My Best Friend, Maybe Page 22

  “Why do you keep sending me those e-mails then?” I ask. I hear a car door slam and wonder if she’s gotten home already.

  “I was trying to explain myself!” Mom says. “I was trying to tell you where I’m coming from, that I had a reason to say that to her, that it didn’t come from nowhere.” She sighs. “Or maybe it would have been easier if you agreed with me when you found out Sadie is a . . . if you didn’t run away and make me question everything. I hate being wrong.” After a long pause she continues. “But it doesn’t matter. I should say this: I was wrong. I was wrong a whole lot and I will be again.”

  “Sadie is a lesbian,” I say. To be better than my mother. To use her example to make myself a good person in a whole different way.

  She sucks in a sharp breath.

  “It’s just a word, Mom. It’s just a fact.”

  “I don’t . . . agree with Sadie’s . . . lifestyle. Or with Edie’s parenting. I can’t. But . . .”

  She’s wrong. I’m going to have to live with a mother who is very wrong about my childhood best friend. It’s going to take some divine forgiveness to figure this one out.

  “But what?” I ask.

  Mom sighs. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “I always thought you had all the answers to everything.”

  “I know,” she says. “I thought you were safer that way.”

  I shake my head because she’ll always be my mom. She’ll always say things like that when you want her to tell you she loves you. But I’m going to have to summon up the courage to forgive her when I get home. She’s still my mom.

  “You’re home now?” I ask.

  “Listen, Colette. In that dream, God tells me I’m not perfect, not on target but . . . I was always trying. I think God knows that, too. In the dream, I mean. I was always trying to do the right thing. I love you, okay? I was trying to protect you. I just . . . did it the wrong way.”

  “Trying doesn’t count for everything,” I say.

  She sighs. “No, it doesn’t. I’m sorry.”

  “I think you’re wrong, Mom,” I say. “You’re going to have to let me disagree with you sometimes.”

  “Look, I don’t know what’s happening with your father. After all these years, I’m finally going to apologize and I hope he’ll hear me. But no matter what happens, you’re my kid, my daughter, okay? And when you get home, the first thing I’m going to do is listen to you.”

  Ω

  The next day I’m thinking a lot about my mom’s words when we pile into the big boat we’re taking to Crete. My mom was not always right, but she wasn’t always wrong either. That’s probably true about everyone.

  Sadie’s sitting by herself in one of the cushy chairs by the window. I plop down next to her but she doesn’t turn to me. Beside her the sea rushes by, Santorini disappears behind our heads. Good-bye, island, I think. Good-bye, cave and volcano and wineries and mountain stairs and fish markets and sunsets and magical first kisses.

  I wait until the island has disappeared behind us to open my mouth. Then I say, “I love you.”

  Now she looks at me.

  “That’s what you said you needed to hear,” I say. “In the volcano. It took me too long to say it, but you’re my friend and I love you.”

  Sadie shakes her head. She looks back out at the sea.

  “You can’t get rid of me that easily, Sadie,” I say. “We wasted too much time already.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she mumbles into the glass.

  “What?” I say.

  “It doesn’t matter. If I told you back then, you wouldn’t have been friends with me anyway.”

  “Maybe not,” I admit.

  “You would have listened to your mom.”

  “I guess,” I say.

  She can’t help turning to glance at me then.

  “But you can’t blame the whole thing on Mom either. You and I grew up a little differently. We went through different kinds of loneliness. You didn’t want the milk shake.”

  “Huh?” Sadie’s eyebrows crinkle together and I know that I get to have this conversation. I at least get to try to do the right thing.

  “My mom was wrong. My mom was awful,” I say.

  Sadie nods. “I couldn’t . . . tell you . . . You had to live with her. I couldn’t let you . . .”

  “I know,” I say. “But it wasn’t only my mom. You didn’t want that milk shake anyway.”

  Sadie frowns, chews the inside of her cheek.

  “It was me. I was holding on to you too tightly. I wasn’t ready to grow up and you were, and that scared me. I didn’t push you away. I held on tight, white-knuckled, until you were squeezed out of my life.”

