Let's Pretend We Never Met

by Melissa Walker

  Agnes seems completely unaware that sometimes she talks at a crazy-loud volume and when she makes animal sounds or flinches at someone coming close to her, that makes people uncomfortable. You just can’t act that way in sixth grade. It wouldn’t even be okay in fifth.

  “Sorry, Lily’s a friend from back home,” I say to Shari on the phone.

  “Oh,” says Shari. “Well, I was just wondering if you wanted to come over and hang out today.”

  Yes. Yes. Yes.

  “Sure.”

  So Daddy drives me over to Shari’s house, which is only, like, ten minutes away, and it’s pretty and yellow with a big tree in the yard that has a swing under it. It fits her.

  Even though it’s cold out, I’m thinking we might make a snowman or play on the swing in front because who can waste all this amazing white stuff, but Shari has other plans.

  “We’re doing a spa day and a photo session,” she tells me. “First, face masks, then manicures, then makeup. After that we’ll do a fashion shoot with my older sister’s clothes—she’s on an overnight trip.”

  “Okay,” I say. And we start.

  The face mask recipe Shari found involves both peanut butter and eggs, and it’s really icky on my skin. When I wash it off, Shari says, “Doesn’t your face feel amazing?” And it does, but I don’t mention that that might be because it’s not covered in peanut butter and eggs anymore.

  When we do manicures, I go first and I choose a sparkly polish that has rainbow flecks in it. “I love the colors,” I say when she’s done painting my nails. Shari doesn’t say anything, but then she chooses this dark midnight blue called Velvet Vixen. She tells me that the rainbow polish is from when she was younger, like last year, and my nails suddenly look babyish to me.

  Shari’s sister’s name is Tanice, and everything in her room is monogrammed, from the red-and-white comforter to the gold curtains to the giant circle mirror on the wall that looks like she signed the bottom in lipstick. It makes me nervous to go in there because Tanice seems really into her stuff. I hesitate in the doorway, but Shari waves me in. “My sister has all the makeup!” she says.

  So we sit half and half on the spinning circular chair in front of Tanice’s big mirror, and Shari takes out more blush, eye makeup, and lipstick than I’ve ever seen in one place outside of the drugstore.

  “Close your eyes,” she says, and I do. She starts with a pencil really close to my lashes, and then she’s brushing my lids lightly with the eyeshadow applicator.

  “I’m really glad you moved here, Mattie,” says Shari, and her breath is soft on my cheek. It smells like the butterscotch candies she’s always eating.

  “Me too,” I say through my teeth, partly because I don’t want to move my face too much while she’s applying makeup and partly because I have no idea how my breath smells and she’s really, really close to me.

  I hear Shari click the eyeshadow shut, and I look to see her getting out some blush.

  “I was sad at the beginning of the year because Emily and Robin were both in Ms. Stoddard’s class,” she says, starting in on my cheeks. Ms. Stoddard is the other sixth-grade teacher. “Even though we got to eat lunch together, they were getting to be better friends.”

  “Mm-hmm,” I say. I can see that happening. Robin and Emily do seem close—they have inside jokes from being in class together all day. And I guess Shari and I are starting to have those too. The thought of that makes me feel warm inside.

  She pauses and leans back to look at my cheeks. “Hmm . . . I guess you need a different color,” says Shari, and then she giggles. I turn to the mirror and realize that Tanice’s blush shade is for darker skin—it looks too harsh on me.

  “Whoa!” I laugh.

  “Let me blend it,” says Shari, and she grabs a light-pink powder to mix in.

  When she starts to do the soft brushing on my cheeks again, I tell her that I know what she means about Robin and Emily. “My friends Lily and Josephine from home are becoming better friends with each other. I can tell even just by phone calls and stuff.”

  I silently think that even the phone calls aren’t happening anymore.

  Shari nods. “Moving must be hard.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “It’s kind of sad.” I stop but then I keep going, because it’s not only sad. “But it’s also kind of fun,” I say. “Meeting new people, I mean.”

  “Well, I’m glad you’re here,” Shari says again. “It makes things better.” She stops and holds the blush brush in midair. “Also, now your cheeks are better too.”

