Jasper John Dooley, NOT in Love (6 page)

The next day Isabel got the lates. The kids were all at their tables writing Compliments to Margo and eating the cupcakes she had brought when somebody knocked on the door. Ms. Tosh answered it. Jasper saw Mandy in the hall. Ms. Tosh stepped out and closed the door. A few minutes later she came back inside with Isabel. Ms. Tosh had her arm around Isabel the way she put her arm around a kid coming back from the sickroom.

Everybody stared at Isabel. Ms. Tosh put a finger to her lips.

All the kids nodded and went back to writing Compliments to Margo just as if Isabel had not come in late with connect-the-dot drawings all over her face.

The Star, Margo, got to do anything she wanted while the rest of the class was writing Compliments to her. She was playing with Hammy, the little brown hamster in the cage at the back of the room. She didn't see Ms. Tosh put her finger to her lips. Now she turned and saw Isabel. In a very loud voice, she cried out, “Isabel! What happened?”

“Jasper John did this to me!” Isabel told the class. “He connected all my dots when I was at his house yesterday! Look!”

She pulled up her shirt to show her stomach. She pulled up her long sleeves and the legs of her pants. Everybody saw how Jasper had turned her into a connect-the-dots doodle pad.

“Didn't you have a bath?” Jasper asked.

“I had three baths,” Isabel said. “This is permanent marker. Do you know what ‘permanent' means?”

“Forever?” Jasper said.

“It means I'm going to have a cat on my forehead for the rest of my life!”

Leon said, “I like how the tail is hanging down your nose.”

“It looks terrible!” Isabel roared. “I'm not allowed to play with you ever again, Jasper John. My mom is going to phone your mom. She's really mad.”

Jasper slithered down in his desk. He wished he had some potholders to cover his face.

“Isabel,” Ms. Tosh said. “Please sit down. We're writing Compliments to Margo.”

When Isabel's mom phoned Jasper's mom, Jasper's mom would change her mind about getting him a trampoline for his birthday. Jasper felt sad about that. But he felt better in the lunchroom with Ori and Leon and Paul C., because Paul C. said, “I guess those girls won't be bothering you anymore. I guess you're going to be a knight again.”

Being a knight with his friends was better than having a trampoline. Jasper knew that now.

Paul C. took off his glasses and cleaned them. He looked just as sad as Jasper had felt a moment ago.

“You can be a knight, too,” Jasper told him.

“Can I?” Paul C.'s face lit up. “Look,” he said, turning over the book he had brought down to the lunchroom. It was about knights. The boys leafed through it while they were eating. It gave them some good ideas about shields.

As soon as they finished eating, they rushed outside to play.

They were eenie-meenie-miney-moeing to see who would be the dragon when Isabel pushed through the bushes. “Come on, Jasper,” she said in a voice that was hard not to obey.

“Where?” Jasper asked.

“You have to get married to me. Nobody else will now that you drew all over my face.”

Jasper stood up. He could see all the girls on the other side of the bushes waiting with crossed arms. Isabel crossed her arms, too. She wiggled her nose. The cat's tail twitched. That cat was so so so so mad!

“In case you're wondering, I still love you,” she said. “I just don't like you anymore.”

Jasper's stomach flip-flopped, but not in a nice way. Isabel was going to make Jasper get married to her, and there was nothing he could do about it. Jasper started to go with Isabel. He had to.

But just then Paul C. sprang up and rushed at Isabel with the book about knights in his hands. Isabel looked surprised because usually Paul C. was so quiet and just sat by himself at the picnic table minding his own business.

Paul C. turned the book sideways and opened and closed it in front of his face. The book opening and closing looked just like the horrible snapping jaws of a dragon, jaws that came closer and closer to Isabel.

“I'm going to bite you,” the dragon said in a quiet voice that was twice as scary as a roar.

“Ah!” Isabel yelled. “I'm telling on you, Paul C.! I'm going to find the monitor! You're in big trouble! Biting isn't allowed!”

Jasper invited Ori, Paul C. and Leon to his house after school. Leon couldn't come because he had a piano lesson. Paul C. was allowed even though he had spent part of lunch in the principal's office where he had never been in his whole life. He had to go to the principal's office because what he'd done to Isabel was Very Dangerous.

“You had to go to the principal's office?” Paul C.'s mother asked after school.

“It's Very Dangerous to scare people with a book about knights,” Paul C. said.

“He was protecting his friend,” Ori told her.

“Me!” Jasper said.

And Paul C.'s mom looked so so so so happy. She said to Jasper's mom, “Paul is new to this school. I'm so glad he's found friends.”

Ori and Paul C. came to Jasper's house to make a plan. Their plan was about how to make Isabel NOT in love with Jasper. Jasper had tried ignoring her. He had tried being nice. The only thing he hadn't tried was pretending to love her, too.

“Girls like quiet boys who mind their own business. That's why she loves me. Girls don't like boys who dip their pigtails in ink,” Jasper explained.

