What Are Friends For?

by Rachel Vail

  I didn’t know what to say. Does being best friends mean you’re automatically partners for everything? I didn’t mean to do the wrong thing. I was just unclear about the rules.

  The bell rang as I was slipping into my seat. When we split up to work with partners, I pulled my chair to Lou’s desk, but I turned away from him and looked toward Morgan, who was slumped over Roxanne Luse’s messy desk. Morgan looked at me blankly, maybe angrily. I flared my nostrils at her. She cracked up, which made me feel terrific. Nobody ever thought I was funny before.

  “Hi,” Lou said.

  “Hi.” I tried to think of anything other than, He likes me. “So, a code . . .”

  “A code.” We made eye contact. I quickly looked down at my paper. With my peripheral vision, I saw his face turning purple. I think mine was, too. I glanced over at Morgan, who smiled at me. It felt like my birthday or something, like I was the one in the tiara and the chair with the Mylar balloon.

  I thought of a million questions I wanted to ask Lou, none of which had to do with numbers. For example, I thought of asking why his family had a rule about whether you can go out with somebody and at what age, but I guess my family is different from most. I can’t imagine my parents making that kind of rule, or that they’d think it was any of their business; even if they did tease me about Lou’s phone call, they certainly didn’t press me for details or tell me what I could or couldn’t do. That would’ve been so rude. It may be one reason Dex and I get along so well with our parents: They respect our privacy and our ability to make responsible decisions. If I’d ridden with Morgan on her bike, for example, it’s not that my mother would punish me or ground me like other mothers might, but just that she’d be surprised and disappointed in my poor judgment. I think. I don’t know because I would never betray her trust.

  The bell rang incredibly soon, and Morgan yanked me away. I barely said ’bye to Lou. Morgan whispered, “Let’s get out of here!”

  All day long it was like that: Morgan putting her back to everybody and whispering only to me, and Lou blushing every time he looked my way.

  At the end of soccer practice, Lou jogged over from the other field where the boys had had their practice and headed straight for me with his big, doofy grin. Dex, who is the starting center on the boys’ team, was waving at me, too, his cleats knotted at the laces and draped over his shoulder. I waved back and Lou, thinking I was waving at him, yelled, “Hi!” Dex tilted his head and pointed his thumb at Lou, then sped up to overtake him.

  Morgan wedged herself between me and them and whispered, “Walk me to my bike?”

  I hesitated.

  She cupped her hand over my ear. “I know you won’t let me ride you. I just have to tell you something.”

  “OK,” I said. I wiped my sweaty face on my new purple soccer shirt and, waving to both Dex and Lou, ran with her toward the bike rack. Both boys stopped walking and stood in the middle of the girls’ field, looking perplexed.

  She didn’t tell me anything earth-shattering at the bikes, just, “Some people are so uncoordinated.” She cocked her head toward the two girls who had crashed into the goalpost earlier in practice. We both covered our mouths.

  I never act like that. I hate girls who act like that. It seems so stupid and insensitive and immature. The strangest part was, I liked it.

  nine

  You’re not getting to be friends with Morgan Miller, are you?” Dex asked me in the morning, as I was eating my Cheerios.

  “Why shouldn’t I?”

  He shook his head. “You’ve been saying for two years what a lousy friend she is to CJ, what a bad influence. She’s so nasty and sarcastic. I’m just repeating what you’ve always said.”

  He was telling the truth, so what could I say? “People change,” I told him. “And I’m sarcastic, too, sometimes.”

  “Yeah.” Dex laughed. “You, sarcastic.”

  “You ready?” Mom asked, rushing through the kitchen with her hands above her head, braiding her shiny black hair. “Let’s go, let’s go!”

  We piled into the car. “You smell,” Dex said, tugging at my soccer shirt.

  “Oh, I’m so concerned,” I said.

  Dex turned around and stared at me. “That was sarcastic. Holy.”

  I sneaked a sniff at myself while Dex climbed into the car. I smelled OK, I thought, but now I was nervous about it. I hoped all the other girls would be wearing their soccer shirts, too. Last year we all did. It surprised me that I would care at all what anybody else wore, and resolved not to. When we pulled up in front of school, though, I was relieved to see all the other girls wearing their soccer shirts. I sat down with Morgan, our backs against the cool brick wall in the front of school.

