Friends Forever? (14 page)

2
: to; two; too

4
: for

b
: be

b/c
: because

BFF
: best friend forever

c
: see

OMG
: Oh my God

pls
: please

r
: are

u
: you

ur
: your

wb
: write back

Mixed Messages

“I
am soooo happy to have electricity and cell phones again,” Mackenzie Blue Carmichael said to her friends.

“And warm showers,” Zee's BFF, Ally Stern, agreed, sucking a Mocha Chiller through a straw.

“I don't know,” Chloe Lawrence-Johnson replied in her southern accent. “I kind of miss being in the wilderness.”

“Oh, I didn't mind being in the wilderness,” Zee said. “I just don't think all the bugs and dirt needed to be there, too.” She brushed off her red kimono tunic as if she were flicking away invisible grime.

“Isn't that kind of the point?” Jasper Chapman asked. “Don't bugs and dirt go with the wilderness?”

The four friends were sitting on the patio of the Brookdale Mall Café, reminiscing about their seventh-grade science field trip on Brookdale Mountain.

“All I'm saying is, I hope the eighth-grade field trip is to a spa,” Zee explained.

“No, you don't.” Chloe laughed. “Admit it. You had a great time.”

Ally leaned closer to Zee and flashed a smile. “After all, I got to be there.” Ally was visiting from Paris, where she had moved over the summer. She and Zee had been BFFs since before kindergarten and missed each other tons now that they lived so far apart. When Ally surprised Zee with a visit the week before, Zee was so excited to have all her friends together.

Zee rolled her eyes. “Okay, I had fun. But don't tell my parents. They're threatening to take Adam and me camping in the spring.”

“I bet it would be awesome to go camping with your brother,” Chloe said.

Zee shrugged. “Well…I don't know about that, but Adam's not really the problem. I think I might spontaneously combust if I ever have to go a week without the internet again.”

“That would certainly be messy,” Jasper said.

“Even without cell phones and the internet, I thought the week went by incredibly fast,” Ally said.

“I hope this week doesn't,” Zee told her. “You have to go back to Paris on Saturday.”

“Don't remind me,” Ally said, frowning. “I'm going to miss you so much.” She turned to Jasper and Chloe. “You guys, too.”

“I can't believe I'm going to have to say good-bye all over again,” Zee said. “I'm going to be way sad.”

“At least you'll still be able to IM and email,” Chloe pointed out. Her green eyes sparkled with encouragement.

“I guess,” Zee said with a sigh, “but it's not the same. Paris and California are in totally different time zones. So when I'm just getting to school, Ally's day is almost over.”

“And by the time Zee gets home from school, it's usually time for me to go to sleep,” Ally put in.

“When we finally do connect, we have to spend so much time catching up on what our friends did and said,” Zee explained.

“And then we are usually interrupted before we get to the juicy stuff.”

“It would be so much easier if we could just start with that,” Zee added.

“Like you can on Facebook and MySpace?” Chloe said.

“What do you mean?” Zee asked.

“You can post pictures and updates and other information about yourself,” Chloe said.

“Right!” Zee agreed. “Adam is constantly posting what he's doing every minute of every day—as if anyone cares.”

“We wouldn't have to spend a lot of time filling one another in when we finally do chat,” Ally said. “Our posts would keep our friends up-to-date, and they could read them whenever they wanted.”

“You know so much about it, Chloe,” Zee said. “Do you have a Facebook page?”

Chloe shook her head so fast, her thick ponytail nearly whipped her face. “No way! My parents won't let me join Facebook or MySpace until I'm older.”

“I think my parents would,” Ally said, looking hopefully at Zee.

“Count me out,” Zee told her, and her shoulders slumped. “I already asked. Facebook rules say you have to be fourteen to have an account, and my parents love to follow rules.”

“Those big sites make my mum nervous,” Jasper put in matter-of-factly. “That's why I'm building my own social networking site for my friends back in England.” Jasper had recently moved to Brookdale from London over the summer.

“
Excuse
me,” Chloe said, putting down her strawberry-kiwi vitamin water. “You're
making
a site like that?”

“Well…yes,” Jasper said.

“Cool beans!” Zee cheered. “But how come you never told us you were into computers?”

“I suppose because you never asked,” Jasper answered. “And I didn't think it was important.”

“It is soooo important,” Zee said.

Ally nodded. “Yeah, very.”

“Why?” Jasper asked.

“Because we're your best friends, and it's like you're keeping a major secret from us,” Zee explained.

Jasper turned to Chloe with pleading eyes. Behind his round wire-rimmed glasses, they looked as though they were screaming, “Save me!”

“Don't look at me,” Chloe protested. “I can't believe we didn't know.”

“That's not how it works with my mates in England,” Jasper said.

“It's because they're boys,” Chloe said. “Girls share everything.”

“Yeah, if you're going to hang out with us,” Ally began, “you have to, too.”

“Fine.” Jasper threw his arms in the air, nearly knocking
over his half-full glass of milk. “I'm almost finished building the site. It's going to be by invitation only.” Zee, Ally, and Chloe stared expectantly at him. “Of course, you three will be invited.”

