“Please.” I clasp my hands together. I probably look silly and everyone is probably watching, but I don’t care. I want my best friend back.
Claudia sighs loudly. “Fine.”
My eyes light up.
“Later, though.” She looks up at the clock, which is about to ring for first period. “After school.”
“I can wait.”
And I can. I think back to the kitchen table again, about all this time that Mom’s been gone.
I’ve learned to do that, at least.
* * *
“I have been keeping secrets from you.” Claudia and I are sitting in my backyard, her on the tire swing, me on the ground beneath it. It’s sunny and warm and the sky is a clear blue, but inside, I feel full of dark clouds.
“And you told them to Libby instead?” Claudia’s voice is shaky. “I’m your best friend, Veronica.”
“I know.” I pluck a blade of grass from the lawn, then force myself to meet Claudia’s eyes. “I didn’t tell you for a reason, though. I know you’ve been sad about your parents and I didn’t want to stress you out even more.”
“You keeping secrets stresses me out.” Claudia pushes off the ground, setting the tire swing twirling in a circle. I watch her spin, my own head whirling even faster. “And that’s … well, it’s a dumb reason not to tell me. I’d rather be more stressed out than be totally in the dark.”
I imagine Claudia and me stumbling through a darkened room, reaching out for each other and banging into things. It’s exactly the way I’ve been feeling lately, at home and with her.
“Lights are good,” I admit.
I think Claudia cracks a smile, but by the time the tire spins back around, the smile’s gone again. “Yeah. And secrets are bad.”
“I know.” My nose does that “I’m totally going to cry” tingly thing, but I don’t try to hold back the tears. I’ve been holding back too much lately.
“Mom isn’t on a business trip.” The first words are hard to get out, but once the dam is breached, the rest of them flow out like roaring floodwaters. “She’s in rehab and she’s been drinking too much and she’s an alcoholic and I was afraid that if I told you you’d worry or look at me weird or think Mom was messed up or I was messed up and … and … I might not get to do softball because Mom and Dad are all stressed and they’ll be too busy to bring me and it costs money and I don’t know what I even want to do…” I break off, my breath coming in gasps.
Claudia reaches down and squeezes my hand. “I’m so sorry, Veronica.”
I squeeze back. “Thanks.” I look up at Claudia hopefully, but that’s all she says. “Are you still mad?” I ask.
Claudia sighs, then stops the tire swing and finally looks me in the eye. “Yes. No. Kind of? I’m just sad, I guess. And confused? Why didn’t you trust me?”
“I did trust you, though! I do!” I want to hug Claudia, but I can’t risk doing anything that could make things worse. (She’s on a tire swing, too, so that’d be pretty awkward.) “I was just trying to make your life easier. And to be honest, I guess I was a little bit jealous.”
“Jealous?”
“That your mom wants to spend so much time with you. Meanwhile, mine’s off at rehab and Dad’s working nonstop. I miss them.”
“I miss you,” Claudia says. “And I wish I could have helped more.”
“I miss you, too!” A tear drips down my face. “I miss everyone.”
“Except Libby.” Claudia bites her lip. “Is she your new best friend now?”
“No way!” I climb onto the tire swing next to Claudia, causing it to dip us both backward. I grip onto the chains. “She is my friend, though. She was easy to talk to.”
I don’t know how to tell Claudia that sometimes it’s easier to share a life-altering secret with someone besides your best friend.
How, that way, you don’t have to push through layers of childhood memories.
How starting off on a clean sheet of paper means that you don’t have to find a clear space to write a new story on.
(I don’t tell Claudia why Libby understands so well, though. That’s not my secret to share, after all.)
“Oh.”
“I didn’t want you to worry.” I try to catch Claudia’s eye, but she’s looking at the grass. At the sky. At a squirrel running by. Anywhere but at me, the worst best friend ever. “And I didn’t want you to look at me any different. Remember how you said I’m Veronica with the perfect family?”
