What Are Friends For? (12 page)

Morgan thumped her head against the mattress, giggling hysterically.

“Uh-huh,” I managed.

“Well,” Lou asked, “Do you want to go over it?”

“Now?” I screeched. “The math homework?” Morgan was rolling around on her bed, clutching herself.

“True, it’s not due till Tuesday, but, do you want to sit together on the bus to apple-picking? We could, like, work on it.”

“I’m sitting with Morgan,” I explained, looking at Morgan.

“Oh,” Lou said.

Morgan jumped off the bed and grabbed me by the legs. “Say you have to go!” she whispered.

“I have to go,” I told him.

“All right,” Lou said.

“Thanks for calling,” I said. “Back.”

Morgan slapped her hands over her face.

“You’re welcome,” said Lou.

I hung up and screamed with Morgan. “I can’t believe I did that. I made a total fool of myself!”

“Yes,” Morgan agreed, nodding vigorously. “You sure did!”

“Aaa!” I screamed. I fell backward onto her bed, pulled my feet up, and laughed.

“Morgan!” her mother yelled.

We got serious fast. Morgan put her finger to her lips.

“Morgan!”

She lay silent beside me and held her hand up, above our heads. “These rings are nicer than I thought,” she whispered.

I held mine up, next to hers. “They are nice,” I agreed.

“I asked you for ten minutes of peace!” her mother screeched.

“Sorry,” Morgan yelled.

“Can’t you go outside?” her mother pleaded.

“Going,” she answered without budging.

“Let’s go for a bike ride,” I suggested.

Still staring at our hands, she whispered to me, “What a couple of losers we are, huh?”

“I think we’re great,” I whispered.

“You would.”

I shrugged.

Morgan knocked my hand lightly with hers. “So do I.”

nineteen

I
wrapped my arms around Morgan’s
waist as she started pedaling. She pumped really hard, and I closed my eyes to force myself not to steer. We banked around a corner. I just held onto her and tried to imagine us cemented together. It was very frightening, but at the same time, a little exciting.

I felt us picking up speed and had to open my eyes. We were heading down the steep hill on Oakbrook. I brake when I go down that hill all alone. I squeezed my eyes closed tight.

“Whew!” Morgan yelled as we picked up more speed.

I told myself to sit still and hold on.
Don’t lean!
Stop imagining the hospital emergency room and my father racing in, in his surgical scrubs with his beeper lighting up, furious and disappointed in my judgment.

Trust her
.

The road flattened out. I opened my eyes and loosened my grip. Slightly.

“That was great!” Morgan yelled, pedaling again.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “It was.”

“We did it!”

“Whew!” I yelled. We bobbled a little. I gripped her tighter. We didn’t fall. I sat up straighter and reminded myself to breathe. After two or three breaths, I had relaxed enough to let myself look around. We were passing Oakbrook Playground, where I used to play.

Turn the page to read the first part of Zoe’s story!

If You Only Knew

one

W
hen you’re the youngest of
five girls, nothing’s your own. I share a room with my sister Devin, and most of my clothes used to be hers. The first day of school, teachers say, “Oh, another Grandon,” instead of just, “Hello, Zoe.” I have my sister Bay’s hair and my sister Anne Marie’s mouth and, unfortunately, my mother’s behind. I doubt if I’ve ever had an original thought.

That was all fine with me until tonight.

I’m friends with everybody in my grade, including the boys. I haven’t been asked out yet—maybe I’m too tall or too good friends with them or something. Doesn’t bother me, though. Last year nobody tried to kiss me, but just about everybody passed me notes.

I’ve never had a best friend, either, never really saw the point. I like to hang out with lots of different people. Why limit myself? But here I am, lying in the dark, plotting how to make CJ Hurley choose me as her best friend.

We’re having a sleepover at her house, which is partly why I’m still awake—it’s cold. They have air-conditioning but no yelling, the opposite of us. When their mother said, “Bedtime,” CJ and her little brother ran straight to the bathroom and started brushing. That was a surprise. I got up and rushed in after them; I hate to be left out and besides, what could I do? Stay and bargain for a few more minutes with somebody else’s parents?

