Best Friend Emma

by Sally Warner

  “You look cute, too,” Kry tells her. “You guys look very—pink.”

  “We are,” Cynthia exclaims, as if looking pink is a good thing. She twirls around and then pauses to rearrange her glittering headband. “And next time we dress alike, I’ll call you, too, Kry, and tell you what color to wear.”

  Score—for Cynthia.

  “Oh. Thanks, I guess,” Kry says weakly. “But I’m not really sure if—”

  “It’ll be great,” Cynthia interrupts, grinning. She shoots me a ha-ha-on-you look. “Where’s Annie Pat?” she says, hands on her hips.

  Does everyone have to ask me that?

  I suddenly realize that Annie Pat probably isn’t even coming to school today. She must have told her mom she had tummy trouble again—and Mrs. Masterson is too worn out from having a new baby to argue with her.

  Lucky Annie Pat, to have such a frazzled mom.

  “But Cynthia,” Heather says in kind of a snotty way, “you’d better not call Annie Pat and Emma the next time we get dressed up, because pink doesn’t look good with red hair.”

  “Everything looks good with red hair,” I tell them in a loud, clear voice, and I turn and walk away.

  What have I done? I’ve lost Annie Pat Masterson forever, and she was my very best friend.

  I got greedy, that’s what happened.

  “Hey, Emma,” EllRay Jakes calls out from the picnic table. “You forgot your book bag.”

  “Keep-away,” Jared cries, delighted.

  “Keep-away!” Stanley chimes in as he tosses my extremely nice book bag to Jared.

  Leave it to a bunch of boys to make a bad situation even worse.

  10

  The most Terrible Saturday in History?

  Somehow, I made it through the rest of Friday. It is now Saturday morning, but instead of getting ready to go to Marine Universe with Annie Pat and her dad and no new baby, or getting ready to take Kry Rodriguez out to lunch and a movie, I am sitting alone in my bedroom watching the rain come down. (Outside, of course.)

  I do not have a TV in my bedroom, because my mom doesn’t approve of TVs in kids’ bedrooms. Also, I do not have a computer in my bedroom, because Mom thinks kids should only use the Internet when a grown-up is watching. Watching the actual screen, not the kids.

  In my opinion, however, another reason—maybe the real reason—I don’t have these things is because extra TVs and computers cost extra money, and extra money is something we do not have ever since my mother started working at home.

  Why couldn’t she have chosen a new job that pays a lot of money? I will never understand grown-ups—until I am one, and probably not even then.

  What I do have in my room is a combination radio and CD player, which my father sent me last Christmas. (He lives in England with his new wife, Annabelle.) But when I am grounded, I am not even allowed to listen to music.

  Is my mother the strictest mom in the world? Yes. And is this going to be the most terrible Saturday in history? Probably.

  All I’m allowed to do when I’m grounded is read, which doesn’t make any sense at all. It’s like saying that reading is another part of my punishment, and TV and CDs and the radio are treats.

  Really, reading is one of my favorite things in the world—for lots of reasons. For instance, everyone is exactly the same when they read a book. Rich kids, and kids with perfectly straight hair, and undivorced kids read the exact same words that I do. But I get to choose how everyone looks in the book!

  Another reason I like reading is that no one can tell me who to like in the book and who to hate. I mean, you can always tell who you’re supposed to like, but nobody can make you. You get to decide who’s popular—with you.

  But I don’t feel like reading this morning. I prefer to feel a little sorry for myself.

  I am all alone in the world. Alone except for the person in the condo next door, who is thudding along on his treadmill like a giant hamster. The vibrations shake my bedroom wall. And alone except for my mom, who keeps coming up with chores for me to do.

  “Emma?” Mom calls out from down the hall. “Did you finish writing your apologies?”

  “Uh-huh,” I say, eyeballing the two letters that practically have sweat marks on them, they were so hard to write.

  “And did you gather up all your laundry like I asked you to?”

  “Yes,” I lie, looking around at the dirty clothes strewn around my room. Because—what’s she going to do if I don’t gather up my laundry? Ground me? Too late!

