My Best Friend, Maybe Read online

  I ignore how my bathing suit slides around on my skin, refusing to stay the way Sadie taught me to put it. I fling my body forward with the current, past Sam and coming up behind Sadie.

  Sadie might be winning this vacation with her mysteries and her ability to make me do whatever she wants. She might be winning life with her hair colors and her oh-so-many friends and her family that laughs and keeps each other’s secrets. But I’m winning this. The race. I’m beating her to the volcano.

  Then I’m right beside her. She says, “Hi, Coley,” like this is some sort of friendly game. With a few quick strokes I’m past her.

  I’m not fast enough. It’s an awkward freestyle with my head out of the water so that my torso is crooked and my kicking feet can’t quite reach the skin of the sea. My body tilts back and forth like a metronome each time I take a stroke and the waves occasionally reach up to slap me in the face. Still, I’m ahead of her. Of course I am. I’m the faster swimmer because I’m the one who’s still on the swim team. I stayed the same.

  I will get inside the volcano first.

  I glance at it looming over me, the entrance still fifty feet away. It feels like looking down at the grass when I’ve climbed a few branches too high on Sadie’s backyard tree, and I quickly focus on the water.

  The first wave of warmth envelops my body just as I hear Sadie yell, “Coley, wait!” Immediately it’s ice-cold and her voice is gone again.

  Now the mouth of the volcano is only about ten yards away. The patches of warmth come more and more oft en as my body rocks its way through the waves. First it’s only moments of hot water that blast my chest or my thighs, but then it’s like swimming in a hot tub. An angry white hot tub full of choppy waves.

  When I reach the opening of the mountain, which is like a parted set of jaws ready to swallow me whole, I straighten out and tread water for a second and my feet get cold. There’s a line of water at my ankles that divides the ninety-degree surface from the fifty-degree undercurrent. I know nothing about volcanoes. Is this opposite-temperature what makes them erupt?

  Can I actually swim into a volcano? Alone?

  I turn around. Sadie is only about fifteen feet behind me. “Coley!” she yells.

  And bam, I’m off again.

  Between the angry walls, it’s immediately silent. The shouts of the swimmers behind me, the waves breaking against the black rock, the wind howling toward the island, all stop. Ahead of me is a tunnel, made of the same dark bumpy walls as the outside of the volcano and filled with warm water.

  I wish I could slow down and enjoy this. I wish I could let myself feel the fear that will turn slowly to excitement because I am inside a volcano.

  But instead I move forward. My feet are still cold if I let them dangle straight down. I want to get to the spot where it’s hot everywhere. Even if it burns me.

  I move deeper inside the monster, the water getting incrementally warmer with each stroke, my tiny spot on God’s map getting incrementally farther from Sadie’s, even though I know I’m heading toward a dead end.

  The tunnel twists to the left and then it opens up. I’m completely alone in the middle of a volcano. The water is hot. The walls are black. But the water at my feet is still cold.

  If it erupts, I’ll be the first one killed. And maybe that will count for something. Maybe the fact that I’ll be the first body thrown toward Heaven will help me get in after the number of times I’ve broken the fourth commandment recently.

  I spin around slowly. There’s orange writing all along the rocks closest to the water. NESTOR WAS HERE. EAC+WJC. EILEEN AND ERIN, BESTIES 4EVAH. DANNO ROCKS. Proof that other people have come this far and survived.

  I doggy-paddle over to the edge and reach my hand out to touch the stone just beneath the surface. My fingertip turns orange immediately. I wonder if that’s happening to my bathing suit, like Rose said it would.

  I write my name on a rock. I write “Sadie?” underneath it. Where is she? I thought she’d come into this area right behind me but maybe she gave up. Maybe she’s hurt.

  No, I’m not going to think that. I’m not going to worry about her when she clearly hasn’t been worrying about me.

  I go back to what I estimate is the exact center of the opening. I float on my back. The black walls of the volcano form the shape of a C with the blue sky framed between them.

