Free The Lemonade Crime by Jacqueline Davies Page B

hard to talk about feelings?
    "I'm not mad at you anymore," Jessie said, knowing that it was mostly true and that by tomorrow it would be completely true.
    Megan smiled. "See you on Monday, Jess." She hopped down the front steps.
    "Hey, Megan?" called out Jessie. "Do you think Scott took the money?"
    "Yep, I do," said Megan. She shrugged, and the look on her face seemed to say,
That's life.
    Jessie watched her friend walk down the street. It was a gorgeous end-of-summer-just-starting-to-befall day. The trees swayed in the breeze. The sky was the color of cornflowers. The sun felt good on her skin.
    Jessie ran upstairs to her room and found the yoga book that her grandmother had given her the past Christmas. She flipped to [>] and stared at the picture.
    "Be the tree," Jessie murmured to herself. Slowly, she picked up her left foot and rested it on her right knee, finding and holding her balance for one blissful second.

Chapter 16
Amends
amends (),
n.
Legal compensation (of money or other valuable assets) as a repair for loss, damage, or injury of any kind.
    In his whole life, Evan had never gone this long without eating. And the weirdest thing of all was that he wasn't even hungry anymore. Sometime around two o'clock on Saturday afternoon, his hunger had just disappeared. Like turning off a light switch. He felt empty and light and a little buzzy in his head. But not hungry.
    He hadn't even planned it. Yesterday, he'd come home and eaten his dinner, as usual. And then the sun went down and he thought about Adam and Paul, and he wondered if they had started fasting and if they would make it all the way till tomorrow night. And then he wanted to see if he could do it. Go twenty-four hours without food. Just wanted to see what it was like, and if he had the strength to do it.
    And that got him thinking about the Day of Atonement. The less he ate, the more he thought, until here he was, sitting on his branch of the Climbing Tree, way up high with the leaves whispering to him and the birds pecking for their last snack of the day and late-afternoon shadows beginning to stretch across the yard.
    He began to think about his sins. And that was a hard thing to think about. Did he really have any sins? He didn't know. But there was one thing he did know. Right now, he felt lousy. And Evan knew that when he felt really bad, that usually meant he'd done something he regretted.
    Evan regretted that whole basketball game. He wished he hadn't played like that. He wished Megan hadn't seen him play like that. Or Jessie. Or anyone. He wished he hadn't been such a jerk. The game kept playing over and over in his head, every perfect shot looping through his brain, and it made him feel sick. He was never going to know what had happened to that missing money, but crushing Scott on the basketball court wasn't going to change that.
    Evan climbed down from the tree and went into the house. Jessie was in the kitchen with a mixing bowl and a bunch of ingredients spread out on the countertop: flour, sugar, butter, and eggs.
    "What'cha makin'?" he asked as he walked through.
    "Your favorite. Chocolate chip."
    "Thanks," said Evan, grabbing his baseball hat from the front hall closet and heading for the door.
    "Where are you going?" asked Jessie.
    "Scott's."
    "No!" said Jessie. "Don't do that."
    "Quit worrying! Tell Mom where I went, okay?" Jessie followed him to the door. "And don't eat all the cookies before I get back," he shouted over his shoulder.
    He didn't really have a plan. In the back of his mind he figured a handshake and at least one "I'm sorry" were somewhere in his future. Beyond that, he didn't know what would happen.
    Scott's house was a short bike ride away from Evan's, but his neighborhood was a world apart. The houses were huge and had fancy bushes planted in little groups and two-car attached garages and lawns that looked like they were edged with a razor blade. As Evan walked up the brick path to the front door, he noticed that the two