Friend Me

by Sheila M. Averbuch

  “I’m so, so sorry.” Lily shakes her head and bites her lip.

  I feel like a ton of weight has rolled off me. Lily’s mum didn’t make her invite me. She wants me here.

  Outside I can hear Michael and Hiro still goofing around in the pool. Michael yells at me to come get my butt kicked in a game of chicken. I’m not going to let someone as flimsy as Zara ruin what could be a fab party.

  I drop my phone onto my clothes. “Come on.” I yank Lily back outside. “We have some brothers to beat.”

  We splash and shout and mess about in the pool for ages, and finally we relay race. I come this close to beating Hiro, and the others give me such a cheer, I feel like I’m at a swimming competition again. Michael makes me stand high on his shoulders, and he shouts that I’ve won a silver, and the others applaud, and this feeling … this feeling floods me that I thought was gone forever: Everything is okay.

  “Hello! You must be the next generation of Doyles.” Lily’s mum stands with the tongs at poolside, smiling down. Her voice is like Lily’s, but with a British tinge. You wouldn’t know she’s from Tokyo. Lily does introductions. Her mum nods that it’s lovely to meet us, and are we ready to eat?

  Lily makes a face, like she’d rather keep swimming, but nods. Hiro vaults out of the pool and threatens to soak his mum with a hug. She laughs and swipes at him with the tongs, calling out something in Japanese. She hands us towels and her blue eyes study me. “Hungry?”

  Is it okay to say I’m starving? The aroma of roasting meat is so luscious, I could eat the air. “Definitely. And it smells so good.”

  Her mum beams, and Lily smiles at me as she straps her watch back on. I said the right thing.

  * * *

  The rest of the barbecue is great. We stuff ourselves from platters of teriyaki beef and sesame chicken, then play Nintendo on the giant TV and squashy couches, wrapped in cozy after-swim clothes that Mum, of course, packed. I catch her watching me from the center of a group of lab people. Their beer bottles are empty now, and they’re a lot noisier. Mum’s look says, I knew you’d sulk if I told you this was a work thing, but this is good, right? I don’t give her anything, just turn back to the TV and our game; it’s annoying enough, being dragged along by the tide of Mum-knows-best. She doesn’t get smiley-me, too, even if this afternoon was brilliant.

  Lily shows me her room. She owns every good thing: shelves to the ceiling with more books than a library, a walk-in closet, and a mirror with bulbs around it, like a celeb’s dressing room. Wait till I tell Haley. She already thinks Lily is a spoiled princess. I realize I haven’t messaged Haley in hours. She’ll think I died.

  I spot a pinboard that makes me go cold. Old photos of Lily and Zara, instant printouts from those retro cameras everyone wanted a few years ago. Every picture is a square of perfect: blazing sun, impossible blue skies, ultra-green grass. I look at one of Zara and Lily at the beach, shouting, jumping, hair flying.

  “That’s fourth grade, when she still lived in Maine.”

  I make a sound that I hope makes it clear I don’t want to talk about Zara. Even Lily seemed more relaxed after Zara and Mara left. But now it’s like some loyalty thing’s kicked in, because she wants to tell me where every picture was taken. I turn away from the pinboard while she’s still talking. Lily trails off. “Zara’s really nice,” she says quietly. “She used to be, anyway.”

  Really nice?

  “Zara had two girls hold me so I couldn’t move in the bathroom.” The words tumble out; I don’t remember telling my mouth to speak. “She came at me. Said she was going to pull up my dress and check inside my underpants.” I stare at Lily’s dresser. Lacquer-red jewelry box. Scuffed nail file. Spare strap for her watch, the hole at the center like a missing eye. I realize I’ve stopped breathing and make myself pull in air.

  “Oh,” Lily says finally. “My God.”

  I begin to shake, freezing suddenly despite my hoodie. In the mirror, I see Lily start to reach for my shoulder, pull her hand back, cover her mouth. “You should tell somebody.”

  This floors me. I open my mouth to say I am telling—I’m telling her! But just then an alarm screams; a wail like the world is ending. TEEE TEEE TEEE.

  Lily rolls her eyes. Her smartwatch is talking to her. She holds it against her ear. She shouts to me over the wailing alarm and points downstairs. “I think we should …!”

  I’m guessing the house isn’t actually on fire, but it’s the excuse Lily wants to get away from this conversation. She rushes out of the room.

