My Best Friend, Maybe Read online

  I shower quickly, tie my wet hair into a knot, and pull on my nicest shorts and top. Since Sam still isn’t back when I’m ready, I decide to reread that last e-mail from Mom. When she said she’d help me fix things, did that mean that if I can’t handle this she and Dad will bring me back home? Did that mean I can disappear back into my old perfect life? Do I want that?

  There’s a new one.

  Dear Colette, how are you doing? Please do write back to me, or call. You have not called or written during your entire trip and I am quite worried about you.

  That’s how she opens, even though I called Dad yesterday.

  Remember that if you are confused or you realize you have stepped astray, we will scrape the money together to bring you home. When you think about friendship, consider this: 1 Corinthians 15:33 “Do not be deceived: Bad company ruins good morals.”

  How does she always know what I’m doing?

  The mouse hovers over the reply button. My mind seesaws between telling her I’m ready to get out of here and telling her I’m fine and I can make my own decisions. I open the new e-mail but I can’t type anything. Both of those notes would be a lie. And I’m so sick of being trapped into lies.

  Louisa: You there?

  Just as the chat window dings open, there’s a knock on my door and I have to close out of everything.

  Sam stands on my balcony in a maroon polo shirt. I haven’t seen him wear anything with a collar the entire time we’ve been here and I let the hope flutter through my heart that he’s trying to impress me, too.

  Once we’re on the marble sidewalk heading toward the very tip of Oia, he says, “So, are you going to the wedding tomorrow?” And I know that he’s trying to get me there for Sadie.

  I open my mouth to say no. There’s no way I’m going to let myself be used by my secret-sometimes-not-secret-other-times lesbian ex–best friend. But Sam is looking at me hopefully and his smile is impossible to resist.

  I should not be here.

  But I don’t feel like getting a speech about why I should go. “I haven’t figured it out yet,” I say as we climb the stairs of a restaurant advertising a great view of the sun.

  The Greek waiter pulls out my chair and he only gives one menu to Sam. To anyone looking, it seems like we’re on a date.

  I wish, I want to tell the waiter. My real date is his sister.

  I should not be here, sitting across from this cute boy. I should be holed up in my cave, chatting with Louisa, figuring out what to say to my mother.

  “I never knew you were such a thinker,” Sam says. I want to ask him what he means but the waiter is there. Sam orders wine and food. He didn’t even ask me what I wanted but he orders the saganaki, salad, and seafood pasta that I definitely would have ordered.

  The waiter pours us each a glass of wine and leaves.

  “What do you mean, a thinker?” I ask. And even though I remember how my brain was pounding this morning, I take a sip because the cute boy ordered it and now he’s looking at me. One glass won’t hurt.

  Sam says, “I remember you as Sadie’s giggly friend. I don’t remember your eyes being so thoughtful.”

  I take another sip to hide the way I flush.

  We have a direct view of the sun where it hangs in the sky, a burning orange ball. It sinks slowly closer to our little balcony table and the sea below us. We’re high above the marble pathways and the clay sets of stairs. People begin to line them and stare into the sky even though it looks like any other sky. I’m more interested in the view of Oia from up here, the pathways, caves, and colors.

  “So, what have you been up to?” Sam asks.

  I look at him, questions in my eyes.

  “I mean, besides swim team. What have you been doing since you disappeared from our lives?”

  “I didn’t disappear,” I remind him.

  “Well, whatever happened. What do you do besides swim?”

  “I wish I didn’t have to do anything but swim.”

  He laughs.

  Our food arrives and he starts to dish some onto my plate. I don’t want to enjoy being treated like this, like a lady on a date with someone who is going to take care of her. But I do.

  How do you keep yourself from liking things that are wrong? How does my mom keep herself so within the rules?

  “Do you have any new friends or . . . you know . . . a boyfriend?”

