Best Friends (Until Someone Better Comes Along) (10 page)

“Ooh, good, I was hoping you'd bring Coco. She'll keep Madeline occupied!” She reached down to pat my puppy, then waved us in. “Come on in. My dad promised he'd stay
out of the way. He and Madeline went out for a moonlight canoe ride so we can have the cabin to ourselves for a while.”

We set up our makeshift beds in the living room, since Ava had promised her sister she could keep the bedroom for the night. “I hate sleeping on hard surfaces,” I admitted as I layered blankets thick on the floor. “I'm kind of a nature wimp.”

“Oh, I was the exact same way our first summer here too,” Ava said, nodding. “Every single bug bite made me cry and hide inside. And then one night, a raccoon showed up at the campfire and I completely freaked out.” She and Bailey both started laughing hysterically. Ava snorted so hard she got the hiccups, which just made them both laugh even harder.

Finally, Bailey stopped laughing long enough to tell more of the story. “Ava stood up on one of the benches by the campfire and started jumping up and down. She was screaming and yelping and pointing at the raccoon, but she couldn't even say anything because she just kept screaming. We were all so busy staring at Ava that no one saw the raccoon hiding in the bushes. So we thought she'd made the whole thing up—”

Ava cut her off. “Until the next night, when the raccoon came
again
! Bailey turned around to get a stick for her marshmallow, and there it was, standing in the shadows, just staring at her. Like,
right
behind her.”

Bailey grinned. “I was totally composed, unlike Ava.”

“You were not!” Ava argued, swatting at her with a pillow. “You screamed even louder than I did. And maybe you should tell Izzy who eventually scared it away?”

“You?” I asked, looking at Ava.

“Me,” she said, grinning. “I grabbed one of Levi's whittled sticks and pointed it right at that freaky thing, like a sword. I don't think I scared it very much, since it just sort of waddled away, but I did save Bailey from rabies.” She peeked at us from under her bangs. “Maybe.”

“I owe you my life,” Bailey said, then crawled over to hug Ava. They both dissolved into a fit of giggles again.

Watching the way Bailey and Ava interacted with each other made me really oddly happy. They teased each other, but not in a way that was meant to be hurtful. They were both sarcastic, but not to the point of cruelty. And I had a feeling that when they said something, they actually meant it. The best thing of all was, I never wondered if they were talking about me behind my back, and I never worried that they were faking happiness when they were really bored or annoyed.

With Heidi and Sylvie, I worried about all of those things.

“Do you want to play Liar and Spy?” Bailey asked, shaking me out of my own head.

“What's that?” I was intrigued.

“Ooh, ooh!” Ava started bouncing up and down. Coco, who'd made herself comfortable at the foot of Ava's floor bed, shifted and whined in her sleep. Ava bent down and whispered, “Sorry, Coco.”

Bailey explained, “In Liar and Spy, you get to decide if you want to do a spy mission—which we will design for you—or if you want us to figure out if you're a liar. You make three statements—things about yourself, usually—and we have to figure out if you're telling the truth or making stuff up.”

“Basically,” Ava said, “It's like Truth or Dare—but not.” She was giving me a funny look. “What? Does it sound dumb?” She flushed, her cheeks turning bright red behind her hair.

I realized I'd been giving them a weird look. “No,” I said quickly. “It doesn't sound dumb.”

“We don't have to do it,” Ava said quietly. “It was just an idea.”

“Who goes first? I can, if you want,” I said, realizing I was going to have to make it really obvious that I was psyched about the idea. Even though we'd been spending a lot of time together, there were still times when Bailey and Ava were sort of cautious around me, almost like I was a wild animal that might snap at a moment's notice. In fairness, that's exactly
what I was like in school, but I was a whole different person in the middle of the woods.

“I'll go first, since you haven't played before. Okay?” Bailey said. She didn't wait for me to say okay, just charged on. “I'm going to do Liar. So I'll say three things, and you guys have to figure out if I'm lying.”