  But then I remember what happened the last time I lied to my mom—about Annie Pat and Marine Universe—and I start gathering. I finish just as Mom steps into my room. “All done,” I say, trying not to pant as I stuff the last T-shirt into my laundry basket.

  “Good girl. You can help me get the first load started, and then I’d like you to empty all the waste-paper baskets and take the trash out to the Dumpster.”

  Just like Cinderella! Taking out the trash is my least favorite chore, because other people’s garbage smells so yucky. And even though I have to throw our garbage bag up really high to get it over the side of the condo Dumpster, I worry about falling in. Especially today, when it’s slippery outside because of the rain.

  Mom gives me a challenging look until I mumble, “Okay.”

  “This is how I spend every Saturday,” she reminds me.

  Never grow up, I remind myself.

  Mom tells me to take a seat in the kitchen just before lunch. She is holding the apology letter she made me write to her. “We need to talk,” she says, looking serious.

  Uh-oh. “But why?” I ask her. “Don’t you like the letter I wrote? I worked really hard on it.”

  “It’s perfectly fine,” she says, giving it an absentminded pat. “Apologies come very easily to you, Emma.”

  “They do not,” I say, trying to keep calm. “I hate apologizing—to anyone!”

  Mom sighs. “Well,” she says, “you obviously know that lying to your mother is wrong, at least.”

  “Lying to anyone is wrong,” I tell her, hoping this will give me extra credit.

  But Mom doesn’t even hear me. “I’m just worried about you lately, sweetie,” she says. “You really hurt Annie Pat’s feelings, and that’s not like you.”

  It’s exactly like me—when I’m not thinking, I feel like telling her. It was a mistake! Can’t a person make a mistake around here? It’s not like you’re so perfect!

  Naturally, I don’t say any of this out loud, or I’d have to sit here forever.

  “Didn’t it hurt your feelings when Cynthia stopped being friends with you, Emma?” Mom asks. “It was only a few weeks ago, after all.”

  I give a tiny shrug. “I didn’t care,” I mumble.

  “I think you did care, honey,” my mom says. “I think you felt really sad and confused when it happened. And I think that’s the way Annie Pat must have felt when you forgot about her and started going after Kry Rodriguez, just because she’s exciting and new.”

  “But Cynthia shouldn’t get to have her,” I say, finally daring to argue a little. “Cynthia is mean. That’s the whole point, Mom. And she gets to have everything!”

  “Kry isn’t a ‘thing,’ Emma,” my mom says, frowning. “She’s a person, and she can make up her own mind about who she wants to be friends with, don’t you think?”

  “But what if she decides wrong?” I say, trying to make my mom understand.

  “Then she’ll have made a mistake,” Mom says calmly. “And that’ll be her problem, Emma. Not yours. Look,” she says, leaning forward. “Do you remember when you kept losing your doll clothes after we moved here? And do you remember when you completely lost that library book last month, and we had to pay the library fourteen ninety-five to replace it? Fourteen ninety-five? And remember when you lost the front-door key a couple of weeks ago?”

  She’s gonna bring up everything? What do moms do, keep an invisible list?

  “I guess,” I say reluctantly. “I’m sorry, I’
m sorry, I’m sorry.”

  Mom reaches over to hug me. “Oh, honey, I’m not trying to make you apologize again,” she says. “I’m only trying to tell you that being careless with objects is one thing. But you can’t be careless with people, ever. Especially not the people you care about.”

  “And I was careless with Annie Pat?” I say, kind of seeing it that way for the first time.

  “I think you were,” my mom says, nodding.

  “Well, you don’t have to be mad at me, Mom,” I tell her softly. “Because I’m already even madder at myself.”

  “I am so glad to hear that, Emma,” my mom says, hugging me again, only this time there are tears in her eyes.

  The weirdest things make her happy—and sad.

  “I’ve got a good idea,” she says, changing the subject with food, which always works. “This is a perfect day to bake some pies.”

  “Pies?” I repeat. “But it’s too early to cook for Thanksgiving. They’ll get stale, won’t they?”

  “Not if we eat ’em,” Mom says with a grin. “Or give ’em away. Come on, Em—I thought you liked pumpkin pie.”

