Best Frenemies

by Cari Simmons

  Alice got up and tucked the notebook next to her copy of Dolphins in her panda bag. Oh well, Alice thought. Here goes nothing.

  Both the good news and bad news seemed to be that Alice wasn’t the only one who hadn’t quite gotten the reading done for Mr. Nichols’s class. After the promising discussion the day before, the students were quiet and unwilling to talk.

  “So what do you guys think so far?” he asked, walking around to the windows and spraying one of the many plants in his classroom with a mister.

  Silence.

  “How does it compare to the first couple of chapters of To Kill a Mockingbird?”

  More silence.

  “Hello?” Mr. Nichols said, spritzing the back of Aaron’s neck a little bit. “Are you guys there?”

  Aaron smiled and wiped the back of his neck off. “It’s fine. I don’t know, I’m still getting into it. It’s just . . . different.”

  “Anything else?” Mr. Nichols asked to the still-silent room. He might as well have been asking his plants. “I’m going to start calling on you guys if you don’t start answering questions,” Mr. Nichols warned.

  More silence.

  Alice stared down at her nails, which she had painted green with blue tips during one of her hangout sessions with Cassidy. The blue was starting to chip away. Please, oh please, Alice issued forth a silent wish. Not me.

  “So what did you guys think about Karana’s father advising everyone to avoid making friends with the Aleuts?” Mr. Nichols asked the group. “I want to hear from . . . Alice.” His name fell on her head like a ton of bricks. Arg.

  “Um,” Alice said. “Well.” She knew what Mr. Nichols was talking about. Her brain just seemed much more disorganized than usual, though. So much for sounding somewhat intelligent today.

  “What kind of mentality does it create?” He tried rephrasing.

  Alice silently scolded herself for reading so fast and not taking her time the way she usually did. Usually when she read for class she circled words that stood out to her, wrote notes in the margins, dog-eared pages that looked important. Now, in her mind’s eye, the pages of the reading chapters flew by, the words a blur.

  “It creates an us-versus-them mentality.’” Alice heard a know-it-all voice over her shoulder. She looked behind her, even though it was obvious who was talking. “It means that Karana is being encouraged to look at the Aleuts not as individuals but as a group. A herd.” Nikki sneered. “I mean, it’s obvious if you did the reading.”

  “I did the reading,” Alice said defensively. Nikki rolled her eyes.

  “Okay then,” said Mr. Nichols, looking confused, like Something is going on here, and I don’t know what it is, but I don’t like it. “Thanks, Nikki. Let’s move on.”

  “I wish somebody would leave you on an island,” Alice heard someone mutter. Todd Tian was looking sideways at Nikki, and everyone who heard snickered quietly. He was still mad, it seemed, about Nikki calling him out during the To Kill a Mockingbird discussion.

  Alice felt a little proud that Todd had stuck up for her. The class was becoming a team after all, but when she snuck a look at Nikki, she saw her skin turning the same shade of pink as her hoodie, which was a deep blush. She felt a little bit bad for Nikki—until Nikki looked up, saw Alice glancing at her, and gave the most evil, narrow-eyed, force-field-penetrating look she’d ever seen in her life. Yikes!

  Mr. Nichols eventually gave up and made the last fifteen minutes of class quiet reading time.

  Phew, Alice wrote to Cassidy.

  We didn’t get quizzed, but I sure did fall on my face and look dumb in front of everyone. Can you guess who helped make me feel real good about it too?

  In the cafeteria, where the chattering echoed off the ugly red-tiled floor and onto the even uglier white-tiled ceiling, it looked like the Nerd Herd was continuing the togetherness outside the classroom. Alice smiled and waved at a table where Aaron, Todd, Ashley, and even shy Nisha Pakoor were all sitting together. She would have taken her tray over there too if Cassidy hadn’t saved a seat for her with Xia, April, and Evie.

  “Boy, have I got a Nikki Wilcox story for you,” Alice said with a sigh, setting down her tray with its uninspiring veggie burger, which she suspected was just made up of old paper from the recycling bin. She had been in such a rush that morning, she’d forgotten to take her leftover lasagna.

