by Jess Keating
I nearly dropped my taco. Liv, calling the math kids geeky?! She had been one of the cochairs of the Algebrainiacs at school last year. And now she’s worried about geeky?
“It’s so much fun, Ana,” she added. “They’re hilarious!”
There was a weird lilt to her voice that seemed off-kilter, but her face remained perma-grinny when I peeked up at her. You know when you’re getting your picture taken and the person with the camera takes forever so your smile starts to hurt and feel all shaky and crumbly on your face, and you know you look like a total weirdo? That is the kind of smile Liv gave me.
It gave me the creeps.
Of course, my parents were too occupied with telling Daz to stop making a salsa volcano out of his leftovers to notice that.
“Hey,” I said. I could feel the tug of desperation behind my words, but I had to do something to get rid of this squicky-Leilani feeling inside of me. “I have a great idea!” I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it before. “We should go to Shaken, Not Stirred now that you’re back! Just the two of us!” I darted a look at Daz, who never missed an opportunity for whipped cream calories.
Liv grinned, but this time it was a real one. “That sounds great! We can celebrate me being here!” She lifted her fork and waved it like a tiny flag. “Mom and Dad have a whole bunch of relatives they want to see while we’re here, but we can go tomorrow!”
“Perfect!” I said, glancing to my parents for their approval. Mom nodded, and I could see she was proud of me for not being a pill about the whole “no mammals” thing earlier. “We can celebrate your visit and hang out like old times,” I said.
Like old times when you didn’t seem like a stranger with purple hair.
Chapter 5
The color of an ermine’s coat changes throughout the year. In warmer months, it is a rich brown. In the wintertime, it becomes snowy white.
—Animal Wisdom
How useful would this be, right?! Instead of worrying about what to wear every single morning so people don’t realize I’m a complete fashion disaster, I could wear the same thing all through the hot months, and then switch over to winter mode when the snow came. Ermines have all the luck.
The next day, I couldn’t shake the strange feeling in my stomach. At first, I thought it was the mountain of tacos we’d eaten, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I was pretty messed up about some of the things that Liv had said at dinner. So messed up, in fact, that I didn’t technically tell anyone about Liv being here the next day at school and came up with some lame excuse about having to clean my room tonight instead of hanging out with anyone.
I know. I’m a terrible friend. But it wasn’t like Ashley or Bella had to know that second that Liv was here for a visit. They barely even knew her! And okay, it’s also true that every time I thought of Liv, I had this image of Leilani in my head that kept popping up like a rodent in one of those Whac-a-Mole games. All night long, I’d even dreamed of Liv and Leilani starring in some Broadway play together, with their name in bright lights. Newspapers were printed with giant headlines in my dream, splashing our names across the page:
Leilani Replaces Ana as Liv’s New Best Friend! Liv and Leilani Set to Appear in Broadway Musical: The Violent Violet Sisters! Buy Tickets Now!
Thanks for nothing, brain.
How come one stupid move to the other side of the planet could make two friends feel so weird around each other? Or maybe it was just me, because so far, Liv hadn’t said anything about feeling off. Either way, I was determined to forget how strange things felt and get back to normal. Grandpa has this saying, about how you can’t control fate, but you can lend it a hand every so often. Now, I don’t know if fate is the reason that Liv was acting like a different person, but I had to do my part to make sure that we stayed best friends.
No matter what country she lived in.
I knew that if I was going to get things back to normal between us, I would probably have to jog her memory and tug her away from all the new stuff in her life. Namely, Leilani and hobbits and all that. Not to mention the purple hair.
Before showing up that afternoon at the Shaken, Not Stirred ice-cream shop after school, I made sure to wear the tie-dyed shirt we’d made for my eleventh birthday party and the sneakers with the blue laces she’d given me for Christmas the following year. Every time I looked at those laces, I remembered that day and how she came over for Christmas breakfast early with us and filled up on croissants and fruit salad, then we went back to her house and did the whole thing again. Friends did that kind of thing, and I was positive that she would have the exact same memory when she saw them. Then we could order our shakes (she would get cherry), and we could get back to normal.
