Best Friends Forever

by Jennifer Weiner

  Oh, God. I held my breath, stuck my head out of the door to make sure that I was alone, hurried over to the sinks, grab-bed a wad of rough brown paper towels, covered them with foamy soap, dunked them under the cold water, hustled back into my stall, slammed the door, yanked down my blue sweatpants, and started scrubbing. Another peek out the door, another dash to the sinks, another wad of paper towels, this time minus the soap. Finally, I pulled a Bic out of my backpack and painstakingly scribbled over each letter of what someone had written about me.

  It didn’t matter. The next day, in study hall, I saw the same words on a desk, this time in black ink. ADDIE DOWNS STINKS. And underneath it, someone writing in blue had added she has big tits tho. I propped my math book in front of me, licked my fingertips, and started rubbing, managing to smear the letters but not erase them. I licked some more, rubbed some more, and looked up to find Mrs. Norita standing over me and frowning.

  “Miss Downs? Would you mind telling me what you’re doing? Because it’s clearly not your math assignment.”

  From the seat beside me, Kevin Oliphant snickered.

  “Let me see,” said Mrs. Norita. I knew it was hopeless. I slid my math book aside. She looked at the words, then looked at me. “We’ll have the janitor take care of that” was all she said. “Okay,” I whispered, and slumped down as far as I could in my seat, my belly pushing against the elastic waist of my skirt, my chest straining at the fabric of my top, wishing I could sink all the way down to the floor and then through it.

  I didn’t understand what I’d said, what I’d done, that had turned me into a target. I hurried to class in a head-down shuffle, clinging to the left edge of the corridor, with an eye on the open doors, the bathrooms I could duck into when I heard the hissed whispers that trailed in my wake. Hey, fattie. Hey, stinky. Fat ass. Lard butt. Wide load. Yo, Hindenburg (this was after we’d covered the Hindenburg disaster in history class).

  “You should smile more!” Valerie counseled on the bus home from school. She bared her own teeth in a tinselly grin. That summer, she had finally gotten her wish and spent six weeks in California with her father. I had counted the days until she came back and had accompanied Mrs. Adler to the airport to meet her. Waiting by the gate, I’d felt my heart shrivel painfully when Val came down the walkway, tanned and taller, with brand-new breasts pushing against the front of her brand-new Izod shirt, and her hair hanging in a heavy gold curtain down her back. Beside me, Mrs. Adler had given a little yelp, her expression the strangest mixture of pride and sorrow, as Val pulled off her sunglasses and flashed her braces in a smile. In the car, she’d babbled excitedly about the amazing time she’d had, showing me pictures of herself posing in front of the hollywood sign, telling stories about visiting her father “on set” and having lunch at “craft services” with Tom Cruise’s stunt double. She’d come back with a suitcase full of new clothes, even more confidence than she’d had already, and a seemingly inexhaustible supply of advice about how I should behave. “Say hi to people,” she told me, as the bus labored up the hill toward home. “Be friendly!”

  “They hate me,” I said. Saying hi and being friendly would never work for me, but it had worked for Val. That fall she’d made the JV cheerleading squad, where her enthusiasm and volume made up for whatever she lacked in rhythm and grace. She wasn’t the best-looking girl, or the most coordinated, and she was off-key as ever when the squad attempted to sing, but she was the one you’d watch anyhow, the one your eyes would follow as she cartwheeled on the sidelines or jumped in the air to celebrate a touchdown. She had a whole crew of new friends, fellow cheerleaders, giggling, ponytailed girls.

  As for me, I had Val, and that was it. Everyone else seemed to hate me, and I didn’t know why. I wasn’t even the fattest girl in our class. There were three girls bigger than I was (there’d been four once, before Andi Moskowitz had gotten shipped off to fat camp in the Berkshires). Yes, I was heavy, and yes, I was plain—I’d spent enough time studying myself in my bedroom mirror to know that even with makeup and my hair done just right, no one would ever be tempted to call me beautiful, nobody from the cheerleading squad would be slipping a note in my locker inviting me to tryouts, the way they had with Val, not even if they needed a large, stable base for their pyramids—but I wasn’t outrageously heavy or ridiculously ugly. So why were they picking on me?

  I wondered sometimes whether it had to do with Jon. Maybe they hated me because they couldn’t hate him. My brother was living, vacant-eyed, occasionally drooling proof that everything they were could be taken away. Just one bad decision, one wrong turn, a car’s wheels that went off the road instead of staying on it, and they could end up like he was. They couldn’t hate him, though; he was a victim, a survivor… but they could hate me, just by virtue of proximity.