  “Hold on a sec,” Cassidy said. “Evie was just telling us about what her big sister had told her about the school musical.”

  Evie leaned over the table and ran the heart locket on her necklace up and down its chain, whispering like she was letting them in on some big secret. “So anyway, Carrie said it’s a ton of fun. Mr. Shankman, the director, lets everyone sort of take control and come up with ideas for the costumes and sets and everything. And there’s a big cast party after the last show, which she said was one of the best nights she ever had in middle school.” Evie’s sister, Carrie, was in high school, and the girls were always hungry for any details of what middle school was like when she was younger—and what they had in store for them in high school.

  “That sounds like so much fun,” Cassidy said. “I’ve always wanted to do more singing, but for some reason Madame Bernard doesn’t appreciate my talent!”

  “Ms. Turner, now is not the time to sing, now is the time to dance!” Xia shouted in a high voice, apparently calling back something hilarious from dance class that Alice had missed out on.

  “I was trying to sing ‘Under the Sea’ while we were doing this mermaid dance,” Cassidy explained.

  “Oh my gosh, guess what,” Alice suddenly heard behind her. She turned to see Christy Gillespie from the Nerd Herd crouching down behind her chair, her perfectly shaped eyebrows arched high on her forehead.

  “What’s going on?” Alice asked, turning around and folding her arms over the plastic orange chair. The girls she was sitting with wouldn’t mind that much if she turned her attention away for a second or two. She could hear them behind her, now trying to figure out if cool Ms. Haynes had a boyfriend or not.

  “I just went to use the bathroom and walked by the courtyard,” Christy said. “And who should I see out there, sitting by her lonesome, eating lunch solo beneath a sad little tree, but Nikki Wilcox!”

  “Oh yeah,” Alice said, scanning the noisy lunchroom. “I guess she isn’t in here.”

  “And,” Christy said breathlessly, bouncing on the balls of her feet, which were clad in blue leopard-print slip-on sneakers, “not only was she eating by herself, but she was reading Island of the Blue Dolphins. Like, I get it, we’re the Nerd Herd, but it’s okay to not study for one second!”

  “Oh my goodness.” Cassidy leaned over the table and joined in the conversation. “Does that girl have any friends?”

  “And she’s doing homework during lunch?” said Xia. “That means she’s too nerdy even for the Nerd Herd!”

  “Hey!” Christy said, raising a warning finger but smiling. “You know how it’s okay if I talk smack about my mom but you’re not allowed to? Only members of the Nerd Herd may make fun of Nerd Herders.”

  “I almost . . . almost . . . feel kind of bad for her,” Alice admitted. It’d be one thing if Nikki was mean and popular, but she couldn’t help wondering if Nikki would be different if she had some friends—or just one friend, even.

  “Even after she was so nasty during class today?” Christy said.

  Alice shrugged. “Maybe there’s a reason why she’s the way she is?”

  “Well,” Christy said. “I was talking to Aaron—they went to elementary school together but she didn’t arrive until fourth grade. He said that she’s always kept to herself, even after she’d been there for a whole year. It’s like she doesn’t want to make friends or something.”

  “That is kind of sad,” admitted Cassidy. “Although I don’t know if it’s sad-sad or, like, pitiful-sad.”

  “I kinda think that if she’s going to be rude, she gets what she deserves,” said Christy. Alice sh
rugged. “But maybe you’re right. You’re a nicer person than I am, Alice.” She grinned at Alice’s table and skipped back to her seat. “See you, ladies!” Alice saw Aaron looking over at her table and offered him a wave. She sort of wished she was sitting over there, with the rest of the Herd, just to hear what they were talking about.

  “Oh, you guys,” Cassidy said. “I almost forgot to tell you about this crazy old book of my mom’s she showed me. It’s called Color Me Beautiful and it says that each woman’s complexion matches a season and she should dress like that season. Like I’m a winter and so I look good in, like, blue and silver and white.”

  “You look good in everything, girl!” said Xia.

