The Melting of Maggie Bean by Tricia Rayburn

Author:Tricia Rayburn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aladdin
Published: 2003-10-19T04:00:00+00:00

19.

“Maggie, are you okay?” Aimee whispered, plopping a stack of spiral notebooks onto the library table and sitting down.

Maggie’s eyes fluttered open. Why was Aimee looking at her like that?

“What’s wrong?” Maggie asked.

Aimee raised her eyebrows. “You were just sleeping sitting up. Your head was about to drop onto the dictionary. I know from personal experience that’s no way to build your vocabulary.”

Maggie shut her eyes tightly, opened them again, and registered the book in front of her.

“Mr. Webster may have been smart, but he certainly wasn’t very exciting.” She attempted to laugh, but a yawn got in the way.

“Seriously, what’s up? What planet are you on?” Aimee looked away and unloaded textbooks from her backpack.

Maggie sat up straighter and shook her head to wake up her drowsy brain.

“Nothing’s up. I’m here. Everything’s great.”

“Yeah, which is why you’ve been late to first period the past three days. And why you weren’t at Mathletes on Monday or French Club yesterday.”

Maggie furrowed her eyebrows. Tried as she had to get her to join, Aimee wasn’t in Mathletes or French Club. “How did you—”

“Mr. Coogan and Madame DuMonde both asked me about you in class. Under normal circumstances, I would’ve known exactly what to tell them.”

“Oh.”

Aimee looked at her expectantly.

Maggie waved her hand. “I haven’t been anywhere. I’ve just had to get home right after school this week. No biggie.” She picked up a pencil and tapped its eraser against the dictionary, distracted.

Aimee raised her eyebrows.

“I’ve just had stuff to do,” Maggie said quickly. “Stuff around the house. And outside the house. But everything’s fine, really.”

Aimee frowned but returned her attention to her backpack. Maggie knew she was trying to give her another chance to talk about what was really up without asking further questions.

“So, how are you? How’s training going?”

As she rummaged through her backpack, Aimee shot her a look. “Shaved off three more seconds, and am up to two hundred sit-ups a night,” she reported, reluctantly accepting Maggie’s subject change. “And Justine Jackson offered to help me with another routine, so that’s good.”

Maggie nodded. Justine was a Water Wing whose circle of friends actually extended beyond the circle of bodies in the pool.

“Do you think you’d want to come by the pool after school today? She’s going to run through the routine with me, but I’d love to get your totally honest opinion on how ridiculous I really look.”

“You won’t look ridiculous. You couldn’t.”

“I’m sure I’ll look like a drunken crab. But I’m okay with that.” Aimee grinned. Victoriously pulling a bag of trail mix from her backpack, she looked at Maggie. “It’d be nice to hang out. I feel like we haven’t really talked in days.”

It had been days. And the last time was over a marathon math study session, during which Maggie forced Aimee to discuss numbers only.

“I know, Aim, but not today. Soon though, I promise.”

Maggie tried to listen as Aimee talked about her big afternoon English test—they were in the library to study, after all—but she was very distracted by the open bag of trail mix sitting on the table between them.

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