My Best Friend, Maybe Read online

  I wiggled in my seat, pushing my spaghetti around with my fork.

  “We need to get to know her better. Maybe we’ll understand everything she does . . . a bit better . . .”

  Dad smiled and jiggled a sleeping Peter in his bouncy seat.

  “Sadie will spend the night here,” Mom said.

  “Yay!” I yelled. Adam started screaming in the bassinet where he had been sleeping.

  “Indoor voice,” Mom reminded me. It felt like those were the only two words she had said to me in the year since my brothers were born.

  “Yay,” I whispered.

  “Sadie? Will spend the night here? Well, I guess seven is a ripe old age to babysit the boys.” Dad chuckled with me. He crossed the room to lift Adam up, patting his diapered bottom while my brother nuzzled his nose into Dad’s sweat-shirt.

  Mom shook her head. “I called Andrea Pepper, Edie’s niece. She’s going to babysit.”

  “Yay!” I yelled again. This time Peter started crying, too.

  “Colette!” Mom said. But Dad was the one looking at me.

  “Sorry, Daddy,” I said, even though he was grinning. I smiled gap-toothed at him. “But Andrea is magical.”

  He balanced Peter on his other hip and squatted down to look at me.

  “I’m beginning to think you consider all Peppers magical,” Mom said.

  I nodded. “Maybe,” I said. I took a bite. If I ate all my food, maybe she’d stop being angry and smile at me again.

  For a second Dad looked nervous, but then he managed to swing around and pick up the pepper shaker without putting down either of my cuddly brothers.

  “Even this pepper?” he asked, dousing my plate with the black dust.

  “Daddy!” I squealed. “Stop, Daddy, stop!”

  He stopped but I couldn’t stop giggling. He covered my cheek in kisses, nudging my face in between my brothers’ two baby-powdered heads.

  “I need to get in on this,” I heard my mom say. She came up behind us and spread her arms around us all.

  “So, Andrea and Sadie and Edie will be here in a few minutes,” Mom said when the hug was over. “That okay?”

  “Sure,” Dad said. “We’ve got to see what these magical Peppers are all about anyway.” He winked at me.

  Andrea didn’t tell us to use indoor voices that night.

  Sadie and I started yelling because we had to, obviously, because there was an ogre after us and if he caught us he would soak up all of our magical fairy powers. We were standing on the sofa in the family room, kicking our legs out to keep the ogre in the sea beneath us that looked like my parents’ Oriental carpet.

  “Back, ogre, back!” Sadie screamed.

  “You’ll never get through my magical fortress!” I swung my arms in front of me and said, “Oogly boogly!”

  “What’s that?” Sadie dissolved into screeching giggles.

  “The magic words,” I said. Obviously.

  “Oogly boogly!” Sadie squealed. “Ogre, disappear to the outside!” We were both laughing loudly when we heard Andrea’s boots clomp down the stairs. She had just put the boys in their cribs for the night.

  I thought she would yell but she only said, “Okay, fairies. Outside. Now.”

  “But we just threw the ogre out there!” Sadie yelled.

  “Shh!” Andrea whispered. “He’ll hear you. Follow me and only walk on your tiptoes!” she said.

  We nodded solemnly and hopped down off the couch, tiptoeing behind Andrea through the kitchenette and down the stairs to the back hallway.

  “We have to crawl through this part,” Andrea whispered over her shoulder, and to our delight she dropped to all fours right on the linoleum floor. We crawled after her and out the back door.

  She hopped up to her feet and said, “Now. We fight the ogre. Ch-ching!” She pulled a fake sword from her belt loop.

  “Ch-ching!” Sadie followed.

  “Andrea,” I said. “The boys are inside. You can’t be in the backyard.”

  She made her arm extra long in order to put it around my shoulders without hitting me with the pretend sword. “Don’t you worry, Colette-Fairy,” she said. “My magical fairy-radio device will let me know the instant the ogre is putting your brothers in any kind of danger.” She pointed to the baby monitor that she had clipped to her belt.