Ava and I settled back on our blankets, waiting while Bailey stood up and cleared her throat. “First truth . . .
or is it a lie
?” she said loudly, lifting one eyebrow. “I hate wearing skirts. One hundred percent, total loathing, despise skirts. Some people look okay in them—Izzy looks cute—but I look like I stole my mom's clothes and tried to pull them off as my own.”

“That's the truth,” Ava whispered to me.

“I probably would have guessed that,” I whispered back. “She's worn the same tank top and cutoff shorts since the first day we got here.” As soon as I said it, I realized my comment sounded judgmental. It wasn't meant to be. It was just a statement of fact. But I knew I had to be careful not to sound like the snob I sometimes was. “Not that there's anything wrong with that,” I added, just to make sure Ava didn't think I was criticizing Bailey's clothes.

“Second,” Bailey said. She paused to think. “I have a
major, major crush on Brennan, and am having a seriously hard time hanging out with him without freaking out every second. He had this piece of melty marshmallow stuck to his upper lip when we were making s'mores at the bonfire the other night, and I literally almost licked it off him. Then I realized it would have totally creeped him out, having this random girl in a dirty tank top lick his face like a dog. So I backed off. Can you imagine? If I'd actually licked him, I mean?”

Ava and I both laughed. “That one is totally obvious,” Ava said.

“Truth!” I said. “I really hope you come up with something better for the last one. So far yours are way too easy!”

Bailey narrowed her eyes and said, “Okay, try this one: I was a surprise.”

“What do you mean, ‘a surprise'?” Ava asked, pushing her hair away from her face. I'd come to find it sort of charming, the way Ava's hair always slipped down over her face. While we were dancing one day, little pieces kept flying all over the place in front of her eyes and into her mouth. That's when she told me how she'd been trying to grow her bangs out for more than a year, but she'd made the critical error of trying to trim and shape them herself between cuts. Now, her hair
fell over her eyes all the time and no matter what she did, it refused to cooperate. I had loaned her one of my headbands, but she always forgot to wear it. She said it was a little stupid to accessorize at the lake, and I had to agree.

Bailey shrugged. “My parents were done having kids. I guess they only ever wanted one, and they had my perfect brother, and then—
surprise!
—four years later, Mom found out she was pregnant with me.” Bailey smiled smugly at us. “Do I tell the truth, or am I lying?”

Ava and I looked at each other. “I think that's a lie,” I said. “There's no way your mom would have
told you
you were a surprise, even if it was the truth. It's like she was telling you you were an accident, and that's kind of awful.”

“Aha!” Bailey said, pointing her finger in the air. “It's the truth! I was one hundred percent surprise. Surprise kid number two.
Moi!
”

“How did that even come up in casual conversation?” I asked, incredulous. “You were just sitting around the breakfast table one day, and your mom said, ‘Hey, Bailey, pass the Cheerios, and by the way, we never wanted a second kid—you were a huge surprise. La-di-da, let's all have some hot chocolate and celebrate'?”

Bailey laughed. “No, it wasn't like that! I can't even
remember how it came up, actually. But my mom and I are pretty honest with each other, so I guess she just must have told me sometime.”

I shook my head, still in shock that Bailey was being so casual about it. Maybe it seemed crazy to me, because I knew if my mom had told me something like that, it would have come across in a totally nasty way. She would have saved it up for the middle of some war, when she really wanted to hit me hard. She would
not
have been able to say it in a mother-daughter-bonding, we-all-love-each-other-now sort of way. “My mom and I are pretty honest with each other too,” I said. “But in our house, ‘honest' just means we totally slam each other and she snaps at me all the time.”

Bailey frowned. “It really wasn't a big deal. It didn't hurt my feelings or anything, since my mom was really nice about it all. Mom kind of goes overboard reassuring me that I'm
very
wanted now, so I don't feel less loved or something. Apparently, as soon as she saw my feet on an ultrasound she was convinced I was a good idea.” She held one of her feet in the air and wiggled her toes. “I do have very nice feet.”

“You do,” I agreed, then reached out and tickled the bottom of her foot. She was so ticklish that she actually fell over, and soon we were all in the middle of a huge tickle fight in the
pile of blankets. Of course, that's when Madeline and Ava's dad came back from their canoe ride.

