What Are Friends For?

by Rachel Vail

  But today, although his armaments were all on display again across Mrs. Shepard’s desk, there was no bowing. He finished his presentation and looked up, smiling and expectant, at Mrs. Shepard, but she just stood there. Lou smiled bigger, his braces showing way back to the ones on his molars.

  I looked over at Mrs. Shepard, to see what was going on. Mrs. Shepard is known as the best teacher in Boggs Middle School, tough but brilliant. At first glance, you might think she looks like a kindly old grandmother from a fairy tale, little and white-haired, slightly hunched forward, but once you see her eyes, you stop thinking that. They are bloodshot and squinty, with big black pupils and pale blue irises. I can’t look at her and talk at the same time, and I am not at all shy. Somebody like CJ, who has trouble talking anyway, shrivels up any time Mrs. Shepard comes near.

  But Lou Hochstetter is the biggest boy in seventh grade. Of course, size does not determine courage; I consider myself relatively brave and I’m the shortest girl in the grade, four foot nine inches unless you believe my mother, in which case, four foot nine-and-a-half. Still, Lou has been on TV.

  Mrs. Shepard pointed her tongue at her upper lip. After a full minute, she said, “And?”

  “And?” Lou asked back, still smiling. I noticed his gums were red and swollen, all puffed up. His neck was breaking out in purple blotches, and a bead of sweat was rolling down his forehead. It paused on his eyebrow.

  “And what does this panoply of World War Two armaments reveal about Louis Hochstetter?” Mrs. Shepard asked him.

  The sweat ball dove from Lou’s eyebrow into his left eye. “What do you mean?” he asked her, blinking furiously. I sit right up front, so I had a perfect view of the battle between the sweat ball and Lou’s eye.

  Mrs. Shepard, unaware, said, “The assignment, Mr. Hochstetter.”

  I reached into my desk to find him a tissue. Lou, still half smiling, placed his hand carefully beside the Lee Enfield gun on Mrs. Shepard’s desk.

  I pulled a tissue out of the small traveler’s size box I keep in my desk in case of emergencies, but it didn’t seem like quite the appropriate time to get out of my seat, barge up to the front of the classroom, and say, Here, you have sweat in your eye—want a tissue?

  Lou leaned more and more of his weight onto his hand, until he was diagonal. The rest of us sat perfectly still and waited.

  “The purpose of the assignment was to reveal yourself in all your various aspects,” Mrs. Shepard said finally. “Have you done that, Mr. Hochstetter?”

  “I, sort of . . .” Lou’s voice squeaked, so the “sort” was a very high note, and the “of” was rumbling low. I crumpled the tissue by accident.

  “Oh?” asked Mrs. Shepard.

  Lou’s bare hand wiped his forehead, where a battalion of sweat balls had mustered. “I’m interested in,” he started, then swallowed. His lips didn’t quite meet, over the braces. He swallowed again, and then, turning pale, said, “Interested in World War Two. Armaments.”

  Mrs. Shepard’s voice came over my shoulder at Lou as she asked, “And is that interest all there is to Louis Hochstetter?”

  Lou swallowed hard and answered, “Pretty much.”

  Mrs. Shepard said, “Hmm.”

  Lou blinked his eyes twice and then surveyed his ten choices of World War Two scale models. They looked like toys, as if he had brought out ten Matchbox cars or ten Beanie Babies. As he’d been pulling them out, one by one, I had felt outdone. My presentation, which I had worked on all weekend, seemed so trivial in comparison to his that I’d been insulting myself for being too superficial and flighty a person, watching him pull these bronze-cast pieces so confidently from his Sack. He had mastery over some bit of world history while I had soccer ball earrings and a charcoal pencil. I felt like a trivial person as I watched him.

  But his field of expertise ended up being just a set of toys. I have to admit I felt a little bit better about myself. At least I did the assignment right, I thought; at least there’s more to me than one narrow interest. I’m not proud of having thoughts like that but sometimes I do, it’s awful but I do.