“Awesome!” Chloe cheered. “We finally get to meet your British friends!”

“I love the idea,” Zee said. “Can I help you come up with stuff to put on it—stuff girls might like, too?”

“Sure! I was thinking about calling it Bluetopia anyway,” Jasper blurted out.

“Bluetopia?” Zee could feel her face redden.

“As in
Mackenzie
Blue?” Ally asked.

Jasper shook his head slightly as if he hadn't realized he'd actually said the name out loud. “Uh…yeah,” he stammered, looking down. “You know, because you're going to help, and I don't want to take all the credit.”

“Jasper definitely doesn't like to be the center of attention the way that Zee does!” Chloe jumped in.

“Hey! What's that supposed to mean?” Zee laughed.

“You know what I mean,” Chloe said. “You want to be a rock star. Jasper would rather be…a…a…”

“Yes?” Jasper prompted. “Go on.”

“You know…a thing that's
not
shiny and bright and gets a lot of attention.”

Jasper tugged at the collar of his green polo shirt. “A rock?”

“Uh…lemme get back to you on that,” Chloe said. Then she turned to Zee and squeaked, “Help!”

Zee sucked the last drop of Mocha Chiller through her straw. “I've gotta get back home,” she said. “My mom says I have to clean my room before our spa appointment at Wink! today.”

Ally laughed. “Ginny said she's never seen anyone who can turn a spotless room into a demolition zone in less than twenty-four hours,” she told Jasper and Chloe.

“I had some help getting it messy,” Zee said, looking sideways at her friend.

“I'll help you clean it up,” Ally said.

“And I will work on the code for the site,” Jasper said.

The group got up from their table and headed to the bike rack. They unlocked their bikes and began to climb on as a gray minivan pulled up to the curb. It had barely stopped when the door slid open.

“You're not leaving, are you?” Conrad Mitori called to Zee and her friends as he stepped onto the sidewalk.

Marcus Montgomery landed next to him. “Hang out with us for a while,” he said. Conrad and Marcus were also Brookdale Academy seventh graders.

Zee looked at Chloe. Chloe had a crush on Marcus, and Zee could tell that Chloe would have liked to stay longer. “Sorry, guys. We have to go home. We're getting manicures later,” Zee explained.

“You're choosing manicures over us?” Marcus protested. He slapped his hand on his chest and staggered as though he'd just been wounded.

Conrad flapped his hands. “Well, we know how important it is to have perfect nails,” he teased. “Not!”

Zee laughed. “Stop it, you g—” She paused when she saw Landon Beck, the boy who she had had a huge crush on since forever, come out of the van, too.

“Hi!” Landon said, staring right at Zee.

“Oh…uh…hi…” Zee stammered. “What's up?”

Landon shoved his hands in the pockets of his shorts and shrugged. “Not much,” he said.

“Umm…are you going to hang out at the mall?” Zee asked.

Landon nodded so that his blond bangs bounced against his tan forehead. “Yeah,” he said. Zee felt like fireworks were going off in her head, but Landon looked so calm. “You want to hang with us?”

“I can't,” Zee said.

“Oh, okay.”

Think of something to say,
Zee told herself.
Anything.

Luckily, Ally saved Zee. “You know, manicures aren't just for girls,” she told Marcus and Conrad. “You guys could probably use one after a week in the woods.”

“Are you getting one, Jasper?” Marcus asked.

“Oh no,” Jasper said quickly. “The girls are on their own.”

Conrad put his arm around Jasper. “So stick with us.”

“I'm afraid I have to decline,” Jasper said. “There's something I have to work on at home.” He climbed onto his bike.

“Are you heading off to save a rain forest?” Conrad asked.

“Or planting one?” Marcus joked. Jasper spent a lot of time on environmental issues at Brookdale Academy. Along with Chloe, he had created a garden on campus where they could grow vegetables for the cafeteria, then turn the food scraps into compost for the plant beds.

“No, it has nothing to do with the environment,” Jasper explained as he waved good-bye.

Conrad turned to Marcus and shrugged. “I thought everything he did had something to do with the environment.”

Ally began to pedal away, too. “Good-bye.”

“Later!” Marcus shouted.

Zee looked at Landon. “Bye,” she said.

Landon smiled. “See ya!”

Zee's bike started to wobble. She straightened it up and followed her friends, quietly hoping that she could make it out of the boys' sight without doing something klutzy like falling off.

“Well…that was interesting,” Ally said as they headed away from the mall.

“Very,” Chloe agreed.

“What?” Zee asked.

“You know…Landon,” Ally explained.

Zee stared at her friends sternly, hoping they'd get the message. Zee hadn't ever told Jasper that she had a crush on Landon.

Chloe didn't pick up on the hint. “As if you didn't know,” Chloe said.

“Didn't know what?” Jasper asked.

“It's nothing,” Zee quickly jumped in. Her red extra-high Converse sneakers pushed faster on the bike's pedals. This didn't feel like the time to spill the news about her crush to Jasper. “It was just interesting to see all the guys there.”