  I start to turn, but she puts her hand up and says, “Wait! You need a reveal moment at the end. Let me finish.”

  Shari opens a mascara tube and tells me to look up before she sweeps the bristles lightly against my lashes. It makes me blink a lot, but it’s over quickly.

  Then she moves on to my lips. “Open your mouth just a little,” she says. I do, and she gets out a gloss wand and paints me with a bright pink.

  When Shari puts down the gloss, she claps her hands together. “All done!” I start to open my eyes, but she says, “Wait! Let me spin you.” So I close them again, and she stands up and centers me on the stool. Then she takes ahold of my shoulders and makes me rotate one full turn.

  I laugh. “Okay, okay, can I look now?”

  “Yes.”

  When I open my eyes and stare into the mirror, I don’t recognize myself at first. Long lashes, black-lined eyelids, flushed cheeks, shiny lips. Shari is good at this! My face looks like me, but kind of . . . brighter. Older. Like a teenager.

  “Now you do me!” she says, and she closes her eyes and waits.

  Chapter 17

  This morning, Agnes knocks and she’s holding out her hands in two fists when I open the door.

  “Pick one!” she says.

  I tap her left hand and she opens it up to reveal Josh Jensen’s ring, back in bow form like I’d never untied it.

  I slip it onto my finger, knowing I won’t wear it to school anymore but also so glad it’s back to its real shape. “Thank you.” I wish I had something more to say. I can tell by Agnes’s smile that she knows how much I mean it.

  Then she shows me her door. It has the white hearts that we cut out of lacy paper earlier this week. Agnes framed them on pink and red tissue paper so apartment 914 looks like a love explosion. I tell her that and she says, “Oh good! I was going for LOVE!”

  Valentine’s Day is soon, and I got a card in the mail yesterday from Lily and Josephine—a joint one. I guess it was nice of them to remember to put a real letter in the mail and everything, but the stamp and the envelope and the way they signed it together made me feel even farther away from them.

  Agnes says her mom has to work and she wants to come with us to my grandmother’s today. When I call to ask Maeve, she gets a singsong in her voice and says, “Of course. Tell that lightning bug I’ve been waiting for her to visit!”

  Mama always works Saturdays at Blue Sky Bakery, so Daddy and I have been going to Maeve’s house on the weekends a lot. She’s doing a big “packing-up” project with some of her things for a yard sale, and I’m helping her. Maeve has trouble labeling the boxes. I found one marked “kitchen” that was full of summer clothes, and another marked “Felix” that had gardening tools in it. Dad said that Felix had been their cat when he was a kid, but that didn’t explain the gardening tools. So it’s good that we’re there. Also, she stumbled on her front steps over the weekend and she has a badly sprained wrist—I want to sign her cast.

  It’s unusual to be with Agnes on a Saturday because she and her mom usually spend weekends together since Mrs. Davis works so much during the week. I guess that’s part of Mrs. Davis being “present” and “balanced.” I also suspect that Agnes has therapy on weekends, but she’s never told me about that, so I don’t bring it up.

  I like being friends with Agnes, as long as we’re at home and it’s just us. So I’m nervous when Daddy drives us into the city to Maeve’s big old row house. But the mome
nt we walk inside, I realize it’ll be okay.

  It’s not because Agnes is polite to Maeve—most kids are like that with grandparents. And it’s not because she tells Maeve right away that she likes how the sun hits the blue-gray stones on the walkway outside. It’s something about the way she looks at each part of Maeve’s house—carefully, like she’s memorizing the details—that makes me glad I’m sharing it with her.

  “The game is afoot!” says Maeve, after we’ve taken off our coats and settled into the dining room to have lemonade and ginger cookies. Maeve and Daddy are drinking coffee, and her cast is a new kind—it’s made of some type of plastic that we can’t sign, which is disappointing. But at least there’s a game!

  Maeve is always making up detective clues for me to follow. It’s one of my favorite things, but last year, when I tried to explain it to Lily and Josephine, saying that maybe we could set up a mystery hunt for each other, they looked at me like I was crazy and then went back to watching their favorite YouTube star, this fourteen-year-old guy who, I’ll admit, has dreamy eyelashes and an amazing voice. So I pretended I was joking.

