“Right, of course.” Flustered, I began wringing my slick hands together, nodding uncontrollably, and pacing in short lines.
Emily emitted a loud, forceful breath.
“I’m sorry,” I said, my mind reeling. “Just one minute, please.” I had already come to the conclusion that I must tell Emily everything. I had to. I owed her that, and quite honestly it had been an easy decision to come to. But I didn’t know where to start, and somehow starting at the right spot felt key; but it must have been only one of those feelings that comes over you when you’re terribly nervous, because all I managed was, “Would you mind if we sat down?”
Emily gave me a look like she wanted to throw a chair at me. Instead she plopped down into one, and crossed one leg over the other, making a show of equanimous civility. “I’m sitting,” she announced, rather unnecessarily.
“Thank you.”
What might have been the teensiest amount of chagrin, but was more than likely annoyance with me, flitted across her face. “And I’m ready to hear this explanation, so let’s get on with it.”
I began walking toward her, nodding and flustered. “Okay. I thought maybe you might need another moment.”
Almost instantly, I regretted my words and thought about rephrasing, but it was already too late; three angry furrows appeared between Emily’s brows. “Another moment to do what? Cartwheels?”
“No, of course not. Just to calm down a little.” I winced.
“I am calm!” she said through a jaw like a sealed oyster. Absently, Emily began bouncing her foot, demonstrating her tranquility. “You’re going to have to take my word for it, Foster—this is me calm.”
I sighed and sat down. “I know, Em. It’s me. I’m the one that needs another moment.”
She arched a brow. “Make it a quick one.”
The words I was about to say to Emily would be the most difficult words ever to leave my mouth. This realization surprised me. I would have thought last night Dominic had stolen that milestone. And terrifying as it had been, the difference was that Dominic was already aware I was keeping secrets. Although it took breaking me in order to do it, to come clean about the house of lies in which I had been living, a part of me, delitescent and desperate, had known there was no one more safe than Dominic with whom to fall apart. The only thing I hadn’t expected, was for him to catch me.
Emily, however, was no stranger. I was, though, to her.
I forced my throat into compliance, pushing the first words through. “I need your help—”
“Clearly,” she interrupted, dryly. “And trust me, I am going to give—”
“Emily”—my hands balled to fists—“please don’t interrupt.”
The word dumbstruck came to mind while looking at Emily’s face. She folded her arms over her chest and said, “Huh, that’s new.”
“I’m sorry,” I said softly, and drew in a breath so deep I felt a bone in the middle of my back crack. “This is very hard for me. If I am going to get through it, Em, I need your help. I’m probably going to do it all wrong and there’s going to be places where I have to stop and think, but it’s because I want to be sure I’m not missing anything, because there’s a lot I’ve been hiding from you. I need you to promise not to interrupt.”
I met Emily’s eyes and I knew for certain I had never seen her face that serious. “Okay,” she said.
I smiled, a very little one. And then I told Emily everything.
It took over thirty minutes. Keeping her promise had been very difficult for Emily. Occasionally she resorted to clamping, gnawing, or physically pinching her lips shut; and when those methods began to lose their effectiveness, she pulled out a packet of Juicy Fruit, folding nine pieces into her mouth. But she did it. True to her word, Emily uttered not a single syllable until I was completely finished; telling her about my childhood, about not being able to make friends until I met her and Jake, and finally about my covert mission not to ruin my first friendship by being myself.
And I did tell her a lot; most everything I could think of, and anything that might help explain why I had made the choices I had, and that they were—however misguided and convoluted—the result of my deep affection and respect for her and Jake. I made sure to take ownership and responsibility for each and every time I was less than honest, but also tried to explain a long-standing hurt I was just now beginning to accept, recognize, and freshly deal with. There remained only one thing I wasn’t ready to share with Emily, and the reason for this being my inability to put words to it. I couldn’t talk about Dominic. Not quite yet.
I felt spent.
Emily looked windblown.
