A Tale of Two Besties (11 page)

Last year I really outdid myself by converting the Carinas' backyard into a doggie obstacle course that let Harper and I see what life was like from a dog's perspective. My mom and Harper's dad made some modifications to their old tree house so it looked like a table with four giant legs, and I hung giant piñatas shaped like burgers and fries from the beams. But, unlike with regular piñata protocol, I wouldn't let us swing at them with bats—we had to just keep running and jumping and trying to “catch” the fake food with our arms flailing in a chomping motion, like dogs do with scraps. Eventually we just started making leaps for the piñatas, which would then come crashing down with us, spilling candy and beads and plastic jewelry all over the yard. I don't think Mrs. Carina ever forgave me for ruining her lawn like that.

The problem was, since Harper didn't like to think about her birthday in the traditional sense, I never had any idea what she might want from year to year. Sure, she would always map out the route for PuppyBash, figuring out which dog parks we'd volunteer and raise awareness at with the PuppyTales owners. But when it came down to the
party
-party part, she always got super demure, like “Oh, it's not a big deal. Let's not even do anything this year.” But I knew she'd be heartbroken if she woke up and, instead of a big surprise party, I had just gotten her a card and a gift or something. Of course I didn't mind the planning, I actually really liked it, but it did put an awful lot of pressure on me to keep coming up with ways to outdo my ideas from previous years, and now that we weren't even going to the same school, I wasn't even sure where the inspiration was supposed to come from.

I stressed so much about the party for the entire morning that I was more starving than usual by the time we were let out for lunch.

I found Nicole, Jane, and Drew sitting by their favorite food truck, which sold vegan Mexican food and pressed juice. Today's special was seasonal watermelon—delicious. “Hey, Lily-Fairy!” Drew sing-songed when he saw me, waving at me from inside the small cluster of kids who were orbiting around Nicole.

“Hey, guys!” I said. “I'm just going to grab some food and then I'll join you?”

“Actually, Lily,” Nicole piped up, “Can you just meet us after class right here? We're kind of backed up right now with people trying to sign up for NAMASTE.”

“Oh,” I said. “No problem.”

I turned around and headed for the food truck, confused and more than a little bit stunned. I heard rapid footsteps come up from behind me, so I moved to get out of the way, but then I turned around to see Jane and Drew jogging to catch up to me.

“Sorry about that!” said Jane. “Nicole's just busy with club stuff.”

“Oh, I can't even imagine,” I said, because I really couldn't.

Jane and Drew stood in line with me and then sat with me while we finished our lunches. Drew was even more loud and flamboyant than he'd been on the first day of school, and at one point he had me and Jane laughing so hard I thought I'd choke on my organic juice. I learned that he's in all these super advanced dance classes and I made him promise to show me how to do the Time Warp and (if time permitted before the next big Pathways dance) the Tootsie Roll. Drew was really into learning dances that had names that didn't always translate to what the dance actually was. I also learned that Jane's not the only fashionista in the group—Drew makes all his own clothes!

“Drew's aesthetic is clearly ‘hit or missable,'” Jane said, then gestured to Drew's outfit: a suit made entirely out of sewn-together ties. “As you can see, today's ensemble is the latter.”

“Pshh, don't listen to her,” Drew said. “She's just jealous because I am way more of a fabulous style icon than she'll ever be.”

I smiled gratefully. Even if I still felt a little bit dejected by my earlier interactions with Nicole, hanging out with Jane and Drew made me realize that everything was still okay. I hadn't been rejected by NAMASTE yet. It was still only the first week of school, but I cared so much about what my new friends thought of me. Now I just couldn't wait until the club fair at the end of the day, when I'd be able to see what Nicole's group was actually about.

When jazz session ended at 2:30, I carefully packed up my piccolo (I also play ukulele, but strings session isn't until Thursday), and with a faint sense of anxiety, headed back out to the Lane for the club fair. The moment I opened the heavy wooden doors, I was practically blinded by what I at first thought was a mirage: a twinkling, shining metallic “lake” made out of long swaths of tinfoil where the Lane used to be, in the middle of which was a plywood stage and a podium spray-painted bright gold. Though I couldn't really see anything because of the harsh glare, I could hear the roar of what sounded like about half of the K-12 student body of Pathways as they pushed and shoved their way into the narrow real estate that separated the two campus buildings.

