Friend or Fiction

by Abby Cooper

  I looked at the blank page in front of me and felt more inspired than ever. Energy zipped up and down my spine. These words I was about to write were more important than anything I’d ever written before.

  Zoe had seriously no idea how she got to Tiveda Middle, but she didn’t really care—she was just excited to be there. She could tell that Jade was going to be her best friend ever in the entire world, and they were going to have a ton of fun together.

  At the same time, a part of her was scared. She got a weird flippy-floppy feeling in her stomach. It felt like she was on a roller coaster with no end in sight.

  “Are you okay?” Mrs. Yang’s soft voice interrupted my thoughts. I looked up and scanned the room. Then I saw Zoe. She sat hunched over in her chair, holding her stomach.

  Zoe holding her stomach like that, that couldn’t have been because…was that…did I do that?

  I stared at my paper. If I did that, not only did new Zoe stories happen in real life—they happened fast.

  She mumbled a yes to Mrs. Yang, but it sounded fake.

  Zoe felt better, I wrote.

  She smiled and sat up straight. “Yup, I’m okay. All good.”

  And it really seemed like she was.

  Whoa.

  I tapped my eraser to my chin. There was still a chance that that was just a coincidence. I had to get creative—write something so wacky that it couldn’t be normal if it happened. If something especially bizarre happened, I’d know for sure it was because I’d written it. But it also had to be something that wouldn’t totally freak out Mrs. Yang or get anyone in major trouble.

  Zoe decided to sing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”

  I put my pencil down. If this was really Zoe, she’d totally be up for a little song. She loved to sing and dance.

  I twisted my hands together. They were super, super sweaty. This was it. This was how I’d know for sure.

  As if in slow motion, Zoe got to her feet. She opened her mouth.

  And she sang the song.

  Every. Last. Word.

  You couldn’t hear a single sound in the whole room, not even a whisper. Even Mrs. Yang was speechless, and she always knew what to say. Finally Clue smacked his hands together and clapped, and everyone joined in, even the Sparkle Girls who wore a lot of sparkles and seemed like they’re kind of hard to impress.

  I glanced at Clue. He raised his eyebrows.

  She actually sang the song. She sang the song! How…what? Nobody randomly sang “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” at the beginning of English class. Or any class. Not even music class, usually. And I couldn’t forget the whole sparkly pencil meeting-each-other thing earlier and the moving-in thing from over the weekend. There was only one explanation: the stories from my notebook were coming true. And the new things I wrote were coming true too.

  Whatever Clue did—it really worked. I guess the weird pond water wasn’t just weird. Like he said, somehow…it was magical too.

  “Okay, Zoe,” said Mrs. Yang. She motioned to everybody like it was time to stop clapping. “Thank you for that. Let’s move on now.”

  Zoe smiled, and Mrs. Yang continued her lesson.

  * * *

  I really wanted to talk to Clue after class, but not as much as I wanted and needed to talk to Zoe. The Sparkles got to her first, though. I could hear them squealing about her “Twinkle, Twinkle” performance from across the room. I couldn’t really blame them for being excited. She was the coolest person ever, after all, and it had been pretty epic. One of those things people would talk about for years to come, probably.

  Anyway, once we got to lunch, she’d forget all about them. I just knew it.

  And I was right.

  When I got to the cafeteria, I saw her sitting all by herself at the table where I did my writing every day. She was waiting for me. She had to be. My heart flip-flopped a thousand times over. It was like the time back in Nevada when I’d begged Mom and Dad to drive me to the kid’s bookstore an hour away to meet my favorite author. We waited in line for what felt like years. But when we finally got to the front, everything about the day that had been boring or annoying or made me impatient totally disappeared. The author smiled at me, and I knew that the trip was worth it. Hanging out with Zoe would be even better. She was my best friend, sure, but she was also kind of like a celebrity I’d been obsessed with basically forever.

  I took a few steps forward, but then I paused.

  And without my permission, my feet took one giant step back.

  What was that about?

  I tried again. Two steps forward. One step back. And again.

  It was like I was dancing. With myself. And not very well.

  There was no reason to be nervous, but maybe my feet were trying to tell me that I was. I tucked a loose piece of hair behind my ear. When had my ear gotten so hot? I felt my cheeks, my forehead, my chin. Everything was hot. And scrunchy, too, like my face was trying to figure out an answer to a teacher’s question without any help from Clue.

  I swallowed hard. I’d probably been nervous hanging out with my favorite author too. But now, years later, I only remembered that exciting, amazing feeling of seeing her smile at me when I got to the front of the line.

  With that in the very front of my brain, I finally rushed over to Zoe and sat down before I could change my mind, or my feet could change it for me.

  “Hi,” I said. And then I grinned. I was okay. It was my best friend! Here! In front of me! It was like my birthday and Hanukkah and New Year’s all rolled into one incredible moment of amazingness.

  “This might sound weird,” she said, leaning in, “but I had this feeling that I was supposed to sit here. Like my feet came right to this table all on their own.” “Well, we’re sort of best friends,” I told her. “I mean, we are best friends, and we sit here every day. This might sound weird, but I write these stories about this girl named Zoe—you. And in the stories, we do a ton of fun stuff together.”

