Lucky

by Rachel Vail

  “No, Kirstyn,” I said. “It’s not. Forget it. It’s not OUR party anymore, it’s yours. It’s all about you, your taste, what you want, your flower arrangements, your stupid little photo albums, your perfect shoes not dyed to match. It was supposed to be about our friendship, not about you in the green dress, the center of attention as always.”

  Her mouth dropped open.

  “Phoebe,” Gabrielle said. “I can’t believe you would say that.”

  I clenched my jaw, thinking, Sure, you’re Kirstyn’s new best friend, you should defend her, Gabrielle. Just watch out when she finds somebody new and drops you, too.

  “If you want the green dress, you can have it,” Kirstyn said.

  “It is totally not about the green dress,” I shrieked, louder than I’d intended. I tried to settle my voice, my breathing, my heart. “It’s just…tacky, the whole overblown party. My parents think it’s disgusting, and honestly so do my sisters, and so do I. And so does Ann.”

  “You do?” Zhara asked Ann.

  “I guess,” Ann said meekly.

  “She does,” I said. “We just feel like it’s ridiculous and gross and honestly I don’t want to be a part of something that reeks of ooh, look how great and rich and pretty we are!”

  Now it was not just my small circle of friends staring at me, it was everybody on their way into school. Even Bridget Burgess stopped, her hands in the pockets of the jeans that used to be Quinn’s, and watched as if this were a show being put on for her benefit.

  Luke turned around. When he saw me, he smiled a little. “How was the bluefish?” he asked.

  “Um, good,” I answered.

  “She caught like a thirty pounder,” he said to my friends, who nodded a little numbly.

  “We’re kind of in the middle of a big fight here,” Gabrielle told him.

  “Yeah, I gathered,” Luke said as the bell rang. “Well, you going in?” he asked me.

  “Um, soon,” I said.

  “Flirt much?” Kirstyn asked coldly.

  “No,” I said, not looking at Luke.

  “Why don’t you just admit you like him already, Phoebe?”

  I glared at her. Forget it. I wasn’t giving in anymore, I was just sick of it. Too bad. “I did,” I said. “I do. I like him. I admit it.”

  “It’s about time,” Kirstyn said.

  “Yeah,” Luke said, behind me.

  “I just think it’s so lame when a person feels like she has to hide the truth from her best friends,” Kirstyn said. “It’s so…insulting.”

  “It’s not about you, Kirstyn,” I said. “Believe it or not, not everything is about you!”

  “I never said it was,” she snapped back. “I was talking about you!”

  “Well, we’ll be late…” Luke said. He waited a second but we weren’t budging, obviously, so he and his buddies headed in.

  Kirstyn and I had turned away from each other. I could see Gabrielle looking back and forth between us but I wasn’t backing down this time.

  “Come on, you guys,” Gabrielle whispered. “Let’s just forget this happened and go in. By lunchtime we’ll…”

  “No, Gabrielle,” I said. “We can’t just move on, and not everything is fine. Kirstyn said it herself—‘I think it’s clear to all of us that this is good-bye.’ Remember? Well, I for one just don’t see any reason to have my good-byes catered and photographed.”

  “You’re not…” Zhara started. “You don’t want to do the party?”

  I glared at her.

  She swallowed hard. “So wait, just the four of us, then, or, Ann, are you pulling out, too?”

  “I guess,” Ann said.

  Zhara put her hand on her hip. “How can we…”

  “We can’t,” Kirstyn said, flipping her sunglasses down onto her face. “We’ll just cancel.”

  “But what about the deposit?” Zhara asked.

  “My mother will take care of it, don’t worry,” Kirstyn said. “It will be worth it to me, to be done with this whole thing. I never wanted to do the stupid party in the first place.”

  “That’s not what you were saying this weekend,” Gabrielle objected.

  “Shut up, Gabrielle,” Kirstyn said. “Phoebe is right. It’s over.” She turned and stormed toward school, leaving the rest of us, as always, to straggle in after her.

