A Tale of Two Besties (2 page)

I, Lily Annelisa Farson, thirteen years of age and of sound mind and body, do hereby declare that the following is the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me Zeus.

Here is a list of things I love:

1
. Really loud thunderstorms (but in a safe “I'm indoors!” kind of way)

2
. Music mixes for and from friends and collages of friends and me

3
. My red chucks and sometimes my blue ones when my mom washes my red ones without asking

4
. 
Crazy animals that shouldn't exist but do.

5
. Comic books (and not just the ones people think girls will like. ALL OF THEM. Even DC)

6
. BASICALLY anything in a thrift store.

7
.  Sneezing. (It makes me feel powerful.)

8/9.
 (Tied) Horses/Vanilla ChapStick

10.
 My friend Harper!

And here is a list of things I really, really don't like:

1. Peppers (sometimes I pretend I'm allergic for dramatic purposes only, promise)
   
2. Aggro-angry music, where someone just yells into a microphone like... Aggressive sounds are so aggressive.
   
3. Volleyball
   
4. My hair (too wavy)
   
5. The smell of airplane bathrooms. I've only been on one plane but it SURE WAS MEMORABLE
   
6. The Mansons—the cult
   and
   Marilyn
   
7. The lady at the mall who works at Day of Knights. It used to be my favorite shop until I accidentally broke a ceramic dragon figurine when I was 11 and she told my dad when he came to pick me up, even though I offered to pay for it. I was planning on being a loyal customer. So really HER LOSS.
   
8. PATHWAYS!!!
   
9. Hashtags (Remember when it was just the “number” symbol and nobody used it, ever, because it was super ugly?)
   
10. Traumas
    

I scrawled my signature at the bottom of my note. Mom and I were keeping a scrapbook of my lists and journals, and she told me that she was even thinking of doing some capital-A Art based on them. There wasn't a lot of room left on the fridge, but I made an executive decision and replaced a postcard Dad had sent from his last trip to Brazil with my note, using our “Got Milk?” magnet to keep it in place right where Mom would definitely notice it.

“Are you ready, Lily-Jolie?” My mom has a way of sing-talking my name like she was an old black-and-white movie starlet. It immediately evokes nostalgia for a time and place that doesn't even belong to me. She was standing shadowed in the doorframe with the light behind her, looking like a classic beauty in her wide sun-brim hat and paint-splattered denim dress. On anyone else it would have looked frumpy, but on her it looked like couture. “We're going to be late meeting Harper at the Pier.”

I stepped back to view the note within the larger context of the fridge. Did it draw the audience's eye? Yes, it did. But would the audience (my mom) understand that the last item—the dreaded Pathways Academy—was the most important? I hoped so. It was only eighteen hours, thirty minutes, and nineteen seconds until I descended into the darkness otherwise known as freshman year at a totally new school where I would know exactly zero people.

“Okay, coming!” I turned and grabbed my shimmery blue fairy wings off the back of one of our red, mismatched kitchen chairs and stuffed them in my backpack. Within minutes, Mom and I were in the car zooming toward the ocean, on our way to the Santa Monica Pier to say goodbye to summer. I closed my eyes and tried to smell the salt in the air.

Besides Harper, my mom is my best friend. She's always understood me, and even when she hasn't agreed with my decisions, she's supported me. Just one example: In third grade, when we were living back in Maryland, I had the brilliant idea of cutting off all my hair—really short, like Felicity in
Felicity
, which is this old show I found on Netflix and watched because they said it was made by the same guy who did
Lost,
which I was psyched about until I realized it didn't feature any smoke monsters. Anyway, I needed short hair to pull off a rattail, which I desperately wanted. Most kids' parents would have laughed in their faces and told them to get real, but my mom took me to her friend's salon in Baltimore the next day. She said my new look was
au courant
.

Now, speeding down the highway, I wiggled my toes and told Mom that I had heard something interesting the other day.

“What was it Lily-
Jolie
?” My mom's family is from France, where “jolie” means “pretty.” It's not even my middle name, which is Annalisa, but it might as well be.

“It's just about how students who go to public high schools usually have an easier time of it, you know, academically, than kids who transfer to private schools. Same with getting into college. Because they have better extracurriculars, you know, with public funding? And I also read an article about how private school students are more likely to join a gang or do drugs than regular kids, because they are more susceptible to peer pressure. Like in
Lord of the Flies
, but with heroin.”