  I smile to mask the guilt that starts thudding in my pulse. Mark. Mark. Mark. He’s somewhere in Costa Rica pounding a hammer with the same beat. Here I am on the other side of the world sitting across from a hot guy who called my eyes thoughtful and wants to know what I’m like. Will the Perfect Rule-Following, Straight-A-Getting, Churchgoing Colette come crashing back into my body? Soon, I’ll fly home. I’ll be Mark’s girlfriend and Mom’s daughter. Dad will be silent with me. Sadie won’t be my friend. Louisa will be gone.

  “My best friend is moving away,” I say. It’s wrong, definitely wrong, not to tell Sam about Mark when he specifically asked if I have a boyfriend.

  I talk about Louisa and how much I’ll miss her. Sam asks the right questions. He tells me about his own friend who is studying abroad next year and how he’ll miss her at Rutgers. We talk. And the more we talk, the less I think about what I’m saying.

  “It’s different, though,” I say about his Rutgers friend. “Because I don’t really have other friends.”

  My eyes go wide as soon as the words leave my mouth. It’s not something I usually admit out loud.

  “I mean . . . I do, kinda, but Louisa . . .”

  “Coley?” he prompts. I love how he calls me that.

  “You know how you were talking about feeling so different from your family?” I say.

  He nods.

  “Well, I know it’s not the same thing. But sometimes I feel different from everyone around me. Like I’m the only one who thinks about things, asks questions. Like I’m the only one who’s bored with our town and our school and our church. And my family. And Louisa is . . . not the same as me, but not the same as everyone else either.”

  “Yeah, I get it,” he says, those eyes trying to bore their way through mine. “I do. At least in my family it’s not so different to be different.” He laughs. “We’re all a bunch of weirdos.”

  Honest. “I miss your family. A lot. I miss Sadie.”

  “You have Sadie,” Sam interrupts.

  I can’t help rolling my eyes.

  “Look,” he says. At first I think he’s making a point, but then he nods out at the sea and the sky and I turn my head. I forget all about Sadie, Rose, Louisa, everything. The sun hovers above the horizon and paints the sky in deep oranges and purples and pinks and maroons—all the colors of Sadie’s fake hair. I smile to myself. Below us, the pathways and sidewalks and stairways are jammed with people reverently watching as the sun kisses the horizon and sinks slowly into the sea.

  I can’t believe the colors. The volcano is a black silhouette on a molten rainbow canvas.

  The restaurant hushes, the crowds below are still. Everyone is holding her breath at the beauty and grace of the moment. The energy buzzes around us, silent but excited, happy, joyful.

  Then the sun is just a sliver of brightness, a neon line peeking out from over the sea, saying good-bye until tomorrow. And then it’s gone.

  To my surprise, the entire island erupts in applause for the sun and the sea and the energy and one another and I know my mom is somewhere calling this vacation lavish and unnecessary and dangerously fun, but to me this is a God moment.

  I turn back to Sam. He’s not looking at the spot where the sky just swallowed a burning star. He’s looking at me.

  “All the colors reflected off your skin,” he says. “I’ve never seen that before.”

  My breath catches. I see his dimples and the light in his eyes and it’s impossible that I have a boyfriend in another country and a disapproving mother and an ex-friend who is his sister and who thinks she can pretend to be dating me. It’s impossi
ble because we are the only two people in the world, staring at each other with a background of orange sky.

  “Anything else?” The waiter bursts the moment. When he’s gone Sam says, “I’m not going to try to convince you to go to this wedding tomorrow. But I do know that Sadie invited you, Colette, instead of any of her other friends, for a reason.”

  Did she? I guess I still don’t have the full reason.

  “And I know that Rose put her through the ringer last summer. She could use your help with whatever is on her mind.”

  I sigh. The bigger person would go. But how can I be the bigger person when Sadie makes me feel so small?

  Besides, I came here to stop doing the right thing all the time. To do what I want to do. To be selfish for once. So, I shouldn’t have to feel small and do something for someone else. I came here for a break from my mom’s constant reminders to be the bigger person.

  Then again, my mom wouldn’t tell me to go. She wouldn’t be able to get past the gay part.

