“Okay, then seriously. What is wrong with you? You’re so Bummersville.”
“I’m thinking of buying property there,” she said, sliding the tray on the table.
“Oceanfront.”
“Yeah, and maybe I’ll come see you sometime in Oblivious Town.”
I laughed. Madeline didn’t. She moved the cookie sheet on the table, like she couldn’t go on without it being perfectly straight.
I’m sure her comment was about her mom and parents in general, but I hesitated asking more about it. As she had so helpfully pointed out, I lived inside a family sitcom.
That night, Mom made a place for me on the floor of my room like she always did, and I let Madeline have my bed.
Lying on layers of blankets and an old sleeping bag, I felt strange, like something—me, Madeline, school—wasn’t right. Maybe I just needed to adjust to the new school year or something; or maybe the eggs we put in the cookies were rotten. Whatever it was, I fell asleep hoping Madeline and I never had another sleepover like that again.
13 MADELINE
IT’S LIKE, SHE TOTALLY DOESN’T GET IT. Not even remotely.”
Susanna and I were at my locker on Monday morning. She had asked how my weekend was and I told her about the lame sleepover at Brooke’s. I realized I was feeling more and more comfortable telling Susanna stuff that Brooke just couldn’t understand.
“It’s kind of not her fault,” Susanna said, “having a perfect family and all.”
“It’s kind of obnoxious,” I said, because honestly, it was. Brooke was my best friend but I was starting to realize that she just didn’t understand it, not like Susanna did. It felt weird, but it was also a relief, like I finally had someone to talk to.
“When my parents were still living together,” Susanna said, “I couldn’t have sleepovers. I was too afraid they’d have one of their epic battles over, like, the grocery bill or something. Once my dad accused my mom of buying too much food, and then she accused him of encouraging her to get an eating disorder.”
I sort of laughed because I knew how crazy parents could get. I saw it in my own house. I worried that Susanna would think I was mean for laughing but she just said, “I know, right? They were insane.”
“Listen,” Susanna continued. “I was thinking of inviting everyone over this weekend for a sleepover. You want to come? My mom is always so busy reading magazines that she never bothers us. Last time the girls came over, we had a little party on the roof outside my bedroom. My mom would have killed me if she found out but she never even noticed. Surprise, surprise.”
I thought of my mom, always working, never at home, like maybe she wanted to avoid me and my brother. It was the complete opposite of Brooke’s mom. “Brooke’s mom actually offered to bake us cookies on Friday,” I said.
Susanna laughed. “Please tell me you’re joking.”
I laughed with her, even though I liked that she had offered. My mom would never do that.
“How very Betty Crocker,” Susanna said, and then her face suddenly changed to a more serious expression and she said, “So if you want to do that thing just let me know. Should be cool.”
I turned and saw Brooke was now there. “Um, yeah, I’ll let you know. Hey, Brooke. How’s it going?”
I don’t know why I didn’t want her to know what we had just been talking about. We’d been making fun of her mom, I guess, but Susanna obviously didn’t want Brooke to know about the sleepover, which I guess meant Brooke wasn’t invited.
“I swear, this building is shifting,” Brooke said. I stepped aside so she could get to her locker. “How can I keep getting lost on my way to the same class every day?”
“It’s not that hard to find your way around,” Susanna said.
Brooke looked up at Susanna and said, “Wow. Thanks for the insight.”
And just like that—tension. Why did Brooke have to be like that?
Brooke dumped and grabbed a couple of books, then slammed her locker shut. She stood up and asked me, “You want to eat outside in the courtyard today? It’s kind of nice out.”
I really didn’t want to. It seemed a little breezy and I hated being cold. Also, it seemed rude not to invite Susanna when she was standing right there. “Um, I don’t know. Isn’t it going to rain or something?”
“That’s why I want to eat outside,” she said. “I didn’t shower this morning, and I hear that rain is the most cleansing water of all. It’ll be like going to the spa.”
Sometimes I wished she could just answer a question straight. Everything had to be a joke.
