What Are Friends For? (6 page)

“What I mean is, I, if I could, if I were allowed, you would be the girl I would most want, to, um, could we just, um, what I wanted to ask you is . . .”

I waited, smiling.

“Could we just, you know,
like
each other? That’s probably stupid. You probably think that’s stupid.”

“No,” I said.

“OK,” he said quickly. “That’s what I thought. OK. Forget it.”

“No,” I told him. “I meant, yes. Sure. That’s fine.”

“Yes?” Lou asked. “That’s great. Wow. That’s so great. OK. Wow. Really?”

I smiled. “Yeah. Sure.”

“So, great,” he said. “Wow. Phew. I took a shower before I called you. To be, um, clean. Anyway, oh, I didn’t mean to tell you that. Forget I said that. Anyway, you can hang up because you’re probably, like, getting ready for bed, or, I mean, you don’t have to tell me what you’re doing.”

“Homework,” I said.

“Right,” said Lou. “Figures. You’re so smart, too. Wow. But, so, go ahead, see you tomorrow, thank you, I’m hanging up now, ’bye.” He hung up.

I laughed and hung up, too. I just sat there in the hall a minute.

When I finally ventured back into the dining room, Mom and Dex both looked up at me expectantly. I stood the phone beside Dad and sat down resolutely in front of my homework.

“So, how’s Lou?” Dex asked.

“We’re friends!” I said. “Doesn’t anybody but me and Dad have any work to do?”

Dad tore his eyes away from his laptop screen and asked me, “Who’s Lou?”

“A friend,” I said, trying to stop smiling. “Just a friend.”

eight

T
he next morning, Morgan
grabbed me when I was halfway out of the backseat of Mom’s car and dragged me by the elbow past Zoe and CJ into school, whispering as if nothing had happened between us at the bike rack the day before. “Did you bring in your permission slip?” she asked me. “What should we get for the bus ride?”

“I’m not sure,” I said, stopping myself from asking if we were sitting together next Monday on the bus to apple picking. I’d been half expecting her to give me the Silent Treatment.

“We’ll figure it out,” she whispered, toying with the lock dangling from my locker. “Right?”

“Right.” Last week we were just acquaintances. I wasn’t at all sure how to act toward her. I closed my locker and she fastened the lock for me.

“I’ll pick you up after homeroom,” she whispered.

“I, OK,” I agreed.
I really could just meet you at Spanish, like usual
, I almost said, but she’s free to take an extra long walk if she feels like it, I told myself. I don’t know how she managed it, but by the time Zoe and I emerged from our homeroom, Morgan was already there, waiting for me. She dragged me by the elbow toward Spanish. Zoe was left standing there alone. During class she passed me a note that said,
Hola, amiga
. I didn’t pass one back, but I did smile at her. She waited by my desk after the bell rang.

On the way to math, Lou walked with us and said, “Wait till you see what I thought of.”

Morgan turned her back to him and whispered to me, “What does
he
want?”

I cupped my hand over her ear and whispered through her silky hair, “He’s my partner for the math project.”

“I sort of thought . . .” she mumbled. “Never mind.”

I didn’t know what to say.
Does being best friends mean you’re automatically partners for everything?
I didn’t mean to do the wrong thing. I was just unclear about the rules.

The bell rang as I was slipping into my seat. When we split up to work with partners, I pulled my chair to Lou’s desk, but I turned away from him and looked toward Morgan, who was slumped over Roxanne Luse’s messy desk. Morgan looked at me blankly, maybe angrily. I flared my nostrils at her. She cracked up, which made me feel terrific. Nobody ever thought I was funny before.

“Hi,” Lou said.

“Hi.” I tried to think of anything other than,
He likes me
. “So, a code . . .”

“A code.” We made eye contact. I quickly looked down at my paper. With my peripheral vision, I saw his face turning purple. I think mine was, too. I glanced over at Morgan, who smiled at me. It felt like my birthday or something, like I was the one in the tiara and the chair with the Mylar balloon.

I thought of a million questions I wanted to ask Lou, none of which had to do with numbers. For example, I thought of asking why his family had a rule about whether you can go out with somebody and at what age, but I guess my family is different from most. I can’t imagine my parents making that kind of rule, or that they’d think it was any of their business; even if they did tease me about Lou’s phone call, they certainly didn’t press me for details or tell me what I could or couldn’t do. That would’ve been so rude. It may be one reason Dex and I get along so well with our parents: They respect our privacy and our ability to make responsible decisions. If I’d ridden with Morgan on her bike, for example, it’s not that my mother would punish me or ground me like other mothers might, but just that she’d be surprised and disappointed in my poor judgment. I think. I don’t know because I would never betray her trust.