  22

  I WON, I TOLD MYSELF. I did it. And it went surprisingly smoothly, too.

  So why did I feel so bad?

  I ambled through my classes, doodling in my now-useless party planning speckled notebook, with the purple Sharpie Kirstyn had bought in the five-pack, to give us each one. Everything was connected to her. We did our best not to look at each other. Well, actually everybody was doing their best to stay out of my way. I went to the library at lunch and opened my party planning notebook and began a list:

  REASONS I AM LUCKY TO BE OUT OF THE PARTY

  1. No other choice—had to get out of it

  2. You can’t choose friends over family

  3. Green dress

  Then I cried for a minute, hiding behind the math textbook I was pretending to study. I tore out that page and started a new list on the next:

  WHY I HATE MYSELF

  1. I just wrecked my friendship with my best friend.

  2. Maybe she’s selfish and materialistic, but she’s been my best friend for four years.

  3. I’m not going to have a graduation party.

  4. Nobody likes me anymore.

  5. I am in the library at lunch.

  6. The way Kirstyn looked at me just before she went in to school.

  7. The way she hasn’t looked at me since.

  8. I am probably going to have to sit in the high school library every lunch period for the next four years.

  9. Kirstyn will never forgive me and neither will any of my other friends, ex-friends I mean, because I have no friends now.

  I sat there reading over my list for a while. It was really bad. But the main reason wasn’t on it. As the end-of-lunch bell rang, I added a final reason to hate myself:

  10. As much bad stuff as I can (and did) say about Kirstyn, she is not the real reason I canceled the party, and I blamed her anyway.

  I collected my books and left the library. All afternoon I tried to convince myself that it didn’t really matter. What I had said was all true. It was ridiculous to spend so much money, or make our parents spend it, for an eighth-grade graduation party. Kirstyn does like to be the center of attention. She does want to exclude people, and she does look down on you if your family is not in the same league as hers. Even if I had told her the truth, it would have ended our friendship anyway, probably. The Phoebe she liked was happy, smooth, easy, untroubled. But that’s not me anymore. So what does it matter, ultimately, if I blamed her? She is at fault on some level. Isn’t she?

  I didn’t go to track, even though our last meet of the year was coming up in two days and if you miss a practice you don’t run. I didn’t care. No way could I have run anyway. I could barely drag myself up to the speed of sulk. I sank down in the back row of the early bus and kept my eyes closed the whole way home.

  Mom was sitting on the front steps when I got there, talking on her cell phone and fiddling absently with her necklace, the sapphire on the thin silver chain. She hung up as I got to the walk. She was wearing thick socks, jeans, and a pale pink long-sleeve T-shirt.

  I stopped in front of her. Maybe she wanted to be alone. She looked kind of like a kid, her arms resting on her knees like that. I wondered for the first time in my life if it might be better to have a mom who was big and chubby and could gather me in her arms and rock me.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Hi,” she said.

  I swallowed. “Well…I guess I’ll go in and…”

  “Wait.”

  I stopped. Oh, dread. I sat down a few feet from her on the front step and looked at the front yard, out to our hedges that were still only medium.

  She sighed, kind of sadly.
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  I should never come home early, I thought. What if she started to cry? I wouldn’t know how to deal with that at all. She’s the mom. The grown-up. She’s not supposed to fall apart, especially not in front of me. I can’t handle it!

  My hand levitated again and hovered near her shoulder and then, almost maybe by accident, landed on it. I felt her boney shoulder tense under my fingers and I almost pulled away, scalded, but then, I didn’t.

  Her shoulder relaxed.

  I slipped my hand around to her other shoulder and pulled her toward me. She came easily and rested her head against my shoulder. Neither of us said anything more. We just sat there like that and I looked out at the tulips blooming down by the hedges, which I had never noticed before. It was nice, kind of. It felt good. It was weirdly comforting, to comfort her.

  “You know what’s so dumb?” she asked, pulling away.

  Me? “What?” I was a little disappointed but also a little relieved because my arm was starting to fall asleep. It’s not in shape for that, I guess.

