My Worst Best Friend (21 page)

“You’re not lying,” I lied. “She’s around here somewhere, Dad. You know what she’s like. She gets bored staying in one place too long.” I gave another shrug. “Maybe she went out on the porch. Or upstairs.”

“Ummm…” My dad nodded. “Go and get her.” He didn’t believe me. He was calling my bluff.

“I didn’t say that she’s definitely upstairs or on the porch. She could’ve gone downstairs. You know, to see if the little kids are OK.”

“Get her, Gracie.” My dad almost never yelled. The way you knew that he was upset or angry was that he spoke so quietly you practically had to stand on tiptoe to catch what he was saying. “Tell Savanna her mother’s on the phone.”

“She could be in the bathroom,” I babbled on. “You know how long that can take. Remember that time she was in there for over an hour and you had to go next door? Maybe you should just tell Mrs Zindle that Savanna will call her back.”

“Gracie…”

“Or maybe I should talk to her. I can take a message.”

My dad put his hand on my shoulder. He leaned down, close to my ear, so no one else could hear what he was saying. “I know Savanna is— has her own way of doing things, Gracie. But I’ve never known you not to tell me the truth. So if she really is here, I want you to get her. Now.”

I figured that I had two choices. One: I could go through the motions of looking for Savanna – really thoroughly and so slowly that a snail could have walked from our front porch to town before I was done – hoping that by the time I was finished she’d be back in the house. Two: I could tell him the truth and get it over with. Which would probably mean that I’d spend the rest of high school in Florida with my grandmother because my father wouldn’t speak to me any more and sent me to live with her in her trailer with the vultures circling overhead.

“Gracie?” He squeezed my shoulder. “Gracie, what’s going on?”

I’d make a really lousy politician. When politicians get caught lying, they just lie some more. But I couldn’t do that. It had to be option two.

“It’s just that Savanna—”

My father suddenly straightened up. “Well, speak of the Devil.” He sounded really surprised. “There she is.” He was looking behind me.

I turned around.

Savanna was coming out of the kitchen with a glass of soda in her hand.

“Savanna!” I thought I was going to faint with joy.

She clocked the looks on our faces – relief mixed with the remnants of horror (mine) and deep suspicion and bewilderment (my father’s). She gave us her what-a-wonderful-world smile. “What’s up?”

My dad didn’t smile back. It was possible that he was never going to smile again. “Where have you been, Savanna?”

I would have hummed and hawed and looked shifty and evasive. My ears would have turned the colour of a cardinal. Savanna’s eyes didn’t blink and her smile didn’t flinch. She wasn’t even flushed the way you’d expect someone who’d just come into a warm house from the cold would be. “I was out in the backyard.” She made it sound like a normal thing to do.

Though not to everyone.

“The backyard?” My dad’s eyebrows rose. “Is something happening out there that I don’t know about?”

Savanna laughed. “Oh, Professor Mooney… I mean, I think this party’s really affected me. Spiritually. All of a sudden, all I could think of were these long-ago people, living nobly and in harmony with nature, and I just had to go outside to try to communicate with them. And it’s such a beautiful night with, like, a gazillion stars. I mean, it’s like they know we’re honouring them and are telling us thank you. And it’s so timeless – you can imagine that there aren’t any cars, or planes, or electric plants or anything like that…”

“Really?”

“Uh huh. I just stood there looking and thinking that, like, hundreds of years ago, a girl like me probably stood where your backyard is now and looked up at those exact same stars. I mean, that’s really something, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” said my father. He was looking at me. “It’s really something.”

I said, “Savanna, your mother’s on the phone. It could be important.”

The
phone call wasn’t really important. Zelda couldn’t find her favourite bath gel. Figuring out that Savanna had used it and not put it back where it belonged was pretty much a no-brainer. “She is, like, sooo anal,” said Savanna after she hung up. “I mean, what’s the big deal? It’s not like she’s got some major date. She’s taking a bath and going to bed.” I said that I didn’t understand why Zelda didn’t keep everything she valued locked up.

Savanna and I went up to my room before the band called it a night and the last guests left. Two guitars, a banjo and a fiddle didn’t really make the kind of music Savanna could listen to for more than half an hour without falling asleep, and, now that I knew my dad wasn’t going to disown me and send me to live in a trailer in Florida, I felt as if I’d spent the night rescuing animals from a flood. I was wiped out.

