The Friendship Matchmaker

by Randa Abdel-Fattah

  “So you have some options. I brought you some mousse. It’s my sister’s. Put it in your hair to stop it from standing up like that, or pull your hair back. Look, I’m not a control freak. I’ll leave it up to you. Just make sure you bring extra elastic bands tomorrow so I can change it if I don’t like it. Cool?”

  She agreed and I ticked “hair” off my list.

  “Some other Rules,” I continued. “No meatballs for lunch. Ever. They may be yummy but they stink, and stinky food is a one-way trip to being bullied. Got it?”

  “Yep.”

  “Can you play basketball? The other day I heard you talking about how you play on the weekends.”

  “Well, yeah, I can dribble and shoot the ball.”

  “Are you good at it? Me? I’m hopeless. So be honest with me.”

  “Well … yeah, I’m okay. I’m a good shooter. Dad plays ball with me at the park near his house when I visit him.”

  I looked down at my list but out of the corner of my eye I noticed she seemed a bit upset. Maybe she’d had enough for one day. Not everybody could keep up with me.

  “Okay, look, let’s finish the training session now. That’s enough for you to digest.”

  “Great, thanks so much, Lara. You really are the best kid in the school.”

  I smiled modestly. “Oh, thanks, Tanya. I just love to help. That’s all.”

  That afternoon after school Julie was at the school bus stop. Her stop was before mine but it didn’t matter. Even though my Rules said to sit next to someone who gets dropped after you, I was an LBC and was excused from the Rules.

  Julie had her basketball tucked under her arm. I walked up to her and said hi. She looked happy that I was talking to her. Julie had a best friend (Lucinda) but she wasn’t getting on the bus. Also, I think there were cracks in their friendship. Lucinda had told me secretly she was getting sick of basketball but didn’t know how Julie would take it if she told her.

  I thought maybe if I could get Tanya into basketball she might have a chance with Julie.

  I just had to test the waters first.

  “So, Julie,” I said, “guess who I discovered is a crazy basketball fan too?”

  “Who?”

  “Tanya.”

  “School-supply-sniffing Tanya?”

  I nodded. “Yep. Oh, and she doesn’t do that anymore. It was just a medical condition, but she took pills for it and she’s cured now.”

  Julie started dribbling the ball. She didn’t seem excited by the news.

  “So why don’t you both hang out at recess tomorrow? Get to know each other. Maybe even shoot some hoops? She’s amazing with the ball.”

  “Sounds good,” Julie said, shrugging. “‘But I’ve never seen her on the basketball court at recess or lunch.”

  “Well, she’s never been invited. But that’s not your fault. You didn’t know she’s a champion player.”

  I left it at that and arranged with her to meet us at the courts at recess the next day.

  Chapter 11

  In the evening I logged on to e-mail at home. My user name is FMM. I use e-mail for my out-of-school-hours Friendship Matchmaker services.

  I had lots of messages from clients.

  Wandmaker Hi, FMM, I’m in sixth grade. Jessica says she won’t play with me on Wednesdays and Thursdays because Natasha is going to be her best friend on those days. What should I do?

  Brickboy My best friend stinks at football. I didn’t pick him in PE and he’s angry. Do you think I was being unfair?

  Tasha8 NO ONE WANTS TO PLAY WITH ME! HELP!

  As I was going through the messages and responding, my big sister, Tara, came into my room and hovered over me.

  “Chatting on e-mail?” she said. “Finally got a friend?”

  “I’m working,” I said.

  She plunked herself down on my bed. “Don’t be such a weirdo.”

  I turned to face her. “I don’t have time for friends. I’m too busy helping other kids.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “That’s dumb.”

  “You have so much to learn,” I said impatiently. “I’m anything but dumb.”

  Her voice was suddenly tender. “Don’t you get sick of being a loner?”

  I rolled my eyes. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  I imagined how Tara would react when Harry Potter’s publishers contacted me with a book deal. The thought put a big smile on my face.

  Tara stood up. “What happened to your friends from before? You three were glued at the hip.”

  “Go away!” I screamed.

