I sighed. This was one of the many reasons I had stopped hanging out with the Jennifers. They were all constantly freaking out about something. "What's wrong?"
"The PSATs. I'm taking them again, I think, but what if I do worse than last time?"
"You'll do fine," I said, and Jennifer T. leaned toward us and said, "See, I told you."
That made the third Jennifer, Jennifer S., look nervous. Jennifer M. was Jennifer S.'s best friend, or at least she had been in the fall. Now she was spending a lot of time with Jennifer T.
I looked down at my desk and wondered if I could get away with putting my head down and taking a nap.
"What about you, Will?" Jennifer M. said, letting go of my arm in order to grab his. He sat across from her too, one desk in front of me. "Oh, wait, you did really good, didn't you?"
"Yeah, but I was just trying to keep up with certain people." Will looked back at me and grinned.
"Kate, I thought you said you just did okay," Jennifer M. said.
"I did," I said through clenched teeth. "Will's trying to be funny. Laugh so he'll shut up." Jennifer M. said, "Kate, you're funny," in the same tone of voice she always used whenever she didn't understand why I'd said something, and then started talking to Jennifer T. as Jennifer S. watched, still looking nervous.
Will looked at them for a second and then turned back around again, whispering, "Kate, don't be like that. You know I only did so well because I yearn--see, SAT word--to follow you to college and steal your heart."
"Uh-huh. Too bad for you I don't plan on attending clown college."
He grinned. "Only you would ignore the incredibly sweet thing I just said."
"Only you would describe one of your asinine comments as incredibly sweet."
"Asinine? Now there's an SAT word. In fact--"
"Mr. Miller, do you mind?" Our teacher, Mr. Clark, had come in, reeking of cigarettes like always.
"Nope," Will said, and then shook his head in apology when Mr. Clark glared at him.
"Don't worry," I whispered as Will turned back around. "You can always look up what asinine means in the dictionary. It'll be easy to find because your picture will be next to the definition." And then I grinned, because I'd gotten the last word in, and that hadn't happened in our last three conversations.
I knew it was pathetic to be happy about something like that. And to actually keep track of who got the last word in. But hey, I had to take what I could get.
Especially because when I went to lunch, I saw Anna. Since lunch periods at Jackson High are only twenty minutes long, I always get in line for soup or salad. It's the busiest line, and the slowest, and by the time I get my cup of lukewarm soup and pay for it, I have just enough time to drink it before I go to class.
Today the line moved a little faster than usual, though, and by the time I paid there was enough time to grab a seat and eat my soup before the bell rang.
That's when I saw her. Anna was a cheerleader now, even though she'd always made fun of them before, and cheerleaders ate during first lunch block when there was a basketball game. I'd seen her a few times before, always surrounded by her new friends, always sitting right next to Diane.
Today, Anna was sitting with Tara.
Tara was a senior, and she was so popular that she could do anything. She ate when she wanted, went to classes when she wanted, and when she got a bad dye job and her hair turned orange, a bunch of girls dyed their hair orange too. If an actual world leader had that much power, we'd all be living under one big dictatorship. Scary thought.
I watched Anna laugh, grinning the way she did when she was happy but embarrassed.
The last time she'd smiled at me like that was last year, when she was complaining about her eleventh birthday party and I'd reminded her it was ancient history and that she'd just gotten a solo in choir.
Last year, Anna would have been sitting with me, and we'd have been talking about whoever was in her seat now.
The bell rang, and I chugged my soup. It was lukewarm and salty, and as I threw the cup away I saw Tara and Anna get up. They hugged, and I saw Anna smile for real, radiant and wide, as Diane caught her eye.
Anna used to smile like that at me.
Anna had treated me like crap and I knew it, but I couldn't bring myself to hate her. In fact, looking at Diane, I wished I were her so much I felt sick with it.