“The thing is,” Ori said, “I don't know what you're talking about.”

“My Nan told me,” Jasper said.

But at Jasper's school, they didn't draw with nib pens in art class. They mostly used colored pencils.

“Mom!” Jasper called.

Mom came and the boys asked her, “Would you like it if a boy dipped your hair in jam?”

“In jam? No,” she said. “I'd be really mad.”

“What about if he did this?” Paul C. asked. He smiled so that his cheeks lifted up. Then he pushed the frames of his glasses into his cheeks so his eyes stretched down. He looked so so so ugly!

“Stop it, Paul!” Mom said. “You're scaring me!”

The boys smiled evil smiles.

And Mom took the little blue notebook out of her pocket and wrote something down.

At breakfast on Monday, Jasper asked for toast.

“Toast?” Dad said. “You always have cereal. Is something wrong?”

Jasper said, “I feel toasty.”

While the toast was toasting, Jasper took the jam from the fridge. He did a test with his own hair. He had to hold the jar against the side of his head because his hair was too short to dip.

“Jasper?” Dad asked. “What are you doing with the jam?”

Jasper took the jar away. “Is there jam on my hair?”

“Just a little. Are you okay, Jasper?”

“The jam's too thick,” Jasper said. “How can I make it more like ink?”

“Like ink?” Dad said. “Well, you could add water.”

While Jasper was at the kitchen sink stirring water into the jam, Dad used a wet cloth to wipe the jam out of Jasper's hair. He went to put the cloth in the laundry hamper. When he came back, Jasper was sitting at the table pouring out cereal for himself.

“I thought you were having toast,” Dad said.

“The jam was too watery.”

“You seem funny this morning, Jasper,” Dad said. He put a hand on Jasper's forehead. “Uh-oh. It's not what I think it is, is it?”

Jasper nodded.

Girl-itis!

At school, Ms. Tosh noticed right away that Jasper had got new glasses. She didn't notice that Paul C. didn't have glasses anymore.

“I still can't see very well,” Jasper told her. “I need to move closer to the board.”

“Go to the seat where you would see best, Jasper,” Ms. Tosh said.

Jasper didn't need to pretend he was having trouble seeing. He had to wave his arms in front of himself as he walked so he wouldn't crash into anything. How could Paul C. be so good at math when everything was so blurry?

Jasper stopped at Margo and Bernadette's table. He looked over the top of the glasses to make sure it was the right place. “I need to sit here, behind Isabel,” he told Ms. Tosh.

Margo and Jasper switched places. As soon as Jasper was seated behind Isabel, he squinted at the back of her head through Paul C.'s glasses. Paul C.'s glasses were junk! Jasper couldn't even see Isabel's pigtails!

He slid the glasses down and looked at Isabel over the top of them.

Isabel didn't have pigtails. Her hair barely reached her shoulders. Dipping her hair was going to be harder than he thought.

Jasper decided to skip ahead to the next part of the plan. He tapped Isabel's shoulder. When she turned around, Jasper pushed the frames of Paul C.'s glasses into his smiling cheeks so that his eyes stretched down.

Instead of screaming, Isabel laughed. “Jasper John, I'm so happy you're sitting behind me now. Did you notice? The cat is almost gone?” She pointed to the ghost of the connect-the-dots cat on her forehead. The tail had completely vanished.

“I took eleven baths on the weekend,” she said.

“Meet me in the bushes at recess,” Jasper whispered, lifting the glasses frames.

“Okay. Can we get married then?”

“Maybe,” Jasper said. “But don't bring any other girls with you.”

“Isabel and Jasper?” Ms. Tosh said. “Please stop whispering.”

At recess, Jasper waited behind the bushes at the back of the schoolyard where the playground monitor hardly ever went. Ori, Leon and Paul C. were crouched on the other side waiting for Isabel, too.

She came alone. “Here you are, Jasper John!” She sounded so happy to see him. But she wouldn't be happy for long.

“Let's get married!” she said.

“First, I have to do something,” Jasper said.

“What?” Isabel asked. “What? What? What?”

Jasper blew two raspberries, which was the signal for the other boys to jump out from behind the bushes with the jam and grab hold of Isabel. She shrieked in surprise.

“What are we going to do now?” she asked in an unterrified voice.

“I'm going to dip your hair in jam!” Jasper shouted. He laughed an evil laugh — “Ha ha ha ha!” — as he came toward her, unscrewing the lid.

Isabel tilted her head so it would be easier for Jasper to get her hair in the jar. Jasper circled her, cackling and dipping. Isabel cackled, too. He dipped the sides and the back. Her bangs were too short to dip. When he finished dipping, he stepped back to look at Isabel. Runny jam dripped off the ends of her hair. Her shoulders were soaked with it.

Isabel ripped her arms free from Ori and Paul C.'s grip. She snatched the jar.

“Ha ha ha ha!” she said, dumping the jam over Jasper's head.