  I follow her down the shrieking hall. Bitterness boils in my stomach. Does she have any idea how hard that was? Telling her what Zara did? And she doesn’t want to know. If I’d told Michael, he would’ve hugged me till I couldn’t breathe. Not Lily.

  She turns at the top of the stairs, her watch pressed to her ear. The TEEE TEEE TEEE stops suddenly. “Taiko says it’s smoke in the kitchen, someone burning food. But it’s okay now.” I guess Taiko is their Jeeves? A few minutes ago, when I thought we were becoming friends, I would’ve asked her about it. Not now. Lily says something in Japanese to Taiko—the lights switch off behind us—and she smiles at me, like everything’s fine.

  Like that meme, the dog sitting in cartoon flames: “THIS IS FINE.” Lily’s just heard that Zara does way more than take her phone and send fake messages. She’s the worst kind of bully. But it’s not even a blip on the radar of Lily’s shiny life.

  I am super rude for our last five minutes at the party. Michael won’t leave Hiro or even look up from the Nintendo until I swear so bad, Michael whistles and makes googly eyes.

  Lily’s mum sees us to the door. I hardly look at her, though she says nice things: She was glad Hiro and Michael got on so well, and she was especially happy to meet me. I was kind to come over after school, she says, to help Lily with geometry. I’m about to say that was Nikesh, not me, but I feel Lily tense opposite me. The panic’s obvious in her eyes: I guess her mum will flip if she finds out Lily has a boyfriend. And I’m her alibi.

  “You’re a math whiz, Lily tells me,” her mum says. “Thanks for helping her.”

  “It’s fine.” I study my shoes. I should betray Lily, like she did me. But I don’t.

  Lily’s mum makes a hmm sound and looks at Lily. Silence falls and doesn’t lift while we wait for Mum. Even Michael is quiet. A tray of brightly painted wooden birds sits on the hall table. Michael fiddles with a bird. Years pass.

  There’s a sudden waft of laughter and burnt smell as the kitchen door swings open. I glimpse a geek in oven gloves giggling at a tray of something black and smoking. Mum calls goodbye and follows Mr. Tanaka to the front door, both of them grinning.

  Mum instantly susses out the thick silence and starts babbling: about the party, the food, their lovely, lovely home. Her boss starts to look uncomfortable at all the compliments. Mum, STOP TALKING, I beg silently, but she revs up when she’s nervous.

  “Put that back, Michael. Ooh, that’s exquisite—where did you get them?” Mum takes the tiny carving from Michael and peers at it before passing it to Mr. Tanaka. His open smile wobbles. He places the bird carefully on the hall table again, not answering.

  Mum shuts up, finally, and somehow we get out the door. It closes behind us. Michael helps Mum down the slick path in her heels; the bricks gleam in the drizzle that’s begun to fall. Part of me believes Lily will come through—throw open the door, tell me she’s sorry—but there’s only silence, and darkness.

  You’re never totally friendless, or at least you don’t look it, if you have your phone. Haley and I message each other nonstop on the bus ride to the museum for my field trip Monday morning. I know I should let her go, so she can do school-whatever, but Haley says her Chem teacher is clueless; she could stand on her head and he wouldn’t notice. That girl can make me laugh.

  After two hours, though, I need to switch off. Nausea sloshes in my stomach.

  Carsick, sorry! It’s not just my tummy. The headache I’ve had all weekend is ge
tting worse. Ughhhhhh. Talk to u later?

  Deffo!

  I grin. You’re sounding Irish yourself.

  Ha! Good! Cya later Ro.

  I press my palms against my eyes. I’m stretched out, legs and bag along the front seat. It’s not like anyone wanted to sit with me, anyway. I lean back into the cool of the window. I should’ve stopped looking at my screen sooner, but Haley’s all I have. We keep saying it’s a tragedy that I can’t move to Old Orchard Beach. I’d do it in a heartbeat.

  A shrieky laugh from behind me is like a knife through my brain. Just like that, the warm feeling of talking to Haley ices over.

  I risk a glance. Three rows back, Lily sits with Nikesh. She twists around to Zara as I watch: Zara and Mara sit behind her and want to show Lily something on the phone. Lily gives the screen a quick smile and turns away, but the others roar laughing at whatever they’re watching. Probably someone suffering on YouTube, those awful videos where toddlers get whacked by falling Christmas trees. Zara cries with laughter. What kind of world is it, where she gets to be this happy?