  Dex shook his head as he passed us.

  Morgan watched him go by, then whispered to me, “Look at CJ.”

  CJ, who can’t do soccer this year because she has ballet almost every afternoon, was just about the only girl in seventh grade who wasn’t in a purple Boggs Bobcats soccer shirt. CJ had on a pale yellow dress, instead. It made her skin look even greener than usual—to match her eyes. I whispered to Morgan, “What about her?”

  “Exactly,” Morgan answered. She laughed. The bell rang. She grabbed me by the elbow and whispered as we shuffled in, “You are so funny, Olivia. I can’t believe I never knew.”

  I placed my lunch carefully in my locker and raised an eyebrow.

  “What?” Morgan asked. “I just forgot mine.”

  “Your permission slip?”

  “No, my lunch. It must be on the counter, that’s all. Jeez.” She turned and sprinted toward her homeroom.

  I gathered the books I’d need for the morning and headed toward Ms. Masters’s room. I passed Zoe Grandon at the water fountain. She yelled for me to wait up for her, so I did. She asked me when I was getting my braces.

  “Friday,” I told her.

  She scrunched her face sympathetically.

  “The orthodontist told me my teeth aren’t the worst he’s ever seen.”

  “Oh,” said Zoe. “That’s a sort of horrible thing to say.”

  I nodded. “I asked him if the other person survived.”

  Zoe laughed out loud as we walked into Ms. Masters’s room. Ms. Masters put her finger to her lips. Zoe covered her mouth with both hands and whispered to me, “You’re funny.”

  “So I hear,” I mumbled to myself.

  All through the pledge I stole glances over at Zoe. She is very friendly, but I never know what to talk about with her. Her broad face is so open and eager, so ready to laugh along with anything you come up with, it seems almost nasty to be at a loss for topics of discussion with her. She couldn’t be nicer or easier to get along with, and yet there’s always something that makes me turn away from her. And it’s not just that Morgan was giving Zoe the Silent Treatment. I make my own judgments.

  Zoe glanced over at me right before the bell rang and caught me looking at her. She smiled. I smiled back.

  Last Friday, Tommy Levit flicked Zoe’s bra strap a number of times, such an immature little jerk, and when he wouldn’t stop, she let him have it verbally with an expression I would never use, but which I thought was totally justified, and which I have memorized in case someday I wear a bra and somebody flicks it. But somehow Morgan and CJ twisted the whole thing all around and made Zoe apologize to Tommy, saying the incident was her own fault because she was wearing a tight shirt. It was ridiculous and insulting. Zoe looked so confused. I tried to tell her she shouldn’t apologize at all, that she was absolutely not in the wrong—but she caved in to the peer pressure of the more popular girls and left me sitting alone. I’m not really friends with the boys (except now I guess Lou), so I suppose I wasn’t the right one to listen to on how to deal with them, but anyway since then I’ve felt like, for all Zoe’s big size and outgoing nature, she isn’t a very strong person. I try not to b
e so judgmental, but sometimes I can’t help myself.

  Zoe headed to French and I went to Spanish. Morgan caught up with me halfway and asked if I’d done the homework. Of course I had. I didn’t ask if she’d done it because I didn’t want to be in the position of her asking to copy mine. We took our seats. She looked especially sad. “You OK?” I asked her.

  She nodded, then rested her head in her crossed arms on her desk. I got the homework all right, but I didn’t volunteer and didn’t get chosen. When the bell rang, I gathered my books and stood up to walk to math/science with Morgan, but Lou gripped me by the shoulder. “Hey,” he said.

  Morgan continued walking with a scowl on her face. I couldn’t tell if she was angry at me or what, but Lou wasn’t letting go of my shoulder. I looked up into his red-cheeked face.

  “Um, your shirt is nice,” he said.

  “My shirt?”

  “The soccer ball. Is nice. And the, um, fit.”

