What Are Friends For?

by Rachel Vail

  CJ has her own room and an extra bed that pops out from under hers just for sleepovers. We put on our T-shirts and boxers, turned out the light, and lay here for I don’t know how long. I was thinking, Well, this is weird. Devin and I always talk in the dark of our room. I can’t just go to sleep.

  “Are you asleep?” I whispered to CJ.

  “No,” she whispered back.

  “Just wondering.” I have good eyes—the best in my family—so I checked out CJ’s built-in shelves across the room. She has a collection of stuffed animals lined up neatly, like they’re not to play with anymore.

  “Don’t feel bad about tonight,” she whispered.

  “I had a great time,” I said, which was true. I love barbecues—the smell of the hot dogs on the grill, your hair still wet from the shower, playing catch in the swim club parking lot until it gets too dark to see. “Didn’t you have fun?” I asked her.

  “Yeah, but when you went out to the parking lot with the boys . . .”

  “We were playing catch.”

  “You were the only girl,” she said. “I thought maybe you . . .”

  “You could’ve come.” I felt bad suddenly that I hadn’t invited her. But nobody invited me. I just went. If she’d wanted to come, she should’ve come.

  “I thought you felt left out or something. With the girls.”

  “Girls?” her father called as he passed CJ’s door.

  “Sorry,” CJ said.

  He turned off the bathroom light and said, “Good night.”

  “I didn’t feel left out,” I whispered. “I just felt like playing catch.”

  “Shh,” she whispered back. Like we were in trouble. Boy, in my house, trouble is a lot louder than that.

  The light from her parents’ room shut off. Maybe a minute later, CJ lifted her head up again and leaned on her elbow. “How does it feel to have four older sisters?”

  I shrugged. “How does it feel not to?”

  “I mean, is it like a party all the time? That’s probably why you get along with everybody—you’ve just always had to. Or do you wish you could have more privacy?”

  “I don’t really like privacy,” I said. “It’s boring.”

  “That’s so funny.” She pushed her blanket down and lifted her leg up to her face. She’s a ballerina so she can. “If I don’t have time to myself, I go crazy.”

  “If I kissed my knee like that, my leg would pop off.”

  “You get used to it,” she said.

  I shrugged. “Same with sisters, I guess.”

  She switched legs. “But are they into your things all the time? My brother used my markers yesterday, and I could yank his little fingernails out.”

  “Ouch,” I said. “I never thought about it before, really. My sister Colette gets a little weird about people touching her CDs, but she’s the difficult one. I don’t mind much. I mean, practically everything of mine was one of theirs first, so what do I care?”

  She nodded sympathetically. “You must be dying to have something that’s just your own.”

  “Well, I have . . .” I started but I couldn’t finish because I couldn’t think of anything. “I have . . .” Nothing. Nothing of my own? “I’m the only one who doesn’t go in alphabetical order,” I finally came up with.

  “What do you mean?” She splayed her legs into a split and propped up her head in her palms, in between. She wasn’t wearing a bun for the first time I’d ever seen, and her pale bony face looked lost in the frizz of all that brown fluffy hair.

  “That doesn’t hurt your legs?” I had to ask.

  She shook her head. She was just waiting for me to talk. That felt pretty nice—at my house you have to talk fast if you have something to say or somebody else will fill in with a different story.

  “They had a kid a year for four years,” I explained. “A-B-C-D: Anne Marie, Bay, Colette, and Devin. Then the next year a dog, Elvis. And then me. But my mom was like, no way is this one Fiona, don’t even think I’m going through this twenty more times; this kid is named Zoe. As in, The End.”

  “Well, that is sort of alphabetical,” CJ said.

  “No. You get it? Z.”

  “Just with a lot of letters skipped.”

  “Oh.” I could see what she meant. “Thanks for pointing that out.”

  “I’m sorry”

  “Great,” I said, “the one thing I thought was my own.”

  She shook her head slowly and whispered, “That must feel awful.”

  Nobody ever took me so seriously in my life. Not even myself. I could hear my sisters saying, Oh, please, get over yourself. So what? Alphabetical order? Please. But interrupting their voices in my head was CJ, saying, That must feel awful. And it did. “It does,” I whispered back. “It feels awful.”

  “I know it,” she said. She talks really slow.

  Her sympathy felt so good, I wanted to give her gifts. “Thanks,” I said. I had to laugh at myself. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m not usually such a sap.”

  “No, seriously,” she said. “It’s so hard. I know just how you feel. I mean, the same with my mom about ballet—I tried to tell her I’m not sure if I want to dance this year, and she didn’t even hear me. She’s just writing out the check anyway, saying, ‘You’re so gifted, you’re so talented,’ blah, blah, blah.”

  I nodded. I thought about saying that must feel awful back to her but I didn’t want to copy. Also, it didn’t sound awful. I can’t imagine my mother saying anything that nice to me. The closest she comes is, At least you’re no trouble. So I told CJ, “Maybe she’s just really proud of you.”

  “Maybe.” She lay down on her side and whispered, “My real name is Cornelia Jane, same as my mom.”

  “I know,” I said. “Mrs. Platt?” We were in homeroom together last year and the teacher, Mrs. Platt, always called CJ, Cornelia Jane, Our Prima Ballerina—even when she was just taking attendance.