  “I’m Zoe,” she said, like she was introducing herself all over again.

  “Yeah, I know. You’re Zoe, the character from my stories. I made you up. You lived in a notebook, I guess. But Clue brought you to life.”

  “What’s a clue?” Zoe picked something up off her lunch tray. “And what’s this?”

  I giggled. “That’s a spork,” I said. Then I pointed at the table a couple rows over where Clue sat with a few guys from our English class. “And that’s Clue.”

  “Spork,” Zoe repeated. “Clue!”

  “Very good,” I said.

  She stuck her tongue out at me, but in a joking kind of way.

  I tilted my head to the side as Zoe admired her spork some more. It was pretty funny that she’d never heard of one. Around here they were as common as new mailmen. But maybe it wasn’t funny at all. I tried to think if I’d ever written about a spork in a Zoe story.

  If I had, maybe she’d know what they were. But if I hadn’t…she might not have a clue.

  If that was the case, what else did she know? And what else didn’t she know?

  I held up my napkin. “Do you know what this is?” I asked.

  “Napkin,” she answered. “But works better as a bird.”

  Whoa. I smiled and pointed to a milk carton. “How about this?”

  “Milk carton.”

  “Nice.”

  I pointed to a grape. “This?”

  Zoe frowned and tilted her head so far to the side that she had to blow hair out of her face.

  “A…something something?”

  “Close. It’s actually called a grape.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Interesting. Grape. Grape grape grape.”

  Apparently I needed to write more stories that involved fruit. That made me wonder something else. I leaned in. “Do you know our stories?” I asked. “Like everything we’ve done t
ogether?”

  “Everything around here seems familiar, but fuzzy, you know? It’s like I’ve seen everything before, but through blurry glasses or something. All I know for sure is I was in this moving thing, and then I was in a house, and now I’m here,” Zoe said. “I don’t remember much before that.” She tapped her fingers on her chin like she was thinking. “I’m alive,” she said, but it came out more like a question.

  “You are,” I said. I smiled. So she didn’t know the details of our adventures—that was okay. She had the general knowledge of things that were in them, like origami napkins and milk mustaches and stuff. We’d bring the stories to life together, the way we’d made some of them come true already.

  Zoe grinned from ear to ear.

  “Best friends,” she said.

  “Best friends,” I agreed.

  Zoe did a little dance in her seat. “We’re going to have the best time ever.”

  I smiled, leaned in as much as my seat would allow, and lightly grabbed her wrists. I’m not sure why or what I was even trying to do.

  The weird thing was, I wrote a story last year where this happened at lunch. First I grabbed her wrists. Then she wriggled out of my grasp, flipped her wrists over so she was actually grabbing mine, and before I knew it we were playing that fun hand-slappy game where you try to catch the other person before they pull away.

  Now that was exactly what was happening. And as fun as it had been in my imagination, the real thing was about a trillion times better. It was so awesome that my old stories were actually happening, and that new things I wrote were coming true too.

  Zoe and I laughed really hard and really loud and it might have been too loud but I didn’t care. I could feel tons of best-friend duos looking at us, probably sighing and wishing that they were having this much fun.

  Zoe was right. We totally would have the best time ever.

  We already were.

  “So catch me up,” she said, after we were done with our game.

  “On what?”

  “Us. Our stories. Grapes. Everything I’ve missed.”

  “Oh, right.” I grinned. “Yeah, I’ll catch you up.”

  For the rest of lunch, that’s just what I did.

  11

  Liver Alone

  Lunch flew by faster than it ever had in the history of lunch. When the bell rang I refused to move until it rang a second time so I could make sure that it wasn’t an accident. We’d just sat down! How could it be time to go already? But it was, so Zoe and I got up and walked toward the classrooms with everybody else. It didn’t feel like there were sixtyish sixth graders shuffling down the hall with us, though. There was only us. Zoe and Jade. Jade and Zoe. Best friends.

  “Word count?” Ms. Yang asked as we passed her by.

  “Zero!” I shouted.

  Maybe she said something else after that, but I didn’t hear. I had one earbud in and Zoe had the other, and we were singing along like every song was recorded just for us.

  I skipped into fifth-period health with her by my side. Normally health grossed me out before it even started, but nothing could bug me today. I felt like I could survive forty-five minutes of the digestive system and anything else that Mr. Kremen threw our way. Except for maybe the scary-looking bowl on his desk that was filled with what looked like a combination of dog food and puke.

  He grinned at it and then at all of us.

  “Isn’t this unit the greatest?” he asked. “Soak it up, people, because soon we are on to mental, emotional, and social health. All good things, of course. But today, our exciting tour of the digestive system continues with the one, the only, the liver!”

  Some people giggled, but not me. There was nothing funny about a liver. Especially the ones that stopped working.

  As if he could read my mind, Mr. Kremen shot me a look—but since he was the teacher and everybody was watching him, it was kind of like he was shooting the whole class the look that was only meant for me, which was not so great. His face was part sad and part worried. Even his pointy gray hairs seemed to stare at me that same way.