I watched her reach into her pocket and remove several gum wrappers, tidily stuffing the wad of gum inside, and putting it back into her shorts. “So . . .” she said, and I exhaled with her. “What you’re telling me . . . is that everything I know about you . . . is a lie?”
Yes, Emily. That is what I am telling you. And I am so sorry.
An instinct to form a reply barricaded with prevarications rose into my throat. I swallowed it back down and took another deep breath.
“The truth, Foster,” Emily demanded. “Just give me the truth. I can handle it.”
“I know you can,” I said imploringly. “Again, it’s me, Em. These are my very first attempts at being fully honest. I have to be very careful or I’ll wind up being dishonest without even meaning to.”
“Fine,” Emily said, but it was not laced with venom; it was a disconcerted consent.
A bit surprised, I said, “The answer to your question is no. I thought at first it was yes, but that isn’t right. It is much more complicated than that. The version of me you know is me—it’s just an alternate version of me, a moderated version. It might help to think of it this way: whenever we were together I tried never to give you impulsive answers, but a very careful, engineered response—the final draft of several edits. I strove to give you the answers I believed you wanted, and also the ones that would keep you at a safe distance.”
Emily glared at me. “Why are you smiling?”
I felt my lips slacken back into place. “Oh! I didn’t know I was,” I told her. “I think it’s just that, well . . . my answer just now is the opposite of what I’ve been explaining. If I look happy . . . it’s only because I told you the whole truth.”
Emily was silent for a moment. Two hands rose up from her lap and bunched into fists. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to say to that, Foster. Congratulations?” Emily laughed humorlessly. She wasn’t mad exactly, nor was she pleased, but intensely frustrated. “I’m having trouble grasping this. I don’t—does it mean—are you—”
Never had I witnessed Emily Donahue at a loss for words. “Can I maybe give you an example? I think it might help illustrate what I am saying better than my words can.”
“Charades, miming, sign language—your pick,” she offered.
I smiled, but was nervous again. “Do you remember when I called you the day of that dance and told you I couldn’t go anymore because I had a contagious illness called Tinea Pedis?”
One of Emily’s eyebrows dipped low. “Yeah.”
“Well, I did have that,” I confirmed with a fervent nod, a bit too exuberant. “That was the truth, but . . . but it wouldn’t have prevented me from coming to the dance.”
“Why not?”
“Well.” I wiggled in my seat. “Tinea Pedis is just the medical term for athlete’s foot.” I cringed, closing one eye and half-expecting her to jump out of the chair and start flying around the room like a possessed boomerang.
“Okay,” she said evenly, no signs of any boomeranging just yet. “So what’s the real reason you couldn’t come to the dance?”
“It’s not that I couldn’t come . . . I didn’t want to,” I replied, finding it tremendously hard not to look away as I said this. A flicker akin to Emily’s version of pain flashed across her face. Instinctively, I reached out and put my hand on her wrist. “It’s not that I didn’t wan
t to spend time with you and Jake. I just . . . I can’t dance. I can’t even go more than a couple minutes without tripping over something, or sometimes even nothing.”
“None of this is breaking news, Fost,” she said dryly and laughed. “I have eyes, you know. But just because it’s called a dance doesn’t mean that’s all there is to do.”
“I suppose you’re right; I could have stayed at the table,” I admitted, taking my hand back and laying it on my ankle. “Would you not have felt responsible for me, though? The times when your date and other friends wanted you to dance with them?”
She thought about this for half a second and shrugged, evidently coming to the same conclusion as me. “Okay, then,” she said, changing angles. “We didn’t have to go to the dance—it was lame anyway. We could have had people over to my house, ordered a bunch of pizza and had a movie marathon. Or we could have gone down to the beach and had a bonfire, or went to Disneyland, or bowling, or—I think you see my point, yeah? You didn’t have to exclude yourself; there were other solutions.”
Sometimes—actually more often than not—Emily said things that rendered me speechless; this was one of those times. But rather than with her usual outlandish behavior or abuse—verbal, physical, or otherwise—it was with her kindness and generosity.
