My Worst Best Friend (9 page)

“Of course not.” I laughed. “And it’s called
Neighbours. I just went to see what it was like.”

“You know what it’s like.” Savanna wrinkled her nose. “It’s full of missionaries thumping their Bibles and telling everybody not to wear make-up or listen to pop music.”

“It’s nothing like that.” I was still laughing. “It was really interesting. The kids were—”

“Oh, you can’t be serious…” She’d been leaning back against her pillow but now she sat up so sharply that the bed rocked. “Don’t tell me you actually joined up.”

“No, I … You know, I was thinking about it. Mrs Hen—”

“See? Didn’t I say he wanted to brainwash you?”

“Oh, Savanna, please… It’s not a cult, it’s a literacy programme.”

“Just promise me you won’t do it, Gracie. I mean, it’s, like, so major Godsquad.”

“No, it isn’t.” She was the first person to mention God all day. “And the people I met were—”

“OK, like maybe I’m wrong about the God-squad thing. I mean, I’m sure they’re doing great stuff. Like the Statue of Liberty. But you’re already so busy, Gracie. I mean, like, when am I going to see you if you spend your weekends doing that?”

“It’s not the whole weekend, Sav, it’s—”

From somewhere on the floor someone started
singing that song from
Dirty Dancing
about having the time of her life.

“Ohmigod!” shrieked Savanna. “That could be Morgan!”

She threw herself across my legs and hung over the bed, reaching for her bag.

I had to laugh. She’d just met him and she’d already put a new ringtone on her phone. She’d been going out with Archie for weeks before she put on “My Guy”.

Talk about changing your life.

Savanna
said that the social side of school is just as important as the academic, so we always got there a little early to hang out together in the Student Lounge before homeroom. That would be all of us except for Zebediah Cooper. Cooper never arrived on campus more than a minute before the first bell and – since, unlike some of us, he didn’t mind making an entrance – usually more like several minutes after. Cooper had a pretty firm policy of not spending any more time at school than was absolutely necessary.

On that Monday, Pete and Leroy were in one corner of the sofa half-heartedly trying to come to grips with their math homework while they socialized and Savanna and Archie were sitting hip-to-hip in a we’re-so-going-out kind of way in the other. I was on a chair across from them. Archie was telling us about some movie he’d seen. As Savanna said, Archie’s movies were kind of interchangeable. They had different settings, different characters and different body counts, but otherwise they were more or less the same story. Not that you could tell that she’d heard it all before by looking at Savanna. She was listening to him as if he was Franklin Roosevelt giving his famous “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” speech and she was a grateful nation.

I was smiling and nodding, but to tell you the truth I’d pretty much stopped listening to Archie after the first major shoot-out. I was keeping myself awake by conjugating the Spanish verb
aburrir
in my head
(yo estoy aburrido, ella está aburrido, nosotras estamos aburridos
– meaning: I’m bored, she’s bored, we’re bored out of our gourds) when my unspoken prayers were answered by a merciful God and Archie suddenly broke off mid-bloodbath. “Oh, dude…!” he shouted. He pointed across the room. “Am I seeing what I’m seeing, or am I having some kind of massive hallucination?”

The rest of us all looked to the door. Cooper was sauntering towards us, wearing his normal wise-guy grin. He was back to his sartorial not-so-good – a striped collarless shirt, baggy corduroys, black-and-white polka dot suspenders and his beat-up brown fedora – and had the old mailbag he carried his books in slung over his shoulder. Nonchalantly. (Just in case you wondered why people thought he was strange.)

“I don’t believe it!” Archie had taken his arm from around Savanna, and was leaning forward, waving a hand at Cooper. “Get out of here, you evil imposter!” he laughed. “I know your game! What have you done with my friend?”

“Ohmigod! Isn’t it illegal for you to get here before the bell?” screeched Savanna. “I mean, like, to what do we owe this great honour? Is the world about to come to an end and you wanted a chance to say “
I told you so
” before we’re all blown up?”

Cooper swung his bag to the floor. “I woke up early, so I figured I might as well come in.” He didn’t bother looking for somewhere to sit, he just dropped down next to my chair. “See what you guys get up to when I’m not around.”

