A Tale of Two Besties (29 page)

“Thank you, thank you, thank you!” I trilled, never so happy in all of my life to have a big sister.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just remember: You owe me.”

I blew Rachel a bunch of air kisses and told her I'd text her when I was ready to come home (I know, I totally caved on my tech-diet. But this was important!). I waited for Tim on the shore by the Ferris wheel, just where his email told me to. It was almost the exact same spot where, less than a month ago, Lily and I had pledged our undying friendship to each other.

That memory ached like a leg muscle cramp in the middle of the night. But there were no potassium-rich BFF bananas in sight, no friendship-fixing electrolytes that could make the pain go away. I would just have to survive on a diet of terrible metaphors. Tasty.

“Harper?” A voice emerged from underneath the boardwalk, and was then followed by the sight of a small figure walking toward me. Not Tim. A girl.

It took me a minute to recognize her without her wings.

“Hi” might not seem like the bravest word in the world. Anyone can say “hi.” You could go up to someone you don't like or even
know
right now and say “hi,” and basically the worst thing they will do is roll their eyes and pretend they didn't hear anything.

No, “hi” isn't such a hard thing to say. Or at least, it shouldn't be. And yet. . . .

“Hegh!” I said, walking toward Harper on the beach. I cleared my throat and tried again. “Hiyam?”

“Lily?” Harper started toward me, took half a step, then settled back on the balls of her feet, resolved and confused all at once. “What are you doing here?”

“I . . . I called Tim,” I said, forcing myself to speak normally. It helped if I didn't try to make eye contact, so I addressed Harper's Free People sandals instead. “Actually, I asked him to get in touch with you . . . to tell you to meet him here.”

“Oh,” she said as I stared at her left foot, which was busy scratching her right shin. “So . . . Tim's not coming?”

I shook my head, still forcing myself to focus on the small details, which could tell you so much. Harper's toenails were lacquered in a bright, hard red: Rachel must have convinced her to get a gel pedicure.

“Oh,” said Harper's feet, wiggling and then turning to go. “Okay, well . . .” I watched them take one, two, three steps before I found my voice again.

“Hey!”

“What!” The sandals made an indentation in the sand, like snow angels. “What could you possibly say right now that I'd want to hear?”

“I'm sorry Harper,” I said. “I'm really, really sorry . . . about everything.”

She pursed her lips and studied me silently. I was purposefully not wearing my wings today, and not only because they were basically just threads of fabric at this point. I'd also dressed more “conservatively” than what I'd started to think of as my Pathways Uniform: all bright colors and beaded accessories. Today I was just wearing a dark blue blazer with a poppy colored patch pocket over a T-shirt, and old, beat-up Adidas sneakers. Though it was still kind of a kooky outfit compared to Harper's effortlessly chic skirt and flowered top ensemble.

“I'm sorry about the way I've been treating you ever since I started Pathways,” I said, looking her right in the eyes this time. “And for flaking on your PuppyBash. And I'm sorry for not planning a real birthday party and for dragging you along to my thing.”

I took a deep breath, because the next part was hard. “And I'm sorry . . . I'm sorry I was talking about you to Nicole. I've been an awful friend. Full stop. I got really caught up with Nicole and NAMASTE, and I guess it was just really exciting to feel like I finally fit in somewhere. That I was expressing myself, and that everyone liked it so much that they wanted to be just like me. I've never felt like I had anything that anybody else wanted, you know? Except a lot of that stuff you heard me say on Saturday . . . that wasn't me. That was Nicole.”

I forced myself to keep looking Harper in the eye, which was difficult because of how bad I was tearing up. I needed her forgiveness so badly I felt like I was burning up inside and my eyes felt like they were being rubbed with sandpaper.

“The thing is, Lily, I just don't believe you.” Harper cocked her head, and I felt the familiar squeeze of anxiety in my stomach. “The things you said were really mean, and really specific. I would never even think those things about you let alone say them out loud to a group of mean bullies who I was trying to impress. Don't you see, Lily? This is exactly what we promised each other we wouldn't do!”