The bell rang incredibly soon, and Morgan yanked me away. I barely said ’bye to Lou. Morgan whispered, “Let’s get out of here!”

All day long it was like that: Morgan putting her back to everybody and whispering only to me, and Lou blushing every time he looked my way.

At the end of soccer practice, Lou jogged over from the other field where the boys had had their practice and headed straight for me with his big, doofy grin. Dex, who is the starting center on the boys’ team, was waving at me, too, his cleats knotted at the laces and draped over his shoulder. I waved back and Lou, thinking I was waving at him, yelled, “Hi!” Dex tilted his head and pointed his thumb at Lou, then sped up to overtake him.

Morgan wedged herself between me and them and whispered, “Walk me to my bike?”

I hesitated.

She cupped her hand over my ear. “I know you won’t let me ride you. I just have to tell you something.”

“OK,” I said. I wiped my sweaty face on my new purple soccer shirt and, waving to both Dex and Lou, ran with her toward the bike rack. Both boys stopped walking and stood in the middle of the girls’ field, looking perplexed.

She didn’t tell me anything earth-shattering at the bikes, just, “Some people are so uncoordinated.” She cocked her head toward the two girls who had crashed into the goalpost earlier in practice. We both covered our mouths.

I never act like that. I hate girls who act like that. It seems so stupid and insensitive and immature. The strangest part was, I liked it.

nine

Y
ou’re not getting to be friends
with Morgan Miller, are you?” Dex asked me in the morning, as I was eating my Cheerios.

“Why shouldn’t I?”

He shook his head. “You’ve been saying for two years what a lousy friend she is to CJ, what a bad influence. She’s so nasty and sarcastic. I’m just repeating what you’ve always said.”

He was telling the truth, so what could I say? “People change,” I told him. “And I’m sarcastic, too, sometimes.”

“Yeah.” Dex laughed. “You, sarcastic.”

“You ready?” Mom asked, rushing through the kitchen with her hands above her head, braiding her shiny black hair. “Let’s go, let’s go!”

We piled into the car. “You smell,” Dex said, tugging at my soccer shirt.

“Oh, I’m so concerned,” I said.

Dex turned around and stared at me. “That
was
sarcastic. Holy.”

I sneaked a sniff at myself while Dex climbed into the car. I smelled OK, I thought, but now I was nervous about it. I hoped all the other girls would be wearing their soccer shirts, too. Last year we all did. It surprised me that I would care at all what anybody else wore, and resolved not to. When we pulled up in front of school, though, I was relieved to see all the other girls wearing their soccer shirts. I sat down with Morgan, our backs against the cool brick wall in the front of school.

Dex shook his head as he passed us.

Morgan watched him go by, then whispered to me, “Look at CJ.”

CJ, who can’t do soccer this year because she has ballet almost every afternoon, was just about the only girl in seventh grade who wasn’t in a purple Boggs Bobcats soccer shirt. CJ had on a pale yellow dress, instead. It made her skin look even greener than usual—to match her eyes. I whispered to Morgan, “What about her?”

“Exactly,” Morgan answered. She laughed. The bell rang. She grabbed me by the elbow and whispered as we shuffled in, “You are so funny, Olivia. I can’t believe I never knew.”

I placed my lunch carefully in my locker and raised an eyebrow.

“What?” Morgan asked. “I just forgot mine.”

“Your permission slip?”

“No, my lunch. It must be on the counter, that’s all. Jeez.” She turned and sprinted toward her homeroom.

I gathered the books I’d need for the morning and headed toward Ms. Masters’s room. I passed Zoe Grandon at the water fountain. She yelled for me to wait up for her, so I did. She asked me when I was getting my braces.

“Friday,” I told her.

She scrunched her face sympathetically.

“The orthodontist told me my teeth aren’t the worst he’s ever seen.”

“Oh,” said Zoe. “That’s a sort of horrible thing to say.”

I nodded. “I asked him if the other person survived.”

Zoe laughed out loud as we walked into Ms. Masters’s room. Ms. Masters put her finger to her lips. Zoe covered her mouth with both hands and whispered to me, “You’re funny.”

“So I hear,” I mumbled to myself.

