A Tale of Two Besties

by Sophia Rossi

  I didn’t know what I could do except call Harper and, in what would go down in history as the giddiest display of excitement in my entire life, tell her that I’ve been planning the most awesome birthday surprise yet. I would tell her that I pulled some strings to score invites to the party of the school year, in honor of my favorite PuppyGirl’s very special fourteenth birthday. In other words, I would lie, and pretend that Jane’s party, which I was obligated to go to, was Harper’s party, and I’d be able to make everyone happy all in one fell swoop!

  Either that, or I’d just hit a new level of skeez on the Terrible Friend scale. No, I couldn’t think like that: I would lie, but I would be lying for a good cause. The cause being the caretaking of both my social identity and my friendship with Harper. I couldn’t risk losing both.

  This conundrum would absolutely be hashtagged #freshmanyearproblems. How do adults make such serious decisions all the time? It was so stressful.

  I had no idea how Harper would react when she saw that most of Pathways had adopted my signature “look.” I was also pretty sure that Harper didn’t even own a pair of wings, and didn’t know if she would be able to get some in time for the party. I was totally spiraling.

  I had to act fast. I texted Jane to make sure I could bring a plus-one (yes—thank you Jane!). I couldn’t believe I was calling Harper my plus-one when I was usually her plus-one. I know people think plus-one is a negative, but I thought it always sounded so sweet and thoughtful since you were basically being called an addition to a party!

  I just hoped Harper would see it the same way. I took the deepest breath in the world as I prepared to press the Number One entry in my Favorite Contacts list.

  Please go to voicemail, please go to voicemail, please go to—

  “Gawkward Fairy!” Harper chirped.

  Dang.

  “PuppyGirl!” I said, twirling my hair so nervously that my finger got caught in it. “So. Do I have a birthday surprise for you.”

  By the first week in October, it seemed that most people had forgotten about my SchoolGrams debut. Students were no longer stopping to stare at me in the hall, and I hadn’t been emailed a “reaction video” of kids watching my SchoolGrams humiliation for the first time for at least a week. (This was definitely in no small part thanks to everyone’s new obsession: a viral video of a couple of juniors on skateboards pantsing poor Mr. Sims in the faculty parking lot). Hopefully the whole thing was just going to die down and go away for good. So what if that meant that I had to die a little along with it? That I’d never get to hang out with Derek again? (Even though what he did was terrible and inexcusable, I still couldn’t help reliving that stupid kiss in my head every day.) And so what if I wasn’t as popular as I’d been all my life before, and if my stomach still did flips every time I saw anything bright pink or mesh coming toward me in the hall? So what if my best friend might be about to abandon me for the fancy new folks at her ultra-cool, alternative high school? At least I wasn’t completely alone.

  I’d fallen into a pattern at school that, if not exactly fun, was a far cry from the mortification of the first week. After our chance meeting in the park, Stephanie had been hanging out with me pretty consistently during lunch. Tim (who I wasn’t just using as a human shield anymore, I swear, though I have to admit I was silently thanking the gods every day for his summertime growth spurt, which made him almost pass for kinda-cute) dutifully walked me to and from every class every day, making sure that I never had to bump into Kendall or one of her cohorts alone in a hallway. In return for this service, he got Lily’s former spot in Rachel’s car after school.

  And though I tried to suppress it as best I could and not get my expectations too high, I was even getting excited for my birthday. When Lily called and invited me to that fashion party, I’d been a little disappointed at first. After we hung up, I looked up the blog that was hosting the party, and, sure enough, it belonged to Jane, aka Pathways Jane, aka one of the hip kidnappers who seemed to be intent on stealing my fairy godmother from me. Was Lily really just going to add me as a plus-one to some lifestyle event and consider that a symbol of BFF-ship? But after my initial annoyance, I finally calmed down and found reason. After all these years of friendship, Lily had never let me down on my birthday. She also has a history of faking left and going right when it comes to surprising me. Like last year, I was waiting and waiting for her and she still hadn’t shown up, and then my mom took me out for what I’d assumed was a pity-ice-cream-cone because my best friend had forgotten about me, but then when we got back there was the most amazing surprise party waiting for me. And then there was the year she told me she’d have to skip the party because she needed to go to San Francisco for the funeral of some great-great-thrice-removed aunt, and she needed me there for moral support, and she was so gloomy and quiet the whole car ride, but then when we got there it turned out we were really going to this unbelievable dog event that she’d found out about online.

