BFF Breakup (25 page)

Something about the way she said those words calmed me down. I looked at each of them carefully, the glare in their eyes and the way they stood before me, like a standoff. “Fine,” I said, nodding my head. “You got it.” I turned and started to walk away.

“You have
got
to be kidding,” Susanna said.

I stopped and turned back to her. To all three of them. I was finally realizing who I was when I was with them: someone I'd never hang out with. I kind of couldn't blame Brooke. She'd been rude to them, but she'd also been right.

“I'm not kidding,” I said. “I'm totally serious. Brooke is and has always been my best friend because she understood me no matter what. We had a fight, so big deal. You don't stop being friends over one fight. At least I don't. If you don't like me being friends with her, then I guess we were never meant to be friends in the first place. So see ya.”

I turned and walked away from them, surprised at how little I cared what they thought.

After school I found Brooke standing by the pickup curb waiting for her Mom, arms folded over her chest, and a far-off look on her face.

“Before you say anything or go anywhere,” I said before she could even turn to see me, “please, please meet me by the creek when you get home. I'll be there. Please, Brooke.”

She considered me, looking at me with eyes that seemed to see every part of me, good and bad. It made me very uncomfortable.

“No,” she said. “Come to my house.”

Which was not what I wanted to do. But I wasn't exactly in a position to negotiate.

“Okay. As soon as I get home I'll come over.”

“Fine.”

Her mom pulled up; she got in the car without another look at me.

After crossing over the creek and up to Brooke's house, I realized how strange it was to knock on her door. I couldn't remember the last time I'd done that.

Her mom answered. I wondered if Brooke had asked
her to. “Well, hi there, Madeline! Come in! How are you?”

“I'm fine.”

“Good to see you again. Listen, I never did ask you . . .” I swallowed, waiting for her to tell me what a horrible person I was. “How is your mom doing?”

“Oh, it's okay. I mean, she's fine.”

“Tell her I said hello, would you? Tell her to call me.”

“Okay.”

“Brooke is back in her room. You know the way!” She waved over her shoulder.

I knocked on the door and walked in. She sat back on her bed, clutching Mr. Keating, her stuffed penguin. I was a little surprised to see all her stuffed animals were still there. They were all lined up the way they'd always been.

“Hi,” I said.

She didn't move, but she lifted her eyes when she responded with her own, “Hi.”

“You still have all your stuffed animals?” I asked. I thought of how Susanna teased me into getting rid of mine, and for some reason I assumed Brooke had done the same thing.

“Yeah. So?” Brooke said. “Don't you still have yours?”

“I thought they were kind of babyish.”

“Look,” she said. “Are you making fun of me?”

“No! Of course not. I'm
not
.”

“Fine,” she said, and seemed to relax again, leaning against them. Looking at Mr. Keating, she said, “So what do you want?”

I took another step into her room. “To say I'm sorry.”

She fake-laughed. “For what?”

I sat on the edge of her bed. I didn't know where to begin. There was so much I should have said so long ago and just didn't. I wasn't even sure why. Too scared, I suppose. It's hard saying the things you feel—even to your best friend—but especially when the things you feel aren't nice. It's easy to say you're happy when you're at a party, or you're sad when it's raining out, but it's hard to say you're sad and hurt and have to explain why.

I decided to take it one issue at a time. “Did you tell your mom what I said? You know, about the candles and my mom just feeling sorry for her?”

“No,” Brooke said. “You think I'm stupid or something? Why would I tell her?”

“I'm just asking. I didn't mean that, anyway. I'm really sorry I said that.”

“It's okay,” she said, tugging on the wings of the penguin. “I know.”

“I didn't mean any of that stuff I said. I'm sorry, B.”

Keeping her eyes on Mr. Keating, she said, “Yeah. Me, too.”

I wondered if she meant she was sorry for what she did, or if she was also sorry that I had said those things. I didn't ask.

“Today, before lunch,” I said, “I really wanted to eat with you and your friends. It's just that Susanna saw us at the movies Friday night. I told her I was going to my mom's, and I
hadn't
told her we were going out. When she saw us, she was a little . . . shocked.”

“I'll bet.”

I managed a smile. “More like her head spun around on her neck while she spat balls of fire at me.” That got the tiniest of smiles from her. “Needless to say, she's not happy we're friends again.” I let that statement hang there for a moment to see if she'd tell me otherwise—that we were in no way
friends again
.

“Remember that e-mail you sent me?” she asked. “The first one you sent me?”

I knew she meant the first one since our break up. “I remember.” I couldn't really remember what I wrote, but I knew it was short and sweet.

“It was really lame,” Brooke said.

“What? What do you mean?”

She kept her eyes on that penguin, making him dance in her lap. There was a note of humor in her voice when she said, “It was all, ‘If you want to be my friend again, I'll allow you.'”

“It was not!”

“Was, too.” She smiled.

I hit her foot with the back of my hand. “I don't believe you.”

