The Truth According to Blue Read online

It was really hot, but I’d have to test and deal with my blood sugar if I wanted to swim. Exercise would bring my sugar down, which would be fine if my blood sugar was already high, but if it was normal or low I’d have to eat something to get my sugar up, and then wait fifteen minutes and check it again to make sure it was in a good range, and then if it wasn’t I’d have to eat some more, wait fifteen more minutes, and test again, which would mean we’d stay here even longer, which would mean waiting even longer to start the hunt. So…

  “No thanks. But you go ahead.”

  I looked down at Otis, who was using my foot as a chin pillow. Save me, I mouthed. But Otis just snorted.

  Otis and I proceeded to have a totally fantastic and not at all awkward time. He lay under a glass table pretending to be a rug, and I watched Jules do laps in the pool like she was training for the Olympics instead of killing time while her dad made her hang out with me. When Mom and Ed finally came out, it was past noon and I was ready to explode. By the time we got home and had lunch, it’d be too late to take the boat out and do any real work. First day of the treasure hunt, totally wasted.

  “How’s the water?” Ed said.

  “Cold,” Jules said, even though she’d been in it by choice for almost an hour. “You forgot to turn on the heat.”

  “Sorry, kiddo. Blue, you didn’t want to swim?”

  “I didn’t bring my suit.”

  “Well, you’ll have to bring it next time. Or borrow one of Jules’s. She’s got tons, right, Jules?”

  Jules dove down and breaststroked to the deep end without answering. Mom’s eyes got big for a split second. Let’s just say if I ever ignored my parents like that, they’d never let me go swimming again. Plus, we don’t have a pool. Plus, if we did, it wouldn’t have heat.

  But Ed didn’t seem to notice any of it. I guessed this was normal for them, because he was watching Jules swim with a grin so wide it belonged on a World’s Proudest Dad mug.

  “Hey, Blue, it’s really great the way you and Jules have hit it off. Like I said, she doesn’t know anyone here, and I bet you’ve got millions of friends. You wouldn’t mind taking Jules with you to the beach or something tomorrow, would you?”

  I opened my mouth to tell Ed that I was really sorry but I wasn’t going to the beach tomorrow—and probably not any other day—because I had a school project to do and there was no possible way Jules could come with me because it had to be done completely alone (except for Otis, of course).

  But before I could get a word out, Mom cut in and said, “What a great idea, Ed. Blue would love to take Jules to the beach tomorrow.”

  Blue would not love to take Jules to the beach tomorrow! I need to start treasure hunting tomorrow! But I couldn’t say that to Mom, even if Ed and Jules hadn’t been standing in front of us.

  Back in the truck, Mom turned up the volume on “I Feel the Earth Move” by Carole King, which she calls her “jam.”

  “How could you do that to me!” I yelled over the music. “Jules is totally obnoxious—Otis, get your tongue out of my ear; you owe me three biscuits! I one hundred percent refuse to take her to the beach. I’ve already wasted a whole morning of my life; I’m not wasting another minute on some rich movie star’s spoiled kid.”

  Mom looked over at me while she was driving. I hate it when she does that.

  “Ed pledged half a million dollars to the Cure Juvenile Diabetes Foundation, and he’s inviting two hundred people to the party and bringing in a camera crew to film the event.”

  Game over. Nothing I could say would change Mom’s mind, not when all that money and all those people could maybe possibly help find a cure for diabetes. Which I understood, and even agreed with. But it does feel sometimes like diabetes sucks the fun out of every single thing I ever want to do.

  I looked away from Mom and stared out the window. “Fine. I’ll go with Jules tomorrow, but that’s it. I’m not babysitting her the whole summer.”

  “Deal,” Mom said.

  CHAPTER THREE

  True Fact: Best friends are called “best” for a reason. (TF supplied by a throw pillow in the sale bin at Kmart.)

  As if the morning hadn’t been bad enough, that night was Nora’s last night home before leaving for theater camp. This would be our first summer apart since we met in kindergarten. No biking to the wildlife sanctuary, no bonfires and s’mores on the beach, no epic rainy-day TV marathons. We decided to go to our happy place.

