My Best Friend, Maybe Read online

  We eventually descend the hill, zigzagging down the mountain at angles that make it seem impossible for the van to stay on the road and not go tumbling down the rocky cliffs. We cross into the flatlands and drive by stringy vines dripping with bright-red and perfectly circular cherry tomatoes. “These are in season,” Nikos says.

  “Yum,” Sadie says to me, and I nod.

  Then we turn another corner and we stop, and crawl out of the van, and follow our guide into a dusty field dotted with even rows of small bushes. Sadie walks right next to me, her elbow almost touching mine, and Sam and Rose are close behind us. I don’t ever walk like this with anyone anymore, even with Mark. We hold hands but there’s always a few inches between our bodies above our wrists. But I recognize this as the way I used to walk with Sadie everywhere: the pool, the mall, the hallways in middle school. I can’t imagine walking this close to anyone else really. Not Louisa, not my mom. Not even Adam or Peter.

  Does Sadie walk this close to everyone? Or is this just how little girls walk? Are we turning into little girls again because that’s the only way for us to be best friends?

  We follow Nikos about ten feet into the field. The ground is packed hard but puffs of white dust sprout around our feet, almost like chalk. It’s not sand and it’s not soil; it’s something I’ve never seen before. When Nikos stops in front of one of the little bushes, Sadie says, “Coley!” and hip checks me so hard toward Sam he has to catch me, his palms seizing my shoulders before I fall over.

  I laugh, though. This is another little-girl game we used to play everywhere all summer until our hips were covered in blue and purple bruises. It’s another joke I forgot to miss. I wonder how much of Sadie I’ve been missing without knowing it. I wonder if I’ll be aware of everything I miss about Mark when I get home, or if there are things I’ll forget. I don’t know which to wish for.

  I give Sadie an “I’ll get you later” look and Rose comes up to stand next to her on the other side.

  “Oh, you two are so adorable,” she says, but the look sliding from her dark eyes down her button nose is pure disgust.

  Sadie and I both have to twist our necks to glance at her. She’s so much taller than us, with thick hair that falls in perfectly smooth waves around her shoulders as if she’s immune to the heat that’s cooking the island for the rest of us. She wears a black sundress with flip-flops.

  She tosses her hair to the side farthest from Sadie and Sadie says, “Shut up.”

  Rose laughs, a noise so clear and high and purposeful it is both beautiful and cruel. “Does she always dress like that?” Rose asks.

  And I shrink to a feather inside my clothes. I’m in jean shorts, a pink T-shirt from Target, and sneakers because I thought we might be hiking or something. Yes, I always dress like this. There’s nothing wrong with dressing like this for a daytime tour of an island approaching a hundred degrees.

  Sadie takes a step away from me. I expect her to say “shut up” again or that I look fine, but she stares at her shoes and shakes her head and I wonder what it is about this cousin of Andrea’s that can get to even my most self-assured friend. “No,” Sadie says. “She doesn’t.”

  I shrink even smaller.

  “So these are the grapes.” The guide’s voice seems to boom over us, and I realize how quietly Rose has been talking even though her words are so powerful.

  “No way,” Edie says, stepping closer to the bush on the ground. It’s barely as tall as my ankles. None of the bushes in this field are as high as my midshin. “Grapes grow on vines,” she says. “We weren’t all born yesterday, you know.”

  Everyone chuckles except for Rose and Sadie and me.

  “It actually is a vine; take a closer look,” the guide says.

  I couldn’t care less about vines or bushes or grapes or wine right now. All I want to do is change into some fabulous outfit and then crawl back into the bed in my cave.

  But because it suddenly feels like we’re on a field trip, and because I always follow the directions, and because now that Sadie isn’t at my elbow I morph back into Little Miss Perfect, I take a step toward the bush and lean over it. It’s a brown coil of a branch all twisted together, a doughnut of leaves.

  “I think you look great.” The words are slippery on the back of my neck. I didn’t realize Sam had followed me, tilting his body right behind mine. Suddenly I’m covered in goose bumps and I don’t know how that happened.