“If it’s not raining, then okay,” I said. “If it is, I’ll meet you inside.”
Brooke started down the hall and yelled, “Wimp!” which made me smile.
As Susanna and I walked to our third period classes, which were near each other, she said, “So. Are we on for Friday or what?”
I watched Brooke turn the corner at the end of the hall, then pass back in the opposite direction. I hoped she was going the right way. “Yeah,” I said. “We’re on.”
I didn’t like how hiding something from Brooke made me feel, especially something as dumb as a sleepover at someone else’s house. You’d think I was cheating on her. I realized that Susanna asking me to spend the night was the first invite from a new friend since Brooke and I became inseparable. I felt bad that Susanna didn’t ask Brooke, but it wasn’t my place to invite her to someone else’s house either. Maybe if Brooke was a little friendlier she might have been invited, too. Every day at lunch she acted all off-putting and annoyed.
I ended up meeting Brooke outside the caf, and the weather was actually really nice. Chris Meyers was hanging out in the courtyard, and Brooke egged him on to do the worm. I wondered if she still liked him, even though she claimed she never did.
Anyway, Chris said it’d mess up his tie if he wormed, but after another round of teasing from Brooke, and then me, he agreed to it. He even showed us some new moves he’d been working on, with all these jerky motions and sliding sideways on the sides of his feet like he was on ice. We had a little circle of people cheering him on until one of the teachers came by and broke it up. It ended up being one of the best lunches ever.
Later that week, when Brooke asked me about the weekend, I had a sick feeling in my stomach, like I was doing something seriously wrong. I felt the need to confess to her that I had other plans that didn’t involve her. I even thought about lying about it, but we never lied to each other. So I told her.
“It’s not a big deal,” I said. “It was sort of a last minute thing.” Okay, so I kind of lied. I have no idea why.
“Oh,” Brooke said as we walked to the front of school at the end of the day on Friday. “That’s cool.” She so didn’t look like she thought it was cool. She looked kind of surprised, and not in a good way. “Who all is going to be there?”
Exactly the question I didn’t want to answer because everyone was going to be there except her. “Um, I think maybe Natalie and Julia are going to stop by. They might be spending the night too, but I’m not sure.”
“So it’s like a whole slumber party thing?” she asked.
“Well, not really. It’s just really casual. Really last minute.”
“Really?” Brooke said, but she was smiling. “Because I really want to know if it’s really casual and really last minute. Really.”
“Ha ha,” I said. “Seriously, I’d invite you but it’s at her house. If it were my house, it’d be totally different.”
“Yeah, you wouldn’t have to invite me because I’d already be there.”
“F’sho,” I said.
As I packed a bag for the night, Susanna called me on my cell.
“Major problem,” she said. “We have a leak in our roof. Can’t have the sleepover here.”
“Is it from walking on the roof?” I joked.
“No,” she said. “Natalie and Julia and I talked about it and we think we should have it at your house. I’m tired of their houses and we hav
en’t seen yours yet. So it’s your turn. Is that okay?”
It didn’t really seem like much of a question, but I guess I didn’t mind. Mom was actually at a conference in Chicago, which had started another fight—Dad wanting to know what kind of work conference happened on a Friday night—and my brother, Josh, was going to a friend’s after the high school football game. It was kind of perfect, actually.
I made sure all traces of Josh’s dirty socks and shorts were out of sight, then picked up my room. I paused, looking at the stuffed animals on my bed. I had sort of teased Brooke about hers, even though I still had some. I wondered what Susanna and the girls would think of them. They’d probably think it was babyish. I scooped them all up, even my beloved Harold, and put them in a big duffel bag that I stuffed in the back of my closet. It was time to move on from them anyway.
When everyone got to my house, we raided the pantry, stocking up on Pringles, gummies, cookies (already baked, thanks very much), water, and Cokes. We settled ourselves in my room, where I had pulled out my best collection of movies just in case we wanted to watch something, and I had a new mix playing on my computer that I’d made earlier that week. We dumped our nosh on the floor. Susanna picked up the remote and started flipping through the TV channels, Natalie wondered if we should call any boys, and then Julia asked, “So, what’s the deal with Brooke?” Suddenly I had a very bad feeling in my stomach.
