The Bridge Battle by Jacqueline Davies

Author:Jacqueline Davies
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2022-09-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

Tension and Compression

“Why are you so late?” asked Jessie. Evan was supposed to get home an hour and ten minutes after she did, but he had been late every day this week. She was tired of waiting. She had to talk to him.

“I’m not late for dinner,” said Evan.

“You’re late for talking to me,” said Jessie impatiently. “I need to talk to you, and I’ve been waiting for two and three-quarters hours.”

“Well, sor-ry,” said Evan. “It’s been kind of a rotten week. And believe it or not, Jess, sometimes I don’t spend all day thinking about you.”

Jessie narrowed her eyes and looked at her brother’s face. She was pretty sure this was an example of sarcasm. Sarcasm was when someone said one thing but meant exactly the opposite! Who invented such a thing? That’s what Jessie wanted to know. Jessie needed people to say exactly what they meant, or else she was lost. She always said exactly what she meant. Why couldn’t everyone else be like her? It would make life so much easier.

But then she thought that she didn’t want Evan to be just like her. She needed him to be just like him! Otherwise, how could she find out if someone was being sarcastic if she didn’t have Evan to ask?

“Are you being sarcastic?” she asked.

“Yeah,” said Evan, getting up to get a yogurt from the refrigerator. And this time, he sounded more like himself. “Sorry. For real. I just had a rotten day.”

Jessie was about to tell him it was too close to dinnertime to eat a yogurt, but then she bit her tongue, which was a trick her mother had taught her for when she wanted to correct someone but didn’t need to correct someone. It was a difficult distinction to spot. In this case, she had to bite her tongue twice.

“It’s okay,” she said. “I have a problem. A problem at Summer Fun Exploration Camp.”

“Are those girls being mean to you?” asked Evan.

“No!” said Jessie. “I think I’m being mean to them. At least to one of them. The other two kind of like me now. For no good reason. Which is even stranger than when they didn’t like me, also for no good reason.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Evan, scooping a spoonful of yogurt into his mouth. Evan could finish a yogurt in five scoops. Jessie had counted. It made her kind of sick. Yogurt was slimy and cold. Like eating a raw egg. Or a slug.

“I will explain,” said Jessie. And she told him the whole story of the bet with Becky and how she had won, but how it hadn’t felt good. Not like when she’d won the Lemonade War against Evan, which he still claimed was a tie, even though it was not. “It feels like I did something bad,” said Jessie. “But I didn’t! I won, fair and square.”

“Well, I wouldn’t call it fair and square,” said Evan, putting the yogurt container in the recycling bin. “The problem is, Jess, you’re ten times smarter than Becky.

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