All through the pledge I stole glances over at Zoe. She is very friendly, but I never know what to talk about with her. Her broad face is so open and eager, so ready to laugh along with anything you come up with, it seems almost nasty to be at a loss for topics of discussion with her. She couldn’t be nicer or easier to get along with, and yet there’s always something that makes me turn away from her. And it’s not just that Morgan was giving Zoe the Silent Treatment. I make my own judgments.

Zoe glanced over at me right before the bell rang and caught me looking at her. She smiled. I smiled back.

Last Friday, Tommy Levit flicked Zoe’s bra strap a number of times, such an immature little jerk, and when he wouldn’t stop, she let him have it verbally with an expression I would never use, but which I thought was totally justified, and which I have memorized in case someday I wear a bra and somebody flicks it. But somehow Morgan and CJ twisted the whole thing all around and made Zoe apologize to Tommy, saying the incident was her own fault because she was wearing a tight shirt. It was ridiculous and insulting. Zoe looked so confused. I tried to tell her she shouldn’t apologize at all, that she was absolutely not in the wrong—but she caved in to the peer pressure of the more popular girls and left me sitting alone. I’m not really friends with the boys (except now I guess Lou), so I suppose I wasn’t the right one to listen to on how to deal with them, but anyway since then I’ve felt like, for all Zoe’s big size and outgoing nature, she isn’t a very strong person. I try not to be so judgmental, but sometimes I can’t help myself.

Zoe headed to French and I went to Spanish. Morgan caught up with me halfway and asked if I’d done the homework. Of course I had. I didn’t ask if she’d done it because I didn’t want to be in the position of her asking to copy mine. We took our seats. She looked especially sad. “You OK?” I asked her.

She nodded, then rested her head in her crossed arms on her desk. I got the homework all right, but I didn’t volunteer and didn’t get chosen. When the bell rang, I gathered my books and stood up to walk to math/science with Morgan, but Lou gripped me by the shoulder. “Hey,” he said.

Morgan continued walking with a scowl on her face. I couldn’t tell if she was angry at me or what, but Lou wasn’t letting go of my shoulder. I looked up into his red-cheeked face.

“Um, your shirt is nice,” he said.

“My shirt?”

“The soccer ball. Is nice. And the, um, fit.”

I looked down at the shirt that hung straight down from my shoulders to the middle of my thighs. It fit me about like everything else fits me. “Thanks,” I said. The boys’ uniforms hadn’t come in yet, so Lou was wearing a blue button-down with the sleeves rolled up. I told him his shirt was nice, too. We sounded like a couple of idiots.

“Um,” he said. “I was wondering.”

That’s all. I stood waiting to hear what he was wondering, but instead of talking he just turned redder and redder until he was almost purple. Señora Goldsmith called from behind her desk to ask if he was OK, if he wanted a pass to the nurse, because he looked like he had a fever.

“No,
gracias
,” he said, his voice cracking, and pushed me out the door. We walked toward math/science. “I . . .” he started.

I switched my books to the arm between us and kept walking.

“I . . .” he said again.

We had reached the door of Ms. Cress’s room. Ms. Cress was at the board, reaching up to write some equations in chalk. All the boys spend the whole double period of math and science staring at Ms. Cress’s long, shapely, pale legs in their high-heeled boots. I saw Lou look.

“Lou!” Tommy Levit yelled. Lou flicked his head toward the front corner where Tommy was standing, with his hands in his pockets.

“Here,” Lou said to me, and thrust a folded piece of paper at me. I took it and went to my desk, put down my books, and unfolded the note. It was a cartoon Lou had drawn in pencil, of two dogs standing in front of a toilet. The smaller one looks perplexed and disappointed as the bigger one tells him,
I know I used to like drinking out of it, too—but I’ve moved on
.

I smiled at it, and looked up to watch Lou walk over to Tommy. Dex has a point; Lou does sort of walk with a
de-doe, de-doe
rhythm, and his hair goes in many directions. You could see why people think he’s goofy, especially compared to somebody like Tommy Levit, with his dimples and squashed-in cute face, and his solid way of moving—shoulders square, eyes straight ahead. Lou’s eyes never stop darting around. I watched him arching down to listen to Tommy. I felt myself melting a little at how apologetic Lou looks.
He’s a geek
, I heard inside my head. But then I congratulated myself on resisting those messages. I reread the cartoon. So cute. My palms got damp. It felt weird but good.