would deny it. Her mom would believe her. And I couldn’t prove anything. So Elena would get away with it.
Arggggggh!
I had been willing to end it with Elena. I really had. But this was too much. She had gone too far, and I just couldn’t let it go. I had been planning how to get back at her all night, and by recess the next day, I was bursting with ways to get my revenge.
“I’m going to find the biggest spider in the whole town and put it in Elena’s backpack,” I said venomously. Atticus and I were sitting at the top of the jungle gym (now our regular spot), looking at Elena, Sissy, and Chloe, who were jumping rope by the basketball court. They were acting like nothing had happened the night before.
They were the only ones.
Somehow the whole grade knew. As soon as Mae saw me that morning, she’d asked if it was true. Did I really get a bucketful of milk dumped on me? Later, Augustus Sawyer meowed at me in the lunch line.
“Or maybe I’ll do a Jasper Hightower,” I continued, glaring at Elena, “and dunk her head in the toilet.”
“Avalon,” Atticus said.
“What?” I snapped back.
“You can’t do any of that,” he said. “You have to promise me.”
I looked at him. “It’s not fair, Atticus! You saw what she did to me!”
“I know it’s not fair,” he said. “But if you get back at her, she’s going to get back at you worse, and it’s never going to stop. You’ve got to be the bigger person and let it go.”
I dropped my head and groaned. Didn’t he know by now that I was not a bigger person kind of person?
“Plus, you have more important things to do,” he went on. “Like winning spelling bees. Like going to the nationals.”
“I’ve got to win the regionals first,” I said. I’m always surprised how Atticus can dream bigger for me than I can for myself. “And I haven’t actually won a spelling bee yet.”
“But you will,” Atticus said matter-of-factly. “And who knows what’s going to happen with our Infinity Year—”
“Stop it with the Infinity Year, Atticus!” I said, cutting him off. “If there was ever a time when I needed my Infinity power, it was in the Coopers’ backyard!”
“Shhhh.” Atticus put his fingers up to his lips.
“Why should I be quiet? If I didn’t get my power then, there’s no such thing as an Infinity Year.”
Atticus looked around like he was more concerned about people overhearing us than about what I had actually said. He was strict about the rule that we could only talk about our Infinity Year with each other. “You have to have faith, Avie,” he said quietly. “And who would want to waste their magical power on Elena Maxwell anyway? She isn’t worth it. Besides, Pop-pop says people like Elena get what they deserve in the end. That’s just how life works.”
Maybe he was right. But I wasn’t sure I wanted to believe anything Pop-pop had to say right now. I just knew one thing. I would have used up all of my Infinity Year magic on Halloween night if I could have turned Elena into a green slimy slug.
* * *
I walked around in a grump for the next three weeks. I didn’t do anything bad to Elena. But I really wanted to.
Before I knew it, it was almost time for our family tree presentation. During my grump, I decided that getting random old pictures off the Internet would have to do for my father’s side of the family. I found some real good ones, too. The older and crankier the people looked, the better.
Mae and I prepared our posters and came up with links between our families. The most bizarre link of all was that we each had a great-great-grandfather with a glass eye.
Mae has a little brother named Noah who is four. When we worked at her house on the presentation, Noah would get into all our pictures and try to draw on our poster board. This would get Mae really upset and she’d yell for her mom to come and get him. But I can tell Mae really likes her brother. I kind of like Noah, too.
I also kind of like Mae. It’s weird to have a girl who’s a friend. Because Atticus has always been my best friend, I’ve never really had a girl friend.
Mae and I never talked about my dad, though—not once since Elena embarrassed me about him in the art room that day. I wondered what Mae thought about my dad being in prison. She was always nice to me, but was she secretly ashamed to have me as a project partner?
The night before our presentation we were at Mae’s house rehearsing. When we got to the part about my dad and I had to talk about him, I just looked at her.
I could tell she knew what I meant. “I don’t know what to say,” I finally said. “Everybody knows about my dad. And Elena…” My voice trailed off.
I watched her glue my dad’s picture to the bottom space on my family tree chart. “Don’t worry,” she said. “We’ll figure out something.”
“Yeah,” I said quietly.
