Chapter 14

Chapter 14 Reconciliation reconciliation (reconciliation) n. The act of bringing together after a difference, as in to reconcile numbers on a balance sheet; resolution. "Come on, you two," Mrs. Treski called up the stairs. "If we don't go now, there won't be any room on the grass." "We're coming," shouted Evan, sticking his head out of his room. Jessie was sitting on his bed, and he was trying to get her to go to the fireworks. She had her lock box on her lap and a mulish look on her face. "Just say it's a tie," said Evan. "C'mon, Jess. This whole thing is stupid and you know it." "It's not a tie unless it's a tie," said Jessie,

knowing she sounded like a brat but not able to stop herself. "How much have you got?" "Mom's waiting," said Evan. "Put your dumb box away and let's go to the fireworks." "How much have you got?" Evan tensed up his fingers as if he were strangling an invisible ghost. "Nothing! Okay? I've got nothing. Look." He turned the pockets of his shorts inside out. Jessie looked skeptical. "You can't have nothing. You must have made something." "Well, I had expenses. So I ended up with nothing. Okay? Are you happy? You win." Evan sat on the edge of the bed, looking at the floor. Jessie felt her heart sink. "You spent all your money on mix for your Lemonade-on-Wheels stand?" Jessie asked. "All of it?" Evan nodded. Jessie felt like crawling under the bed and never coming out. "It didn't pay off so good?" she whispered. "There were a few bugs in the system," said,

Evan. That's a joke Jessie would have loved, he thought. Before the war. Now it was all just money and numbers and bad feelings. There was no room for laughing. "Oh," said Jessie, her voice the size of an ant. She stared down at the box in her lap. "I've got—" She opened the lid of the lock box, took out the change tray, and pushed aside all the scraps of paper she had collected and the comment card from Megan. She stared. "Wait a minute. This isn't my money." She picked up a handful of wrinkled, bunched-up bills. Evan lay down on the bed and covered his head with his pillow. Jessie counted the money quickly. "Sixty-two dollars and eleven cents? Where'd this come from?" "Imamummy," said Evan from underneath the pillow. "What?" said Jessie. "Take that dumb pillow away. I can't understand what you're saying." She hit the side of his leg for emphasis. "It's my money!" he shouted, still through the

pillow. "It was a hundred and three dollars, but then I spent forty-one dollars for the Lemonade-on-Wheels stand. So now it's just sixty-two." "Your money? But where's my money?" Evan pulled the pillow away from his face. His eyes were closed. His nose pointed at the ceiling. He folded his arms across his chest like a dead man. "I took it." "Well, give it back," said Jessie. This time she hit the side of his leg for real. "I can't. It's gone." He lay as still as a three-day-old corpse. "Gone? Gone where?" Jessie was shrieking now. Never in her life had she worked so hard to earn money. Never in her life had she had more than one hundred dollars in her hand. Never in her life had she had a friend who trusted her like Megan had. "I don't know. It was in my shorts pocket. And then I played basketball with the guys. And then we went to Jack's house to swim. And I took off my shorts and borrowed a suit. And when I went back to

change, the money was gone." He sat up and faced his sister. "I'm really sorry." In a real war you fight. You fight with your hands and with weapons. You fight with anything you've got because it's a matter of life and death. Jessie felt the loss of her hard-earned money like a death, and she ripped into Evan with all the power in her body. She punched him. She kicked him. She threw her lock box at him. She wanted to tear him up into little pieces. Evan didn't try to pin her, though it would have been easy to do. Part of him just wanted to lie on the bed and take it. Take it all. For being the one who started the whole thing by saying, "I hate you." For making Jessie feel so rotten about herself just because Evan felt so rotten about himself. For taking Jessie's money and losing it to Scott. Just for being so stupid. But Jessie was really going at it, and if he didn't protect himself at least a little, he was going to end up in the emergency room and that would upset his

mom. So he kept his hands up in front of his face, just enough to keep Jessie from gouging out his eyes. But he never once tried to hit her back. He was done fighting. Finally Jessie ran out of gas. She lay down on the bed and tried to make her brain work. Her body was so worn out that her brain felt like the only part of her that could work. "One of your friends stole my money?" she asked. "I think it was Scott Spencer," said Evan. "He went upstairs to go to the bathroom. And then he came down all in a hurry and said he had to go home. After that, I went upstairs and the money was gone." "He's such a jerk," said Jessie. "The biggest," said Evan. "If he gets an Xbox, I'll know it was him." "It was a lot of money," said Jessie, feeling tears start to spring from her eyes and run down her face. "It was," said Evan. "I couldn't believe how much