The queasy feeling returned as I got in line with all the other taekwondo students. Madison explained that we were supposed to sign in before the test.
“No offense, but you look a little green,” she said.
I shrugged, hoping my pancakes stayed where they were.
“It’s probably nerves,” Madison said. “It’ll be fine once we start.”
“Are you nervous?” I asked.
“Yeah. A little,” she said as she tightened her belt for the third time. “I really want to move up to the intermediate class.”
The lined moved quickly. “Your turn,” Madison said after she’d signed in.
I picked up the pencil on the table, leaned over the sign-up sheet, and scribbled my name, just wanting to get the whole test thing started. I was about to hand the pencil to the kid behind me when something caught my eye.
Madison’s name. Right above mine. Instead of large, loopy letters, it was in tiny, tight little letters. And there were no swirls above her i’s.
My heart jumped into my throat.
Maybe she’d changed her handwriting since she wrote the Every Day Eliza note. That was possible, right? Maybe she’d decided to go with a more mature signature since we were going into middle school. Or maybe she only dotted her i’s in a swirly way when she was with her friends. Or on mean notes.
But none of that made any sense.
I snapped my head up and looked at Madison, who by that time was busy talking to someone else. It was like a strange, time-travel thing—as if Past Me had known her for a long time but Here-and-Now Me was just meeting her for the first time. And right then I knew. I don’t know how, but I knew it deep in my bones. She hadn’t changed her handwriting; she’d told the truth about the note last year. She hadn’t been the one who’d given me the nickname. I’d been wrong all this time. Why hadn’t I seen that before?
And if I’d been wrong about Madison, what else had I been wrong about?
What if I was wrong about being ready for the test?