“I told you that you were missing out,” said Archie. He put his arm around Savanna’s shoulders again. “I was telling everybody about this movie I saw on cable last night. It was pretty cool.” And, making a quick recovery from the unexpected interruption, Archie effortlessly picked up where he’d left off. “So anyway, the dude’s lost his gun and he’s wounded and…”

But Zebediah Cooper wasn’t the kind of person to pretend to be into something when he wasn’t – and he probably hadn’t been into the same movies as Archie since second grade. He looked up at me. “So, Gracie…” He wasn’t whispering, but he was definitely only talking to me. “What did you decide? You going to join us on the front lines of the war against illiteracy?”

“Well, I—” Hadn’t really thought any more about it after Savanna pretty much begged me not to join, to tell the truth. Not because of what she’d said – it was just that, what with the whole Morgan saga and everything, I’d kind of put it out of my mind.

“It’s a yes-or-no question,” said Cooper.

I could feel Savanna’s eyes on me. For some reason it made me feel as nervous as standing up in front of the class giving a speech always made me feel. “Well, I—”

I don’t really know what I was about to say, because I never had a chance to say it. And Archie never had a chance to finish the sentence he was in the middle of either.

Which would be because Savanna suddenly wailed, “Ohmigod… Gracie, I can’t believe it! You never told Archie about your awesome weekend!”

You’d think from the way she said it that I was in the habit of telling Archie about my weekends. As if his Monday wasn’t complete unless he’d heard that I’d watched the 1935 version of
The 39 Steps
or helped my dad clean the gutters on Sunday afternoon.

Archie’s head swung from her to me and back again. “What?” He looked like a dog who doesn’t know which hand the ball is in.

I, however, did know which hand it was in. Because I knew Savanna so well, I knew exactly what she was doing. Even though Archie had been letting loose his catalogue of movie mayhem pretty much in her ear, she’d heard what Cooper had said to me. She was putting me on the spot, that’s what she was doing. She figured if the others all heard I’d gone to Neighbours their general ridicule and hilarity would discourage me from deciding to join. She knew me pretty well, too.

“Savanna, please…” I laughed. “I’m sure Archie hasn’t felt there was this major hole in his life because—”

“No, I’m really interested, Gracie.” Poor Archie. Savanna was snuggled against him so closely now that I figured she must have her nails dug into his ribs. “I can’t believe I forgot to ask you.” He gave me a big, enthusiastic smile. “So, Savanna said you two went to see your dad in that play yesterday. How was it?”

This, of course, was not what I thought he was going to ask. But it was a pretty interesting question, as questions go. Mainly because my dad has never been in a play in his life, and because Savanna and I hadn’t gone to see it. I really had helped my dad clean the gutters on Sunday. And, up until that moment, I’d been under the impression that Savanna had hung out with Archie. Since she’d told me that was what she was going to do – to make up for breaking their Saturday date.

I glanced over at Savanna. Her smile had more or less frozen and her eyes were locked on mine. Some people can read lips. Some people can read sign language. Some people can read smoke signals. I could read Savanna. This wasn’t the question she thought Archie was going to ask, either, but it was as clear as a mountain spring what my answer should be.

I smiled back at Archie. I could feel myself blushing. Which would be one of the reasons I really don’t like to lie. I’m not exactly convincing. “Yeah, it was… You know, it was good. It was pretty good. I mean, even though I’m, you know, biased – because of my dad.”

Savanna’s smile melted into an um-duh-I-am-such-a-dummy kind of face. “And can you believe I, like, totally forgot we were going?” she shrieked. “I mean I, like, completely wiped it from my memory when I talked to Arch on Saturday.” Her eyes looked into mine. “I mean, I was actually, like, getting ready to hang out with him yesterday when you called and reminded me.” Savanna honked. “I guess I blanked it because I was afraid, you know, that if your dad wasn’t any good, it’d be, like, really cringe-making and humiliating. I mean, what would I say to
you
? How could I ever face your dad again?” She leaned back, beaming. “But like I told Arch, The Professor was totally great. I mean, like, really, I was sooo surprised. I didn’t know he could act.”