  Sadie nods. But then she shakes her head. “It was me,” she says. “I didn’t give you a chance to stand by me. I didn’t talk to you about how I needed to grow, different experiences, different people.”

  I shrug. “It was a lot of things. It probably had to happen. But it’s over.”

  She stares at me.

  “You don’t have to be my friend,” I say. “But I think I can still choose to be yours.”

  I stand to leave. Her face doesn’t move.

  “I’m going to go sit by Sam now. I like him, and you can’t tell me not to. And Rose,” I say. I watch Sadie’s breathing quicken. “You should talk to her.”

  Ω

  The next day, I’m back in my red minidress and black heels. We ride in a van from our regular old hotel on the Sea of Crete over winding hills and past countless olive trees, grapevines, and apple orchards to the site of the wedding reception. The van takes the bumpy dirt streets with a vengeance, throwing me into Sam’s body every time the road curves right.

  Sadie hasn’t said anything to me since yesterday, but she gave me a little smile when I passed her and Edie sitting on the front bench of the van.

  “That dress,” Sam whispers in my ear, “is so hot.”

  He squeezes my hip and I nuzzle into the crook of his warm neck and I know that he’s my boyfriend, that his heart is speeding like mine. There are a million things we don’t have to talk about because we know. And that doesn’t make everything hunky-dory, but it might make each piece of the mess a little bit easier to take.

  The van stops and we climb out. We walk up a narrow road on a small hill. There is a red-brick patio lined with rows and rows of tables and smelling of fresh running water and savory sauces and so much food. There are hundreds of mostly Cretan people mingling around the tables. And in the middle of the patio is the largest tree I’ve ever seen. Its trunk is so thick it would take me and Sam and Sadie and Rose and Edie and my parents working together to hug all the way around it. It’s bumpy like a child made it out of clay and couldn’t be bothered to flatten out the knobs and indentations. It looks like a series of Santorini steps are carved into its side, for the little feet of garden gnomes to climb. The branches above are as thick as the average tree trunk and the sun shines through the green leaves, casting the entire patio in a jade light.

  Sam and I stand hand in hand staring up at the monstrous tree and then I hear a voice behind us. “Ivan’s mom invited over five hundred people. Can you believe it?” I turn. Andrea is smiling at us. It’s not until then that I realize we are standing next to Sadie and Rose. “This is actually small for a Greek wedding. Most of them have thousands of guests!”

  I try to smile at Sadie but she looks away.

  “I’m so glad you guys are here,” Andrea is saying. “I’m grateful to have at least a few familiar faces.”

  Then she’s called away.

  “Welcome!” Ivan’s father stands on the other side of the tree with a microphone. “We want to welcome everyone to our party to celebrate the wedding of our son, Ivan, and his new wife, Andrea.”

  I join in as the Greek crowd whoops and applauds. It’s nice to be in a crowd where I am actually one of the different ones. Where my difference is obvious and not hidden. Here, it’s no big deal to be Haitian or lesbian or just me becau
se we’ll all be singled out as the Americans.

  I turn to smile at Sadie again, but she’s gone somewhere else. I try not to be disappointed.

  “We are so pleased to be hosting this party at the Tree of Life,” Ivan’s father says. “Because this wedding represents the expanding of our family. Now, for our American family and friends, let me briefly tell the story.”

  There’s a good-natured groan from the Greek crowd. Sam puts his arm around my shoulders and squeezes.

  “We all know Zeus was quite a ladies’ man,” Ivan’s father starts. People chuckle around us. “So once Zeus had been married to his sister Hera for a while, his wandering eye got the best of him and he disguised himself as a bull and kidnapped the beautiful Europa. Europa was an interesting choice because, while she was a privileged young lady of some royalty, she was still human. So Zeus the flying bull flew Europa to this tree and this is where they, ahem, created the first of Zeus’s illegitimate children, King Minos and King Rhadamanthus.”

  Everyone else shifts around but I’m drawn in. This was the religion years and years ago? A god who was married to his sister? Who disguised himself to create illegitimate children? This was a story they told, a god they prayed to?