  And I am past the gay part. Aren’t I?

  “What are you thinking?” Sam asks.

  “I . . . I don’t know,” I say.

  He nods. “If you’re uncomfortable, you’re uncomfortable. I don’t think you should be, but she should have checked it out before she dragged you all the way to a foreign country.”

  I’m not uncomfortable, I’m angry.

  He puts his hand on the table, right on top of mine. “But if you’re there tomorrow night, will you save a dance for me?”

  And then I’m smiling.

  Ω

  I see her blond head from the top of the hotel steps as Sam walks me home. She’s sitting on the stoop outside my cave, her face propped up on her knees. She’s staring at the black sea.

  All of the fantasies of the good-night kiss Sam might give me that I shouldn’t want vanish out my ears when I see my “date.” I can’t believe she’s sitting there. I can’t believe she thinks I want to talk to her after what she did to me today.

  Sam must see her, too, because he says, “I better let you go.” And with nothing more than a pat on the shoulder, he’s gone.

  Sadie hasn’t seen me, so I take a minute to think about the me I want to be. That me isn’t afraid of a girl who uses people and lies to her friends. That me isn’t afraid to stand up for herself.

  I walk right past Sadie on the steps and calmly shut the door to my cave behind me.

  “Coley!” I can hear her yelling as she charges up the steps after me. She starts banging on the door. “Coley!”

  “I’m going to bed,” I say.

  “Coley!” she yells. “I have to talk to you!”

  I stick my head out of the window next to the door. “We’ll talk later,” I say. “I’m tired.”

  The only thing I want to do is crawl into my bed, cover myself with the blanket, and replay the evening in my head. Sam telling me I have thoughtful eyes. Sam staring at me instead of watching the sunset. Sam asking me to save him a dance.

  “Please, Coley,” she’s saying.

  “You could always come to my room.”

  I hear the wavy and intimidating words float across the Santorini air and onto my doorstep.

  “I’m staying right next door to your precious novia.”

  I don’t know if it’s pity for Sadie or being sick of Rose or anger at both of them, but I open my door and pull Sadie in.

  She stands with her back to the front wall, looking shell-shocked. She stays there, still and silent, as I get my pajamas out of my bag and act like I have a million more important things to do than listen to her.

  Finally I look at her. “What are you doing here?”

  “My mom was snoring and I couldn’t sleep.”

  I stare at her.

  “I have to talk to you,” she says.

  “So, talk.”

  “Look, I’m sorry, Coley,” she says, crossing the cave to sit down on the little bench. I’m running out of fake chores so I start rearranging the clothes in my suitcase. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

  I look at her. “Done what?”

  Some of her actual spunk comes back into her body, like she’s distracted from her apology. “Do you like my brother?” she asks.

  I narrow my eyes at her. “No.” I try to stop there, but I can’t. “Why would you even say that?”

  She shrugs.

  “Of course I don’t.”

  She nods, but I can tell she’s not buying.

  “Besides, I have a boyfriend.”

  Sadie squints. “I thought you and Mark broke up,” she says.

  I forgot I told her that.

  “I thought so, too. It didn’t stick.”

  She chuckles. “Didn’t stick? Isn’t it up to you if you’re dating him or not?”

  I roll my eyes. This is not the time for her to have a point. “I can’t like your brother. I’m dating you, remember. Are you here for an actual reason?”

  She gets quiet again. She looks at her hands folded in her lap. “Are you going to the wedding tomorrow?”

  If I do, it’s to dance with Sam. Not with you. I don’t answer.

  “I . . . I really thought you knew. I’m sorry.”

  “You thought I knew that you dragged me here to go on a girl-date?” I say.

  She shakes her head, vehemently. “No, no, no. I thought you knew that I’m . . . you know . . . a lesbian.”

  I sit down on the edge of the bed, refolding a pile of already-folded clothes in my lap. Can I make myself get used to that word?

