The Kind of Friends We Used to Be

by Frances O'Roark Dowell

  Kate and Lorna had started eating lunch together almost every day. Sometimes they talked, sometimes they read. Sometimes Lorna read to Kate from the novel she was writing. It was a story told from the point of view of a cat who was actually a ghost cat and had helped out on the Underground Railroad during the 1800s. Kate thought it was a pretty good story so far, though secretly she wondered how much help a cat could have been transporting slaves from the South to Canada. She’d known a few cats in her life, and they’d never struck her as the do-gooder types.

  One day Lorna showed up in the cafeteria looking serious. This was unusual. Lorna normally looked like she found everything in the world particularly hilarious and couldn’t wait to let you in on the joke. But now she wore a slight frown. She looked a little confused to Kate, like she wasn’t sure about something.

  “What’s wrong?” Kate asked her. “Do you feel okay?”

  Lorna sat down without saying anything. She didn’t pull her lunch bag out of her backpack the way she typically did the second she sat down, making a big show out of unpacking it, explaining what each item was and how it was made. It worried Kate that Lorna was just sitting there, not unpacking, not talking.

  “Did something bad happen?” Kate asked. “Because if it did, you could tell me.”

  Lorna let out her breath in a big rush. “Okay, I’m just going to say it. On my way here, I saw Matthew waiting outside the principal’s office, and he looked upset, like something bad was going on.”

  “Maybe he’s sick,” Kate said, a stream of nervous energy suddenly rushing through her. What if something horrible had happened? What if Matthew needed her to be there with him right now? Should she go? She didn’t have a hall pass, but she didn’t care if she got in trouble, not if Matthew needed her help.

  “I don’t think so,” said Lorna. “I mean, that’s not what things seemed like.”

  Kate knew there was something Lorna wasn’t saying. She leaned in toward her. “Tell me. Tell me what you’re not telling me.”

  Lorna pursed her lips, like the words she was holding back were sour as lemons. “Okay, listen. I know you guys are just friends, so this isn’t a big deal or anything. But he was sitting there with this girl. I don’t know who she was, but she was sitting really close to him and saying that getting caught skipping wasn’t such a big deal and they’d hardly get into any trouble for it at all.”

  “Matthew got caught skipping?” Kate sat back in her seat. “With a girl?”

  “Yeah, and she’s really pretty.” Lorna smacked her hand over her mouth. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to say that part.”

  Kate sat up straight. She refused to get upset over this. “It’s okay. It was probably Emily, this girl he’s friends with. He’s got lots of friends.”

  “Yeah, no big deal, you’re right,” Lorna said, smiling weakly. “Besides, it’s not like you guys are boyfriend-girlfriend or anything. You’re just really good friends.”

  “That’s right,” said Kate. “That’s just how it is.”

  Kate did not go to Creative Writing Club that afternoon, even though she had a draft of a new song she’d wanted to get feedback on. After the last bell, she got on the bus and took a seat at the back. She wanted to be alone and stare out of the window. She thought if she could just stare out the window for a long time without being interrupted, everything would make sense to her. She would suddenly understand why her good friend Matthew Holler, who was just her good friend and who she was not in love with, skipped class with Emily and hadn’t said one word to her about it, even though they’d talked that morning before third period.

  He could have mentioned it, Kate thought. He could have let me know what was going on in his life.

  Someone sat down next to her. Kate looked up. Matthew?

  Marylin.

  “I have a dentist appointment at four,” Marylin said, arranging her backpack at her feet. “I don’t know why my mom can’t make appointments during school like everyone else’s mom does. Now I have to miss cheerleading practice, which means I get demerits.”

  “Doesn’t your mom work?” Kate asked, forgetting to be irritated that Marylin was interrupting her staring-out-the-window time.

  “Yeah, I know, but you’d think she’d like the excuse of taking some time off,” Marylin said. She pulled the elastic out of her hair and began redoing her ponytail.

  “Maybe her boss would give her demerits,” Kate pointed out. “I think it’s different taking time off when you’re actually getting paid to be somewhere.”