  “I mean, obviously,” Cassidy said, holding up her hand like a pocket mirror and admiring herself in it. “Anyway, I want to bring it to lunch tomorrow because a) the outfits are hilarious—I mean, like, skorts, and also b) it could be fun to see what seasons we are. Alice, I’m thinking you’re kind of a late summer. Evie, maybe for you, spring.”

  “Ooh, that’s my favorite season!” squealed Evie.

  The girls babbled about Cassidy’s discovery, debating which seasons they would be and what colors they were destined to wear. Alice couldn’t help but think about Nikki sitting out all by herself in the courtyard. Alice’s friends and the Nerd Herd were both so easy to talk to and fun—why did Nikki separate herself?

  Maybe Nikki had a reason for staying away. Maybe she was just smart about getting her work done. Alice had to admit to herself, I should probably go out there and catch up on my reading too.

  Maybe Nikki’s onto something.

  CHAPTER 8

  BEST FRIENDS SEPARATED

  “We had such a fun discussion in class today,” Alice bubbled to Cassidy on the bus ride home a few days later. After the first rough few days of Dolphins, the class had gotten back into the groove and discussion had picked up, and they finished the assignment without incident (or pop quiz). Mr. Nichols’s class had been especially enjoyable lately, the Nerd Herd was gelling nicely, and for once, Nikki Wilcox seemed to be keeping her mean comments to herself. The sun was out and the air was crisp and cool—but not cold yet—and Alice felt invigorated.

  “Hmm. ‘Fun’ and ‘class’ are not words that should go together,” Cassidy joked. “Unless it’s opposite day. Or I have been misled this entire time about what ‘fun’ actually is.”

  Alice smiled sympathetically. In Cassidy’s latest notebook entry, she had lamented that she wasn’t doing so great in French class.

  You know what would make French easier? If there were only one tense. Just live in the present! Viva la moment! Anyway, if I don’t get my grades up my mom said she’s going to make David start tutoring me, which makes me want to le vomit.

  But Alice couldn’t help herself. “Today we talked about what books we’d bury in a time capsule for future generations,” she said.

  “Aren’t books just books?” Cassidy said. “Aren’t they going to be there whether or not we’d put them in a time capsule? Isn’t that what libraries are for?”

  “No . . . you don’t—” Alice was about to say, “You don’t get it,” but she caught herself. “The point was just to see what books we’d put in to illustrate what’s important to us now.”

  “Oh,” said Cassidy, looking out the window at the gray lake. “I guess that’s cool.”

  “Also,” Alice said. “I forgot to tell you but last week we got this assignment where we got to retell a famous children’s book in our words. And I talked about The Giving Tree!” The Giving Tree had been one of her and Cassidy’s favorite books when they were little, although Alice had a hard time reading it now because it made her sad. So in her version, she wrote it so that the tree was actually a human mom who gave everything she had to her kids but without all that depressing letting-herself-be-cut-down stuff.

  “Huh!” Cassidy said, not turning her head away from the window.

  “Is everything okay?” Alice asked. “I guess this stuff is pretty boring.”

  “No, sorry,” Cassidy said, looking back at Alice and smiling with her lips together. “I’m glad you’re having a good time in school. I’m just upset about this French thing. It spoiled my whole day.”

  “I know what you mean,” Alice said, remembering a few weeks ago when just the thought of having to read Island of the Blue Dolphins had ruined her night. She had learned her lesson: it just wasn’t worth not getting her work done first, especially if the knowledge that she had work to do lurked over her time with Cassidy.

  The bus pulled up to the girls’ street, and they started walking down towards their houses, kicking at the leaves that were scattered on the sidewalk.

  “You know what we might need,” Cassidy said. “Mini dance party?” Whenever the girls were feeling low or just needed to burn some energy, they turned the lights off in one of their rooms and danced as hard and as dumb and as wild as they could, to exactly four songs: two that Alice chose, and two that Cassidy chose. It was the one time Alice didn’t feel self-conscious about dancing.

  “I really want to,” Alice said. “Really. But I can’t. I’ve just got too much homework. Mr. Nichols gave us a new book.”

  “Mr. Nichols is really cramping our style,” Cassidy said, frowning. “I mean, doesn’t he understand that we need our BFF time?”