I walked by them both on my way out of the cafeteria. Diane didn't even see me, but Anna did. She saw me, and something flashed across her eyes, something that looked like sadness. I stopped, hoping she'd smile at me, but she turned away.
Just like she had the day I finally realized we weren't friends anymore.
Chapter five
I can't remember a time when I didn't know Anna, One of my first memories is building a tower of blocks with her in day care, holding one and waiting for her to tell me where to put it.
We did everything together. We both learned to swim in the same class at the community center. We both got bikes for our fifth birthdays, and learned to ride wobbling around the cul-de-sac at the end of her street. We both got our ears pierced when we were in fifth grade. We even bought our first bras together, although, to be totally honest, I didn't really need one at the time.
Up until the middle of ninth grade, Anna was about eighty pounds overweight, had braces, and wore glasses, the kind with heavy, thick lenses. People made fun of her but she never cared, would just look at me and roll her eyes. Anna always walked and talked and acted like she knew exactly who she was and no one could tell her otherwise. She was as brave as I wanted to be.
Then, last March, Sam bumped into Anna in the hallway after second period and said,
"Watch it, wide load."
Anna had liked Sam since middle school, and her crush only got worse during our first year of high school. She was crazy about him, and seeing her face after he said that made me want to cry.
She did cry, although not until she'd made it to the girls' room. I followed her and said everything would be okay as I handed her paper towels to use as tissues.
She made a face at me and said, "How can you say that?"
"Because it will be," I said.
And it was, because Sam came up to her at the end of the day and apologized for yelling.
"See?" I said after he'd left. "I told you he didn't mean it. You wanna come over for dinner after choir practice?"
She tugged the bottom of her shirt down over her stomach. "I'm fat, aren't I?"
"Anna!"
"Kate, I am."
"Come on, you look fine."
"Liar," she said, her voice curiously flat, and then the choir director came out and told us practice was starting and could we please hurry up and come inside?
At lunch the next day, Anna wanted to buy salad, not pizza.
"Why?" I said. "I mean, I can understand skipping sausage pizza, with those weird seed things in the meat. But this is pepperoni!"
"I want to eat better."
"I just said it isn't sausage."
She gave me a look.
"Okay, fine, we'll get salad. But Anna . . is this because of yesterday? Because Sam said he was sorry."
"He said he was sorry he yelled. He didn't say he didn't mean what he said, and I--I'm fat. I'm fat and wear glasses and I'm tired of it. I'm sick of being the ugly girl. I want to be pretty."
"But I know Sam didn't mean it," I said, stunned by how angry she'd sounded. Anna always seemed so sure of herself, so proud of who she was.
"Of course he did," she said, and stared at me so hard I had to look away.
For the rest of the school year we ate salads for lunch. Anna lost about twenty pounds.
We had a lot of fun shopping for new jeans for her to wear, and on the last day of school, I asked her if she wanted to join the community center and use the pool.
"I can't," she said.
"Come on, I hear Sam is lifeguarding."
"I can't, okay? I have to go to my stupid aunt's house in st
upid Maine."
"What?"
"I know. What am I going to do in Maine all summer? I'll probably freeze to death my first day there."
"All summer?"
She nodded. "When are you leaving?"
She looked at the floor. "Don't be mad, Kate, but ... the day after tomorrow."
"The day after tomorrow?"
"I wanted to tell you before, but I was afraid you'd hate me because I'm going to be gone so long."
"Hate you?" I said, even though I sort of did because now I was going to be stuck in Jackson without her. "I'm going to miss you."
She knew what I was thinking because she said, "I'll call all the time and e-mail every day. You'll get sick of hearing from me, I swear."
I went with her and her mom to the airport, which was kind of scary because her mom cried a lot, and Anna called me from Maine that night. She said it was cold but pretty.
"Everything is really, really green," she said.
It was the only time she called. I called her once, about a week after she did, but all I had to talk about was Todd and how annoying he was, plus her aunt had to use the phone.