  He straightens as I turn to smile at him, and I’m hoping he can’t somehow see the bumps on my legs or the way my stomach dropped and turned to jelly. He’s smiling that warm smile, those two beautiful dimples peeking at me. I cannot be thinking this way. He cannot possibly have meant those words like . . . that. This is Sam. Sadie’s brother. Not Mark.

  Somewhere over my shoulder I’m aware of the guide, and Sadie and Edie comparing the shape of a twisted vine to a basket or a snake or a beat-up Slinky. But in my vision are only Sam’s smile and dimples and happy, sincere brown eyes.

  “You shouldn’t listen to a thing Rose says. All week,” he adds in a whisper not quite as close to my skin. Relief and embarrassment cause my heart to slow back to normal. He was protecting me. He’s basically my big brother, too.

  My hot big brother.

  I glance across the crowd and see Rose whispering something to Sadie, Sadie smiling shyly at her flip-flops.

  We hike the rest of the way through the vineyard and enter a wooden building. There is a wide open area, a concrete floor the same color as the wooden walls. Along the back wall is a counter and to the left a table is set with nine places, each with three wineglasses.

  “And this,” the guide says, “is where you finally get to taste some wine.”

  “Whoo!” Edie cheers. “It’s about time for some wine in this crowd.”

  Mary Anne, Rose, and Aunt Kat laugh.

  We take seats around the table. Me between Sadie and Sam. Sadie between me and Rose. It’s beginning to feel like assigned seating. In the center of the table there are baskets filled with various kinds of cheese and bread and olives, so Sadie, Rose, Sam, and I at least have something to snack on while the adults sample the wine.

  Our guide disappears for a second and I’m still thinking about my outfit, shrinking with embarrassment at Rose’s comment (and burning with something slightly different at Sam’s) and wondering why Sadie said no. Why couldn’t she say I was fine in what I was wearing? Why couldn’t she stand up for me?

  And all of this thinking brings me back to the first question: Why does she need me here anyway?

  I’m so involved in my own brain that I don’t even notice Nikos circling the table with a bottle and filling up glasses, until he’s leaning over my right shoulder, between Sadie and me, and a golden liquid is building up in my glass. I raise my eyebrows, but I don’t say anything.

  Nikos starts talking about how before you taste the wine you have to look at it against something white to see the color of the liquid versus the color of the surface. Then you do something called the sniff and slurp and you have to put your whole nose in the glass.

  I go through the motions, tilting my wine to see the color change and shoving my nose all the way past the lip of the glass. But I couldn’t care less. I’ve never tasted wine. Even my church uses grape juice instead. I’ve only seen wine on a handful of occasions since Mom and Dad don’t drink it and the parties I go to only have beer. I can think of a million things I’d rather be doing than sitting at this table being totally embarrassed for two opposite reasons and learning all about a topic I’ve never even thought about before. Starting with swimming in the darn sea. And ending with making out with Mark in Sally’s little brother’s bedroom again.

  “And without further ado,” Nikos says, “drink!”

  I put my glass back on the table politely but everyone else—everyone, everyone else—brings their glass to their lips and takes a sip.

  “We’re allowed to drink the wine?” I whisper into Sadie’s ear. In public? In fron
t of your mother?

  Rose smirks so hard she almost spits her mouthful across the table. “Is she serious?” she asks.

  Sadie turns her head away from me, toward Rose, and nods. “Yes, she is. That’s really our Colette.” They both start snickering and I stare wide-eyed at the back of Sadie’s blond-and-purple head.

  That’s it. That’s why she needed me. To be Rose’s punching bag. To protect her from Rose’s scorn by being an even more pathetic mess. Tears threaten to fill my eyes.

  I imagine the two of them laughing in secret at how innocent and childish I’ve been acting. Trading notes on the stupidest things they’ve seen me do. I imagine Sadie telling Rose all about my church-basement first kiss, my breakup with Mark, my willingness to drop everything for a chance to be near her again.

  “Colette.” Edie rolls her eyes at me. It feels like knives going into my heart. I miss the old Edie almost as much as I’ve been missing Sadie. “The world doesn’t end at the American border. You can drink here. The drinking age is eighteen.”