  Agnes is sitting straight up, eyes sparkling. Maeve meets her gaze.

  “There’s a blue marble egg missing from the bowl on the coffee table in the living room,” says Maeve, raising one eyebrow. “I’ll need your help to find it.”

  “Yes, sir!” shouts Agnes, her voice very serious.

  I laugh into my lemonade as Agnes pushes her chair back from the table. “Let’s go!”

  When we look at the bowl in the living room, there’s a tiny slip of paper underneath the remaining marble eggs. I read it out loud: “I guard the keys with a silent vow.”

  Immediately, she shouts, “The monk!”

  My mouth drops open. I know where the next clue is, but how does she know? In the entryway is a gigantic gold-framed mirror, and underneath it is a wooden monk figure that has a hook on the back to hold Maeve’s keys.

  When we get to the monk, Agnes finds a folded piece of paper underneath his bent knees.

  “Button, button, who’s got the button? I do, even though I’m not wearing any clothes,” she reads. Then she walks straight into the living room, with its gold carpet and cushy red couch. She heads for the reading chair in the corner, the maroon-colored one with the deep cushion. “Buttons,” she says, pointing. And she’s right: set into the back of the chair is a pattern of buttons. We hunt around and find clue number three under the back left leg.

  The search goes on and on like this—Agnes solving clues in record time while I follow her around like a surprised pet. The only moment where I have the chance to get involved is when clue number eight mentions a painting on the second floor, which Agnes hasn’t seen yet.

  We find the marble egg tucked into Maeve’s sewing chest after twelve clues, in less than thirty minutes. The game usually takes me at least an hour.

  How is Agnes so smart? It’s like her brain works faster than other people’s, or in a different way somehow that makes a really complicated puzzle look like a full picture to her right away.

  When we bring the egg back to the dining room, Maeve and Daddy are still having their coffee.

  “Well, you must have skipped a few clues, Honeypie,” Maeve says to me, wide-eyed.

  I shake my head no. “Agnes solved most of them.”

  “That’s not true, Mattie,” says Agnes, holding the egg up to the light and studying it carefully. “You were a very helpful assistant.”

  That makes Daddy and Maeve laugh, and I don’t mind. We won the game in no time at all, and Agnes was so into it that Maeve lets her keep the marble egg. Agnes acts like it’s a precious jewel.

  “Will you girls help me pack up the other eggs?” asks Maeve.

  “You’re selling them in the yard sale?” My eyes go wide, because I’ve been playing with those eggs since I was really little.

  “I’m just putting them away, Elodie,” she answers slowly. “For safety.”

  “She’s Mattie!” says Agnes in a cheerful voice. Maeve smiles in our direction, but she doesn’t look either of us in the eyes and she doesn’t correct herself.

  My stomach clenches.

  “We’ll be careful with them,” says Agnes, patting Maeve’s good hand. “Do you have tissue paper?”

  Maeve stands and walks over to open her marble-top table with the stationery drawer, where there’s a collection of soft rainbow tissue paper.

  “We’ll wrap them according to color,” says Agnes, picking out sheets of purple, green, silver, and gold to match the eggs.

  Daddy goes downstairs to grab a box from the basement for us, and Agnes and I head into the living room, where I hand her the eggs and she wraps each one with slow hands.

  When we’re done, I tape up the box and use a black magic marker to write “Marble Eggs” across the top. Agnes and I carry it into the dining room together.

  “Thank you, my darlings,” says Maeve.

  I nod, not sure what to say because I feel sad about putting away the eggs and I’m not even sure why.

  “Packing special things is hard,” says Agnes, and I see a gleam of light in Maeve’s eyes. That’s what she needed to hear . . . I wish I’d said it.

  Later, on the ride home, Agnes tells me that the kitchen is her favorite room at Maeve’s. That surprises me, because it’s really small and not as grand as the rest of the house. When I ask her why, she says, “Because it has a deep sink and a half-sized oven with two blue-flame burners and a green step stool so Maeve can reach the top cabinets.”