“I know you would have done that for me, Em,” I said softly. “That’s exactly why I didn’t tell you the whole truth, though. You were nominated for Winter Queen, the limo was already rented, reservations were made, and you had a date and everything.” I raised my hands and immediately let them fall. “I just . . . I just wanted you to go and have a good time. If I had been there it would have spoiled everything.”
Emily tipped her head back and groaned. “All that brain and so little common-sense.” Beneath the annoyance, however, I could tell she was very hurt. “None of that was more important to me than having you with me. Not a dumb school dance, not a cheap crown—it was pretty rad seeing Samson’s face when he lost to Everett, though. And you are definitely more important than the dufus I took with me.” Pure mischief spread across Emily’s face. “I don’t think I ever told you about Trevor, did I?”
“No,” I replied, shaking my head, “I don’t think so, no.”
“So after the dance, Trevor wanted to take me back to his dorm to show me . . . his room.” She air quoted his room with a feigned look of naivety. “I knew it was just a bogus attempt to get me alone, but he had behaved so far that night, and I knew that if he tried anything shady I could take him,” she said casually.
I frowned, expressing my disapproval. Emily was tough—but she was still a girl. Defending herself, if it came down to that, against a grown man was not the same thing as defending herself against a gangly teenage boy.
Noticing the look of reproach, she added for my benefit, “Relax, Fost. I had pepper spray in my purse. And had he tried to touch me, it wouldn’t have only been his face I aimed it at. I would have used it like spray sun-block—all over coverage.”
“Em, you have to promise you won’t—”
“Yes, yes, I promise,” she interrupted, waving the cautioning away like a mosquito. “None of this has anything to do with the story.” She stared pointedly, then shook her head. “We get back to Trevor’s room and I can tell he’s stoked. He opens the door, turns on the light, and we walk in and . . . Winnie the Pooh sheets. Bam! The whole gang’s there: Piglet, Tiger, Eeyore, Pooh’s paw in a jar of honey. He didn’t try and hide it, which—I thought was kinda cool. So the guy likes Winnie the Pooh. Okay, I can deal with that. We sat on his bed and talked for a while and later he showed me pictures of his fraternity brothers. It was going all right”—she turned her head and coughed once into her shoulder—“until I asked to use his bathroom. There weren’t any towels to dry my hands with, so I opened one of the cupboards, expecting to find extras, and there, stacked on the shelf below his cologne, deodorant, and a toothbrush with about seven bristles left on it, were four more sets of sheets!” She held up a closed fist and began listing, starting on her thumb. “Smurfs, Sesame Street, Teletubbies, and Power Rangers.” Leaning forward, she added in undertones, “Teletubbies, Foster—Teletubbies! What self-respecting dude keeps Teletubbie sheets where people can find them?”
“What did you do?” I asked, and realized I was blushing for Trevor.
“What else? I told him the truth,” Emily replied without malice. “That I could have dealt with it—maybe, if it were superheroes or something, but that I draw the line at dating an eight-year-old.”
I shook my head. “Oh, Em . . . he must have been so embarrassed.”
“You would think, right? But yeah, no. Not so much.” Emily’s lips formed a tight suppressed line. “When I came out, Trevor asked if I wanted to see what was on the Cartoon Network. The End,” Emily concluded, rolling her eyes. Then she looked at me, still smiling, and angled her head. “There’s something else, Fost—what is it?”
I nodded and didn’t stop to prepare how to word it. “Em . . .” My voice broke and my throat began to close.
“I know,” she said. “You don’t have to say it. I already know.”
I smiled through watery eyes. “I think I still have to say it,” I said, and took a deep breath. “Em, you deserve a better friend than I’ve been to you. It was foolish of me to think my lies would keep me safe, keep me from caring too much about you and Jake. All that did was make me realize how much I did care. Do care,” I amended, with a smile. A tear fell from each eye. “You and Jake . . . having people like you in my life—honest, funny, fun to be with, who invite me places and want my opinion . . . I told myself a long time ago I didn’t need friends. That I was even better off without them.” My voice shook. “But I was wrong, Em. I could never be better off without you and Jake.”