Savanna put the plate of desserts she’d brought up with her on my night table and threw herself on my bed. “I can’t believe you were worried for even one tiny second. Didn’t I tell you everything would be OK?” she crowed. “You just get so nervous about everything, Gray. It can’t be good for you. I’m really scared it’s going to do you some permanent damage. I mean, look at how you twitched and fretted about my plan, and it totally worked like a dream!”

I locked the door behind us. “Not a good dream.”

Savanna groaned. “That’s exactly what I mean, Gray. You have to stop being so negative all the time… It’s a real turn-off – especially for guys.” She kicked off her shoes. “I went, I came back and no one’s the wiser.” She raised her arms. Victorious. “You did all that worrying for nothing.”

I hadn’t planned on saying anything about how guilty I was feeling and what a lousy time I’d had and everything. Savanna and I never fought. Partly because I wasn’t confrontational. And partly because she had her family to fight with; she didn’t need to fight with me, too. Besides, I was so relieved that we’d actually got away with it that all I really wanted was to forget about it.

But, instead of keeping my mouth shut, I said, “That close.” I held my thumb and index finger so you’d just be able to slip a hair between them. Maybe. “If you had been two seconds later, it would all have been over except for the tears. That’s how close we came to being busted by my dad.”

“But we weren’t, were we?” Savanna smiled. Brightly. “
Ifs
don’t count, Gracie. It’s only the
dids
that matter. Did I get back too late? Did your dad find out the truth? Did we get in trouble?”

“You forgot one.” I was still standing. “Did I lie?”

Savanna bit into a brownie. “You didn’t lie, Gray. You just edited the truth a little. Really a little. Because the point is that I
was
in the house most of the night. But not, like, all of it.”

Words are funny. They are important, but not as important as what they describe. You know, like in a war when civilians are being bombed into oblivion and the army calls it “collateral damage”. You could call it chicken soup, but it would still be killing innocent people. Editing the truth … fictionalizing … omitting a couple of tiny facts… It didn’t matter what you called it. It was still lying.

“I don’t like lying to my dad, Savanna.” I moved away from the door, pulled the chair out from my desk and sat down. So she’d know that I was being serious. “It makes me feel really lousy.”

“Oh, Gracie, don’t say that.” She brushed some crumbs off her top. “I mean, it’s not like he’ll ever know.”

“But
I
know.”

She took a cranberry and orange cookie from the plate. “I’ll tell you what. If it makes you feel better, you won’t have to lie to him again. Ever. I mean, this was, like, an emergency. Swear on a bear, any future excuses will not involve The Professor.” She gave me a smile. “Just Archie and the rents.”

In movies and books, people who survive a near-death experience – like some terrible accident or a heart attack – often have a moment of truth afterwards. Suddenly they understand what’s really important in life. They find God. Or they give up drinking. Or they don’t lie any more.

I shook my head. This was my moment of truth. “No, not them, either.”

Savanna stopped in mid-bite. “Excuse me?”

“I’m really sorry, but I can’t cover for you any more. Not with Archie, not with your folks – not with anyone.”

She smiled as if I was teasing. “But you have to.”

“No, I don’t.” I didn’t.

“What do you mean, ‘No I don’t’?” She dropped the cookie back on the plate. “You can’t abandon me now, Gray. Not when everything’s, like, going so well. I need you to support me. I depend on you. Without you, I might have to stop seeing Morgan. I mean, how can I keep it all together by myself? And if I have to stop seeing Morgan, it’ll be just like you took a gun and shot me through the heart.”

And if I kept lying for her, it would be like I took a gun and shot myself through the heart.

“I’m sorry, Sav. I really am.” I leaned forward. I was earnest, but I was calm. So calm you’d think we were having a regular conversation about how she was going to survive till the next time she saw Morgan or what colour she should do her nails next. “But I can’t go on with this. I just can’t. I feel like an impersonator.” Impersonating myself – the honest Gracie Mooney. The girl who always told the truth.

“Oh, Gracie…” Savanna’s whole body sighed. “How many times do I have to tell you to lighten up? You’re taking this way too seriously.” She smiled again. “I mean, it’s not like you’re killing white rhinos for their horns or anything like that. This is, like, totally harmless. All you’re doing is backing me up.” She winked. “By not quite telling the truth.”

