by Beth Turley
“What exactly am I helping you with?”
“The Ask Amelia advice column,” Gertrude said. She reached under her desk for a yellow shoebox and pulled out a stack of letters, all different sizes and colors. “I’m Amelia.”
“Isn’t your name Gertrude?”
“Technically. But Ask Gertrude doesn’t have quite as much of a ring to it.”
It seemed exciting to give yourself a new name, to allow yourself to be a different person, but I wondered if sometimes Gertrude got confused between whether she was supposed to be herself or Amelia. She picked up the first letter from the pile in her lap.
“ ‘Dear Amelia, I just tried out for the basketball team at my school but I didn’t make it. I’m really disappointed since I love to play and now have to wait a whole year before I can try out again. Maybe I’m just not good enough. Should I quit? Signed, Bad at Basketball.’ ” Gertrude looked up. “Any advice?”
I thought about how strange it was that I knew Bad at Basketball’s biggest disappointment, but not who they were. My heart clenched as Summer’s text flooded into my brain. I knew so many things about Summer. That she had a Truly Happy Dimple, that she watched the sunrise, that running made her feel like she was flying. But I didn’t know why our friendship was unraveling like a spool of thread.
“She should keep practicing. She shouldn’t quit. Even if she never makes the team, if she loves basketball she should keep playing.”
“Agreed,” Gertrude said.
I wrote a letter in my head. Dear Amelia, What do you do when the person you love the most is drifting away?
Gertrude read letter after letter. I gave advice on failing grades and annoying siblings and fears about starting middle school. I felt myself slip into therapist mode as she typed my ideas as bullet points on her computer. I pictured the writers of the letters on velvet chairs in my future office, not sticky leather couches. I imagined them talking about the tangled parts of themselves, me knowing just the right way to unknot them. Gertrude picked up the next letter.
“ ‘Dear Amelia, I don’t know what to do. I’ve had this best friend for a long time, and I think she might have a secret she’s not telling me. We’ve always been so close. I’m afraid to lose her. Can you help? Signed, Friendless.’ ”
I stared at a picture of Bruno with a bone in his mouth.
“Elena?” Gertrude probed. “Thoughts?”
The office was full of the sounds of typing, and I was full of the need to help Friendless.
“Just because something has always been one way, doesn’t mean it always will be. Or that it always should be.”
I pulled the advice from a deep part of my heart. The part that wondered if Summer and I would ever be the same again. Gertrude nodded and typed, urged me to keep going.
“They need to talk. Nothing is going to get solved if they don’t.”
“You’re a natural,” Gertrude said.
Gertrude added the rest of my advice to Friendless, the advice I wasn’t sure I’d be able to take myself. She had a rose on each of her thumbs. The petals nodded in agreement.
Chapter Twenty
The Check-In
I was still swirling with happiness when we got back to the lobby of the Tappiston after our day at headquarters. We’d eaten lunch in the Spread Your Wings cafeteria, which had bright purple bulletin boards with typed-up newsletters and a silver refrigerator stocked with sparkling water. Mindy said all the snacks on the counter were free, so the four of us raided the baskets until we had a mountain of crinkly bags on the table in front of us. Whitney and I shared pretzels on the walk back to the hotel. My hand was in the bag when my phone rang in my pocket. Summer’s text flashed through my mind.
“Are you going to get that?” Whitney asked. She licked the salt off a pretzel.
I shook my head and my phone went silent. We were at the elevator when it started ringing again. The door slid open and the rest of the Flyers got on. I paused outside the door, easing the phone out of my pocket, afraid to look. I breathed a sigh of relief when it was Mom on the screen.
“I’ll be right up,” I said to the Flyers. They disappeared behind the door and I went to sit on the yellow wicker furniture.
“I’m sorry to bug you, Lenny. I know you’re busy but I just wanted to hear your voice,” Mom said when she answered. The hotel lobby smelled a little like Mom’s perfume, but it didn’t make me feel homesick. It made me feel like I had a piece of her with me.
