Best Friend Emma (4 page)

We’ll see about that! Because Cynthia already has a first-best friend and a second-best friend, and neither one of them is me or Annie Pat, even though we try to be nice to her.

Cynthia and I used to be
kind-of
friends when I first started going to Oak Glen, but now I only have one friend, Annie Pat Masterson.
So
it makes sense that Krysten Rodriguez, the new kid in class, should be mine.

Mine and Annie Pat’s, I mean.

After all, we saw her first!

     
4
     

I called Annie Pat at home last night, but her mom said she was already asleep and she couldn’t come to the phone. So I have had to come up with a plan to get Kry Rodriguez to be our friend all by myself.

There are other girls in my class besides the ones I’ve talked about so far, of course, but they already have each other, so I haven’t gotten to know them very well since I changed schools last September. Three of the other girls are best friends from church, and two are next-door neighbors. They always hang out together.

The main girls I have met in my class at Oak
Glen are the ones I’ve already named: Cynthia, Heather, Fiona, and Annie Pat. And this morning, before school starts, I am going to meet Kry.

Like I said before, I actually used to be friends with Cynthia Harbison when I first started going to school at Oak Glen. In fact, I really hoped for a couple of weeks that Cynthia would be my new best friend, but something happened.

Don’t ask me what, though, because I couldn’t really tell you! Cynthia just turned against me one day, and that was that. Maybe she got bored once I wasn’t new anymore. But by then I had Annie Pat, so who cares?

I used to go to Magdalena School for Girls. It was private, and I never lost any friends there—until I had to leave, that is. But my mom got fired from her regular job, which was being a librarian for a big company near San Diego, and we had to move twenty miles from our house into an Oak Glen condominium. She works at home now.

I almost never see my old friends anymore, and when I do it’s not the same.

I am not crazy about living in a condo, if you want to know the truth. There are no pets allowed, which is just terrible for a girl like me who loves nature. Also, my mom and I suddenly have a whole lot of instant neighbors who live very close by, and their cooking smells weird.

Not like ours.

Also, you can hear scraps of other people’s conversations, TV shows, singing, and sometimes even fighting, even when you are just walking around outside minding your own business. Even when you put your hands over your ears and sing, “La, la, la!”

You’re
supposed to be perfectly quiet, though. Especially if you’re a kid.

“Bye,” I murmur to my mom on Tuesday morning, and I tiptoe out the front door, hoping to get to school very, very early. This is the first part
of my plan to make friends with Kry before Cynthia gets a chance to.

So far, it’s the
only
part of my plan.

“Do you have everything?” Mom calls after me, forgetting to keep her voice down.

I nod and make a circle with my fingers to show that everything is okay, and then I head off down the street.

It is cool and foggy outside today, with the kind of drizzle falling that feels more like tiny prickles on your face than it does like rain. The droopy eucalyptus trees’ crescent-moon leaves rustle and sigh as I walk down Candelaria Road.

“Br-r-r,” I whisper to myself. But really, I am prepared for this drizzly day. I am wearing a cozy pink sweater that is nearly new. It is the color of bubble gum and is soft, fluffy, and reminds me of a
little pink lamb, and my pants flare out perfectly, just like Kry’s did yesterday.

She will think I look cool. Cool enough to make friends with today, that’s for sure.

I can’t wait to get to Oak Glen, which is four blocks away. Even though I miss Magdalena, Oak Glen Primary School hasn’t been so bad. That is, if you ignore the boys, which I mostly do—except for Jared Matthews, who can be kind of mean, so you have to watch out for him. And except for Corey Robinson, who sits next to me in class, and smells
like chlorine because he swims so much, and is afraid of arithmetic. He’s nice. And except for EllRay Jakes, who is the smallest—and loudest—kid in the third grade. I like him, too, though. He’s funny.

“Hey,” I say, surprised, as I fling my book bag onto the picnic-table bench where most of the third-graders gather before school.

“Hey yourself,” Cynthia Harbison says, because she is sitting there all alone in the foggy gloom—right
on
the picnic table, so she can have a good view of who’s coming, I guess. “What are you doing here so early?” she asks me, scowling with suspicion. “Waiting for Kry Rodriguez to show up?”

“Maybe. Maybe not,” I say, shrugging. “Why do you care, anyway? Unless you’re waiting for her, too. Is that why you got here so early?”

Cynthia is usually the last person to get to school. It’s part of what makes her famous.

Cynthia shrugs, not answering either of my questions. She takes off her headband, flips her short straight hair forward and then back in a businesslike way, and then scrapes her headband over it so hard that little comb-stripes show in the hair just above her forehead. She looks as if she is ready for
anything
.

“Don’t answer me, then,” I say with a shrug of my own. “Because I don’t even care. I’m just waiting for my friend.”

“Barfy Pat Masterson?” Cynthia jeers at me. “Who probably won’t even be in school today?”

“Annie Pat never actually threw up,” I remind her.

Cynthia shakes her head in a pitying way. “Kry Rodriguez isn’t going to want to hang out with girls who smell like you-know-what. Or with you, either.”

“Why are you being so mean to me?” I ask her. “Ms. Sanchez says all us girls should try to be friends. She says she’s tired of all the squabbling.”

“Ms. Sanchez can’t make us like each other,” Cynthia says, her chin in the air. “Not once we’re on the playground. Kids are the boss of that.
I’m
the boss of that, and I decided I don’t like you.”

“But—I still like
you
, Cynthia,” I tell her, telling the almost-truth. “We used to have fun, didn’t we?”

“We had fun
once
,” Cynthia snaps. “Because I felt sorry for you when you were new. But now it’s over, so give it up, Emma.”

“
You
give it up,” I say, wishing suddenly that I could push Cynthia off the table. I don’t want to hurt her or anything—I would just like to see her
go flying through the air like a wicked witch.

“I can’t give it up,” Cynthia tells me, smiling a little. “Because Kry is going to be my new best friend. I just have a feeling.” And then she shivers in a fakey
I-can-tell-the-future
kind of way.

“Maybe not,” I tell her, trying hard to keep my voice steady. “Maybe she’s going to be
my
new best friend.” I seem to have forgotten about Annie Pat, I realize after a second. But that’s okay, because so far, she’s not here today.

“Kry is not going to be your friend,” Cynthia says, jumping down off the table.

What’s Cynthia going to do, sock me? I don’t
think
so.

“But you already have two friends,” I point out, trying to reason with her as I back away a little. “And I only have one. If I get Kry, though, it’ll make us even.”