  Pumpkin pie! “I love it,” I say, almost drooling.

  “And you didn’t get to have any last year, as I recall,” my mother continues. “You griped about it for weeks, in fact. And I did the bulk of my holiday shopping yesterday, to beat the crowds, so we have the ingredients. Why not make our pies today? And even eat one, if we feel like it!”

  “But—but we usually buy pumpkin pie in the store, Mom,” I say. “It must be really hard to make.” I picture my mother, who really doesn’t like to cook, plopping our poor old Halloween pumpkin—which we never got around to carving—into a frozen pie crust and hoping for the best.

  “I’ve actually got a recipe,” she says, grinning at me. “And lots of canned pumpkin,” she adds. “So let’s make our sandwiches and eat them fast, sweetie. We’ve got some serious pie baking to do!”

  11

  Really, Really, Very, Very Sorry

  Like I told my mom, I hate having to say I’m sorry. And it’s especially hard in person. But it looks like that’s what I’ll have to do, because it is Sunday afternoon, and we are on our way over to Annie Pat Masterson’s house so I can give her my apology letter. Also, we are bringing the Mastersons one of our pumpkin pies. Also, my mom has a small present that she has been meaning to take over to Murphy, the Mastersons’ new red-haired baby.

  The pumpkin pie looks a little burned on top, and a chunk of the crust broke off when we got in the car, but Mom says they’ll still appreciate it. She says that when you have a new baby, you’re desperate for food someone else has made.

  Annie Pat, on the other hand, is not desperate. In fact, she will probably slam her bedroom door in my face. And I’ll deserve it, too—not because I forgot about going to Marine Universe yesterday, but because I forgot about her, my best friend, Annie Pat. At least for a little while.

  And that was a wrong thing to do.

  “Did Mrs. Masterson say that Annie Pat and her father had a good time at Marine Universe?” I ask gloomily, staring out the car window at the trees whizzing by.

  “They didn’t go,” Mom says, eyes on the road. “Annie Pat was too upset.”

  “Oh.”

  That’s not good. I start rehearsing my apology all over again.

  “What’s their house number?” Mom asks, peering out the window at Sycamore Lane, where the Mastersons live.

  I’ve only been to Annie Pat’s house once, because of the baby, but I remember. “Three-fifteen,” I mumble, and then we are there.

  Way too soon.

  Knock, knock. “Can I come in?” I whisper at Annie Pat’s bedroom door, which I happen to know is decorated on the inside with pictures of beautiful jellyfish.

  “Nuh-uh,” Annie Pat’s muffled voice says from behind the door.

  “Please?” I say.

  No answer. Then, “I’m busy reading about leopard sharks.”

  I slump down onto the floor outside Annie Pat’s room and listen to the grown-ups in the living room cooing over the baby. “Look at those little hands!” Mom marvels, as if she’s never seen hands before. I have hands, and all she ever notices is whether or not my fingernails are dirty.

  Annie Pat’s house smells different from ours. Not bad, but different. I knock again, but Annie Pat still doesn’t answer. So I slide my apology letter under her door—and listen hard to hear if she tiptoes over to get it.

  It is a very good letter, in my opinion, and here is what it says:

  Even if I end up with no friends at all—let alone a cool best friend like Annie Pat Masterson, who wants to be a scientist, too—at least I’m doing the right thing.

  Annie Pat’s door opens a crack, just wide enough for me to see one pigtail and one navy-blue eye. “Say it out loud,” she tells me, sounding stern.

  “The whole thing? But—but I don’t have it memorized,” I stammer.

  “Just the last part,” Annie Pat says.

  I wrinkle up my forehead. Boy, I think, she’s not making this very easy for me. “I was wrong,” I force myself to say.

  “Not that,” Annie Pat says from behind the door. “The part after that.”

  The part after that. I try to remember. “Uh, ‘your friend’?” I say, guessing.

  Annie Pat’s door opens a little more. Now I can see her angry nose. “You were mean to me just the way Cynthia was mean to you, once upon a time,” she tells me. “You’re exactly like Cynthia, Emma. You dummy.”