CJ has her own room and an extra bed that pops out from under hers just for sleepovers. We put on our T-shirts and boxers, turned out the light, and lay here for I don’t know how long. I was thinking,
Well, this is weird. Devin and I always talk in the dark of our room. I can’t just go to sleep
.

“Are you asleep?” I whispered to CJ.

“No,” she whispered back.

“Just wondering.” I have good eyes—the best in my family—so I checked out CJ’s built-in shelves across the room. She has a collection of stuffed animals lined up neatly, like they’re not to play with anymore.

“Don’t feel bad about tonight,” she whispered.

“I had a great time,” I said, which was true. I love barbecues—the smell of the hot dogs on the grill, your hair still wet from the shower, playing catch in the swim club parking lot until it gets too dark to see. “Didn’t you have fun?” I asked her.

“Yeah, but when you went out to the parking lot with the boys . . .”

“We were playing catch.”

“You were the only girl,” she said. “I thought maybe you . . .”

“You could’ve come.” I felt bad suddenly that I hadn’t invited her. But nobody invited me. I just went. If she’d wanted to come, she should’ve come.

“I thought you felt left out or something. With the girls.”

“Girls?” her father called as he passed CJ’s door.

“Sorry,” CJ said.

He turned off the bathroom light and said, “Good night.”

“I didn’t feel left out,” I whispered. “I just felt like playing catch.”

“Shh,” she whispered back. Like we were in trouble. Boy, in my house, trouble is a lot louder than that.

The light from her parents’ room shut off. Maybe a minute later, CJ lifted her head up again and leaned on her elbow. “How does it feel to have four older sisters?”

I shrugged. “How does it feel not to?”

“I mean, is it like a party all the time? That’s probably why you get along with everybody—you’ve just always had to. Or do you wish you could have more privacy?”

“I don’t really like privacy,” I said. “It’s boring.”

“That’s so funny.” She pushed her blanket down and lifted her leg up to her face. She’s a ballerina so she can. “If I don’t have time to myself, I go crazy.”

“If I kissed my knee like that, my leg would pop off.”

“You get used to it,” she said.

I shrugged. “Same with sisters, I guess.”

She switched legs. “But are they into your things all the time? My brother used my markers yesterday, and I could yank his little fingernails out.”

“Ouch,” I said. “I never thought about it before, really. My sister Colette gets a little weird about people touching her CDs, but she’s the difficult one. I don’t mind much. I mean, practically everything of mine was one of theirs first, so what do I care?”

She nodded sympathetically. “You must be dying to have something that’s just your own.”

“Well, I have . . .” I started but I couldn’t finish because I couldn’t think of anything. “I have . . .” Nothing. Nothing of my own? “I’m the only one who doesn’t go in alphabetical order,” I finally came up with.

“What do you mean?” She splayed her legs into a split and propped up her head in her palms, in between. She wasn’t wearing a bun for the first time I’d ever seen, and her pale bony face looked lost in the frizz of all that brown fluffy hair.

“That doesn’t hurt your legs?” I had to ask.

She shook her head. She was just waiting for me to talk. That felt pretty nice—at my house you have to talk fast if you have something to say or somebody else will fill in with a different story.

“They had a kid a year for four years,” I explained. “A-B-C-D: Anne Marie, Bay, Colette, and Devin. Then the next year a dog, Elvis. And then me. But my mom was like, no way is this one Fiona, don’t even think I’m going through this twenty more times; this kid is named Zoe. As in, The End.”

“Well, that is sort of alphabetical,” CJ said.

“No. You get it? Z.”

“Just with a lot of letters skipped.”

“Oh.” I could see what she meant. “Thanks for pointing that out.”

“I’m sorry”

“Great,” I said, “the one thing I thought was my own.”

