The Retake

by Jen Calonita

  I couldn’t help but smile at the memory. “Yes. We practiced it every day for weeks. You were convinced if we sent it to Shawn, he’d repost it on Instagram and we’d be famous.” I started giggling.

  “I still think he would have if you learned how to do a handstand,” Laura said accusingly.

  “I can barely balance on two feet! You wanted me to balance on my hands! It was never going to happen!”

  Laura stuffed a pretzel into her mouth and almost choked, she was laughing so hard. “Even though you can dive for a volleyball and save the shot with no problem? How can the same person not do a handstand?”

  “I just can’t,” I insisted as she tossed me two pretzels, like she already knew I wanted some.

  “Yes, you can! Let’s try that handstand again now.” Laura pushed the craft table out of the way, making an aisle of carpet in my room.

  “You’re serious?”

  “Yes, I’m serious,” Laura said, even though she was laughing. “Alexa! Play ‘If I Can’t Have You’ by Shawn Mendes!” It immediately started playing. “Try it!”

  I joined her on the carpet.

  “Five, six, seven, eight,” Laura called out, and I joined in, matching her steps till we hit the first chorus and the handstand. We were both laughing so hard that we had trouble concentrating. Laura nailed it. I tripped and fell into the lamp on my bedside table, knocking it off and sending my phone flying. The resulting sound was loud.

  “My phone!” I cried.

  “What’s going on up there?” I heard my dad yell from downstairs.

  “Dropped something! Sorry, Mr. M!” Laura shouted as I went to check on my phone.

  The hot temperature reading was gone. The phone was still warm but not burning. I clicked on Retake, and the pink icon was still there. “That could have been bad,” I whispered.

  Laura popped over my shoulder. “Hey. What’s that pink app on your phone?”

  Without thinking, I hid my phone behind my back and tried to control my breathing. “It’s some stupid game Taryn told me to download.”

  “What stupid game did I tell you to download?” Taryn leaned on my door. She was holding a bowl of popcorn. Laura went over and took a handful of it. “I don’t download games.”

  Laura and Taryn were staring curiously at me now, but I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t let anyone else know about the Retake app.

  I placed the phone in my back pocket, warming my butt. “It’s nothing. I haven’t even played it.”

  Laura and Taryn looked at each other.

  “If she won’t tell you, she definitely won’t tell me.” Taryn walked away.

  I winced at the dig. “Not true! I love my sister!”

  Laura’s phone continued to chirp, and she looked at it again. “Hey. How long do you think this practice session will take?”

  “I don’t know.” I didn’t remember Laura being in such a rush the first time. My whole brain felt foggy trying to keep track of every conversation we’d now had over the last few days, in the past, the present, and what I remembered of the original past. I remembered the chirping cell phone because it had driven me nuts. Laura had eventually changed the ringtone to a swoosh sound. But pushing for us to finish faster, I didn’t remember. I guess it wasn’t the most exciting afternoon. That gave me an idea. “Hey. Want to sleep over tonight? It’s warm enough to sleep in the tree house. Then we can both practice our parts of the presentation several times.” Laura’s phone chirped again. “You have got to change that ringtone.”

  “You’re right. I’m going to hear chirping in my sleep. How about this?” Laura pressed some buttons, and I heard the familiar swoosh of the past.

  “Much better.”

  “Good. But I can’t sleep over tonight.” Laura frowned. “I’m not even sure I can stay long. My mom is texting me like crazy. My dad and her are switching weekends because he has to go away for work next weekend, so she has to take us over there this afternoon. I can probably eke out another hour.”

  “Oh. Okay.” I tried not to sound disappointed. How was I going to get through to Laura within the hour? “I can practice later on my own then, so we have more time to hang.”

  “No, you wanted me to come over to practice, so let’s hear you go again from the top.” She took a handful of chips.

  “Okay.” I cleared my throat and started to speak. Laura burst out laughing.

  “You are too cute. Let’s take a selfie.” She grabbed her phone and held it up. “Say ‘BFFs’!”

  “You’re nuts.”

  “That’s not what I said to say.”

