All the Answers (4 page)

“Are you sure you never heard that scientific name?
Totally
sure?”

“Sophie, I'm positive.” Ava looked at the pencil on her desk. If she were Sophie, she'd be skeptical, too. She
was
skeptical, even though she was the one having conversations with a pencil.

“Ask it what I had for a snack after school,” Sophie said.

Ava asked. The pencil answered, and she repeated its response. “M&M'S.” Then Ava added, “But anybody who knows you would guess that.” Sophie considered M&M'S to be a major food group.

“True.” Sophie squinted at the pencil, then hid a hand behind her back. “Ask it how many fingers I'm holding up.”

Ava wrote:

How many fingers is Sophie holding up?

“Four.” The voice sounded bored.

“It said ‘four.'”

“Try again.” Sophie hid her hand three more times. Two fingers. One finger. No fingers. The pencil got it right every time.

Sophie's eyes were huge. “Do you know what this means?” She paced back and forth across the light green carpet in Ava's room. “You'll never have to study for another test!”

“Yeah, but …” A gnawing feeling grew in Ava's stomach. If the voice she'd heard during her math exam wasn't the little voice in her own mind, reminding her of what she already knew … if it was really this pencil talking and had nothing to do with what she had studied, then … “That's cheating, isn't it?”

“There's no rule about writing questions with your magic pencil. So why not?”

“It seems wrong.” Ava already felt squirmy, knowing she hadn't really remembered those formulas for circles and triangles.

“Okay, fine. But there's so much stuff we can ask it.” Sophie stopped pacing and looked at the pencil in Ava's hand. “Do you think it'll work for other people or just you?”

“No clue.” Ava didn't see how the pencil could be answering questions in the first place. “But magic stuff usually has rules. At least in books.”

Sophie put a finger to her pursed lips and looked at the ceiling. “It could be like a genie, and in that case, it'll probably only work for you. You're the one who found it.”

“You think there's a genie in my pencil?” It hadn't occurred to Ava that somebody might be trapped in there. She put the pencil down.

“It's hard to say. Can I try writing a question with it?” Sophie asked.

“Okay.” Ava moved aside so Sophie could write at the desk. “What are you going to write?”

“I don't know yet.” Sophie's eyes darted around the room. “There are so many things I could ask it. I mean … oh!” She turned and started writing. Then she put the pencil down and looked up at the ceiling.

“It doesn't work for me,” Sophie said after a few seconds. She looked disappointed.

“What'd you ask it?”

Sophie sighed and held up the legal pad so Ava could read it.

Who is the first boy I'm going to kiss?

“Will you try?” Sophie got up from the desk and motioned Ava to sit down.

“I don't want to know
that
!” Ava made a face. “I don't even want to
think
about that.”

“Not
you
.” Sophie sounded exasperated. “Me! Ask it who
I'm
going to kiss. Please?” She picked up the pencil and twirled it in Ava's direction.

“Oh! Okay.” Ava took it, sat down, and wrote:

Who is the first boy that Sophie Chafik is going to kiss?

“What did it say?” Sophie was practically climbing onto the desk.

“Nothing.”

“Huh. Do you think it only works if the question is about you?”

Ava looked at the pencil. “I don't think so. It told me how many fingers you were hiding.”

“Well that stinks!” Sophie crossed her arms, then got a worried look on her face. “Ask it something else, okay? Make sure it's not broken.”

“Like what?”

“Something easy. Like a math formula.”

“Math formulas are
not
easy.” But Ava wrote:

What is the formula for the circumference of a circle?

The voice said, “Two pi R,” just as loud and clear as ever.

“It still works,” Ava said.

“Well, why wouldn't it tell you who I'm going to kiss?” Sophie glared at the pencil. “Ask it why it won't answer my question.”

“It probably won't answer that either.” But Ava wrote:

Why wouldn't you answer the question about the first boy Sophie is going to kiss?

“Because
that
is not a
fact
,” the voice said. It sounded cranky. “People have free will.”

Ava carefully put the pencil down. She was a little worried that it was getting tired and maybe mad at them. And who knew what an angry pencil-genie might do?

“Did it answer?” Sophie moved Ruffles the Owl aside and flopped down on Ava's tie-dyed blue-and-green bedspread.

“Yeah. It said who you're going to kiss first isn't a fact, and that people have free will.”

“Oh. That must be one of its rules.” Sophie sat with her mouth
scrunched up for a few seconds and then nodded. “I guess that makes sense. But it would have been cool if it told future stuff. We could have gotten lottery numbers for next week.”

That felt like cheating to Ava, too, but she didn't say so.

“Hey!” Sophie bounced up from the bed. “That means it might still work for me. Can I try again?”

“Go ahead.” Ava traded places with Sophie. Then she remembered the pencil's grumpy tone. “Be careful, though. I think it's getting tired of us.”

“If it's a genie, it's not allowed to get tired of us.” Sophie picked up the pencil, then gasped and put it down. “But wait … what if it
is
a genie and it'll only do a certain number of questions, like three wishes or something?”

Ava thought about that. “It's okay. You can try it.” Even if there weren't many questions left, she'd want Sophie to have a turn. “What are you going to ask?”

Sophie frowned for a second, then laughed out loud and reached for the pencil. “I'm going to ask it what color underwear Mr. Farkley was wearing today!”

“Sophie, no! That is the grossest question ever!”

But Sophie was already scribbling. She finished and then doubled over in the chair laughing.

Ava really didn't want to know, but Sophie was laughing so hard she had to ask. “Okay, what? What did it say?”

Sophie held up a finger and tried to catch her breath. “Green … with … with …” She started laughing again. “Yellow smiley faces!”