“Believe it. I was so mad when I read it. Like, as if the whole fight wasn't bad enough. I was actually excited when I saw you sent me something. I had no idea it was going to be like
that
.”

Since she was kind of laughing about it, I felt like I could, too. “I need to see evidence of this.”

“I saved it all.”

“Nice,” I said.

I tried to remember what I was doing when I sent that message. It was the weekend I found out about Mom. That wasn't an excuse, but I had definitely been distracted.

Breaking my thoughts, Brooke asked, “Why didn't you stand up for me that day in the cafeteria?”

I flashed back to the day that started this all. Maybe something had been building up for weeks, but everything came together on that day and I hadn't thought much about the specifics since it happened. I didn't want to face it.

But as we sat on her bed, I was suddenly facing it all.

“I don't know,” I finally told her. “I should have. I'm sorry I didn't.”

Her voice was quiet when she said, “That was horrible.
I never thought you'd choose some new girl over me.”

“That's not what I meant to do at all,” I said. “I got caught up in having new friends, I guess.” I thought of all the times I complained to and with them about how Brooke acted and how much she got on my nerves. Had I really felt that way, or was I just showing off for them?

It was hard to talk about that stuff, but it also felt good, like we were checking items off a list titled
BACK ON THE ROAD TO FRIENDSHIP
. We needed to do this, I figured. Which was why I brought up the next subject.

“It's been a nightmare since my parents split.”

Brooke sat forward, putting her elbows on her knees. “I feel
horrible
about your parents splitting. I heard your mom moved out? What's up with that?”

“It's awful,” I said. “I really needed you.”

“I tried to be,” Brooke said. “But Susanna was always there, and she seemed to know just about everything about divorce. It seemed like you'd rather have her around than me. Honestly, I couldn't relate to having your parents split up.”

“You don't have to relate,” I said. “You just have to listen. When all that stuff with us went down I was really mixed up and upset. My parents weren't just divorcing, Brooke. My mom left Dad for her first husband.”

A tiny gasp came from Brooke. Well, it
was
shocking
information. When she finally spoke, her voice was small. “Seriously? Mads, I didn't even know your mom was married before.”

“I know.”

“That's . . . that's crazy.”

“I know.”

She took a breath and said, “I'm so sorry. About everything. I wish we
both
hadn't been so stupid. I'm sorry I didn't try harder to see what you were going through. But please promise me—next time something bad is happening, you have to
tell
me. Don't expect me to just figure it out, okay?”

“Okay,” I said. “I promise. I'm sorry for all the horrible stuff I did. I didn't mean it. I really didn't.”

“I know,” she said. “Wait. Even the necklace incident?”

“I swear on my deceased cat's grave that I had
nothing
to do with that. Not a single thing. That was all Susanna.”

“Some friend,” Brooke said.

“So . . . are we okay? For now, I mean?”

She picked Mr. Keating back up and sat back against the pillows. “Yeah. I think so.”

I stayed at her house until dinner. We talked about stuff we hadn't had the chance to yet, like boys. Boys like Derek and Chris, to be specific. But I knew the credits weren't ready to roll just yet. That afternoon at her house
didn't magically fix everything between us. In a way, starting over was harder than starting new. I wasn't sure what would happen to us but I knew that, for the moment, I was the happiest I'd been all year.

W
OW, IT REALLY WAS A TON OF SHOCKING
information from Madeline. Her mom, married before? And she went back to him? I didn't even know how Madeline had dealt with that as well as she had so far. If it were me, I'd be bawling in class every day.

After that afternoon we decided we'd just go back to being friends. Just like that. Well, maybe not just like that. She decided that Susanna wasn't the kind of person she wanted to be friends with, like, ever.
She told me that Susanna said she had to choose between me or them. It was so lame, if you ask me. Madeline didn't even think twice.

“You never liked them,” she told me, “but you also would never make me choose like that. It was just sort of creepy.”

Admittedly, I was glad she wasn't going to be friends with the OMG girls anymore. Still, I had some reservations. Maybe she didn't really mean what she said about my mom or how my sarcasm was annoying, but she had to believe some part of it, or else why would she have said it in the first place? Stuff like that kept bothering me. Maybe they were things I would just have to try to let go of. Maybe they were things that would always bother me.

I believed Madeline—everything she said that day after school. I believed that she didn't know about the necklace, and that she was truly sorry for not standing up for me. Believing what she said and getting over what had happened were two different things. I was willing to try, though.

I somehow knew things would never be like they were in elementary school, that the days of telling secrets by the creek were over. In a weird way, though, our fighting made us tighter. It was something we went through together, even if it temporarily tore us apart. I'd never be
able to forget the things she said to me, but I was trying to forgive and move on. Maybe we'd never be able to trust each other like we once did, but what I knew for sure was that the thought of not having Madeline in my life was impossible. She meant too much to me. I guess I finally understood just how much. Even if we didn't talk like we used to, share secrets by the creek, or hang out together as much, it didn't lessen the depth of love I had for her. Madeline Gottlieb was once my very best friend in the whole world. That, at least, would never change.