  “Fine. ‘BFFs.’ ”

  Laura snapped the picture and threw the phone down onto my bed. “Pee break!” she declared. “I’ll be right back.” She headed out into the hall again, and Taryn appeared as if by magic.

  “Can you guys shut the door if you’re going to blast Shawn Mendes? He’s kind of over.”

  “If he’s so over, why did you go to his concert with us a few months ago?” I challenged.

  Taryn’s cheeks reddened. “The tickets were a gift. I didn’t want to be rude.”

  The swoosh sound blared through the room, then went off two more times.

  “Who is blowing up Laura’s phone?” Taryn asked, picking up her phone.

  “Hey!” I reached for the phone. “Don’t read Laura’s texts!”

  “I read yours, but yours are all Pinterest links and weird emojis. But Laura’s…” Taryn looked at me. “Who is the Stinky Cheese Squad?”

  “The Stinky Cheese Squad?” I wasn’t sure. “That has to be people from the play.”

  “They’re on some big group text,” Taryn said. “Something about a sleepover at some girl Ava’s house? Because she has a heated pool? And the boys might come for a night swim? What boys? Your number isn’t on this group text.” Taryn gave me a sharp look. “Is she trying to ditch you?”

  I grabbed the phone and looked at Laura’s last text: “Trying to get out of here and come!” she’d written. My heart sank, and that was before I read the other comments.

  “Good!” Ava had written. “Tell Geekarella you have to go already and get over here!”

  “LOL!” Hyacinth had written, and several others had sent laughing emojis.

  The worst part was that Laura had texted a laughing emoji back too.

  Not only was Laura ditching me, she was making fun of me to fit in with her new friends. I wasn’t sure what stung more—that they had so much to say about me when they barely knew me or that Laura was agreeing with them.

  Now I felt stupid. I had picked this moment because I thought the afternoon had been about two besties hanging out together. But it turned out Laura had been texting the girls the whole time, trying to find an excuse to leave. I wasn’t sure if I should laugh or cry at how stupid I’d been. Laura had lied about going to her dad’s, no less. My house had pretzels, a glue gun, and stuffed animals that Laura felt were babyish. Ava’s house had a pool that belonged at a hotel, and cute boys who might show up. In Laura’s eyes I couldn’t compete.

  It didn’t matter that I was the friend who helped her through her parents’ divorce, or the one who checked on her at the first-aid station when she scraped her knee at a water park, or the girl who threw her an epic party every year for her birthday. Laura wanted to move on, and I was starting to see there was nothing I could do to stop her.

  “As usual, you’re right about Laura,” I said, my voice suddenly hoarse. “I guess I just didn’t want to see it before now. She’s moved on without me.”

  I looked down at my phone. It was sizzling to the touch, the new selfie of Laura and me frozen on the screen. The picture may have been different, but the result was the same. I was tired. I wanted to go home, back to my present. But when I used Retake to get myself back, what would I find waiting for me? This time th
e drama queens and Laura obviously wouldn’t be part of my life. Did that mean I’d be alone?

  Taryn’s face softened. “Oh Zoe.” And for the first time in a long time, she reached out and hugged me. I hugged her right back.

  “Hey.” Laura stood in the doorway, looking anxious. “Everything okay?”

  Taryn pulled away and looked at me. “You’ve got this,” she whispered.

  “What’s going on?” Laura asked.

  I tried to calm down, but I couldn’t. My best friend—the one I shared markers with in first grade and clothes with in fifth, who I sang every song with in the car and who I told all my most important secrets to—didn’t want to be my best friend anymore. She felt bad about it at first, I guessed, which was why she was lying that afternoon, but the truth was something the app couldn’t show. Captions and hashtags didn’t tell the whole story. They didn’t even tell the real story a lot of the time. Laura preferred her new friends over me, and there was nothing I could do to change that. To her, I was Geekarella.

  “Zo-Zo. Are you okay?”

  Unless…

  “I have to tell you something,” I said, my heart beating wildly.

