The Lemonade War Read online

  The Lemonade War

  Jacqueline Davies

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Table of Contents

  ...

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Houghton Mifflin Company

  Boston 2007

  Acknowledgments

  I would like to thank the astute and devoted first readers of this book: Mary Atkinson, Tracey Fern, Jennifer Richards Jacobson, Sarah Lamstein, Carol Antoinette Peacock, and Dana Walrath. Thanks also to members of the $100K Club: Toni Buzzeo and Jennifer Ward. For her support in so many guises: my agent, Tracey Adams. And last, but never least in my heart: Ann Rider. Thank you.

  —J.D.

  Copyright © 2007 by Jacqueline Davies

  Illustrations by Cara Llewellyn

  All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

  www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com

  The text of this book is set in Guardi.

  Pronunciations are reproduced by permission from The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition,© 2006 by Houghton Mifflin Company.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Davies, Jacqueline, 1962-

  The lemonade war / by Jacqueline Davies.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Evan and his younger sister, Jesse, react very differently to the news that they will be in the same class for fourth grade and as the end of summer approaches, they battle it out through lemonade stands, each trying to be the first to earn 100 dollars. Includes mathematical calculations and tips for running a successful lemonade stand.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-618-75043-6 (hardcover)

  ISBN-10: 0-618-75043-6 (hardcover)

  [1. Brothers and sisters—Fiction. 2. Moneymaking projects—Fiction. 3. Arithmetic—Fiction. 4. Lemonade—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.D29392Lem 2007

  [Fic]—dc22

  2006026076

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  MP 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For Tom, Kim, and Leslie.

  All roads lead back.

  Contents

  Chapter 1 * Slump [>]

  Chapter 2 * Breakup [>]

  Chapter 3 * Joint Venture [>]

  Chapter 4 * Partnership [>]

  Chapter 5 * Competition [>]

  Chapter 6 * Underselling [>]

  Chapter 7 * Location, Location, Location [>]

  Chapter 8 * Going Global [>]

  Chapter 9 * Negotiation [>]

  Chapter 10 * Malicious Mischief [>]

  Chapter 11 * A Total Loss [>]

  Chapter 12 * Waiting Period [>]

  Chapter 13 * Crisis Management [>]

  Chapter 14 * Reconciliation [>]

  Chapter 1

  Slump

  slump () n. A drop in the activity of a business or the economy.

  Evan lay on his back in the dark, throwing the baseball up in a straight line and catching it in his bare hands. Thwap. Thwap. The ball made a satisfying sound as it slapped his palm. His legs flopped in a V. His arms stretched up to the ceiling. And the thought that if he missed he'd probably break his nose made the game just interesting enough to keep going.

  On the floor above he heard footsteps—his mother's—and then a long, loud scraping-groaning sound. He stopped throwing the ball to listen. His mother was dragging something heavy across the kitchen floor. Probably the broken air conditioner.

  A week ago, right at the beginning of the heat wave, the air conditioner in his mother's attic office had broken. The man from Sears had installed a brand-new one but left the old one sitting right in the middle of the kitchen floor. The Treskis had been walking around it all week.

  Scra-a-a-ape. Evan stood up. His mom was strong, but this was a two-person job. Hopefully she wouldn't ask him why he was hiding in the dark basement. And hopefully Jessie wouldn't be in the kitchen at all. He'd been avoiding her for two days now, and it was getting harder by the minute. The house just wasn't that big.

  Evan had his hand on the railing when the scraping noise stopped. He heard footsteps fading to silence. She'd given up. Probably the heat, he thought. It was that kind of weather: giving-up kind of weather.

  He went back to lying on the floor.

  Thwap. Thwap.

  Then he heard the basement door open. Psssshhh. Evan caught the ball and froze.

  "Evan?" Jessie's voice sounded echo-y in the darkness. "Evan? You down there?"

  Evan held his breath. He lay completely still. The only thing that moved was the pins-and-needles prickling in his fingers.