  Island Bowl has been around forever. My grandparents bowled there, my parents bowled there, my friends and I bowl there. Outside, the green, yellow, and orange ISLAND BOWL sign was missing its B. Inside wafted the sounds of pop hits from the fifties and the aroma of sixty years of foot odor and onion rings.

  Nora, Otis, and I were in lane twelve, which has been Otis’s favorite ever since he spotted a mouse running along the wall. That was two years ago, but Otis is an optimist—he’s still on the alert for another. Island Bowl doesn’t allow animals, but since Otis is a service dog, he gets to go everywhere I go.

  Nora eyed the four pins standing at the end of the lane, blew on her lucky green ball, and—

  “Inspiration break!” She spun around to face me and Otis at the scoring desk. “What if we just take however many points we need depending on how we’re feeling instead of how many pins we knock down?”

  Nora is a big believer in finding new ways to express herself. But sadness-based scoring wasn’t going to make me feel any better about us being apart for seven weeks. I forced a smile. “Go for it,” I said. “But I think I’ll stick to the usual methods.”

  “As you wish.” She swung the ball between her legs granny-style and let it go. Spare.

  Back in elementary school, Nora and I used to play for the Gutter Girls, the Island Bowl youth league team that won the state championship three years straight. Let’s just say granny-style wasn’t always Nora’s bowling technique.

  She stepped carefully over Otis, who was at his mouse-duty station on the floor between the desk and the wall, to slide in next to me. “I’m feeling pretty good right now, so I don’t need the whole ten points. Just give me three.”

  I marked Nora’s score on the score sheet and went to the ball return for my yellow nine-pounder. Lined it up, released, and…

  “Another strike for Blue!” Nora cheered.

  She swiveled to face Otis and picked up his paws to make him dance with her. Otis tolerated the indignity because he loves Nora. “Phoebe and Sophia asked if we wanted to hang out tonight, but I told them we were having Special Blue and Nora Time,” she said to me.

  Last fall Nora got a part in the middle school musical and “discovered the theater.” For three months she had rehearsals every day after school and sometimes even on weekends. When it’s just us, we’re still as close as ever, but now Nora has a bunch of new friends to hang out with too. She invites me to do things with them, but whenever I go, I feel weird and awkward, like I’m standing in the wings watching them put on a show. It’s been even worse since February, when my grandfather Pop Pop died.

  I took my seat at the desk again. “You didn’t have to do that,” I said, even though I was relieved that she had. “They could have come.”

  “Well, I did want to have Special Blue and Nora Time.”

  I did too.

  We played through the end of the game, both of us getting sadder and sadder, until Nora finally rolled a gutter ball and said, “Give me a thousand.”

  She plopped down on the chair next to me. Otis whined softly and put his head in her lap. “What if everyone hates me and I don’t make a single friend and then I catch tuberculosis and no one visits me in the infirmary?” she said.

  “Not possible,” I said. “Anyone who hates you is a moron and you wouldn’t want to be friends with them anyway. And if you get tuberculosis, Otis and I will hitchhike to camp and visit you.”

  Nora kneaded one of Otis’s super-soft ears between two fingers. “What if I’m so bad that I don’t get cast in a single s
how and I have to spend the whole time sweeping the floors and shining all the actors’ shoes instead?”

  “Also not possible. I’ve seen you act and you’re incredible. And I’ve seen you clean…” I bumped her shoulder with mine. “And you’re terrible.”

  Nora planted her forehead on the desktop, smooshing Otis’s head in her lap. Not that he cared. “What if Jules becomes your new best friend, and you forget I ever existed and move to LA and star in a reality TV show?”

  I fake-gagged. “Definitely not possible. I’m not even going to see her again after tomorrow.”

  Nora sighed and sat up. “Is she really that bad?”

  I pictured Jules ignoring me while she swam laps, Jules ignoring her dad when he tried to talk to her, Jules ignoring Otis. “Put it this way,” I said, outrage building. “She didn’t say a single word to Otis the entire time we were there. She didn’t even try to pet him.”

  Nora’s eyes narrowed. “A dog-hater,” she said. “The lowest form of life.”

