The Friendship Matchmaker

by Randa Abdel-Fattah

  “Ah, let it go, will you, Chris?” Jemma yelled. “This beats being in class any day!”

  “Definitely!” somebody said.

  “It’s unreal!”

  “If you don’t want to play with us, Chris,” Bethany called out, “you can always wait for us in the classroom.”

  “Ooh!”

  “Go, Bethany!”

  I couldn’t believe my ears. Bethany had never dared to talk back to Chris before. What had Emily done to her?

  “Nah,” Chris said with a casual shrug. “I want to see what this is all about.”

  “It’s a recycling relay,” Bethany explained. “Each team has a box of garbage. Don’t worry, it’s all clean. You have to take an item and then run to the three boxes and decide which box it belongs to: Reuse, Recycle, or Discard.”

  “Reusing is the cheapest option,” Emily said. “It uses fewer resources. Recycling is the second-best option. Discarding or landfilling is the least-best option.”

  “The winner is the team who has the most items in the correct boxes. We’ve got a stopwatch too. So remember, it’s a race!”

  There was another buzz of excitement through the class. Everybody was pumped up to play. I overheard people’s comments:

  “It must have been Bethany’s idea. She’s the one who’s so into the environment. It’s awesome!”

  “Wow, I never even thought about reusing stuff. I hope I know which box to put it in! What a cool idea!”

  “What a smart project,” Tanya said to me.

  “Yes, smart,” I said through clenched teeth.

  Needless to say, the relay was a massive success and Emily and Bethany won the prize.

  I wanted to curl up somewhere and hide from Emily. Did she think I didn’t notice her smug grin? That self-congratulatory expression on her face?

  Bethany was surrounded by a group of kids patting her on the back and congratulating her. They didn’t even seem to mind her close-talking. Even Chris joined in and asked Ms. Pria if Bethany could take over class from now on so we could run math and science relays too.

  Bethany suddenly locked eyes with me and bounded over.

  “What did you think, Lara?” she cried excitedly.

  “It was great,” I said, trying to sound enthusiastic.

  “It was my idea but I would never have been able to do it if Emily hadn’t encouraged me. I remember in our first induction session you told me I shouldn’t do or say anything that would make me look like an environment nut, so I wasn’t sure, but Emily told me to take a chance. And look! It worked!”

  Just then Claire and Jemma grabbed Bethany’s hand and led her away. Emily joined them and they walked together back to class, laughing and joking. And when Emily left them to go to the bathroom, Claire and Jemma walked on with Bethany as if they’d all been the best of friends forever.

  Meanwhile, Tanya started chewing on a pen as we walked, and I couldn’t tell if it was a sign of regression or whether she was having second thoughts about my ability to find her a best friend.

  Because I hated to admit that I was.

  Chapter 18

  “Good morning, Lara, marinara,” Omar said as I walked into class the next day.

  “Hey, Omar,” I answered flatly. I wasn’t in the best of moods. I’d just seen Claire, Jemma, Emily, and Bethany huddled together and laughing like hysterical hyenas.

  “I overheard Ms. Pria telling Mr. Laidlaw that she’d just made some copies of a quiz, whiz. She’s testing us on last week’s geography class, pass. What a bummer, dumber.”

  A quiz. Great. Just what I needed.

  Tanya emerged from down the hall, followed by Chris.

  “Hey, Electric Shock, didn’t you have time to fix your hair today?”

  He was right. Tanya’s hair was all over the place. She looked miserable and was obviously trying to ignore Chris.

  Then I gasped. Tanya was wearing a T-shirt with a sewn-on koala. I sighed and slowly shook my head. Regression was sometimes a problem with my clients. But it was my own failure if a client I was working with on a one-on-one basis was going back to old habits.

  I really was very considerate. Not for a second (okay, not for ten to twenty seconds) did I blame Tanya. She had issues. That’s why she was a Total Loner and I was the Friendship Matchmaker. I had to work with the TLs and help them, not blame them for their obvious problems. So she was having an “I love koalas” setback. And she’d run out of styling mousse. That was easily fixed. I’d ignore it for now and intervene when the time was right. Besides, there was Chris to deal with.