  Lou stood at Mrs. Shepard’s desk for a few seconds, looking at his things, and then instead of just dumping them into the brown paper bag, or sweeping them in as I would’ve done at that point—anything to get away faster—he gently picked up the 2.3 mortar, turned it over in his palm to inspect it, and wrapped it carefully in its bubble wrap before lowering it softly into the bag.

  That’s when I felt it, this thing I am wondering if maybe it is how the first pang of a crush feels.

  My insides got hot and my skin felt chilled. My first thought was, Fever. Then I thought, Wait a sec, maybe not. My hands rubbed the tissue as I watched Lou rewrap his scale models and painstakingly place them, one by one, back into his bag—not dropping them, but lowering them all the way in, taking all the time necessary to do it right—while everybody in the class waited and watched. It seemed extraordinary to me, after what Mrs. Shepard had just said—like he was oblivious to the fact that she had just stripped his artillery pieces of their value. Or like he disagreed. It seemed so radical, what he was doing. I wanted to see Mrs. Shepard’s reaction, but I couldn’t stop watching Lou take care of his things.

  Then, as Lou walked past me going back to his seat, I felt what I can only describe as some kind of force field, or magnetic energy, or maybe static electricity. The whole thing may just be a matter of an overheated classroom in September causing some static electricity exchanges, when oppositely charged people pass too near each other. The whole thing is very likely to be scientifically explainable, a matter of laundry products not used.

  Or else, I’d just entered adolescence. Emotionally, anyway. My body remains concave.

  four

  Tommy Levit began his report and CJ sat up straighter. Like me, Tommy had ten reasonable, varied, appropriate objects in his bag—a plastic dinosaur, a Red Sox ticket, a photograph of his family at the beach. Not like Lou’s. When Tommy finished, Morgan, who sits behind me and in front of Lou, passed me a note:

  Sorry I’m such a moody mess. Tommy thinks he’s so great. Ha! I have to tell you something URGENT. Your best friend, Morgan.

  It surprised me enough to distract me from my new possible situation with Lou. Your best friend, Morgan? If I had to choose who was closest of my friends, Morgan would not have made the shortlist. Until today, in fact, Morgan barely tolerated me. If I’d thought about it at all, which I didn’t really, I would’ve said we were distant friends or acquaintances at most. I missed whatever happened between her and CJ, I guess—a fight or something, maybe over Tommy, and it must’ve happened over the weekend. Sometimes I feel out of sync with what’s going on.

  My best friend?

  “Cornelia Jane Hurley,” Mrs. Shepard called.

  I knew better than to look at her, poor CJ. I kept my eyes on my desk and willed her the strength to get up there and do her report. Nothing happened, nobody moved. I reread Morgan’s note and wondered what URGENT thing Morgan might have to tell me, and hoped it wouldn’t be more nasty things about poor boy-crazy, tongue-tied CJ.

  CJ still hadn’t budged. I quickly wrote back to Morgan, Want to come over after school today? and flipped the note back to her.

  Finally, CJ passed me, walking slowly, but of course gracefully, toward the front of the class. It was clear she was terrified. I don’t know what it is that scares CJ so much about talking in public. It’s ironic because she performs in ballets in front of hundreds, but getting up in front of nineteen kids she’s known her whole life is torture.

  While CJ presented the contents of her bag—basically one ballet prop after another—I imagined what I would do with Morgan after school.

  My best friend.

  We have a pool table, but Morgan can’t play and I think doesn’t like to. We have plenty of board games, but it seems to me that it is suddenly not the th
ing anymore to play games. Over the summer, everybody grew out of being a kid, everybody except me, and now they’re no longer interested in anything but bodies and boys. My brother is a year older than I am, so I’ve always watched what he does to see what I’d be doing the next year—like I knew in second grade that I’d get to play violin in third grade, and then that year I found out I’d start team sports the year after—but Dex is still playing board games with his friends, and sports, and pool; not talking about the opposite sex all the time, at least that I’ve heard, and not saying all the time, I’m so ugly, or I’m so stupid, or, my least favorite, Who do you like?