  I nodded. I went on to fight the ogre, but I wondered why Mom didn’t know about the belt clip on the monitor, the wonderful two-inch piece of plastic that allowed us to play outside, screaming our lungs out, until it was time for bed.

  Later, once Sadie started snoring lightly, I dug my head into the pillow and replayed all of the best parts of our day of laughing, all the scenes of Andrea and Sadie and even Adam and Peter, until I fell asleep. During sleepovers, when my mom wasn’t there to sit on the edge of my bed and pray with me, those memories were my prayers.

  I was still awake, smiling at the dark ceiling, when I heard my parents come in with Edie. I heard Andrea say, “They were great.”

  Then the front door opened and shut again and Edie and Andrea were gone.

  “That was . . . interesting,” I heard my mom say.

  “Well, I like her,” my dad said. “I like Sadie, too.”

  “Oh, so do I,” my mom said. Her voice got a little muffled and I strained to hear more. “Odd ideas . . . family . . . small child . . . There are easier best friends out there, you know, honey.”

  “We’ll watch out for our little girl,” Dad said. “Make sure the influence is going in the right direction.”

  Ω

  The sun is barely shining behind the blue curtains of my second-floor windows when my bedroom door whacks open.

  “What time’s your flight?”

  “Dad?” I say. I half sit, rubbing my eyes. My black T-shirt falls off my shoulder.

  “Sorry. Should have knocked,” he says, but for once he doesn’t sound sorry. He sounds like he knows exactly what he’s doing. “When is your flight?” he says again.

  “Tomorrow morning,” I say. “Nine or something.”

  I lie down and roll away from him. If I can’t go to Greece, at least I can sleep in one last day before I’m stuck doing physical labor for two weeks.

  “Colette!” he says, too loudly for the early morning. “Today! What time is your flight today?”

  Now I shoot awake, sit straight up in the bed, pure adrenaline flowing through my veins. “To Greece?” I ask.

  He nods.

  “Five,” I say. I don’t ask why he’s asking. I don’t ask if I’m going. I look at him standing tall and proud with a wild look in his green eyes.

  “Get up,” he says. “Get packed.” He pulls his wallet out of his back pocket and starts fumbling in it. “Go to the bank and get your passport out of the safe-deposit box,” he says. “And get”—he throws a hundred-dollar bill on the foot of my bed—“anything you’ll need.”

  My eyes widen.

  “Be ready by two. I’ll call Edie,” he says.

  I nod. My heart flaps in my throat like butterfly wings, making it impossible to talk.

  He turns to go. In the doorframe, he spins back around. “And, little lady?” he says. “Your mom took the twins to their swim meet all the way in Flemington today. So . . . maybe leave a note for your brothers, but let me handle . . . Mom. Okay?”

  “Okay, Dad,” I manage.

  And then I’m up. I don’t let myself think about it as I fold my red dress and count out pairs of underwear. I go buy razors at the pharmacy and shift through our safe-deposit box for my passport. I don’t turn my phone on because I don’t want to hear Sadie tell me I’m not invited after all, or worse, to see Mark’s good-morning text. I work on autopilot until my dad is loading my bags into the back of his minivan with heavy thunks. Then I’m sitting next to him, staring, wondering who he is as he’s speeding down Highway 78 toward Newark Airport.

  He pulls up to the curb outside the international terminal.

  When he looks at me, his eyes aren’t s
o wild anymore. They almost look sad. “You ready?”

  “What’s going on, Dad?” I ask. It hits me that he somehow snuck me out of the house and he’s now ready to push me onto an airplane to some distant island, but he still hasn’t said anything real.

  He shrugs. “Mom’s not always right,” he says.

  But she is.

  His eyes fall to his lap. “Neither am I,” he says. “Call your mother. Say good-bye.”

  My hands shake as I finally turn on my phone.

  She answers before the first ring. “Don’t get on that airplane, Colette,” she says. “I don’t approve of this.”

  “You know?” I ask.

