Among Friends

by Caroline B. Cooney

  Praise for Among Friends

  A New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age

  “Well developed and fast paced.”

  —Voice of Youth Advocates

  “The style is breezy [and] accessible and readers will respond to the author’s candid view of friendship.”

  —Booklist

  Novels by Caroline B. Cooney

  The Lost Songs

  Three Black Swans

  They Never Came Back

  If the Witness Lied

  Diamonds in the Shadow

  A Friend at Midnight

  Hit the Road

  Code Orange

  The Girl Who Invented Romance

  Family Reunion

  Goddess of Yesterday

  The Ransom of Mercy Carter

  Tune In Anytime

  Burning Up

  What Child Is This?

  Driver’s Ed

  Twenty Pageants Later

  Among Friends

  The Time Travelers, Volumes I and II

  The Janie Books

  The Face on the Milk Carton

  Whatever Happened to Janie?

  The Voice on the Radio

  What Janie Found

  What Janie Saw (an ebook original short story)

  Janie Face to Face

  The Time Travel Quartet

  Both Sides of Time

  Out of Time

  Prisoner of Time

  For All Time

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 1987 by Caroline B. Cooney

  Cover illustration copyright © by Jackie Parsons

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in hardcover by Delacorte Press in 1987.

  Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

  Visit us on the Web! randomhouse.com/teens

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition of this work as follows:

  Cooney, Caroline B.

  Among friends / Caroline B. Cooney

  p. cm.

  Summary: Six high school juniors discover surprising, often painful, things about themselves and their relationships with the people around them in the diaries they are asked to keep as a three-month English assignment.

  [1. Self-perception—Fiction. 2. Friendship—Fiction. 3. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 4. High schools—Fiction. 5. Schools—Fiction.] I. Title

  PZ7.C7834 Am 1987

  [Fic]—dc22

  87018853

  eISBN: 978-0-307-81892-8

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v3.1

  For my son, Harold

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  December

  January

  February

  About the Author

  Everybody who had Miss MacBeth for English last year warned us that The Assignment was coming up, but still we thought we could bring Miss MacBeth around. We’ll read an extra Shakespeare play, we promised, we’ll read Moby Dick, we’ll read War and Peace, we’ll read any book with 800 pages, but please, please, please don’t make us keep diaries!

  Miss MacBeth just passed out spiral notebooks with green pages, like the ones secretaries use for shorthand. “You’ll find these easy to fill,” she said.

  There are sixteen of us in advanced junior English. Sixteen moans rose up like a chorus of dogs at the pound.

  “Fill?” we said, horrified. “Miss MacBeth, you expect us to fill these books? What are we going to say?”

  “Whatever comes to mind,” said Miss MacBeth. “We’ll keep them for three months. You’ll be surprised at what happens in your lives over three months.” She smiled, but her smile landed, of course, on Jennie.

  I looked at Jennie too, but I didn’t smile.

  Once there was an Awesome Threesome.

  Jennie and Hillary and me.

  You come across a lot of best friends, but we were the only trio in school history. If only The Awesome Threesome still existed! Jennie would first of all talk Miss MacBeth around and get us a better assignment. Teachers try to please Jennie, instead of the other way around. And if Jennie lost, and we did have to keep diaries, Jennie would make it such fun! We’d read each other’s entries, and laugh around the clock. Or else Jennie would think up some crazy diary-writing technique to make everybody else in the room wish they could be part of The Awesome Threesome, too.

  Today was like old times for a minute. Jennie and Hillary and I stood there in the hall after English class staring at our blank notebooks, leaning against each other to make a tepee: Jennie always said three made a perfect support.

  Like third grade. I still remember the day Jennie said we were going to learn to jump rope or die trying. She made us stand in the road with that piece of clothesline all day, and we even missed lunch; we lied to our mothers and said we’d eaten at each other’s houses. But by the time it was dark, we could each jump into the rope and do any pattern we’d ever seen done.

  Today we straightened up from the tepee and Jennie said, “Let’s play ‘This Hallway Is Ours.’ ”

  She invented that game on the first day of high school, when we were scrawny little ninth graders and everybody else was lost in the maze of halls or struggling to remember new locker combinations. We were scared of the seniors because they seemed so old and sophisticated, so tall and well dressed. But we linked arms, because Jennie said that if we’d been The Awesome Threesome in junior high, we’d really be The Awesome Threesome in high school. We marched down those unfamiliar halls like the Salvation Army taking over a street corner, and even the seniors got out of our way.

  We haven’t done that in ages.

  For a while I thought the change in The Awesome Threesome was from summer. After all, I had a job at McDonald’s and Hillary’s grandmother took her to Europe and Jennie—I don’t even know what Jennie did all summer. It was the first time The Awesome Threesome went separate ways. And somehow it’s not going back together. Or rather, Hill and I go together, but Jennie—Jennie’s “busy.” That’s Jennie’s word for when she’s being a success and we’re just going shopping.

