All That Glitters (From the Files of Madison Finn, 20) (4 page)

Madison hit
SAVE
.

Her laptop buzzed as it saved the file, and she tapped her fingers nervously on the desktop, waiting for the final “you’re all set!” beep. She always hated it when her computer went
ding
in the middle of the quiet library. Madison did not like anything that drew unnecessary attention to her, especially when she was busy writing in her files.

But someone had heard the
ding
. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of red sweater. The person wearing the sweater strolled toward Madison like a secret-service agent, arms pressed tight against his sides, face pinched with concern. It was Hart, but Madison had never seen him looking so serious. Next to Hart, walking just as fast, was Egg. He looked serious, too.

They didn’t make a huge fuss but sat down in chairs on either side of Madison and began talking as if they had been sequestered in some kind of interrogation room. Madison felt as though she were in the hot seat—and not just because of the boys’ battery of questions. Madison was hot because her face felt flushed. Her skin prickled.

She stared again absentmindedly at her crush. As his lips moved she wondered (as she often wondered) whether or not Hart was the kind of guy who would like the flavor of Madison’s lip gloss.

“What are you doing up here?” Madison asked the boys.

“We’re looking for you,” Egg joked.

Madison rolled her eyes.

“Seriously, we were,” Hart said.

Madison neatly closed the laptop cover and crossed her arms. “What for?” she asked.

“Yo, I have to boogie,” Egg announced, like a circus ringmaster, gesturing to the right and left and finally slinging his bag over his back with a loud swoosh. “Hockey later, dude?” he asked Hart.

Hart nodded. “Later,” he said.

Madison was beginning to get the distinct impression that something was going on between the two friends. Sometimes they didn’t use actual words, but seemed to communicate in shorthand. As Egg walked away, Madison turned to Hart. There was a glint in his eye, but he didn’t speak. He just stared.

“Um…Hart,” Madison said. “I’m sorry about the other day. About the tongue, I mean.”

Hart gave Madison a blank stare. “The tongue? Huh? What are you talking about?”

Madison’s throat muscles clenched.

“Um…nothing…I guess…” She wanted to run, but she pasted a smile on her lips instead. He obviously had forgotten all about that moment at the end of class.

“Hey,” Hart said, clearing his throat. “Are you working on the science homework or studying for those stupid standardized tests?”

“Neither,” Madison admitted with a sigh. “I was writing in my online journal. I keep these computer files…”

“Files?” Hart repeated. “What’s in the files?”

Madison thought about saying, “Duh! What do you think? All of my daydreams about you, dork!” But she didn’t say any of that.

“Well,” Madison continued aloud. “I keep track of all my feelings and ideas and…oh, you know. I can’t believe I’m telling you this. I mean, you can’t possibly care about my files or my feelings or anything…”

“Huh?” Hart said, taking a deep breath. Madison could see his Adam’s apple move in a jerky gulp. “Sure I care. I’m your friend.”

“Oh,” Madison replied.
Friend?

There was a moment of silence. Both tongues were tied—tight.

Madison giggled nervously.

Then Hart giggled.

“Finnster, can I ask you something?”

Madison grabbed the table and pushed back in her seat so that she was balancing on the back two legs of the chair. “Sure,” she said, coolly kicking her legs out and pinching the table edge so she didn’t tip all the way back.

“Finnster, do you remember…when I asked you out to the movies with everyone?” Hart asked really fast.

Madison closed her eyes and then opened them again, as if she were blinking in slow motion.

“I remember,” Madison said expectantly.

Yes, this really was Hart Jones. Yes, she really was Madison Finn. Yes, he really
had
just said that.

“I totally remember,” Madison said.

“Well…do you want to do that again sometime, maybe…for real?”

“Yeah,” Madison said, still trying to act cool while her insides were doing loops on an imaginary roller coaster.

Hart exhaled. His shoulders dipped down.

“I was thinking…” He spoke very slowly. Madison could tell that he was nervous. He didn’t want to mess this up.

“I was thinking that we could go to the mall on Saturday,” Hart said.

“Wow,” Madison said.

“They have this car show, and I was thinking that you and me, I mean, you and I, could go to this car show…”

“Car show?” Madison made a funny face.

“Or not. Scratch that. We don’t have to go to the car show,” Hart cried. “That was just a dumb guy idea. Egg told me to say that.”

Madison pushed the chair upright again. There was no leaning back now. She was already off balance enough. She fiddled with the hem of her sweater.