  What an idiot I was, to think those two feel-good hours at Lily’s house were my life. Before she left the party to go babysit, Zara had already plotted my next punishment, though I didn’t know it yet.

  On Saturday morning, it had all kicked off. Michael nudged into my room, waggling his phone. I’d hardly slept, and a headache pounded through my skull, but Michael was grinning. Zara had posted a picture on You-chat of Michael in his Speedos, which, apparently, are crazily unacceptable in America, unless you’re swimming for the Olympics. Hey @roisinkdoyle’s brother—YOUR IN AMERICA NOW. Zara included blinky American flags over Michael’s eyes and a red X over his trunks.

  I stared at Michael. How was he smiling? I flung the covers back over my head.

  “Come on, Ro, it is kind of funny. Though she should learn to use an apostrophe. This is that girl you were on about, right?”

  If he knew what that girl had done to me—how I’d spent the night reliving it, in nightmares that woke me every few hours—he wouldn’t be smiling. “She’s not a girl, she’s a virus,” I murmured into the white fluff muffling my face. My sour breath seeped back at me. Ugh, I hadn’t even brushed my teeth before bed.

  Michael sat on my bed and tugged the covers away. He frowned at my matted hair, still crunchy from pool water. “C’mere to me now …”

  “Michael, don’t!” He’d gone all Irish. Granny Doyle, Dad’s mam, is from Kerry. It’s what she says when she’s about to lecture us: “C’mere to me.” Translation: I’m going to say something you won’t like. Granny is tiny but ferocious as a goose.

  “What would Granny Doyle say about Zara Tucci?” Michael asked, reading my mind. “‘That one’s a dose,’ she’d say. ‘Don’t mind her.’ ” He didn’t get it: You can’t ignore a virus. It keeps on, until there’s nothing left of you. But Michael nudged me. “Go on, what would she call Zara?”

  “A toe-rag.” I imagined Granny Doyle as a goose, pecking at Zara till she disappears.

  Michael nodded. “I’m only saying: SATs, workaholic parents, global warming … these are things. Zara is not a thing.” He threw his phone into the air, caught it with the other hand. “It’s my picture on You-chat, Ro. If I can laugh at it, you can.”

  I couldn’t. The weekend was a nightmare of posts and tags, first about Michael and his snug trunks, then bouncing back on me. Zara said the Irish don’t know how to wear clothes, and everyone else piled on. I didn’t even know these people. They had avatars instead of pics. Maybe they weren’t real people. Zara might have a network of bot trolls, just for me: more fakery, like her messages meant to stop me and Lily becoming friends. I pictured Zara as fake, inside and out: If you unzipped her skin, there’d be no blood, just thousands of robots skittering over one another on clicky legs.

  The engine rumbles, and the school bus drops down a gear. We curve around a sharp turn onto yet another highway. Where is this museum, the end of the world? My bag slides away and clunks to the floor. I lunge for it, suddenly sure someone will grab it and make a game of keeping it from me. This is me now: a weakling from a bad teen movie, two scenes away from getting dumped into a garbage bin.

  But I was right. A girl is reaching for my bag. She straightens up, the straps hooked over her strong arm. My pulse races as I recognize the black ponytail, the long face. It’s the silent girl, the one who helped Mara hold me in the bathroom. Nita. She hands me the bag and flashes a closed-mouth smile that shows her dimples.

  I shoot her a death look. Her smile drops and she looks hurriedly at her phone, back to her tunes. Earbud cords hang bright white down the sides of her face. Yeah, you better look away. Okay, she was the one who let me go … but still. I’ve never even spoken to her. I can’t remember her speaking to anyone, ever. So why did she attack me?

  What happened in the bathroom surges back again, stronger now. I pull in a breath, trying to remember what Haley said: They’re nothing. I’m strong. Don’t let them beat me.

  But my hands are trembling. I clamp them between my knees. Weakling. I close my eyes and see Zara: She paces toward me. She’s going to yank up my dress.

  “Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum!” I open my eyes. Mr. Morrison has popped up like a meerkat at the front of the bus, but no one looks at him. Everyone’s got their noses to the windows, looking for skyscrapers. Even I know we’re in the wrong part of Boston for that. Here it’s mostly trees and gray-stone buildings that look like courthouses.

