A Tale of Two Besties

by Sophia Rossi

  “Maybe she’s like . . . special,” Jessica whispered, but loud enough for the whole class to hear. Derek and a bunch of other kids started laughing. If I were Lily, I would have died of embarrassment. Instead, she suddenly smiled and gave a dramatic bow, as if everyone were applauding her. I felt my cheeks go warm, and I squirmed uncomfortably. My mom says my blush is my “tell,” the thing that alerts a room to your nervousness. Mom also says she doesn’t have a tell, but I’ve definitely noticed that whenever she’s upset she hums like a maniac. (Also see: the peeling off of gel manicures thing I mentioned earlier. Or her overflossing habit, which she does before, after and sometimes DURING meals.)

  “I’m Lily, and I’ll be performing an interpretive dance to a song I wrote called ‘Oh Mighty Sir Zeus’! It’s to the tune of Beyoncé’s ‘Single Ladies.’” She had a small-loud voice, like the kind you’d hear in a cartoon or in an old movie. “The song is about me and my best friend, Sir Zeus, who is part Chesterfield pony and part narwhal. Most of the time Sir Zeus and I just go on adventures and fight bad guys in high-crime neighborhoods. But we’re taking a sabbatical this year because my mom is doing an installation project for a gallery in Hollywood. So now we’re focusing on broadening our art portfolio.”

  I didn’t know what the word “sabbatical” meant, but I knew the word “Sabbath” from Hebrew school. It means “day of rest.” I thought maybe Lily’s parents were resting for a year?

  “Oh,” said Mr. DeJulio, clearly out of his depth on this one. “We don’t actually need you to perform anything today.”

  The fairy didn’t miss a beat. “That’s okay,” she said. “I’ll do it anyway.”

  I don’t remember much about the ensuing spectacle, only the looks on my classmates’ faces, which ranged from stunned to amused to horrified. Lily must have realized she wasn’t quite moving her audience, but to her credit, she kept singing and dancing to her weirdo song about Greek gods and how if they liked it they should have put a ring on it. I had no idea what she was talking about, but it was definitely memorable.

  When she finished, I was at once relieved and sad that it was over. I looked at Lily up there, expecting her to burst into tears any moment. Instead, she was totally beaming. She brushed her hair out of her eyes to give her captive audience another giant bow, despite the total lack of applause her performance was greeted with.

  I knew that if it were me up there, I would have been mortified. I would have literally crawled into a hole and died. It would feel so nice, I thought, to jump up and just act silly like that, without worrying about Jess and Steph calling me weird and gross, or living in fear that Matt was going to make a fart noise after a teacher said my name. It’d be nice to just say “WHO CARES!” because, actually, who really did care? I wanted to believe in my own kind of magic, too, even though I was scared about what it would mean to be that bold.

  No, scratch being scared. I desperately wanted to believe in Lily’s world. And sometimes wanting to believe in something is enough to make it real.

  “Harper, what do you think you are doing?” It must have really freaked Mr. DeJulio out to see one of his best, most quiet students getting up without permission and joining the new girl up front. In fact, I didn’t really know what I was doing, either. I just knew I wanted to feel as brave as Lily.

  “Um, I just wanted to say . . .” I looked across the room full of my classmates, my mind a total blank. Had I really been wondering what it was like to be this girl? Because I had already known: there was Derek and Phil snickering, there was Tim Slater looking over his glasses, something between amusement and concern flashing in his eyes. There was Stephanie, chewing on her lower lip, her eyebrows creased with worry. And there was Jessica, quickly scooching her way to the front row and trying to get my attention.

  “Ohmygod . . . Harper, get down!” hissed Jessica. “Are you having an episode?”

  “I just wanted to say,” I ignored Jessica and started again, my heart beating out of my chest, desperately darting my eyes around to find a friendly face and finally landing on the girl right next to me, who inspired this insanity in the first place. Lily was looking at me—really looking at me, with her bangs finally out of her face—and for once her mind didn’t seem so far away. It was as if she saw me, and that she was interested in what I had to say, and that that was enough.