“What do you mean?”
“She means,” Susanna said, turning her head but not her eyes toward me as she kept changing channels, “what’s her deal? Why does she act like she’s better than us?”
“She doesn’t,” I said, feeling defensive about Brooke, but also knowing they had reason to ask that about her. It wasn’t like she was being the world’s friendliest girl or anything.
Julia said, “I never did anything to her and it’s like she shoots me dirty looks every day at lunch.”
“You’re just misreading her,” I said. “She does like you guys.” I was pretty sure this wasn’t true, but I couldn’t say what I really thought, which was that she didn’t like them, and for no good reason that I knew of.
Susanna dropped the remote and turned to me. “Look, Mad, we know she’s your best friend and all, but seriously—what’s with her attitude? She’s actually kind of rude.”
“Yeah,” Julia said, her eyes looking nervously from me to Susanna.
“You guys just don’t get her humor. She’s very sarcastic. She’s actually really funny,” I said, even though her sarcasm had been getting on my nerves lately.
“That’s it,” Susanna said, like she’d just realized something. “She’s sarcastic. It’s like everything she says has to be some snarky remark.”
“The other day at lunch,” Natalie said, “I told her my mom had the same shoes as her and she was like, ‘Yeah, just what I want to hear.’ I couldn’t believe it. I mean, I was just saying.”
“I don’t know what her deal is lately,” I said, feeling a slight twinge of guilt. But I told myself it wasn’t anything I wouldn’t say to her face. “Her sarcasm thing is getting pretty old.”
Always one for stating it like it is, Susanna said, “It’s obnoxious.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I guess it is.”
“Madeline said her mom was trying to bake them cookies last weekend,” Susanna said to Natalie and Julia.
“Seriously?” Julia asked. “What are you, four?”
I rolled my eyes like I thought it was dumb, too. “I know. But we basically told her to get lost. Her mom is nice but kind of lame. She sells these weird candles and incense and room fresheners. But get this; she doesn’t sell them in stores or online. You have to buy directly from her.” The girls were all listening to me, and it was like I couldn’t stop myself. Why was I saying these things about Brooke’s mom, who’d never been anything but nice to me? “She hardly makes any money doing it. They’re practically broke.”
I don’t know why I said it. I wasn’t even sure it was true. But they all nodded like they agreed with me, so I let it go and told myself to keep my mouth shut when it came to talking about Brooke around Susanna and the other girls.
Later, we watched a movie about chupacabras, then dared each other to run all the way to the creek alone, without a flashlight. (No one did it but I silently betted that, if Brooke were here, she would have.)
Natalie and Julia brought their sleeping bags and Susanna and I slept in my bed. “Stay down there, my loyal subjects,” she teased Natalie and Julia as they crawled into their sleeping bags.
“We must keep them at our feet,” I said. And then Susanna and I looked at each other and said at the exact same time, “Pedicures!” We both got out of bed and I opened the bathroom drawer that held all my polishes. We each chose a different color and stayed up for another hour, concentrating on giving each other the perfect pedicure while teasing Natalie and Julia that their feet stunk. It ended up being a great night. So much fun, in fact, that I sort of forgot all about Brooke.
14 BROOKE
MADELINE AND I ALWAYS SPENT FRIDAY NIGHTS together. I couldn’t remember a weekend we didn’t start together. It’s not like it was a law or anything, but it just always . . . was. I didn’t care that she’d made some (completely superficial and boring) new friends that weren’t my friends, and that they invited her and not me to their (probably completely superficial and boring) sleepover on Friday.
But still, something wasn’t right, especially after our bomb of a sleepover last weekend. I tried not to over-think it because the rest of the week had been fine. Once we hung out on our own, we had fun just like always. I tried not to think she was starting to like them more than me, but the nagging feeling pestered me.