  “Double doors.” She pointed behind us to the massive entrance we never use.

  “That’s what’s dumb?”

  “I was so freakishly proud of these double doors. The day we bought the house, while you girls were in school, Daddy and I came over after we signed the contracts and I threw these double doors open and stood in the wide space there, surveying all the grandeur I had just bought for my family.”

  She stood up and winced a bit. Her right leg looked stiff.

  “That was the last time I ever opened those doors. I tried today and I couldn’t get them open. I think I lost the key.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Maybe it’s in the drawer with the tape.”

  “No, I looked.” Hands on hips, she turned to face the front lawn. “It’s just so…emblematic. This is hard on you girls, I know that, and I’m sorry I’m putting you through this.”

  “No, Mom, it’s not your fault.”

  “Yes, it is.” She sat back down beside me, wincing a little. “You can’t own your victories if you won’t admit your failures, you know?”

  I kind of shrugged. I didn’t know, really. It sounded right, but everything she says does, and it’s only later that I realize I didn’t really know what she meant.

  “I got an interesting call this afternoon,” Mom said.

  “Oh?” I hated the tremor in my voice.

  “From Kirstyn’s mother,” she said. “I admit I always kind of thought of her as a little, what? Annoying. A small-minded materialistic busybody, if I’m completely honest.”

  I sat on my hands to hide their shaking. “Wha…Why did she call?”

  “She called about your graduation party.”

  “Again?” I asked. Mom looked surprised at the question so I added, “Daddy said she left a message.” I tried to hold down the panic. “What did you tell her? I told Daddy I was handling it myself.”

  “Yes, well, apparently she called again last night after dinner, and spoke to Daddy about your party. He told her he thought that you girls had canceled the party. She said absolutely not, she knew nothing about that.”

  “I, see, the reason…” I stammered, but luckily Mom interrupted me.

  “You were working on that angle?”

  “Yes.”

  “I figured,” she said. “Well, meanwhile, my check for the down payment for your party bounced. You know what that is, right? When a check bounces?”

  “Yes,” I said. We were all business, me and Mom, having a quiet little conference there on the front step. “What did Daddy tell her?”

  “Kirstyn’s mother thought that there was a bank mistake. Your father, I gather, corrected that impression.” She sniffed once. Her eyes focused on the hedges bordering our lawn. “He told her that there was an issue—that was his word—an issue for me at work and we couldn’t afford—”

  “No! He told her that?” I demanded. I stood up and kicked the step. “I can’t believe he did that to me!”

  “To you?”

  I gripped my jaw tight and stared at the stone landing under my feet. Rain drops were starting to fall. Great, just great.

  “When she called me, just before, on my cell, I was blindsided myself.”

  “What did she say?” My voice was cool and quiet again, like Mom’s.

  “Well, honestly, she could not have been more gracious.” Mom took a deep breath and let it out with a small half chuckle. “She asked how I was holding up.” Mom sighed, then continued. “And she said, and I agree, that the adult work world and its issues are nothing for you girls to worry about. She said, Please do not give it one moment’s thought.”

  “Meaning what?” I asked.

  “Meaning, she wants to pay our share of the graduation party.”

  “No!” I didn’t care that I was screaming. “Absolutely not!”

  “My words exactly. I said we were not comfortable taking charity from—”

  “Charity?! Oh, my God.”

  “Right. Her position was that it wasn’t charity but friendship.”

  “You don’t even like each other!”

  “True. But she meant you and Kirstyn. Apparently you have been a wonderful friend to Kirstyn these past few years. Her mother thinks the world of you, Phoebe. She went on and on about how beautiful your friendship with Kirstyn is and how important it is to celebrate that. She said she actually envied what you and Kirstyn share, because she never had that, herself—close friends she could really count on. She’s so happy Kirstyn has that, with you.”

  She knew. It suddenly hit me. Kirstyn knew. She stood there and took it from me this morning, I realized, even though she knew the truth. Because she knew it. “The party is off.” I closed my eyes. “I canceled it.”