“It’s okay. Mom, I helped people today. I really helped them. I’ve always wanted to do that.”
Whenever I talk to my mom on the phone, I feel like I can hear her facial expressions through the receiver. She was smiling.
“That’s amazing. So you’re having a good time?”
I thought of the mound of empty snack bags on the table, the way the sidewalks around the Tappiston Hotel had started to become familiar.
“Yeah, a great time.”
Mom cleared her throat. Edgar squealed in the background.
“That must be why Summer says she hasn’t heard from you?”
My heart tightened up.
“What do you mean?”
“She came over to babysit Edgar for a few hours today. She seemed down. When I asked what was wrong, she said you were angry with her.”
I imagined Summer sitting on our corduroy couch, her legs tucked up under her while she talked to Mom. Mom’s hand rubbing comforting circles into Summer’s shoulder, even though I was the one who deserved the comfort.
“Did she tell you what she said to me?” I asked.
I could hear her squint, lean her head to the side.
“No, but surely it can’t be bad enough for you to shut her out entirely. She is your best friend.”
“Tell her that.”
Eyebrows pulling together.
“What?”
“Tell her that friends don’t shut each other out, that they don’t treat each other like she’s been treating me.” My words were coming out as fast as Summer’s, an angry stampede of a sentence.
“I’m sure you realize I’m not going to do that, Elena. You need to be the one to talk to her.”
Some hotel guests came to gather around the wicker furniture, their conversation so loud I couldn’t hear if Mom, or her facial expressions, said anything else.
“Okay. Bye.” I hung up and stepped away from all the chatter. On the ride up to the room the elevator beeped with every passing floor like an accusation. Lyrics popped into my head but I didn’t have my Lyric Libro, so I pretended to write them across the air in front of me.
How am I supposed to help,
If I can’t even help myself?
How can I save the day,
When I’m a wall in my own way?
Chapter Twenty-One
The Big Chair
Whitney and I were alone in the room. Cailin and Harlow had gone to the hotel gym. In episode five of On the Mat they filmed Cailin’s team’s workout routine, which involved more push-ups and squats than I’d done in my whole life. Cailin said she did the whole thing once a week. Harlow went with her to observe from the perspective of a sports journalist.
“Dasha Clark had to seriously fight for her sports column in the Vernon Daily,” Harlow had said before they left.
“Dasha who? The Vernon what?” Whitney asked.
Harlow laughed.
“I forgot to cover the five Ws. Who, what, where, when, why.” She shoved her pencil through the dark hair by her ear. “Dasha Clark was a reporter in the fifties at the Vernon Daily, the newspaper in my town. She was the first female reporter in eastern New York, and she was Japanese like me, and therefore she is both my hero and a revolutionary.”
“Great word,” Cailin said.
I remembered after Summer came in first at the all-county meet, a journalist had interviewed her for the paper, scribbling into a notepad faster than I thought possible. Maybe because Summer was talking so fast. I could picture Harlow as that
reporter, her head bent down, taking in every single word.
When Harlow and Cailin were gone, Whitney dragged her duffel bag over to the bed. I was perched on the edge. The TV played a romantic comedy, but I wasn’t paying attention to it. Whitney started to pull her clothes out of her bag, piece by piece, and lay them on the comforter. She assembled the outfits like puzzles.
“You’re so good at that,” I told her.
“At what?” she asked. On a black dress she laid a long gold necklace with a heart-shaped locket.
“Clothes. Putting outfits together. Everything you wear is perfect.”
“Oh.” Whitney looked down at the outfits with her forehead wrinkled up, like she was noticing them for the first time. “Yeah, it’s important to me.”
In one ear I heard the movie, the guy character professing their love. In the other I heard Whitney’s breathing turn rough like in Grand Central.
“Are you feeling… like before?” I asked.
Whitney picked the gold necklace back up.
