by Amy Spalding
“I’m sorry,” she says. “Obviously being a vegan is a choice and being bisexual isn’t. They’re absolutely different things, and that isn’t what I meant. It’s that you throw yourself so hard into whoever you’re dating. It can feel like the rest of us disappear.”
“I totally get it can seem like that. None of that before was love, though,” I say. “I love Quinn. I love her more than I knew I could love a person.”
“You’re barely out of high school,” James says in a way that suggests she’s decades older with miles and piles of experience and wisdom. “None of this means anything now. Don’t you get it?”
“Just because your parents got divorced doesn’t mean none of it matters,” I say.
“You don’t know anything,” James says.
“And you don’t know everything!” It’s honestly shocking that it’s taken me this long to burst into tears. I know there’s no point in trying to stop them. “I know how I feel, James. I know what’s in my heart. And, no, I don’t know if I’m actually going to stay with Quinn and marry her someday or who knows. But right now, it’s one of the realest things I have.”
“Once Quinn showed up, it was like I was nothing to you,” she says.
“Oh my god, I can’t believe how freaking unfair you’re being. Quinn tried so hard to be your friend. I tried really hard to include both of you all the time.”
“I didn’t want to be Quinn’s friend,” she says. “You never forced me to be Matty’s friend. I have enough friends! I didn’t want to switch lunch tables and stop hanging out so much with Sofia and Mariana or anyone else.”
“Then why did you?” I ask. “You totally could have been like, hey, Kat, I know you want to sit with Quinn but I still want to hang out with everyone else.”
She’s silent.
“Stuff was clearly bothering you! You didn’t say anything about that, either. If you thought I was being a crappy friend, you should have said something.”
“And you should have known. I just wanted you in my life, like before, like when it felt like it was me and you against everything.”
“But we weren’t against anything. You were my best friend, and then suddenly you weren’t. Suddenly you didn’t tell me anything and I had to find out stuff from Logan, and from Hannah Padilla. Like, are you freaking hooking up with Logan again?”
She looks guilty for just a split second.
“Great, I’ll take that as a yes. And what did you say at Jon Kessler’s party? I hear you didn’t really mean it but everyone was just sick of prom or something? So I’ll assume”—I realize for some stupid reason I hadn’t let myself accept this already—“you were saying something horrible about me or Quinn or both.”
She stares at me. “Look, I was sick of hearing about this great civil rights struggle, when you know as well as I do that it had nothing to do with equal rights. I’m thrilled our school finally caught up with the times, but for you to act like it had something to do with anything but still getting to be prom queen . . .”
“Is that . . .” I take a few deep breaths and try to get my crying under control. “Is that seriously what you think of me?”
She doesn’t say anything.
“You know what? You can like being prom queen and still want equal rights,” I say. “Even if Quinn and I had lost—”
“But you didn’t lose,” James says. “You never lose. And so you had no room for someone like me, who could only lose.”
“I had room for you! You locked me out.”
“You were impossible to talk to,” she says. “You wouldn’t have understood.”
“I wouldn’t have understood having your family suddenly split up in a way you could never have imagined? I couldn’t have understood what it was like having your parent fall in love with someone new? That’s, like, my whole freaking life, James.”
“Your mom died,” she says. “Mine left. It’s not even close.”
“Oh, yeah, I’m so lucky. I get to know my mom was perfect, while thinking about the fact that I will never see her again, never be hugged by her, never get to tell her about prom, or college, or whatever else happens to me. I’m sorry your mom maybe did something selfish, but you’re freaking right it’s not even close.”
James stares at me. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry that I—”
“Don’t. That you could even think it . . .” I turn from her and start crying again. Continue crying? Does it even freaking matter? “I really, really feel like you hate me.”
“I don’t,” she says. “I could never. It’s just . . .”
I turn around, and we stare at each other for a few moments.
“James . . . if I wasn’t a good friend to you, I’m sorry.”
She kind of laughs and shakes her head. “Really? If? I think I laid out the reasons that you haven’t—”
“Oh my god, seriously? I’m trying to talk to you, and you’re so super ready to jump down my throat about—”
“Jump down your throat?” She sighs. “So much fucking drama. I’m over it.”
“You know what I hate? How people say things all super calmly so they can say someone else is being dramatic. I can’t help how my voice sounds.”
“You can help what you say, though. You can think about how you choose your words. And I don’t know why I thought you could manage not to be selfish for even five minutes. Somehow you’ve turned into the most selfish person I’ve ever known.”
“Keeping yourself all locked away from people who care about you seems really selfish, too.”
We watch each other some more.
“I don’t think you’re my best friend anymore,” I say, a little because I believe it, and a lot because I’m hoping she’ll fight to contradict this, to do something that makes me see how horribly wrong I am right now.
“Yeah.” She folds her arms across her chest. “I don’t think you are, either.”
I hate every single thing about what’s happening. I hate that once things are out of your mouth, it’s already too late to put them back in. Worse, I hate that it’s the same when it’s someone else’s words.
Or is it worst of all when it’s your own?