“Mic check!” yelled a familiar voice, reverberating through my skull as feedback from a powerful sound system keened on behind me. I could feel myself start to sweat. There was a reason I didn't like live concerts, and it mainly had to do with my fear of things like loud noises and confined spaces packed with a lot of people, both of which I was now experiencing in the extreme. I shut my eyes to try to block everything out.

“Confined, confined, confined,” I could hear someone echo beside me. I pried open my eyes and whipped my head to the left before realizing that I had been talking to myself again.

And then, in a span of mere moments, this metallic version of the Lane had now been transformed into a mosh pit, with Nicole in the center, elevated on the makeshift stage.

“Friends, colleagues, and esteemed Pathway students!” Nicole said, her eyes fervent with passion, obvious even from way back where I stood. “Welcome to . . . NAMASTE!”

A large cheer rose from the crowd, the kind that sounded more like a reaction to a rock solo than the
ohm
s of the peaceful yoga class I'd imagined the NAMASTE meeting would be like. Come to think of it, I really had had no idea what the NAMASTE group actually
was
, or even what it stood for, but had been under the impression it was something vaguely spiritual in a nonthreatening way. Nicole raised her arms in the universal gesture of
Saturday Night Live
hosts that need their fans to settle down so they can continue their monologue. She had changed into a piece of gauzy red fabric wrapped around her body as a dress, which amplified her curvaceous figure. It stood in stunning contrast to her bright hair and pale, freckly skin. Her outfit almost looked like a sari, if saris were supposed to be halfway transparent and worn without a bra. I wondered, not for the first time, what Nicole's natural hair color was.

“Many of you already know me, but for those who don't, my name is Nicole Schumer, and I'm a junior here at our fine institution,” Nicole began when the crowd had settled. “I'm here to tell you about my personal journey through this institution, as well as my struggle to find an individual identity in a school full of unique personalities. That struggle led me to founding the NAMASTE Club. Hopefully, some of what I say this afternoon will resonate with you, and you can sign up for one of our ‘Humane-ity' meta-curricular programs.” She nodded offstage, and I saw Drew and Jane come forth from behind her, holding aloft a bunch of colorful fliers. Holding the papers above the fray, they made their way back past the first couple of rows as Nicole continued.

“When I first arrived at Pathways, do you know what I wanted more than anything in the world? It wasn't good grades, or a group of friends who encouraged me, or a path to carve out that would distinguish me from others. What I wanted was to go
backward.
I wanted to go back to my old life, where I had been comfortable. But my mom and dad, goddess bless them, they paid all this money to send me to this amazing school, to provide me with this . . . this . . .
once in a lifetime opportunity
. And you know how I repaid their kindness? Was it by saying, ‘Thank you mom, thank you pops, gee, I hope I do you guys proud?' No. I thanked them by coming home after my very first day, locking myself in my room, and crying for about two months straight because ‘
no one at school likes me!
' Because ‘everyone thinks I'm weird' and ‘I don't have the right accent!' I must have spent half my first semester begging them to take me out of Pathways and re-enroll me in public school, where all my so-called ‘friends' went.”

Here, Nicole stopped pacing and scanned the crowd. Maybe it was just the reflections in the foil lake playing tricks on me, but I could have sworn her eyes stopped right on me. I realized I had been holding my breath, and reminded myself to consume oxygen like a normal person. But still, how did Nicole know I'd had some of those same exact thoughts? It was like she'd been reading from my pre-Pathways mind.

Suddenly, the crowd was quiet enough to hear a safety pin drop. Looks like I wasn't the only one affected by Nicole's magnetism.

“But screw ‘being normal!'” Nicole shouted, piercing through the silence and rousing everyone to start cheering again. “There is nothing worse in life than normalcy! It's the opiate of the complacent, bourgeois masses, who tell us not to deviate from the boring standard, lest we be considered freaks, social outcasts, rebels.
Screw
the normies and screw the besties, with their cliquish identities that make them dependent on other people. The only person you should depend upon for your identity is you.

“And that's what NAMASTE Club is about. It's about being different no matter what, at all costs. It's about having the balls to break away from what society tells you to do—like staying ‘true' to who you
used
to be, or keeping ties to a community that is actually just tying you down. In NAMASTE, you'll learn about the true, core message of Pathways: That there is no ‘us' in Individual, but there is an ‘I'. In fact, there are three of them.”