  She barely looks at me before she buries her face back in her own wineglass.

  “But I’m—”

  Sadie’s fist comes down hard on my thigh and I suck in a breath to keep from yelping. Seventeen. Sadie turns from me to Rose.

  “Caramba,” Rose breathes in almost silent relief. They share a smile before they both take another sip.

  I shift my gaze from the back of Sadie’s evil head to my wineglass and I wonder if Edie is basically telling me that I have to drink it. Yes, I’ve had alcohol, but never more than one drink at a time. Never at three in the afternoon. Never wine.

  Despite all the warning speeches my parents and pastors have given me about peer pressure, I never imagined a situation like this.

  Now everyone’s staring at me, the freak who dresses in T-shirts and sticks her nose in glasses that she wasn’t ever going to drink from. Even Charlie, Mary Anne, Martina, and Jorge look at me passively, like they want me to chug this liquid so they can get their next taste. Rose and Sadie look like they’re about to burst with laughter if I don’t take a sip. Sam looks worried and Edie looks plain annoyed and they all try to back me in a corner and drown me with wine.

  I raise my glass to my lips and allow a tiny bit to enter my jaw. It’s sour and acidic and surprisingly thin. It doesn’t taste anything like honey or nuts or any of the other foods Nikos listed before we started peering through our glasses against the white tablecloths. But I swallow quickly and then it’s gone and everyone starts paying attention to their own wine again. Nikos talks about flowers and apricots as he circles the table with a second bottle.

  Sam leans into me and whispers again, and even though I’m sad and angry and almost crying and punching a wall, my stomach does that jelly thing and I turn some of the anger on myself. “A little wine might help you deal with everything today,” he says. “You know, with Rose.” He clinks his glass against mine.

  So I take another sip.

  Ω

  Three vineyards and countless gulps later, we pull back into our dead-end parking lot and pile out of the van. The sun has only been down for about thirty minutes so the sky is hanging low, a deep purple, and the crowds have already thinned enough to see the storefronts.

  I’m not sure what drunk is. But even though I’m stuck on an island where my purpose is to be a human bully-shield, and the snickering from Rose has not stopped, and my heart is still broken and it aches every time I think about going home to no Mark, I still feel like smiling.

  Edie and the adults vanish as soon as the van is gone. Charlie and Mary Anne say they’re off for a romantic dinner. Sam, Rose, Sadie, and I stand in a circle. Sadie and Rose are whispering to each other and giggling at nothing like they have been all day, Sam is looking at the people milling around, and I’m smiling like a clueless idiot.

  “What are we supposed to do now?” I say finally.

  “Supposed to do?” Rose mocks, eliminating the Spanish accent from her voice so that she sounds like me. “What do you think, there’s, like, an assignment?”

  I shrug because yes, that is what I thought. This entire trip is an assignment. I drank the wine today because Edie told me to. I went on the stupid wine tour because it was on the schedule she handed out. And I’m only on this island in the first place because Sadie told me I needed to be. So it is an assignment. I’m right and Rose still manages to make me sound stupid.

  “Shut up, Rose,” Sadie says, but she’s smiling at her.

  Sam rolls his eyes. “I wanted to get some dinner,” he says. “Maybe test our knowledge with the Santorini wine list.”

  Now Rose nods, perky. “Okay!” she says.

  But she’s barely finished the second syllable before Sadie screams, “No!”

  We all jolt backward at the force of her word.

  She fakes a giggle, shifting from her right foot to her left . “I, um, I mean that you can’t go,” she says. Then she looks up at Rose. “It would be, like, weird . . . you know?”

  I wonder if Sadie is drunk, too.

  I look at Sam to see if he knows what’s happening. He’s staring wide-eyed at his short, blond little sister and her tall dark bully. He opens his mouth like he’s going to say something, but then he turns to me and shakes his head. For a split second he looks surprised to find my eyes on his face and a small dimple flirts with his left cheek.

  I tell my heart to slow down.