  “And what’s with that dumb T-shirt?” he barked. “You look like a tour guide at the zoo.”

  “Ew!” I cried, loud enough for the other kids that were gathering to hear. “Chris, you stink! Didn’t you shower this morning?”

  “I can’t smell anything, sing,” Omar said, sniffing the air. “Oh, well, maybe … yeah, there’s a slight whiff, myth.”

  “It isn’t me!” Chris pleaded.

  “Why don’t you leave Tanya alone and go and make friends with a bar of soap,” I snapped. “You’d do us all a favor if you smelled halfway decent before class starts.”

  Actually, he smelled fine. But since when did there have to be any truth in teasing? It was working. Some kids were snickering and pointing at him. He stormed past me, shoving my shoulder as he passed.

  “Get outta my way, fatso,” he said.

  It was pretty lame given I was skinny and he’d banged into me.

  Chris got his revenge in class later that morning when we were taking the geography quiz.

  Ms. Pria had made me sit next to Omar. She’d put Tanya beside Bethany, at the table directly in front of Chris.

  When Ms. Pria was pretending to look for a tissue in her bag but really texting (who did she think she was kidding?), I heard Chris hissing at Tanya to lift up her paper so he could cheat.

  Tanya tried to ignore him, but when he kicked her chair she slowly lifted her paper and let him copy.

  I wished I was sitting closer so that I could have done something to help her.

  But Tanya had only finished page one of the quiz. Chris was getting impatient and turned his attention to Bethany. He started hissing at her too and throwing tiny bits of chewed paper at the back of her head.

  Bethany was even worse than Tanya. She actually wrote out the answers, scrunched the piece of paper up and threw it back to Chris. Ms. Pria, meanwhile, was still texting, only occasionally glancing up.

  It was sad the way they both gave in to Chris like that.

  When we finished our quizzes Ms. Pria collected them and gave us reading time while she marked them. We cheered. Reading time was so much fun. We were allowed to sit anywhere in class with a book and read.

  Of course, with Ms. Pria concentrating on correcting our quizzes, it meant we could sit anywhere in class with a book and talk.

  Tanya was still in a mood and declined my offer to hide behind the bookshelf so we could chat about our next Bungee Jump attempt.

  “Do you mind if I just read?” she asked. “Maybe we can talk about it tomorrow. I’m not really in the mood today. Sorry, Lara.”

  I didn’t have the heart to be angry with her so I let it go. She took a book out of her bag and sat down by herself in a corner of the classroom to read. She was obviously having a strange day, what with the frizz, koala, and solitary reading.

  I noticed Bethany, Jemma, and Claire sitting close together against the back wall, out of view of Ms. Pria, deep in conversation.

  How had they become so close, so quickly? The only consolation I had was that they were a trio. As long as they remained a trio, I still had a shot at winning. Jemma and Claire would soon leave Bethany out. It was a scientific fact and just a matter of time.

  Emily was sitting on one of our classroom beanbags. Her lap was filled with booklets. I found myself slowly approaching her and then sitting down on the floor a short distance away.

  “What are you reading?” I asked, c
urious.

  “Instruction manuals,” she answered, holding one up for me to see.

  It was a manual for assembling what looked like a coffee table.

  “Why?”

  She shrugged. “I’m just trying to figure out what to do when I’m older. I’m looking at traditional and nontraditional jobs. So I figured somebody obviously writes these manuals. I’m just wondering if I’d be interested in instructing people on how to put together an eight-piece table setting.”

  I must have looked baffled because she said, “With my brains, people always say, ‘That girl will be a doctor or lawyer one day.’ But I’m not interested in being what other people want me to be.”

  “So you want to write manuals for Ikea?”

  She shifted in the beanbag. “Well, not specifically Ikea. I imagine any furniture shop will do. But I guess if you can figure out an Ikea one, you can figure out any other one. Well, at least that’s what my dad said in between swearing when he put together my new bed last night.”

  She went back to reading. I tucked my feet under me and tried not to stare at her.