  It’s not that I want desperately to be popular or anything. In fact I usually prefer to be alone, but I know that it’s important to have friends and for the past week I’ve been feeling very clumsy in that way. I was actually planning to go to the library after school and try to find a book on seventh-grade girls.

  I could tell Morgan I like Lou. She’s very big on the Who do you like question, and until now, I’ve always just said, I don’t like any of the boys much at all, because I don’t, or didn’t. I always tell the truth, it’s a vow I’ve made to myself. If Morgan asks me that question today, though, I’ll have to answer that I might actually like Lou Hochstetter. For the first time, I can see how that’s an interesting question to turn over and over in your mind. Do I like him? Does he like me? I could spend some time on that. What if he likes me, too? Lou Hochstetter and Olivia Pogostin. They sound good together, actually.

  Those thoughts made me jittery. CJ finished her presentation, which was very boring, but Zoe the Grand One (I have nothing against her; I just like that) applauded. People looked back at her, surprised.

  As Zoe applauded, I wondered again what the URGENT thing was that Morgan wanted to tell me, and then, I realized—Morgan likes Lou, too.

  Of course. She did pass me the note after Lou’s presentation. Obviously his vulnerability up there with his World War Two paraphernalia had touched Morgan just as it had touched me. How could I not have realized? It was so obvious. My heart was thumping.

  As CJ took her seat, I turned to look at Morgan. Morgan’s head was ducked down almost to her desk. Lou sits behind her, and since Lou is very tall, I saw his face instead. We made eye contact. He tilted his head a little to the side, so his shaggy brown hair swung down into his eyes. I smiled a little. He began to smile, too, and the silver of his braces peeked out from between his lips. I blinked, then glanced at Morgan.

  Caught.

  Morgan’s eyes had tears in them. Obviously she’d seen me staring at Lou, smiling at him, flirting, if I’m honest. That’s what I was doing, I have to admit; I was flirting. A flirty girl. That’s who I’d suddenly become, of all things, exactly the opposite of how I’d always thought of myself, exactly what I’ve always sworn I’d never be. Nobody ever wanted me for a best friend before. Morgan suddenly did, which was odd enough, and then practically confided that she liked Lou—now here I was, betraying her already.

  Morgan stood up abruptly, banging her knees into her desk, which tilted forward onto my chair. I caught it before it fell over and dumped her stuff. She was clutching her crumpled Sack and asking Mrs. Shepard if she could go to the bathroom. Before Mrs. Shepard could finish reminding her to leave her Bring Yourself in a Sack project, Morgan was out the door, her Sack still in her fist.

  “Zoe Grandon, you’re next,” Mrs. Shepard said, but I raised my hand before Zoe had a chance to stand up.

  “Yes, Olivia?” Mrs. Shepard asked me.

  “May I go to the bathroom, too?” I asked.

  “When Morgan returns,” she answered, and turned to raise one eyebrow at Zoe, who was clattering around at her desk.

  “I wanted to, um, see if Morgan needs help,” I said in as confident a voice as I could manage.

  “Doe she have an injury?”

  I thought about it. An injury? “Not exactly,” I answered.

  “Well, then.”

  I sunk low in my seat as Zoe walked toward the front. I closed my eyes. Five minutes into adolescence and I’d already fallen in love, gotten a best friend, betrayed her, and lost her. If things continue at this pace, I’ll be dead by tomorrow.

  five

  At the end of Zoe’s very funny and creative presentation, Morgan returned to class. Her eyes were red and her jaw was clenched, but she stood straight and crossed the room with those long steps she always uses. I tried to catch her eye, but she wouldn’t look at me.

  When Morgan’s name was called next, to give her report, she dropped the note on my desk as she passed. She had written, under my invitation to come over after school, Yes. I was so surprised I had to reread it a number of times. It kept saying Yes, and I kept being surprised.

  Morgan’s stuff was different from mine and most people’s—instead of souvenirs from vacations or tokens of her interests, Morgan’s Sack was full of her personality: a box of red-hots represented her sweet tooth; one of her baby teeth was there to symbolize the babyish parts of herself, parts that she’s done with. The last item was the best, in my opinion. It was the bag itself, once it was emptied, as a representation of the parts of herself that she hasn’t yet created.