Egg told me to say that.

So, Egg knew about what Hart was planning to do?

“Forget I said car show. That was wicked lame. Let’s go to the stores or something else that you want to do. Just hang. Play videos. Whatever. My dad said there’s this new take-out Italian restaurant in the Food Court called Napolis or something. He told me what I could order. We could go there, I guess, right?”

“I guess.”

“Ever eaten calamari? It’s squid.”

Madison chuckled. “Squid?” she said.

Hart nodded. “Gross, huh?”

They both burst into laughter. Madison clapped her hand over her mouth so that Mr. Books, the librarian, wouldn’t chase her out of the library with one of his “silence at all times” lectures.

Hart kept right on laughing. Even his eyes were grinning. Had Madison ever seen him look this happy? Had she ever been this happy? She wished that someone could take a photograph to prove that it really was happening.

Aimee, Fiona, and Lindsay wouldn’t believe it.

“What about a movie?” Madison asked.

“If you want to go to a movie, I’d have to ask my dad for permission. He said he’d come along as a chaperone, unless you wanted to ask your mom to drive us…and I heard that on Saturdays the mall is starting this new concert series.”

“Oh, no,” Madison said, her expression changing from a smile to a frown. “Saturday? This Saturday?”

“What’s wrong with Saturday?” Hart asked.

“I can’t go,” Madison said. She hung her head.

“Huh?”

“I can’t go,” Madison repeated. “I can’t go this Saturday.”

Hart’s face froze. Madison wasn’t sure what to say next.

“You really can’t go?” Hart asked.

“I can explain,” Madison said. But she didn’t know what else to say. “There’s this party…”

“Yeah, sure,” Hart said. “That’s cool. I understand.”

Although the library was perfectly quiet, Madison heard the imaginary sound of screeching brakes. She nervously grabbed at her neck. If it had been a teen movie, she would have leaped into his arms and nuzzled
his
neck.

But this was no movie.

“Um…what about…well…can we do it
next
weekend instead of this weekend?” Madison asked.

“No, I can’t,” Hart shrugged. “My dad is only free this weekend, which is why I asked you for that day. I have hockey games every weekend for the rest of the winter, pretty much.”

“Oh,” Madison said dumbly.

“So you can’t go? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Not exactly…well, yes…” Madison could hardly speak.

“Gee, I guess I should go now,” Hart said. His shoulders had slumped again.

“Wait!” Madison cried. “Don’t be weird, Hart, please. I want to go out with you. But I just can’t do it then.”

“No, that’s cool. I understand. Totally,” Hart said.

“No, you don’t,” Madison said.

“I don’t?”

“What I mean is…”

“Forget about it. We can talk later,” Hart said.

“Later,” Madison repeated. “You can’t talk now?”

“Nah,” Hart mumbled. “I have a lot of really, really important stuff to do.”

“Oh,” Madison said. “You do?”

She watched him pick up his bag and turn solemnly toward the library door and then, taking giant steps, disappear into the hallway without once looking back at Madison.

Stunned, Madison sat back down in front of her laptop and idly hit
SAVE
again just to make sure that her previous file was still there.

It was.

But something else was missing.

A little piece of her heart had just left the library.

“Maddie, you have to stop crying,” Fiona said as she rubbed Madison’s back. “It’s a good thing that happened. Not a bad thing.”

Aimee and Lindsay sat close by. The four friends were hanging out on the wall outside school, waiting to catch a glimpse of Hart Jones. But it looked as though he—and all of his other friends—had most definitely left the building.

“I blew it,” Madison said, sniffling.

“You did not blow it,” Aimee reassured her friend. “He blew it.”

“What?” Madison wiped her cheeks but the tears kept coming. “It wasn’t his fault I couldn’t say the right thing.”

“Well, he didn’t have to walk away, either,” Aimee said.

Fiona groaned. “Aim, Hart didn’t walk. He ran. He was mortified. Madison rejected him.”

“I didn’t reject him!” Madison cried.

“You did,” Aimee said.

“I did not!”

“That’s not how Hart sees it,” Lindsay said.

“Whose side are you guys on?” Madison asked.

“Why didn’t you just tell him the truth about Lindsay’s birthday party?” Fiona asked.

Madison shrugged. “I don’t know. I couldn’t speak. All the wrong things kept coming out of my mouth.”

“Yeah, well…Maybe you did blow it,” Aimee said.