  Tara shook her head and left the room. I sat very still for a moment. I tried to think happy thoughts.

  My Manual on the shelves in bookstores.

  Book signings all over the country.

  When I’d calmed down I turned back to the computer and continued helping the kids who had e-mailed me.

  Sometimes I thought I needed them as much as they needed me.

  The next day I met Tanya outside our classroom. My heart of gold melted with pride.

  Her hair was brushed back into a ponytail, and she was wearing a sparkly pink headband with matching pink earrings.

  “I borrowed them from my cousin,” she said shyly, when I asked her where she’d been hiding such gems.

  She was wearing a pair of jeans (thank goodness, no track pants) and a plain white T-shirt with a cute pink collar. There wasn’t a knitted furry animal in sight.

  The best part was when she showed me her cheese sandwich.

  “And it’s not even the smelly kind!” she boasted.

  I gave her a quick hug.

  I walked into class with Tanya proudly at my side.

  Chris saw her and yelled out, “What happened to you, Electric Shock?”

  “Shut your trap!” I snapped at him. “At least Tanya doesn’t wear the same underwear all week!”

  I didn’t know if that was true, but I guessed with a creep like Chris he’d be disgusting in every way.

  Some of the class burst out laughing.

  “I only change ’em on the weekends,” he said and winked at the class.

  “What a loser,” I muttered to Tanya.

  Ms. Pria was at her desk, holding a cup of tea. She ordered us to sit down quickly.

  Emily was sitting next to Bethany. I made sure to lock eyes with Emily and tried not to look too happy with myself. But she just smiled at me, totally unaffected by Tanya’s transformation.

  To my delight, Bethany looked just the same. Emily hadn’t bothered to give her a makeover. Bethany always dressed like she was going camping. She wore army-colored pants with heavy boots I’m sure she bought from the boys’ section in the store, and hand-knitted cardigans in odd colors. Her hair was always in a million braids or else she bunched up sections of it into little buns all over her head.

  She was a bully’s dream.

  Tanya and I sat down. I had to stick with her until I found her a friend.

  Also, it was her first day as the new Tanya. She needed some extra support.

  Ms. Pria started telling us about our math lesson. She jiggled her tea bag up and down in her cup and then took it out and threw it in the garbage.

  Bethany’s arm shot up. “Ms. Pria, you can’t do that!” she shrieked.

  “What are you talking about, Bethany?”

  “You have to recycle the staples and little paper tag in the tea bags. That’s what we do at home.”

  “What nonsense!” Ms. Pria scolded.

  “But you have to!” Bethany said. “The paper and staple are recyclable. And you can reuse the tea bag.”

  Other kids in the class were groaning. I would have felt sorry for Bethany but I had to think of Tanya’s interests. I stole a glance at Emily. Amazingly, she looked calm. She should have been panicking. Who will want to be Bethany’s friend now? She was just so obsessed.

  “That’s enough, Bethany!” Ms. Pria yelled.

  She was always losing her temper. I didn’t think she liked being a teacher
very much.

  “This humble cup of tea is not going to ruin the world! Now, can I explain fractions to the class?”

  “Yeah, go on, Ms. Pria,” Toby called out. “We’d rather learn math than listen to Bethany go on about tea bags.”

  Some of the kids giggled.

  What a disaster for Emily!

  When the bell for recess rang and we were all putting our things away, Emily stood up and said, loud enough for most of the class to hear, “My uncle is an artist and he sews used tea bags together to make beautiful artwork. He’s made thousands doing stuff like that.”

  “Wow. Really?’

  “Just from used tea bags?”

  “So Bethany was right …”

  “Imagine getting rich from used tea bags!”

  I noticed Bethany beaming as some of the kids crowded around her, asking for other ideas that would make them rich.

  “But it’s about saving the planet,” Bethany argued.

  Emily spoke up. “Well, if you can save the planet and make money, that would be awesome!”

  Bethany smiled. “Yeah, that’s true. And you could always donate your profits to a rainforest campaign.”