  He heard the door start to close—long breath out—but then it stopped and opened again. Footsteps on the carpeted stairs. A black outline of Jessie standing on the bottom step with daylight squirting all around her. Evan didn't move a muscle.

  "Evan? Is that you?" Jessie took one short step into the basement. "Is that...? She inched her way toward him, then kicked him with her bare foot.

  "Hey! Watch it, would ya?" said Evan, swatting her leg. He suddenly felt stupid lying there in the dark.

  "I thought you were a sleeping bag," she said. "I couldn't see. What are you doing down here? How come the lights are off?"

  "It's too hot with the lights on," he said. He talked in a flat voice, trying to sound like the most boring person on the whole planet. If he kept it up, Jessie might just leave him alone.

  "Mom's back in her office," said Jessie, lying down on the couch. "Working." She groaned as she said the word.

  Evan didn't say anything. He went back to throwing the ball. Straight up. Straight down. Maybe silence would get Jessie to leave. He was starting to feel words piling up inside him, crowding his lungs, forcing out all the air. It was like having a chestful of bats, beating their wings, fighting to get out.

  "She tried to move the air conditioner, but it's too heavy," said Jessie.

  Evan tightened up his lips. Go away, he thought. Go away before I say something mean.

  "It's gonna be hot a-a-a-all week," Jessie continued. "In the nineties. All the way up 'til Labor Day."

  Thwap. Thwap.

  "So, whaddya wanna do?" Jessie asked.

  Scream, thought Evan. Jessie never got it when you were giving her the Big Freeze. She just went right on acting as if everything were great. It made it really hard to tell her to bug off without telling her to BUG OFF! Whenever Evan did that, he felt bad.

  "So, whaddya wanna do?" Jessie asked again, nudging him with her foot.

  It was a direct question. Evan had to answer it or explain why he wouldn't. And he couldn't get into that. It was too ... too complicated. Too hurtful.

  "Huh? So, whaddya wanna do?" she asked for the third time.

  "Doin' it," said Evan.

  "Nah, come on. For real."

  "For real," he said.

  "We could ride our bikes to the 7-Eleven," she said.

  "No money," he said.

  "You just got ten dollars from Grandma for your birthday."

  "Spent it," said Evan.

  "On what?"

  "Stuff," Evan said.

  "Well, I've got ... well..." Jessie's voice dribbled down to nothing.

  Evan s
topped throwing the ball and looked at her. "What?"

  Jessie pulled her legs tight to her chest. "Nothin'," she said.

  "Right," said Evan. He knew that Jessie had money. Jessie always had money squirreled away in her lock box. But that didn't mean she was going to share it. Evan went back to throwing the baseball. He felt a tiny flame of anger shoot up and lick his face.

  Thwap. Thwap.

  "We could build a fort in the woods," said Jessie.

  "Too hot."

  "We could play Stratego."

  "Too boring."

  "We could build a track and race marbles."

  "Too stupid!"

  A thin spider web of sweat draped itself over his forehead, spreading into his hair. With every throw, he told himself, It's not her fault. But he could feel his anger growing. He started popping his elbow to put a little more juice on the ball. It was flying a good four feet into the air every time. Straight up. Straight down.

  Pop. Thwap. Pop. Thwap.

  The bats in his chest were going nuts.

  "What is the matter with you?" asked Jessie. "You've been so weird the last couple of days."

  Aw, man, here they come.

  "I just don't wanna play a dumb game like Stratego," he said.

  "You like Stratego. I only picked that because it's your favorite game. I was being nice, in case you hadn't noticed."

  "Look. There are only six days left of summer, and I'm not going to waste them playing a dumb game." Evan felt his heartbeat speed up. Part of him wanted to stuff a sock in his mouth, and part of him wanted to deck his sister. "It's a stupid game and it's for babies and I don't want to play a stupid baby game."