  “I just wanted to say that I really liked your performance, Lily.” I took a deep breath. “And I just wanted to know, um, where did you get those really cool wings?”

  Lily smiled. “They were a gift from my grandmother, thank you for asking,” she said. “I like them because they remind me of her . . . and of those sour blue lollipops that make your mouth look like a Smurf’s.”

  “Oh, I love those!” I said, surprised that Lily actually ate regular human food. “Have you ever tried to eat one while wearing root beer flavored lip gloss?”

  Lily giggled. “No! Is it good?”

  “Um . . . not really.” All of a sudden, it was like Lily and I were the only two people in the room. I didn’t care what anyone else thought of us, and it was like I had been waiting my whole life to meet someone who could take away that constant anxiety of being judged.

  “I like your shoes, too,” Lily said. “Did you make them?”

  I looked down at my feet in confusion. I was wearing my crocheted low tops that I’d somehow convinced my mom buy for me after telling her that no, I didn’t think Kate Spade sneakers would be appropriate to wear when we were running laps. Did Lily think I had sat there with a needle and a ball of yarn and just, like . . . made a pair of shoes? Was that even a thing you could do? Suddenly the world seemed full of formerly implausible, now totally possible, DIY projects, and I wanted to try every one.

  The bell rang, saving Mr. DeJulio from having to deal with the two crazy girls who had taken over his classroom. It was like a spell had been broken: Immediately it was mayhem as usual as everyone scrambled to the locker rooms to change back into their regular clothes and go to lunch. The show was over, nothing to see here, folks. Lily followed behind me as I made my way to my cubby.

  “Do you want to maybe . . . tell me where I could get a pair of shoes like that?” Lily, looking down and scuffing her feet on the shiny floor, seemed shy again.

  “Sure,” I said brightly. “Actually, do you want to come over to my house this weekend? My mom can take us to Bloomingdale’s and we can get you a pair just like mine.”

  Lily’s smile was neon-bright. “That would be really splendid, thank you. Are you sure you won’t mind?” “Not at all,” I said, though I was mentally cringing at the idea of Rachel teasing my new, odd friend. I’d have to bribe her with ten Pixie Sticks just to get her to keep her mouth shut. “I’m Harper, by the way,” I said.

  “Lily. But you already knew that, I guess.”

  On our way to lunch, Stephanie caught up with us and asked if Lily wanted to sit at our table. She said yes, and the rest was history. Now that Lily was around, I’d thought, life would never be boring again.

  Which is exactly why I felt so alone now, back in my boring life without a gawkward fairy to guide me.

  On Friday I rushed home after school and got ready to go to Murphy’s Ranch. At six p.m., I left a note for my parents saying that I was going to ride my bike over to Lily’s house for dinner and a movie, knowing that they would never suspect that I wasn’t going to be exactly where I said I was going to be. Plus, I was pretty sure Mom was out of town for the weekend on some Clear Your Clutter, Free Your Mind conference in Belize, and Rachel was with Jacques.

  I didn’t know what to expect when I got to the wrought-iron gates that led into the compound. I could hear music below, where the graffiti-covered bunkers were, but the giant outdoor staircase looked too daunting to maneuver with my bike, so I ended up leaving it hidden in some bushes near the entrance.

  For a moment I felt like Cinderella as I desce
nded those epic steps. Like, maybe I should leave a shoe or something? The whole scene was very cinematic, the way the wild courtyard opened below me into this giant ravine, the music blaring like a thousand trumpets (if trumpets sounded like Eminem). I wondered for the umpteenth time if I had dressed up too much. I must have tried on a billion outfits before settling on something I hoped said “funky-casual-sexy”: a red and white striped Madewell dress and my brown Anthropologie moccasins. I’d completed the look with one of those stupid, floppy wide-brimmed hats, which at the last second I decided to ditch with my bike in the bushes near the gates.

  “Hey, Carina!” a voice shouted from below, near the giant barn that served as the ranch’s headquarters. “Come on back here and let’s start rolling!” Both my pace and my heartbeat quickened, and I nearly tripped down the rest of the stairs in my rush to meet Derek.