  I stayed as close to Val as I could, tagging along with her new friends, trailing in her perfume-and-mousse-scented wake, because nobody was mean to me when she was around. I also started carrying a bar of Dial soap in a plastic case, and a washcloth and a hand towel around in my backpack, plus fresh underwear and even an extra pair of sweatpants. I’d shower in the mornings for ten, fifteen, twenty minutes, standing underneath the scalding water until my skin was bright red and my mother banged on the door and told me for the third time to come out. After lunch, I’d duck into the bathroom and change my underwear, just in case… and when I had my period, I’d change my napkin between every class and change my underwear, too. I went through cans of what the drugstore coyly called “personal hygiene spray” at the rate of one a week. Val and I were in different classes except for science and English, and three days a week we didn’t even have the same lunch. I sat by myself at assemblies and in chorus, and two days a week, I’d be all by myself at lunchtime, at a table in the cafeteria corner. Sometimes Merry Armbruster would plop down for a few minutes. She’d bow her head in prayer, lips moving rapidly while I ate the carrot sticks and rice cakes that I’d packed. Merry belonged to some weird church. She didn’t cut her hair or wear pants or talk to boys, and she got sent to the office almost as much as Dan Swansea, because of her propensity for hissing things like “hellbound Sodomite” at girls who French-kissed their boyfriends in the halls. She’d sit with me and talk to me, but I didn’t think she liked me very much. Merry viewed me as a lost cause, the closest thing Pleasant Ridge High had to a leper whose feet she could wash.

  After school, Val had cheerleading practice. I would walk the two miles home (I’d quit taking the bus by myself after we’d had to back down a blocked-off street and the meep-meep-meep noise had prompted some wit to shout, “Hey, that’s how Addie Downs sounds when she’s getting on the toilet”). The yellow-and-black bus would labor past me, up the hill just beyond the high school parking lot, and usually, someone would stick his head out the window and yell “Burn it off, fattie!” as I climbed. I kept my head down, biting my lip, feeling my thighs rubbing together, feeling myself start to sweat, start to chafe, start to stink.

  At home, I’d take another shower, and then I’d go to my job, babysitting Mrs. Shea’s youngest children, a set of three-year-old twins. I’d stay until seven, sometimes later. I would take the twins to the park, pulling them in their Radio Flyer wagon, and at dinnertime, we’d play restaurant, where I’d take their order in a little notebook, then bring them their mac and cheese or cut-up hot dogs, rice or chicken noodle soup. I’d bathe them, read to them, supervise teeth-brushing and pajama selection, and leave them on their beds, waiting for their mother to come home and tuck them in.

  The Sheas lived at the end of our street. Most days, I’d go straight home, but once or twice a week, I’d cross the busy road and walk to the convenience store on the corner of Main and Maple, or the drugstore down the street, and wander through the aisles slowly, sometimes murmuring “milk” or “bread” or “butter” to myself, to make it sound like I had a legitimate reason for being there. Meanwhile, I’d fill my basket with bags of cookies and chips, family-sized Cadbury candy bars wrapp
ed in crisp blue-and-white paper and gold foil, boxes of Sno-Caps, plastic cups of butterscotch pudding so loaded with artificial colors and flavors and preservatives that they didn’t require refrigeration, chocolate-iced cupcakes, raspberry-filled doughnuts, and lemon pies. I’d shove my money across the counter without meeting the clerk’s eyes (“Having a party?” an older lady in a dark-blue apron had asked me once, and I’d been forced to mumble my assent), cram the treats into my backpack, and hurry out the door.

  At home, my mother would have dinner waiting: broiled chicken breasts, sweet potatoes with a sprinkling of cinnamon and Butter Buds, a bowl full of chopped iceberg lettuce doused with fat-free vinaigrette. The four of us would sit at the kitchen table, cutting and pouring and moving food into our mouths and answering questions about our days. Jon would work on word searches, or read Omni magazine at the table, his cheek propped up in one hand, his mouth hanging open.

  When we were done with our meal, I’d wash the dishes, wipe off the table, and sweep the floor. My father would head to the basement. Jon would drift toward the television set. He liked sitcoms with laugh tracks, shows that told him what was funny. I’d hear his own hoots of laughter, a scant second after the taped audience started laughing. My mother would change into sweatpants, and we’d take our evening constitutional, ten laps around the block. I’d take another shower, my third of the day. “Goodnight,” I’d call before locking myself into my bedroom.