  But after a few more sessions of awkward texting with Lily, and after Tim started asking more and more questions about my big Saturday birthday plans, I thought I finally had figured it out: she was planning a surprise party for me, and this “fashion party” thing was just a cover, and she’d even gotten in touch with Tim about it so he could help her cover up the surprise.

  Suddenly, it all made sense. I finally knew why Lily was acting so weird and distant (to make the surprise even better!) and why she had bowed out of the PuppyBash (so I’d be fooled into thinking she didn’t care about me!) Why hadn’t I seen that this was the same plan, just updated for a new year? After I figured that out, I was able to relax a bit, and didn’t even get upset when Tim would keep asking questions about PuppyBash, reminding me that he was going to be there instead of Lily.

  It was the day before PuppyBash, and Rachel picked Tim and me up after school as usual. “Still on for Friday night, right?” He’d asked the same question every day ever since I’d invited him, usually while riding home with Rachel and me after school. By Thursday, I was basically treating his question like the running joke it had become.

  “What is it with you kids these days?” I tried on my best crazy cat lady voice and waggled my finger at him. Rachel rolled her eyes, the car swerving as if in sync with her sarcasm, yet somehow managed to keep us from veering into traffic. “Always worrying about ‘parties’ and ‘good times’! Pheh! Your generation will ruin everything!”

  Tim swatted at my shoulder from the backseat. “I’m just trying to be responsible and confirm our plans! I’ve got other places I could be on a Friday night, you know.”

  “Oh, come on,” I said, twisting around in my seat and shoving him (not too hard) back. “Like you have anywhere to be. What, am I making you miss a hot date?” I giggled as Tim grabbed my hands and started making them mime the “Cups” song motions in the air. “Stop it, nerd.”

  “Neanderthal.”

  “Geek.”

  “Mega-dork.”

  “Dweeb.”

  “Pipsqueak.”

  “Okay, settle down you two, or I’ll have to separate you,” Rachel barked. Tim immediately dropped my hands and I, still giggling, turned to face the road. I didn’t feel like messing with Rachel today. The last time we got into an argument, she brought up the SchoolGrams video loudly enough for my parents to hear, and I had to spend the next three days dodging my mom’s repeated question of “Harper, what’s a ‘school-o-gram’?” (“Some kind of new health cracker, Mom,” I finally said, to which she just responded, “Oh, that’s nice. But careful you don’t eat too much gluten.”) But then Rachel asked about my birthday plans on Saturday, and I could see Tim leaning forward in the rearview mirror. Curses, Rachel! I thought.

  “I’m going to a party with Lily,” I mumbled, hoping that she would drop the subject rather than start grilling Tim about what he’d be doing Saturday. Now that I figured out the surprise, the last thing my Empath
y Powers wanted was to feel someone else squirm trying to come up with a lie for my sister, and then I’d have to get into a whole big thing where I’d have to tell her why Tim wasn’t invited and then I’d feel like a terrible person and then probably break down and invite him anyway, even though that would make everything totally 100 percent awkward. Or . . . maybe Rachel was in on it, too?

  “With people from Pathways?” Tim leaned forward and propped one of his gangly arms up on my seat. His eyebrows were knitted in fake concern. Maybe he wasn’t in on the party. I wondered if there was a way to tell Lily to invite Tim, without letting her know that I had figured out her surprise plan.

  “Yikes, you’re partying with kids from that hipster feeder program?” Lately Rachel had become a little too enthusiastic about putting down Lily and her new friends. It actually made me want to defend Lily and her artistic, painfully politically correct crowd, but the truth was, I didn’t know anything about them or what went on in that school of hers. They actually could be terrible people—or brainwashers!—for all I knew.

  “Oh,” Tim said, dropping his arm to the center console and popping out the retractable cup holder. “So how is Lily doing, anyway?”