I took a deep breath and shoved open the door.
Liv was sitting cross-legged in a booth. A smile spread over my face when I saw it was the same booth we always used to sit in together. See? She remembered everything, just like me.
“Hey!” I said, plunking down across from her in the booth. She set the menu down on the table, and her jaw dropped.
“Oh my God!” she squealed as I unzipped my coat and unwound the fuzzy scarf from my neck. “Is that the shirt from your birthday party?” Her eyes darted around us.
I wriggled my shoulders proudly. “Sure is! Remember when we made them? You got green dye all over your fingers and under your nails. It took weeks to come off.” I giggled. “And check out these laces!”
I stuck out my foot so she could see the bright-blue laces on my sneakers. Although my feet were freezing in this chilly weather, it was totally worth the frostbite for the laces.
Liv made a face. “I do remember it, but wow, Ana. It looks bad. You look like a ten-year-old! It barely fits!”
A fizz of heat ran through my body. “I do not!” I said, slumping down. The way Liv was glancing all around made me wary of who was looking at us. Or more specifically, me. But who cared? I was wearing a shirt from my best friend—that should mean something.
Even if it was hideous.
“I thought you would like it,” I mumbled. “I don’t wear it all the time or anything,” I added hotly.
She laughed. “Well, that’s good! You know there are lots of great YouTube videos about style now? I got into them when we moved, and they have been s-o-o-o helpful.” She picked up the menu again. “I can’t believe some of the things we used to wear,” she said lightly. “That shirt is one thing, but remember those matching hats we had all through third grade? God, what was wrong with us?”
I frowned. I had looked for that hat this morning to add to my “friendship ensemble,” but couldn’t find it in my disaster of a closet.
Was it me or was she now pretty much hiding behind the stupid menu? Nothing was wrong with us. We were friends, and sometimes friends wore silly things together. That was the whole point: the together part. Even the dumb things are fun when you’re doing it with friends.
I forced myself not to slouch. “I wanted to wear something that reminded me of you,” I said.
Of us, I added to myself.
Liv’s face softened, and her eyes scrunched up with a smile. “Is it weird that I sort of love that those goofy shoes and horrible shirts remind you of me?”
My heart lifted. “See! They still fit.” I squirmed in my top. “Okay, not really,” I admitted.
Liv leaned closer to me, lowering her voice. “Do you remember that time we wore those pink tutus from Goodwill to school in second grade because we thought it would convince our fairy godmothers to find us?” She shook her head gravely.
“I can’t believe they didn’t show up,” I said, cackling at Liv’s fake-disgusted face.
As Lacey the waitress sidled up to our booth, we tried to pull ourselves together. This was more like it! We were two best friends who were a little out of sync at first. Now, the twisty nervous feeling in my stomach
was fading.
“Hello, girls,” Lacey drawled. Pulling the pencil from behind her ear, she blinked at us over her notepad. “What can I get ya?”
“A vanilla shake please, extra whipped cream and two cherries!” I announced.
Liv pursed her lips, tapping her chin. “I’ll have the…”
“Oh! Ana! Wait!” Lacey interrupted, sticking her pen in her hair. “Sorry, hun.” She apologized to Liv and turned back to face me. “I completely forgot to tell you, my niece was watching the news last week and saw some little advertisement for the zoo with you in it and flipped her lid when I told her I knew you! Would you mind signing a copy of your grandpa’s book for her? We got a copy when he was here last, and I know I’d be the best aunt ever if I gave it to her with your signature!”
My chest tightened. In all my life, someone asking for my autograph was about the craziest thing I think I would ever expect. Crazier than zombie sloths taking over the streets. Crazier than Daz enrolling in beauty school. Crazier than—
“I have it here! In the back!” Lacey blurted. “You and your friends are in here a lot, so I knew you’d be in soon enough. Is that okay?”
