by Abby Cooper
Everything had been going so great—and still was, really—so why did I feel like somebody had dropped a bucket of old, soggy Tater Tots on my head?
“We don’t need them,” I said after a too-long silence. “It’s better when it’s just the two of us.”
Zoe sipped her chocolate milk and looked like she was thinking about it.
“Yeah, I guess you’re right. We don’t need more friends.”
I sat up a little straighter and drank my milk too. It tasted extra chocolatey and delicious, and for a second I didn’t have that Tater-Tots-on-my-head-messy-greasy-icky feeling. Until I looked over at Zoe and saw that she was staring at the Sparkles, and the bad feeling came rushing back.
18
The Stuff That Matters
After school we picked up Bo and walked home the same way we had a couple days before, with the swinging and the shouting and the laughing. After the way Zoe had looked at the Sparkles earlier, it was extra important that this afternoon was the most fun one yet.
We were almost home when Zoe said, “You can come to my house today, if you think that’s a good idea. It could be fun, maybe. Right?”
I bit the inside of my lip. Yeah. It probably would be fun. After all, Zoe didn’t have any parents around to tell her what to do or not to do or to make her feel sad. (Not that Dad did that to me on purpose, but still.) I straightened my shoulders. Yeah, why didn’t we go to her house? Just because we’d never been there in my stories didn’t mean it was impossible. It just hadn’t happened yet.
“Let’s do it,” I said.
“Let’s do it!” Bo agreed.
I shot Zoe an uh-oh kind of look, and she made one back.
“I think this is going to be, um, big-kid time,” I said. By the look on Bo’s face, I knew I’d said the wrong thing.
“I am a big kid,” he insisted.
“I know,” I said. “Sorry. I mean…bigger kids.”
“Oh.” He nodded slowly. “Okay. But if the bad guy comes…”
“We’ll call you,” I promised.
He smiled as we crossed the street to our house. I opened the door, let him in, and called for Mom.
“We’re going to hang out at Zoe’s today, if that’s okay,” I told her.
She smiled. “Sure. Actually I’ve been meaning to go over and introduce myself to her parents. Maybe I’ll come with you for a second.”
“NO!” I yelled. “I mean, no thanks,” I said in a calmer voice, even though I was sweating out of pretty much every single body part. “It’s not a good time right now. Her dad’s at work, and her mom…her mom lost her voice.”
“Yeah,” Zoe said. “My mom can’t find her voice. It could be anywhere.”
“Too much singing,” I added.
It felt bad to lie, but we had to do it.
Mom gave us a funny look. “Okay,” she said slowly, “I’ll try to catch them another time. Be home in time for dinner.”
“We will be!” Zoe answered.
I put one hand on the door and the other on Zoe’s backpack. “Okay,” I said. And with a light, friendly, please-hurry-up tug, we were out of there.
We giggled the whole way across the street.
“And then you were like, She lost her voice!” she said, and we cracked up all over again. It wasn’t like I was proud of lying to Mom, but it was nice having another thing only my best friend and I knew.
Zoe opened the door and tossed her backpack on the ground. At my house, I usually tossed my backpack on the couch. But as I looked around, I realized…there was no couch.
There was also no table. No chairs. No lamps or plants or rugs. There were no typical living room things whatsoever.
The room wasn’t empty, though. Far from it. There was a giant stuffed unicorn in the corner, next to a bunch of empty pizza boxes. In my stories, Zoe liked eating homemade meals at my house, because she mostly ordered pizza at hers. There was a bike, a box of sparkly pencils, a couple pairs of shoes, a huge umbrella, and a giant sled.
All of the objects looked so familiar.
“So, what do you want to do?” Zoe asked. She plopped onto a weirdly-shaped blanket. It was like whoever made it was trying to make a rectangle but made a much different shape instead. There were places where it was uneven, and other spots where bunches of stuffing were spilling out. It looked like something a little kid had made.
Wait a second. I looked closer. A little kid had made it—me!
I remembered now. It was the summer after fourth grade. Dad called it my Sewing Phase, which I thought was not very nice because I was going to sew forever. I hadn’t really sewn since, but that was beside the point. In real life I made presents for everybody—mostly tiny, weird-shaped blankets, because that was all I knew how to make. One for Mom, one for Dad, one for Bo, one for Bo’s stuffed giraffe. And then, in a story, I wrote about making one for Zoe.
“Whoa,” I said out loud. I pulled my glasses down and looked out over the rims. These weren’t random objects in Zoe’s house. These were things from my stories. Things I’d written about Zoe and I buying together or making together or things I’d given her to take home. They were on my “Things Zoe Knows” list. And now here they were, all spread out like they were in a museum. The things she knew. The things she owned. The life I’d made her.
“Whoa,” she repeated. I blinked and tried to smile, even though seeing all this stuff was super weird. I wondered—if I wrote a new story where Zoe suddenly got a bunch of new things, would that stuff actually show up here?
