The Lemonade Crime (10 page)

So he headed for the top of the key and planted his feet so that he could make that beautiful turnaround jumper that he'd been practicing for months. He stood there, dribbling the ball, practically shouting out to Scott,
Yeah, come get me.
And when Scott did, Evan turned and threw an elbow that caught Scott right on the side of the face.

Scott went flying and landed hard on his rear end, his hands scraping along the blacktop. Evan didn't even look over to see if Scott was okay. He dribbled once, twice, three times, then jumped in the air, twisted his body, and let fly the ball.

Everyone watched as it sailed through the air and then swooshed through the hoop.

Nothing but net.

The ball dropped to the blacktop and bounced. Nobody made a move for it. Nobody said anything. Scott was still sitting on the ground, the blood on his hands a bright red. Evan was standing, his arms at his side. He felt like he'd been through a fistfight.

Scott got up slowly, picked up the basketball, and then drop-kicked it as hard as he could so that it sailed over the fence and disappeared into the swamp. Then he ran.

balance
(
),
n.
A device used for weighing that has a pivoted horizontal beam from which hang two scales. In statues and paintings, the figure of Justice is often shown holding a balance.

"Grandma, can you talk for a minute?" Jessie stuck a moshi pillow behind her head and cradled the phone to her ear.

"Sure, Jessie Bean. What's up?" Jessie's grandmother lived four hours away, so Jessie called her on the phone a lot.

"Everything's awful," said Jessie, picking at a corner of her bedroom wallpaper that was peeling. She explained to her grandmother about the trial yesterday and the basketball game and Scott kicking the ball into the swamp. She told her how Evan had to hunt for the ball for half an hour before finally finding it, and how he told all his friends to just go home, he'd find it himself,
just go home.
So they did. And how Evan and Jessie were left to look for the ball, and how Evan didn't talk the whole time they did.

"And today he's not even
eating,
or anything," said Jessie. "Did you know that it's Yom Kippur?"

"Yom Kippur, is that the one where the kids dress up?" asked Jessie's grandmother.

"No, that's Purim." Grandma was always mixing up things like that, things that sounded kind of the same, but were different. During their last phone call, she was talking with Jessie about the sequoia trees in California, but she kept using the word
sequester
instead. "Yom Kippur is the day when the Jewish people ask for forgiveness and they don't eat."

"Is Evan Jewish now?" asked Grandma.

"No, but he's not eating. He says he's not hungry," said Jessie.

"Sometimes that happens to me," Grandma said. "I practically forget to eat."

"But Evan's
always
hungry," said Jessie. "Mom says he's a bottomless pit."

"He'll eat when he's ready," said Grandma. "Let it go."

Jessie hated it when her grandmother said that. She was always telling Jessie to
let it go
and
be the tree.
Crazy yoga grandma. How could anyone be a tree?

"But ... I want to do something to help," said Jessie.

"Why don't you bake cookies?" said Grandma. "That'll get him to eat. Right?"

"I don't think so," said Jessie. "Not this time." This was bigger than cookies. How could she explain to her grandmother how bad things were?

Jessie had believed in the trial. She had thought the truth would come out in court, and with truth would come justice.

But instead of truth in the courtroom, there had been lies, including hers. Instead of justice, there was a crime with no punishment. And now she and Evan were going to have to stand up in front of the entire fourth grade and say that they had been wrong—even though Jessie knew that wasn't true.

"Grandma, it's so unfair," said Jessie. "I know Scott Spencer took that money. I know he's lying. And now it feels like I did all this work, just so he'd end up looking innocent!"

"Some things are beyond your control, Jessie," said her grandmother. "You need to learn to accept that. You can't run the whole world."

I wish I did,
thought Jessie. The world would be a better place if she was in charge. But then ... she thought of the terrible thing she'd done.

"Grandma," she blurted out. "I lied in court." She explained how it had happened. Her grandmother listened to the whole story without interrupting.

"Lying is wrong," Grandma said, "but at least you did it from a good place in your heart. You don't need to feel ashamed about loving your brother."

"I still feel really bad about it," said Jessie.

"That's good," said Grandma. "I'd be worried if you didn't feel bad about lying. You
do
have control over that. Nobody can make you lie. So feel bad for a while, and always remember what you've learned, and then move on and be a better person. But don't beat yourself up, Jessie. You're only seven."

"Grandma! I'm eight!" said Jessie. How could her grandmother forget her age?

"Really?" said Grandma. "Are you sure?"

"I've been eight for almost a whole year. My birthday is next month."

"Good," said Grandma, "because I have a book I've been meaning to send you, and it will be the perfect birthday present."

"Grandma," said Jessie, her voice sounding a warning. "You're not going to send me
The Prince and the Pauper
again, are you?"

"No, Miss Smarty Pants! I remember I sent you that book—twice! You'll never let me forget that, will you?"

"Why do you forget things?" asked Jessie. "You didn't used to."

"Oh, Jessie Bean, I'm getting old." Her grandmother laughed quietly, and Jessie hugged the phone closer. "And that's something neither of us has any control over. Sorry to say."

Jessie heard the doorbell ring downstairs. She knew her mother wouldn't hear it all the way up in the attic office, and she was pretty sure that Evan wouldn't answer it, even if he did hear it. "Gotta go, Grandma," said Jessie. "There's someone at the door."

