Crazy in Love (2 page)

That very same day Rachel and I had lunch together. And then we met again at noon the next day, and the next, and just about every day after. We got to know each other giggling over tuna fish sandwiches and cartons of milk.  As we
revealed bits and pieces of ourselves, we both kept exclaiming that we’d been destined to meet. With each story we told,
each revelation of a special crush or a secret dream, we became closer and closer.  Before long, we were
spending most of our free time together.

One of the things that made me trust Rachel early on was
that when I told her that I wanted to be a songwriter, she
didn’t laugh. She didn’t even look surprised. And she
certainly didn’t give me that lecture on “practical skills”
and “making serious career choices” that most people,
even friends my own age, are always giving me. It was as if
she could sense how sacred it was to me, and how by even
telling her, I was letting her in on something that was very
special to me.

Her secret ambitions were a bit less out there, although
she admitted that her math and science teachers rarely
appreciated the fact that she was mainly interested in languages and had learned more of them than most people
her age. Maybe the fact that she, too, was bent on one particular thing was what made her encourage me. She
said she thought it was great that I wanted to be a
songwriter and suggested that I find somebody to work with.

I’d thought of that before, of course. As I sat in my
bedroom for hours, strumming my guitar and trying to think
of a rhyme that made sense or searching for the perfect
chord, I’d often wished for a collaborator. While I usually
wrote both words and music, I’d to admit that it was
writing the lyrics that I was most interested in. My melodies
sometimes sounded flat, and while my family and my
friends insisted that they were the most beautiful melodies
they had heard outside of the Beatles’ songs, I could
tell that they needed something to spice them up. Some
times I knew I could profit from an objective opinion, but the problem was, I just didn’t know anyone who was good
at writing music or the least bit interested in forming a musical team.

But once Rachel suggested it, I started thinking about it more and more.  I decided I was definitely going to
have to look for someone to work with. If nothing
else, this person and I could develop a sort of mutual
admiration society and encourage each other to keep
plugging away, even when the whole thing seemed like a
complete waste of time, as it so often did. It’s not always
easy to spend a Saturday night all alone in your room, trying
to find a word that rhymes with “caring,” after you’ve ruled
out “sharing” as being too predictable.

So right from the start, Rachel was a pal. She understood me, and she wanted what was best for me. I, in turn, wanted
what was best for her, which was how I got so involved in this thing. I mean, it’s pretty hard watching your very best friend when she’s about to make a decision that you think is
horribly wrong, isn’t it? Some people might consider it
butting in to other people’s business, where you don’t
belong, but I consider it friendship.

Still, it is hard to take sides when you end up siding against your best friend. Fortunately the bonds that existed
between Rachel and me were strong enough to withstand
anything, it turned out. After all, once two people have
lived through two semesters of chemistry lab together, it
takes a lot to break that bond
.

And to think it was a Bunsen burner that first brought
Rachel and me together.

Even though I’ve never considered going to school even close to fun
, I always end up
looking forward to September. By the time August rolls
around, New York is deadly. In the summer the city is like a
desert, with long stretches of hot sidewalks that look like sand. Everybody clears out, with the sole exception of the
Spooner family, or so it seems. There’s still a lot going on—
concerts in Central Park, the air-conditioned movies, about
eighteen billion street fairs and block parties—but everything feels so stagnant that it’s easier just to sit around and
wait for it all to be over.

The summer before my senior year of high school was especially bad. For the very first time Rachel’s family went
away for the entire month of August. Her father is a
doctor—a dermatologist, as a matter of fact, good news during the
pimple-prone years—so he has a pretty flexible schedule
. The Glass family usually spreads its
vacations over the year, a week here and a week there.  But for some reason, Dr. Glass suddenly got the idea of renting
a house near the ocean for half the summer. Rachel was ecstatic. Not only did she get a terrific tan;
she also perfected her breast stroke. Of course, she could
only do it in salt water, which wasn’t very useful when it came to our school swim team since it only operates in water that’s
seventy-five percent chlorine.

While Rachel was combing seaweed out of her hair and
flirting with cute blond lifeguards, I was busy being
miserable. I moped around the apartment for the whole
month. That is, when I wasn’t working my butt off as a waitress at Peppermint Park. That’s an ice cream parlor
I used to love before I went to work there for the
summer. Now, the mere thought of a Rocky Road parfait makes me gag.

Anyway, even my sister Jenny gave up on trying to drag me places with her and her friends. So by the
time September came around, I was thrilled that my best friend was back in town. Even the idea of another whole year of tests and French grammar and gym class couldn’t get me down.

I remember the day the Glass family rode back into the city.  Their car was almost bursting with suitcases and boxes
and plastic beach balls that had just about lost all their air. I barely recognized Rachel when she climbed out of the car.  She was carrying an empty KFC bucket in one hand and a copy
of Lady Chatterley’s Lover
in the other. She had that dreamy look she often gets when
she’s been daydreaming or reading or thinking really hard. I
figured it was Sir Clifford who was responsible this time.
Anyway, she was very deeply suntanned, and she looked
thinner. She wasn’t actually any thinner, she told me later,
but all those hours thrashing away in the waves had turned
her into solid muscle.