I shook my head and let the thought fall out. No. My friendship with Zoe wasn’t about stuff. I didn’t care what she had, and she didn’t care what I had. We had each other. If there was something she really wanted, I could see if I could get it. But otherwise, everything we needed was right here.
“So what do you want to do?” she asked again.
I looked around at all the random things. They were all part of our story. Instead of making new stories right now, I just wanted to be with the fun, familiar past. “Let’s take a walk down memory lane,” I said.
Zoe stood up. “Okay. Let me get my shoes. Is Memory Lane by the mall?”
I laughed. “Not quite.” I linked my arm through hers. “Come on. Let’s look through all your stuff.”
* * *
“Where’s Dad?” I asked as we all sat down to eat. Zoe and I had come back to my house in time for dinner, just like we promised Mom we would.
Mom set two big dishes on the table and hurried to pull something else out of the oven. “Oh. Dad’s, um, having dinner in bed tonight.”
“Why?” Bo asked.
“Because it’s fun.”
“Why?” he asked again.
“Because,” Mom said, “it’s like breakfast in bed, but at dinnertime. Everybody should get a meal in bed every once in a while.”
I waited for Bo to ask why again, but he seemed cool with that answer.
“Can tomorrow be my turn?” he asked.
Mom smiled. A relieved look flashed onto her face but quickly disappeared. “Maybe,” she said.
I stared at the yummy lasagna and garlic bread on the table. I’d been hungry, but now, not so much. Dad had dinner in bed a few times before, but it wasn’t just for fun, it was because he was so tired that he couldn’t even sit at the table for the time it took to eat. Even though the cancer was supposed to be gone, actually feeling better could take forever.
“Hey.” Zoe nudged me with her elbow, and I looked up. Her green eyes watched me like they were trying to tell me something. She smiled gently and poked my arm a few times, and I knew exactly what she was saying. I get it. It’s scary. We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. And I’m here no matter what.
The temperature in the room hadn’t changed, but goosebumps prickled up all over my skin. Zoe was saying the same t
hing she’d said to me that one summer day when Mom told me not to worry them with anything. Only now she wasn’t saying it from the pages of a notebook—she was saying it for real, with real eyes and a real smile.
I closed my eyes and dropped my head onto her shoulder. I thought about the weirdness during lunch earlier today. Maybe the Sparkles got Zoe to notice them then, but for the stuff that really mattered—stuff like after-school fun and our family dinners—she was still mine.
19
The Right Words
The next day at lunch, Afiya and the Sparkles appeared in front of our table, just like I secretly hoped they wouldn’t. They smiled at Zoe and I fidgeted in my seat. Yeah, she was funny and fun and nice and popular and smart, but come on, so were other people!
Okay, if I were them, maybe I’d try to sit with her too.
But still.
“So, I brought every kind of chocolate from home,” Afiya told us. “Taste-test time?”
Zoe fiddled with her fingers. She stared at her hands. She looked at me, and when I didn’t say or do anything, she mumbled, “Sure.”
I bit my lip as Afiya sat down on my right. Scarlett took the spot to my left, and Janelle and Camila sat on the other side. The table became so loud so fast that I could barely hear Zoe—or the thoughts zooming through my own head.
This was fine. This was totally fine. They could sit here. Zoe and I were still best friends, and we’d get time alone together later. Plus, I still felt bad for shaking my head yesterday. Anyway, I’d written that she was popular, so what did I expect?
Then again, I’d also written that despite her popularity, she only wanted to hang out with me.
As the conversation continued around me, I mindlessly combed through the food on my tray with my spork. What if Zoe somehow forgot that I was the only friend she needed? I was the only one who really knew her, the only one who’d been there for her even before she turned real.
I thought of the notebook sitting in my bag all lonely. And I realized: there was a way to make sure she remembered.
“I’ll be right back,” I said, not that anyone was listening.
I grabbed a spot at a mostly-open table and flipped to a new page, but before I could bring my pencil to the paper, Clue plopped down beside me.
“Um, hi?”
“Hey,” he said. “What’s up? Seems like things are going pretty well with your surprise.”
“Yeah,” I said. Part of me considered sharing how certain things could go better, but that sounded like the kind of thing you talk about with a friend. Which Clue wasn’t. I was pretty sure that giving somebody something—even if it was the best surprise ever—didn’t mean they automatically had to be your friend.
“Good,” he said. “That notebook really took to the water,” he added, tapping the blank page staring up at us. “I just can’t believe she was right about the pond being magical. I always hoped it was true, especially lately, but it seemed like something we just imagined and daydreamed about, you know?”
I didn’t answer.
We sat silently for a few seconds. I didn’t have the energy to ask Clue what in the heck he was rambling about again. Clue opened his mouth every now and then like he wanted to say something, but then he changed his mind. I tapped on my notebook with my pencil. I really needed to write, but no way was I going to do it with him sitting right here watching. For someone so good at giving hints, he wasn’t the best at taking them.
“Clue, thanks for checking in,” I finally said, “but I really need to get back to writing.”
