Page 65 of The Lookback

“You’re such an idiot,” Jed mutters.

“What was that?” Tommy asks. “I thought you didn’t know how to speak.”

Instead of scowling, or fuming, or muttering a swear word, Jed half-smiles. It’s a breakthrough of shocking proportions, and I begin to wonder whether Tommy might be right.

It makes me think about the one time I really made him mad when we were kids. At an end of the year party for school, we went to Libbert’s Pond—a pond on the Libbert family’s property with this cool rope swing. Jed had pulled my hair while we were eating lunch, and I had squawked. Everyone laughed, so to get back at him, I shoved him into the lake. It seemed equal and opposite to a ten-year-old. Only, instead of falling in the lake, he slipped and landed face-first in the mud. Every kid in my class had howled with laughter when he stood up.

He was mad at me all day—right up until another kid, Kyle, started trying to convince me to get a ride home with him instead of Jed. That’s when Jed finally stopped being mad and dragged me to his mom’s car.

When pushed, he got over it.

We’ve tried pushing a little. The play was a bit of a push, but he got sick. The dance was too, sort of, but not really. But now he has to fight for a spot to be prom king, and Tommy and I are right here beside him.

Maybe what he needed all along was a little pressure.

Just then, Janet comes jogging up, wearing shorts, even in this chilly morning air, and a t-shirt and sneakers. Her hair’s pulled into a high ponytail, and her eyes are bright. She looks like she could be jaunting over for a photoshoot for some fitness magazine.

“Alright, everyone,” Principal Lyons says. “Thank you so much for your patience while we collect tickets and provide ballots to all the attendees. We’re so excited that this Crown Challenge has been so well received and attended. I’m delighted to announce that we’ve raised almost twice as much money as we needed to fund the prom, and not only will the tickets now be free, but we’ll have a full dinner at the prom instead of simply bowls of chips and dip.”

“Probably soggy ham sandwiches,” Jed says.

It wasn’t directed at me specifically, but he did speak in my direction. I can’t help the lightness that rises up inside of me. Maybe Tommy was right. Maybe by prom, Jed and I will finally be fine again.

“Better than those stale potato chips last year,” Tommy says.

That seems to remind Jed that he didn’t go the last year, and he frowns. I bump Tommy, and he shoots me a chagrined look, at least.

“And now, it’s my honor to announce the contest for today. But first, I’m going to welcome my wife, who’s going to share her favorite fairy tale, which inspired our competition today. You may have heard of it before—Hansel and Gretel.”

There isn’t a lot of applause as Mrs. Lyons stands up. I think people are a little confused. I know I am. The story I know is about kids eating a candy house and getting thrown into an oven or something, so I’m not sure how that might have inspired a competition for teenagers. . . Unless they’re planning to bake us?

“Hello, everyone. For years now, I’ve stayed home with our three children while my husband has gone out into the world to bring home some bacon for our family.”

There’s some scattered, lackluster applause and hooting.

“But a few weeks ago, as I was telling little Ricky his bedtime story, he asked again for Hansel and Gretel, his favorite tale too, and my husband had been talking about ways to raise funds to pay for prom, and also about the process for selecting the prom court, and we had an idea.”

The gathered audience of nearly a hundred people—students and parents—seems to be as lost as I am.

“The story of Hansel and Gretel is about two siblings whose mother dies. When their father remarries, it’s to an awful woman who sends them to chop wood in the cold all day while she eats all the food, leaving them nothing but scraps. The children are starving slowly, as you might imagine.”

Connect the dots quick, lady. “We’re not little Ricky,” I mutter, “and this is really weird.”

Jed laughs, looking sideways at me.

I smile back, and he doesn’t recoil. My heart lifts, and I can see that Tommy sees it, too.

“Well, those children finally decided they should run away instead of starving at the home that’s no longer their home, so they gather their meager belongings and leave.” She drops her voice a bit, but luckily she’s still talking into the mic. “Hansel asks his sister Gretel how they’ll find their way back if they can’t find food in the forest. She tells him they can take their scraps of bread and break them into tiny pieces and leave a trail of bread crumbs the whole time they walk into the forest, and then if they have to, they can follow them back.”

“They’re starving and she uses their tiny bits of food. . .as a trail?” Jed arches one eyebrow. “That’s pretty smart.”

Now we’re all laughing.

“They do search far and wide in the forest, but they find nothing that they can eat. In defeat, they finally decide to go back home.” Mrs. Lyons sighs dramatically. “When they try to turn around, they discover?—”

That hilarious little Dolores kid from the play shouts, “The bird ate it all!”

Mrs. Lyons smiles. “Yes, you’re right. A naughty bird had eaten all their bread crumbs, and they were very lost.”

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