  And those are the exact reasons why it’s my favorite room too.

  Chapter 18

  This week, Agnes gave her presentation about Billie, and it seemed like it was going okay—she knew so much about how to care for a baby bird and her poster was really cool, with 3D parts and even a painted image of Billie in the corner. But then Lee started making tweeting noises from the back of the room. Mr. Perl silenced him, but after that I felt like I could hear every little twitter, and it was like the whole class was laughing at Agnes in a quiet way.

  Finn and Bryce started talking about going to the mall after school on Friday. They kept bringing it up, saying they were going to get new sneakers and also probably see a movie or something.

  Now it’s Thursday, and when we get off the bus to go home, instead of waving and heading toward his own neighborhood, which is down the hill from Butler Towers, Finn says, “Hey, Mattie—wait,” and I stop walking.

  I see out of the corner of my eye that Agnes is going inside, and I watch her stay still in the lobby, not looking back, but waiting for me to come in too, so that our out-of-school friendship can resume.

  When I turn to Finn, he’s standing very close to me. My arms are holding a book to my chest, and his coat sleeve is almost touching mine. I can see the shadows of his eyelashes on his cheeks and a tiny chapped part of his lip as he says, “Do you want to go to the mall with me and Bryce tomorrow?”

  “You and Bryce?”

  “Yeah, he’s asking Shari to go, and I thought I’d . . . you know, ask you.”

  He looks down and shifts his feet in the snow, stepping back a little.

  “Okay,” I say.

  His head snaps up, and I’m hit with the warmth of Finn’s big-toothed grin. It makes me smile involuntarily back at him.

  And we don’t say anything for a minute, just smile at each other. Until he says, “Awesome,” and I say, “Yeah,” and then a squishiness that isn’t all bad overtakes me and I turn to go into the building. When I look back at him, he’s still standing there grinning at me, and it makes me feel like I am lit by the brightest part of the sun.

  Agnes is waiting in the lobby, and she says, “How was your day?” like she does each afternoon.

  But I don’t feel like cooking or cutting paper hearts with Agnes today. I want to talk to Shari and tell her that Finn asked me to go to the mall and find out if Bryce asked her and what she said, and if the four of us are going to the mall
together, what does that mean?

  In the elevator, Agnes is telling me about how she wants to paint more pictures of Billie and all I can think about is the curve of Finn’s smile. I try to replay each word he said to me, and I want to write it down so I’ll always remember.

  But there’s no avoiding Agnes.

  Upstairs in my apartment, she gets out the ingredients for a recipe she wants to make and tells me to prep the carrots, so I start peeling. She’s talking, but I’m not listening, and it doesn’t seem to matter. She just keeps going. I tune in for a minute, and she’s saying something about the shapes of the clouds and how they fit her moods perfectly each day, and I just say to her, “I have to do something.”

  I walk out of the kitchen, leaving half the carrots unpeeled, and go to the computer in the living room, where I open my email to message Shari.

  MMM: did b ask u?

  SHARSTAR: y! F and u?

  MMM: y!

  SHARSTAR: do u like him?

  MMM: do u?

  SHARSTAR: idk

  Suddenly, I feel Agnes’s breath on my ear and I turn around to see her leaning over.

  “Is that Shari?”

  “Yes,” I snap at her, closing the laptop.

  “What were you typing about?”

  “Nothing,” I say. I’m mad at Agnes, and I’m not even sure why.

  “Okay.” She shrugs. “Then let’s finish!”

  She’s smiling her big smile and is not upset or anything at being left out of the conversation with Shari, and I don’t get Agnes at all.

  But I want her to go home. So I say, “I’m done. Why don’t you go to your own apartment now?”

  “We’re making a recipe,” she says matter-of-factly. “We have to finish.”

  That’s when Mama comes in and says, “Agnes, maybe you and I can work on the food and let Mattie have time on her own.” I wonder how much she’s heard, because she seems to know a lot.

  “Okay,” says Agnes. She walks back to the kitchen without looking at me.