What Are Friends For? (8 page)

“That sounds really dangerous.”

“Oh, it was ridiculous.” Mom picked up the box of All-Bran and looked at it again. “I actually hate this stuff.”

I smiled. “Put it back.”

She put it back on the shelf and grinned at me.

“You let her hang out the window?” I asked. “You won’t even let me sit in the front seat with a seat belt on.”

“I know. Can you believe it?”

“I would never do that,” I promised. “Anything like that. I’m careful.”

“I know you are. Good.”

“I can’t even imagine you . . .”

“It was crazy.” Mom shook her head. “She was fun. I was fun, with her. For a little while we were best friends.”

“Where is she now?” I asked. My mother doesn’t talk about herself as a teenager much. She mostly talks about books. It felt weird and exciting, as if she were a new girl moving into town. She seemed new.

“I don’t know,” Mom said. “Should we get bananas? Let’s get some bananas.”

I followed her out to the fruit area. “You lost touch? Did you have a fight? Did Nana forbid you to see her?”

“No.” Mom placed a bunch of greenish bananas carefully into the front section of our cart. “Nothing so dramatic. We were different. I went on to Yale. Colleen, I don’t know. She had other interests. I didn’t agree with some of her choices, so I guess I pulled away. We weren’t very much alike.” Mom picked up a string bean, snapped it in half, took a bite, and nodded.

I ripped a plastic bag off the roll, massaged it open, and held it up for Mom to fill. When the bag was loaded, I asked, “Do you miss her? Colleen?”

“Miss her?” Mom looked up into the ceiling light and smiled. “Sometimes, maybe. I wouldn’t be friends with her now. It’s not who I am, but . . .”

“What?” I asked.

“There’s a part of me that she discovered, or that I discovered with her, and I guess I’m grateful for the discovery.”

I nodded. “I know what you mean.”

“Just be careful,” Mom said. “And make sure you keep thinking for yourself, OK?”

“I will,” I promised. “I always do.”

“That’s what I like to hear.” She took the handle of the cart and pushed it to the check-out area. I followed her.

twelve

T
he next day, Friday, Lou told me
in math that he’d had a breakthrough on our code project. He asked if I’d come up with something, and I had to admit I hadn’t done any work on it at all. Usually I do most of the work in a group project, so as he began to explain his concept, I didn’t pay much attention—I was too busy insulting myself over what a distracted, lazy ditz I was becoming. When he said, “It’s elegant, don’t you think?” I had to ask him to repeat his idea. It was to take the symbols above the numbers on the computer keyboard and use them in the numbers’ place. “Easy to remember, and I don’t think Ms. Cress will crack it that quick, especially if she’s not at her keyboard.”

I had to admit it was very clever. He had written down the numbers and their symbols. We played around with it, and it worked very well. We were both psyched, and started discussing making up a letter code, too. When the bell rang and Morgan grabbed me, I was startled.

Lou watched me go backward out of the classroom.

“We’ll work on it more later,” I yelled to him.

“I can’t believe you got stuck with him,” Morgan said as she slammed her locker shut.

“He’s really smart,” I said.

She made a gagging face and jiggled my lock while she waited for me to organize my books and take out my lunch. “I’m on a diet,” she whispered. “I tossed mine in the garbage on the way this morning.”

I asked her why. She looked very skinny to me.

She pinched skin on her waist—there was barely enough to grip. “You wouldn’t understand,” she told me.

“You’re right, I don’t,” I told her, pulling my lunch down from the shelf of my locker. “You’re the prettiest girl in seventh grade. I don’t understand why you wouldn’t eat lunch. That just seems self-destructive to me.”

Morgan let out a burst of air and smiled.

“What?”

She shook her head. “Sometimes I don’t know whether to say
thank you
or
screw you
to you.”

I closed my locker and locked it. She’d have to figure out what she wants to say to me herself.

She grumbled, “Come on. Hurry.”

“What’s the rush?”

She grabbed me by the elbow and pulled me toward the cafeteria. “Don’t you hate walking in there late, feeling like everybody is watching you?”

“I never thought about it,” I admitted. “Why would they watch us?”

“Judging,” she answered.