Emily was smiling and she didn’t look happy about it. Her eyes shone as she raised an eyebrow. “If you make me cry, Fost, I—”
“I’d like to start over,” I broke in softly. “Would you . . . can we do that?”
A long moment passed; and the silence, for once, didn’t alarm me; it didn’t make me feel like it was a precursor to danger. Something else I realized: the vulnerability didn’t hurt. That desire to turn away, close my eyes, and hold my breath until I received Emily’s answer wasn’t there. Neither did I feel brave; it was something else, euphoric almost.
Emily lifted from her chair, leaned forward, and kissed me on the cheek. I must have had an awfully funny look on my face because she immediately burst into laughter.
Then she said, “Fost, I don’t want to start over.”
“You don’t?”
“No. That would be dumb. The three of us—four now, with Maddie—we’ve had a lot of fun this last year and a half; I’m down for moving past the past, but I don’t want to throw everything away just because there’s some bad stuff in it. Look—I get it. It wasn’t the real you. But this crap about not being the friend I deserve—it’s just crap,” she said, with finality.
Something impatient came over Emily and she released an exaggerated sigh. “Fost, other than Jake—who’s not exactly a girl, but whose masculinity I occasionally question, you’re it. The only one who doesn’t exhaust me. I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” she continued sardonically, “but I don’t exactly keep a whole lot of female company. Because—well, one or two girls I can handle, but a group of them and it’s like being eaten alive by quicksand. What is the deal with people talking crap on people constantly? It never stops. It’s like everyone’s waiting for the first opportunity to throw someone under the bus. I get it—everyone needs to vent. We’re all stuck here together in teenage purgatory, and it’s only a matter of time until someone says or does something to piss you off, but does it have get nasty? Guys, they punch each other straight in the face. They know it’s coming, and either they block the blow or they get beat down. And when it’s done, it’s done. Like, for good. Girls . . . girls are assassins. You never know when one is about to drop on your head or reach
for your jugular from behind. Seriously, I would so much rather someone just say to me, ‘Hey Emily, you kinda sucked when you said blah-blah-blah,’ and then be done with it, The End, instead of this chain-game: Kyla who heard it from Molly who heard it from Ashlin’s boyfriend who heard it from Allie’s second cousin—you know?”
Emily exhaled. She was flushed and rubbed her palms up and down her legs involuntarily. “I totally just ranted at you, sorry,” she said. “Anyway, the point I was trying to make—well actually, that is my point.” She laughed. “Fost, you’re the only person I have ever met that can handle listening to someone go off like I just did and then leave it be. Anyone else would have jumped in and perpetuated—woah, big word.” Emily grinned at me. “I must have picked that one up from you. So do you get what I’m saying?”
“Yes,” I replied, resolutely. Then, “I think.”
Emily rolled her eyes, laughing. “I’m saying you’re not a real girl. You’re like this super-advanced prototype that makes the rest of us seem like gerbils. You’re different, but dude, it’s a good thing, not a bad thing, Fost.” Emily turned her eyes to the ceiling, blinked twice, then sighed through her nose in resignation. “I look up to you. If I had a sister I’d want her to be exactly like you.”
I could feel tears mounting behind my eyes. “Em . . .”
“But if you so much as tell one person I kissed you, I’m starting a rumor that you came onto me.” I laughed so loudly that when it finally echoed back to me, it sounded like several people. Then the bell rang. First period was over.
“Well, I guess we should probably give those dorks back their room.”
I lunged forward and gave Emily a hug, holding her tightly but releasing her before the band room flooded with students. “Do me a favor?” she asked.
“Of course,” I said.
“When you see Clark Kent, let him know I’m looking forward to getting to know him at lunch.”
“At lunch?”
Emily nodded and though she smiled, it was a nemesis’s smile. “I guess we’ll find out if Clark’s made of steel or stuffing.”
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