  I walked out of class quickly. Tanya followed me. Bethany was attracting a lot of good attention. How had she gone from being a weirdo to suddenly having a group of kids wanting to talk to her?

  Emily Wong.

  I’d underestimated her. She was better than I thought.

  Okay. I exaggerated Tanya’s ability to play basketball. She got the ball through the hoop once. And when she dribbled, the ball seemed to want to be anywhere but under her control.

  Within ten minutes Julie was fed up.

  “I thought you said Tanya was awesome?!” she yelled at me.

  Tanya stood still but didn’t say a word in her own defense.

  “She is,” I snapped back. “It just takes the right kind of teamwork. Come on, Tanya, let’s go.”

  Lucinda, who’d also been playing, watched with sympathy. It was obvious she didn’t want to keep playing, but Julie passed the ball to her and cried out with manic enthusiasm, “Come on! Let’s play some real ball!”

  Tanya followed me away from the courts.

  “What happened? Didn’t you say you were a good shooter?”

  “Well, yeah, that’s what Dad tells me all the time.”

  I groaned. It was my fault, not hers. I’d always made it a rule to never listen to compliments paid by parents. They were supposed to make their kids feel good about themselves. I’d had to sort out hundreds of problems caused by parents overpraising their children.

  “Well, never mind,” I said, giving her a reassuring pat on the arm. “There is plenty of other best-friend material out there. We’ll keep on trying.”

  “Do we have to try now? Could we maybe just hang out for the rest of recess?”

  I looked over at her. “Okay. We’ll try again tomorrow. I need to prep you at lunch today. Our next target is Carla.”

  Tanya grinned. “Cool! So … I noticed you like writing.”

  “Yeah, I do. How’d you guess?”

  “I see you writing in a book all the time. And then you put it away like it’s something special. You always have a dreamy look on your face when you’re writing.”

  I smiled. “I love it.”

  “Is it a diary?”

  “Nah. I don’t keep one.”

  “Me either. So what do you write?”

  “It’s private … sorry.” Huh! Wouldn’t she and the rest of the school like to know?

  “That’s okay. I write too, you know.”

  “Really? What do you write?”

  “It’s also a secret.”

  I laughed. “Two secret writers. Well, let’s give each other a clue.”

  “Okay! My book is kind of like a how-to book. Like a long piece of advice.”

  “No way! So is mine. Well, it’s more like a manual.”

  We laughed.

  “So when do you write?” I asked.

  “Mainly at night, before I go to bed.”

  “Same!”

  We spent the rest of recess talking about our writing habits and who our favorite writers are and what we do when we get stuck for words. I confessed that I actually hate books about talking fairies and vampires but that at school they are really the only books that are cool to be seen reading. I explained that this was based on a year of research, and Tanya said she understood because I was the expert. Anyway, she also hates those kinds of books. Like me, she reads fantasy, horror, and action books. We swapped our lists of book titles, promising to read each other’s favorites and report what we thought.

  By the time the bell rang, I’d almost forgotten that I was supposed to be training Tanya on our next target, Carla.

  It’s okay, I thought. We’ll have all of lunchtime. Or maybe even half of lunch and the rest we could spend talking about our fantasy-book collections.

  Chapter 12

  At lunchtime I gave Tanya all my tips on Carla. How she wanted to be a hairdresser and liked spending breaks doing braids and other nice things to people’s hair. I explained that Carla was very sweet and easy to talk to. She didn’t really like sports so there was no way Tanya would have to go through the basketball disaster again.

  I’d slipped into my sister’s room that morning and taken one of her hair magazines. She had a pile because she was trying to decide how to do her hair for her senior prom. She was way older than me and had lots of amazing magazines. I stole things from her room a lot, and she screamed at me when she found out.

  The plan was to walk past Carla at lunchtime, with Tanya holding the hair magazine. She had to make sure Carla noticed.

  Carla was standing on a bench behind a girl named Ayshe, playing around with Ayshe’s hair. Tanya walked past them. I peeked around a corner within hearing distance.

  Bingo. I was just too good.