  I looked down at the shirt that hung straight down from my shoulders to the middle of my thighs. It fit me about like everything else fits me. “Thanks,” I said. The boys’ uniforms hadn’t come in yet, so Lou was wearing a blue button-down with the sleeves rolled up. I told him his shirt was nice, too. We sounded like a couple of idiots.

  “Um,” he said. “I was wondering.”

  That’s all. I stood waiting to hear what he was wondering, but instead of talking he just turned redder and redder until he was almost purple. Señora Goldsmith called from behind her desk to ask if he was OK, if he wanted a pass to the nurse, because he looked like he had a fever.

  “No, gracias,” he said, his voice cracking, and pushed me out the door. We walked toward math/science. “I . . .” he started.

  I switched my books to the arm between us and kept walking.

  “I . . .” he said again.

  We had reached the door of Ms. Cress’s room. Ms. Cress was at the board, reaching up to write some equations in chalk. All the boys spend the whole double period of math and science staring at Ms. Cress’s long, shapely, pale legs in their high-heeled boots. I saw Lou look.

  “Lou!” Tommy Levit yelled. Lou flicked his head toward the front corner where Tommy was standing, with his hands in his pockets.

  “Here,” Lou said to me, and thrust a folded piece of paper at me. I took it and went to my desk, put down my books, and unfolded the note. It was a cartoon Lou had drawn in pencil, of two dogs standing in front of a toilet. The smaller one looks perplexed and disappointed as the bigger one tells him, I know I used to like drinking out of it, too—but I’ve moved on.

  I smiled at it, and looked up to watch Lou walk over to Tommy. Dex has a point; Lou does sort of walk with a de-doe, de-doe rhythm, and his hair goes in many directions. You could see why people think he’s goofy, especially compared to somebody like Tommy Levit, with his dimples and squashed-in cute face, and his solid way of moving—shoulders square, eyes straight ahead. Lou’s eyes never stop darting around. I watched him arching down to listen to Tommy. I felt myself melting a little at how apologetic Lou looks. He’s a geek, I heard inside my head. But then I congratulated myself on resisting those messages. I reread the cartoon. So cute. My palms got damp. It felt weird but good.

  Behind me, I heard CJ whispering to Zoe.

  “What?” Zoe gasped.

  CJ whispered to her some more. I kept sitting straight in my seat, telling myself to mind my own business. I folded the cartoon, put it in my back pocket, took out my math notebook, and rechecked my problems. They were all right, and I couldn’t stand it anymore, so I turned around to see what was happening. Zoe was slumped down into her seat, looking like she’d just been given devastating news. I’ve never seen her look so pale and horrified.

  “What happened?” I asked Zoe.

  CJ answered, “Nothing.”

  Zoe opened her mouth, said nothing, then dropped her head down hard onto her desk. In my mind, I started reviewing what my father had taught me about CPR.

  Meanwhile, Morgan had gone over to CJ’s desk and was leaning toward her, whispering, “You think you’re so special, don’t you?”

  CJ shook her head.

  “What happened?” I asked again.

  “Nothing!” CJ yelled. Ms. Cress looked at us over her shoulder, then went back to writing on the board.

  “She’s fixing up Zoe with Lou,” Morgan told me.

  “Lou?” I asked.

  “Do you even like Lou?” she asked Zoe.

  Without raising her face off the desk, Zoe shook her head. The bell rang, and Ms. Cress asked everybody to sit. Lou straggled back to his seat without looking at me. I didn’t know what to do, or think. What if he likes her, too? Everybody likes Zoe; he probably will. I started to stand up, but since I had no plan of where to go, I sat back down. I pushed my pencil onto my notebook page and broke the tip, which spoiled the clean copied-over homework with a dark smudge. Pull yourself together, I told myself. My palms were drenched.

  Morgan leaned close to CJ and whispered, “Not everybody needs a boyfriend. You just think you’re so great to have a boyfriend, and be a little ballerina, in your ballerina dress, so much better than the rest of us.”

  CJ looked pleadingly at me, her oldest friend. She was starting to cry, I could tell by the way she pulled her lips inside her mouth. I decided to check my math problems again—thank goodness for math, problems with actual answers.