  “Your father left a note. Colette . . .” She trails off . “You heard me tell you not to go, right?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “Well, if you go anyway, be safe. Protect your body and your soul. I changed your phone plan so you can only call home, okay? It’s too expensive for you to call Louisa and Mark willy-nilly.” Mark. “But call when you arrive, okay? So we don’t have to worry.”

  “Okay,” I say.

  My hands aren’t shaking anymore. I’m relieved to hear her sound like any-old-mom.

  “And, honey?” she says. She says it so softly I think she’s about to tell me to have a nice time. Or that she loves me.

  “Yeah?”

  “I hope you understand soon what a terrible choice you’re making.”

  She hangs up.

  I stare at the phone in my palm.

  “She okay?” Dad says finally.

  I shrug.

  We get out of the car and I spot Sadie and her family climbing out of a limo curbed fifty feet away. She jumps up and down as soon as she sees me, her now purple-and-blond hair waving across her face. I can’t help smiling. I can see her mouth moving even from here. “You came! You came!”

  I give my dad a quick hug, pull out my suitcase, yank up the handle of my rolly bag, and take my first step as the new, imperfect Coley.

  “Colette?” Dad says.

  I turn around, ready for him to sit me back in the car, to tell me this was all a test that I failed. Instead he holds out his hand and shoves a stack of bills into my fist. “For whatever you need, little lady. Have fun. I—we. We love you.”

  Then he’s gone.

  “Coley!” She’s running toward me so quickly that I only have a second to open my phone and click on my good-morning text from Mark.

  “One more day! I love you!” the message says.

  My heart beats faster and salt water threatens to escape from behind my eyeballs and I know he deserves so much better than this, so much more explanation, so much more of me. And me, too. I know I deserve a better good-bye than I’m going to be able to give him. But I only have ten seconds before she reaches me, before it’s time, before the bell rings on my perfect life and I dive into drama with Sadie.

  I type the seven letters i-m s-o-r-r-y. Then I press Send. Here we go.

  Later I find myself in the middle of a dark, rumbling airplane. I don’t believe it, but here I am. Away from church and my family and Mark.

  And I’m terrified. The minute we sat down on the plane, Sadie turned to me and said, “We should try to sleep.” Then she stuck her headphones in her ears and closed her eyes and I pulled out the guidebook to read for the thousandth time about the volcano and the caldera and the beaches and the vineyards and the cave-like houses on Santorini.

  I’m going to see them all.

  As many times as I read the descriptions of this island, as many times as I see the pictures, I can’t imagine what anything actually looks like. The entire island rests on a caldera—a volcanic crater. At the top is a cliff with houses and businesses and hotels and stuff built right into it where people work and sleep and live. A red beach is a beach with red sand and a red rock wall behind it. A black beach is the same, but only black. How are these things possible?

  Sadie sighs in her sleep as I turn the same four pages back and forth in my Greek Islands tour book. I glance around. The plane is the biggest one I’ve ever been on, with seven seats across and two aisles running from front to back. I nabbed the window seat and Sadie sits next to me, the aisle next to her. Behind us are her eldest brother, Charlie, and his girlfriend, Mary Anne, who has very pale skin and a pink hoop in her nose. Behind them, Sadie’s other brother, Sam, sits next to an old man. Edie is up in first class.

  It feels like the entire plane is asleep except for me.

  I check my watch. In three hours we’ll land in Athens, where we’ll switch for a plane to Santorini. In Athens it will be morning.

  I put down the guidebook and lean my head against the window.

  I’m not sure if I actually fall asleep or if exhaustion and the whir of the airplane lull me into a kind of daze, but at some point I feel the plane start to shake with sudden turbulence and I jolt upright.

  “Sorry!” Sadie whispers urgently. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I was just seeing if you were awake.”

  Her cheeks grow pink and her blue eyes squint with embarrassment and I realize that the turbulence was actually Sadie shaking me.

  “No,” I say, smiling. “You weren’t checking. You were waking me up.” Like you’ve done a million times during a million sleepovers.

  When she smiles back at me it’s nervous and joyful at the same time and I wonder if I’ve just given her my version of the inside-joke smile.