“Right. That.” Claudia sighs.
“We’re not perfect at all,” I admit. “Dad’s Mr. Cheerful half the time, Mom’s not even here, and I’m…” I trail off. “I’m just angry. A lot.”
“I guess maybe there’s no such thing as a perfect family,” Claudia says softly.
“Maybe not.” My eyes follow a bird as it flits from tree to tree.
“Did you know that some people think birds bring good luck?” Claudia follows my gaze.
The bird finally settles down in a nest at the top of our old oak tree. “Grandma Helen told me that once,” I say. “She said that a bird pooped on her head on her way to her wedding, and that it was actually a good-luck sign.”
“Ew!” Claudia covers her head with her hands.
“Exactly.” I giggle, then cover my mouth in horror. “Can you even imagine? I’d say it’s the exact opposite of good luck. But Grandma said that she just wiped it off and went and got married. I guess it worked, because they never got divor—” I break off, my hands flying to my mouth. “Oh no. I shouldn’t have said that.”
Claudia waves her hand in the air. “It’s okay. Really. My parents probably are going to get divorced, and no amount of bird poop is going to stop that from happening.” Her words are sad, but there’s a twinkle of something else—hope? acceptance?—in her eyes. “It’s probably a good thing anyway.”
“A good thing?” I say slowly.
“Yeah.” Claudia grasps onto the chains and tilts her head back toward the sky. “You’ve heard them fight. It’s awful.”
“True.” I remember going over to Claudia’s house during winter vacation. We made friendship bracelets to the soundtrack of her parents yelling about her mom not refilling the car with gas and her dad not vacuuming the house enough. Claudia turned the music up so high to drown them out that I practically lost my hearing.
“It only got worse,” she says.
“Yeah, I know.” That’s why we hung out at my house after that. Then at Tabitha’s and Lauren’s when I got so embarrassed about my mom that I didn’t want anyone over, either.
“I saw a robin in the backyard one morning last winter, after they had a really big fight.” I’m not sure what Claudia’s point is, so I let her keep talking. “It was hopping around our garden, even though everything was all bare and wilted. There were leaves blowing all over the place, a bunch of dirt, and this little bird, just bopping along.”
I smile at the idea of a bopping bird. I bet it loves music as much as I do.
“I went online to look up what robins eat and found this whole website about bird meanings. About how seeing a robin, especially in a garden, means that good luck will happen to the people who live there.” Claudia grips the chains more tightly. “It made me think that Mom and Dad were going to stop fighting so much, that all I had to do was find enough robins and everything would fix itself. I found so many robins, but it never worked out.”
She sniffles, and I reach out to touch her shoulder. “This really stinks.”
I didn’t know what to say to Claudia before. I didn’t know what someone with separated parents would want to hear and I didn’t want to make it worse. Now, though, I say what’s in my heart. I say what I wanted to hear—what I still want to hear—from people. That when parents have problems that kids can’t fix, it just plain stinks.
Claudia wipes her eyes but doesn’t quite get one of the tears dripping down her right cheek. I reach out and get it for her.
“You didn’t have to do that.”
“I know,” I say simply. “I wanted to. To make up for what a jerk I’ve been.”
“You haven’t been a jerk.” Claudia takes a deep breath and wipes her face again. “You were scared.”
“So were you,” I say. “And I should have trusted that you’d be here for me. You’ve never given me any reason not to.”
“What about that prank I played in fourth grade…” Claudia trails off, that same spark entering her eyes again.
I immediately know what she’s talking about. “When you put glitter in every single pocket of my softball bag…”
“And when you opened it up, it got all over your mom’s car?” Claudia is laughing so hard she almost topples over. “That was the best!”
“It was not!” I exclaim. “I got grounded for the whole weekend and it took ages for me to brush my hair without getting glitter all over the place.” I giggle. “Mom said you were a bad influence on me.”
Claudia bites her lip. “Maybe I am.”
“What? No,” I protest.