As we crossed the cafeteria, I peeked around to see who might be judging us. Lou smiled at me from his table near the front and started to stand up. “I thought of another thing we could add to the code!”

I looked away. Out of my peripheral vision I saw him sink back down in his seat.

Everybody else seemed too engrossed in their own lunches and conversations to take any notice of us. I looked for Dex. There were a few eighth-grade girls leaning on a table with their backs to me and their hips shifted sideways. Dex was probably sitting opposite them.

Zoe Grandon smiled at us and waved, then pointed at a space next to her that was vacant. CJ wasn’t with her. I looked around quickly for CJ, surprised to see her unattached from Zoe. She’d been Zoe’s shadow all week. It occurred to me that maybe Zoe was angry at CJ over the Lou incident. It was sort of hard to picture Zoe angry. She waved again, a little more frantically.

Morgan smiled at her, let go of my elbow, and walked quickly over to the spot Zoe had been pointing to. “Where’s CJ?” Morgan asked Zoe.

“I don’t know,” Zoe said, tucking her long blond hair behind her ears.

Morgan smiled her electric white smile at Zoe and rested her chin in her palms. I sat down opposite them and took my sandwich and pretzels and soda out of my bag. I tried to think of something to say about our homework or current events, anything but what I was thinking, which was,
Morgan is MY best friend, so quit smiling at each other like that!

I told myself to quit focusing on insipid social issues and think of a world event or political conflict to bring up as a topic instead, but I couldn’t think of any. I started insulting myself about that and then remembered how much Morgan and Zoe seem to like it when somebody insults herself so I said, “I just realized, I’m so stupid I haven’t read the paper all week!” They looked at me blankly for a minute and then they both got hysterical, thumping the table, laughing. I smiled, unsure if they were laughing at me or with me.

They kept laughing, and I was feeling increasingly uncomfortable, so I glanced around and was startled to see CJ was standing beside me, pulling a soccer shirt out of her bag. She held it up against her body as if it belonged to her. It was number five, the number she wore last year when she only had two ballet classes a week, instead of five. This year she can’t play. She had made it up to performance level, a very exciting achievement for which she’d been working incredibly hard; our two families had gone out to dinner at the swim club the night she found out, to celebrate. CJ’s mother, whom I call Aunt Corey even though she’s not my blood aunt, was so proud of CJ that she kept squeezing CJ’s arm until CJ had to excuse herself from the table and go to the ladies’ room. CJ was proud, too, and so excited her cheeks were a little rosy. When I found her in the ladies’ room that night, she was staring at herself in the mirror, and she told me it was the first day she’d ever allowed herself to think all her mother’s dreams for her had a chance of coming true. I hugged her and told her how happy I was for her, and how confident I was about her future. She really is gifted and dedicated. She deserves her success.

So I wasn’t sure what to make of the fact that she was holding a soccer jersey. She smiled nervously, and nodded slightly.

“But . . .” I said.

“You . . .” said Morgan.

She climbed onto the bench and sat down next to me. I moved my lunch over a little to make room for hers. My tuna fish was sticking to the roof of my mouth. I put it down on top of the lunch bag, and when I saw Morgan staring at it, I happily pushed it toward her. She took a bite and put it back down. I hoped she’d finish it. I get angry when I see girls trying to be so skinny they’re barely there. What kind of culture do we live in?

CJ opened her lunch bag, looked in, and said casually, “I just decided I’d rather be on the soccer team.”

“Rather than what?” I asked her.

“Rather than dance.”

“You’re quitting dance?”

“No need to alert the media,” she said in the snottiest voice she’d ever used. I turned to her, surprised. “Or your mother,” she added.

I felt myself getting angry, as I always do when she tries to humiliate me publicly. I took a deep breath and asked, “Well, what did
your
mother say? She must be devastated.”

OK, that was mean, a low blow, since I knew that of course her mother would be devastated. CJ’s ballet career is her mother’s dream come true, and I knew that better than any of the other girls at the table. But I couldn’t help myself from giving CJ that dig, after she was so snide to me.

CJ shrugged. “It’s my decision.”

Of course she was right. I took a sip of my soda to avoid having to acknowledge her point.

“When did you realize that?” Morgan asked her.

“Yesterday,” CJ said.