  I turned quickly to look at Mrs. Shepard. She looked blown away. She even complimented Morgan.

  I never realized Morgan was so deep.

  We didn’t talk after class or on the way to gym, and she didn’t drag me by the elbow, which I realized I had already gotten used to. We were in different groups for gym, so after school at the lockers was the first time we were pretty much forced to deal with each other since the Lou thing.

  “You ready?” Morgan asked, slamming her locker shut.

  “I walk home,” I said, unsure if she already knew that.

  “I have my bike,” she said, starting to walk toward the front entrance of school. “I’ll ride you.”

  As I was hurrying to catch up with Morgan, Lou Hochstetter slammed into her. He’d been running toward the front door from the band room with his trombone case held in front of him like a shield. “Oof,” he said, tripping but continuing toward the door.

  “Watch where you’re going!” Morgan grumbled. She turned around to me, shaking her head and smiling a little. I smiled back. She slowed down, and when I caught up with her, she whispered, “His presentation today, didn’t that kill you?”

  I nodded. We nodded together, holding each other’s eyes, and Morgan covered her heart with one hand, the way CJ and her mother do sometimes. She leaned even closer to me, until her forehead tapped mine.

  “Ouch,” I said, and she said ouch at the same exact time. Then I lifted my hand to rub the spot that had clonked against her, although it didn’t actually hurt, and she was doing the same exact thing. We smiled at each other and started laughing.

  “What’s so funny?” Roxanne Luse asked, angrily, from across the lobby.

  I was about to assure Roxanne that we weren’t laughing at her, when Morgan said, “Nothing,” and grabbed me by the elbow to drag me outside.

  “Your face is funny,” Roxanne called after us, which made both Morgan and me laugh. Morgan used to laugh that way with CJ, bending over each other, in on the same joke that nobody else in the room picked up. I’m not usually much of a laugher, but I was practically choking, doubled over there in front of school.

  When Morgan gasped, “Do you think she meant my face or your face?” a snort came out of my nose, which knocked Morgan over onto her knees, and I fell down laughing right beside her.

  “You OK?” asked my brother, Dex, who was suddenly standing above me. When I looked up into his concerned face, it convulsed me with hysterical laughs all over again. Morgan, too. Dex just stood there, waiting for us to collect ourselves. Dex is used to girls falling all over themselves giggling in front of him; he’s learned to be patient about it.

  Dex is very good-looking. We don’t ta
lk about it much because physical appearance is not what matters, my parents both say, but I know people can’t help staring at my brother. One time this past summer, when we were waiting in line for the movies, a woman in pink pants and a hair scarf was staring and staring at us, which we ignored—we’re multiracial and Boggs is very white, so sometimes ignorant people are rude—until she finally met up with us at the refreshment counter and said to my mother, “Your son is stunning.”

  My mother smiled slightly and answered, “I have two beautiful children.”

  “Of course, of course,” the lady said, shuffling away with her box of Dots gripped tightly in her meaty hand.

  It’s not the first time something like that has happened. Dex has big brown eyes with thick, long eyelashes, a small, straight nose just like my mother’s, curvy brownish lips like my dad’s, and a slow smile that shows mostly his bottom teeth. He’s on the tall side, with broad shoulders and narrow hips, and he wears his hair really short. His skin, like mine, is the color of tea with milk, a combination of Mom’s half-Filipina khaki and Dad’s half-African-American brown. I know I’m not repulsive-looking—I’m sort of cute, actually—but my looks aren’t especially remarkable except maybe for being small for my age, and light brown. People stare at Dex.

  As Morgan and I sat there on the pavement catching our breath, Dex asked, “Where’s your other half, Morgan?”

  “It’s Monday,” I reminded him. “CJ has dance.” Dex always makes fun of CJ when we go away, our two families—Where’s your other half, CJ?

  “She always has dance,” Morgan added. “We barely see her. So I don’t know what you mean, other half.”