We just sat there, not looking at each other. Finally I said, “Well, I should probably get going. I have some stuff to take care of.”
Lindsey nodded. “Yeah, I need to get ready for a date. I’ll see you in school next week?”
“Yeah.” I pushed back my chair and stood up. “Well, it was nice hanging out with you. I hope you have fun tonight.”
“Thanks. You, too.” Lindsey also got up and stood there for a moment, clutching her purse in front of her. “Oh, hey, if you ever want to hang out—Peter knows some guys from another school, and I think some of them are single. We could, um, go out on a double date sometime.”
I shook my head. “I’m still not interested in dating anyone. Thanks for the offer, though. Tell Peter hi for me.”
We said one last good-bye and went our separate ways.
When I got to the car, I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and dialed Heather’s number. “Hey,” I said when she picked up. “I’m bored. Do you want to hang out?”
“Sure!” she said with enthusiasm. “Glen and Ashleigh were telling me about this bowling alley that turns on all these black lights and glowing stuff at night on the weekends. It sounded like fun. Do you want to see if they want to go?”
That did seem like the kind of drama-free fun that I needed right then. “Oh, yeah, I’ve heard about that place! Let me just find out from my mom what time we’re doing dinner tonight, and then we can coordinate with everyone to meet up later.”
Mom agreed to let me go bowling with my friends that night, but first she asked me to stop by the grocery store on the way home to pick up some things she needed for dinner.
Madrone was not big enough to attract any of the big chain stores. The town had one tiny mom-and-pop store called Johnny’s Supermarket which carried the basics. If we needed anything special, we had to drive half an hour or more to get to a bigger store in San Andreas or Cave City. Lindsey’s mom worked as one of the managers, and just about everyone shopped there, so I usually ran into someone I knew.
But there was one person who I didn’t expect to see when I walked up the bread aisle: a certain mischievous Fae, peeking at me from around a corner.
I stopped short in surprise. I didn’t think that I’d ever just run into Dandelion in public before. But there was no mistaking that self-satisfied smirk, or his outrageous yellow t-shirt with a picture of a frightened chicken on the front. “What are you doing here?” I asked.
“Oh, I was just in the neighborhood and I need to buy—uh—” He turned and looked at the nearest shelf. He looked up and down the bread products and grabbed a package of English muffins at random. “Some of these things.” Dandelion looked at them with an expression of curiosity. “Nooks and crannies. These have holes in them? And that’s a good thing?”
I shook my head and laughed. “There’s air bubbles in the dough when they bake. It’s a—a texture thing? So they hold more melted butter or jam or whatever you like to put on them.”
“Fascinating.” He stood there, holding the English muffins, and looked around the aisle. “But there is no butter or jam for them.”
“They’re in another aisle.”
Dandelion frowned. “Why not keep them together if they go together?”
I rolled my eyes. I didn’t have time to explain to him how grocery stores worked. “What are you really doing here, Dandelion?”
He turned and looked at me. “Checking up on you. The last time we spoke, you seemed troubled about a number of things. I wanted to see how you were doing now.”
I looked down at my feet and blushed. “Things are going okay. My parents are helping Akasha bring her grades up in school, and Lindsey just started talking to me again.”
“Hm.” He tilted his head to one side and scrutinized me. “So you think everything is resolved now? No other problems?”
I shrugged. “Yeah, everything’s great. I’m going out with my friends tonight for bowling, and I think we’ll have a lot of fun.”
“With Lindsey? Or that fox boy who seemed so interested in you last time?”
“Well, no, Lindsey’s going on a date with Peter, and I have no idea what Kai is doing. Heather, Glen, and Ashleigh are all coming.”
Dandelion raised an eyebrow. “Oh, really.”
I sighed. “I don’t think I’m going to hang out with Lindsey much anymore. She’s going to be busy with her new boyfriend, and we’re just not close like we used to be.”
“And you’re okay with that?”