  This is incredible, I think. I’m in the middle of a volcano, surrounded by naturally warm water. I feel my heart slow as I calm down. I picture what I would look like from above, a body suspended in the middle of a black mountain. It’s inconceivable that all of this is on the same earth with my square bedroom and our tiny kitchenette and the hill at the town pool. I’m not angry anymore. I’m not sad or mad or confused. Instead, I’m suddenly close to grateful, close to prayer.

  “Coley!” I turn and there’s my old friend, her blond-and-purple hair streaking out behind her body.

  I almost get angry, but we’re in a volcano. I have a week to get angry. I have eight more hours today to get all of the secrets out of her. I only have a few minutes in this place.

  “Isn’t this . . . ?” I can’t think of how to finish.

  She old-lady-breaststrokes over to me, nodding. “Yeah.” She tilts her own head back to look at the sky.

  “Where is everyone?” I ask.

  “They all gave up and turned back about halfway in.” She laughs. “That was a hard swim.”

  She’s right. I feel my arm and leg muscles twitching with the effort of it.

  Sadie gives me her inside-joke smile. “We’re the only swimmers strong enough to make it all the way in here.”

  I smile back, enjoying the quiet, the black walls, the sky, and the presence of my friend who I will be mad at later.

  “Coley . . .”

  I look at her, floating on her back. She talks to the sky.

  “I have to tell you . . . I thought you knew that . . . I should have . . . I needed you to come here . . . with my family . . .”

  “Yes?” I say. My heart rushes. Finally, the answer.

  “I needed you to be my . . .” She’s taking so long I’m sure the eruption will begin beneath us before I know what she’s going to say. “Date.”

  “What?” I ask. My voice bounces off the angry walls and back into the warm water. “Your date?”

  “Remember my broken heart?” Sadie says. She’s talking fast now, words flying from her mouth like she didn’t want them to be kept inside all this time. Like keeping them in wasn’t her own fault, her own choice. “Well, until the other night, I really thought you knew. I thought you knew I was a . . . It wasn’t broken by a boy. I mean, no one at school knows. It’s not like you’re the last to know. It’s not . . . It wasn’t broken by a boy because it was broken by . . . her. And I couldn’t stand to see her again. She was supposed to have some hot girlfriend here, too. You know, some girl from her school where everything’s perfect and she can be out and no one cares about it. But everyone cares about beautiful Rose. She’s always talking like she can have any girl she wants, and so I was sure she’d have some hot girl here and I’d be all alone and I needed someone and . . . well, you were just . . . perfect.”

  She lets out a huge breath like she’s relieved or something, like all the words were keeping her from breathing. Like that was all the answers and none of the questions.

  I stare at her and I think four words. Sadie is a liar.

  She mumbles toward my face, “I thought you knew.”

  She’s been lying. For so long.

  Probably since we were little kids.

  Forever.

  “Coley?” she says. “What are you thinking?”

  I stare at her. I’m thinking about her lying because it’s the part I can think about, the part I know is wrong. Because I can’t even try to think about everything else yet.

  “Oh, yeah,” she says suddenly. Her breath is short as her arms and legs move around to keep her upright in the water and I don’t know if it’s be
cause she’s nervous or because she’s not in as good shape as me since she quit the swim team. “I’m supposed to say that I know this will take some getting used to for you and stuff, so I don’t need you to say anything about that right now. I just need you to say that you still care about me. That you’ll still . . .” She swallows. “Love me.”

  Something flinches in my face. She needs me to say I care about her? After she used me? After she dragged me to another country with a lie?

  She needs me to love her?

  And because I can’t look at her lying, begging face anymore, I dive, my whole head, my whole body, submerged in the burning hot water where it’s quiet and angry just like me, and then I open my jaws and I don’t care that the eggy sulfur runs into my mouth and ears and up my nose. I let out the loudest silent scream I possibly can right into the bottom of the volcano and if it causes the cold water to mix up with the hot water and if that’s what causes an explosion, then that’s okay with me. The thought of being flung into the sky, far away from Sadie’s flailing limbs, is a good one.