  Her phone chirped. Nora checked it. “My mom’s on her way. She said to meet her in the parking lot.”

  But we didn’t move. Even Otis stayed perfectly still, like he wanted to freeze time as much as Nora and I did.

  Suddenly, Nora said, “Wait, I almost forgot!”

  “What?”

  “I have a going-away present for you.” She lifted Otis’s head from her lap and slid out from behind the desk. “Hang on, I know it’s here somewhere.” She rummaged through her bag, taking out a knotted ball of rainbow yarn (Nora was learning to knit), a half-eaten roll of cherry Life Savers (for me, when my blood sugar gets low), black socks (no clue), and, finally, a decrepit copy of her favorite book, Whitman’s Jolly Limericks.

  Nora flipped through the pages. “It’s right… here.” She pulled out an envelope. “A new True Fact for your journal.”

  I’ve been keeping a True Facts journal since I was nine, which was around the same time I started understanding diabetes. I don’t mean understanding all the day-to-day stuff—I’d been dealing with the highs and lows and everything that went with them since I got diagnosed when I was two. I mean the other stuff. Like how I was the only kid I knew who had to have her parents come on every school field trip, or who had to miss the third-grade triathlon to prick her finger and drink juice in the nurse’s office, or who had never been on a sleepover at someone else’s house.

  I’d stay awake half the night worrying about how there was no cure for diabetes, which meant that I was going to have this disease for the rest of my life. My parents tried to help, but nothing made any difference until one day Mom finally said, “Blue, feelings and facts are both important, but they’re not the same thing. You feel sad because you may go blind one day, but the fact is, you’re not blind today. Try to stick to the facts.”

  After that, instead of worrying about what was going to happen in the future, I’d stay up making lists in my head of all the facts that were true today: True Fact: I’ve never had a stroke. True Fact: My kidneys work. True Fact: I don’t have any sores on my body that won’t heal. Then I started writing down my True Facts, and after that I started sleeping better.

  I got up and took the envelope from Nora. Inside was a square of pale blue paper that Nora had illustrated with musical notes, a boat, a quill, and a rabbit poking out of a top hat. In the center of the paper, Nora’s loopy, swirly handwriting said:

  True Fact: Matthias Buchinger was an artist, a magician, a cardsharp, a musician, and a sharpshooter, and he liked to build ships in bottles. Also, he was twenty-nine inches tall and was born without hands or feet.

  “He reminds me of you,” Nora said, reading over my shoulder.

  “Because… I’m twenty-nine inches tall?”

  “Because no matter what you’re born with, you can do anything.”

  My eyes welled up, and I threw my arms around Nora. Otis sandwiched himself between us because he was going to miss her as much as I was.

  “I’m sorry I don’t have a going-away present for you,” I said, my voice muffled by her shoulder.

  “I’m sorry my rabbit looks like a snowman,” Nora said into my neck.

  And then, because we couldn’t actually freeze time no matter how much we wanted to, the three of us headed out to the parking lot to wait for Nora’s mom to pick us up.

  “Are you still not telling your parents about the treasure hunt?” Nora said.

  “You know I can’t. If I tell them, they’ll never let me do it. Or they’ll make so many rules the search won’t be mine anymore.”

  “Well, I need to know everything that happens. Swear you’ll write to me.” Nora held out a hand and we hooked pinkies.

  “I already put a card in the mail this morning,” I said. A happy anniversary card, because Nora and I choose cards based on their covers, and this one had a fuzzy picture of two striped kittens touching noses on a bed of clouds. “And I need to know everything that happens with all those plays you’ll be starring in. Swear you’ll write to me?”

  “I swear.” We crossed pinkies again. “Three times a day, at least.”

  Nora’s mom pulled into the parking lot. Before getting in, Nora turned for one last look at the ISLAND BOWL sign with its missing B.

  “Farewell, owl, our faithful friend!” she sang, flapping her arms like a bird and swerving around the parking lot. She looked over her shoulder at me. “Well?”

  I did a couple of noodly flaps. Nora gave me another look. I picked up steam and flapped like I meant it.

  “Farewell, Island owl!” I called.