  “I paired up Jemma and Claire, you know,” I said casually.

  “That’s nice,” she said without looking up.

  “It’s not often you come across perfect matches. But they were. Same taste in clothes, music, TV shows, books. They even live on the same street.”

  “Interesting.”

  “You can’t honestly expect that Bethany will last in a trio with them.”

  Emily put down her manual. “I can’t say. But they seem pretty comfortable together.”

  “We agreed it had to be genuine best-friend material. Not just some temporary thing.”

  “Yeah, I know,” she said. “But they seem really happy. Jemma and Claire love animals, and Bethany’s mom works at an animal shelter. Jemma’s and Claire’s parents said they can help out with the animals at the shelter on the weekends.”

  “Oh.”

  “Did you know Bethany and her family are animal activists too?”

  I slowly shook my head.

  “And that Jemma and Claire would love any chance to be around animals and look after them?”

  “Well, yeah, of course I know they love animals. That was one of the reasons I paired them. The Golden Rule of Shared Interests, thank you very much.”

  Emily fought back a smile.

  “What’s so funny?” I demanded.

  “Nothing … um, it’s just that this picture of a bedside table looks like a lunch box. I’m not so sure I’m cut out for this kind of work. My drawings are too good for these manuals.”

  I eyed her suspiciously and then burst out. “You think my Friendship Matchmaker services are funny, don’t you?”

  “No,” she said in that annoyingly calm voice of hers.

  “You think it’s all one big joke!”

  “I never said that.”

  “That’s how you act!”

  “You’re misunderstanding me then.”

  We were suddenly interrupted by Ms. Pria’s booming voice. “Chris, a big fat zero! It’s obvious you cheated.”

  “I didn’t cheat, Ms. Pria!” Chris cried. “You’re being unfair. Even when I get the answers right you yell at me!”

  “Nobody who came up with the answers you gave on page two could have produced the correct answers on page one.”

  “Huh?”

  “I’m pretty sure I did not teach you that Johannesburg is the capital of China or that Hungary is part of New Zealand. Every answer is more absurd than the next!”

  Chris glared at Bethany, who was sniggering with Claire and Jemma. Emily was grinning quietly to herself. I glanced at Tanya. She locked eyes with me and shrugged.

  Once again Bethany had humiliated Chris.

  By lunchtime the news of Bethany’s trick had traveled across the school.

  I didn’t know how much longer I could stand watching Bethany being patted on the back.

  BUNGEE JUMP FRIEND

  It might seem scary. But it’s not. Trust me. You have to believe in yourself and your ability to talk about random topics.

  If you can succeed at Bungee Jump Friend you will never again feel nervous about starting conversations with strangers. Like when your mom runs into an old friend at the mall and you’re stuck beside her wondering what to talk about with the other kid as the moms moan about the days when they had time to brush their hair and read the newspaper.

  Practice in front of the mirror. Have a mental list of topics for Bungee Jump situations; for example, what flavor chip is missing from the grocery store? How many more school vacations do you think we should have? Why are parents so mean and refuse to give us an iPhone/DS/iPod until we’re in high school?

  YOU CAN DO THIS!

  Chapter 19

  “I can’t do this,” Tanya moaned, pacing up and down in front of the library.

  “Don’t say that! You can talk to me for ages.”

  “That’s different.”

  “No, it’s not. If you want a best friend you have to open up more. Stop being so shy. A couple of weeks ago I would never have thought you could have a telephone conversation or hang out. You’ve surprised me! So now surprise Stephanie.”

  “But I’m so nervous.”

  She did look a little queasy, but I tried to ignore it.

  “Stephanie is a talkaholic so it will be easy. Just follow her lead.”

  Tanya took a deep breath.

  “Think calm thoughts. Then walk over to her and say hi as you sit down next to her. Ask how her week’s been, what she’s doing on the weekend. The conversation will flow from there.”

  Tanya nodded slowly, and I gently nudged her in Stephanie’s direction.