  He opened his mouth. Don’t say anything out loud, I begged inside my head. But if he had read my mind before, he definitely wasn’t doing it now.

  “Jade, if you’re uncomfortable at any point, feel free to leave,” he said. “You don’t have to ask first or anything. Or, if there’s anything you want to add to our discussion, you can do that too. You probably know more than I do. However you want to participate or not participate—it’s up to you.”

  I squirmed around in my seat. My cheeks burned. Mr. Kremen was probably trying to be nice, because my mom told all my teachers that my dad had liver cancer. But did he have to try to be nice in front of the whole class? Now everybody was looking at me. Not even just looking. They were staring, like I had green stuff in my teeth or worse. I shrunk down and tried to make myself as small as I could, but it was no use. Everyone kept right on looking. What did they want me to say? What was I supposed to say?

  Wait a second. Maybe I didn’t have to say anything out loud. Maybe I could say something on paper, instead, and someone else could be the one to speak.

  I hurried to write in my notebook.

  Zoe distracted Mr. Kremen and saved the day.

  It was kind of a short story, but it got the point across.

  “Hey, Mr. K.?”

  Zoe’s hand shot up and—to my total amazement—everybody’s heads turned away from me and toward her.

  “What’s that stuff on your desk?” she asked.

  “Chopped liver,” he said. “It’s a spread made with eggs, onion, garlic, and chicken liver. Doesn’t have much to do with human livers, but I thought we’d stick to a theme today.”

  “Can I try some?”

  Gasps and whispers rippled through the room. I took a giant breath and looked around. Not one person was looking at me. All eyes were on Zoe, just like I wanted.

  “I don’t know. It was really only here for dramatic effect,” Mr. Kremen said. “Though technically it is a food. And personally, I find it very tasty.”

  “Let her have some!” someone called out. Soon everybody was cheering.

  “Okay, okay, quiet down.” Mr. Kremen rummaged around in his desk drawer and pulled out a plastic spork like the ones we used at lunch. “If you really want to, go ahead. But if she doesn’t want to,” he turned toward the class, “you should liver alone.” He laughed to himself as we all rolled our eyes. He then added, “Is this okay with you, Jade?”

  Ugh, not again. I closed my eyes and wished that I were invisible.

  “I’m doing it.”

  I opened my eyes in time to see Zoe spring up from her seat and race to the front of the room. People didn’t even have a chance to look at me because she got up there so fast. She dipped the spork into the chopped liver of disgustingness and then held it up and raised her eyebrows at the class like, Dare me? Double dare me? Triple dare me?

  She put the spork down—but in a joking way—and the whole class booed.

  “Just kidding, you guys. I am all about this spork.” She picked it up again, smiled, and slipped a giant bite into her mouth.

  The room went dead silent as she chewed. People leaned as far forward as their seats would let them, watching like they’d never seen anyone eat anything gross before. Bo used to eat glue like once a week, even after Dad tried to hide it from him. We finally had to come up with a really detailed story about this other three-year-old boy who ate so much glue that he turned into a human glue stick, and not in a fun way. In a very bad, you’re-going-to-stick-to-things-that-aren’t-very-fun-to-be-stuck-to kind of way. Dad and I acted it out for Bo so he’d understand. I was Regular Bo and Dad was Bo the Human Glue Stick, and all afternoon Dad pretended to stick to everything and get really frustrated when he couldn’t go where he wanted. Bo got the idea. Though it kind of stunk th
at Dad actually did turn into the Human Glue Stick, always stuck to that same brown chair.

  Everybody stood and cheered for Zoe as she swallowed. Not a single person glanced my way—not even Mr. Kremen. I grinned for the first time in health class maybe ever. It worked. It had really worked! Together, there was nothing we couldn’t do.

  * * *

  OPPSERVATION: It’s weird how people always say “think before you speak” but never “think before you listen.”

  Questions for further research: Shouldn’t you try to think no matter what?

  Teachers and parents always tell us that we’re in control of what we say. We can think before we speak. But no one ever says you’re in control of what you listen to. Sometimes you are, maybe, like with music and TV. But sometimes you have to sit at a hospital and listen to a doctor say things like “liver cancer…50 percent five-year survival rate” that you’re not supposed to understand because you’re only in fourth grade. But even back then, two whole years ago, I did understand. Even before I started listening to the doctors, I was thinking about how I would never really be ready for anything they were going to say.

  Sometimes you have to sit in health class and listen to Mr. Kremen talk about livers. And talk. And talk. And talk.

  I knew I could walk out, like he said, but my body felt stuck to my seat. If I got up, everybody would be even more curious than they were before Zoe distracted them. I didn’t want to talk about it. I really didn’t want to be asked about it. I wanted Zoe’s spork-fascination and liver-eating to be the most memorable parts of health class. And so I had to stay.

  But that didn’t mean I had to like it.

  I put my elbows on my desk, my head in my hands, and sneakily inched my fingers toward my earrings that looked like owls. Maybe if I could cover even a pinky finger’s worth of ear, it would help.

  As my pinkies reached their target, Zoe’s voice broke through.

  “I don’t feel very well,” she said. Her face was as green as the water in the pond.