  Alice sighed. “I know. I promise this won’t last forever. It’s been a busy week.”

  “True,” Cassidy said, and picked up a perfect red leaf from the sidewalk. “It’s just that this is the third day in a row that you haven’t been able to hang out after school. And you used to be able to come over all the time.”

  “I hate it,” Alice said, feeling like she wanted to cry. They were standing next to the planters on the street, which were temporarily empty. Mrs. Turner was still debating what she’d fill them with for the colder months of fall. “But I just don’t know what I can do about it. The last time I didn’t get to finish my work on time, I got in trouble in class, you know? Besides, isn’t that what the notebook is for? So we can stay in touch?”

  “Well, I hope you still have time to write in it,” Cassidy teased her. “I hope you don’t get too busy for it!”

  “Can we just pretend like the notebook is the same as our walkie-talkies?” Alice asked. When they were little and Alice would cry when it was time for her to go home to her parents’ house after spending time at Cassidy’s, her dad gave her a gray plastic toy walkie-talkie set so the two could talk to each other from each other’s houses, even at bedtime. They barely worked; the toys were too flimsy to get much reception and the houses were too far apart. But sometimes Alice would be able to hear Cassidy’s voice through the static, and even if she couldn’t understand her, it brought her comfort at night knowing her best friend wasn’t far away.

  Cassidy gave her hand a reassuring squeeze and the girls separated, heading towards their own houses. As Alice walked up the driveway, she started feeling mad instead of sad. It wasn’t fair. Why did she have to be separated from the one person who totally knew how to make her feel better whenever she was down?

  “Hey, what’s going on?” Alice’s mom asked after her daughter entered the kitchen and angrily threw her backpack and jean jacket on the window seat. To make matters worse, the scent of fish permeated the kitchen. Mrs. Kinney was baking salmon, which Alice hated.

  “I hate being in honors classes!” Alice said.

  “But you were so excited about the assignments and discussions you were having in Mr. Nichols’s class,” Mrs. Kinney said, wiping her hands on her jeans.

  “I’m sick of talking about Mr. Nichols!” Alice nearly yelled.

  “Whoa,” said Mrs. Kinney. “Sit down. Let’s talk.” She poured each of them a glass of sparkling water and fixed a lime wedge on the side, neither of which Alice really wanted, but the gesture seemed nice and the clear blue glass looked pretty with all the bubbles fizzing to the top, so she took it without complaining. They sat at the worn woode
n table in the breakfast area, where hanging lighting fixtures gave the kitchen a warm feel.

  “Cassidy was having a bad day and wanted to hang out after school, but I told her I had to go home to do work today. It just made me sad,” Alice confessed, telling her mom all the details.

  “I understand you want to see your friend, but I think that Cassidy should understand your time commitments,” her mom said gently. “It’s not like you get mad at her when she goes to ballet class, right? You guys find time to talk and see each other.”

  “Right,” Alice said. “I just don’t want her to think I’m blowing her off.”

  “You’re not blowing her off,” her mom said. “You just have to prioritize some things sometimes. You still see her at school, and on the bus, right? And you’ll have your time back together soon. But until then, you can’t be expected to do a poor job on your work just so you can see each other more than you already do.”

  Alice felt sad. She had homework to do, she couldn’t be there for her best friend on a hard day, it didn’t seem like there was anything she could do about it, and they were having fish for dinner.

  “Do you . . . do you think it’s possible that there’s a little tension there because you made it into honors classes and Cassidy didn’t?” Mrs. Kinney asked after taking a sip of water. She was clearly trying to choose her words delicately.

  “Cass isn’t stupid,” Alice said angrily.

  “That’s not what I said at all,” said Mrs. Kinney.

  “You clearly want me to stop being friends with Cassidy and just be friends with dorky honors-class kids!” Alice stood up and pushed her chair away. Deep down she knew that her mom didn’t mean that at all, but she felt like being mad about something.

  “Alice,” her mom said in a warning tone, but before they could talk more, Alice grabbed her backpack and stormed up to her room, slamming the door. She stood in her darkening room for a moment, not sure what to do now. Homework? Ugh.