I threw up my hands. “Even if I’m not, I can’t make her change. When I tried to talk to her about it, we got into this huge fight and we didn’t speak to each other all week long. I was going to make her come apologize to me so that she’d have time to think about it and maybe realize how bad she is, but—” I sighed and shook my head.
Dandelion put his arm around my shoulder. “Why did you make up with her if you still feel mad?”
I shifted my basket of groceries to my other hand and leaned into his arm. “My parents told me that they were worried about the fight and wanted me to apologize, so I did. And I guess I realized that what I was waiting for wasn’t going to happen.”
“I thought you told me before that you wanted to stop letting your parents make all of your decisions for you,” Dandelion said with a frown.
“I know. I mean, I don’t mean to let them, but when they sit down and explain everything to me so logically, it’s hard to argue with them—”
“Sooner or later, you’re going to have to start thinking for yourself.” Dandelion dropped his arm and took a step back to look at me. “Make sure you don’t let them talk you into making any choices that you’re going to regret later.”
Before I could answer, he turned and walked out of the bread aisle. I ran after him, but when I turned the corner, he’d disappeared.
After dinner, Glen came by in his father’s car to pick me up, with Ashleigh in the passenger’s seat. I gave him directions to Heather’s house. When the four of us were all together, we drove to Gold Country Lanes in Fenton, almost an hour away.
On the way, Ashleigh handed out glow bracelets in a variety of colors for everyone to wear, and we all mixed and matched our favorites. We even convinced Glen to wear one green bracelet.
The bowling alley was already busy but we were able to get a lane without waiting. The place was insane with the black lights and disco ball, and many people had dressed up to take advantage of the glowing effect. I wore a white t-shirt which glowed blue in the artificial light. Heather had a white dress on that also looked good. Ashleigh’s pink dress had white flowers dotted all over. Next to the three of us, Glen’s outfit looked dark and dull. We laughed and joked as we played, talking about school and friends and television shows.
Halfway through the first game, Ashleigh ordered sodas for everyone. I put all four cups together on the little table and waved my hands over them. “Watch this, guys.”
I pulled a small bottle of laughing potion from my bag and added a capful of the pink liquid to each cup. “I whipped this up at home earlier. It’s sweet, like grenadine.”
Ashleigh lifted her cup and grinned. “To fun with friends,” she said. “Cheers!”
We laughed and pretended to clink the plastic soda cups together. “Cheers!”
After that, our bowling scores started to go down, but the evening seemed like it was even more fun. I threw my first gutter ball when I started to giggle.
“Guys.” I turned around and waggled my eyebrows. “My ball is in the gutter.”
Glen caught my eye with a grin and laughed. “Rosa, you have a gutter ball.”
That set Ashleigh giggling as well. “I think she tries to keep it a secret, but Rosa’s ball is always in the gutter!”
I tried to stifle a snort and failed.
We tried to take that first game seriously, but none of us bowled our best score. Then we played a second game, but that came with a second round of sodas, and this time I added even more laughing poti
on to each one. We started getting so silly that half the time we were trying to throw gutter balls on purpose. Heather switched to the granny throw and made a big show out of bending over to swing the ball between her legs, which set us all laughing.
By the end of that second game, we were starting to get tired, and our laughter was getting so wild that we were getting looks from people at other lanes. “I think we’d better go,” Glen said.
We started to change out of our bowling shoes. “Where will we go?” Ashleigh asked. “It’s too early to go home. It’s Friday night! We should be having fun.”
“I’m kind of hungry,” Heather said. “Should we order some food here?”
“No, the food here is lame.” Ashleigh rolled her eyes.
I looked up at the clock on the wall. “It’s already after nine. Most of the restaurants will already be closed.”
“I just want something small, like fast food,” Heather said.
We all shook our heads at the same time. “Not really much fast food around here,” Glen said.
“Just the Shake’n Burger,” I said, “and they closed at nine, too.”
Heather frowned. “What about pizza?”