“Or at the very least, maybe I’m not a good friend.” Claudia sniffles. “I wish I’d shown you that I could be trustworthy with the stuff about your mom.”
“You did! I mean, you are.” I take a deep breath and try to explain. “I think I just didn’t want to change things with us. I didn’t want to make you sadder or hurt our friendship with all this bad news.”
“But your bad news is reality,” Claudia says. “Same with the stuff about my parents. That’s why I told you. Because I know that our friendship is strong enough to survive a little bit of sadness.”
“Or a lot,” I say.
“Or a lot.”
“I’m sorry I kept Mom’s alcoholism a secret.” I say it as firmly as I can, and I look Claudia in the eyes. I need her to know how serious I am. “I know—I guess I knew all along—that you wouldn’t judge her. Or me.”
There’s a teeny-tiny part of me that’s still afraid that Claudia will judge me—that everyone in the world will—but I push it deep underground, under another layer of hard rock that no shovel will be able to penetrate.
“I’m sorry about the talent show, too. I didn’t mean to leave you out.” I kind of did, but I don’t tell her that part. “You can be in the act, too, if you—”
“No way!” Claudia laughs and shakes her head. “But I will be there cheering for you.”
“Yay!” Having Claudia in the audience will make the show even better.
“Your mom is awesome.” Claudia gives me a hug. “I’m glad she’s getting better. I’m glad your family will be getting better.”
“I don’t know what’s going to happen once Mom is home. Or what she’s going to be like when I see her again.” I say the words quietly. It’s the first time I’ve spoken my fear out loud.
“She’ll be different. You’ll all be different. Just like my family will be.”
“What if that stinks, too?” I ask.
“It might. But it might not.” Claudia’s voice is hopeful, but her eyes look worried. Maybe we’ll both be worried for a long time. Maybe that’s okay.
“But we’ll get through it.” I hug her back.
“Together.”
Thirty-Two
“Fine.” I walk into the family room and huff out a breath. “I’ll go.”
“Go?” Dad looks up from his show. He’s been binging this high fantasy epic about dragons and warriors and half monster–half gods that’s basically a bunch of people in armor constantly fighting. I tried to watch it with him once and was bored in like five seconds. I could barely see anyone’s face, never mind hear the dialogue over the clashing of swords.
Dad’s rapt, though, as usual. “Hold on a sec, Veronica.” I thought he was going to pause. Wasn’t my dramatic entrance dramatic enough? I even tossed my hair and pouted out my lip. He apparently didn’t notice any of that, though, because he finishes out the scene, where a massive dragon breathes fire over an entire town, before clicking the TV off.
At least I have his full attention now.
“What’s that?” he asks. “You’ll go where?” He looks at his watch. “It’s late, honey. I don’t want you out too long after dark.”
I guiltily remember my midnight journey to the practice area in the park and force my face to look as innocent as possible. “I’ll go see Mom,” I announce. “For Family Day, I mean.”
It’s like my words have transformed Dad into another person, like he’s an actor who showed up to a movie set with a bare face and messy hair and stepped out of the makeup trailer a glamorous superstar. “You will?” he breathes. “Oh, honey, I’m so glad. This will mean so much to your mother.”
“I’m not doing it for her,” I grump, although I’m not sure who I’m doing this for. Me? Claudia? My family? Whatever the reason, I know that I have to go.
“I’m just so glad you came to this decision—”
“Stop.” I hold up a hand. “It wasn’t all my decision and you know it.”
Dad’s cheeks get pink. Good. He should be embarrassed.
“I got all your hints. As usual.” I shake my head. “Dad, you don’t need to set up some mental gymnastics obstacle course to get my attention. I’m not a detective you have to clue in, either. You can just talk to me.”
Dad fiddles with the buttons on the remote control, even though the TV is off. “I know.” Channel up, channel down. Volume up, volume down. I better be careful the next time I turn the TV on.