  I stare at her as she perches on the edge of the bench in my cave. How would I know something like that? I feel so dumb for not figuring it out, but I’m not sure how I was supposed to.

  She follows my movements with her blue eyes, and I know that she’s beautiful but I’m not gay. I didn’t know she was gay. Am I stupid? I’ve never known a gay person before. Most of what I’ve heard about gay people has been from my church, and I know they aren’t the best source on the subject. Why would she think I would know?

  “Coley,” she’s saying, “I really don’t think I’m going to hell or any of that stuff. I’m really just myself. I can’t help—”

  “Stop!” I say. I can’t think about hell and choice versus instinct and all the stuff I’ve heard within the walls of my church. “I’m not saying . . . any of that.”

  She shuts her mouth, like she’s surprised that I’m more concerned with everything else than with the gay-ness.

  “You don’t think I’m going to hell?”

  “No,” I say. I think of my mom, my church, and everyone I know who are all the same, who think the same way and who are so different from everyone here. And how much better it feels to be with the Peppers than all those other people. “No,” I say again.

  “Then why are you angry?” she asks.

  “Because you used me!” I exclaim. “You knew I wouldn’t want to come here to pretend to be your date, so you made it some big secret. You made me pretend everything was back to normal when you were lying to me. Everything is your fault.”

  She stares at me, wide-eyed, and I pant and go over the words I just said and know that there are still some missing.

  “Oh,” she says quietly.

  “And I’m mad because”—my voice is small now, my blood full of pathetic-ness like I’m about to use that word “need” even though I’m not—“you didn’t tell me.”

  “Oh,” she says. “Oh. I’m sorry.”

  We freeze like that for minutes until I’m sure we’ll sit like this forever, silent, across the room from each other, suspended somewhere between friendship and loneliness. But then she says, “It’s so hard. I never tell anyone.”

  I nod, feeling numb.

  “The first person I told . . . she made it really hard on me. She’s the only . . . Well, until you, I’ve only told one person . . . It was so long ago and so . . . awful . . .”

  I nod again. Her words keep humming around my ears.

  “It kind of ruine
d everything when I told her . . .” Sadie stumbles. She’s crying now, tears running over her perfect cheekbones and down her tanned face. “My family knows but I didn’t . . . I didn’t have to say it. The first person . . . Since then I’ve been so afraid . . . Can you try to understand?”

  “I’ll try,” I say. But it still hurts you chose Lynn or one of those other girls to tell instead of me. It still hurts that you let us splinter apart before giving me a chance.

  Sadie stands. “That part,” I whisper. “That part I’ll try to understand. But will you try to understand the other part?”

  “What’s the other part?” Sadie asks.

  I can’t go to this wedding, I decide. I can’t be that manipulated.

  “I thought you invited me here for me. I thought I was important to you. After waiting for years and years to figure out what happened to us, I flew to another country just to be with you and then it turns out . . .”

  She sits on the edge of my bed next to me, her eyes wide and pleading. “I do need you, Coley,” she insists. “I do.”

  I bite my lip.

  She straightens. “I’m sorry, Coley. I really am. But will you please come to this wedding with me? If you don’t Rose will know that it was all fake and I’ll look even more pathetic. See? I still need you.”

  Forget how pathetic you’re making me look. Feel. Forget that I thought we were going to be real friends, not fake dates.

  “It hurts every time I see her,” she says.

  Forget that I left my own boyfriend and I’m having to rewrite my own life so you can have revenge on some ex-girlfriend.

  “It won’t mean anything. It won’t be real. I just need to prove to Rose that I’m over her.”

  “But you aren’t,” I say.

  Her eyes stay wide and pleading.

  It hurts every time I see you.

  “It’s not like it’s a real date, Coley. It’s fake.”

  Everything has been fake.

  “You see Rose, Coley. You see how awful she is to me. Can you try to understand how bad it will be if I show up without you tomorrow? How she’ll stomp on my heart and squash it all over again?”

  I hate that she looks so sad, even if I am angry.