My mom sighed. “Lily, we've been over this. You are going to Pathways.”

“I know.” My feet were fidgeting so much that the sole of my sandal was almost entirely detached from the actual shoe at this point. “But maybe if I transferred after first semester? If I really, really hated it, maybe . . .”

We pulled into the parking lot for the Pier, the Santa Monica amusement park only a quick trip down the boardwalk, which was made even faster when I wore my chunky purple rollerblades with the vintage stripes. The Pier is where Harper and I had our secret spot.

Mom turned off the car and took my head in her hands, wiping away my tears. I didn't even know I had been crying.

“Oh Jolie,” she murmured. “I know you think you won't be able to make friends, but you'll see . . . everyone will love you!”

Easy for you to say,
is what I wanted to tell her, but didn't.

I'd told my parents from the beginning that I didn't want to go to a private high school. “But Pathways will help nurture your individuality!” Mom would keep telling me, as if individuality is something I have a problem with. If anything, I'm
too
much of an individual.

“You'll find your passion there,” my dad would insist. “You're so creative; you just need a nurturing environment.”

My parents think Pathways is better than Palisades or Beverly High, because it's exclusive and a lot of “artists” have come out of there. “Plus,” they kept saying, “you get to call your teachers by their first names!” I told them that I'd much rather hang out with Harper than call my teacher “James” instead of “Mr. Franco.” (Yes,
that
James Franco. But he was only a visiting teacher so it doesn't really count.)

While I was still sniffling in the parking lot, Mom reached over the seat and handed me my rollerblades. “Mrs. Carina or Rachel will pick you up at four and drive you guys back. You'll have dinner over at Harper's, and I'll pick you up at eight.” She kissed me on top of my head and gave me my knapsack. “Now, you go have fun,
jeune fille
!”

I breezed down the boardwalk in my scuffed-up rollerblades, which were covered in sparkly stickers and flaky scribbles from an old Puffy Pen. I took in the life around me: peddlers of all kinds of wares, artisans of chintz and bongs and bongos. Harper and I have our special place outside Pacific Park, not quite underneath the boardwalk, but almost. We found it two summers ago, an empty stretch of beach where you can look to your left and see the Ferris wheel; look to your right and see the ocean. It's where we listened to Lana Del Rey's “Video Games” for the first time, sharing an iPod, dancing around like witches attached at the ears. It's the place where, last summer, those two skateboarding boys followed us, trailing drips of the ice cream they'd bought for us, the sugar sizzling on the boardwalk. Our stomachs stretched tight as drums, we lovingly set down the oversized teddy bears, useless things that Josh and Ben had won for us at the Playland Arcade, and all four of us had run into the water with our clothes on, shrieking. Harper Snapchatted them a picture of us making goofy faces that August, but they never messaged her back. Harper said that was really rude, because you shouldn't buy two pretty girls ice cream and then never reach out again, especially if those two pretty girls didn't even ask for extra toppings and were very chill. I don't know much about this but I believe her. We would have burned the bears in effigy in her yard to cleanse ourselves of their memory, had we not been worried about toxins.

I came to a quick stop at our spot, where I found Harper already waiting for me. She was wearing her go-to beach gear: a blue and white striped Topshop bathing suit underneath a sheer, oversized white cotton shirt that came down to her knees. Her hair was pulled back in a messy bun, highlighting her big brown eyes and the freckles dotting her high cheekbones. Harper's only accessories were her friendship bracelets that both of us wore all the time—we didn't even need to remind each other to put them on, though they sometimes fell off my bony wrists (the only parts of me that are still bony).

Harper is my muse: One time I had her dress up in a big, white gown and this pink wig I found at a thrift store on Melrose, and we shot an entire movie on my cell phone. I wrote and directed and provided the soundtrack, and she was the star. It was about a ghost who doesn't know she's dead, waiting at the shore for her lover to arrive. It had a lot of shots of Harper looking intensely at the sea, and doing romantic stuff like running down the steps of the boardwalk crying “Where are you, Walter? My darling!”

I would say my inspiration for that film was sixty percent Godard and forty percent these cool Vines I saw where everyone looked like they were in
Girls.
Harper posted it online and we got a bunch of comments, including one from one of our favorite TV actors, from that show about the moody cop who always solves impossible crimes. He wrote, “Will be looking for you two next pilot season!” We almost died.