  “You don’t have to do that. We’ll find a way…. This isn’t your problem.”

  “Too late,” I said. “I canceled it this morning.”

  “Oh.” Mom blinked twice. “Because of my…issues?”

  “Because of a lot of things.”

  Mom nodded. “Okay, then. Generous of her to offer, though. I’ll have to send her a note. Let’s go inside. I have a conference call at three thirty.”

  She picked up my bag. I followed her down the walk toward the door we actually use, but didn’t go up the step. She turned around after she opened the screen door and said, “Come on in, it’s raining.”

  I shook my head. I knew where I had to go.

  “What are you doing?” she asked impatiently. “I have to—”

  “You said, remember with the tea kettle, the drippy one? You said we are the Avery women; we will never be intimidated.” The rain running down my face fell into my mouth when I opened it to talk. I didn’t really care. “But I was. I was intimidated. I wanted you to be proud of me. I tried to act strong, be like you, but I’m not. I’m always intimidated. Did you know that about me?”

  “Phoebe, come inside and we’ll…Where do you think you’re going?”

  I had turned away and was walking the rest of the way down the path, arms crossed over my chest, toward the driveway. “To Kirstyn’s,” I said.

  “It’s pouring!” Her BlackBerry was ringing. She wasn’t answering it.

  I stopped and turned to face my mother. “I thought I was a Valkyrie.”

  She tilted her head at me.

  “But I wasn’t. Kirstyn was.”

  23

  BY THE TIME THE CAR PULLED UP the long driveway, the rain had eased into a drizzle. I was sitting on the steps leading up to their walk, soaked through. It was sooner than I’d expected, but track must’ve been canceled. Kirstyn’s mother got out of the car first.

  “Phoebe!” she shrieked. “What’s wrong? What are you doing here in the rain? What happened, honey?”

  I didn’t stand up. I was hugging my legs for warmth and my shirt was see-through. “I wanted to talk with Kirstyn.”

  “Come in, come in!”

  “No thank you,” I said.

  Kirstyn’s mothe
r’s face switched from concerned to surprised to serious. “Kirstyn,” she said. “Phoebe wants…”

  Kirstyn got out of the car and glanced at me briefly before slamming the door shut behind her and walking toward us.

  “Phoebe needs to talk with you,” her mother said. “Then come inside and dry off. Okay? I’ll cut up some strawberries. Would you like some fresh iced tea?”

  “Mom,” Kirstyn said warningly.

  Her mother slipped into the house without another word.

  “You knew,” I said.

  Kirstyn didn’t react at all.

  “How?”

  She slid her eyes over to mine.

  “Your mother told you.”

  “No.” She smoothed her hair back toward her ponytail.

  “But you know, you knew, what was…about my mom, and everything.”

  “You’re not the only family with an old baby monitor, you know.”

  I dropped my face into my hands and rocked for a minute.

  “I thought we were best friends,” Kirstyn said. “When you promised this party would be the greatest thing, all that—you know I didn’t give a flying crap about the party, at least not at first. But then I started feeling like, well, you’re the one who said it: The point is us. Remember? You said that. The point is us. I believed you. I thought what you were really promising was that this whole stupid party, the flowers, the hideous balloons, all of it—was a celebration of us, of our friendship, and how great it’s been, how lucky we are.”

  “It was. That’s exactly what it was supposed to be.”

  “Apparently not,” she said. “Turns out our friendship isn’t about being there for each other. It’s about you, looking down from Phoebe World to console poor Kirstyn, with her crazy parents and no sisters. When it hits the fan for you, though, instead of trusting me, turning to me like I have come to you, how many times? A million? Over and over I tell you my parents this or my life that. But did you come over crying and saying, Holy crap, my life is going down the toilet, my mother the perfect goddess screwed up and I’m scared? No, not Phoebe. You couldn’t handle letting me comfort you. No way. Admit maybe you and your perfect family had some problems of your own? No, you had a better idea: Why don’t I humiliate my best friend in front of the entire school instead?”