"Okay, Honey Bear. Be the tree! And bake cookies! I love you."

Jessie ran downstairs and opened the front door. There was Megan.

"Hi," said Megan.

Jessie lifted her hand in a short wave, but she didn't invite Megan in.

"I thought maybe you were mad at me," said Megan.

"Kind of," said Jessie. There was a short silence. "Why'd you do it?" Jessie hadn't wanted to believe that she was angry at her best friend, but now all the questions that she had tried to ignore since the trial came flooding into her brain.
Why'd you ruin all my hard work? Why'd you get Scott off the hook? Why'd you betray me and Evan?

"I'm sorry, Jessie," said Megan. "I didn't want to make you mad, and I didn't want to mess up your trial, but the thing is, it wasn't really your trial. It was all of ours." Megan looked right at her. "You did this great thing, Jessie. You gave us a real court. Not some fake, dress-up, pretend thing. A real one. But in a real court of law, everyone has the right to a lawyer. So, somebody had to stand up for Scott. Otherwise, the trial would have been a great big fake."

Jessie didn't say anything, but she understood exactly what Megan was saying. Somewhere in the back of her brain, she'd known it all along. "I wanted to win," she said finally, feeling all over again the pain of losing. "But you're right. You did the right thing."

The two girls stood there, both looking at their feet. Why was it so hard to talk about feelings?

"I'm not mad at you anymore," Jessie said, knowing that it was mostly true and that by tomorrow it would be completely true.

Megan smiled. "See you on Monday, Jess." She hopped down the front steps.

"Hey, Megan?" called out Jessie. "Do you think Scott took the money?"

"Yep, I do," said Megan. She shrugged, and the look on her face seemed to say,
That's life.

Jessie watched her friend walk down the street. It was a gorgeous end-of-summer-just-starting-to-befall day. The trees swayed in the breeze. The sky was the color of cornflowers. The sun felt good on her skin.

Jessie ran upstairs to her room and found the yoga book that her grandmother had given her the past Christmas. She flipped to
[>]
and stared at the picture.

"Be the tree," Jessie murmured to herself. Slowly, she picked up her left foot and rested it on her right knee, finding and holding her balance for one blissful second.

amends
(
),
n.
Legal compensation (of money or other valuable assets) as a repair for loss, damage, or injury of any kind.

In his whole life, Evan had never gone this long without eating. And the weirdest thing of all was that he wasn't even hungry anymore. Sometime around two o'clock on Saturday afternoon, his hunger had just disappeared. Like turning off a light switch. He felt empty and light and a little buzzy in his head. But not hungry.

He hadn't even planned it. Yesterday, he'd come home and eaten his dinner, as usual. And then the sun went down and he thought about Adam and Paul, and he wondered if they had started fasting and if they would make it all the way till tomorrow night. And then he wanted to see if he could do it. Go twenty-four hours without food. Just wanted to see what it was like, and if he had the strength to do it.

And that got him thinking about the Day of Atonement. The less he ate, the more he thought, until here he was, sitting on his branch of the Climbing Tree, way up high with the leaves whispering to him and the birds pecking for their last snack of the day and late-afternoon shadows beginning to stretch across the yard.

He began to think about his sins. And that was a hard thing to think about. Did he really have any sins? He didn't know. But there was one thing he did know. Right now, he felt lousy. And Evan knew that when he felt really bad, that usually meant he'd done something he regretted.

Evan regretted that whole basketball game. He wished he hadn't played like that. He wished Megan hadn't seen him play like that. Or Jessie. Or anyone. He wished he hadn't been such a jerk. The game kept playing over and over in his head, every perfect shot looping through his brain, and it made him feel sick. He was never going to know what had happened to that missing money, but crushing Scott on the basketball court wasn't going to change that.

Evan climbed down from the tree and went into the house. Jessie was in the kitchen with a mixing bowl and a bunch of ingredients spread out on the countertop: flour, sugar, butter, and eggs.

"What'cha makin'?" he asked as he walked through.

"Your favorite. Chocolate chip."

"Thanks," said Evan, grabbing his baseball hat from the front hall closet and heading for the door.

"Where are you going?" asked Jessie.

"Scott's."

"No!" said Jessie. "Don't do that."

"Quit worrying! Tell Mom where I went, okay?" Jessie followed him to the door. "And don't eat all the cookies before I get back," he shouted over his shoulder.

He didn't really have a plan. In the back of his mind he figured a handshake and at least one "I'm sorry" were somewhere in his future. Beyond that, he didn't know what would happen.

Scott's house was a short bike ride away from Evan's, but his neighborhood was a world apart. The houses were huge and had fancy bushes planted in little groups and two-car attached garages and lawns that looked like they were edged with a razor blade. As Evan walked up the brick path to the front door, he noticed that the two large maple trees in the yard were beginning to turn. They would drop a lot of leaves next month, but Evan knew that Scott never had to rake because his family had a service that took care of the yard.

When the front door opened, Evan wasn't surprised to see Scott standing there. Evan could hardly ever remember Scott's parents answering the door.

He looked better than he had yesterday, that was for sure. Cleaned up, no blood, and he was wearing jeans, which covered up his knees. But the look on his face was the same—a look of hatred. Pure hatred beamed right at Evan.