“I know that now! It was just all very confusing! Please, give me another chance!” Part of me was still a little frustrated that Harper refused to acknowledge the tricky situation I'd been caught in that had made me feel guilty about our pact in the first place. I
hadn't
changed what I wore to fit in! But I realized now that BFF pacts didn't extend to just your accessories. It was about staying true to ourselves, yes, but that meant letting others stay true to themselves as well, no bullying people for not wearing wings—which, now that I thought about it, was CRAZY-PANTS.

And, oh god, Beth-Lynne . . . I sighed to myself out of sheer memory-based embarrassment.

“Hmmm?” Harper had turned around, luckily missing my gasp of humiliation for poor Beth-Lynne.

“Harper, you've got to believe me,” I begged. “I will make it up to you a million times over. I . . . I am going to drop out of NAMASTE.” I didn't even know that myself until the words were out of my mouth, but as soon as I said it, I knew it was true, and I marveled at how simple it was all going to be from now on. I was done with Nicole and her faux-dictatorship.
Viva la revolución!

Harper seemed to be weighing my outburst against some internal scale. “But you missed everything,” she said finally as the wind picked up. “You missed my first kiss. You didn't even
ask
about it. That's not what a friend does. That's definitely not what a
best
friend does.

“And then there was this video, and it was a whole thing. . . .” Harper hugged her skinny arms around herself and stared off into the ocean. “That night at Murphy's Ranch . . . I acted like a total moron, and the
one
person who could make me feel like I wasn't the worst person in the world didn't even seem to care! Lily, I
pretended
to be
drunk
. On camera. In front of the
cops.
And as nice as Tim Slater is, and as chill as Stephanie is, and as . . . eccentric as Rachel is—they're not you. They don't know how to make me feel better just by being themselves. They don't know how to reassure me that that one big slipup won't make me a pariah for life.”

“What?” I said, surprised at my own stupidity. Harper and I had needed the exact same things from each other the entire time. I had to come clean. “Harper, I had no idea . . . I'm so sorry. The thing is . . . part of the reason I've been so . . . so . . .”

“So . . . zombie-ish? So creepily cheerful?”

I sighed. She wasn't wrong. I collected my thoughts and started again. “Part of the reason I've been so
not myself
is because I did something—a couple of things—that were bad. Harper, I know I said I wasn't sure if I broke our pact, and at first, I really wasn't. But then, I did something . . . I did something that I'm really not proud of. And I guess I was too embarrassed to talk to you afterward, because I knew you'd see right through my fake-happy act into what a gross monster of a person I'd actually become.”

“What do you mean? Lily, I could never think you were a gross monster! No matter what you've done!” Harper said, a glimmer of her old, sweet, concerned self shining through the disappointment in her eyes.

“Well, you know how I've been wearing my wings, like, every day since school started?”

“Yeah. . . .”

“Uh, well, that wasn't exactly my idea.”

“Let me guess. Nicole?”

“Yup. She told me on Day One that I couldn't be in NAMASTE unless I wore my wings. Because my wings were
me,
they made me who I am. At first I thought, well, maybe it's not so bad—I do like the wings and I did wear them by choice the day we met. But you know me—I'd never wear those things every single day, they're more of a good luck charm.” Harper nodded thoughtfully. “So when I came to school without them, thinking she couldn't possibly have literally meant I need to wear them
every single day,
she freaked. I really wanted to join NAMASTE and keep hanging out with Jane and Drew and especially Nicole, this girl that everyone in school seemed to just worship and fear but in a good way, like in the way that you'd be kind of afraid to meet your favorite actor or something. So I kept wearing them, even though I didn't want to.”

“Oh, Lily—”

“Oh, that's not even the bad stuff, yet, like how I totally fell for Nicole's self-help NAMASTE nonsense, even though at some level I recognized that she was just using my fairy wings as a way to see how many people she could get to fall in line before taking it mainstream. Making it part of her ‘personal brand.' I mean, even at Jane's fashion launch party, everyone was wearing wings and talking about ‘expanding our merchandizing opportunities' to like, energy drink companies. It was gross. It wasn't what my wings were about. But I was way too blind to see that I was just being used.”