  Carla shrieked. “Wow! Tanya, is that the latest Hair Catwalk Expo magazine?! I’ve been saving all my allowance for that!”

  Tanya looked at me and I waved my arms around, trying to get her to stop looking at me and focus on Carla.

  “Um … yeah, it is …”

  I tried to send mental messages to Tanya. Be confident! Be confident!

  “Can I please take a look? It’s, like, the best magazine in the world. Where did you get it?”

  Tanya answered, just as we’d practiced.

  “It’s my friend’s sister’s magazine. She’s a trainee hairdresser. She has them lying all around the house. She gave it to me because she knows I love hairstyles.”

  It was a teeny-weeny white lie. My sister was not a trainee hairdresser. She was still in high school. And like I said, I stole the magazine from her room. But sometimes you had to bend the truth if it meant beating Emily—I mean, finding Tanya a true friend.

  But Tanya sounded like she was reading a script. She needed to loosen up, the way she was with me. Why couldn’t she talk like that now?

  Carla jumped off the bench, leaving Ayshe with wild hair all over the place. Tanya handed Carla the magazine. Carla grabbed Tanya’s hand, sat her down beside her, and started flipping through the magazine, pointing out hairstyles.

  “Look at this one! It’s gorgeous! Ooh! Look at that one! Can you see how they’ve cut the back but left the front long? It’s so different!”

  “Yeah!” Tanya said, trying to sound excited. “The hairstyles are really nice.”

  Carla pressed the magazine to her chest and looked up at the sky. “One day I’ll have hairstyles in a magazine too!”

  “Um … yeah … imagine how cool that would be …”

  “What’s your dream?”

  Tanya was prepared. “To, um, do hair for all the movie stars.”

  “Me too!” Carla laughed. “Wow! So do you think we should do an updo for Ayshe or leave it down? The updo shows off her eyes. But the down is more casual for school. What do you think?”

  This was definitely big progress. Ca
rla was asking Tanya for her advice. She was acting like they were a hairdressing team.

  “Um … we could try both and see what looks better …”

  “Great thinking!” Carla cried.

  She leaped up onto the bench and started back on Ayshe’s hair.

  “Come on up,” she told Tanya. “You can try it too.”

  A couple of moments later Emily and Bethany walked past. I couldn’t help but point out Tanya and Carla, who were standing side by side on the bench, both working on Ayshe’s hair. I flashed Emily a triumphant grin. She walked up to me.

  “Since when does Tanya like hairdressing? I may be new but even I can guess it hasn’t been her hobby for long.”

  “Well, some people pick up hobbies quickly.”

  Emily raised an eyebrow. “So you’re changing the way she looks and what she likes, just so she’ll make a friend.”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  She raised an eyebrow again. “Hmm … nothing … See you around …”

  Bethany and Emily walked off.

  I was fuming. She was so stuck up. I knew what worked. And she was the new girl acting like I was some evil witch making people miserable!

  Carla asked Tanya to sit next to her in class after lunch. She kept flipping through the magazine and asking Tanya what she thought about all the hairstyles.

  Tanya had definitely won the toughest battle. Carla had invited her to sit next to her. I was sure it was the beginning of an amazing friendship.

  Meanwhile Bethany was still stuck like glue to Emily. Maybe Emily had missed the point. Emily was supposed to find Bethany a best friend, not be Bethany’s best friend.

  I said bye to Tanya and Carla after school and hopped on the bus. It’d been a great day.

  Tanya called me that night and we spoke for half an hour. At first she told me all about Carla and how she was trying her best to become a hairstyling fan. It sounded like things were going really well. Carla had swapped phone numbers with Tanya and said she wanted to get friendship bracelets made out of braided horse hair. She thought human hair would feel a little icky.

  Then we started talking about school and how English was our favorite subject. We talked about how we didn’t really like Ms. Pria, but the librarian, Mr. Thomas, was the best teacher ever. I confided in Tanya that I wrote poetry and that my mom and dad liked to frame everything I wrote and hang it in the hallway. Tanya said she wrote short stories and used to read them to her parents and that they would staple them together into little books.