  “Be on my mom’s side, why don’t you?” said Marylin, giving her ponytail one last tug. “Anyway, I saw your boyfriend in the office today. He looked like he was in a lot of trouble.”

  “I don’t have a boyfriend,” Kate said. “I only have friends, some of whom are boys. Besides, I think he has a girlfriend. I mean, one who’s not me. At least that’s what it sounds like. This friend of mine saw them waiting together after they got caught skipping.”

  Marylin looked shocked. “Did you know about her?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Kate said. She held up her fingers and began examining her calluses. They were an interesting color, somewhere between yellow and clear. “We weren’t going together or anything. Doesn’t the word ‘friends’ mean anything anymore?”

  “To be honest, I’m really not sure,” Marylin said. She turned and looked at Kate. “Do you ever miss it? Being all-the-time friends, like we used to be?”

  Kate thought about this. It was hard to think about being friends with someone when you were in fourth or fifth grade, and trying to translate that friendship into seventh-grade terms. Part of the reason she and Marylin had been best friends for so long was that they lived close to each other and they were both basically nice people. They’d never had a lot of stuff in common, but when you’re nine, it doesn’t really matter all that much.

  But when you’re twelve, Kate thought, it matters more, liking the same things. She was glad, for instance, to have a friend like Lorna, who liked to write and read as much as Kate did. And, with a pang, she realized it was nice to have a friend like Matthew Holler, who understood about guitars and smooth blue rocks that were beautiful and felt good in your pocket.

  That’s not what she said, though. What she said was, “Yeah, I miss it.”

  And then Marylin laid her head on Kate’s shoulder for a second, and Kate did everything she could not to cry.

  That night Kate sat in the kitchen, listening to Joni Mitchell sing and writing down words in her notebook with her indigo blue pen. Her mom was looking through cookbooks and taking notes for a cake she was supposed to make for a bar mitzvah the following weekend.

  Icicles, Kate wrote, copying words from the song that was playing. Birthday clothes. Sorrow.

  “What’s this song about, anyway?” she asked her mom. “Who’s Little Green?”

  “Little Green is the child Joni Mitchell gave up for adoption,” her mom told her, flipping through the pages of her cookbook. “This is a song she wrote about it. When someone told me that this song was true, I couldn’t stop crying, it was so sad.”

  Kate stared at her mom. She couldn’t believe she was actually telling her something so interesting and grown-up. “I wish I could write a song like this,” she said. Then, seeing her mom’s shocked expression, she added, “I mean, a song that’s as good as this one. Not one about me giving up a baby for adoption.”

  Mrs. Faber frowned. “Promise me, Kate, whatever you do, that you will not start having interesting experiences just for the sake of writing about them.”

  Kate held up her fingers in the Girl Scout salute. “I promise.”

  When the phone rang, Kate didn’t bother picking up, since the phone was always for Tracie, and for once, Tracie was actually home to answer the phone herself. So it was a surprise when a moment later, Tracie called down from her room, “Kate! It’s for you! And don’t hog the phone all night!”

  Kate grabbed the phone off the kitchen count
er and turned down the volume on Joni Mitchell. Maybe it was Lorna, she thought as she hit the talk button, though Lorna was more of an instant messenger than a phoner.

  She wasn’t prepared at all to hear Matthew Holler’s voice on the other end of the line.

  “I think my big mistake today was leaving the blue rock at home,” he said after she’d said hello, not even saying who he was, though Kate knew as soon as she’d heard him breathing. “Usually I put it in my pocket first thing in the morning, since it’s good luck, but I was late and my mom was yelling, so I forgot.”

  “Are you in a lot of trouble?” Kate asked, forgetting that her mom was in the room, though she remembered as soon as her mom started hissing, “Who’s in trouble? Who is it?” from across the kitchen.

  “It’s not so bad,” said Matthew. “Three days of morning and after-school detention. It’s the first time I ever got caught.”

  Kate moved out into the hallway, away from her mom’s ears. “Do you skip a lot?” she asked in a half whisper.