I spent Friday night at home with my parents. I tried not to feel like the world’s largest loser but if I’m being honest, it was pretty depressing. Mom worked at the kitchen table on order forms and sniffing out new scents while Dad watched some of the most unfunny sitcoms I think I’ve ever seen. I didn’t smile once, and he kept laughing at stuff that wasn’t even supposed to be funny. When Abbey’s friends picked her up to go bowling, I jokingly (but not really) asked if I could go with her.
“I love you like a sister,” Abbey told me, “but not in a million years.”
The night dragged on and on, and while staring at hilarious-less TV shows, I couldn’t stop wondering what was happening at Susanna’s house. I wondered if her bedroom was all decked out like Madeline’s with a TV, DVR and computer and tons of space. I wondered what they were doing and what sorts of things Susanna and her friends did at sleepovers. I also wondered if they were talking about me. I don’t know what I thought they might be saying, but it’s like I could feel my loser vibes all around the house that night, and I wondered if Madeline, who I have sort of an ESP thing with on good days, picked up on it and then made fun of it.
The next morning the sun was shining and the weather had that cool fall crispness in the air. It was only 10:00, but I wondered if Madeline was back from Susanna’s yet. I decided to walk across the creek to see.
I pulled my hair back into a ponytail and put on my favorite Saturday jeans, the ones that were worn through in the knee and were soft and comfortable. I grabbed my purple hoodie and headed down the slope behind my house, kicking through the leaves that were just beginning to fall on the patches of dirt and rock that mark the path. The rain had let up but the creek water still flowed, and I smiled remembering the snake from just a couple of weeks ago.
I hopped over the creek using the large rocks as stepping stones, wondering, once again, when Dad was going to build that swing. Then I made my way through the trees and up to the edge of Madeline’s property. Her lawn was kept electric green and trim with the help of a two-man landscaping team. Abbey and I had learned early on how to mow our own lawn.
The wind kicked up a bit, sending ripples across her always perfectly blue pool and some brown leaves cartwheeling across the top. I walked up on the back porch, gave a quick
knock, then let myself in.
I could hear voices in the kitchen, so I headed that way.
As I came around the corner of the living room, I heard several girls’ voices, one being Madeline’s. I slowed my pace and peeked around the corner to see who was there, my heart pounding violently in my chest. When I looked around the corner, I saw them—all of them. Madeline, Susanna, Natalie, and Julia. They sat at the kitchen island eating cinnamon rolls, the kind that come in the tube you have to unroll—offensive to the kind my mom makes from scratch for Madeline and me. Susanna stood on the opposite side of the island from the other girls with a plate and a glass of orange juice. They were all laughing.
For a moment it was like I was frozen in place. Madeline said that Susanna had invited her to her house, and that if they were spending the night here, she totally would have had me over. Had she completely lied to my face?
I wanted to get out of there. I couldn’t bear seeing all those stupid girls and listening to their stupid talk. I turned to sneak back out, but just as I did, Susanna saw me. She screamed like she’d been murdered, which made all the other girls scream, and then she yelled, “Oh my god, who is that?”
What could I do but turn back around, with the best at-ease look on my face I could muster?
“Hey, guys.” I waved. “Just me.”
“Oh my god, you scared the life out of me!” Susanna said, clutching her chest like she was an actual heart attack victim.
“Brooke,” Madeline said, getting up from her seat, her brows all pulled together in a totally appropriate what-the-heck-are-you-doing-here look. Her eyes darted from me to the other girls, like she was trying to figure out who deserved her attention most.
“Oh, um,” I eloquently began. “Hey! Just dropping by to see if you were home and . . . you are. Hi!” They all stared at me, confused, and I just wanted to get out of there and go home.
“Well,” Madeline began, looking uncomfortable. Although I couldn’t figure out why because I was the one who accidentally busted in on her me-less party. I was the one who should be the most uncomfortable. “Um, do you want some cinnamon rolls? They’re not as good as your mom’s, but at least we didn’t burn them.” She laughed. Fake laughed.
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