I had to hand it to Harper: She could smell a caveat coming a million miles away. She folded her arms. “So all you did was let other girls borrow your style . . . what's so wrong with that?

I gulped, feeling like I had been running a marathon. Why was this part so much harder!

“There's more,” I said, knowing that if I didn't keep going I might lose my nerve before I told Harper the other, much worse thing I did during my shameful NAMASTE brainwashing days. “You know Beth-Lynne?”

“Yeah . . . you asked about her the other day, too. Why?”

“Well, it turns out that new fancy school she goes to is Pathways.”

“No way! Somehow I can't picture her there . . .”

“Exactly. She's kind of in a different part of the school all together, with the tech and science labs. I don't know how I could have missed her for the first few weeks though—she kind of sticks out like a sore thumb, you know in her jeans and flannel that she always wears, which is obviously totally fine—I mean, who am I to talk, look at the way I looked compared to everyone else at Hollywood Middle, for instance, you know?” Harper was looking at me in the expectant-slash-encouraging way she does when I start to ramble nervously. “Right, anyway. So, Beth-Lynne goes to Pathways, which I found out because, one day, she came up to me and said hello when I was hanging out with Nicole in the hallway.” I paused, thinking about how to phrase what happened next.

“Okay. And . . . ?” said Harper, nudging me along.

“And at first everything was totally friendly, but then she said something totally innocent about my wings, you know, just commenting on them, and Nicole stepped in and said Beth-Lynne was, like, making a joke about them. Which she was, sort of, but not to be mean. And then Nicole said something about her clothes . . . well, you know what Beth-Lynne's style is like, and, all I can say is if you thought what Nicole said about
your
shoes at the party was mean . . . Anyway, she went on and on about how not only was Beth-Lynne's outfit—which included Uggs, mind you—environmentally irresponsible, but her style was basic and boring and so she must be basic and boring, too.”

“Poor Beth-Lynne,” said Harper. And then, under her breath, “I can't believe that
bully.
”

“Yeah, it was bad. But what was worse . . . the worst thing about it was . . . I started to believe what Nicole was saying. That Beth-Lynne was against what NAMASTE stood for, and if I didn't say anything to stand up to her, it meant I
also
went against everything NAMASTE stood for.”

“Oh, no,” said Harper. “Lily, you didn't. . . .”

“I did,” I said. “I said everything Nicole said and worse. I'm a terrible person, Harper. I made her
cry.
In front of the
whole school.
And I didn't even run after her or apologize or anything, because that's how much of a monster I've become.”

“What? Hey, no. Let me repeat: You are
not
a monster. Yes, that sounds like a bad scene and Beth-Lynne
definitely
didn't deserve any of that. I mean, she and her family save innocent
puppies
in their spare time.” And with that, I let the tears flow. I couldn't help it. “Hey! Listen to me. Are you listening to me?”

“Yes,” I cry-mumbled.

“Okay. What you guys did to Beth-Lynne wasn't great. And it sucks that you felt you had to let parts of yourself be coopted by an older, cooler girl in order to fit in. But you know what?”

“What?” I sobbed, really losing it now.

“The only thing I hear from you right now is that you made some mistakes—because you're a human being, FYI—and that you
know
they were just that: mistakes. And you feel bad about them, and want to make them right. You can always apologize to Beth-Lynne, and while she may not send you flowers and write you a thank-you note, she'll probably understand and be pretty cool about it. And I
know
you won't stop trying until you make all of this right.
That's
the Lily I know and love! The Lily that stood out as so special on that first day in gym class a million years ago. The Lily who is my
best friend.
Nicole, she does all this stuff and doesn't feel guilty about it, because
she's
the monster.
You're
the Gawkward Fairy—even when you're not wearing your wings—which means that no matter what you do, your light and your kindness is going to win out in the end.”