“No, I’ll be fine if I can get this right.” She moved the necklace from outfit to outfit, her fist bouncing against the mattress. I watched the charm on the necklace slide across the chain.
“It goes with all of them. I mean it.”
She stopped, then placed the necklace back on the black dress where it started.
“I’m just worried about the outfits I helped with earlier for the issue. They’re not good enough.”
The sensation I’d had at headquarters with Gertrude settled over me. I focused on Whitney’s feelings, her sharing the most important thing going on in her world. Like flowers that needed care, and I was the one who could help. I knew Whitney’s diagnosis: panic. And now I knew that fashion was her treatment.
“Do you feel like if your outfit lines up, it lets your thoughts line up too?”
Whitney’s head lifted. A loose curl hung across her glasses.
“It’s like you read my mind or something.” She sat on the edge of Cailin and Harlow’s bed and observed her work. “Do you want to know what it feels like?”
I nodded and sat across from her on our bed. On the TV the love interest couldn’t decide if she was in love or not.
“Near where I live in Philly, there’s this giant red chair down by the water. It looks like a normal wooden lawn chair, but it’s big enough for a bunch of people to sit in. It’s supposed to be cute or touristy or whatever. Me and my friends Paige and Monique went to sit in it, and they were laughing and stuff. Cause it’s a giant chair. But I started having this explosion inside. My heart and lungs, all of me just got so scared of being so small compared to something so big.”
“I get it,” I said.
“Do you? I feel like it makes no sense.”
“No one wants to feel small.”
Whitney stood and wrapped her arms around me, her breath even now. She smelled like coconut sunscreen.
The hotel door whirred and Cailin and Harlow came in. Cailin crouched and did a diving forward roll across the entryway. She ended up sprawled on her back in the space at the foot of the beds. Harlow followed behind, writing into her notebook.
“That’s an entrance,” she said.
“I always get a little wired after a workout,” Cailin answered. Her eyes spun around as she watched the palm frond fan blades on the ceiling fan. She’d wiped off her makeup before the gym, and without it I could see a sprinkle of freckles on her nose.
“I’m the opposite. I collapse into a heap on the floor,” Whitney said. She sat next to me on the bed.
“Well, we both end up on the floor, so we’re not too different.” Cailin laughed. She sat up, facing the desk, and gasped. “How did I not notice these before?”
She picked up a basket of mints on the desk.
“Housekeeping must have left them,” Harlow said. “What was that jump you did with your legs straight out called again?”
“A pike. But that’s not important right now. Do you know what these are?” Cailin took a mint from the basket and held it out to us, acting like it was a diamond and not a chalky white mint.
“A Wint-O-Green Life Saver?” Whitney answered.
“No, these are magic. Come on.” She tossed me the mint and I caught it. The wrapper was warm from Cailin’s palm. When she’d given one to Harlow and Whitney, Cailin pushed us all into the bathroom and closed the door.
“Is this some kind of cheerleading initiation? Because I saw what you made new members do in On the Mat and I am not getting into an ice bath,” Harlow said. She hopped up to sit on the edge of the sink. Whitney took the spot next to her. I stood against the wall by the tub.
“This will be our Flyers initiation. Repeat after me.” She popped the mint into her mouth and chewed hard with her mouth open, the mint making cracking sounds. Her face contorted as she crunched and smiled at the same time. It occurred to me that I’d never seen Cailin look less than perfect. On TV and on her profile she was pretty and put together, the spokesperson for Sunny Days Gel Polish, the girl in the Miami sun. Now her features were squished and spit flew out of her mouth.
“I’m so confused,” Whitney said.
“Just trust me.”
The rest of us put the mints in our mouths and started chomping. Cailin turned the light off. Pitch black fell over the room. I looked around the dark to the spots where I knew the Flyers were sitting. Tiny blue lights ignited where their faces should be.
“What is that?” I asked through the minty crumbs in my teeth.
“Wint-O-Green Life Savers make sparks!” Cailin answered.