So that made three of us, since I was pretty sure my dad didn’t know he could act either.

Savanna steamed on like a missile. “I mean, usually these amateur groups are, like, so amateur… But your dad’s group is really good. And that woman who played the lead— You know, the blonde? I mean, she could be on Broadway or something.”

She wasn’t the only one.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “She’s terrific.”

“I didn’t know your father was into amateur dramatics,” said Cooper. “I thought he was a musician in his spare time.”

“That, too.” Hahaha. “He’s a man of many talents.”

“I can dig that. That’s cool.” Cooper nodded. “So what was the play?”

“Huh?”

“What play was it?”

“Yeah, what was it?” Archie gave Savanna a playful poke. “You know Savanna, she can never remember the name of anything.”

I glanced at Savanna. She was examining her nails – you know, for microscopic chips or cracks or a patch where the colour wasn’t even. All of a sudden she had nothing to say.

I watched a lot of documentaries where CEOs of mega corporations and politicians are interviewed about climate change and the environment and stuff like that. So I knew that the way of avoiding answering a question you’d been asked was just to answer some other question. I turned to Cooper. “About Neighbours,” I said. “Yeah, I’ve decided to join.”

Because
Savanna and I didn’t have any classes together and lunch was always a group affair (and because every time I saw her between periods that day Archie was pretty much glued to her side), I didn’t have a chance to see her alone until school was over. Which gave me plenty of time to think about what had happened in the lounge. At first I was surprised and shocked, but a part of me was also kind of admiring of Savanna. It isn’t everybody who would not only make up a lie like that, but also involve someone else in the lie without even telling her. That took real chutzpah. I mean, really. You had to hand it to her, the girl had nerves of steel. But as the day wore on, surprise and shock started to change into something more like horror, and the admiring part more or less faded out.
How could she do a thing like that?
I fumed.
Isn’t there the slightest connection between her brain and her mouth? Is she out of her mind?
It really wasn’t fair. She’d dropped me into her lie to Archie like someone throwing an empty
can into a river. Plop. And, like someone throwing a can into a river, she hadn’t given me another thought or wondered how I’d feel about it. Not for a second. Not for as long as it takes a hummingbird to beat its wings once. For Pete’s sake, she didn’t even think to
warn
me! It would have served her right if when Archie asked me how I’d liked the play instead of saying it was good, I’d said, “What play?”, or, “Play? Did I go to a play?”

By now you know that I wasn’t exactly a confrontational kind of person. The closest I usually got to confrontational was two rooms away with the door closed. If I saw somebody being mean to an animal I’d say something, but when it came to me, personally, I pretty much kept my mouth shut. I figured that the less you said, the less you had to wish you hadn’t said. I really didn’t like scenes or anyone yelling at me. But the other thing I really didn’t like was lying. My dad’s so old-fashioned he doesn’t think honesty is just the best policy, he thinks it’s the
only
policy.

By the end of that Monday, I’d thought so much about Savanna getting me to lie for her and everything that I’d actually decided to say something to her about it.
It really wasn’t on
, I’d tell her.
You really dropped me in it
. As soon as the bell rang in English I was out of my seat and through the door like a tiger with a pack of poachers after her.
Come on, Savanna, get real…
I’d say. Y
ou can’t just make things up like that… you can’t tell lies that involve me and not even tell me you’ve told them…
I knew that if I didn’t say all this in the next ten minutes, it would probably never get said at all. That’s what I was like. I got mad for a while, but then it passed. Or I just lost my nerve. Losing my nerve was something I was really good at.

I hurried down the corridor, marched out of the building and strode across the quad. Savanna was standing by the bike rack, looking bored. I took a deep breath and kept walking.

Savanna, you know how much I hate lying… Savanna, at least you could’ve warned me… Savanna, I really don’t like being treated like that.

“Gracie!” She was on me so fast I almost didn’t even see her coming. “Gracie, I am, like, sooo glad to see you.” She threw her arms around me, banging my butt with her bag.

“I just haven’t had a second to myself and I’ve been
dying
to talk to you since this morning.”