My Best Friend, Maybe Read online

  “That’s not the question,” I say.

  “We’ll type up a full itinerary and we’ll be safe,” Sadie says.

  “That’s not the question.”

  “What then?” Sadie plops down on her cherry-print bedspread. “And you can come in, you know.”

  I stand in the center of her gold carpet and face her. It feels good to be the one towering over her at this moment.

  “So, what is it?”

  I open my mouth and the words fly through it the way “sure” did in French today. “Why are you inviting me?”

  Sadie’s face cracks open and she smiles at me with the inside-joke smile and I shift my feet because I’m not sure which side of the joke I’m on this time. But I can’t help smiling back at her. “I need you,” she says with a shrug.

  And then my whole world tilts and the room spins out of focus. Because that’s not what I came to find out. That doesn’t answer if she misses me or if she wants me there or if she has to prove something. That’s not an answer at all. But now, I need to go. No Costa Rica. No Mark. No parental objections. Now I need to go.

  Sadie invoked the promise. She remembers. And I’m not going to be the one to break it.

  “Come here,” Sadie says, still smiling. She stands up and for a second I think she’s going to hug me but instead she spins me around and clips the top of my hair back. Then she faces me again. “Yeah, like that,” she says. “Maybe we should get haircuts before we go. Some new clothes, too.”

  It’s almost exactly what she said at the pool today, but this time it’s nice.

  She walks over to her dresser and opens a makeup case, then attacks my face with a huge blush brush.

  “What are you doing?” I ask.

  “Getting you Ready,” she says. “We’re going to Sally’s party.”

  I nod. I’m still not asking all the questions.

  The bathroom door swings open as we step into the hall outside Sadie’s bedroom. I can’t believe I’m going to this party. With Sadie.

  Steam pours out the door and then an older, taller, more muscled Pepper brother emerges wearing nothing but a white towel around his waist. It’s Sam. My jaw drops but I manage to clench it shut before he notices me.

  He’s standing surrounded in steam, his black hair cropped close to his skull, his brown eyes smiling as they land on my face, his dark chest dotted with beads of water, the muscles in his arm flexing as he moves a hand in a stunned wave.

  Oh, my gosh, Sam is hot.

  “Colette!” he almost shouts, a huge smile spreading across his face.

  He said my name! I think, like he’s a movie star and not a boy who used to drive me crazy playing keep-away with my favorite stuffed elephant when I was eight years old.

  “Hi, Sam,” I manage.

  He’s three years older than us, so he’d be . . . twenty. I haven’t seen him since he was my age now.

  “You’re really coming to Greece with us?” he asks slowly.

  Sadie grabs my hand. “Told you she was!” she chirps. “Come on, Coley! Let’s go.” She pulls me down the hallway toward the stairs.

  “Bye, Sam,” she calls over her shoulder.

  I force myself not to look back at him.

  Ω

  On the mile walk to Sally’s house, my body feels enormous. I’m short for a swimmer but right now the two inches I have on Sadie make my head float suspended above my body. My arms swing like a monkey’s, almost reaching my knees. My legs are too long to step gracefully. I’m bloated and awkward and I don’t know what I’m doing but I keep taking another step, then another, then another into the deep hole of Sadie-drama.

  I’ve been to Sally’s parties before. Often the whole high school is at her shindigs. I’ve gone there with Mark and sat in a corner and talked or played Text Twist on his phone while everyone else lived their normal lives. And that’s okay. When Mark isn’t there, I hang out with Louisa, playing Kings or I Never and actually sipping beer and hoping no one will tell my straight-edged boyfriend. It’s not like I drink enough for it to matter. It’s not like I’ve ever had more than one. But I don’t think Mark would understand that.

  Neither Mark nor Louisa will be there tonight; they would have texted me about it if they were going. This will be a smaller cool-kids-only party.

  What will I do? What will Sadie do?

  She’s rattling on and on about Greece and I can’t believe I have to go there with her. I can’t believe she invoked that ancient promise.

  But! But! But! The still-tiny, still-fun Coley who lives in the back of my skull is screaming: But what if she does need me?