  Because then I won’t have to deal with what this means about Sadie or our friendship or me.

  When nothing happens I launch my own body up out of the water and pound and kick my way toward the mouth of the volcano. “Coley!” Sadie yells behind me. But I don’t care. I don’t care if she’s not a good enough swimmer and she’s stuck in here forever. I don’t.

  I freestyle my way down the tunnel. The current is against me now, and even though the water is warm around my body, the splashes that hit my face and ears and climb, salty, into my nose are cold.

  “Coley!” she calls again, and because my own muscles and joints are aching now with all of this effort, I turn around and find her clinging to the side of the rock wall.

  I want to leave her here, screaming and helpless and not ever knowing if I would have forgiven her. But I don’t want to be the me who’s angry enough for that. I tread water until she catches up.

  “You’re still going to the wedding with me tomorrow, right?” she asks quietly.

  I shake my head. How can she even ask me that?

  I swim back to the boat. But I make myself be the girl who keeps her close enough to ensure she’s not drowning.

  Ω

  I sit in the same position on the catamaran’s nets, shivering and watching the monster disappear. I can’t believe I swam into a volcano. And I can’t believe that every time I think about that now for the rest of my life, it will be an angry memory instead of an adventurous, magical one.

  I’m glad I’m by myself. Either everyone took one look at my angry face and decided to leave me alone, or they’re too cold to sit out here in the shade, exposed to the wind and the spray.

  I can’t believe I’m stuck on a boat with her. A girl who lied to me my whole life. A girl who twisted a childhood promise into a messed-up bribe.

  A girl who is gay.

  All I want is to be back in my cave. Alone. I hate that I’m on a boat, trapped with the liar and her family in some alternate world where there are no rules. I know it’s my fault that I’m here. I talked about missing Sadie until my dad felt he had to sneak me out in the middle of the afternoon. But life was so much easier when I did everything my mom said and I was the girl who loved Mark.

  I feel a warm body lower itself next to me on the net.

  I turn. It’s Sam. Someone else who has been keeping me clueless.

  “If you sit here, you’ll get sprayed,” I say.

  “I can see that,” he says. He gently tugs the soaking wet towel off my shoulders and wraps a dry one around me. “My sister is bawling her eyes out in the bedroom with my mom.”

  I don’t know what to say. What I feel is jealous—that Sadie has someone to turn to and I don’t, even though she’s the one who did something wrong. Sadie has a mom who will let her cry instead of reminding her to count her blessings and walking away. Edie loves Sadie so much she can be this mad at me without even talking to me about it.

  Finally I say, “There’s a bedroom?”

  “What happened?” Sam asks.

  I shrug.

  “She finally told you, didn’t she? About Rose?”

  I look at him and something in my heart soft ens. I don’t want it to happen, but when I see his eyes, they’re like velvet. Like all the flecks of brown in them can shift around so they look so many different ways and I want to crawl inside them and use that velvet as a blanket and sleep until I feel better.

  I nod. I try not to cry.

  He puts his arm around me and I can’t help collapsing into his chest. I try not to feel the way the towel has slithered away from my hip so that a little of the skin on his side is pressed warm against me. I try not to feel the warmth at all even as the boat slides back into the sunny waters. I try not to feel the way his breathing is measured and gentle. I try only to feel the protective brotherliness. But I fail.

  “You know, she really thought you knew. She thought you’d known for a long time that she’s a lesbian.”

  He says the word so easily, like he’s calling her a blonde or a teenager or something benign. I can barely hear that word related to my Sadie without choking.

  It’s not that I think she’s wrong. But every other time I’ve heard that word, it’s been an insult, not a fact.

  “It’s always hard to hear at first,” he says.

  And I realize that once upon a time he also found out that his sister . . . liked girls.

  “She really thought you knew, though. You know that, right?”

  I shake my head again. “How would I know?” I say quietly.