She looked at me. “What do you want to say?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. I really didn’t know. How do you explain a thing like that to a bunch of kids who already know the terrible thing you’re trying to hide from them?
She pressed her hand across his picture to be sure it was glued on good. “Okay,” she said. “When you decide, just let me know.”
* * *
I finally decided the next day, right before our presentation. While everybody was getting ready, I told Mae my plan. When we got to my father’s picture, I would say: My father was from California. He met my mom at college and then they moved here after graduation and had me. Then Mae would talk about her dad right away so nobody would have a chance to really think about what I had said.
It was a simple plan but I thought it might work.
After everybody was ready, Mrs. Jackson called up the first team to the front of the class. The order had been established a week earlier by pulling numbers out of a hat. Me and Mae were going third.
We watched Eva Chang and Marcus Johnson go first. Eva’s part of the presentation was perfect. She explained everything and everybody while Marcus stood by with—you guessed it—a finger up his nose.
Augustus Sawyer and Elena were next. Augustus talked about his relatives, who were originally from Georgia, and Elena talked about her great-grandparents, who were from Naples, Italy. She also told us how her father was a big lawyer and how her family was so great. Elena’s and Augustus’s families didn’t have much in common. But who would really know? Augustus didn’t get to talk much.
Then it was our turn. We propped our posters up against the blackboard and began. We started with our great-great-grandparents and went from there. We had rehearsed everything, so after Mae spoke about one of her ancestors, I spoke about one of mine. It was all going great until I got to my dad.
I looked at the picture of him on the poster board and remembered the last time we were together before everything changed. It was a Saturday afternoon and we walked up to the Jiffy Freeze together. I held his hand as we passed yard after yard covered in orange, red, and yellow leaves. I remember thinking it was too cold a day for ice cream. The next Monday, my father didn’t go to work and two policemen showed up at the front door. He never told me what happened. He just went away.
“Avalon,” Mae whispered, and nudged me with her arm.
I had almost forgotten where I was. I had such a deep yearning to be eating a double chocolate fudge ice cream cone with my dad that I almost wasn’t there.
I took a breath. “This is my dad,” I said. “He was born in California and met my mother at college and they moved here after graduation. And had me.” There, I said it.
I looked at Mae. She nodded at me and started to talk. Just like we planned.
But Elena talked quicker.
“And then he went to jail,” she called out smugly.
Everybody looked at her.
Then everybody looked at me.
It was horrible.
I looked over at Mrs. Jackson and our eyes met. In that moment (maybe the longest of my life), I could see that she understood everything. How Elena’s outburst had paralyzed me and that I couldn’t recover. How if I had been a gazelle in the wild, Elena would have eaten me by now.
Mrs. Jackson was about to intervene when someone else came to my aid instead.
“Yes, he did,” I heard Mae say. “Avalon’s dad went to jail. Like a lot of our ancestors probably did.” I looked at Mae and she smiled at me.
“Do you think Avalon’s dad is the only one?” she asked the class. “Who else has someone on their family tree who went to jail? There’s got to be somebody.”
I saw Marcus giving her question serious consideration. Suddenly, Augustus Sawyer yelled out, “My great-uncle went to jail for fighting in a bar when he was eighteen! My dad told me!”
Everybody laughed.
“See,” Mae said. “Any of us could have a jailbird somewhere back in the family tree. Even Elena.”
Mae looked straight at Elena in case she had anything to say. She didn’t.
“My dad can burp the national anthem,” Mae continued. “He should go to jail for that.”
I smiled a little. At that moment, Mae was my hero.
As the room filled with laughter, Mrs. Jackson rose from her desk. “Okay, class. Settle down,” she said. She looked over at me and Mae and winked at us. “Good job, girls.” Then she turned to Elena. Without saying a word, Mrs. Jackson flashed her a warning look. Elena pretended not to notice but I saw it. Clear as day.
We went back to our desks and I practically melted into my seat. I was so relieved it was over. And I was so grateful to Mae. She stood up for me. And Elena backed down.
At lunch, I told Atticus what happened. I wondered how he would feel about somebody else looking out for me. I wondered what he would think about me having another friend.
And you know what? Atticus thought it was great. No surprise. Atticus is just that kind of person.