“OK, then,” I say, and then it’s like before, when my brain couldn’t keep up with its own thoughts. My mouth seems to be talking without my full input. “Have a good life, James. Have fun in Berkeley or wherever you’re going.”
“Yeah,” she says. “You too.”
I know that I basically came over here to yell at James. I feel justified, and it seems fair. And no matter if that’s true or not, I don’t expect to leave her house in tears, no longer her friend, no longer anyone’s best friend.
My phone buzzes as I walk home, and I desperately grab it from the pocket of my shorts. It’s just Quinn, so I ignore it for now while sending a silent plea up into the blue skies that James will text anyway.
But James doesn’t text. James doesn’t text all afternoon, evening, and night. There are only more messages from Quinn when I wake up—if you can even call it sleep if all you do is toss and turn—the next morning.
I’m still not even sure if I can fully wrap my head around just how angry James made me. In some ways, I’m used to being hurt. Isn’t everyone? Life hurts you, and you do your best to heal. But anger is something different. I hadn’t prepared for it. I’m not sure it was ever my default for anything. Even when Matty slept with Elise, and I should have been angry, what I remember most is how sad I was, how betrayed, how suddenly alone a person’s absence could make you feel. Matty was no one compared to James, though, not even a blip on the radar where James was the brightest light.
I was going to talk at her wedding, and I had these dumb thoughts that we’d have babies who would grow up to be best friends, and whoever she ended up with would also love the Dodgers and we could make him take Quinn to games while James and I did something way more fun instead. Whenever I thought about being old, I thought about The Golden Girls and how, even if really sad things happene
d, James and I would be there for each other until the very end.
I was not going to walk out of her house one summer day when I was only eighteen with that part of my life behind me, with all those future possibilities immediately deleted.
Except that it’s what happened.
The thing is that I know I could text her, and I know that people can fight and end up OK later. Finality is one of those things you can feel, though, and even though I hadn’t been prepared for it, I can’t deny that it’s what’s hitting me now.
“Hey, kid.” Dad knocks on my bedroom door. “Quinn’s here.”
I check my phone again and the day has gotten much later than I realized, and, also, I have about a thousand messages from Quinn. Not even one from James, though.
I rush into the kitchen. “Hey, sorry.”
“K, are you OK?” She throws her arms around me and holds me, and it’s way too much niceness and so of course I start crying again. “What happened?”
Dad eyes the scene warily and then walks down the hallway to his room. Quinn and I laugh at exactly the same time.
“I had a huge fight with James,” I say.
“I’m sorry.”
“We’re . . . we’re not friends anymore.”
“That sucks.” She’s still holding me tightly. “I can’t imagine how bad it would be if Raina and I . . .”
“You and Raina never would,” I say. “She believes the best in you. And James . . .”
“I’m seriously so sorry, and I feel like an asshole that I kept texting you about the game when you had something major going on.”
“Agh, oh, man, Quinn! That’s why you’re wearing your special Dodgers shirt!”
She glances down at it. “It’s called a jersey.”
“Whatever! We are still going to the game. It slipped my mind but—”
“You don’t have to.”
“Nope! I promised my girlfriend an evening of baseball, so we are baseballing.”
“Oh, boy.”
“Do I have time to get ready? I bought a special shirt, just for the occasion.”
“Do you mean a jersey?”
“No! It’s, like, a super cute T-shirt. You’ll like it.”
“Yes, go get ready,” she says. “But, really, we could just stay here and do nothing. Or I could see if someone else—”
“I think it’s good if I don’t stay home,” I say. “If I keep crying, I might never stop.”
She squeezes my hand before letting me go. And even though my face is wet and my eyes are puffy and red, I change into jeans and the cutest Dodgers T-shirt I could find at Target. Quinn drives us over to the stadium, and I stand in line to buy Dodger Dogs so she can watch batting practice. I still don’t care about baseball, but I care a lot about the tense faces Quinn makes during the game when players go up to bat, and I find myself as happy as she is when we win the game. Almost as happy, at least. No one’s smiling like Quinn is.
“This was actually super fun,” I say as we walk out of the stadium. “We should see a game when we’re home for break.”
“Kat . . .” She gives me a very worried look. “You understand there are seasons, right? They don’t just play all year ’round.”
“Oh, right. Because of snow in other places.”
“Since I think you’re just being cute now, I’m going to ignore that.” She slides her arm around my waist. “How are you feeling?”
The win seems to slip off of me as we reach her car. “Not great. Can we go eat like one million cheese fries at that weird diner?”
“You’ll have to be a little more specific than that, but, sure.”
I buckle myself in and lean over to kiss her. “How are you?”
It feels awkward to ask, for some reason, but she just smiles. I feel weird that while things might be forever lost with James, her words are maybe helping me be a better person. Ultimately, though, being a better person is the most important thing. No matter where it comes from.
“My team won, I’m on my way to cheese fries with my girl, and my sister’s about to leave for camp for two whole weeks. I’d say I’m pretty great.”
“Coding camp?” I ask. “Isn’t that, like, where you go to kiss cute girls?”
“It’s cheer camp,” she says.
“You could definitely go to cheer camp to kiss cute girls!”