  “Can I look at your book?” she asks.

  I shrug and she pulls it off my lap.

  “What are you most excited to see?” she asks. She’s speaking in the tiniest voice so that even if everyone on this plane were awake, only I would be able to hear her.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t understand what anything is going to look like, really. I guess I’m excited not to know what to expect.” For once.

  She nods and closes her eyes again. For a second I think that’s going to be it, that’s all I’m going to get even after she shook me awake, in the middle of this dark airplane where we are somehow both in private and surrounded by people, both sitting still and propelling forward, both inside and flying through the clouds.

  Her eyes pop open again and her pupils are huge. She studies me. “I didn’t think you were coming. After . . . everything.”

  I don’t say anything.

  “Look, Coley,” she says, but she keeps her eyes glued to the back of the seat in front of her. “Let’s not do this. Let’s not act like strangers when we’re there.”

  “Okay,” I say.

  “Let’s be like we used to be, okay? Let’s laugh and have fun and forget about it.”

  “Okay,” I say. And I smile. I like this idea so much I almost agree that simply. But this might be one of my only chances. I don’t know when I’ll get Sadie alone and open like this, huge-pupiled Sadie who looks almost as scared as I usually feel in her presence. I don’t know when she’ll show up again. So I ask, “Forget about what?”

  She sighs and her face gets a little harder. “Forget about what happened.”

  “What happened?” I push.

  She throws up her hands and rakes them through her blond-and-purple hair, exasperated with me. I feel a little part of me shrink, like she’s whittling away at my personality, making me disappear bit by bit. I won’t let that happen. Not here. Not again.

  “Jesus, Coley,” she says, somehow managing to whisper and yell at the same time. “Who knows what happened? Everything happened and nothing happened and suddenly you didn’t like me anymore.”

  No, you didn’t like me anymore. You’re the one who chose Lynn and a million other girls over me. You’re the one who left me dripping on that bench without a milk shake. I stayed.

  She continues. “We changed, I guess.”

  No, you. You changed. I’m still on the swim team and I still have the same hair color. I stayed the same.

  “But who cares?” she concludes. “What matters is that you’re here for me now. When I need you. What ma
tters is that we kept our promises.”

  I did. I kept them all. All you did was buy me a lousy milk shake.

  “So let’s try to have fun, okay?”

  I take a deep breath. “Why do you need me? Now?”

  She looks at me for a second, considering. If she wants us to magically morph back into our old version of friendship, she has to answer me.

  She opens her mouth like she’s about to answer.

  But then the lights in the cabin come on and the flight attendants start talking about fixing seat backs and tray tables.

  Instead she leans toward me and cups her hands around my ear. “You’ll figure that part out. I promise,” she says.

  I think about pushing harder but now it’s bright in here and everyone is starting to shift and stretch and my courage is gone.

  Ω

  “I need you to promise me something,” Sadie said.

  We were treading water in the deep end of the town pool and I almost dropped under. That word “need” had been haunting me ever since the whole milk shake–ditching incident a few days before. Yesterday, Sadie and I had finally gotten those milk shakes and it had seemed like everything was back to normal. Almost, anyway. Until she left before dinner.

  “Can you promise me something, Coley?” she said again.

  I didn’t like how serious her voice sounded. I tried to answer casually. “Sure,” I said.

  I dove underwater, reaching for her ankles, but she caught my hand in her own and dragged me back up. “No,” she said. “I’m serious.”

  The fantasies I’d been having all morning about a regular fun day at the pool were chased out of my head. It was one of our last pool days. We’d go to the beach the next week. Then we’d have only a few days before we started high school. It felt like the world was tilting too quickly in all new directions. “Okay,” I said, serious, for her.

  “Will you promise not to hate me, even if I do something you don’t like?”

  I squinted at her. What would she do that I wouldn’t like? It was so ridiculous I couldn’t help giggling.

  “I’m serious, Coley,” she reprimanded.

  “Okay,” I said. “I promise.”

  “Will you promise to keep my secrets even if we aren’t friends?” she said.