  “Now, I don’t know too many who believe in Zeus anymore,” Ivan’s father is saying. “But Zeus doesn’t care. Because look at this tree.”

  I can feel everyone studying its beauty and nature right along with me.

  “This is how it looks all year long. In the wind the leaves stay put. In the snow the tree stays warm. It never drops a leaf. You never see red or green or orange even when all of the trees around it turn to the colors of autumn. This tree always thinks it’s summer. It always thinks it is time for new life. It has molded itself to fit the little feet of the many children who have climbed it. It has grown extra branches so that the heaviest ones will not fall. This is truly the Tree of Family, the Tree of Fertility, the Tree of Life. And likewise, we hope that the marriage of our son, Ivan, and our new daughter, Andrea, will always be full of life. Now let’s dance!”

  Sam pulls me to the dance floor and we do our best to copy the Greeks’ graceful movements, but I keep my eyes on the tree umbrella-ing above our heads. There are a lot of things in this world that won’t make sense, I decide. A lot of things maybe religion can’t explain. And maybe we’re supposed to live in a world of mystery.

  The music slows down and I spend a song pressed tight to Sam, laughing at his jokes, whispering to him that he looks smashing, and only blushing a little. When the next song begins and it’s still slow, I feel a tapping on my shoulder.

  I turn.

  There’s Sadie, smiling at me. “Can I cut in?” she asks.

  I step aside to give her to her brother. She’ll yell at him for dancing with me. She’ll demand he doesn’t date me. I don’t know what he’ll say.

  “No!” she says. “I want to dance with you, Coley.”

  Now Sam walks away. Sadie holds both my hands and starts twirling me like we’re little kids and I follow but I can’t bring myself to giggle.

  “I’m not sorry I brought you here,” she says.

  “I’m not sorry I came.”

  “Because you like my brother,” she says. She’s looking at me out of the corner of her eye like she thinks it’s funny, like she’s harmlessly teasing me, but it might be a trap.

  “How about this tree?” I change the subject. “What a story, huh?”

  “What story?” Sadie asks, ducking to spin herself under my arm.

  I stop dancing. “The one Ivan’s dad just told,” I say.

  Sadie turns a little pink. “I missed it.” She sways and swings her arms around, dancing in front of me like it doesn’t matter if anyone joins her. “I wasn’t here.”

  “Where—”

  “I was with Rose!” she says, happy and quiet and whispering and all best-friendish. And even if I’m not her best friend anymore, my face lights up for her. “Over there!” She points past the tree. “Kissing!” she says, lowering her voice.

  “That’s good?” I say, but I can tell it is.

  “Thanks to you,” she says. “You did it, Coley.”

  Now I start dancing.

  I shrug. “I talked to her. That’s all.”

  “No,” Sadie says, finishing a twirl. “That’s not all. I realized that if I could be that wrong about you for so long, you who I knew better than anyone, I could also be wrong about Rose.” She smiles at me. “And I realized that if you could find a way to hold on to me, even after so many years of me pushing you away, then I better find a way to hold on to Rose.”

  “Good,” I say. “I’m happy for you.”

  I try to mean it. I try not to be jealous that at the end of this Rose gets the forgiveness and I only get the thank-you.

  “You know,” Sadie says, “you’re right that it wasn’t all your mom and it wasn’t all me being gay and you being all Christian. It wasn’t all one thing. But you’re wrong also.”

  I raise my eyebrows.

  “You’re wrong that it had to happen. It never had to happen,” she says. “If it had to happen, if we were supposed to not be friends, even for a little while . . . it wouldn’t have hurt so much.”

  And now, even though we’re both smiling, we’re also crying and we’re hugging and it doesn’t matter that Sadie is gay or that she’s Sam’s sister or that she was mean to me three years ago or any of the things that always seemed to matter so much. It matters that she’s mine. My friend. My fish. My Sadie.

  Ω

  I don’t invite Sam into my hotel room that night. There will be so many nights in the future for making out, for enjoying my hands on his skin, marveling at the way my heart beats into his. Nights for the kind of completely self-assured belly-laughing that comes with Sam’s jokes, for the puffed-up feeling in my chest that comes from making him laugh. There will be lots and lots of moments and days and years for that. But there won’t be lots and lots of mornings in Greece.