  As my eyes adjusted to the dusky light inside the ranch, I saw that Derek wasn’t alone. Of course he wasn’t, I chided myself. What did I think, that he’d invited me out to the middle of nowhere to make out with me or something? Well, of course that would have been the ideal scenario, but . . . no. In fact, everyone from our Monday detention was there—including Matt and the snotty American Apparel crop-top girl, whose name (obviously) was Kendall. She was draped on top of Derek like a slutty poncho.

  There were a bunch of kids—guys mostly—who I didn’t know, and who looked older. Possibly even in college, or at least college-aged. They were hovering over a cooler full of beer, which they would reach into every time they’d finished crushing their last can under their feet and then threw it like a Frisbee out the barn door. I doubted that they’d be picking them up later as part of the ranch’s “Leave No Trace” policy.

  “Hey, Harper, want to come over here for a second?” I turned around and was more than pleasantly surprised to see my old friend Stephanie Adler, who I guess was playing the part of my guardian angel tonight. I gratefully plopped down next to her. Out of all the kids hanging out, she was the only one who was actually dressed for skating. In a baggy sweatshirt and faded boy jeans, with her blond hair shoved underneath a beanie, she could almost pass for one of the guys.

  She kicked one of her black Vans against my leg affectionately, like she used to do when we were little. “Hey, don’t worry about Kendall,” she said, nodding toward Derek, who was trying to untangle himself from American Apparel’s embrace. “She’s been panting over him ever since we all met in summer camp.”

  “I didn’t know you and Derek went to camp together.”

  “Oh, well, yeah. It wasn’t anything exciting,” Stephanie laughed. “Basically just a place for parents to dump their kids while they’re vacationing in St. Barths, or whatever.”

  “I didn’t see you and Jessica together in class . . .” I began, stopping when Stephanie made a face. I had forgotten about their SchoolGrams fight video. “So . . . you and Jessica . . .” I trailed off, not really sure how to bring up the topic tactfully.

  “Yeah. Me and Jessica. Ancient history, I guess.” Stephanie laughed ruefully.

  “I guess what I’m asking is, did you and Jess have . . . are you guys still . . .” Apparently it was impossible for me to talk about BFFs without sounding like a befuddled Elmer Fudd.

  Stephanie turned to me and looked out from underneath her beanie. “Let me guess. You saw the video.”

  “What video?” I played innocent.

  “Ha, you were always a terrible liar, Harper, even when we were kids. Everyone saw that video, even my parents somehow got a link to it.” Stephanie shook her head and a strand of blond hair came loose. “Do you know how humiliating it is, when there are multiple Vine accounts looping of the worst moment of your life to everyone in school over and over again?”

  “I guess not,” I conceded. “The version I saw was pretty grainy. I couldn’t even tell what it was about. Did you guys have a fight?”

  “We were always fighting,” she muttered darkly. “By the end we didn’t even like hanging out with each other.” She shrugged, stood up, and dusted off her legs: a signal that the conversation was over. She picked up her longboard—I was no expert, but this one wasn’t cheap—and turned to give me a hand up.

  “You know, I remember when you first started hanging out with Lily. Jessica and I used to think you guys looked as attached as the Olsen Twins allegedly were before the surgery.” Stephanie broke out in a grin, and for a second she didn’t look like a model who was slumming it, but like the nine-year-old girl with gap teeth and a too-tight hair bun I remembered from that day in gym class.

  “Gross!” I laughed.

  “But seriously.” Stephanie looked at Matt, who seemed to be at least three beers ahead of everyone else, shouting about how wasted he was, as if it were his crowning achievement. “It’s hard to find people who let you in so easily.”

  I could tell Steph was getting upset about Jessica, so I changed the subject to Matt. “Are you guys hooking up?” I was actually genuinely curious. Sometimes it seemed like Stephanie and Matt were a couple, and sometimes it looked like they just happened to run in the same group. They spent a lot of time with each other, but I’d never see them make out or even hold hands. Then again, what did I know about dating? Currently I was one half of a Dorky Duo with a guy I didn’t even like. Well, not like-like, anyway. And I spent the rest of my time obsessively Internet-stalking Derek. (Things I’ve found out so far: He didn’t list his relationship status, all his photos are of either Kurt Cobain or skateboards sans filters, and he has more Twitter followers than I do.)