  Someone jokes about watching for muggers. Another boy says he heard someone got stabbed near Fenway last weekend. The bus goes quiet. I see Mara and Zara zip phones carefully into bags. A nervy energy ripples through everyone, more than the day-off buzz of a field trip.

  Outside the bus, everyone clusters around Mr. Morrison like baby ducks. Look at their faces! It’s suddenly obvious that most of them have never even been into Boston. I bet not one of them could’ve done what I did: take the train by themselves, find a pool, deal with a lost wallet. I get a surge of satisfaction, remembering the cash still in my purse from Jors.

  It’s like a little light switches on inside me: not enough to beat back all the dark, but it’s something. I’m more of a city kid than any of them. Back in Dublin, I’ve swum a million times at the Townsend Street pool, surrounded by trams and tourists and exhaust. I didn’t think twice about diving straight into Lowell. None of these kids would’ve had the guts.

  Then I catch sight of Zara: She’s showing her wrist to Lily, asking if she should zip her fancy watch into her bag, for safety. Lily shakes her head, showing her matching watch; she’s keeping hers on.

  Zara grips her bag, her eyes darting around for, I guess, armed muggers. Mara hisses something, and Zara looks: A woman begs for change at the bus stop. My heart goes out to the lady—stained T-shirt, crisscross scars up her arms—but Zara looks sick, like if the criminals don’t get her, the homeless will. Zara only budges when the boy behind shoves her for holding up the queue.

  She’s mocked me nonstop, telling everyone how pitiful I am. Who’s pitiful now?

  That light inside me glows brighter. I slip out my phone.

  Hales! U should see Zara here: I think being in the city is her worst nightmare. It’s like she’s panicking. She’s PATHETIC.

  Ha! Haley shoots back. That’s one we didn’t think of: Zara goes to Boston, is mauled by pigeon.

  Ha, perfect! I stuff my phone back in my pocket as we traipse into the museum.

  The instant we get inside, Zara flies out of my brain because of the incredible scene in front of me. It’s a garden inside the building: a bright courtyard that’s flooded with sunlight pouring through the glass roof. We all just gape at the grass and shrubs and actual trees, with marble statues dotted around. An ivy-covered fountain splashes at one end, like something from a dream. Above us, balconies surround the courtyard on all sides, four stories high, all of them carved stone, like an old church. It’s so lovely, so European, my heart fli
es, right up to the orange flowers that cascade like waterfalls from the balconies.

  They split us into two groups, and my group gets to go upstairs first. The guide walks us through dim galleries stuffed with art, and I am into it. It’s like my brain was dulled by everything, but now it’s awake and hungry. I love it all: the paintings and carved furniture and stained glass, the smells of polish and old wood.

  The tour guide has to tell Zara and Mara—twice—to stay with the group, because they keep disappearing to go take selfies, slipping under ropes to pose at the balconies. He says if he has to warn them again, he’ll have to take our tour back to the lobby.

  If she and Mara get us booted from here, I will personally end them. I blast them a don’t-you-dare look, though Zara and Mara only have eyes for their phones.

  I dash another message to Haley. omg have u ever been to the Gardner museum in Boston? It is totally FAB. the devil twins are trying to get us kicked out though, being idiotic.

  They are pathetic, Haley says.

  I jam my phone back into my jeans. My eyes go to Zara again and I feel my jaw grind. It’s strange. Seeing her so skittish in the city has shrunk her in my mind. She doesn’t seem like a virus to me now, or a machine: just a stupid human who’s afraid of homeless people.

  A stupid human who had two girls hold me down and tried to pull up my dress.

  Zara’s slipped away to pose on another balcony. She shakes her dark hair in front of her eyes to look tousled for TokTalk or You-chat or whatever, that careful version of perfection she shows her followers. But I know the real Zara: so insecure about Lily, she lied to her and faked those messages to stop Lily becoming friends with me. My fists clench so hard, my nails stab my palms. It’s like all my sadness from the weekend has changed to something else, something with teeth and claws.

  The guide brings us up more stairs, to a room with big balconies overlooking the courtyard. A huge portrait of Isabella Stewart Gardner stands over us in a gold frame. She looks thoroughly awesome: floor-length black gown, belt of pearls, monster ruby at her throat. The guide tells us Isabella collected everything in the museum herself.