“Oh,” he said. “Yeah, sure.”
He got up and blinked a bunch, almost like he was in some kind of daze. He scanned the cafeteria like he wasn’t totally sure what or who he was looking for. But eventually he wandered over to a table of people from our math class and took a seat, and I started to write.
Zoe was just being polite to the Sparkle Girls. Her manners were great. In fact, that was one of the trillions of reasons she liked hanging out at Jade’s: so she could share her great manners with Bo, who still had a lot of them left to learn.
Someone made a throat-clearing sound, and I looked up.
Zoe stared back at me. Her arms swung by her sides and a frown seemed frozen to her face. I didn’t think I’d ever seen Zoe frown before. It made my stomach flip over and fall back down with a big, messy splat.
“Are you mad at me?” she asked. “I’m sorry I said they could sit with us. It’s just that you didn’t tell me what to do, and I didn’t think saying no made any sense. I wanted…” she paused, and a small smile crossed her face for a second. “I wanted to say yes. But did you want me to say no? Can you explain, like, why we should say no? I want to understand.”
I lowered my gaze and tried to ignore the tightness in my chest.
The thing was…yeah, I wanted her to say no, but that was mean. I didn’t want to admit feeling that way. I didn’t want to feel that way, period. I couldn’t explain why. There was no real reason to say no. It was mostly a feeling that had made me shake my head yesterday, and feelings were hard to talk about, sometimes, especially ones that didn’t make you feel very proud of yourself. Zoe was supposed to understand this like she always had. Unlike Nessa or any of my other former best friends, Zoe was supposed to just get it, no matter what it was. She was supposed to be my friend no matter what, even if I said or did the wrong thing, like left her birthday party early or stumbled when I tried to explain the reason.
It seemed like a million years passed as Zoe stood there watching me and I sat there trying to figure out what to say. But I couldn’t think of a good way to answer, so I finally told her, “I’m not mad at you,” and went back to looking at my notebook.
“Well…I might go back over there, then, if that’s okay.”
I nodded, even though I practically had to grab my neck to get it to cooperate.
“Cool. I’ll see you in health, then.”
Zoe backed away slowly, like she was waiting to see if I would say something more. But I still couldn’t think of the right words to say—or to write—so I slumped down, dropped my pencil, and tried not to watch her go. My story said she was just being polite to them, but it felt like she really, truly liked Afiya and the Sparkles.
I stared at my feet and tried not to let myself wonder if she could ever end up liking them more than me.
* * *
“Word count?”
I shrugged at Mrs. Yang.
“I wrote, but it’s not very good.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. It’s hard to write the right thing all the time.”
Mrs. Yang smiled, but there was nothing happy about my writing—and life—problems.
“I know how that goes,” she said. “Remember, there’s no need to stress too much about first drafts,” she added. “They don’t need to be amazing. They just need to exist.”
I frowned. Mrs. Yang’s advice was getting more frustrating by the day.
“I know,” I said again. “But I just really need some first drafts to be perfect.”
“I understand that it feels that way,” Mrs. Yang said, “but do great piano players or athletes or surgeons just wake up that way? No, it takes practice. And with writing, practice is more than writing first drafts. It’s taking what you have and making it better, just like basketball players adjust different things about their free throws and their shots improve. Believe me—no one ever gets everything exactly the way they want it in a first draft. Not even professional authors. That’s what revision is for.”
I bit my lip. An author told us that in a video chat once. And so maybe that was true in general, but these circumstances were a little unusual.
“And hey, Jade, it’s okay to not write the perfect story even after you revise. Like the story you gave me yesterday—I had a chance to look at it, and it has a l
ot of potential. I was mainly looking to see that everyone is writing, but if you’re open to feedback, I definitely have some ideas for ways you can revise. And then there may be some things you decide on your own that you want to change. It can be an ongoing process. What matters most is that you’ve done the best work you possibly can and you’re proud of what you’ve created.”
I tucked some hair behind my ears and leaned against the wall. “But what if I still explain something wrong, or my characters say the wrong thing, or I don’t give enough details?”
I thought about lunch. I should’ve written that Zoe talked to me for longer until she got me to say something smart and clever that captured my confused feelings. I should’ve written something more than what I did.
“Then that’s okay,” Mrs. Yang said, jerking me out of my thoughts. “Jade, listen to me. If you provided every single little piece of information about your characters in your stories, there’d be nothing left for your readers to imagine. And you’d end up writing an encyclopedia instead of a book. I like books that ask me to fill in the blanks and come up with my own answers to some of the questions that arise. I think that’s a lot more fun than being bogged down by a bunch of specifics.” She paused. “You know, writing is choosing which words to use. But it’s also choosing which words to leave out.”
A sudden lightness draped over me like a cozy sweater on a chilly day. “So writing can be…not writing?” I asked.
Mrs. Yang laughed. “I think it’s mostly about trusting your readers. They’ll figure out the things you don’t tell them. And maybe they will imagine things about your characters and plot that are more amazing than anything you would have imagined yourself.”