  We flapped and spun and hooted. Even Otis joined in, chasing us in circles, until finally Nora’s mom called out the window, “I’m getting old here waiting for you! Enough craziness! It’s only seven weeks.”

  For Nora and me, there could never be enough craziness. And seven weeks felt like a lifetime.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  True Fact: Sometimes you have to suck it up for a good cause. (Wisdom bomb from Mom)

  The next morning, I made Jules get to the beach at nine thirty. I figured nobody would be there that early except moms and toddlers, and Jules would get bored and want to leave, so I’d get to dump her and start the hunt.

  No such luck.

  After her dad dropped us off (“Stay as long as you like, kiddos! Here’s forty dollars for snacks.” Forty dollars?), Jules and Otis and I set up our things right behind the tide line, where the dry sand started. She spread her towel while I dug a hole for the umbrella.

  “Don’t you like to lay out?” she asked. “Umbrellas are for old people.”

  “It’s for Otis,” I said. “He likes shade.” Although, at that particular moment, Otis was lying a few feet away, directly in the sun, happily devouring an old sandy hot dog.

  “Leave it, Otis. Don’t be a cannibal.”

  Otis dropped the hot dog and gave me his big-eyed Why have you robbed me of all joy? look. I tossed him his chew toy as a peace offering.

  Jules kneeled on her towel and started putting on sunscreen. Otis lay down under the umbrella, and I sat in the shade between him and Jules.

  “So what’s it like living here?” she asked.

  “It’s okay, I guess,” I said. “Most of the year it’s pretty quiet, and then in the summer it gets crazy when all the tourists come.” Tourists like you, who clog the movie theaters and shove people like me out of line at the Five & Dime.

  “But what do you do here? Like, for fun?”

  Jules actually looked interested, so I decided to tell her the truth. “Mostly I go out on our boat.”

  “You mean with your parents?”

  “Nope. By myself.”

  “Cool,” Jules said.

  I didn’t add that I’d been boating alone for only the last bunch of months. Before that, I always used to go with Pop Pop. Everything I know about the water, I learned from him.

  “What do you do for fun in Hollywood?” I asked.

  “The Palisades,” she corrected. “Not Hol
lywood. And not a lot. Before my parents split up, I mostly just went to my friends’ houses and watched movies in somebody’s screening room or whatever. Now I’m just not that into it.” Jules put on a big pair of black sunglasses that hid half her face. Then out of nowhere, she said, “Want to see a picture of my mom?”

  “Um… sure,” I said, even though I was not at all sure why she offered.

  Jules scrolled through her phone and passed it to me. I cupped my hand around the screen so I could see a picture of a smiling mom-ish-looking woman with brown hair who had her arm wrapped around Jules. Jules was smiling too, with her head leaning on her mom’s shoulder. She almost looked like a different person, like a regular, happy person instead of an angry supermodel from Hollywood.

  Excuse me, the Palisades.

  “She looks nice,” I said.

  “She is,” Jules said.

  Over Jules’s shoulder, I spotted three boys from my grade heading our way. Douglas, Wilder Douglas, and Fritjof play together on the soccer team in the fall, the basketball team in the winter, and the lacrosse team in the spring. They all wore hair gel, even though it was ten in the morning and they were at the beach. Also, Wilder isn’t an adjective; it’s a first name. I’m not sure why everybody uses his last name too. They just do. And Fritjof is called Fritjof because his dad is Norwegian.

  “Heyyyy! Otis, buddy! How’s it going, dude?” Douglas said.

  Fritjof and Wilder Douglas pounced on Otis, who was totally thrilled to pounce right back.

  It’s possible that some people like my dog more than they like me.

  “Hey, Blue. Who’s your friend?” Douglas asked, noticing Jules.

  “This is Jules,” I said.

  There isn’t a single girl at my school who looks like Jules. Which might be why Douglas was squeezing his eyes shut really hard and then rubbing his nose.

  “You wanna go swimming?” Jules said.

  “Oh. Yeah. Totally.” Douglas yanked off his T-shirt and flung it down without looking, so it landed on my leg.

  You’d never have known that Douglas, Nora, and I used to hang out when we were little. It was like all those playdates when we dressed up in superhero capes and jumped on the bed had never happened.