Watching Nicole speak was like being hypnotized. I was there, but I was also watching myself from above, hovering just a few feet away, and looking down at me looking at Nicole. The funny thing was, the more Nicole talked about being herself, the more I wanted to be like her, too. She was so different from anyone else I knew, so aggressive in her beliefs and so confident in her identity. This wasn't at all like the first time I met Harper, whom I immediately recognized as a friend, but who was ultimately on the same plane of existence as myself, like an extension of the preexisting me. And, sure, Harper could be a little . . . passive sometimes, though it's not really fair to compare friends. Especially when they were so different! My feelings toward Nicole were much more aspirational in nature, like being around her felt a little like being able to sit in the presence of Queen Bey. She made me want to be a better
me
. Just like she was saying!

“So, fellow Pathways-goers,” she continued. “What I am asking of you today is that you become
I
s instead of
Us
es. Stop being scared of being different and start being scared of being the
same
. Join NAMASTE, and learn about our core tenets: N for Nature, A for Art, M for Magic, A for Alienation, S for Sheganism, T for Thought and E for Energy. That's what NAMASTE stands for.”

Oh!
I thought, equal parts relieved that someone had finally explained it, and more confused than ever about what that acronym actually meant.

“Do yourselves a favor and join our club so you can start being the truest version of you today. And remember: NAMASTE is all about letting you transform from the caterpillar of conformity into the butterfly of creativity! That's why I'm pleased to announce that our new official club symbol is now
fairy wings
, which we'll be rolling out over the next couple of weeks. The message to remember here is that NAMASTE gives you wings! Thank you.”

Nicole's closing lines reminded me of the end of an infomercial, but when she said them, the crowd began to roar again. I was stunned, not sure if I should clap or cry. Did Nicole just base her club's logo off my outré accessory? I felt flattered beyond belief . . . no one had ever liked my style enough to start a whole trend off of it! I found my voice cheering harder than anyone else's, and I couldn't decide if Harper would be weirded out or obsessed with what was happening. Maybe, I thought, if the Gawkward Fairy clapped her hands loud enough, she could actually start believing in the magic of transformation herself.

NAMASTE!

I wish I could say the rest of the week went better than Monday, that I spent the rest of freshman year making a name for myself as the chill girl whom everyone loved because she had the superhuman ability to befriend everyone in our class.

But yeah,
no
.

Tuesday was even worse. I spent all day texting Lily and getting frustrated when she wouldn't respond fast enough, and I kept wishing we still went to school together so we could skip the texting and just talk in person. I knew I was being needy but I WAS IN NEED. What I didn't need was Tim, who was getting on my last nerve, apologizing over and over for me for getting me in trouble with Ms. Miller. The way he was trailing me around like a broken apology robot, I almost wished I were back in detention so I could get some peace and quiet.

“Seriously, I was just trying to make you laugh,” he said, trailing me in the hall before fourth period. “I thought it would cheer you up to see a new installment of the fan fiction I used to write about you and Lily!”

I picked up my step, hoping to shake off Tim, forgetting all the nice things I thought about him when I first saw him in class yesterday after a summer away. Even then I couldn't help but think that his too-new preppy clothes, paired with his Batman backpack and unstylish crew cut were burning a bull's eye into my back. If Derek and his crew didn't think I was a spaz before, just wait till they met my new BFF, the Boy Wonder. Unfortunately, Tim and I took all the same AP classes, which were spaced approximately ten yards apart from one another, giving everyone in school ample time to check us out and peg us as Beverly's nerdiest non-couple.

“Look, Tim, it's fine,” I stressed as we arrived at our calculus classroom. “I told you not to worry about it. Just, maybe next time? Cool it on the comics, and saying stuff like ‘fan fiction' in public.”

Tim grinned. “Why?”

“Because,” I said, searching for the right words. “It's like you're
trying
to be a stereotype. And you don't have to be! You're not even that dorky-looking anymore. You could be totally passable . . .” I stopped before I said something more unfortunate.

“Passable for what?” Tim said, but he was still smiling. Oh god! Did he think I was hitting on him? I blushed just thinking of how upset Lily would be if she found out that Tim Slater thought I was calling him cute. The right thing to do would be to cut it off at the pass.

“Passable for not a loser,” I added, doing my best Rachel impression before turning on my heels, walking into the classroom, and choosing a seat in the back corner, far away from Tim.

I cracked open my textbook and pretended to go over my homework as I texted Lily yet again.

How many updates about how much FUN she was having at Pathways with Nicole was she going to send me? I was proud of Lily for thriving at her new school, but part of me couldn't help but feel totally abandoned. Had my little fairy flown the nest?