And then Mom freaked out when she got the bill.
I e-mailed her every day for a while but, again, I didn't have much to talk about, and whenever she wrote back she was always tired from doing stuff with her aunt and was never sure when she was coming home. I wondered why we didn't talk more, but Anna said she had to beg to use the computer, and her phone situation was like mine. It seemed like we were both having pretty boring summers, and I figured things would get back to normal as soon as she got home.
Then my mom saw her mom at the supermarket a couple of days before school started, and I found out Anna had come home. I called her right away.
"You didn't tell me you were back! How come you didn't call me when you got home?"
"Kate, I've been home for two days and I've slept the whole time. My aunt made me get up at six every morning. How crazy is that?"
We made plans to meet at her house that night. I didn't recognize her when she opened the door. She was tan, and her hair was longer and dyed the color of corn silk, so pale it was almost white. Her glasses were gone, and her braces had come off. She also weighed about seventy pounds less than when she'd left.
"Wow, you look different," I said. She did. She looked like a model.
I was a little jealous. Okay, a lot jealous.
"I know," she said, and when she grinned at me I didn't even recognize her smile. It looked brighter and shinier somehow, different.
I should have guessed what was coming. Girls who looked like Anna didn't hang out with girls who looked like me. It's one of those laws of high school no one talks about but everyone knows. But she was my best friend, and she said she'd missed me, and when she talked about Maine she sounded just like she always had. ("So cold! But the ocean was gorgeous, Kate. I even went swimming a couple of times. Almost died from the cold, but I did it!")
That was the last time we talked. She didn't call me the night before school started to discuss what we should wear, and when I got to school she wasn't waiting outside for me like she always did. She wasn't in any of my classes or my lunch block, and whenever I saw her in the hall she was always walking away from me.
It was weird, and by the time she didn't show up for choir practice I knew something was wrong. I called her that night and her mother said she couldn't come to the phone.
"Is she sick?" I asked, and Anna's mother just said, "I'll tell her you called."
When Anna didn't talk to me again the next day, and didn't even seem to notice me when I waved at her, I figured she was mad at me. She didn't get mad often, but when she did she got really mad. I knew I should have called her more over the summer. I should have e-mailed more. I should have told her she looked amazing instead of being jealous and stupid and only saying she looked "different." I should have called her the night before school started instead of waiting for her to call me.
I knew I needed to say I was sorry and make things right, so the next day I went to the bathroom by the cafeteria before last period. Anna always went in there to check her hair and makeup.
She was there when I walked in, standing in front of the mirror like always, and I grinned at her reflection. "Hey."
Next to Anna, Diane Mullins was putting on lip gloss. She glanced at me in the mirror like I was some sort of weird bug and then turned toward Anna, dismissing me. "What do you think? Is this too red?"
Anna didn't say anything to me. She just looked at me in the mirror like she'd never seen me before, and then she turned to Diane and said, "It's perfect." That's when I finally understood what was going on. Anna hadn't stopped talking to me because she was mad at me. Anna had stopped talking to me because I was still me and she'd become someone else. She'd become somebody.
She wasn't my best friend anymore. She wasn't even my friend.
But I wanted her to be.
I wanted our friendship back. I wanted it enough to keep hoping even though I hated myself for it. I hated how she made me wish we could go back to the way things were.
I hated how I knew, deep down, that I would do anything to be her friend again.
Chapter six
When school ended, I walked out to Dad's car, but
Dad wasn't in it.
"Todd, what are you doing here?"
"Hi to you too," he said, and motioned for me to get in. I did.
"Where's Dad?"
"At the mall. I said I'd pick you up."
"Why?"
Todd was silent for a second, acting like he was concentrating on pulling out of the parking lot. "Just felt like it."
"Sure you did. What are you avoiding?"
"Handing out flyers inviting people to the house for a Perfect You party tonight."