  “Fine,” Rose says finally. “It’s nice to see you again, too, Sadie.” She says it like it should hurt but I swear her face looks scorned.

  She turns on a heel and marches up the parking lot, little clouds of gray dust erupting at her feet.

  “Rose!” Sam calls, but she keeps walking.

  I look at Sadie as she watches the dark shape disappear, and when she finally turns her face back to mine, I demand, “What’s up?”

  I mean it like, what’s going on here? The wine has stopped the smiling effect, but it’s still filling me up, making me bigger, reminding me that I count, I matter, even in the face of my complicated and dramatic and intriguing friend. Or ex-friend. Or whatever. She owes me answers.

  But she says, “Let’s go get some dinner. Sam?”

  “Sadie . . .” He trails off for a second and she tries to stare him down. “She doesn’t—”

  “Shut up, Sam!” Sadie says, almost as fiercely as she just screamed at Rose.

  “Sadie?” I say, but she’s already wandering through the parking lot. The wine is pulling at the corners of my lips and sitting heavily on my eyelids, making me slow and sad instead of full and confident.

  Sam gives me a melancholy smile and then follows his sister.

  Even if I am confused by the goose bumps and the jelly-belly and the speeding heart, I’m glad he’s here. It would be nearly impossible to deal with Sadie without him.

  Ω

  Sadie, Sam, and I are only halfway through the appetizers we ordered for our dinner at the next little cliffy restaurant we found when Sadie puts down her fork and announces, “I’m tired. I’m going back to Mom’s room.”

  I stare at her in disbelief. Sure, Sam and I have been doing most of the talking—it turns out he’s a walk-on on the track team at Rutgers and I’ve been drilling him about the tryouts and telling him about my own swimming aspirations. But I can’t understand why anyone would leave this dinner. It’s a rainbow spread before us. The tomatoes in the salad are absolutely red the same way the lemons on the calamari tray are completely yellow. The saganaki (fried cheese) we ordered came to the table literally on fire and now the bites of it melt in my mouth gooey and rich. The spinach pie is green-and-white layers of creamy goodness inside flaky phyllo dough, and the beef patties are like sliders, so delicious they don’t require ketchup or a bun. Then, there’s everything else. The sky is a dome above us, dotted with white stars. The moisture in the air kisses our skin and the cool breeze shifts through our hair. The sea cracks at the rocks below our feet and all around us conversation
s in Greek and English and French and Spanish and Russian intermingle. Plus, the wine is golden and it’s starting to taste like flowers and honey, like Nikos said.

  It’s the best moment of the day. I can’t believe she’d want to leave now.

  “No, I’m not really hungry. All the wine made me tired. You guys finish, it’s okay.”

  “It’s only ten o’clock,” Sam says.

  Sadie shrugs.

  Sam says, “I was going to finish dinner, then go find Charlie or Andrea or something and let you two hit the town. I didn’t mean to get in the way.”

  You’re not in the way, I think. Please don’t go.

  “I’m just tired,” Sadie says again.

  I open my mouth to throw in my own objections about the food and the sounds and the ambience. About the magic of this moment after a long and difficult day. But the wine must have loosened my jaw or something because what comes out is: “But we just got rid of her.”

  Both Sadie and Sam turn to stare at me.

  “I mean—” I say, but they both know exactly what I mean. We finally got rid of Rose and we had to deal with her all day. We’re finally back to the normal, easy people and we can joke around like we did at lunch or tell secrets like we did at my cave last night or finish eating and go sneak into the infinity pool. But still, I shouldn’t have said that. I can almost hear my mother scolding me.

  Sadie’s shock turns into that new wide-eyed pathetic-ness that I’m so sick of and she shakes her head and stands to leave.

  “Sadie,” Sam says. She stays standing, but she looks at him. “Don’t go.”

  “Sam! I’m . . . I have to . . .”

  Once again I’m in that position: I have no idea what’s going on. But, right now, I don’t care. I take a sip of wine and feel it run warm through my veins. I take another bite of the gooey cheese. If Sadie is going to ruin tonight by going to bed early, that’s fine. I don’t need to join her.