See, I knew from the first moment I met Lily that I had to emotionally adopt her. I've always had a soft spot for strays and misfit toys; for baby birds without their moms and the Barbies that my sister Rachel would use to practice her (terrible) hair stylist skills. Basically I'm a sucker for people and things whose actual dopeness goes unnoticed. I'm kind of an Empathy Addict (it's my kryptonite), and my spirit animal is the Statue of Liberty. Just give me your hand-me-downs, your shelter strays, your hopeless fashion messes, and I will see the best in them.

So what else could I do but save the day when an adorably lost girl in fairy wings wandered into my fourth grade gym class like a mouse wandering into a cat party? Lily looked like something I'd dreamt up one night, maybe after having too many diet sodas and gummy worms at a sleepover with a bunch of gossipy girls who, had you asked me at the time, I would have called my besties. Sometimes you don't really think about what certain words actually mean until you meet someone special, and then everything shifts inside and you take a big red marker to the dictionary in your head and under “best friend” you write in an entirely new definition.

That's what it was like when Lily entered the lemon-cleaner-scented gym that day, almost two months after the school year had started. I remember it was right before Halloween because the gym was decorated with big pumpkins and those weird little misshaped squashes and fake, synthetic straw. I also remember the squeaking of sneakers on the buffed floorboards, the
thwump
of dozens of dribbling basketballs, and then the harsh echo of Mr. DeJulio's whistle as he alerted us to the presence of this odd, rare species. A new student? We hadn't had a new kid in our class since two Januaries ago when Matt Musher's dad moved the family from Pittsburgh, so this was
big
. Did something tragic happen to her family? WAS SHE FAMOUS? Is she from one of those Disney or Nickelodeon shows and now we'll get to go to premiers where they give out gift bags with fancy nail polish in them?

She shuffled up behind Jessica and Stephanie, who were doing their best to maintain an authoritative distance, so as not to infect themselves with a case of the Weirds.

Back then, Jessica and Stephanie were the epitome of my old definition of “best friends.” They dressed the same and talked the same and sometimes would even tell people they were twins, which was funny (in the way creepy clowns are kind of funny) because they actually looked nothing alike. Jessica was short with brown hair and a narrow, oval face while Stephanie was tall with surfer-girl blond hair and a perfectly round face. In fourth grade they would both wear their hair in tight ponytails and big bouffant-y top knots, and when they put their heads together to whisper—which was all the time—it would look like two scoops of ice cream, like a hair sundae. Of course, there was no way I'd ever tell them that observation. Jessica and Stephanie had supersensitive radar detection for anything that was gross or weird, like Tim Slater's Batman obsession (weird) or the matzo PB&J sandwiches my mom packed in my lunch during Passover (gross). Talking about hair-cream-sundaes would have been both.

Anyway, back to Lily. She moved to say hello to Jessica and Stephanie, but before she could get the word out, they crossed the gym really fast and refused to look behind them, as if they were being chased by a zombie and were afraid to see how close it was. In their (small) defense, Lily did look like something from another world: In a sea of sneakers, shorts and ponytails, in walks this tiny girl with long, blunt bangs, wearing a robin's egg blue leotard, white cowboy boots, and a too-big tutu. And that was what you noticed before you got to the fact that she was wearing giant purple butterfly wings and a crown made of flowers and sticks in her hair. She would have looked more at home in Narnia than a California elementary school.

Mr. DeJulio must have felt bad about the hair twins blowing off the new girl, because the next thing he did was order Jessica to give Lily a tour of the gymnasium. Stephanie attempted to give Jessica a look that said “I'm sorry!” but that mostly just came off as “Thank god he didn't pick me!”

“And here's the gymnastics station, and over there are the pull-up bars. . . .” Jessica was rushing through her tour so fast she didn't even bother to introduce Lily to anyone, nor did she even stop once to look behind her to see if her charge was still following her. “You do have gyms back . . . where you're from, right?” Jessica called over her shoulder without breaking her stride. When she walked past me, she gave an exaggerated grimace and rolled her eyes. Stephanie must have felt bad, because for once she wasn't walking right in step with Jessica, but instead kept pace with the strange little fairy girl who wandered the gym with her lips slightly parted. Stephanie gave the new girl a wide berth, as if she were an exotic animal you don't necessarily want to touch.