  “What’s wrong?” Laura reached for the manatee she supposedly hated and held it on her lap. “Everything okay?” Her phone made the swoosh sound again. She grabbed it and placed it in her lap. “If this is about the texts—”

  I cut her off. I didn’t think. I didn’t second-guess myself. I didn’t even rehearse what I was going to say. “Ava, Marisol, Sarah, and the girls from the play aren’t really your friends.”

  “What?” Laura’s face froze. “Did you look at my phone? Listen, about today—”

  “That’s not it. I heard them talking yesterday when my mom took Taryn and me out for pizza,” I lied, thinking fast. “They were at A Slice of Heaven, and I heard them making fun of you in the bathroom.”

  Laura’s face fell. “What did they say?”

  “That Jake would never like you, but they wanted you to think that he might so that they could make a fool of you in front of him at some pool party.”

  “Ava’s pool party is tonight,” Laura said, suddenly admitting it. She was squeezing my manatee so hard, he had a squished face.

  “They said the boys were going to make you look bad because Ava wants Jake for herself.” My heart beat faster as Laura’s eyes welled with tears.

  “Ava said that?” Laura whispered. “She told me she liked Shardul.”

  “I guess she said that so you wouldn’t be mad.” The word vomit was coming up faster now, and I couldn’t stop it. I just kept piling it on. “Marisol said you think you’re such a great actress when you’re not, and Steph agreed and said you don’t have a good voice. And then Sarah said you’ll never make the middle school play next year. Ava was talking about them all trying out for this summer play—Annie, I think—and not telling you about it because they don’t want to do it with you.” Laura looked like she might burst into tears, but I kept going. “I wasn’t going to tell you, but we’re best friends, and best friends tell each other the truth.”

  You’re a liar, a voice in my head said, but I pushed it way down where I couldn’t hear it.

  “I can’t believe them,” Laura said softly, tears running down her face. “I was going to invite them to my pre-summer sleepover party. I thought they were my friends.”

  And I thought you were mine. I tried to block out the texts Laura had sent making fun of me to the group, but I kept seeing the laughing-face emoji. I had to chalk it up to her wanting to fit in, just like I was trying to do.

  “I didn’t even know there was a summer theater production of Annie! I can’t believe they didn’t tell me they were auditioning.”

  They didn’t tell you because they don’t know about the show yet. It won’t be announced till the first week of July. But Laura didn’t know the future like I did.

  “I feel like such a fool,” Laura said. “To think…I have to tell you something too.” Her eyes were big and wide. “I said I was going to my dad’s, but I was really going to Ava’s later.”

  I tried to slow my breathing, but my heart kept thumping in my chest so loud I was sure Laura would hear it. I felt so guilty. “Oh.” That’s about the only word I could manage.

  “I tried to get them to invite you—I’ve told them about you, but they don’t know you, and I didn’t want to make you feel bad by telling you I had plans. I just really liked all of them and wanted to be their friend. I was hoping they’d be yours too, but they’re a pretty tight group.”

  “Oh,” I said again, because now I felt even worse. I wondered if that’s what had happened that day at the cabana too. I hadn’t realized Laura tried to bring me into the group. Not that I wanted to be friends with those girls—I knew that now from all my retakes with them—but at least Laura hadn’t fully given up on us right away. She’d tried. I just hadn’t known it.

  I was pretty sure I was going to throw up.

  Laura hugged me. “I can’t believe I was going to ditch my best friend for those girls. I’m so sorry, Zo-Zo.”

  I held on tight. I’m sorry too, I thought, but not sorry enough to tell you the truth.

  That night Laura wound up sleeping over.

  It was her idea. “We have some catching up to do,” she’d said. “I feel like I haven’t seen you in ages.”

  That was probably because she hadn’t.

  This was the moment I’d wanted Retake to give me all along, but I hadn’t seen it in any post. There were no pictures as proof. Laura had turned her phone off and put it in her bag hours ago, after declaring she never wanted to speak to any of the girls from the play again.

  We slept in the tree house, the two of us in matching sleeping bags, a wireless speaker playing softly beside our lantern, which glowed as we talked for hours about summer being around the corner. It felt like fifth grade again, and all the years before it. I should have been thrilled, but the knot in my stomach continued to grow.