We all tried to stop laughing, but for some reason it was impossible. As Madeline and her dad snuck past, staring at us like we were crazy people, we dissolved into a fit of giggles again.

A
n hour later, we were
still playing Liar and Spy. While we talked, I gave Ava and Bailey manicures and pedicures. When I finished their nails (and also Madeline's, who promised Ava she'd leave us alone if we let her hang out for a little while), Ava did my toes and Bailey painted my hands. “You're the worst nail painter ever,” I told Bailey. “I think my fingers have more polish on them than my fingernails do.”

“I just do things differently,” she said, laughing as she slapped the brush against my fingers. The way she painted nails almost reminded me of the way a modern artist would flick a brush at a canvas. She held my hands out in front of her and studied her work. “I think it looks beautiful,” she said.

“Um . . .,” I said. “It's definitely creative. Maybe not something I'd pay for, but . . .” I giggled. Each of my nails was a different color, and the polish was messy and glopped on. But at least they were my real nails, grown in and healthy-looking. Since I'd started hanging out with Bailey and Ava, I'd stopped picking at my nails. I guess I was just more relaxed or something, but I didn't seem to have much nervous energy at the lake. So even though they didn't look perfect—or even pretty—they looked sort of healthy and fun. And they reminded me of an awesome night.

Most of the time that night, we were laughing hilariously about someone's seriously funny or seriously stupid secrets—but sometimes the truth someone shared was also sort of sad.

I'd discovered that, when she was seven, Bailey had thrown up in the pool at swimming lessons (yuck!). In keeping with the pool theme, she also told us that when he was eight, her brother pooped at the bottom of the pool during swim team practice, thinking it would be funny (super-yuck!).

Then Ava told us about how her stepfather kept a snake in his bedroom that only ate live mice (um, cool?). We also found out that one time she made and ate an entire tube of Halloween slice-and-bake cookies in one night and felt so sick afterward that she hadn't eaten them since.

I admitted that I once stole a poster of a cute puppy sitting on a dictionary that was hanging up in the school library (pitiful). And neither of them believed me when I told them that my dad had once toilet-papered his
own
house, just so people would think he was popular (I guess TP-ing was a sign of coolness or something in the town where he grew up).

After Madeline went to bed—with Coco trotting along happily behind her—I reluctantly confessed that I'd once let Jake Theisen read a note that Heidi had given me where she talked about how hot he was. “Why?” Ava asked, without any judgment. “Why would you do that to a friend?”

“I don't know,” I said, realizing that I really
didn't
know. I guess it had just seemed funny at the time, but Heidi was crushed when she found out. “I wish I hadn't.”

I also admitted that I'd been lying to everyone about dance tryouts. “Soccer doesn't really get in the way at all—practice is on different days, which everyone will eventually figure out. I just don't want to humiliate myself in front of the whole school by trying out. Sometimes,” I confessed, “I worry about looking stupid.”

I thought this was a very profound statement, but Bailey and Ava both laughed. “What?” I demanded. “What's funny about that?”

“Um,” Bailey mumbled through a mouthful of Oreo cookie, “you and everyone else. Do you think you're the only person in the history of seventh grade that's worried about her reputation?”

I held out my hand for a cookie and shook my head. “No, it's just—I don't know. I feel like I have more to lose if I really embarrass myself.”

“That is so self-centered,” Ava said, lifting her eyebrows. She rarely put things so bluntly, so it caught me off guard. My cookie tasted like cardboard in my mouth, and I kind of wanted to spit it out.

Bailey nodded. “You're more popular than ninety-nine percent of our class, but that doesn't mean it's a bigger deal when you do something stupid. It's just a bigger deal to
you
.”

“But it
is
a bigger deal,” I pressed on, though my face was getting hot, and I was a little queasy. I hated when Bailey and Ava confronted me about saying selfish things. They didn't understand what it was like for me, how it felt like everyone was always watching me, waiting for me to screw up, just so they could laugh at me. It was like I was more visible than most people at school. Most of the time, I liked it that way, but sometimes I felt like I had to be extra cautious. “I just mean, when I do something that makes me
look stupid, it seems like the whole school is watching.”