Morgan smiled at CJ. I gulped more soda. I felt totally miserable, with no idea why; like I might start punching somebody if they all weren’t careful.

“She’s disappointed, of course,” CJ said, opening her yogurt. “She said she wished I felt differently, but that I have to do what’s right for me.”

CJ turned to me. I had to look her in the eyes, her wide, vulnerable green eyes, which were flicking around my face, begging for approval. “Well,” I said. What could I say? As talented as she is, she was also right—it was her decision. It might not be the choice I’d have made in her position, but I had to respect her for following her own conscience. Sometimes she seems so eager to please her mother she forgets to be a person herself. “Congratulations,” I told her.

“Thanks,” CJ said gratefully. “And I’m coming apple picking, too.”

Morgan’s head snapped up to look at CJ. “You are?” she asked.

I unwrapped my box of pretzel sticks to keep from reminding Morgan she had already asked me to sit with her. Last year when we went to the waste disposal plant, I didn’t care one single bit who I sat with. I think I ended up with Gabriela Shaw one way and Roxanne Luse the other, and I read a book the whole time. It was strange to me that I cared, this year—cared a lot, honestly.

I shoved the box of pretzels at Morgan, who took some and smiled gently at me. I looked away and offered some pretzels to Zoe, who usually grabs a handful but this time she shook her head. I held the box in front of CJ, who never accepts. This time she did.

“I handed in my permission slip today,” she told us proudly, and took a loud bite of the three pretzel sticks.

I felt like I should say something to her. “I was wondering why your name was finally erased from Ms. Cress’s board,” I managed.

“That’s why,” she answered.

Morgan blew the bangs away from her eyes. “I guess we won’t be having a class trip to see you in
The Nutcracker
this year, then,” she said to CJ.

CJ’s smile sunk a little.

Morgan crumpled my lunch bag and tossed it over me and CJ into the garbage can. We all watched it arc in perfectly. Then she leaned toward me and whispered, “You ready to go outside?”

I shoved the last bunch of pretzels into my mouth and nodded as I chewed them and stood up, all at the same time. I tried to think of something else to say to CJ, but nothing came to mind.

“As if you’d tell your mother,” Morgan muttered to me as I hurried after her, down the hall.

“My mother probably knows already,” I said. “They talk every day.”

“Some people,” Morgan started, but then said, “Forget it,” and pushed out the door. She paced around the perimeter of the playground, dragging her fingers along the metal fence. She hung her head, hiding her eyes behind her bangs, and pushed her lower jaw forward, not saying a word. I started chattering like a bimbo, but I couldn’t help myself. I knew I was acting foolish, the way CJ used to—hustling to keep up the pace with Morgan, complimenting her, asking her if she was OK. She ignored me and when the bell rang, sprinted in alone.

In English/social studies, I passed her a second note when she didn’t answer my first, assuring her I wasn’t planning on saying anything to my mother in case that’s what she was mad about. I was annoying myself, not to mention Morgan.

We were in different groups for gym, which gave me a rest from pursuing her, and I spent the time berating myself—
Have a little self-respect, would you, please?
—but after, when we were changing in the locker room, unable to stop myself, I slid over next to her. “If you want to talk . . .” I said.

Obviously she didn’t want to talk because if she wanted to talk she would talk.

“I’m here,” I added, in case somehow she’d managed not to notice.

She turned her back to me and took off her white gym top and in the same motion, pulled on her blue shirt. I considered telling her it was a nice shirt, but miraculously exercised my first moment of self-restraint in over two hours and stood up instead, and went back to my own locker. She slammed her locker shut and said, “Don’t.”

I turned back around. Morgan was walking toward me. Poor Gabriela Shaw, who was putting on her pants sitting on the bench between Morgan and me, pulled her long legs in and scrunched up as small as she could to get out of Morgan’s way. I shrunk down into my shoulders, wondering if Morgan was about to punch me.

Morgan stood in front of me, too close, and whispered, “I’m not bringing any junk food for the trip, Monday.”

I swallowed. “OK,” I said.

She didn’t move away, and I started wondering if I had misinterpreted what she said. She’d said it as if it would insult me, or as if it were of terrible consequence. I couldn’t, as hard as I tried, think of a deep and consequential meaning of her not bringing junk food for the trip.