  None of this felt real.

  “Come with me to Lake George,” Laura said suddenly. “Dad said I could bring you.”

  “He did? You never told me that,” I realized, my eyes growing sleepy.

  Laura sat up on one elbow. She was wearing a pair of my pajamas since she’d never gone home. “How could I? My dad just told me that I could this morning.”

  “Right.” I held tight to the phone at my side, praying it wouldn’t burst into flames.

  Laura was giving me exactly what I wanted—more time—but the nagging voice in the back of my head kept reminding me why: I had lied to keep my best friend. I had sunk her new friendships to keep Laura exactly where I wanted her, by my side. And it felt wrong.

  “So you’ll come?” Laura asked again. “We get back the day before you leave, I think, and if not, I’m sure your mom and dad will leave a day late so that you can go away with me. It will be fun. There are these arcades that we go to at night when we walk around town, and…”

  But I’d stopped listening, instead just saying “uh-huh” and “yeah” every so often when Laura paused. After a while, Laura stopped talking. I listened to the sounds of crickets softly chirping outside the tree house and the occasional car rumble by on a nearby street. Eventually, I heard her snoring.

  I did it.

  I’d annihilated the drama queens.

  Laura and I were still best friends.

  I’d gotten exactly what I wanted.

  So why did I feel so miserable?

  The truth was eating away at me. I couldn’t stay here a minute longer. I pulled out my phone, feeling the back of it burn my fingertips as I held it in my hand. I clicked on the app. It opened on a selfie of Laura and me and allowed me to scroll through pictures once more. I searched for one from the second attempt at the first day of school my dad took and found the new p
icture of us standing side by side on my front lawn.

  I’d hashtagged it #seventhgradeherewecome. We were both smiling, but even in that reality, something about the picture felt off. I’m sure it was all the guilt I had about manipulating the past to make my present dreams come true.

  Maybe I really did need to grow up a bit. Not because Laura wanted me to be someone I wasn’t, but because I couldn’t lie to hold on to what I wanted. If Laura and I were meant to be best friends in the future, then it wouldn’t matter if we liked different things. We’d find our own ways back to each other.

  My finger hovered over the button that would take me back to the present. I looked over at Laura sleeping. I’ll make it up to you, I vowed. I’ll be the best friend ever, and we’ll put this whole thing behind us. “I want to go back to the present,” I whispered, hoping Laura wouldn’t wake up. Then I clicked on the new picture of us and waited for the flash.

  There was a blinding light, and before I knew it, the world around me faded away.

  “Did you get the picture? We’re going to be late!”

  There were lots of voices as I blinked hard, the flash of light blinding me. Laura was standing nearby checking her phone.

  “Zoe! Where is your backpack?” Mom asked. “Did you leave it in your room? Dianne is swinging back around in a moment to take you guys to school. One of the twins forgot her lunch box, so she ran home.”

  “Uh…” How did I know? I scanned the front lawn. I didn’t see it anywhere. “I think I left it on my desk. I’ll run upstairs and grab it.” I took the steps two at a time and reached my room. At least I thought it was my room. The bag was sitting on my bed, but my teal comforter had been replaced by a yellow one, and my stuffed animals had disappeared along with my cute German soccer player poster. The walls were pretty much bare except for the corkboard, still hanging over my desk. I walked over to look at it.

  The pictures were all of me and Laura from this past summer. Laura and me on a boat! Laura and me side by side on paddleboards! Laura and me sleeping in the tree house under twinkle lights! I scanned the rest of the photos, looking to see who else was in them, but there was no one but me and Laura. No Reagan, Jada, or Clare. No drama queens. It was just the two of us against the world, as it always had been. I reached for my phone. The phone was charged to 100 percent. That was good news too. I pulled open the app and scrolled through my feed. There were a zillion pictures of Laura and me at the cabana, swimming in the pool, boogie boarding in the ocean, hanging out in the backyard. We’d documented every moment of our summer together with lots of BFF hashtags.