  “Hey, Carina, do you want to start filming?” Derek called out, having found his way out of Kendall’s clutches. “I was thinking we’d set up the first shot near the water tower.”

  “Great,” I said, standing up a little too quickly. “Can you walk me through the story here? It might, um, help with my set up?”

  We left the barn together, alone, and I caught Kendall giving me the evil eye as Derek threw his arm around me. God, maybe this would turn into my Cinderella night after all.

  The water tower was huge, a towering, dented, rusting giant with a giant Super Mario mushroom tagged on the side. I pulled my camera from my handbag and made sure we had enough light for a video. Then I did a test run of the audio, where I asked Derek to stand in front of the water tower and say a bunch of silly words.

  He made a face. “Okay, are we ready now, Scorsese?” Thank god the light was dimming because I could feel even my hair turning red when he said that.

  I guess I can get really obsessive about projects. Even though Lily is usually the one who dreams up the ideas, I’m the one who usually puts them in motion. Like with our Memory Box, which has been sitting in the back of my closet since August, despite the promise we’d made over the summer to add to it at least once a week during the school year.

  “You know, I don’t know anything about this stuff,” Derek said, scuffing his dirty shoes on the ground. “But I’ve always wanted to be a filmmaker. You know, like a revolutionary badass. Like the dude who made Spring Breakers.”

  “Harmony Korine,” I said.

  “Well, not ‘harmony,’ per se,” Derek said thoughtfully, his broody brow wrinkling in thought. “I’d go more for, like, disruption. You know, damn the man! Spring Breakers forever!”

  “No,” I said. “I meant the guy who made Spring Breakers. His name is Harmony.”

  “For real?” Derek smiled, and shook his head. “Damn, Carina. You know a lot about cinema!”

  “Oh, not really. I mean, just the basics,” I said, trying to resist the urge to show off. “I’ve seen like, all of Sofia Coppola’s early work.” I did a cool shrug, like it didn’t really matter.

  Derek looked suitably impressed, though it was hard to tell because suddenly he was standing so close to me that our arm hairs touched.

  “All the Coppolas, though, are good.” Oh god, now I was bab
bling. Some remote part of my brain was telling me this was a good thing to say, that as long as I kept talking, he’d keep moving closer. “Um, did you know Nicolas Cage is actually a Coppola?”

  “Okay, Wikipedia,” Derek said. “Hey. Don’t worry too much about getting the video set up just right. You know, I only wanted an excuse to get you out here, anyway.”

  My brain was going “Say something sexy! No, make a joke! Say a sexy joke!”

  “Yeah?” said my mouth, smartly not listening to my brain.

  “Yeah,” Derek smiled. Up close, I could see that one of his bottom front teeth was chipped, and he smelled good, like fresh sweat and burnt leaves. Funny, in fourth grade I would have put “smelling Derek” on the top of my list of “Most Effective Torture Techniques.” I guess I still would have put it there now, but for different reasons.

  “Hey, remember how you always wore that same T-shirt every day? And when Mr. Kalinski had to drive you home because you were so smelly?” I said, before I could to stop myself. Derek gave me a crooked grin.

  “Yeah? What made you think of that?” He asked, picking up his arm and waving his pit dangerously close to my face. “Are you trying to give me a hint?”

  “Dude, gross!” I said giggling as he waggled his arm, thinking with horror that I’d transformed into one of those tweeny-boppers who burst into laughter every time a cute boy burped. What was happening to me?

  Suddenly Derek lowered his arm around my shoulder and he was pulling me closer. Everything was moving in slow-mo. I had time to think about how doleful his eyes looked, like they belonged to a heartthrob on the cover of Tiger Beat, with some headline like, “Harry Styles Talks About His Secret Love . . . !” only for the article to reveal that the “secret love” is chocolate ice cream. And then time sped up all at once again, and then his mouth was on mine and we were kissing.

  My first real kiss was happening . . . and with Derek Wheeler! The most random person I could have possible chosen from the yearbook!