  The thought sends fire into my veins, makes my eyes want to explode with tears of relief and worry. What could be wrong? Is it Edie? Her brothers? Andrea? Why would she need me on a family vacation?

  But no. I can’t ask those questions. It’ll hurt too much when I’m wrong, when her need turns out to be pure manipulation and vindication.

  Sadie stops suddenly and says, “Here we are.”

  But we aren’t. We’re standing on a sidewalk surrounded by the tiny shops that make up the small one-block expansion we refer to as the “center of town.” I look around.

  “We’re not going to Sally’s?” I ask.

  “We are,” Sadie says. “But I owe you something first. Wait here one minute.”

  Then she disappears into one of the storefronts, and my heart hammers in my chest because I know what she’ll be holding when she comes back. I know what she’s about to give me. And I can’t believe she remembered.

  Ω

  After the last home swim meet, the summer before high school, I sat on the bench outside the locker room, my hair dripping onto my T-shirt and my muscles twitching from swimming the butterfly leg of the group medley during the last race. I was waiting for Sadie so we could ride our bikes into town and get peanut-butter milk shakes.

  I wrung my hair out to my side, hummed a song, and told my brain not to worry about all the ways that things had been weird for the past few months. I was outside the locker room because I didn’t feel like hearing any more of Sadie’s inside jokes with Lynn. Their giggling had gotten on my nerves. On that bench, I was feeling good and a little nostalgic. It had been my last meet at the town pool—after eight years, summer swim team was over because it didn’t extend to high school—and I’d won all four of my races. I had chlorine in my hair, sun on my skin, four new medals clinking in my backpack, and plans with my best friend. Because Sadie and I always got peanut-butter milk shakes after home meets, just the two of us. No matter how weird things were.

  Finally, after close to an entire week, I was going to get Sadie to myself for an hour. Not that I didn’t like the other girls on the team, but Lynn had gotten so clingy with my best friend. It was hard to be around them without feeling dizzy. At least Lynn was a year younger. She’d be stuck in middle school in the fall and I’d get the real Sadie back. Until then, we had our milk shakes.

  So I kicked my feet out and leaned my head back against the wall and smelled the chlorine. Then Sadie burst out of the locker room in a storm of giggles with three other girls. Lynn included. A big girl, a head taller than Sadie with bulging biceps and wide shoulders, she stood with her arm slung around my friend’s neck.

  “Coley!” Sadie said when she saw me on the bench. “Ready to go? We’re gonna hang out at Lynn’s house.”

  My jaw dropped. “But . . . milk shakes . . . ,” I managed.

  “We’ll get them tomorrow,” Sadie said. Part of her hair was dyed green. It looked mildewed. She was elbow in elbow with another girl, Sue, on her other side. They were always touching. It was so annoying.

  “And Lynn has a pool in her backyard,” one of the girls said.

  I stared, dumbfounded. We were at a pool. If Sadie didn’t feel like drinking a milk shake, we could stay here.

  It wasn’t like I refused to hang out with these girls. It wasn’t like we hadn’t spent every day that week hanging out in a group. All I wanted
was one afternoon with Sadie to myself. We could go to Lynn’s tomorrow.

  One of the girls sat down so she could whisper to me, her words tickle-y and uncomfortable in my ear: “Her parents are away for the weekend and her cousin who’s watching the house bought all of this beer but he’s not there right now either.”

  I lowered my eyebrows at Sadie, confused. She wanted to drink some nasty old beer? Instead of a thick and sugary milk shake?

  “But, we have plans . . .” I trailed off.

  “Give me a sec,” Sadie said to the group. She dropped Sue’s elbow and sat on my other side, swinging her arm around me. “She always has trouble if we change things around,” she said over my wet hair. I didn’t like her talking about me like that. “Come with us, Coley. It’ll be fun.”

  “We hate beer,” I said.

  Sadie shrugged. “Maybe this time we won’t.”