“Magic is the only explanation for this,” Whitney said.
“It must be something in the flavoring,” Harlow responded.
“No. I agree. It’s magic,” I said.
We laughed and chewed in the dark, the sparks like little stars. I memorized every detail of the moment. The mints cracking. The way it was like our laughter created light.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The Park
Central Park was like its own little universe. The tall buildings and brick town houses with flower-filled window boxes turned into a sea of grass and sidewalks. Mindy told us the park stretched across nine neighborhoods, and I liked the idea that you could be lost in lots of places and still find your way here.
It had rained overnight, so there were puddles on the sidewalks and the air smelled clean. The itinerary for Wednesday told us we’d spend the morning writing in the park. We walked with our bags full of paper and pens, past a fountain, a playground, and at least fifty dogs. James took a picture of us in front of a fountain with an angel on top. Harlow kept looking at the angel after we were done with the picture. She stuck her finger into the pool of water and swirled it around, the corners of her mouth turned down.
“What’s wrong?” Whitney asked her. She wore a thick flowery headband that matched her slip-on sneakers.
Harlow squinted up at the angel, at its creased copper gown.
“The statue reminds me of one that used to be in my town. In front of the Vernon Daily building.”
“It was an angel?” Cailin added. We started walking again and crossed paths with a group of kids who looked our age. They stared wide-eyed at Cailin and whispered behind their hands. Cailin pushed her sunglasses down off the top of her head.
“It was of Dasha Clark. There were benches all around it that I’d sit on after school and work on my stories for journalism class. I’d try to channel her energy while I wrote.”
Harlow wiped her wet hand off on her shorts and it left a rainbow-shaped mark behind.
“There it is,” Mindy said, and pointed toward a red checkered blanket set up in the grass. The blanket had plates spread out around a wooden cutting board covered in wedges of yellow and white cheese, round crackers, and condiment cups full of dark pink jelly. If there was ever a picnic that belonged in the pages of a magazine, it was this one. James took a picture of the setup and then flipped his camera around to show Cailin.
<
br /> “What do you think?”
Cailin looked back and forth between the camera and the park, squinting toward the sky.
“Can you get more sunlight? Like, not enough to wash it all out but just enough to make it… glow?” She wiggled her fingers when she said “glow.” She’d reapplied her Sunny Days Gel Polish that morning and took a picture of her hand wrapped around her MetroCard. She captioned it my Sunny Days goes where I go.
“You got it, girl.” James moved to the left side of the checkered blanket and took another shot.
As we sat, Mindy told us to take out our notebooks and sliced a piece of cheese from one of the wedges. The little flag attached to a toothpick stuck into it said Brie.
“Itinerary spoiler alert—you’ll be finishing your Flyer essays on Friday. But we’re not going to have you go into that cold. Today’s the day for first drafts, word vomit, drawing pictures of castles, whatever it is you need to do.”
Harlow snapped a long, crunchy breadstick in half without looking at it. Her eyes were on the angel statue. We could only see its wings from here. I took a piece from the wedge labeled Cheddar. My abuelita uses cheddar for her empanadillas, and the taste was like being with her, rolling out dough in our kitchen.
“We’re going to do what’s called a sprint. That’s five minutes of nonstop work. Whatever spills out, let it spill, just keep your pencil moving.” Mindy clicked a button on her watch. “Go.”
The rest of the Flyers’ pencils jumped to action right away. I pressed the tip to the paper, my mind as blank as the sheet. Pressure climbed up in my chest. I wanted multiple choice questions, an essay prompt, a fill-in-the blank section with a word bank. There were too many things that could spill out onto this empty space. Too many thoughts about Summer and everything that had happened between us.
Summer, I wrote. I thought we were our own galaxy, the two of us. But it hasn’t been like that lately. We’re not the friends I thought we were. Not since Joey’s party, or the locker room, or the bus ride to the winter field trip to the tree farm.