Downstairs, my father started belting out “There Once Was a Union Maid”.

I took a deep breath. “No, I’m not. From now on, I’m quite telling the truth.”

“Which means what exactly?” She tilted her head to one side. “That you won’t lie for me, or that you won’t back me up?”

“Who never was afraid…”
sang my father.

“Both.” The relief of not getting caught was nothing to the relief I felt at finally taking a stand. Of knowing that things really would be different from now on. I felt like I’d been walking across a minefield, and now I’d made it back on safe ground. “If you tell Archie you were with me when you weren’t and he asks me how I liked the flying seals or the kazoo orchestra, I’ll tell him the truth.” I made myself look her right in the eye. “That I was home by myself.”

I didn’t get long to enjoy my relief. Savanna’s face lost its smile. It looked like it should be up there on Mount Rushmore, squeezed in between Teddy Roosevelt and Lincoln. “You couldn’t do that to me, Gracie. You wouldn’t dare.”

“I could.” I focused on her hair. “I would.”

“But that would be, like, the biggest, most major treachery ever. I mean, I would never do something like that to you. Not even if I was being tortured.” She wasn’t sprawling against the pillows any more, she was sitting up straight. Exactly as if she was carved out of sacred stone. “You’re supposed to be my best friend. Best friends stick by each other. They help each other out. Like I always help you out.”

“I
am
your best friend. That’s why I’m telling you how I really feel.” You can tell your best friend
anything
, right? Even about them. “Who else is going to tell you when you’re— you know, making a big mistake.”

“Who else?” Her curls snapped. “Well, that’s a laugh. Because you know just as well as I do, Gracie Mooney, that practically everybody in the world is always telling me I’m wrong. I get nothing but criticism. From Gus and Zelda … from teachers … from kids at school … and now from you!” Her voice was getting louder. I couldn’t hear what was happening to the union maid any more. “How come I’m always the one who’s in the wrong, huh? How come everybody’s always down on
me
? How come everything’s always
my
fault?”

“Everything isn’t always your fault, Savanna. All I’m saying is—”

“I thought you— I thought you really understood me, Gray.” She was kneeling on the bed now, so that her body was wobbling as much as her voice. “I thought you were on
my
side.”

“I
am
on your side.” I looked her straight in the eyes. “But I don’t think what you’re doing is right. And not just all the lying. Cheating’s bad, Savanna. Somebody could get really hurt.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Gracie. You are sooo melodramatic.” Savanna had got up off the bed. She’d folded her arms across her chest and was tapping her foot on the floor. “I told you, it’s not cheating unless—”

“Then tell them,” I said. “Tell Morgan and Archie. Tell them both that you’re seeing someone else, but it’s OK because you aren’t married.”

Tap, tap, tap. Her eyes narrowed. “Why are you doing this to me, Gracie?”

“I’m not doing anything
to you
, Savanna. Just count me out, that’s all I’m saying. I don’t want to be a part of it any more.”

“But you
are
doing something to me.” She sounded like the digital voice on an answer machine. Tap, tap, tap. “You’re ruining my life, that’s what you’re doing. I’m supposed to be able to depend on you. But I can’t, can I? You’re just not
there
for me!”

“What are you talking about? I’m
always
there for you.” Even when
there
was someplace like the mall, or the beach, or the gym, where I really didn’t want to be. Even when she never showed up. “You’re the one who never thinks of me, or what I feel, or what I want to do.” I couldn’t seem to stop. Now things I hadn’t even thought had bothered me at the time were racing out of my mouth. “You never once came to see my butterfly garden in the summer. You never once went camping with me.”

“You know I don’t like The Great Outbores, Gracie. I totally can’t sleep in dirt and bugs. I have, like, a phobia. And I was going to check out your butterflies, but it just so happens that I was busy, too. In case you forgot. I mean, I’m the one who got stuck babysitting Sofia all the time.
By myself.
And I’m the one who had to deal with Archie and his demands last summer.
By myself.
” Savanna’s hair moved like storm clouds in a heavy wind. “And anyway, that’s not the point. The point is that, instead of supporting me, you’re going against me. I mean, this isn’t just you having other things you have to deal with. This is you deliberately sabotaging me.”