  I felt like I might cry and I didn’t want to do that in front of these girls or in front of Sadie, even though I had cried in front of Sadie a million times before. But everything was changing. First, things changed at home when chaos in the form of two screaming babies took over my house and the entirety of my parents’ attention. Now things were changing with Sadie.

  It felt like everything we used to have—swim team, trips to the beach, running through her huge backyard during thunderstorms—had been invaded and rewritten by these girls. By Lynn. Now the milk shakes? I didn’t want to give up the milk shakes. I couldn’t.

  “You guys go ahead. I’ll meet you at the bike stand,” Sadie said finally. They started to file out and she took her arm off my shoulders to face me.

  “Do you really need me to go get milk shakes?” she asked.

  I did. I clearly did. But that word “need” sounded so pathetic. I needed her to want to get milk shakes. I needed her to rank all of her friends for me so that I could hear my name at the top of the list. I was afraid I was sinking lower and lower on it, and if I sunk too low on Sadie’s friend list, I might sink out of real life.

  “No, it’s okay,” I said. “Have fun.”

  “Milk shakes tomorrow!” Sadie pronounced, like it didn’t even matter that we’d just won our last-ever swim meet at the town pool.

  Ω

  The cold plastic cup pressed in my palm sends goose bumps up my arm and into my lungs. I stare at the milk shake, shocked.

  “You’re really coming with me, right?” Sadie says. Her blue eyes are even bluer because of the turquoise shirt she’s wearing. Her hair is swept up in a bun on the back of her head so I can’t see the red part. She’s suddenly thirteen again, and so am I.

  I giggle. A milk shake is such a silly thing. A milk shake is nowhere near the equivalent of a trip halfway around the world. A milk shake is nothing. Big Colette knows all of this. But I don’t want to ruin the moment for little Coley, for the small part of me that’s dancing for joy because she didn’t forget.

  “I told you I was,” I say, wondering if this means I really have to, if a milk shake can possibly have that much power.

  Sadie clinks her own plastic cup against mine and it feels so good to giggle with her as we take our first chilly sip.

  Then we’re on our way again.

  As Sally’s mansion rises into view, my nerves start to knock against each other. At this party we won’t be half-thirteen/half-seventeen. At this party we’ll be in high school and I doubt Sadie actually wants me there with all of her new, beautiful, popular friends. Should I tell her that I won’t go to Sally’s? Should I tell her that if I’m going to go with her, she’d better not ditch me?

  My steps have slowed so Sadie is a few strides ahead as we enter Sally’s yard. She turns to me and chirps, “Come on, Coley!” She smiles at me like she used to when we were little and playing dolphins in the pool.

  Maybe she does want me here.

  Then she plows ahead of me onto Sally’s lawn.

  But maybe not.

  I scurry to catch her and I’m about to tell her that if she doesn’t want to hang with me at the party, I can leave. But the door swings open and there, just inside, is Mark.

  With a beer.

  Ω

  Sadie and I sat facing each other, cross-legged on her gold bed-room carpet, the brown bottle standing up like a mini-rocket between us.

  “You try it first,” she said.

  I shook my head. “No, you.”

  The late-afternoon sun gathered heavily through her windows, darkening the red stripes in her wallpaper so that they reflected brightly into her hair. The Miller Lite bottle was in a puddle of sunshine, the brown surface sparkling.

  She smiled and scooted closer to the bottle. And to me. “You have to try first. It’s your turn. I’m the one who stole it,” she said.

  “You just stole it from Charlie,” I said. “We can’t get in trouble for that.” Because Charlie was only sixteen and wasn’t supposed to have beer in his room anyway. Sadie stole it out of his gym bag.

  We were only nine. And not supposed to have beer at all.

  “Come on, Coley.” She nudged the bottle so it almost tipped but I managed to catch it with my palm. And then it was in my hand. Warm, almost hot, dangerous and tempting.

  Sadie kept talking. “In twelve years we’ll be twenty-one and we’ll have to drink beer when we dress up and go into New York City together and find the bar where Miley is playing live. And we’ll be doing our dance moves and some guy will see us and he’ll buy us two of these beers and we’ll have to drink them. So we might as well start practicing.”