  Every night I’d promise myself I wouldn’t do it, that I’d just finish my homework and go to sleep like a normal person. Some nights I’d last until eight-thirty or even nine. I’d rinse my mouth with mouthwash so astringent it would make my eyes water. I would brush my teeth until my gums bled. I’d chew sugar-free gum and gulp mint tea. I’d sketch frantically, using charcoal and colored pencils to capture a scene from the day—the twins in the sandbox, their round faces crinkling when they laughed; the sun coming up over the cherry tree in our backyard; my mother’s hands on Jon’s shoulders. I’d replay the day’s taunts in my head. I would review what I’d eaten, and think about how well I had done, how I hadn’t had as much as a spoonful of the twins’ mac and cheese or a single cookie from their box. None of it did any good. Eventually I’d think, Just a taste. Just a little taste of something sweet. And then, almost before I knew it, I would find myself with my hand down deep in one of the plastic bags, the stiff waxed paper and foil wrappers crinkling as I tore the packages open. I’d turn off all the lights except the small one by the side of my bed, and I’d lie on my side, curled around my sketchpad, or one of the heavy art books I’d take out of the library, looking at paintings and photographs from museums in Italy and Paris, places I’d never been and would probably never visit. And I’d eat, ferrying the sweets from the box to my mouth in an unbroken chain, chewing and swallowing and chewing and swallowing, feeling the pillow cool against my cheek, the chocolate coating my mouth and my tongue, the syrupy caramel melting deep in the back of my throat, my left hand dipping and rising into the bags and boxes as my right hand turned the pages.

  The Saturday after Valentine’s Day all of those heart-shaped boxes of candy that hadn’t been bought were 75 percent off. I’d buy half a dozen boxes and stack them in my closet. At night, I’d start off with cookies, move on to something salty, like cheese curls or potato chips, and finish my evening with nougats and caramel chews, buttercreams and cherry cordials. I would flip the pages, looking at the pictures with my fingers scrabbling through the fluted brown paper cups in a box with the words To My Sweetheart twining across the cover in gold script, and I’d fall asleep without brushing my teeth, with all of that sweetness gilding my mouth. I would dream about love, about being magically lifted out of my house, out of my town, even out of my body, and deposited someplace better, where I’d be a thin beautiful laughing girl in a two-piece swimsuit or a short cheerleader’s skirt. Sometimes I would let my mind wander to Dan Swansea, how he’d looked at the swimming pool in the summer, beads of water flashing on his smooth brown back, more water slicking the dark hairs against his calves. Hey, pretty, I’d imagine him saying as we passed in the hall. In my dreams, he reached for my hands, he tugged me into the secret vestibule outside the gym teacher’s office to steal a kiss before class. None of this would ever happen, but my dreams, carefully embroidered and unfolded each night, were as sweet as candy.

  “I don’t understand it,” my mother said after my checkup. My pediatrician had shaken his head, frowning, while I stood on the scale, and then, bald head gleaming, he’d bent over his prescription pad and written the words “Weight Watchers” and “exercise,” before tearing it off and ceremoniously handing it to me. She’d add another lap to our evening walk, or subtract half a sweet potato from my dinner, and I’d promise myself that I was going to stop with the chips and the cookies and the To My Sweetheart candy. I’d wake up full of resolve, thinking that this would be the day that things would change: I’d stick to my diet, I’d smile, I’d be friendly, I’d do whatever Val told me, because clearly she’d figured out the secret to being liked by everyone.

  “Just don’t worry so much,” Val lectured one spring morning. She wore a pink tank top that left her arms and the top of her chest bare, and a khaki skirt—since she’d started with the cheerleaders, she wore skirts almost all the time. A few she’d bought herself, over her California summer, and a few I recognized as Mrs. Adler’s, the long, lacy cotton ones that swept the ground like a bridal train. Val’s braces had come off, her teeth were white and straight and shiny, and her figure had filled out—she wasn’t very big on top, but her small breasts looked right with her tight hips and long legs. To look at her you’d never believe that she’d once been geeky or gawky, that her clothes had been weird, that she and I had once belonged together. The balance had shifted. In high school the things that I was (smart, neat, polite, artistic) mattered far less than the things Valerie was (blond, cheerleader). “You smell fine.”

  “I know,” I said, and pulled at the hem of my sweater. It was too hot for sweaters, but mine came from Benetton and was exactly the same as the ones the other, thinner girls wore, only bigger. I had the same designer jeans, too, special-ordered from Marshall Field’s, where they didn’t normally stock my size. My mother had bought them for me, and I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I could wear exactly the same things as the other girls and they would still look wrong, because I was wrong, and nothing I wore could change that.

