The Friendship War Read online

  Grampa has seen my room at home, and how the drawers of my desk are crammed full. Also the top of my dresser, and the tops of my bookcases, and the windowsills—actually, every flat surface in my room is loaded, including the floor. Feathers, acorns, a really old calculator, seashells, troll dolls, fake jewelry, rocks and stones, keys, markers and pens, coins, pinecones, paper clips, candles from my birthday cakes, every card and letter I’ve ever gotten, old movie tickets, marbles, nails—on and on. And that’s just the smaller stuff.

  I’ve also got seven large snow globes, nine dark blue glass bottles, a globe of the world from 1941, a slide rule in its own leather case, three plastic crates of vinyl records, a wobbly piano stool, and a couple dozen stuffed animal toys—mostly cats and dogs and penguins. Not to mention half a zillion paperbacks and comic books. Plus three full sets of Encyclopaedia Britannica—which I stacked up into the shape of a big armchair.

  I have a theory about why I collect so many things. Which I don’t want to think about now.

  Actually, I’ve usually got at least five or six active theories rolling around inside my head—theories about all kinds of stuff. Because whenever I notice something I don’t understand, I think up a possible way to explain it, and then I keep track of the facts to test if my theory is right—which is not some new process I invented. It’s called the scientific method.

  Still, wanting to own a whole storeroom of buttons? I might need to revise my theory about why I love all the things in my room.

  But I’m not lying to Grampa—I really don’t know why I want all of them. I just do. It feels like an opportunity I shouldn’t pass up, like when I found that third set of Encyclopaedia Britannica.

  And Grampa gets that. He’s still chuckling and shaking his head.

  I look him in the face. “Can I ask a favor?”

  He wipes his eyes with a tissue. “Sure.”

  “When I get home and I tell Mom and Dad and Ben about your building and everything, I’m not going to tell them about the buttons, not till they arrive. So could you not mention them until later?”

  “No problem—that’s even better!”

  He’s laughing again.

  Grampa probably thinks I’m going to keep these buttons a complete secret until they show up in Illinois. But that’s not quite true.

  I’m going to tell one other person in exactly six days—on the first day of school.

  It’s strange not seeing Ellie all summer. For two and a half months we don’t even email or talk on the phone. But I’m used to it. Her family has a vacation home in Colorado, and they also travel a lot—like, all over the world.

  Sometimes I wonder if Ellie has an extra best friend in Aspen, like a spare tire. And sometimes I think that by the time we make it to June every year, we might just really need our long summer away from each other. With zero communication.

  But today it’s the first day of school, and I see her in the hall outside the art room. Then she turns her head, and we snap together like magnets for a quick hug.

  I jump right in, because with Ellie, it’s important to be the one who starts talking first.

  “I’ve got to tell you something! At the end of August? I flew to Boston by myself to visit my grandfather, and he bought this really old building, and I—”

  She grabs my arm. “That reminds me!”

  And just like that, I know that my turn to talk is over.

  “Because, in Aspen? Inside this Old West general store, there’s a jewelry shop, and they make things out of real gold nuggets—that’s all they do! Look at this bracelet. Isn’t it fantastic? My mom would die if she knew I wore it today, but I had to show you! And these sneakers? You’ll never guess where I got them—in Paris! My grandmother took me and my sister to all her favorite shops there, and it was wonderful! Such gorgeous things—you have to come for a sleepover! And on the way back to Colorado, we stayed in London for six days, and we went to this amazing store called Harrods, and I got the cutest…”

  Ellie goes on for three more minutes, and her descriptions are funny and smart and charming and captivating—in other words, classic Ellie. But by the time she stops, I realize that I don’t want to tell her about my fantastic dusty boxes of buttons, from this gorgeous crumbling building where all the floors were covered with the cutest bird droppings.

  And this is when I remember the Ellie Effect. Every summer I forget about this phenomenon, which always makes me ask myself the same question: If Ellie Emerson is my best friend, then how come she gets me so upset?

  I’ve been trying to figure this out since second grade, and there does not appear to be a scientific explanation.

  So each new school year, I get to study the Ellie Effect all over again.

  One time Mom said, There’s an old saying: “Opposites attract.” I think that might be what’s going on with you and Ellie. In a lot of ways, this theory makes sense to me.

  I don’t care much about clothes; Ellie cares a lot.

  I love math and science; Ellie doesn’t.

  I like to hike and camp and mess around outside; Ellie is perfectly happy to stay inside and talk…or go shopping. And honestly? Sometimes Ellie can be so much fun to be with that she can make me happy to hang out at the mall all day, too. Once in a while.

  And those sneakers she got in Paris? I have to admit that they’re really cute.

  The one way that we seem most alike? We’re both pretty—except I don’t try to be, and Ellie does.

  If I ever said that out loud—that I thought I was pretty? Everyone would think I was totally conceited. But I’m not. I’m just trying to be scientific about something science can’t even define. There have to be a million different ideas about what makes someone good-looking. All I know for sure is this: Ellie is positive that she’s pretty, and she keeps on telling me that I am, too.