“Mountain Man’s is open until ten on weekends,” Ashleigh said. “If we hurry, we might make it before they close.”
“Mountain Man?” Heather giggled. “Are you serious? What, does he wear plaid and have a big bushy beard?”
I frowned at her. “Don’t harp on those old stereotypes,” I told her sternly. “That’s an insult to—”
“The plaid-wearing, bushy-bearded mountain man community!” Ashleigh started a new round of giggles.
Glen wiped tears out of his eyes and leaned closer to me. “Hey, Rosa, how long is this potion supposed to last?”
“I don’t know, a couple of hours maybe?” I elbowed him in the ribs. “Why, do you think you aren’t safe to drive?”
Glen shook his head. “No, I just want to make sure that we aren’t like this all night.”
“Relax, we’ll be fine.” I skipped ahead to the car. “Shotgun!”
We drove to the pizza place in time to order food for everyone, but since they were closing soon, we decided to get it to go. We sat around eating pizza in the parking lot: Glen and Ashleigh on the hood of the car, me and Heather perched on the wooden fence nearby.
The conversation wound its way through several random topics until someone mentioned a rumor they’d heard about Lindsey stalking Robert. I found myself blurting out, “No, she gave up on him. She’s going out with Peter now.”
Heather repressed a snort of laughter. “What? I thought Peter was too mad to talk to her.”
“They made up.” I let out a sigh. “They’re on a date tonight. She told me about it this afternoon.”
Ashleigh gave me a concerned look, but the corners of her mouth kept twitching up into a smile. “And now it bothers you to see them together.”
I shook my head. “I want them to be happy together.” I looked down at my hands. “Why am I so sad? Something must have gone wrong with the laughing potion.”
Glen chuckled. “Something went wrong? It sounds like a boomerang effect to me!” He laughed again and covered his mouth abruptly with his hand.
“Stop it, you guys, this isn’t funny.” I twisted my hands together. “I—I just feel like Lindsey isn’t going to have time for me anymore, and I said it wasn’t going to bother me, but now I am freaking out.”
Heather put a hand on my arm sympathetically. “I don’t think you’ll lose her as a friend.”
“I already lost her.” I felt tears in my eyes and blinked them away; I didn’t want to cry over Lindsey anymore. “That was a long time ago. I know she’s never going to change her mind.”
Ashleigh nodded. “Still, even if you’ve managed to convince yourself of that, it must be hard to see her with someone else.”
Heather frowned, looking very confused. “Wait, what?”
I looked at Ashleigh, then looked away.
Ashleigh said to Heather, “I thought you knew what happened between them.”
Heather caught my eye and folded her arms. She was still wearing her glow bracelets, and they flashed as she moved. “No. Would you care to explain it to me?”
I spread out my hands. “Lindsey and I—we’ve been friends for a long time. That friendship has always been more important than anything else, including how I feel.”
“How you feel? About what?”
Ashleigh put her hand gently on my arm. “It’s better if you just admit it.”
There was a lump in my throat that made it hard to get the words out. “We were together for a little while, but she broke it off. I’m still in love with her,” I whispered.
Heather frowned. “I didn’t think you and Lindsey were—that way.”
I stared at her. I didn’t know what to say.
Glen put his arm around Heather and murmured, “It was a pretty big deal for Rosa. Don’t give her a hard time about it.”
Heather looked at me and her whole face fell. “I’m sorry, Rosa, I had no idea. I just thought that the two of you were old friends.”
I covered my face in my hands. “Oh, great, the potion is boomeranging on you, too. Please don’t get all guilty and upset. I don’t know what went wrong with this potion—”
“Okay.” Glen took a deep breath. “I think it’s time to take everyone home now.”
Ashleigh nodded and put her arm around me. She started leading me back to the car. “That sounds like a good idea.”
As I sat down, I could hear Heather still apologizing outside. “I’m sorry, I’ve just never known anyone who was a real lesbian before, and I heard—”
“We’ll talk about it another time,” Glen said to cut her off.