Ava laughed, too. She couldn't imagine how she was ever going to take a math test with a straight face again. How could someone so strict choose smiley face underwear?

“Ava, you girls okay in there?” a voice called from the hall.

“We're fine, Mom.” Instinctively, Ava tugged open her desk drawer and brushed the pencil inside as her mom came in, balancing a cup of tea and a pile of folders, legal pads, and
Money
magazines in her arms.

“What's so funny?”

“Just the usual girl stuff,” Sophie said, still giggling.

Mom glanced at the schoolbooks on Ava's desk. “How was your math test today?”

“Okay,” Ava said.

“Better than okay,” Sophie added. “Ava aced it.”

“That's not really—” Ava began.

“That's great!” Mom leaned over, juggling her folders, and kissed the top of Ava's head. “You've had the force all along, my dear.”

“It's
power
, Mom. Glinda said, ‘You've had the power all along.' You're confusing
The Wizard of Oz
with
Star Wars
.” Ava rolled her eyes. She and her mom had this thing where they quoted books they'd read together, trying to work the characters' sayings into real life, only Mom always messed up the quotes. Usually, Ava liked laughing with her about that. But lately, the whole silly tradition felt embarrassing when other people were around. Even Sophie. “We won't get the test back until later this week. But I think I did all right.”

“Well, congratulations.” Mom picked up the cookie napkins from Ava's desk and left, closing the door behind her.

Sophie let out a deep breath. “That was a close one with the pencil.”

“Yeah …” Ava felt that way, too. But she hadn't really meant to hide the pencil from her mom. Had she? “Do you think we should tell somebody about this? What if it's dangerous?”

“Seriously? It's fine, Ava.” Sophie pulled open the desk drawer, and Ava looked in. The pencil looked so ordinary, sitting there with the pens and paper clips. It was hard to imagine it doing anything bad. “Besides, nobody would believe us even if we did tell.”

“Probably not,” Ava said. What was it the professor in
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
had told the kids when they got home from Narnia? Don't tell anybody about your weird magical trip unless you find out something similar happened to them? It was something like that, and it made sense. “I guess it's okay.”

Sophie pulled the pencil from the drawer and twirled it between her fingers. “Let's go to the store and get a soda. And then we're going to have some serious fun with this thing.”

When Ava and Sophie opened the door to Anderson's General Store, the bells on the handle jingled like always. Ava's dad looked up from the counter where he was writing something in Magic Marker. “Hey, girls! Grab a treat. How was your day?”

“Good.” Ava tucked her legal pad under one arm and grabbed an atomic fireball from the candy counter. “Hey, Dad?” she asked casually, pulling the blue pencil from her pocket. “Any idea where this came from? It was in the kitchen junk drawer.”

He shrugged. “Maybe from Grandpa's place. Mom and I swept about a year's supply of pens and pencils out from under his radiator when we were cleaning his apartment this summer. But finders keepers, I'd say. It's all yours.” He went back to his lettering.

Sophie stretched a candy bracelet over her wrist and nibbled on one of the beads. “How is your grandpa?” she asked Ava.

Ava shrugged. “All right, I guess. But he seems even sadder
since he moved. He's had heart problems, so he can't live alone anymore, but I don't think he likes Cedar Bay.” Grandpa, Ava's mother's dad, had been on his own since Grandma Marion died five years ago, but now he couldn't take care of himself and hardly ever talked. The doctors weren't sure if he was losing his memory or just depressed, but either way, they'd recommended Cedar Bay. Mom had called it a long-term memory care facility. All Ava knew was that it was full of old people who usually seemed like they were somewhere far away in their minds.

Ava's dad sighed. “It must be tough to give up living on your own.” He put the top back on a Magic Marker and stepped back to look at his poster.

“Whatcha working on, Mr. Anderson?” Sophie asked.

“Something that'll have that superstore wishing it never made plans to open here.” Dad held up the sign:

ANDERSON'S GENERAL STORE, HOME OF THE WORLD-FAMOUS MOUNTAIN MAN SANDWICH. He'd drawn a burly lumberjack next to the words.

“What's a Mountain Man Sandwich?” Sophie asked.

“I'm not sure yet.”

“How does it get to be world famous?” Ava asked, sucking on her fireball.

“Well, hopefully if we
say
it's world famous, other people will catch on and say so, too,” Dad said. “It's a proven strategy. There's a supermarket in San Francisco that advertises a world-famous turkey sandwich. It's a regular turkey sandwich, but they slapped
‘world-famous' in front of it, and bingo!” Dad picked up a red Magic Marker and underlined “world-famous” on his sign. “Want to help brainstorm sandwich combinations?”

“Sure,” Ava said.

“But not right now,” Sophie jumped in. “We better do our
homework
first.” She started for the door, and Ava understood. Sophie wanted pencil time.

It was warm for late October, so they went outside and sprawled under a maple tree that was still holding on to a few red leaves.

Ava poked around some weeds near the tree. “Think there are any goldenrod galls here? We get extra credit for science if we bring some in by Friday.”

“How can you be thinking about some nasty bug larva when we have a magic pencil?” Sophie tapped Ava's legal pad. “What should we ask it?”

“I don't know.” The whole thing was feeling weirder and weirder. Ava looked at the pencil as if it might grow teeth and bite her. “Soph, what if this pencil's cursed or something? What if … what if it wants to be paid for answering questions?”

“Paid how?”

“What if it wants our first-born children or our souls or something?”

Sophie laughed and made the pencil bounce through the air. “I'm the evil blue pencil,” she said in a deep, growly voice, “and I want to suck out your soul …”