I glanced at Liv, unable to keep the excitement off my face. This was kind of cool! And incredibly nuts. “Um…I guess so?” But Lacey had already bustled off to the kitchen for the book.
Liv kept her eyes down to her menu as Lacey returned with Grandpa’s hardcover in her hands. “Thank you so much!” she exclaimed. “She’ll love it. Her name is Olivia.”
“Oh! That’s her name too!” I pointed to Liv. “Two Olivias!” I took the book from her hands. What was I supposed to write? Do I just sign my name? Should I do a little drawing? For a second, I looked up to Liv for advice, but she was searching in her purse for lip gloss. She smeared the inky darkness over her lips as I looped my signature on the title page. I added a little smiley face for good measure, along with a “I think you’re great!” message.
Lacey grinned at Liv. “Have you lived here long? I don’t remember seeing you here.” She chatted animatedly, but Liv was still sitting there with a tight smile on her face.
“Liv was here her whole life until she moved to New Zealand before the summer!” I explained, trying to stop the icy feeling that was spreading around me. I had to admit, this whole “sign an autograph in front of your long-lost best friend” was a teensy bit weird. “You probably don’t recognize her because her hair is purple now,” I added.
Lacey nodded. “Cool. And thanks so much for this, Ana!” She took the book and stuffed it into her apron pocket, then found her notepad again. “Sorry, what did you guys want again?”
I took a deep breath, secretly feeling super proud of myself for not botching that autograph by spelling my name wrong. “A vanilla shake, with extra whipped cream and two cherries,” I said. I pointed to Liv for her to order.
Cherry shake with extra sprinkles, I thought triumphantly.
“Toffee crunch swirl sundae,” she said finally. “Please.” She handed the menu to Lacey, who nodded and bustled back to the counter.
“No cherry shake?” I tried to mask my surprise with a laugh, but it came out more like a hacky, super-surprised cough.
She shrugged. “The toffee crunch looked good too,” she said. Something about the way she was holding her smile made me nervous again. She wasn’t even looking me in the eyes anymore, and her dark lip gloss made her look like a storm cloud. When you’ve known someone forever, you can instantly tell when they’re acting weird. And this was weird, no matter how Liv tried to hide it.
“You’ve never gotten one before, in all the years you lived here,” I said, keeping my voice light. “Is everything okay? If this is about the book—”
“What?” she snapped. “Because I want to try something new?” There was an edge to her voice that made me flinch. She must have noticed because she rolled her eyes and scoffed.
“I’m fine. Okay?” She shook her head. “So. Tell me everything.”
I blinked. “Everything what?” The shift from weird-Liv to normal again was enough to give me whiplash.
She tsked. “You know, everything everything. I haven’t seen you in months! You have to catch me up on everything that we couldn’t talk about over dinner! How is Kevin? How is school? How are the awful Sneerers? Has Ashley self-imploded from sneeriness yet or what?”
Suddenly my tongue felt too big for my mouth. Now was the perfect time to tell her that the Sneerers and I, well, one Sneerer in particular, were actually friends now. It would be a great way to show Liv that she wasn’t the only one changing.
But what if I told her and things got even weirder between us? I didn’t want to risk her getting snippy again, did I? Maybe now wasn’t the best time.
I snapped back to reality. “Kevin’s good. We’ve been going out since the start of school. Mom lets us go on group dates mostly, which is pretty cool. With Bella and Daz, I mean.”
Liv’s eyebrows lifted. “Is that the shy girl with the weird pixie cut? The one who was always buried behind some book in class?” Her tone wasn’t mean, but my skin crawled uncomfortably at how she described Bella.
“Yeah,” I said. “Well. No,” I corrected. “She was, is, super shy, but she’s actually supercool and smart. I like her hair too…” I trailed off awkwardly. I wasn’t trying to defend Bella or anything, because Liv didn’t mean it as an insult. But still.