“Do you?” I sit down next to Dad and put my hand on his arm. “I’m not going to get scared away by what’s happening with Mom.” I smile sadly. “There’s nowhere to go. I have to deal with this because I love Mom. I love you. You guys are family, which means you’re stuck with me.”
It’s the same with Claudia. We’ve been best friends for so long that she’s basically like family. She’s stuck with me, too. She loves me and she loves my mom. How could I have ever thought she’d think differently of me? Of us? How could she have worried the same thing about me?
Maybe deep down, we’re all afraid of losing the things we love the most.
We don’t have to be, though. Elastic bands may stretch and stretch until they snap, but we’re not cheap elastic bands. We’re not even bungee cords, which are strong enough to hold people when they jump off bridges. The bonds between people are thicker than that.
Especially the bonds between friends and family.
“I’m sorry I didn’t ask you,” Dad says finally. “I guess I have some things to work on, too, just like your mother does.” His eyes brighten. “And hey! Family Day will be the perfect place to do that!”
“Okay…,” I say guardedly. “What’s this whole day about anyway?”
“It’ll be great!” Dad exclaims, and I honestly can’t tell if he’s genuinely excited or a totally optimistic fakerpants. “Family Day will help both of us,” Dad continues. “We’ll get to go to classes to learn all about your mother’s illness, talk with other family members about what they’re going through, and maybe see your mother’s room.”
“You’re not exactly painting the prettiest picture,” I say. I had imagined the three of us eating cookies and drinking lemonade together. Maybe they’d even have sports events, like they did at field day in elementary school. We’d play volleyball and have three-legged races. It’d be corny, but fun. We’d bond. “Will we get to do anything fun with Mom?”
“We’ll get to have a meal with her,” Dad say slowly. “And visit with her. We’ll be doing a family therapy session together, too.”
“Yippee.”
“Veronica.” Dad raises his eyebrows. “You just told me that I need to communicate.”
That’s you, though, I think to myself. It’s something that we already knew you had trouble with. What if it turns out that I’m doing something that’s messing up our family beyond repair? What if it’s something I can’t fix?
“What if I’m not good at therapy?” I whisper.
Dad puts his arm around me
. He smells like sawdust and coffee. “It’s impossible to be bad at therapy,” he says softly. “You just need to talk and be honest.”
“Libby said the same thing.”
“Libby?”
“My new friend. Her mom’s also an alcoholic, and she’s been trying to get me to go to a support group. She made the All-Star team, too.”
Dad blinks. “Well, that’s a lot of information.” He gives me a hug. “I’m glad that you two have each other. And I’m proud of you for making the team. I know you’ve been working really hard.”
“I thought you said we can’t afford it.” Last time we had this conversation, I was a total grumpapotamus. Today, though, I’m not even mad. I know that Libby and I have a good chance at winning the talent show. And even if we don’t … maybe not playing wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.
No.
Of course we’ll win. Of course I’ll be able to play. That’s what this year has been all about, after all. Softball is what’s always connected me and Mom before. If we lose that, it could ruin her recovery—and our bond—once she comes home.
“We’re still figuring out what we can afford,” Dad says evenly. “It’s a conversation in progress.”
I roll my eyes. “That’s total dad-speak, you know.”
“Well, I’m a dad, so that’s what you’re going to get.” Dad ruffles my hair (which—ugh—he knows I hate). “We still have a few weeks to figure everything out before the season starts. But I do want you to know how proud I am. How proud Mom will be, too.”
The thought makes me feel warm inside.
“I’m glad you want to go to Family Day,” Dad says. “It’ll help all of us, I promise. We’ll get to talk about what life will be like when your mother gets home. What we can do to make things easier and how she can help us, too.”
“Okay.” It doesn’t sound that bad, actually. Guidelines for Mom’s homecoming will definitely help. Because even though we don’t know when Mom is getting discharged, it suddenly hits me that she will be discharged. Pretty soon, Mom will be home. And even though that’s all I’ve wished for lately, the thought scares me now.
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