  “You go ahead,” I heard Morgan whisper to CJ. “Do everything you can to set yourself apart. I hope you’re impressed with yourself, Superstar. The rest of us will be perfectly happy to stick together in the shadows.”

  I wished there were some shadows for me to hide in.

  Ms. Cress asked Morgan to sit down, so she did. When we split up to work on our codes, I asked for a pass to go to the bathroom. By the time I got back, we were up to going over the homework, thank goodness. I was called on to go to the board a few minutes later. I didn’t even know what problem we were up to. That’s never happened to me before. When I looked back at the class from up in front, Zoe’s head was on her desk, CJ’s face was buried in her palms, Morgan was staring lockjawed at the clock, Lou had his desk opened and was hiding inside it, and Tommy Levit was scrunched so far down in his chair he looked like he might slither out under his desk. Ms. Cress made some joke about marking us all absent for the day. Nobody laughed. I turned back to the board, tried to concentrate, forgot to carry the one, and got the problem wrong.

  ten

  As we set the dinner table, Dex made the mistake of asking, “How’s Lou?”

  I slammed the stack of plates onto the table, which startled me for a second, long enough to gasp, but when I saw nothing had chipped I returned immediately to being furious. “Not everybody needs a boyfriend.”

  “What?” Dex asked. “What’s wrong with you?”

  I took one of the plates and set it down hard in front of Mom’s place. “Nothing! Why does it always have to be something wrong with me? Maybe there’s something wrong with you!”

  I slammed a plate down in front of my place.

  “Are you crying?” Dex asked.

  I wasn’t, but that started me. I ran to my room and slammed the door shut. I was feeling persecuted and overwhelmed—why would CJ fix up Zoe with my—whatever—my crush? Obviously, she didn’t know, but I still felt like, I wouldn’t do that to her. I’m such a good friend to CJ, I defend her all the time, I am so there for her and happy for her successes—I made her a flip book for being in The Nutcracker last year, a ballerina doing a leap and a pirouette, and it took me a solid month, and she barely even thanked me for it. Even though she’s the first to act annoyed with me when I use words she thinks are fancy, or make fun of me in a group of friends when I do or say something she thinks is less than cutting-edge cool, even with all that, I have always been totally loyal to her, my first friend. But enough is enough
. She has no right to stab me in the back. I have plenty of dirt I could tell Morgan, and CJ would deserve all of it. I wouldn’t, of course, but it’s totally unfair that she can be mean and callous about my feelings without the slightest thought that, you know what? I could do damage to you, too.

  I lay down on my bed with my feet up on the wall. I wasn’t crying anymore. I forced myself to imagine Lou and Zoe walking down the hall together, holding hands. That got the tears going again, until I reminded myself, That won’t happen, because he can’t go out with anybody, and Zoe doesn’t even like him. Why doesn’t Zoe like him? What’s so wrong with him? He’s smart and kind and screw her, the Grand One—she doesn’t deserve somebody so good. Was I missing some horrible fact about him? Maybe he really is a loser. Why haven’t I told anybody I like him? Am I really just private? Or is it shame, because of other people’s opinions? Am I turning into someone who does only what the crowd allows?

  I tumbled off my bed, sat down at my desk, picked up my phone, and dialed Lou’s number. I hung up before it rang. Do I need a boyfriend? I asked myself. Am I such a weak girl that I need a boyfriend to feel like I have value as a person? Yuck. I hate girls like that.

  I don’t need a boyfriend. I don’t need anybody. I have always been really proud of my self-sufficiency. I listen to my own heart, my own mind, march to my own drummer. I’m my own person, standing alone. Anyway, can I still stick together with my best friend in the shadows if I have a boyfriend? My best friend. I liked the sound of that.

  Mom called me to dinner.

  “One minute!” I yelled back. I picked up my phone again and quickly dialed Morgan’s number. When she answered, I whispered into the phone, “I can’t talk, they’re all at the dinner table, I just wanted to say that . . .”

  “Who is this?” Morgan asked.

  I rested my forehead in my palm. “Olivia. Pogostin.”

  She laughed. “I know.”

  “Oh.” I closed my eyes. “I just wanted you to know I think what you said to CJ was totally justified. I think she really deserved that.”