That night, after we dropped Heather off at her house, Ashleigh took me home with her. We went into the living room and talked. She brought me tissues and I had a melt-down on the couch. I didn’t remember everything later, but I knew I was babbling about Lindsey, my sister, and probably a lot of other silly stuff.
I woke up with a headache, the sun streaming down onto my face. There was a soft, fuzzy blanket wrapped around me and a pillow under my head. I felt emotionally drained, but at least the couch was comfortable.
I realized that I hadn’t told my parents where I was the night before, since I hadn’t planned on staying out. They would be worried. I sat up slowly and looked around for my purse.
Ah, there it was, sitting right in front of me on the coffee table. I dug out my phone and checked. There was a text message from Lindsey and three from Heather, but nothing from my parents. I ignored the messages for now and opened up a new text message to send to my mom’s phone.
“Spent the night at Ashleigh’s house,” I wrote. “I’ll be home later today. Call if there are any problems.” I hoped that would be enough to ward off the worst of the lectures and put the phone away again.
I got up slowly off the couch and tiptoed over to the hall bathroom, trying to move quietly because I didn’t know if Ashleigh or her dad were awake. I washed my face with very hot water, which helped wake me up a little more, and got rid of the tear stains from my marathon crying session. I also brushed my hair, which was a mess, and braided it so it would be out of the way. My clothes were wrinkled from sleeping in them, but I didn’t have anything to change into, so I did my best to smooth them.
When I came back out into the living room, Ashleigh was there waiting for me with a smile. “I thought I heard you up,” she said. “How are you feeling?”
“Still a little groggy,” I said. “Thanks for taking care of me last night.”
Ashleigh nodded. “No problem. Oh, by the way, I called your mom and let her know that you were staying over. I hope that’s okay.”
That explained the lack of angry messages on my phone. “No, that’s great. Thank you. And tell your dad thanks for letting me stay over without asking ahead of time. I really appreciate it.”
“It�
��s not really a big deal,” she said with a shrug. “Are you hungry? Glen said to let him know when we were up and about, and he’ll come by to take us out for coffee and breakfast.”
I couldn’t believe my luck. “That sounds great. Could I just, um, stop by my house and get changed real quick?”
Ashleigh nodded and pulled out her phone. “Yeah, I’ll let Glen know. You found all of your stuff, right?” I nodded. “Good. It’ll only take him a minute to get over here.”
Glen pulled up outside as quickly as Ashleigh promised. His dad’s family lived just down the street from her house. One stop at my house and a change of clothes later, they let me pick my favorite place for breakfast. It was a little place by the side of the highway called the Heavenly Cafe, and they were only open for breakfast and lunch. It didn’t look like much on the outside and their food wasn’t anything fancy, just simple country style, but what they made, they made really well.
Ashleigh and Glen got coffee and I had iced tea, which they brewed strong. I ordered my favorite breakfast: eggs benedict with country fried potatoes. Ashleigh had French toast and Glen had an omelet.
After a while of eating and making small talk, I said, “Look, about last night.”
Glen and Ashleigh looked at each other, then Glen said, “I already talked to Heather. She feels bad about what she said, and she wants to apologize.”
I glanced at my purse involuntarily. “Yeah, I saw that she left me a few messages. So did Lindsey. I don’t have the energy to deal with any of that yet.”
Glen nodded slowly. “Okay, I’ll let her know that you need some time.”
I sighed. “I’m not saying that everyone needs to tiptoe around me right now.” I looked up at the ceiling, but nothing that I saw there helped me. “Look, I just want to get through this. Get over it, and forget about it.”
“About Lindsey?” Ashleigh asked.
I took a deep breath. “Yeah. You were right. I’ve been holding on to this thing for too long, and I need to let it go. When I move on, then everything else will be easier to handle, and I can be a better friend to everyone.”
“No one said that you aren’t a good friend, Rosa,” Glen said gently.
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