  Good question. I just wish I knew the answer.

  After we dropped Tim off, Rachel sat in the parked car for an extra minute, wiping off her excess lipstick.

  “So I guess this is the time we’re going to have ‘the talk,’” she said, sighing and picking up an e-cigarette from the recesses of her glove compartment, where it was well-hidden from Mom. The tip of the e-cig turned bright blue as Rachel inhaled, a clear sign that she was “thinking.”

  “Okay. Here’s some pro-tip advice, take it or leave it,” my sister said, still staring straight ahead. “It’s not nice to play with a guy’s feelings like that.” My sister pulled down her sun visor and stared at her reflection in the mirror, tilting it just-so just to avoid making eye contact with me.

  I didn’t even know how to respond to that. “Don’t be a perv about Tim,” I said, doing nothing to hide my snarky tone. “Stick to Jacques-strap.”

  My sister chuckled. “Trust me, this isn’t about me. That boy likes you. Which actually makes me question his judgment entirely. . . .”

  “No he doesn’t. If anything he still likes Lily. . . .”

  “Then why are you two going on a date?”

  I couldn’t tell if Rachel was just trying to wind me up or if she was being serious, but either way it annoyed me that I couldn’t think of an appropriately incredulous response. Of course Tim and I didn’t have a date.

  Wait. Did we have a date?

  I definitely didn’t want Tim to think PuppyBash was a date, because I would never want Lily to think it was a date. But I still wanted to hang out with Tim. Oh my god, I couldn’t believe I wanted to hang out with Tim. It was as inconceivable as suddenly having the desire to spend a weekend away with Rachel and Jacques as their honorary third wheel. I mean, Tim was basically like the equivalent of a gross-cute talking sloth that dressed marginally better than he did in sloth middle school.

  “Looks like you fixed your lipstick,” I finally said, giving Rachel the hint that I was done with this conversation, and that it was time to go home.

  “You’re right. It’s perfect,” she said, winking knowingly at me as she backed out of the Slaters’ driveway. Less than two minutes later, we were home. Rachel went up to her room for the rest of the night, and I went up to the attic to text Lily about outfits for Saturday, mentioning nothing of the fact that I could not get the words “date” and “Tim” out of my head the entire time.

  Friday went by in a blur of classes, gross school lunches, and aggressive avoidance of any sign of both Kendall and Derek. Finally, the last bell rang, and it was time for my favorite thing in the world.

  Despite all the Lily-drama surrounding it, I was actually looking forward to doing the PuppyBash this year. The Jacobys and I had spent a month planning out the places we were going to hit. We mapped out an awesome route: the park (again), the Santa Monica farmer’s market, the West Los Angeles VA Clinic, the Beverly Hills branch of Bridges to Recovery (a mental health clinic that was really popular with famous people). And last but not least, the Crestwood Hills Co-Op in Brentwood, where preschoolers and their parents could play with the puppies and take them out for walks along the hiking trails.

  I had no idea if Tim was actually as excited as I was, so I was surprised to find him already waiting for me in the school parking lot when the Jacobys pulled up in their Mobile Center on Friday, honking their novelty horn that played the chorus of “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?”

  “Excited?” Tim asked, quirking up his eyebrows while trying to help me into the RV. “You ready to play with the big dogs?”

  “I don’t even know what means,” I said, ignoring his offered hand (I’m a modern, independent lady, thankyouverymuch) and hoisting myself into the backseat.

  “I’m just asking if the dog days are over.”

  “You’re in a chipper mood,” I noted, pushing my sunglasses up and onto my head.

  “I’m just psyching myself up to play ruff. In this dog eat dog world.”

  “Okay,” I said. “We’re done now.” I tried not to pay attention to Mr. and Mrs. Jacoby tittering at our banter in the front of the car.

  Finally, we reached the first stop. The park was already pretty packed with young parents sharing juice boxes with their way-too-preciously-dressed children. As we set up the van to welcome visitors, Tim started chatting up the crowd, getting the kids all riled up by asking them how excited they were to bring home a new pet. I realized that I hadn’t really explained to Tim that this wasn’t an adoption event—that we were here to raise awareness and hand out information for interested families—and there wasn’t a prize for the most amount of puppies sold in an evening.