She grins. “Trust me, that’s definitely not what Ainsley’s going to get up to.”
We’re silent for a few minutes as we sit in traffic bottlenecking out of the parking lot. I start a playlist of pop music that I know Quinn likes in spite of herself.
“Hey,” I say, and I try to use my nicest voice because sometimes it’s scary knowing in advance how things will come out. Especially when you’ve decided not to be perfect anymore, as much as you can help it.
“Hey,” she says.
“I have to figure out how to still be super in love with you and also, like, someone who has time for everyone else. Everyone else who deserves it, at least.”
“OK,” Quinn says, as traffic clears long enough that we pull out of the parking lot and are actually on our way. “Direct me to cheese fries.”
“That wasn’t a weird thing to say?” I ask.
She gives me a very cute what-the-heck look. “No?”
The funny thing is that when I lost my boyfriend, it was fine because of my best friend. But no matter how amazing Quinn is, nothing could make losing James OK.
We still eat a giant plate of cheese fries, and make out in her car, and talk about the classes we hope we take next year. My life has a new sad chapter, though, and it’s hard to imagine I’ll ever see events again as anything but before and after losing my very best friend.
I don’t hear from James, and I don’t hear from James, and then, somehow, every day, it gets a little more normal that I don’t hear from James. I don’t want to burden Dad with my girl drama, but I think Luke fills him in, because Dad surprises me with a pair of Dodgers tickets—better seats than the ones I’d bought earlier in the summer—and a scrawled note to have some fun with Quinn. I think he’s mainly just relieved that one of his kids sort of cares about sports in any capacity. Two baseball games in one summer is way more baseball than I ever expected in my life, but it just goes to show how love can change everything. Even sports.
It’s not like other summers, and not just because James isn’t part of my life anymore. There were always so many parties, trips to the beach, hunts for the best and cheapest ways to access pools. But now I think we’re all looking forward—to leaving, to knowing our new friends and classmates will be from other places. I’m pretty sure I’m now messaging my future roommate, Rochelle, as often as I message anyone who isn’t Quinn. Quinn’s future roommate loves baseball but is apparently a fan of the Giants, so hopefully a baseball rivalry won’t tear their room apart. I’m sort of excited to find out, though.
I guess for a long time now, since we lost Mom, I’ve been sad. I know how to be sad and still have a life. And it’s what I’m going to keep doing now.
Dad calls me out from my room on a late Saturday afternoon because Diane’s here. I can hear Luke already being all chill and charming, and I aim to do the same, until I realize Diane’s not alone.
Stacey smiles as I walk into the room. “Look at you. Mini-Jennifer.”
“No,” I say, embarrassed and flattered and relieved that this is how my mom’s best friend looks at me. I was so convinced she had no use for me at all. “Hi. Dad didn’t say you were coming over.”
“Diane and I were getting drinks and when she said she was headed to Charlie’s later, I decided to figuratively crash the figurative party.” Her gaze goes to my neck and I see the realization in her eyes. “God, I made fun of her when she got that.”
I touch my necklaces. “Really?”
“I know it’s hard to believe, but we were pretty cool back then,” she says. “I knew where all the great clubs were, and your mom could talk any guy at the door into lettin
g us in. And then she started wearing this preppy little necklace, and I thought, who even are you? You know how it is when you’re—well, your age. Friendships are so big and dramatic, and everything seems symbolic of something.”
I blink to keep from crying, but Stacey sees it.
“I miss her, too,” she says. “Every day.”
“It’s not just her,” I find myself saying. “My best friend—well, she’s not my best friend anymore. We had a fight and it’s over and . . .”
“Take it from me,” Stacey says, once I’ve trailed off. “One day you’re angry at someone about a necklace, and then before you know it, none of it matters.”
“I hope that’s true,” I say, even though already James seems so far away. I can’t imagine something that would delete that distance, pull her right back to me.
“It’s one hundred percent true.” She smiles. I don’t believe her, but I smile, too.
“So, Oberlin, Charlie says. That’s great.”
“Oh, it’s, like, nothing, really,” I say as quickly as I can. “I don’t have a major yet and I know I’m doing it all wrong and—”
“I didn’t declare a major until the last possible minute,” Stacey says with a smile. “Which is somehow sooner than Jennifer did.”
“OMG, really?” I look over at Luke, who’s home for only a couple of weeks in between important intern things. “Did you hear that?”
He shrugs in his insufferably chill way. Is my brother turning into a freaking hipster? He is wearing new and cooler glasses and growing a weird beard. “You’re the one who was making such a big deal about it.”
Stacey snickers, and I realize it’s because I’m rolling my eyes.
“Brothers are the worst, I know,” she says.
“The super serious worst,” I say, though I smile at Luke.
“When you’re home on break, call me—we’ll get dinner or something, OK?” Stacey asks me.
I nod and try not to look too enthusiastic. Luke calls me over to settle some faux-argument with Dad, and I love how crowded our little house suddenly feels. I love that Luke and I are just back to bickering like we did as kids, before we lost Mom and suddenly it didn’t feel OK to be kids like that anymore.