  But I hate the idea that if she didn’t think I was pretty, then Ellie wouldn’t like me as much. It’s one theory I don’t want to prove.

  The warning bell rings, and as we walk into homeroom, I remind myself for the hundredth time that even though Ellie Emerson is my best friend, Ellie’s opinions do not rule the world.

  It only feels that way.

  The next two days are super busy—all the regular beginning-of-school stuff, plus dealing with three new teachers, plus being swamped with homework, plus getting used to changing classes, which we didn’t do last year.

  Ellie’s in my homeroom, in all my classes except for science and math, and we sit together at lunch, so we’re seeing a lot of each other.

  But I don’t tell her about my trip to visit Grampa. Or about the stuff I found. Especially the buttons.

  And I tell myself I don’t care that for the past two years we’ve only had sleepovers at her house, never at mine.

  Never.

  And I keep telling myself I don’t care what Ellie thinks about anything.

  But I know that’s not true. I know I’m ignoring scientific evidence.

  How do I know this?

  Because it’s Thursday afternoon, and when I get off the school bus, what do I see in our driveway? A wooden pallet, squat and square, loaded with twenty-seven cardboard boxes full of buttons.

  And am I happy? Am I excited?

  No. I feel like a total dork.

  Right now I would gladly trade all these buttons for one pair of cute purple-and-orange sneakers.

  From Paris.

  There’s a note from Mom inside the kitchen door—she’s at Staples. And Ben won’t get home till after his band practice.

  So I find a pair of scissors, and I go back outside and snip the plastic wrapping off the pallet. I haul every box upstairs to my room, and then I drag the empty pallet to the side of the garage and lean it up next to the recycling barrels.

  I feel hot and tired and grimy.

 
And stupid.

  Back at the mill with Grampa? Owning all these buttons had seemed like such a wonderful idea. And now?

  Not so much.

  I have an old, wide brass bed with a dust ruffle, and twenty-four of the boxes fit underneath.

  I stack the last three at the back of my closet, and now all the boxes are tucked away, but not really hidden.

  So, of course, at bedtime, Mom notices.

  “They’re full of what?”

  “Buttons, little gray buttons. Grampa and I found them in his old building, and he said I could have them.”

  “Well. That was very nice of him.”

  If Mom’s upset, she doesn’t show it.

  And I have a theory about why:

  When I was eight, I tried to collect all the acorns from the three big oak trees in our backyard. I filled bucket after bucket, and lugged each load up to my room to dump into a big blue plastic bin. When the storage bin was full, there were still tons of acorns left outside. Mom helped me estimate the number of acorns in my bin—more than eleven thousand! Then we searched online and discovered that in some years, one large oak tree can drop up to ten thousand acorns—which meant that there could have been almost twenty thousand acorns still lying outside on the ground! We also read how deer and crows and wild turkeys and chipmunks and blue jays and squirrels love to eat acorns. Learning all these facts stopped my gathering. But my big bin of acorns sat in a corner for almost a year—until the whole upstairs of our house began to smell like moldy leaves. Then the acorns went away.

  So, these buttons? Mom probably thinks they won’t stick around forever.

  * * *

  —

  The first full week of sixth grade zipped by, and I’ve had no trouble ignoring the buttons—except I stubbed my big toe on a box as I climbed into bed. Twice.

  Then halfway through Monday morning of week two, Mrs. Casey says, “We start our first social studies unit today: the Industrial Revolution in America.” And on the whiteboard at the front of the room, she flashes a black-and-white illustration with a caption below it:

  BOOTT COTTON MILLS • LOWELL, MASSACHUSETTS • 1852

  Some of the buildings are long and low, and automatically, my hand flies up.

  “Yes, Grace?”

  “I went inside an old mill building in Massachusetts this summer. I took pictures, and I got to keep some things I found.”

  “Great! Could you share some of that with the class tomorrow?”

  Actually…I would hate that.

  This is what I want to say. But, of course, I can’t.

  So I say, “Sure.”

  “Good—thank you!”

  Mrs. Casey turns back to the whiteboard. “Now, this picture shows a very large mill located beside the Merrimack River. In your reading at home tonight, I’d like you to find…”

  I stop listening. My face feels warm, and I want to rewind the last minute and then delete it.

  Because my things from the mill? They’re part of that afternoon I spent with Grampa, poking around like archaeologists.

  It was great telling Mom and Dad and Ben about the mill and the things we found. They know how much I love flea markets and garage sales and old, run-down antiques shops.

  Also, they understand about all the stuff in my bedroom. Some kids like to keep diaries and journals and online scrapbooks and selfies. Me? I like to keep things. And my room? It’s like a museum of my life so far—that’s my theory about all my stuff.

  And I’ve got evidence to support this theory.

  The smooth gray stone next to the lamp on my dresser? It makes me remember the morning mist above the lake on our first family camping trip to Wisconsin. The small curved twig next to the stone? I picked that up on the playground when I was in kindergarten because it looked like a smile. And that IBC Root Beer bottle cap? I had never drunk soda from a glass bottle until my first sleepover at Ellie’s house.

