Enemy Pie

It should’ve been a perfect summer. My dad helped me build a tree house. My sister was at camp. And I was on the best baseball team in town. It should’ve been a perfect summer. But it wasn’t. 

It was all good until Jeremy Ross moved into the neighborhood. I didn’t like Jeremy. He laughed when he struck me out in baseball. He had a party on his trampoline, and I wasn’t invited. 

Jeremy Ross was the only person on my enemy list. I never even had an enemy list before. But he came along, and I needed one. I hung it up in my tree house, where Jeremy Ross was not allowed. 

Dad understood stuff like enemies. He told me that when he was my age, he had enemies too. But he knew a way to get rid of them. 

He pulled an old recipe book off the kitchen shelf. Inside was a scrap of paper with faded writing. Dad squinted at it. 

“Enemy Pie,” he said, satisfied.

You may be wondering what exactly is in Enemy Pie. I was too. But Dad said the recipe was so secret, he couldn’t tell me. I begged him to tell me something—anything. 

“I will tell you this,” he said. “Enemy Pie is the fastest known way to get rid of enemies.”

This got my mind working. What kinds of things—disgusting things—would I put into a pie for an enemy? I brought Dad weeds, but he shook his head. I brought earthworms, but he didn’t need those. I gave him the gum I’d been chewing. He gave it right back. 

I went out to play, alone. I listened to the sounds of my dad making Enemy Pie. I tried to imagine how horrible it must smell. Instead, I smelled something really, really good coming from our kitchen. I was confused. 

I went in to ask what was wrong. Enemy Pie shouldn’t smell this good. But Dad was smart. “If Enemy Pie smelled bad, your enemy would never eat it,” he said. He pulled the pie out of the oven. It looked good enough to eat!

But still, I wasn’t sure how Enemy Pie worked. What exactly did it do to enemies? Maybe it made their hair fall out. I asked Dad, but he wouldn’t tell me. 

While the pie cooled, he filled me in on my job. “There is one part of Enemy Pie that I can’t do. You need to spend a day with your enemy. Even worse, you have to be nice to him. That’s the only way Enemy Pie can work. Are you sure you want to go through with this?” 

It sounded horrible. It was scary. But it was worth a try. I just had to spend one day with Jeremy Ross, then he’d be out of my hair for the rest of my life. I knocked on his door.

When Jeremy opened the door, he seemed surprised. 

I was nervous. “Can you come out and play?” I asked. 

He looked confused. “I’ll ask my mom,” he said. He came back holding his shoes.

We rode bikes and played on the trampoline. Jeremy’s mom made us lunch. After lunch, we went to my house. 

It was strange. I was kind of having fun with my enemy. But I couldn’t tell Dad that, since he had worked so hard on the Enemy Pie. 

Jeremy knew how to throw a boomerang. He threw it, and it came right back to him. I threw it, and it went into my backyard. When we climbed over the fence to find it, the first thing Jeremy noticed was my tree house. 

“Can we go in it?” he asked. 

I knew he was going to ask that! But he was the top person, the ONLY person, on my enemy list. And enemies aren’t allowed in my tree house. 

But he did teach me to throw a boomerang. And he did let me play on his trampoline. He wasn’t being a very good enemy. 

“OK,” I said, “but hold on.” I climbed up first and tore the enemy list off the wall. 

We played games until my dad called us down for dinner. 

Dad made macaroni and cheese—my favorite. Jeremy’s too! Maybe Jeremy Ross wasn’t so bad after all. I was beginning to think that we should just forget about Enemy Pie.