She was small, like short, swamped by her too-big clothes, with giant, bright blue eyes and pale skin, which was a novelty in sunny California, where sunbathing counted as an unofficial after-school sport. You would think someone who dressed like that would be used to getting tons of stares, but this girl seemed to pulse with a nervous energy, fidgeting and mumbling to herself, taking out a be-doodled binder and scribbling something in it as she grew more and more oblivious to everyone's eyes. She seemed lost in her own world, and I suddenly had a fierce to desire to know what she was thinking. That is, until Mr. DeJulio broke the spell of silence by blowing on the whistle and calling out, “Okay, now that our new student has had a chance to get the lay of the land, let's all say hello to her. Honey, come up and tell us a little about yourself! Kids, this is Lily Farson.”

Jessica muttered something I couldn't quite catch, but the next remark was loud enough to ring through the room.

“More like Lily FART-son,” Matt shouted from beside the equipment basket, cupping his hands and imitating the grossest noise imaginable. Derek Wheeler, Paul Gilmore, and a bunch of other boys who all wore oversized T-shirts all laughed like donkeys, too dumb to know that if you were going to be a jerk to someone, you better bring something better to the table than poop jokes.

“Musher! Principal's office—now!” Mr. DeJulio shouted. Matt threw a peace sign to his buddies and jogged out of the gym as if he were going shopping for more giant T-shirts instead of to go get punished. “Sorry about that, Lily,” Mr. DeJulio said once Matt had gone. “You can go ahead and introduce yourself whenever you're ready.”

No one moved a muscle. Behind me, I could hear one of the guys cough, and a couple girls started to giggle and whisper nearby. One of the whispers sounded a lot like it belonged to Jessica, actually, and then I heard a violent “shush!” that seemed to come from Stephanie. Lily kept her eyes down and Stephanie kept her eyes on Lily. I tried to beam Steph a psychic MomTip about subtlety, but her shiny bun must have been blocking transmission. My entire inner being shut down with empathy and secondhand embarrassment for this new creature. But Lily didn't seem to feel any embarrassment. In fact, she didn't seem to register that this so clearly humiliating experience was even happening to her at all. I knew, all of a sudden, that this girl was
special
.

After a few too-long beats, Lily finally seemed to recognize that she was supposed to start talking. With a tiny sigh, she trudged her way back to the front double-wide doors of the gymnasium, with Stephanie now trailing behind her like a sleepwalker.

Lily didn't walk like a fairy. Dragging her feet, she made her way to the front of the room, her shoulders sinking as if each step she took made her wings heavier and heavier. When she got to Mr. DeJulio, she turned around, slowly, and faced the rest of us. Her jet black hair looked too big for her head, and it was hard to see her eyes with that big mess of bangs in front of them, which were being pushed down even more by that bizarre flower crown. Her lips were moving, but if she was talking, no one in the gym could hear her. Stephanie, who had clearly softened toward her ever since the Fart-son incident, cautiously approached Lily and asked her a short question, which warranted a violent shake of her black waves. Stephanie shrugged and slowly walked back toward the rest of us, eschewing her usual spot next to Jessica to stand, hip cocked and lips pursed, next to me.

“Uh,” said Mr. DeJulio, looking nervously from Lily to a wrinkled piece of paper in his hand. He must have been as confused as we all were. “Lily has just moved here from Ellicott City in Maryland,” he said, reading from the paper. “Those are some cool wings, Lily. Do you want to tell us about them?” I could tell that, like me, Mr. DeJulio was a sympathetic person. He was nodding his head up and down like he was trying to give Lily a clue as what she should say.

The fairy girl shrugged and kept mumbling—or maybe she was humming? She didn't seem upset, just . . . busy. Like she couldn't really be bothered to introduce herself because she was much more interested in perfecting whatever song she was mumble-humming. For a second I thought maybe Mr. DeJulio had gotten it wrong and Lily was from someplace where they didn't speak English, like Spain or the French part of Canada. My shin received a little kick from Jessica's floral print Keds as she came up and stood behind me.

“Maybe she's like . . . special,” Jessica whispered, but loud enough for the whole class to hear. Derek and a bunch of other kids started laughing. If I were Lily, I would have died of embarrassment. Instead, she suddenly smiled and gave a dramatic bow, as if everyone were applauding her. I felt my cheeks go warm, and I squirmed uncomfortably. My mom says my blush is my “tell,” the thing that alerts a room to your nervousness. Mom also says she doesn't have a tell, but I've definitely noticed that whenever she's upset she hums like a maniac. (Also see: the peeling off of gel manicures thing I mentioned earlier. Or her overflossing habit, which she does before, after and sometimes DURING meals.)