Jasper John Dooley, NOT in Love Read online

  “Hair gel,” Isabel said. “Turn this way.”

  Jasper turned his head. He saw right out her bedroom window into the backyard. “Is that a trampoline?” he asked.

  “Yes. Now turn your head the other way.”

  When Isabel finished gelling Jasper, she sat back to look at him. She laughed so hard she toppled onto her side.

  “What?” Jasper touched his head. It was covered with wet spikes.

  Isabel handed him the brush. “Your turn now.”

  “Do I have to?”

  “No. It’s boring,” Isabel said. “Let’s do something else.”

  “Can we jump on the trampoline?” Jasper asked.

  “Sure. Let’s have a snack first.”

  This time Jasper was ready to race Isabel downstairs, but Isabel threw one leg over the banister and slid down faster than he could run. She beat him to the fridge, too. From the rack on the door, she took a jar of jam.

  “Aren’t we going to put it on bread or anything?” Jasper asked when she handed him a spoon from the drawer.

  “Do you want some bread?”

  “No. But what will your mom say?”

  “She’s working,” Isabel said.

  Through the kitchen door, Jasper could see Isabel’s mom watching TV in the living room. He said, “She has a good job. My mom works in an office in our basement.”

  “That’s not my mom,” Isabel said. “That’s Mandy, my nanny.”

  They sat on the floor and ate the jam out of the jar with spoons. Rollo came over. He seemed even bigger when they were on the floor, like a big, slobbery horse whose ears hung down. Isabel pushed him away.

  “Look, Jasper.” She smeared some jam on her lips.

  Jasper laughed.

  “I’ll put some on you, too,” she said.

  Then they went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. Jasper’s hair had hardened into spikes and his mouth was lipsticked with jam. He was a little disappointed that his hair wasn’t green.

  “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go jump.”

  When Mom came to pick up Jasper from his playdate, Jasper and Isabel were still jumping on the trampoline. Jasper couldn’t stop. He loved the flip-floppy feeling in his stomach. He loved how, if he fell straight back — whee! — in a second he’d be on his feet again. Mom talked for a few minutes to Mandy, who was watching them from the back deck. Then Mom said, “Jasper. Time to go.”

  “No!”

  “Yes. Your dad has supper ready.”

  Jasper climbed back down onto solid ground. It was boring. There was no spring to it.

  “Say thank you to Isabel,” Mom said.

  “You’re welcome, Jasper!” Isabel said, sliding off the trampoline and flinging herself at Jasper. He had to duck behind Mom.

  “Can Jasper have a playdate tomorrow?” Isabel asked.

  “Can I?” Jasper asked, and Mom laughed.

  On the drive home, Mom kept looking at Jasper in the rearview mirror and smiling to herself. She didn’t ask him about the playdate, not until later, when they were eating supper.

  “So?” she said. “I noticed you weren’t inside brushing your hair.”

  Jasper said, “She brushed mine, but I wouldn’t brush hers.”

  Dad said, “Your hair sure looks different.”

  Jasper touched his head. At the back, it felt crunchy. The behind spikes had been flattened when he landed on his back on the trampoline. In front, he had three horns.

  “And she put lipstick on me, too,” Jasper complained. “Did you get her phone number?”

  Mom smiled at Dad. “Jasper wants to go back tomorrow for another playdate.”

  “Tomorrow already? That’s serious,” Dad said. “What’s she like, this Isabel?”

  “She’s covered in freckles and has no front teeth,” Jasper said.

  “Wow,” Dad said. “She sounds gorgeous.”

  Chapter 4

  The next day at school when the bell rang for recess, Jasper and Ori dashed out to look for swords. “Meet you out there, Leon!” they called to their dragon.

  While they were looking for swords, Ori asked Jasper about his playdate. “So?” he said. “Did she lick you again?”

  “No,” Jasper said. “She has a trampoline. You should come over, too.”

  “No way,” Ori said.

  Jasper found a good sword. He slashed it around, then helped Ori look.

  Isabel and Zoë pushed through the bushes. “There you are, you bad, bad babies!”