"That's not funny, Todd." He glanced over at me, and then back at the road. "I'm not kidding. Dad's so-called project is a Perfect You house party. He stayed up last night reading about a woman who had one and made a ton of money."
"And so now he's inviting random people over to the house?"
"Oh no, it's better than that. He's called everyone he used to work with and then decided hey, why not invite total strangers, too? It seems a little--"
"Weird? Stupid? Insane?"
"All of them, which is why I'm going to see my friend Andy for a few days. You'll have to work by yourself tonight, but I'll leave a note for Mom to come pick you up, okay?" He dug around in the front pocket of his jeans, and the car swung into the other lane for a second.
"Todd!"
"Kate!" he replied, mocking me, and tossed a ten-dollar bill into my lap. "That's for food.
I know I'm supposed to take you home so you can do whatever it is you do before work, but I want to get to Andy's place."
"You're kidding, right?"
He sighed. "Kate, I'm sorry you can't leave too, all right? Just go get something to eat and then show up at your regular time. Dad had me make flyers for the party, but I didn't make as many as he wanted, and when you get there he'll probably have handed them all out. So at least you won't have to worry about that." He gave me one of his aren't-I-great smiles, and pulled into the mall parking lot.
"That's really nice of you," I said tightly, getting out of the car. I wished I could run away like Todd. "Hey," he said, and I turned back toward him.
"What?"
"Tell Dad I'm going to Andy's, will you? I forgot to mention it to him before."
I glared at him, because we both knew he hadn't forgotten. He just hadn't wanted to deal with Dad when he got upset. Neither of us did.
And sure enough, when I got to the booth after hanging around the food court for a while, the first thing Dad said was, "Where's Todd?"
I took a deep breath. "He's gone to see Andy."
"When? Wait, now?"
I nodded.
"Did he at least clean up the house while you were getting ready for work like he said he would?"
T
odd hadn't even mentioned that request to me. Not that it was a surprise.
"He didn't--" I started to say, but Dad was looking at me with the big fake grin he wore when he was upset, so I just said, "He didn't do any cleaning when I was with him."
"Oh. Well, that's . . ." Dad sighed, still smiling his big fake smile. Then it got brighter, became a little more real. "Hey, I have an idea. What if I drive you home real fast right now? Then you can clean and have your mother bring you back to work until closing when she gets home."
Oh no. No no no. Dad was not sticking me with getting the house ready for his stupid party. I grabbed some of the sample bags he'd put out for today, Perfect You's Awesome Kids! Chocolate Chew Vitamins, and walked off, heading toward the main mall hallway.
Dad didn't call after me or anything, of course. He would do anything to avoid an argument, just smiled that stupid fake smile whenever he was upset and acted like everything was fine until it was. When Mom got upset over his plan to quit his job for Perfect You, Dad had fake smiled for days until she'd given in.
Still, I couldn't believe he wanted me to go home and clean the house. It was his party, not mine, just like the whole Perfect You thing was supposed to be his dream job and not my forced after-school employment.
But then, avoiding things he didn't want to do was Dad's specialty. Whenever he didn't like something or didn't want to do it, he just wouldn't do it. And if you got upset, he'd just smile and say he was sorry and still not do it.
I sighed, totally frustrated, and turned the corner into the main part of the mall. As I did, I felt something slam into my legs. I looked down and saw it was a little kid. He was staring up at me, mouth open, clearly ready to scream or cry or both.
Then he saw the Chocolate Chews in my hand and yelled, "Is that candy? I want some!"
"Derek, please wait a moment," a woman said, walking quickly toward me, weighed down by shopping bags. I waited for her to say something else to the kid (like "Please don't yell") but instead she noticed me--and the Chocolate Chews--and her eyes brightened when I said, "Would you like a free sample?"
"Yes," she said, as Derek tried to grab one of the bags out of my hand, yelling his head off the whole time. "But only one piece, though. I don't like Derek to have too much candy."
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