She shook her head slowly and whispered, “That must feel awful.”

Nobody ever took me so seriously in my life. Not even myself. I could hear my sisters saying,
Oh, please, get over yourself. So what? Alphabetical order? Please
. But interrupting their voices in my head was CJ, saying,
That must feel awful
. And it did. “It does,” I whispered back. “It feels awful.”

“I know it,” she said. She talks really slow.

Her sympathy felt so good, I wanted to give her gifts. “Thanks,” I said. I had to laugh at myself. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m not usually such a sap.”

“No, seriously,” she said. “It’s so hard. I know just how you feel. I mean, the same with my mom about ballet—I tried to tell her I’m not sure if I want to dance this year, and she didn’t even hear me. She’s just writing out the check anyway, saying, ‘You’re so gifted, you’re so talented,’ blah, blah, blah.”

I nodded. I thought about saying
that must feel awful
back to her but I didn’t want to copy. Also, it didn’t sound awful. I can’t imagine my mother saying anything that nice to me. The closest she comes is,
At least you’re no trouble
. So I told CJ, “Maybe she’s just really proud of you.”

“Maybe.” She lay down on her side and whispered, “My real name is Cornelia Jane, same as my mom.”

“I know,” I said. “Mrs. Platt?” We were in homeroom together last year and the teacher, Mrs. Platt, always called CJ, Cornelia Jane, Our Prima Ballerina—even when she was just taking attendance.

“Oh, yeah,” CJ said, scrunching her pointy little nose. “It’s a family name. My great-grandmother was called Lia, then Grandma is Nelly, and my mom is Corey, so I guess they ran out of nicknames that were actual names for me.”

“I like CJ.”

“Really?”

“Usually only boys get initial nicknames.”

“Exactly,” she said, flopping down flat on the bed.

Wrong thing to say. Oops. I tried something else. “That’s great, to have the same name as your mother. The only thing I have in common with my mother is a weight problem.”

She didn’t take her arm off her face. “It’s not that great, actually,” she said in that slow way of hers.

“Oh,” I said.

“When I was little, I could only touch her toe shoes if I first washed my hands with soap. That’s why I started ballet—I wanted toe shoes I could touch anytime. And to be just like her.”

“No wonder she’s psyched you’re so good,” I said. CJ is a really talented dancer. Last year we had a class trip to see her in
The Nutcracker
. When she came out to the lobby afterward, we were pulling on our wool sweaters and down coats. She looked like a different species from us. You could understand why people who perform are called stars. She sparkled, practically. On the bus ride home, some people said it was just the special makeup with glitter in it, but I don’t think so.

CJ pushed her blanket away again and stretched her neck so her head reached her knees. “Four days a week she drives me all the way to Lenox for lessons and sits there watching me for three hours.”

“That’s great,” I said.

“I guess so,” she told her knees.

“What do you mean?” I asked. “All that time, just for you? Once, when I was like, four, my mom took me to
Sesame Street Live,
just the two of us, and bought me an Elmo flashlight. Please, it’s still my favorite thing.”

“I don’t know, never mind,” CJ said, sitting up and hugging her knees.

“What?”

“Sometimes I just want . . .”

“What?” I asked. “You can tell me.” I sat up, too. I love secrets.

“You’ll think it’s stupid.”

“I won’t. I promise.”

“OK. Sometimes I wish I could just hang around the pizza place after school instead of dancing.”

I thought that was pretty stupid so I stayed still.

CJ frowned. “Stupid, right?”

“No,” I had to lie. “But you know what? Their pizza isn’t even crisp.”

“I don’t care.”

“And nobody gives you a standing ovation for finishing a slice.”

She shook her head. “I’m missing it,” she whispered. “All the regular stuff. I don’t think I’ll ever be good enough to make principal dancer, so I’m just wasting—”

“Maybe you will,” I interrupted. “You’re really good.”

“You don’t know. I’m good but my turn-out isn’t enough and meanwhile I’m missing being a normal kid.”