  “We’re not babies! We’re knights!” Jasper cried, waving his sword at them. “Go away or we’ll slay you.”

  Isabel nodded to Zoë, who was carrying something in the kangaroo pouch of her jacket. A whole jar of jam! Raspberry! Isabel waved two spoons.

  Jasper looked at Ori.

  “The thing is,” Ori said. “No way.”

  “Yes way,” the girls begged. “Play babies with us.”

  “My mom phoned your mom again,” Isabel said to Jasper. “So we can have another playdate.”

  Even as Ori was scowling at him, even as Jasper turned red from embarrassment, the feeling came back. That soaring-through-the-air-stomach-flip-floppy feeling. He loved that feeling! Last night, he had tried to get it back by jumping on his bed. It wasn’t the same. Not at all.

  “If we play babies with you now, will you leave us alone at lunch?” Jasper asked.

  “Yes,” Isabel said.

  “Promise?”

  Isabel put her freckly hand over her heart. “Yes.”

  Jasper turned to Ori. “At lunch, we can use the jam for dragon blood.”

  Ori liked this idea, so he threw down the stick he’d found and said, “Wa-wa-wa-wa.” He and Jasper lay in the grass, kicking their arms and legs in the air.

  Isabel rushed over and pulled Jasper onto her lap.

  “Hey!” Zoë cried. “He’s my baby!”

  “I want to trade,” Isabel said. She wrapped her arms tight around Jasper’s chest.

  Zoë said, “You don’t trade babies. You keep the same baby all your life. Did your mom trade you?”

  “Maybe,” Isabel said.

  Jasper tried to wriggle out of Isabel’s arms, but she was a very strong girl. Zoë tugged as hard as she could on Jasper’s ankles.

  She couldn’t pull him away from Isabel. Meanwhile, Ori lay on the ground wa-wa-waing.

  His own mother didn’t pay any attention to him.

  “Help!” Jasper cried. “I’m stretching!”

  Ori couldn’t help because he was just a baby. The playground monitor couldn’t help because she hardly ever came down to the back of the schoolyard where the bushes were.

  Just then Leon showed up, and Jasper said, “Quick, Leon! Eat these girls!”

  Leon flashed angry dragon eyes at the girls. He stuck out his claws and said, “Agh! Rawr! Grrr!”

  The mothers blinked at Leon, then went right back to stretching Jasper.

  The babies only got away from their bad mothers when the end-of-recess bell rang. Isabel let go, and Jasper and Ori ran all the way up to the classroom. They were supposed to take out their spelling books and copy the new words off the board. Jasper just sat there feeling stretched and wondering what to do about Isabel. He really wanted another playdate at Isabel’s house so he could jump on her trampoline. If only Isabel didn’t have to be there!

  “Jasper?” Ms. Tosh said, coming over and tapping his spelling book so he would focus.

  Jasper opened the book, but he still couldn’t focus. He looked out the window. Somebody was walking past the school leading a horse.

  “Rollo!” Isabel shrieked. She jumped up and ran to the window to wave.

  “Isabel,” Ms. Tosh said. “Will you please sit down?”

  Chapter 5

  Mom was a
little late picking up Jasper and Ori from school that day. The boys had to stand around ignoring Isabel. She didn’t make it easy. When they turned one way, showing Isabel their backs, she ran around so she was in their faces again, chattering away.

  “Don’t talk so much, Izzy,” Mandy, her nanny, told her. “Can’t you see you’re scaring them? Let’s go.”

  Finally, Mom showed up. “Sorry, boys. I have so much work this week I forgot the time.”

  “Hi, Jasper’s mom!” Isabel said.

  “Hello, Isabel. Tell your mother that Monday after school is fine.”

  “Jasper!” Isabel sang, jumping up and down and trying to hold his hand. “We’re going to have another playdate!”

  Jasper was so so so so embarrassed that she said that in front of Ori.

  Then, as they were walking home, Mom made it worse. She said, “I’m not impressed with your manners, Jasper John Dooley. You were the one who wanted another playdate. Now you act like you don’t even want to go.”