  Almost everything in my room is there because it links up with a particular moment, and those moments are mine.

  And they’re private.

  But there’s no way to stop this. Tomorrow, my happy memories of the mill are going to get squished and smooshed around until they turn into a social studies lesson.

  I know smooshed is not a proper scientific term. But it’s still the right word: smooshed.

  The one good thing? As far as the other kids and Mrs. Casey are concerned, my things from the mill will just look like a bunch of random historical objects.

  Still, I hate that my summer souvenirs are going to be studied and examined by the whole class. And probably judged, too.

  Especially by Ellie.

  We’re walking into the cafeteria Monday after social studies, and Ellie says, “How come you didn’t tell me about your trip to Massachusetts? Did you go to see your grandfather? I remember you went for your grandmother’s funeral last summer, right?”

  Because I still haven’t told Ellie anything about my trip. I had started to, back on the first day of school. But she doesn’t remember that.

  Before I can answer, Taylor comes up to us, and then lunch happens, and Ellie doesn’t mention my trip again the whole rest of the day.

  Which makes me wonder, Does she actually want to know?

  Or actually care?

  Maybe the question Ellie meant to ask me is, Who else did you tell about your trip? Because Ellie hates being left out.

  News flash: Everyone hates that.

  * * *

  —

  It’s almost bedtime, and I send six images from my phone to Mrs. Casey’s school email address.

  Choosing the pictures to share up on the whiteboard tomorrow was easy: the mill building and the river behind it; the huge gears and driveshafts in the basement; views of the mill’s office, with all the cubbyholes and built-in desks; and then some pictures of the large open spaces where the women and men worked at their machines or tables.

  But there aren’t any pictures of Grampa or me at the mill.

  Those are private.

  I load the things I found back into the same canvas shopping bag Grampa gave me—except for the buttons.

  I had scooped some into my bag when we were at the mill, and now those are in a blue glass jar on my dresser—to remind me how I found them. With Grampa. Because those buttons are different from the ones that arrived on the pallet. And they’re not for sharing.

  I’m not sure I should take any buttons at all. I’d have to drag out a box, and then put it away again….It’d be a lot of messing around just to show the class some buttons.

  Down in the kitchen, I’m halfway through a cup of yogurt when I decide that buttons are part of the story, part of the mill’s last chapter as a clothing factory. And really, all I have to do is open the top box on the stack in my closet.

  So I take a plastic sandwich bag upstairs. I open my closet, shove some clothes aside, tear the tape off the box, pull back the flaps, and drop a handful of small gray buttons into the bag.

  Except the buttons aren’t gray or small—they’re bright yellow, and almost an inch across!

  And a theory jumps into my mind: At the mill, the buttons must have been organized by color, and the three boxes I opened were all from the gray section!

  It takes me thirty minutes to move, open, and label each box of buttons. And my theory is correct: Not only do I own small gray ones, but I also have buttons that are red, green, pink, lavender, yellow, black, brown, amber, blue, and white—all different sizes, too, from bigger than a quarter to smaller than a pea.

  And my favorite discovery? Three of the boxes are filled with all the leftover and mismatched and fancy buttons, so many different kinds! There are buttons made of glass, shell, brass, wood, plastic, pewter, leather, and other materials I don’t recognize. I’ve got buttons that look like dia
monds and pearls and roses and daisies; buttons in the shape of hearts and triangles and squares and stars and dogs and horses and cats and butterflies and snowflakes—on and on and on!

  I want to dump all three of the mixed boxes onto my floor and then sort the buttons by shape and size and color and design and material—and especially to count them! I could even put all the information into a graph or a table—really look at the data!

  But this is not the right time to become a button expert. My job now is to get ready for social studies.

  Tomorrow.

  When it’s time for social studies Tuesday morning, I lay everything on the table that Mrs. Casey moved to the front of the room: the bobbins, the pens, the gear, the doorknob, the scissors, the hammer, the thimble, the needles, and the antique eyeglasses. I have a small assortment of buttons, and I empty them out carefully at one end of the table. It all makes an interesting display, like you’d see at a museum. Or an antiques store.

  Or my room.

  I talk for a minute or so, and tell everyone what Grampa told me about the history of the mill, and I explain how the things on the table came from different times during its life.

  Mrs. Casey asks the class to gather around, and as they do, she picks up the scissors.

  My stomach tightens up like a little fist, and I think I might have just made a bad face. Because from now on, whenever I look at those scissors, I’m going to have to remember two things—my wonderful afternoon with Grampa, and Mrs. Casey’s pink fingernail polish.

  She opens and closes the long blades, and they make this great metallic swish, ending with a sharp snap.

  “A tailor must have used these to cut through several layers of wool or cotton at the same time—I have never seen shears this large before!”

  Following Mrs. Casey’s lead, the kids start touching and inspecting everything—just what I was afraid would happen. But I don’t really blame them. This old stuff is irresistible, like holding a hundred years with one hand.