“Aim!” Fiona gave Aimee a light punch in the shoulder. “You’re meaner than Poison Ivy!”

Madison cracked a small smile. “I appreciate your trying to help,” she said.

“Why don’t we just call him or E him and tell him the truth? He’ll understand,” Lindsay suggested. She always opted for a practical solution.

“I guess you’re right,” Madison said. “But what if he doesn’t understand or forgive me? What if that was my one and only chance to finally get Hart Jones to ask me on a date and I totally ruined it?”

“Maddie, the two of you are meant to be together,” Fiona said.

“Hart will ask you out again,” Lindsay said. “Eventually.”

“Yeah,” Madison agreed. “Eventually. To him that means another year of waiting and flirting and—aargh!—I’ll be a senior in high school before we ever go out for real. If I make it that far.”

Fiona, Aimee, and Lindsay threw their arms around Madison.

“You’ll always have us,” they all said practically at the same time, their voices muffled as they squeezed together.

Madison knew it was true, but for some reason a friend hug didn’t feel quite the same as a Hart hug. She couldn’t get Hart’s face out of her thoughts. She saw herself reflected in his happy, dancing eyes.

It had only been an hour. She missed him.

Her friends began talking among themselves about the standardized test. Aimee had an old textbook to share while they studied, and they flipped through the long chapters. But Madison couldn’t study. Not now.

Madison scanned the parking lot and the area in front of the school building, hoping that maybe Hart would pop out from behind a tree and rush over toward her. That was the way it would have worked on a sitcom. That was how she’d have written the happy ending to a play.

A cluster of clouds drifted by, taking on different shapes. Madison wanted to be swallowed whole by the sky. She wanted to take back the day.

Lindsay wasn’t the only one with a major dilemma. Madison had one of her own.

What was more important: a best friend’s birthday party or a real date with the one boy she had ever loved?

M
ADISON MOVED HER CURSOR
across the home page of the TweenBlurt.com website. She checked the site’s main bulletin board for new postings. Lately, the Webmaster had been adding a lot of graphics and features to the site, and Madison liked to keep on top of the changes.

Egg always challenged Madison to see if she knew as much as he did about what was on the site. He was obnoxious about it, but of course he was obnoxious about
everything
. He’d been competing with Madison since they had been young. It was practically like having a brother, Madison thought. But unlike Fiona, who had one annoying twin brother named Chet, and Aimee, who had four annoying brothers named Roger, Billy, Dean, and Doug, Madison didn’t have to share toys or fight for the remote control. She wouldn’t have to
see
Egg if she didn’t want to.

Madison had to reenter her password to enter the Members Only area. Madison always wondered what that meant, since anyone could be a member. It was free. The site recommended that users change their passwords every few weeks for security purposes. Madison spelled out her latest:

IHEARTHART

She laughed to herself. It was such a ridiculous password (so-o-o-o-o ridiculous!) and yet she loved it all the same—even now.

The screen buzzed and glowed a shade of lime green. She clicked her keypad to enter the BloggerBlurt section. This was the fastest growing area. The screen flashed a few times as the blogger welcome greeting popped up.

Welcome to BLOGGERBLURT!

Although she didn’t have a blog of her own, Madison visited to check out her keypal Bigwheels’s blog. She scrolled down the list of bloggers until she came across the right one.

Don’t Ask: The Whole Truth


A blog by Vicki (aka Bigwheels)


Madison selected the blog name and clicked. A separate screen opened with her online friend’s latest entry.

School is a big drag & I haven’t been feeling right these days. First off my BFF Lainie has been out sick and that bums me out when she’s not around to talk :>( The other big news is that the doctors keep changing the diagnosis on my little bro. Mom always tells me these things about his autism but I forget most of it. All I know is that he looks like he’s staring into space sometimes and I never know when he’s going to throw his toys around. It’s weird. My mom spends most of the time trying to keep him away from my younger sister. He almost pushed her down the basement stairs by accident. But she’s ok. N e way, M & D say I need to try to understand more but the thing is I am trying--hard. Maybe I need to try harder. I made a list of all the websites where I can get info. One very, VERY good thing this week is that I aced my American history report (finally) and I got a really good score on the standardized test they had in our district. So many people failed or did really badly. AND I saved up some money I got babysitting 2 get this amazing purple sweater set that makes me look skinny. I think I will wear it to the school dance if Reggie asks me. I just need a pair of earrings 2 go w/it. BLOGYL!