  I took a deep breath, swung the bottle to my lips, and sucked in a huge mouthful. It was hot and thick and it tasted worse than vomit. The liquid sloshed over my tongue, back and forth between my molars. My throat closed against it and it grew thicker, into my cheeks. I tried to hold my breath with my mouth full, tried to force it down without tasting. But my lips opened just as my throat closed, and instead, I sprayed it all over my best friend’s red sundress.

  My breath caught. For a moment we stared at each other wide-eyed. I thought she might get mad. Sadie really liked her clothes, not like me who spilled things all the time and didn’t care as long as my mother didn’t find out.

  But then she yanked the bottle out of my hand, took a sip, and spit it on my chest on purpose.

  “Gross!” she squealed.

  We broke down laughing.

  “We’re not going to drink beer at the Miley concert,” I said.

  “No way!” she said as she giggled, wiping her shirt with a tissue. “No. Way. I’m never having a beer again.”

  She handed a tissue to me.

  “Me neither,” I said, and we laughed.

  That promise we both broke. But Sadie broke it first.

  Ω

  Mark’s eyes go wide when he sees me, and he swings his long arm around to force the brown bottle behind his back.

  I feel like I should be mad; instead I’m curious. I’m the one who drinks behind his back.

  “H-h-hey,” he manages, still looking at me with wide eyes and bouncing freckles. They are so adorable. I want to touch each one of them with my index finger and giggle. I don’t want to be mad.

  “What’s up?” I whisper, trying not to laugh at the way he’s keeping his arm twisted to hide something I might be happy about.

  “Oh, you two are so cute,” Sadie says. I almost forgot she was there.

  She wraps an arm around both of us and I see Mark stiffen. His eyes grow wider.

  “Nice to see you, too, Mark. I’ll be right back, Coley,” she says, and disappears into the crowd.

  Mark’s friends from the soccer team are standing behind him. He takes another step away from their circle but they’re still there, pounding the bottom of their beer bottles into the top of someone else’s to make it fizz over so they have to try to suck the foam through the neck as quickly as possible. They yell and hoot and bump into us as my boyfriend and I stare at each other. He moves closer again. I can smell the Pert Plus that keeps his h
air so silky.

  “I texted you,” he says finally. “You didn’t respond.” His hand is still behind his back.

  I crack a smile as I pull my iPhone from my back pocket.

  “Oh,” I say, showing Mark the black screen. It’s dead.

  He shifts his feet back and forth and chews his bottom lip. I keep smiling at him. He’s definitely hiding his beer from me.

  Then Sadie is there and she hands me a magenta bottle, Hard Berry Lemonade. “You’ll like it better than beer,” she says with that inside-joke smile. “Trust me.”

  Then she’s gone again.

  Mark’s eyes travel to my drink.

  I shrug and dodge one of the soccer guys. “You have a beer,” I say.

  Mark pulls the bottle out from behind his back and stares at it like he doesn’t know where it came from or maybe like he doesn’t quite know who he is.

  Finally, I laugh. I clink my bottle against his and take a sip and so does he. The sweet liquid fizzes into my mouth, syrupy and delicious and so much better than beer that it feels dangerous. I clink Mark again. I can’t believe he drinks beer. This means he’s heaped lie after lie onto our relationship, but I don’t care. I’m glad. I’m relieved. It frees me to admit to all the lies that I’ve piled on myself.

  We both laugh and then he puts his long arm lightly over my shoulder. And, we’re us again. Well, we’re us with drinks.

  “So . . . what have you girls been up to, you and . . . Sadie?” he asks carefully.

  “Relaaaaax, Maaark.” His friend Joe faux-punches his beer-holding arm. “Sadie’s a cool chick. It’s not like she showed up with another dude.”

  He shrugs Joe off.

  I take another sip. It tastes like the berry-flavored Pop Rocks we used to eat on the boardwalk, almost sickeningly sweet.

  Mark leans toward me. Now I can smell his skin, salty and soapy, and I want to rub my face against his, bury my nose in his neck, and . . .