  “I’m not like Cynthia,” I object—but nicely, and smiling, in spite of her rude remark, so that she won’t shut the door again.

  I may be a lot of things, but “dummy” isn’t one of them. I hope.

  “Yes, you are too,” Annie Pat insists. “You were trying to decide who would be friends with who, weren’t you? And I just knew that pretty soon you were gonna tell everyone, ‘Kry Rodriguez is my first-best friend, and Annie Pat Masterson is my second-best friend.’ Just like Cynthia!”

  “I would never say such a dumb thing,” I tell Annie Pat. “And like I wrote in the letter, I promise I won’t try to make friends with Kry Rodriguez anymore. I’ll forget she’s even in our class.”

  “I don’t care about that, Emma,” Annie Pat says, opening her bedroom door even more. Tears make her eyes look even bigger than usual, and that’s saying something. “I mean, I like Kry Rodriguez, too,” she says. “Who wouldn’t? I just don’t want you to forget about being friends with me, that’s all.”

  “Never,” I say, crossing my heart and hoping to die.

  (Not really, but you know what I mean.)

  “Then you may enter,” Annie Pat says, sounding like a queen.

  “Thank you for forgiving me,” I tell her humbly.

  And I really, really mean it.

  12

  Turkeys Drool, Best Friends Rule!

  “Hey, Kry, what is your family going to do tomorrow?” Cynthia asks Kry Rodriguez at lunch on Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving. Most of the girls in our class have gathered at the picnic table because it’s so pretty outside. The sun is shining, and orange and gold leaves are blowing all around the nearby playground like little holiday decorations, and two scrub jays squawk like crazy in the branches above our heads.

  Cynthia plays with a tiny plastic turkey that is pinned to her pure white sweatshirt as she waits for Kry to answer. I wonder where she got it? I wouldn’t mind having one.

  Kry swallows a bite of her pita-bread sandwich and takes a sip of milk. “We have relatives staying,” she finally says above the uproar—as loud as a garbage truck—the boys are making at a nearby table, and then she smiles at me, because I already know about the relatives.

  Cynthia does not like that smile, but I don’t even care enough to think, Score! Whoever Kry wants to be friends with is just fine.

  (Of course, if she wants to hang out with Annie Pat and me, that would be really, really, very, very fine. And Annie Pat
agrees with me!)

  “We’re going to my grandma’s house in San Diego,” Heather reports, unasked. The long skinny braid that usually falls across her face has a little plastic turkey on its elastic band that matches Cynthia’s, I notice.

  “And my family is flying to Seattle,” Fiona says, looking important.

  And there’s a third little turkey, pinned to the sleeve of Fiona’s shirt.

  Matching turkeys! I change my mind about wanting one of those pins.

  “Lucky you, Fiona,” Annie Pat says, looking jealous. She has never been on an airplane. Neither have I, for that matter, but I’m supposed to fly to England next summer to visit my dad, and that ought to count for about a hundred trips.

  “We love Thanksgiving,” one of the church-friends says happily.

  “Us, too,” one of the neighbor-friends says. “Pumpkin pie with whipped cream on top!”

  Annie Pat and I exchange green and groany looks at the very mention of pumpkin pie, because last Sunday, we ate more than our share—for this year and for next year. When we are hungry for pumpkin pie again, we’ll be ten years old.

  Double digits!

  “And Thanksgiving is fun ‘cause there are always lots of little cousins to play with,” Kry chimes in. It’s more like she’s a normal part of our class, now, and no one is trying too hard to impress her anymore.

  (Well, except for some of the boys, but that’s another story.)

  “What are you and your mom doing for Thanksgiving, Emma?” Kry asks.

  I grin and slide a happy look in Annie Pat’s direction. “We got invited to eat over at Annie Pat’s house,” I tell her—and everyone. “We’re bringing the stuffing!”

  Because the right stuffing is nearly as important as pumpkin pie. And other people’s stuffing is just plain weird.

  “We’re gonna have fu-u-u-un,” Annie Pat says. “I like to put black olives on all my fingers and then eat ’em!”