  “Not a lot,” Matthew said. “But sometimes. Sometimes I think I’ll go crazy if I have to sit at a desk for one more second. I don’t do anything bad when I skip. I just like to walk around the neighborhoods near school and listen to my iPod. It clears my head.”

  What about Emily, Kate wanted to ask. Does she always skip with you, or just every once in a while?

  But she didn’t ask. Because she didn’t want to know about Emily.

  La roca azul esta bella, she thought.

  Matthew Holler esta bello.

  Do you ever miss it? she wanted to ask. Being all-the-time friends?

  Except Matthew Holler had only been her friend since they’d met in Creative Writing Club, even if it seemed like a lifetime to Kate. A lifetime of guitars and radio stations, wooden boxes and crooked sticks. A lifetime of blue rocks that in a poem you would call stones.

  She would never, ever tell anyone that she loved him.

  “So, do you want to hear some stuff I’ve been writing down in my notebook?” she asked, walking back into the kitchen and taking a seat across from her mom. “I mean, like words and ideas for poems?”

  “Yeah, that would be great,” Matthew said. “And then I was thinking maybe we could play guitar together.”

  “You want to play guitar together on the phone?”

  Across the table, Mrs. Faber giggled.

  “Yeah, sure, why not?” Matthew asked. “You have anything against playing guitar over the phone?”

  “No, I guess not,” said Kate. “But first the words, okay, Matthew?”

  “Okay,” Matthew said.

  “Here goes, then,” Kate said, picking up her notebook and opening it. She took a deep breath.

  “Blue,” she said, her voice catching just a little.

  “Cashmere” she continued.

  “Icicles, birthday clothes, sorrow.”

  The whole time her mom looking at her.

  The whole time her mom reaching out her hands.

  everything in the world

  After Marylin was elected Student Government representative, walking into school first thing in the morning became a brand-new experience. She did not automatically check her reflection in the media center window, which she passed as soon as she entered the building, and she resisted the impulse to rush into the girls’ bathroom next to the science lab to touch up her strawberry Lip Smacker lip gloss before heading to her locker. It wasn’t that she didn’t care about being pretty anymore, it was just that she had a different idea about herself all of the sudden. She was a person who, yes, was pretty, but she was also serious. She had business to take care of.

  It was clear that Mazie did not like the new Marylin one bit.

  “Do you know how boring you’ve become?” she asked the morning after Marylin’s second Student Government meeting. Marylin had been telling Mazie and Ashley about how a group of eighth-grade representatives were lobbying for more vegetarian entrées in the cafeteria, and how they thought that the administration was conspiring against them to save money. Marylin had been shocked by the eighth graders’ claim that Principal Carter-Juarez was secretly plotting with the food services people to keep eggplant Parmesan and tofu burgers off the cafeteria’s menu.

  Marylin blinked a few times after Mazie accused her of being boring. Had she been boring? Was she talking too much? Was it possible that other people did not find politics as interesting as Marylin now did?

  She looked closely at Mazie’s and Ashley’s faces and realized that, yes, it was possible not everyone found the ins and outs, ups and downs of Brenner P. Dunn Middle School’s Student Government all that fascinating.

  “Sorry,” she mumbled. “I didn’t mean to hog the conversation.”

  Mazie leaned toward Marylin and poked her in the shoulder with her finger. “Your job is to get us new uniforms. Don’t start thinking it’s to make the world safe for vegans.”

  Marylin rubbed her shoulder where Mazie had poked her. She stood there rubbing it for several minutes while Mazie and Ashley started to describe to each other in great detail what the perfect cheerleading uniform would look like, both agreeing that it was essential that belly buttons be visible at all times.

  When she saw Kate and Matthew Holler walking down the hall, Marylin broke away from Mazie and Ashley with a quick “Gotta run” and trotted toward them. “Hey, you guys,” she called. “I need to ask you something.”

  Matthew looked at Marylin curiously, his head tilted slightly to one side. “Ask away,” he said with a sudden grin that made Marylin automatically understand what Kate saw in him.