  Everyone knew but me. It was such a trap.

  “I kept telling her she had to tell you about Rose. Rose is . . . challenging. But she didn’t know you didn’t know—”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I interrupt, my voice muffled.

  I feel his shoulder rise and fall. “I couldn’t.” He shakes his head.

  I snort.

  “I wanted to, I really did. But it was her business, you know? She owed it to you to tell you. And I didn’t want to mess up your relationship with her, or mine.”

  I fake a laugh.

  “She’s still your best friend,” Sam says.

  “I feel like I barely know her,” I say.

  He shakes his head. “She was wrong, but you still know her.”

  I snort again. The me I want to be does not snort sarcastically, but I can’t stop.

  “But there are a lot of things you don’t know about her. A lot of things you never knew about her, and she was still your best friend.”

  “Like what?”

  He laughs. “Everything. No one knows anything about us. No one even asks us. Like why my mom has black sons and a white daughter. Why my mom never works but sends us on these lavish vacations. Why Sadie looks exactly like Mom. And who Sadie’s dad is.”

  Sadie’s dad is dead. That’s what she told me when we were little and my mother always told me not to ask anything else about that. But who was he? What was he like? How could I never have wondered about that before? And why did he and Edie put their family together like this?

  “Look,” Sam says. “I love my sister, but she can be selfish. That’s what you get to be in our family. You get love and presents and time and vacations. You get everything. You know that, Coley. You used to be a part of our family, and if you hadn’t disappeared you’d still know that.” He smiles and his dimple shows up again. He tightens his arm, pulling me with it in an almost-hug.

  “I’m not the one who disappeared,” I say.

  “Huh,” Sam says, tilting his head at me. “Really?”

  “Why would I disappear?”

  “You know,” Sam says, “I always thought it was because Sadie was a lesbian. That you couldn’t accept her, or that you weren’t allowed to or something stupid like that. That’s why we all assumed you knew. But clearly you didn’t.”

  I shake my head.

  He squeezes me again and I’m c
onfused by how happy that makes me, right when I’m so sad.

  “So, you weren’t a close-minded little jerk of a kid, huh? You wouldn’t have ditched her anyway, huh?”

  I don’t answer. I store the question in the back of my mind for later.

  And then, since he’s shirtless and warm and Sadie is so selfish that it seems like me being a little bit selfish isn’t too big a deal, I lean my head on his shoulder.

  “So, where are you going now?”

  I turn around at the first step to my cave, and I see Sam standing behind me. He must have followed me as I huffed off the bus and charged back here. Sadie sat on the bus with her head on Edie’s shoulder while Rose sat next to her own mother and snickered at us. I was the only one sitting alone.

  Back to my cave to sleep? To my balcony to call my parents to ask them to send me home like this is some sleepover where I got scared? Down the three hundred steps for an actual swim?

  I shrug.

  Sam looks at me with those eyes. They’re almost sad.

  “I was thinking about grabbing some dinner,” he says, nodding toward the northern tip of the island. “The sun will be setting soon.”

  He squints.

  “But Sadie . . .” I trail off.

  He nods and bites his cheek.

  An image lights up my brain, a fantasy. I’m crushed against Sam’s chest in a slow dance and he leans down and gives me a deep kiss. I shake my head. I have a boyfriend.

  “I know. I’m not taking sides. It’s just that she has my mom and Charlie and even Andrea. And . . . I thought maybe you could use a friend.”

  My heart hammers in my chest. There are a million reasons I should turn around and go into my cave. I can’t help that he’s cute and warm and being with him makes me say whatever is on my mind, but I can shut this crush down. I have a boyfriend. And apparently a soon-to-be ex-girlfriend. Sadie, Rose, Mom, Edie . . . too many people are already mad at me.

  But despite all of that, I find myself nodding.

  I only have so much longer to make the wrong decisions.

  “Get changed,” he says. “I’ll be back in fifteen minutes. We gotta hurry to catch the sunset.”