  So I curl into my bed and I let the memories of summers past, of squealing-girl laughter, of pretend-games and boardwalk milk bottles and jumping waves and yanking ankles dance in my brain all night. And in the morning, like I knew she would be, she’s there as soon as the sun is rising.

  She’s taken my air-dried Speedo off my unlocked doorknob and even though I’m awake as soon as she opens the door, I stay still until she whips it across my body.

  Then we’re up and we’re outside. The two of us, Sadie and Coley, run barefoot in our one-pieces through the sprawling green campus of the resort. We run and run until we splash directly into the frigid Cretan sea as if it were the Jersey shore, and we dive underneath, squealing and laughing. We swim as far as we can, then we stop and jump a wave and splash each other and dive for ankles, and I know that today, just for today, we are not getting out of the water.

  Because we had to grow up. We had to deal with hormones, with broken hearts, with boyfriends and girlfriends, with parents who make mistakes, with loneliness, and with finding new friends to fill it. And we’ll have to grow up even more. We’ll have to deal with college, with moving away, with making up our own minds, choosing our own faiths, creating our own families, and finding so many more friends.

  But we don’t have to be grown-ups today.

  Today is a summer day. And there’s nothing in any part of the world as fun as a summer day with Sadie Pepper.

  Acknowledgments

  Michelle Nagler, thank you for starting this revision like an editing rock star, and Caroline Abbey, thank you for finishing it like an editing maestro. Heartfelt thanks to Laura Whitaker and everyone at Bloomsbury for all of the polishing, support, publicity, and on and on.

  Kate McKean, thank you for your help with the idea and the early drafts, and for fielding my endless questions. And especially for your pep talks!

  To the people of Santorini and Crete, thank you for being so welcoming, informative, and proud of your islands and culture. What a way to researc
h!

  Jessica Verdi, Corey Ann Haydu, Dhonielle Clayton, Mary G. Thompson, Alyson Gerber, Sona Charaipotra, Amy Ewing, and Riddhi Parekh, your encouragement in the early drafts and your vision in the later ones were priceless. Thank you.

  Nestor Alvarado, thank you for consistently answering my questions in Spanish.

  Deep and heartfelt thanks to all my friends for supporting my dream with such enthusiasm. I’m more grateful to you than I could describe. Katherine Aragon, Kate Beck, Rebecca Beers, Megan Burke, Molly and Mike Colonna, Kathy Davidson, Melissa Heinold, Linda Hu, Leslie Marchese, Jenn Meyers, Tommy Obst, and Betsy Schroeder, thank you for the steps you took to support book one (Me, Him, Them, and It) and to help set up this one for success!

  I am so grateful to my entire family. Aunt Catherine and Brittany, thank you for the support of your book clubs. Sarah, Mary Lou, Bridget, Ali, Greg, Kelly, and Kelly, thank you for your e-mails, discussions, and consistent checking-in. And to all of my aunts, uncles, and cousins, thank you. I don’t know where I would be without your support.

  Ronnie, Eric, Eileen, Eric, Tommy, and Erin Larsson, thank you for welcoming me, and my books, into your family. Your enthusiasm, reading, spreading the word, celebrating, and general awesomeness are more than I could ask for.

  Dan Carter, brother, your support of the first book blew me away. Thank you for standing behind my dream and for reading my books . . . even if they aren’t comedies.

  Beth and Bill Carter, Mom and Dad . . . this is the hardest sentence to write. There’s no way to thank you for being the kind of parents you are and always have been. I am immensely grateful for everything you’ve taught me, for the support you’ve given me, and, especially, for the way you’ve loved me.

  And finally, endless, bottomless, boundless thanks to my favorite travel buddy, my life partner, my love. Greg Larsson, I love you.

  A Note on the Author

  CAELA CARTER is the author of Me, Him, Them, and It. She spent eight years working in middle and high schools as a teacher and a librarian. A graduate of The New School’s MFA program, she also writes for Teen Writers Bloc, a blog on children’s literature. She lives in New York with her husband.