  “Uh, okay, what was I going to ask you?” Marylin fell into step beside Kate and nudged her. The nudge was supposed to say, Are you guys an item or what? but Kate just rolled her eyes at Marylin in a way that let it be known she found the whole subject irritating. “Oh, yeah. Vegetarian cafeteria—are you for it or against it?”

  “All the way vegetarian?” Kate asked. “I mean, some vegetarian stuff would be great, but it wouldn’t be fair if there weren’t any cheeseburgers. A lot of people like cheeseburgers.”

  Matthew held up his hand. “Personally, I’m for cheeseburgers. Though I respect vegetarians. My cousin Ryan is a vegetarian because he refuses to eat anything he wouldn’t kill, and since he can’t imagine killing a cow or a pig, he basically doesn’t eat meat.”

  “How about a deer?” Kate said. “Would he kill a deer?”

  “That’s the funny thing,” Matthew answered, draping an arm around Kate’s shoulders. “He has killed a deer. He lives out in the country, and my uncle’s really into hunting, and one time last year Ryan killed a deer. But after they cooked it and everything, he didn’t like the way it tasted.”

  “That’s ironic,” said Marylin, then wished she hadn’t, because she wasn’t sure if she 100 percent knew what “ironic” meant, and maybe it didn’t mean what she thought it meant at all.

  But Kate and Matthew both laughed, and Kate said, “No kidding,” and Marylin suddenly felt okay.

  What an interesting experience, she thought later, as she was taking out her homework folder in math. To have a conversation and feel okay about it afterward.

  Quite frankly, Marylin hadn’t known that was possible.

  Student Government meetings were held Monday nights in the media center. Marylin had expected to be bored half the time, because Clarissa Sharp, who had been a representative the year before, had told her there were a lot of budget discussions and debates over whether or not the Chess Club should get to use a school van to go to tournaments at other schools. Before Marylin went to the first meeting, she’d tucked a copy of the most recent Seventeen in her back pouch, thinking she could sneak-read it if the meeting got supremely dull.

  To her surprise, Marylin found all of it interesting, from the explanation of how to use Robert’s Rules of Order to the line-by-line review of the activities budget. It didn’t hurt that the Student Government president, Benjamin Huddle, was cute i
n a geeky sort of way. Marylin wondered if she could somehow tactfully suggest that he get contact lenses and trade out his button-down shirts for T-shirts. It would, in her opinion, make a huge difference.

  There were two other seventh-grade representatives. One was Alison Crabtree, a soccer player with one of those outgoing personalities that made it impossible to know if she liked you or not, because she acted like everyone in the world was her best friend, and how could that be? The other representative was a boy named Saunders Peck. Saunders Peck was known for being smarter than everyone else and very ambitious, but if he had an actual personality, Marylin had never heard about it. She had tried to be nice to him at first, but he’d hardly responded at all, just sort of sniffed at her. She wondered if he thought she was beneath him because she was a cheerleader and not some rocket scientist.

  So it came as a surprise that, after the second meeting in December, Saunders Peck asked Marylin if she would like to accompany him to the Student Organizations Holiday Extravaganza that weekend.

  “It’s at the Holiday Inn on Bryson Boulevard,” he told her in the hallway as they walked toward the front door. “Music, snacks, some sort of moronic entertainment—according to my brother, who was Student Government president a few years ago. He’s the one who would drive us. Dan, that is. My brother. He goes to Parkside High School now.”

  “Is he Student Government president there?” Marylin asked, trying to stall for time. She did not in any way want to go to the Holiday Extravaganza with Saunders Peck, but she needed a nice way to say no and was having a hard time coming up with one.

  Saunders scowled. “No, but that’s because they’re all idiots. Oh sure, it’s supposed to be one of the best high schools in the state, but if you’re not popular, forget about running for office there.”

  Marylin thought this was probably not a great time to turn Saunders down. “I’d better check to see if my mom’s out front,” she said, turning toward the school entrance. “She gets mad if I make her wait.”