  “You’re too self-conscious,” Val scolded, shading her eyes and peering down the street. “It’s like you’re already thinking of every bad thing someone could think about you before they even think it. If people know they’re getting to you, they’re just going to keep doing it.”

  I ducked my head. She was right.

  “You’re fine,” she said as a white Civic zipped around the corner and squealed to a stop in front of us. Mindy Gibbons, one of Val’s fellow cheerleaders, was in the driver’s seat.

  “Hey, Val!” she singsonged. There was a momentary pause. “Hi, Addie.” Another pause. “Hi, Jon.”

  I raised my hand as Jon raised his head from his word search, looked at me before raising his own hand in a wave. Val picked up her backpack and put her hand on the car door. “Do you want to ride with us?” she asked.

  My throat felt dry. Mindy was a senior and a cheerleader, and I was sure she didn’t want me in her car. “That’s okay,” I said.

  “What?” Val asked impatiently. “I can’t hear you.”

  “Go ahead,” I said.

  “Come on,” Mindy said over the blare of Mariah Carey. “We’re gonna be late.”

  Val gave me a look I couldn’t read before climbing in next to Mindy and slamming the door. I watched them drive off, feeling furious and bewildered and sad. When had Val and Mindy made this arrangement? When had they gone from being squad-mates to being friends?

  I picked up my own backpack as the school bus lumbered around the corner and, bracing for the stares and the whispers,
pushed Jon onto the bus and climbed on board behind him.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Pleasant Ridge town manager Sasha Devine was a handsome, dark-eyed woman five years older than Jordan, who did not look happy to see him on her doorstep late Saturday night.

  “I assume this isn’t a social call,” she said, leaning against her door. Blue light from the television flickered behind her, making her short, curvy body glow like she was radioactive.

  Jordan kept quiet. Sleeping with the town manager, technically his boss, had been a huge mistake. Sleeping with his boss and then not calling her afterward had been an even worse one. “Can I come in?” he asked.

  Sasha tilted her face up and looked at Jordan like he was going to try to sell her something she didn’t want. “How about you just say what you need to say?”

  “Okay.” He should have called her. He’d meant to call her. He’d had every intention of calling her, but by the next night, the task of lifting his telephone, punching in her numbers, actually speaking to her, had seemed insurmountable. I’ll call her tomorrow, he’d told himself, but on Sunday he’d just… what? Gotten busy. There was a Sports Illustrated he hadn’t read, and when he’d turned on the water to make coffee, the faucet was dripping. He’d set about fixing it, only his socket wrenches were under the sink, with the cleaning supplies, and the cabinet was shut with one of the childproof locks he couldn’t remember how to open, and rather than try to figure it out, he’d made a trip to Home Depot to buy more.

  Home Depot was right by the movie theater, and there was a showing of that movie he’d wanted to see, and by the time he got home, it was seven o’clock and he’d figured that Sasha was giving her kids dinner. She had two daughters, eight and ten, and a husband who’d done a runner for reasons she hadn’t divulged. Back in his camouflage camp chair Jordan drank one beer while watching a TiVo’ed episode of SportsCenter, and another beer watching the news. Beers three, four, and five had followed, and then the Nighty-Night Lady came on and he’d gotten involved in the episode, and afterward, zipping his pants and disposing of the Kleenex, he was too embarrassed to speak to anyone. Then it was Monday, but he had Mondays off, and on Tuesday he’d figured he’d see her at some point during the week, and he had, but it had been awkward, and the week after that, when he’d finally decided to ask if she wanted to have dinner, she’d snarled, “Don’t do me any favors,” and that had been the end of their romance. He’d never gotten to apologize. Certainly, he’d never gotten to tell her the truth, which was that after they’d had sex (and that part had gone well, all things considered—out of her suit and hose and heels, with her thick hair loosed from its pins, Sasha was an old-fashioned beauty), he’d gone to her bathroom and seen, amid the cosmetics on the countertop, a tube of Dora the Explorer toothpaste, bright-red gel in a red-and-white container sized for little kids’ hands. And really, what could he say? I can’t see you again because I’m afraid of your toothpaste? I can’t see you again because you have kids and I don’t and I kind of hate you for that? I can’t see you again because, before things fell apart, my wife used to get tipsy on white wine and sing “I Loves You Porgy” to me, and she never will again, and it hurts so much I can’t even think about it?