  Sometimes before class, we find that I’ve studied two hours a day all week for the test—and Jennie forgot about it. But I’ll get an 83 and Jennie will get 96 without trying.

  When I’ve wept over my hair, I go to school and see Jennie all fluffy and sparkly, and I know that the most she’s ever done is run a brush through her hair once.

  When you’re little kids, jumping rope together, you don’t know you’re going to be dull. You think you’re going to be exciting and popular and gaudy and bright. And Jennie is!

  Whereas I’m just Emily.

  Jennie is racing on ahead; her speed in life is twice mine. I’m slogging along back here, choking on her dust.

  I’m jealous.

  Terrible, terrible word.

  Jealousy is a little ball inside me, like a malignant tumor. As long as it stays a little ball, I’ll be okay, I can control it. But what if the ball bursts? What if it spreads through me like some dreadful stain?

  I can’t tell my mother, who would be ashamed of me. I c
an’t tell Hillary, because she doesn’t seem to have bad feelings toward Jennie. I can’t tell Jennie, because it’s not Jennie’s fault she’s terrrific and I’m ordinary.

  Look at that. I even put three “r” ’s in terrific. Jennie’s terrrific deserves more than the usual number.

  All autumn this jealousy has been building. Now I’m choking on it.

  So I guess I’m lucky to have a diary. Somebody to tell.

  Oh, how weird! I’m calling the diary somebody, as if it’s a person who understands, not a bunch of wired-together green pages!

  I don’t know about this. A person could be sorry she wrote things down. I like Miss MacBeth, and I like her assignments, although sometimes it tires me out that no matter how clever I am, Jennie is cleverer. Miss MacBeth has this huge piece of purple paper on the board and in the center of it she puts the week’s best composition of any of her classes. I swear I am not exaggerating when I say that Jennie Quint has been there every single week for two years. A person should know when to back off. Jennie only knows when to surge on ahead.

  In physics, of course, she’s the one with the laser experiment that makes all the rest of us look like third graders learning the four tables.

  In English, of course, she’s written some fabulous short story, which is now up on the purple paper.

  In German, of course, she sits next to Paul Classified and they flirt in foreign languages.

  And now we hear from the Drama/Music Department that the Christmas production is an original pageant, music, costumes, and choreography by Miss Jennie Dunstan Quint.

  I can’t stand it.

  And the worst thing of all is, her complexion is always perfect. That girl has never known what it is to face the mirror in the morning and see yet another horrid spot bursting out on the tip of her nose.

  Miss MacBeth gave us her solemn promise that these diaries would be guarded with her life and nobody else would read them and they would not be posted or excerpted from. Miss MacBeth, I don’t know whether to have faith in you or not.

  I wonder what these journals will accomplish. Paul has so many secrets we could probably auction off his journal at the end of three months and pay for our whole junior prom. But I know Paul; he won’t give away a thing. Probably record the daily temperature instead of his thoughts. I still have my crush on Paul Classified. It’s funny how tantalizing he is just because he never responds! I think Paul Classified is so good-looking. Paul has a silent presence. You’re always aware of him: strong, tall, unbelievably quiet. Paul doesn’t fidget, or tap pencils. He doesn’t adjust his jacket or tell jokes. Before he talks there’s a slight pause: Paul planning ahead so that each sentence will reveal as little as possible. I want Paul Classified to love me.

  Jennie’s all bright-eyed and starry about something. At first I thought it was Paul Classified, but no. “Oh, it’s this project I’m doing,” she said vaguely, as if I wouldn’t be able to understand the project.

  Jennie and Emily and I were little girls again during passing period. It was fun, and it worked, just like it used to, but it doesn’t fit anymore. The Awesome Threesome. That used to be the pivot of my entire life: the trio of us. It’s different now. I still want to be friends, but I don’t want to be The Awesome Threesome.

  I’m sick of Awesome.

  I want Jennie to be ordinary again.

  You transfer into another high school and people are curious. They know your name; the teacher puts it on the blackboard. But you’re anonymous in blue jeans and sweater. So they ask questions, as in, “Hi, Paul. I’m Jennie. Where are you from?”

  Okay, she’s Jennie. Cute, sparkly. But I’m not going to tell anybody anything. They learn one thing, they’re going to want to know another. I’ve practiced my new smile in front of the mirror, and it’s a good one, stretches my lips back, and everything. I say to Jennie, “I move a lot.”

  Right off, from the first day, I mean to stay away from Jennie, because she’s the type who will win: if she wants to know me bad enough, eventually she will. But I stay around her because she’s exciting. She’s my first genius. I might never meet another one.

  In physics lab Jennie is assigned to be my partner. Jennie flirts like mad, and I start liking her, but I keep a grip on myself.

  Jennie says, “What do your parents do for a living that they have to move so often?”

  The whole lab is listening, so I say pleasantly, “Oh, this and that. They blow hot and cold on lots of stuff.”