  Pop. Thwap. Pop. Thwap.

  "Why are you being so mean?"

  Evan knew he was being mean, and he hated being mean, especially to her. But he couldn't help it. He was so angry and so humiliated and so full of bats, there was nothing else he could be. Except alone. And she'd taken even that away from him. "You're the genius," he said. "You figure it out."

  Good. That would shut her up. For once! Evan watched the ball fly in the air.

  "Is this because of the letter?" Jessie asked.

  Crack.

  Evan had taken his eyes off the ball for one second, just for one second, and the ball came crashing down on his nose.

  "Crud! Oh, CRUD!" He curled over onto his side, grabbing his nose with both hands. There was a blinding, blooming pain right behind his eyes that was quickly spreading to the outer edges of his skull.

  "Do you want some ice?" he heard Jessie ask in a calm voice.

  "Whaddya think?" he shouted.

  "Yeah?" She stood up.

  "No, I don't want any stupid ice." The pain was starting to go away, like a humungous wave that crashes with a lot of noise and spray but then slowly fizzles away into nothing. Evan rolled to a sitting position and took his hands away from his nose. With his thumb and index finger, he started to pinch the bridge. Was it still in a straight line?

  Jessie peered at his face in the dim light. "You're not bleeding," she said.

  "Yeah, well, it hurts!" he said. "A lot!"

  "It's not broken," she said.

  "You don't know that," he said. "You don't know everything, you know. You think you do, but you don't."

  "It's not even swollen. You're making a big deal out of nothing."

  Evan held his nose with one hand and hit his sister's knee with the other. Then he picked up the baseball and struggled to his feet. "Leave me alone. I came down here to get away from you and you just had to follow. You ruin everything. You ruined my summer and now you're going to ruin school. I hate you." When he got to the bottom of the steps, he threw the baseball down in disgust.

  Thud.

  Chapter 2

  Breakup

  breakup () n. Dissolution of a unit, an organization, or a group of organizations. The Justice Department sometimes forces the breakup of a large corporation into several smaller companies.

  Jessie didn't get it. She just didn't get it.

  What was Evan's problem?

  He'd been acting like a weirdo for two days now. And it was two days ago that the letter had arrived. But why would he be so upset about that letter?

  This is a puzzle, Jessie told herself. And I'm good at puzzles. But it was a puzzle about feelings, and Jessie knew that feelings were her weakest subject.

  Jessie sat in the cool darkness of the basement and thought back to Monday, the day the letter had come. Everything had been normal. She and Evan were putting together a lemonade stand in the driveway when the mailman walked up and handed Jessie a bundle of letters. Evan never bothered to look at the mail, but Jessie was always entering contests and expecting to win, so she flipped through the letters right away.

  "Boring. Boring. Boring," said Jessie as each letter flashed by. "Hey, something from school. Addressed to Mom." She held up a plain white envelope. "What do you think it is?"

  "Dunno," said Evan. He was in the garage, uncovering the small wooden table they usually used for a stand. It was buried under two sno-tubes, two boogie boards, and the garden hose. Jessie watched while Evan gave a mighty pull and lifted the table up over his head. Wow, he's gotten so big, thought Jessie, remembering what Mom had said about Evan's growth spurt. Sometimes Jessie felt like Evan was growing twice as fast as she was. Growing up. Growing away.

  "It looks important," said Jessie. It looks like bad news is what she thought in her head. Was there a problem? A complaint? A mix-up? All the nervousness she'd been feeling about skipping to fourth grade suddenly burbled up inside her.

  "This table's really dirty," said Evan. "Do you think we can just cover it with a lot of cups and the pitcher and no one will notice?"

  Jessie looked. The table was streaked with black. "No."

  Evan groaned.

  "I'll clean it," said Jessie. Evan had only agreed to have a lemonade stand because it was one of her favorite things to do. The least she could do for him was clean the gunk off the table. "Maybe," she said, holding up the envelope again, "they're postponing school? Maybe the first day isn't going to be next Tuesday? Ya think?"