Also, her hair was
shorter. Rachel has thick, wavy hair, such a dark shade of
brown that it looks almost black. That is, until you get a
glimpse of her in the sunlight and you get a chance to check out all those neat red highlights. It had been really long, but somewhere between New York and Virginia she’d gotten
it chopped to shoulder length. Her eyes are really dark
brown, too, and her tan, combined with her coloring, made
her look wonderful.

To top it all off, she was wearing this totally cool outfit: sunshine-yellow cloth jogging shorts and a striped orange-and-yellow tank top. She was the picture of health. All of a sudden I felt pale and sickly, like some
unfortunate city kid who’d been forced to spend the
summer frolicking in the gushing waters of illegally opened
fire hydrants. You know, like the ones in the posters
soliciting contributions for the Fresh Air Fund. Not that I’ve ever had a tan in my whole life. Even when my family went
to Florida eight years ago, everyone else turned a nice
healthy, toasty brown without even trying. They all got tan
just from hanging around the pool a couple of hours each day and walking through the parking lot from the air-
conditioned rented car to the entrance of the wax museums.
Not me. All I got was sunburned eyelids and six huge
freckles, four on my nose and one on each forearm.

The critical factor here is the fact that I have red hair. Not
red-auburn or red highlights, like Rachel. I’m talking bright
orange-red. And freckles, lots of freckles, even when I
haven’t seen the sun for ages. I would have freckles all over
my face (and, confidentially, all over my entire body) even if I’d grown up in Siberia and only saw the sun for about two hours once a year. I am basically your fair-skinned,
green-eyed redhead.

No one else in my family has that coloring, just me. I
used to think I was adopted, until I found Grandma
Spooner’s diary in the attic of our old house in Boston.  I
discovered that before her hair had turned white, it was
blazing red, just like mine. After that I was kind of
proud of it, as if I were carrying on some hallowed family
tradition or something. That was when I decided to let it
grow long and crazy, instead of keeping it short in the hopes that it would remain unobtrusive. Now, I wear it halfway
down my back.

Still, even with my famous Spooner coloring, I was no
match for the sleek, brown Rachel. By the time she spotted
me, I’d decided to start jogging every morning and to
investigate those body makeups that made you look as if you just stepped off a plane from Palm Springs. Until
someone touches your face and your tan comes off on their
fingers, or however that stuff works.

All that was forgotten very quickly. My soul mate
had returned! Rachel dropped her book and her chicken
bucket, and we ran toward each other. And there, right on East Seventy-seventh Street, we hugged each other and
screeched like wild banshees, oblivious of the passersby
who looked at us as if we were strange or, worse yet,
obnoxious teenagers.

“I’m so glad you’re back!” ! screamed. “You don’t know how much I missed you!”

“Of course I do! I missed you, too!” Rachel answered.
Then we screeched for a while longer. After a few minutes,
once the novelty of being back together had worn off, we were able to tone it down to mere hysterical giggles. It felt so great
having Rachel back.

I think it was on that day that we vowed to make our last full school year together, before we went off to college, our very best year ever. We made a pact, nothing fancy, just a
promise to continue being best friends and to try hard to
have as much fun as we could.

A week later we were back in school. Nothing like a little
reality to put you back in your place. It wouldn’t be easy dedicating ourselves to the idea that the whole point of
senior year in high school is to have as much fun as
possible before being shipped off to college and having to
maintain some semblance of mature, responsible adulthood.

Not when you had as many courses as there are school periods in a day. Rachel was up to her newly pierced ears in language courses, and I’d decided to tackle advanced
music theory. Not to mention all the usual requirements:
English, history, and my all-time favorite, gym. Fortunately
Rachel and I had both finished up our science requirement
with our yucky chemistry class.

You know that feeling that suddenly creeps up on you
when you’re back in school in September? You’re sitting in some class or walking down the hall, usually the very first week of classes, minding your own business, when all of a
sudden this revelation comes to you. It’s like a vision. There
you are,
back in school,
and you’re bored silly. Here you’d
been thinking that going back to school meant seeing all
your friends again, and getting new shoes, and hearing all kinds of interesting gossip. And then, whammo, it hits you. “Read
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
by Friday.”
“Vocabulary test next Wednesday.” “Half your grade will
be determined by this term paper...
.”
Ugh. It always
hits me like a baseball in the stomach.

Even music theory wasn’t pulling me out of my tempo
rary slump. It was going to be
hard.
I was experiencing those back-to-school blues on that first Friday of school when the novelty and excitement had just worn off. I was standing in front of my locker trying to decide which heavy textbooks to lug home. And it hit me. I can remember that I
let out a low moan, kind of like the noise cows make.

I had thought I was all alone, but it turned out that good
old Dan Meyer was just about to turn the corner, after
having stopped at the water fountain. My crush on Dan had
worn off considerably since the year before, when I’d
been mooning over him in chemistry. But let’s face facts:
Dan Meyer is probably the cutest guy in my entire high school, with
his thick, dark hair and his incredible eyes. You don’t get
him out of your system that easily once you’ve melted
before his baby-blue eyes. Still,
I thought that Dan didn’t even
know I existed.

Well, apparently he did. “Hey, Sallie!” he said in that
careless way of his. I swear, he must
practice in front of the mirror. “How’d your summer go?”