  Next time we have lab Jennie says, “Paul R. Smith? That’s your name? My middle name is Dunstan. What does ‘R’ stand for?”

  Again the whole lab is listening. Even the teacher. I manage to smile. I say, “Why should it stand for anything?”

  Jennie laughs. She asks another question and it’s one I can’t answer with a crafty little quip. I wipe the grin off my face and pay attention to the lab. Jennie’s getting a little close for comfort. Things are bad for me and I can’t risk it.

  Funny: I’ve moved four times and it takes months to find your slot and make friends. This time I swear off friends and overnight I’ve got status. I’m popular because I’m a mystery.

  One day we’re filling out forms that request your middle name. “Oh, good! At least we can find out one thing about Paul,” cries Ansley. “His middle name!”

  I can’t stand Ansley. First of all, that’s not a real name. Second, you can’t tell from the name she’s a girl. Third, Ansley is preppy. I don’t like preppy. Reminds me of my—

  No.

  This may be a journal, but that doesn’t mean I have to reveal any secrets.

  The teacher looks at my paper. I’ve written the letter “R” where it says middle name. “So, Paul?” he teases. “Even your middle name is classified information, huh?”

  Instantly The Awesome Threesome starts calling me Paul Classified. The nickname circulates through the entire high school in like six minutes flat. The gym teacher, the kid with the locker next to me, the freshmen in my woodworking class, everybody in English—they’re all calling me Paul Classified.

  At first I was going to put up a fight.

  Then I think, it’s like armor. Whenever they get a little too close—Jennie is always a fraction too close, it’s her nature, I guess, closeness—I can say, “Classified,” and they laugh.

  Jennie is part of The Awesome Threesome. I don’t know if I’ve ever come across three best friends before. Jennie is the plainest of the bunch when she’s quiet: average height, weight, coloring. But Jennie is hardly ever quiet. She’s got enough sparkle to dim new-fallen snow on a sunny morning. Hillary is the prettiest: strawberry blond hair, green eyes, great legs. The third is Emily, with thin black hair, big soft dark eyes, and a back-of-the-room sort of personality.

  Don’t notice me! her posture says.

  I wish my posture said that. People in this school notice me no matter what.

  The Awesome Threesome likes to flirt with me. “Okay, Paul. So you won’t go out with one girl. Go out with three instead. Want to go skiing with us in Vermont this weekend? Don’t worry, Hill’s mother is chaperoning.”

  “Thanks,” I tell them. “My family has plans.”

  That happens to be the truth. We always have plans. Not plans I like, but plans I can’t do much about.

  Just before sixth period, I’m going down the hallway, focusing on physics, which doesn’t come as easily to me as it does to Jennie (not that I’d tell her that) and The Awesome Threesome appears at the far end of the corridor. They have braided their hair together: Jennie’s brown, Hillary’s red, and Emily’s black, into one fat tricolor braid, and Emily’s got the braid in her fist. The Awesome Threesome staggers down the middle of the hallway, six legs under one head of hair, taking up so much room everybody has to flatten against the walls to let them by. First Ansley, who’s thin as a bookmark anyway, and couldn’t get any flatter if you stuck her under a truck. Then her boyfriend Jared, who is so preppy I’m always surprised when he talks—up till then I
’ve figured he’s a store window mannequin for ski togs. Then our history teacher, Miss Marcello, who probably weighs the same as the QE II, with a prow equally large. Miss Marcello can suck in her lungs all year, and she’s not going to get flat against the wall. The Awesome Threesome is laughing like crazy, their laughs braiding together like their hair: Jennie’s all breath, Em’s a high giggle, Hill’s a deep chuckle.

  Jennie winks at me. I try to stop myself, but I wink back.

  I can’t help it.

  Her wink is all mine, all special.

  And then I slip by fast.

  If Jennie touches me, I’m gone, and I can’t afford it.

  I, Ansley Augusta Morgan, begin my journal in the autumn of my junior year at Westerly High. I would prefer to be at Choate Rosemary Hall or Miss Porter’s, like my friends, but my parents believe that the public school system is good for me. They are mistaken.

  Look at the retards with whom I am forced to share the halls.

  Jennie and her little buddies sashayed down the halls hanging onto each other’s hair, staggering like drunks attached at the roots, pushing everybody out of their way. Naturally they seized this chance to flirt with Paul Classified.

  Everybody thinks Paul is so fascinating. Trust me. The only fascinating thing about Paul is that he has managed to convince the school he is fascinating. Underneath all that so-called mystery there’s just another jock with nothing to say.

  And I swear every girl in this school has a crush on him, just the way every boy gets a crush on Jennie. It drives me crazy when all a person does is stand there showing off—and other people fall in love with them.

  Thank goodness for Jared. Another seven weeks and Jared and I will have been officially going together for one year. A January anniversary. I’ll call it our Janiversary. Jared has been saying for weeks now that this winter he’s going camping in the mountains in the snow. I’m going to call his bluff and get him equipment for it.