  “Young lady,” Tim boomed at a small, rapt child in pristine overalls. “You look like you could use a new friend. How about this one here? Um . . .” Tim checked the name tag on a doggy crate. “. . . Cocoa! I know what you’re thinking! Cocoa’s not a puppy anymore. But Cocoa is the perfect dog for your family. Did you know that Labrador retrievers are known for their even-temperedness and total lack of aggression? Making them perfect for families with young children? C’mon folks! If these puppies are still with us at the end of the night, they’ll be in trouble. Please don’t ask what we do with the dogs afterward. You don’t even want to know.” Tim winked at the little girl, who was staring at him with giant, awe-filled eyes.

  “Tim, knock it off!” I said, trying to act less neurotic than I felt. I turned to the crowd gathered behind us and forced a smile. “Ha-ha. Sorry everyone. That was, um, a joke. He doesn’t even work with us, normally. We are not a kill shelter. I repeat: we are definitely not a kill shelter! We care for all of our animals humanely and with kindness.”

  “So.” The father of the little girl stepped forward; he was trying to get to his wallet but was having a little trouble due the sheer tightness of his cool-dad jeans. “Are you telling me this little guy is for sale, then?”

  “Oh, um,” I coughed. “We don’t sell the dogs, sir. This is more of a rescue and adoption service. We pay for the neutering or spaying and the basic shots. . . .”

  Hipster Dad was running out of patience. “Great. So you can just give us the dog, then. We’ll take her. Him. Whatever.”

  “Uh.” I was imagining this guy going home to his unsuspecting wife with a new dog. This was exactly how animals ended up cycling through the rescue process multiple times. “You still need to fill out your application and adoption forms, and we’ll have to check out your references. The whole process takes two to three weeks.”

  The dad stared at me. I couldn’t tell if he was confused or annoyed, and to be honest I don’t think he knew which was the dominant emotion, either. This really wasn’t the way PuppyBash wa
s supposed to go down. When it was Lily’s and my pre-birthday ritual, we had a whole system in place on how to get people interested in PuppyTales. We’d show them the dogs, encourage them to play with the dogs while we supervised and told them stories about the absolute cutest thing Bonezilla the Basset Hound did when we first took her swimming, or how Kevin the Pekinese makes this adorable little oinking noise when he sleeps. None of these “Step right up!” shenanigans that turned the puppies into sideshow stars. Adopting a dog was serious business!

  “Tim,” I said after clearing my throat with authority. “May I speak with you when you have a moment?” I wasn’t sure if he could hear me over my grinding jaw. Tim shrugged at Hipster Dad and shooed Cocoa off back into the RV. It was time to go to the next stop on the itinerary, and I would have to set Tim straight on the way.

  “Okay, so how did I do?” Tim asked after we’d packed up the van to head for Laurel Canyon. He looked so pleased with himself, which annoyed me even more.

  “Not great,” I said. I licked my finger and tried to get a white smudge out of my black shorts. I tried to wear only dark colors during my volunteer work, but somehow they still always ended up dirty. “You should really be following my lead, and maybe just stick to handing out pamphlets. This isn’t some joke, and you don’t know what you’re doing.” Was I being too harsh? Maybe. But this was my passion, and even though Tim meant well, he was just barging in on it like a Great Dane in a delicate figurine store, messing everything up.

  “Okay,” Tim said, looking appropriately abashed. “I’m sorry Harper. But I was just trying to be funny, you know? Entertain people. Make them want to take home the dogs. That’s the whole point, right?”

  I could have given any number of reasons why he was wrong. That the PuppyBash wasn’t about unloading shelter dogs onto people who make decisions based on a whim or a charismatic salesman—that’s exactly how these dogs end up in shelters in the first place. Or I could have told him that, despite his joking around, there wasn’t going to be a happily ever after for any of those dogs if a place like PuppyTales couldn’t raise enough funds to sustain itself, which was 90 percent of the purpose of our community outreach tonight. Hell, I could have told him he had no right to argue with me, and that tagging along for this thing was HIS idea.