  “You don’t want to go, do you?” Ori asked Jasper.

  “She has a trampoline,” Jasper reminded him.

  “I think she’s a great little girl,” Mom said. “So full of energy.”

  “The thing is,” Ori said, “she steals other people’s babies. She had her own baby and she left him crying and hungry in the grass. Now he’s an orphan. He doesn’t feel very good about that.”

  “Is that you, Ori?” Mom asked.

  Ori nodded and hung his head so he looked like a poor orphan nobody loved. Mom stopped to give him a hug.

  “And I got stretched!” Jasper said. “Didn’t you notice? I’m a lot taller.”

  “Oh, dear,” Mom said. “Well, you have to go this time. If you don’t want to go again, Jasper, you don’t have to.”

  “Come to my house, Jasper,” Ori said. “I’m your friend. I’m your close friend. Doesn’t she live five streets away?”

  Jasper felt his face turn the color of strawberry jam. Because he didn’t want to go to Ori’s house. Ori didn’t have a trampoline.

  Jasper got an idea. Why couldn’t they buy a trampoline? If Jasper had his own trampoline, he wouldn’t have to go to Isabel’s house. And Ori could come over and jump, too.

  He told Mom and Dad his idea after supper. They said a trampoline cost too much.

  “I’ll give you all the money I have.” Jasper ran to his room to get his bank. When he pulled out the plug on the pig’s stomach, three million dollars spilled onto the table.

  “Now you have to count it,” Mom said.

  “Is that math?” Jasper asked.

  “I guess it is,” Mom said.

  “No math!” Jasper said. “Anyway, I can tell just by looking at it that this is three million dollars. Isn’t that enough?”

  Dad spread Jasper’s money around on the table. “A lot of this money is brown,” he said. “So, no. It’s not enough. Besides, you have a friend in the neighborhood who has a trampoline. Aren’t you going to her house to jump on it?”

  “I’d rather jump here,” Jasper said.

  “What difference does it make, jumping here or jumping there?”

  “A lot! Here, I wouldn’t have to jump with Isabel.”

  “Jasper John,” Dad said. “Do you only like this freckly, toothless Isabel because she has a trampoline?”

  “No,” Jasper answered truthfully. “I don’t like her at all.”

  Dad leaned back and laughed. He said to Mom, “Does that sound familiar, Gail?”

  “Yes, it does, David.” To Jasper, Mom said, “Your dad didn’t like me either when he met me.”

  “Really?” Jasper asked Dad.

  Dad nodded. “She had all her teeth, and I still didn’t like her.”

  “He didn’t like that I was smarter,” Mom said.

  “She actually is smarter,” Dad told Jasper.

  “Tell Jasper that I did more than stay inside and brush my hair,” Mom said.

  “She had messy hair,” Dad said. “What this all means, Jasper, is that if you spend enough time with Isabel, you’ll probably start to love her.”

  “Yuck!” Jasper cried. He ran out of the kitchen and all through the house waving his arms and yucking because the thought of loving Isabel was so horrible.

  Chapter 6

  The next week, Jasper and Ori started playing knights in a new way. First, Jasper was a knight chasing Leon the dragon and Ori was the lookout. He looked out for Isabel and Zoë and two other girls, Bernadette and Patty, who wanted to play babies now, too. If Ori saw the girls, he shouted to Jasper and Leon, who quickly moved to a new place. Then Ori took a turn being a knight and trying to slay Leon while Jasper looked out for the girls.

  They even asked another boy in their class who wasn’t a knight, Paul C., to help. Paul C. always sat at a picnic table reading a book during recess and lunch. From the picnic table, he could watch what everybody was doing.

  “If you see them sneaking up on us?” Jasper told Paul C. “Shout to us.”

  Paul C. nodded and pushed up his glasses.

  This way the knights avoided being babies at both recess and lunch.

  After lunch on Monday, they had reading time. When Ms. Tosh told everybody to sit with their reading buddies, Jasper rushed to Ori’s table. He hoped that Ms. Tosh wouldn’t remember that she had switched his buddy the week before.