She nodded, smushing her dark-stained lips together. “So you go on group dates with Kevin, and you still haven’t kissed him yet? How come?!” Her mouth drooped into a phony, mopey frown. “You left me all by my lonesome on our kiss pact. Hmph.” Her voice turned all gloopy, like she was sad.
I clenched my hand into a fist. I hated whenever Liv brought up the kiss pact. See, if I rewind a bit, we made a deal back when we were little kids that we would kiss a boy (a different boy, obviously) before we went to high school. But then, Liv went and skipped a grade, which turned our kiss pact into a nightmare. Ashley and Bella knew the story, but for some reason, admitting everything to Liv felt like admitting defeat. Like she was some grown-up, while I was still a loser kid.
Which made no sense, because it wasn’t even something I wanted.
Since when did Liv make me feel so…immature?
“Hey!” I blurted, eager to change the subject. A bright, flickering idea gave me the perfect way to get our conversation back on track and hopefully stop Liv from doing that angry-smushing thing with her mouth. “I’m doing this media project at school, and I’d like to profile you! As one of my influences, I mean,” I said. “It’s all about the people that influence us. Cool, huh?”
“Do I have to do anything special?” she asked, suddenly looking nervous.
I shook my head. “Nope. You can help me whenever I figure out what kind of medium I want to use. I have to include my best friend, of course.”
Liv smiled, but there was something missing behind her eyes. “That’s cool. Let me know if I can help,” she said, chewing her lip. “Oh! Did you want to see a picture of Ryan?” She reached back for her purse.
“Ryan’s the guy you like, right?” I leaned forward to see the picture she was finding on her phone.
She nodded. “He’s so cute.” She held it out.
A boy with a snarly look on his face glared at whoever was taking the photo. His hair was dark and a little too long, like he hadn’t gotten it cut in time for pictures like most kids. He didn’t look cute to me, but I wasn’t about to say that to Liv. He looked like the kind of guy I’d cross the street to avoid. She held the phone to her chest and sighed, all dramatic-like.
“We aren’t going out, going out. Yet. But Leilani said that he told his brother Max that he liked me, so that has to count, right?” She bit her lip and stared at me.
“Right!” I said. “He looks…uh…”
Scary.
Greasy.
>
Murdery.
“Cool,” I said finally. “He looks pretty old for his age, actually,” I added, inspecting the picture again.
“He’s in ninth grade with me, so that makes him a year older. He turns fourteen in a few months!” She giggled.
Fourteen.
If there was anything scarier sounding than thirteen, it was fourteen. But I guess if Liv was technically in ninth grade now, she would always be hanging out with older kids, right? Did that make me one of her “younger” friends?
I didn’t like the sound of that.
Suddenly I felt a little dumb for wearing this stupid shirt, like I was proving to her even more that I was a little kid. Why hadn’t I thought of that before I’d picked my outfit?
I shifted until I was sitting on my feet, tucking the blue laces out of sight. And then, the weirdest, craziest thing happened.
I wasn’t expecting it.
I couldn’t stop it.
For the first time in a decade of best friendship with Liv, a silence grew between us.
And I don’t mean a quiet type of silence, where everyone takes a minute to have a drink or check their teeth for spinach.
No. I would have been okay with that.
Those types of silences are normal.
This was an awkward type of silence, when both people end up catching each other’s eyes and they know someone needs to say something, but absolutely nothing comes out because you can’t think of a thing to say and you get that squirmy feeling in your guts like you want to shrink down and fly away like a bug. When the whole world gets swallowed up by how downright quiet everything is.
My stomach dropped, like I’d swan dived off a cliff.
Liv cleared her throat.
The seconds on the wall clock ticked by…s-l-o-w-l-y...like they were counting down the last seconds of our friendship, as it was going to be washed away for good. Panic clawed at me.
Say something already!
“And here you go!” Lacey’s perky voice interrupted the gigantic hole of nothingness between us. She set my vanilla shake in front of me and slid Liv’s mess of toffee and whipped cream to her.