  That got Evan's attention. "Let's ask Mom to open it," he said.

  Up in the humming cool of her office, Mrs. Treski read the letter through once. "Well," she said. "This is a curve ball." She looked right at Evan. Jessie thought her face looked worried. "Evan, you and Jessie are going to be in the same class this year. You'll both have Mrs. Overton."

  Jessie felt relief flood her entire body. The same class! If she could have wished for one thing in the whole world, that's what she would have wished for. She would be with Evan, and Evan would make everything easier. He would introduce her to all those fourth-graders. He would show them all that she was okay. Not some puny second-grader who didn't really belong.

  But Evan didn't look happy. He looked angry. "Why?" he asked in an almost-shouting voice.

  Mrs. Treski scanned the letter. "Well, the classes were small to start with. And now some of the fourth-graders they thought would be attending aren't because they're moving or switching to private schools. So they need to combine the two small classes into one bigger class."

  "That is so unfair," said Evan. "I wanted Mrs. Scobie. And I don't want—" He looked at Jessie. "That is so unfair!"

  Jessie was surprised. This was great news. Why didn't Evan see that? They always had fun together at home. Now they could have fun in school, too. "It'll be fun," she said to Evan.

  "It will not be fun," said Evan. "School. Isn't. Fun." And then he stomped downstairs and locked himself in his room for the rest of the afternoon. They never finished the lemonade stand.

  And here it was, two days later, and Evan was still all locked up, even though he wasn't in his room. He wouldn't talk to her, and he wouldn't play with her.

  So Jessie went up to her room and did what she always did when she was upset or angry or sad or confused. She started reading Charlotte's Web. She had read the book about a hundred
times.

  She was at the good part, the happy part. Wilbur had just been named "some pig," and he was getting all kinds of attention from the Zuckermans and the whole town. But Jessie couldn't settle into that happy feeling, the one that usually came when Charlotte said:

  I dare say my trick will work and Wilbur's life can be saved.

  Instead, she kept noticing an unhappy feeling tap-tap-tapping on her shoulder. And it wasn't the unhappy feeling that came from knowing that Charlotte was going to die on page 171.

  It was Evan. She couldn't stop thinking about what he had said.

  Jessie could only remember one other time that Evan had said "I hate you" to her. Grandma had been over and Evan needed help with his math homework. He had that frustrated, screwed-up-mouth look that he sometimes got with math or spelling or writing reports. Mom called it his "he's-a-gonna-blow!" look. But Grandma couldn't help him because it was "all Greek" to her. So Jessie had shown him how to do each problem. Well, she'd just sort of jumped in and done the problems for him. That was helping, wasn't it? Grandma had called her a girl genius, but Evan had ripped his paper in half and run upstairs, shouting "I hate you!" just before slamming his door. That was last year.

  Jessie rested the book on her stomach and stared at the ceiling. People were confusing. She'd rather do a hundred math problems than try to figure out someone else's mixed-up feelings, any day of the week. That's why she and Evan got along so well. He'd just tell her, straight out, "I'm mad at you because you ate the last Rice Krispie's Treat." And then she could say, "Sorry. Hey, I've got some Starburst in my room. You want them?" And that would be that.

  Evan was a straight shooter.

  Not like the girls at school, the ones who had started that club. She rolled over onto her side to get away from those thoughts.

  Across the room, against the opposite wall, she noticed the three pieces of foam core her mom had bought for Jessie's Labor Day project. Every year, the Rotary Club sponsored a competition for kids to see who could come up with the best display related to the holiday. This was the first year Jessie was old enough to participate, and she had begged her mom to buy foam core and gel pens and fluorescent paper and special stickers for her display. She was determined to win the prize money: a hundred dollars! But she hadn't been able to come up with a single idea that seemed good enough. So here it was, just five days before the competition, and the foam core was still completely blank.