  “Ms. Tosh!” Isabel called out in a very loud voice. “Aren’t I Jasper’s reading buddy now? Didn’t you say last time that we were buddies until you said so?”

  Jasper started reading out loud with the book an inch from his face. He didn’t chew the book. He read so so so fast and so so so well with his old reading buddy, Ori.

  His old reading buddy, Ori, giggled. “Jasper’s reading in fast forward,” he said.

  “Jasper, your reading buddy is Isabel. Please sit with her as you are supposed to.” Ms. Tosh said this in a way that made Jasper obey her.

  He dragged his feet all the way to the Book Nook at the back of room where Isabel was waiting for him with a big smile on her front-toothless face. He dropped down beside her. Leaning as far away as he could, he picked up a pillow and pressed it to his face so only his eyes showed. He started reading.

  “I can’t hear you, Jasper John,” Isabel said. She squeezed in close, like she wanted to lick him.

  Jasper pressed the pillow harder to his face.

  Isabel put up her hand. “Ms. Tosh! Jasper still isn’t being my buddy! He’s being buddies with a pillow!”

  Twice Isabel got Jasper in trouble! And he still had to go to her house for a playdate after school!

  While he was at Isabel’s house, a terrible thing happened. Isabel asked Jasper to marry her. She asked him while they were jumping on the trampoline. Jasper should have climbed down right then and phoned his mom to pick him up, but he was enjoying the trampoline flip-floppy feeling so so so so much.

  Before they started jumping, they ate a whole jar of cheese spread without bread while sitting on the kitchen floor. Then Jasper and Isabel drank two big glasses of water each. Now when they jumped there was a wonderful sloshing sound to go with the wonderful flip-floppy feeling in their stomachs.

  Even though Isabel had let Rollo lick cheese spread off her spoon, then dipped it back in the jar and licked the next spoonful herself, and even though this had made Jasper feel like he might throw up, he stopped feeling sick once he was on the trampoline. He didn’t even feel like throwing up when Isabel asked him to marry her. He would have felt sick for sure if he’d been standing on the boring, unspringy ground.

  He jumped high in the air after she asked him, twisted, then came back down with his back to her. Flip-flop-slosh-slosh went his stomach. He was waiting for an idea. If he waited long enough, one or two usually came along. Back up in the air he soared, his arms out like wings. Then he rem
embered something. He remembered when he was just a little kid and didn’t understand about getting married.

  “I can’t get married to you,” Jasper said. “I already promised to marry my mom.”

  “But Jasper,” Isabel said, sticking out her bottom lip so the toothless space didn’t show. “I already told everybody that we were getting married.”

  Jasper got down off the trampoline then. Because now he thought he really would throw up.

  “Who did you tell?” he asked.

  Isabel was still jumping. “Zoë. And Bernadette and Patty. And Margo. And Leon.”

  “Not Ori?”

  “I told Ori. I told Paul C.” She went on naming names until she had named the whole class. “And I told Ms. Tosh. And I told Mrs. Kinoshita.”

  “You told the principal?” Jasper said. “When?”

  “At lunch. We couldn’t find you to play babies, so I went to see her in her office.”

  “What did she say?” Jasper asked.

  “She said, ‘Congratulations!’” Isabel somersaulted in midair.

  “Hey!” Jasper said. “How did you do that? I want to try!”

  “I’m never going over there again!” Jasper told Mom in the car on the way home from the playdate.

  “Okay,” Mom said. “But it looked to me like you were having a really good time. I had to ask you six times to get off that trampoline.”

  “I was doing flying somersaults! I just learned how. But those are the last flying somersaults I’ll ever do until I have enough money to buy my own trampoline. Because I don’t like Isabel. I don’t like how she tells on me at school. I don’t like how she ruins every game. I don’t like how she lets her dog lick her spoon then licks it herself.”

  “Yuck!” Mom said. “Did she do that?”

  “Yes!”

  “And did you have to brush hair again?”