  Stephanie was sitting on a bench eating a bag of chips. She didn’t have a lot of friends, because she talked so much most people got fed up trying to compete with her. But I figured that Stephanie and Tanya would be a good balance.

  Tanya sat down next to Stephanie.

  I made my way over toward them and stood a short distance away.

  “Hi, Stephanie. How are you?”

  Stephanie looked up and smiled brightly. “I’m good, Tanya. These chips are delicious, although I normally hate spicy flavors, these have a yummy kick to them. Not that I like spicy food, it makes my stomach feel funny, although I like some kinds of curry, and Mom’s always cooking Mexican but she leaves the chili on the side. How’s your day been?”

  I gulped nervously, wondering how Tanya would respond.

  “Good.”

  I sighed. Belly flop bungee jump.

  “That geography quiz was pretty hard yesterday. Chris’s answers were so funny. Bethany sure has guts. I’d never be able to trick him like that. It’s nice you’re hanging out with Lara now. Lucky you, being friends with her. She tried to help me at the beginning of last year, but I could never stick to her conversation topics. I’m hopeless that way. Did you know we have a field trip to the aquarium on Monday? I’m so excited. What are you doing this weekend?”

  I felt exhausted listening to Stephanie. Tanya looked bewildered but was about to answer when Stephanie jumped in again.

  “We’re going to the circus. It’s near our house, although Dad says it will be boiling hot in the tent but Mom checked the weather and it should be fine and sunny although they said it might reach over one hundred degrees, which means we’ll have to bring lots of bottles of water because Dad says the circus prices are a big fat rip-off and imagine paying four dollars for a bottle of water when you can bring one from home.”

  Tanya stood up. I really didn’t blame her.

  “Ah, nice talking to you, Stephanie. I just remembered I have to return a book to the library.”

  She hurried off and I followed her to the library.

  “Lara, I hope you don’t think I’m cruel, but as lovely as Stephanie is in small doses, I think I’d go crazy if she were my best friend.”

  “You’re probably right, Tanya,” I said.

&nbs
p; I’d run out of options. All my potential best friends for Tanya had been disasters.

  Was it possible that Emily was going to win our competition?

  Mom stood in the doorway of my bedroom with the phone in her hand. It was Saturday morning, and I was lying on my bed, working on the final chapters of my Manual.

  “Tanya is on the phone,” she said with a grin. Then she placed her hand over the receiver. “I’m so happy you’ve found a friend, darling!”

  She passed me the phone and walked out, still grinning.

  I was offended by her comment. If she only knew that it was my decision not to have a best friend. If she only knew that I was making a sacrifice for the greater good. And anyway, this was probably a professional call. Tanya was my client. Honestly, moms could really miss the obvious at times.

  “Hi, Tanya!” I said. “What’s up?”

  “I’m at Mom’s today and she’s offered to drop me off at the movies while she does some shopping. Do you want to come? There’s a new movie out about a haunted mansion. I mean, if you’re free and don’t mind breaking your Rules, of course.”

  “Sure! I’d love to come.” I stopped, realizing I sounded way too eager. I couldn’t let her think I was so bored at home that I was waiting for a call like this. Being a Friendship Matchmaker had outside duties too. Like perfecting my glossary. Or stealing Tara’s fashion magazines so I could update my Fashion Rules.

  “What time is the movie? I just need to check if I’m free. I’m preparing for a Fashion Rules seminar I’m running with the new fifth-grade kids on Monday.”

  “We have the field trip to the aquarium on Monday.”

  “Oh, yeah. Tuesday then.”

  “Mom wanted to drop me off around eleven.”

  “That’s cool. I can work it into my schedule.”

  We shared a jumbo box of popcorn and sat at the back of the theater. We kept on talking through the previews and commercials until the movie started. We screamed at the same time, laughed at the same time, and covered our eyes at the same time. When it was over, Tanya’s mom bought us lunch. We were so inspired by the movie that we decided to write our own script for a scary movie, set on a haunted plane. Once Harry Potter’s publishers released my Manual I’d be famous and Steven Spielberg would probably be interested in our plane movie. But I couldn’t tell Tanya that just yet.