  “Oh, yeah,” CJ said, scrunching her pointy little nose. “It’s a family name. My great-grandmother was called Lia, then Grandma is Nelly, and my mom is Corey, so I guess they ran out of nicknames that were actual names for me.”

  “I like CJ.”

  “Really?”

  “Usually only boys get initial nicknames.”

  “Exactly,” she said, flopping down flat on the bed.

  Wrong thing to say. Oops. I tried something else. “That’s great, to have the same name as your mother. The only thing I have in common with my mother is a weight problem.”

  She didn’t take her arm off her face. “It’s not that great, actually,” she said in that slow way of hers.

  “Oh,” I said.

  “When I was little, I could only touch her toe shoes if I first washed my hands with soap. That’s why I started ballet—I wanted toe shoes I could touch anytime. And to be just like her.”

  “No wonder she’s psyched you’re so good,” I said. CJ is a really talented dancer. Last year we had a class trip to see her in The Nutcracker. When she came out to the lobby afterward, we were pulling on our wool sweaters and down coats. She looked like a different species from us. You could understand why people who perform are called stars. She sparkled, practically. On the bus ride home, some people said it was just the special makeup with glitter in it, but I don’t think so.

  CJ pushed her blanket away again and stretched her neck so her head reached her knees. “Four days a week she drives me all the way to Lenox for lessons and sits there watching me for three hours.”

  “That’s great,” I said.

  “I guess so,” she told her knees.

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “All that time, just for you? Once, when I was like, four, my mom took me to Sesame Street Live, just the two of us, and bought me an Elmo flashlight. Please, it’s still my favorite thing.”

  �
�I don’t know, never mind,” CJ said, sitting up and hugging her knees.

  “What?”

  “Sometimes I just want . . .”

  “What?” I asked. “You can tell me.” I sat up, too. I love secrets.

  “You’ll think it’s stupid.”

  “I won’t. I promise.”

  “OK. Sometimes I wish I could just hang around the pizza place after school instead of dancing.”

  I thought that was pretty stupid so I stayed still.

  CJ frowned. “Stupid, right?”

  “No,” I had to lie. “But you know what? Their pizza isn’t even crisp.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “And nobody gives you a standing ovation for finishing a slice.”

  She shook her head. “I’m missing it,” she whispered. “All the regular stuff. I don’t think I’ll ever be good enough to make principal dancer, so I’m just wasting—”

  “Maybe you will,” I interrupted. “You’re really good.”

  “You don’t know. I’m good but my turn-out isn’t enough and meanwhile I’m missing being a normal kid.”

  We lay there in the dark for a minute. She was right, how could I know if she’s good? She looked great to me last year, but I don’t even know what turn-out is.

  “That must feel awful,” I whispered.

  “It does,” she said. She started to cry.

  Oops, wrong thing again. It had felt so good when she said it to me. I looked around for Kleenex, but she didn’t have a box. “You want me to get you some toilet paper?”

  “For what?”

  “To wipe your nose? Eyes?” I asked. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Some toilet paper?” She wiped her face on her T-shirt. “It’s OK.”

  “So what are you going to do?” I asked. “About dance.”

  “There’s nothing I can do, because it’s not up to me, it’s obviously my mother’s decision. Anyway, the point is, I know just how you feel, about nothing of your own.”

  I nodded. I never know what to say when people get serious.

  “Morgan says I should just quit. But she doesn’t care about stuff like disappointing your mother. I mean, my mother’s always telling me I’m her best friend.”

  I stopped myself from saying that’s so nice. Instead I said, “Oh, that makes it complicated.”

  I wasn’t even sure what I meant, but I was glad I said it because CJ nodded fast, looking right at me. She has really intense green eyes. “Exactly,” she said. “See? Morgan doesn’t get that—she doesn’t care what her mother thinks. But on the other hand, Morgan is right—it is my decision, really. Whether to dance and even who my best friend is. My mom can’t just decide we’re best friends. Don’t I have some say?”

  “Absolutely,” I said.

  She nodded more and smiled a little. “I mean best friends—it’s too important. It’s a commitment, right? Best friends have to choose each other.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I agree.”

  “I’m glad somebody does,” whispered CJ.

  “Who’s your best friend, then? Morgan?” CJ and Morgan Miller hung around a lot last year. I guess I thought of them as best friends. I was regular friends with both of them, although since The Nutcracker, I’ve been a little shy around CJ. It’s hard to imagine all my friends needing permission slips to come see me do anything.

  “Well,” CJ said slowly. “I was best friends with Gideon Weld when we were little, but then, you know, we figured out he was a boy and I was a girl, so that ended that.”

  “Right,” I said, like obviously you couldn’t be best friends with a boy. I’m just friends with anybody. Nothing of my own. Why didn’t that ever bother me before?

  “And since fourth grade, it’s been Morgan, although, sometimes, lately, I feel like she doesn’t understand me,” CJ whispered. “But yeah, I guess it’s Morgan. Who’s yours?”

  “I don’t know.” I faced away from her, toward the door, and folded my pillow over. “I don’t have one.”

  After a while, CJ whispered, “We should go to sleep, huh?”

  I said, “Yeah,” but I can’t sleep.

  Every girl has her own story.

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