Among Friends

by Caroline B. Cooney

  Keith Malone, one of the seniors who are eligible for Star Student application, leaned between Hill and me and said very loudly, “If it isn’t the Star of the East! Look at that! Somebody lend me sunglasses, I can hardly see! She’s shining so brightly!”

  Be loyal! I thought. Stand up for her!

  But I didn’t. I didn’t say a single word. I braided the tassels on the end of my scarlet and white scarf.

  And Keith said, “So how’s that math tutoring going, Miss Quint? You reach perfection yet? We wouldn’t want you to settle for anything less.”

  Ansley said, “Lay off, Malone.”

  Jennie was standing right in front of us. She smiled her usual bright smile and said, “I’m a little worried about the math, to tell the truth.”

  Keith gasped loudly. “Worried? Jennie Quint? Oh, Jennie, we wouldn’t want that! You must scurry to Dr. Sykes and he’ll help you.”

  Jennie’s chin tipped up and her cheeks went red.

  Amanda Hodges said, “But she’s just a little worried, Keith. Jennie would never worry much.”

  I looked up. Jennie was waiting for me. She still expected friendship from me—after all these snubs, she still thought I would come through and be nice to her. I muttered, “Hillary, shove over and let her in.”

  Hillary said, “No, Em, forget it. We’re too crowded.”

  Jennie whirled away, running back toward the door of the gym.

  I almost jumped over the three rows below me and ran after her. “Hill, we can’t do this to her.”

  “Oh, Emily,” said Hillary angrily, “you were the one who was the most jealous.”

  “I know, but I wasn’t the most mean.”

  “Meanest, dummy,” said Amanda Hodges.

  I grabbed my coat to go after her and haul her back when in the door came Scott and Brandon. Handsome, overdressed, amused by the whole place. They said, “Jennie! Great! We were hoping to run into you! We’re slumming, going to a public-school game! Want to sit with us?”

  Keith Malone said, “Slumming?”

  Amanda Hodges said, “It is Jennie, Keith dear. She’s far superior to the common run of Westerly students, you know.”

  Jennie didn’t look back. She crossed the gym and sat opposite us, Scott on her left and Brandon on her right.

  I would feel guilty and awful and rotten through and through (in fact, I do feel guilty and awful and rotten through and through), but Jennie coming out on top again just made me weary. So I didn’t call her up to apologize, and after the game Hill and I stood around joking with Jared and Ansley so we wouldn’t have to talk to Jennie and Brandon and Scott in the front foyer.

  This is getting bad.

  I am going downhill faster than on skis.

  Jennie gets Scott and Brandon. How does she do it? Anybody else would have dragged home with her tail between her legs, utterly miserable and defeated. Jennie ends up with two handsome rich boys. I have never known a single person in my life who so consistently ends up better off than the rest of us.

  So far we hadn’t glanced at the game yet, and it wouldn’t be any time soon that we did, because Paul Classified appeared in the doorway to the gym. From everywhere, girls’ eyes drifted toward him and locked.

  Paul was wearing jeans, and a fleece-lined jeans jacket. He had a hard look to him, as if it would be dangerous to talk to him. He needed a haircut. That thick dark brown hair was in his eyes. Very slowly Paul Classified pushed it back. You could hear this female group sigh. Paul Classified didn’t notice; the basketball teams didn’t notice; maybe the parents didn’t notice. Jennie Quint noticed. She stood up and waved at Paul.

  Paul had never come to a game before that I knew of. I wanted him to sit with me—or us, rather—but if the choice was Jennie or elsewhere, I wanted him to sit with boys, who would welcome him because Paul had their respect, but he wouldn’t really be one of them: he’d be with them.

  Sit with me, sit with me! I thought at him, willing him to pick me out of the crowd. Paul circled the gym and climbed up to sit with Jennie Quint, who already had Brandon on her left and Scott on her right.

  You should have heard us then.

  Now I know that lightning does not strike when you say bad things, because lightning didn’t strike and if anybody ever deserved it, we did. We were horrible, we spent the whole basketball game saying terrible things about Jennie Quint.

  I kept thinking—Jennie and I were best friends. We did everything together. Which of us is bad right this minute? Me or Jennie?

  Oh, I don’t want to keep a diary anymore! Putting these thoughts on paper makes me feel so much worse. I can’t pretend I’m good when I see them written down.

  I’m not writing stuff like this anymore.

  After this, I’m writing strictly facts. Weather, headlines, and homework.

  No more truth.

  The end.

  Love, Hillary … (although I should invent a new way of signing off, because right now I certainly don’t feel loving. So I’ll write—)

  Anger, Hillary

  Well, old P.C. definitely is a mystery after all.

  Last week in school (where I figured it was a little safer) I apologized to him for following him. He said nothing, of course. His face just froze over as if it were water in January. What he was mostly doing was not decking me. Then he walked away. How can somebody who says so little, moves so little, does so little—reduce me to nothing so thoroughly?

  So just when I knew where I stood (in danger), he started being friendly to me. A mere few weeks after I thought he was going to strangle me right out on the highway. In fact, the way he looks at me, you’d think I’m the mystery.

  At least I don’t have to worry about being attacked. And Paul doesn’t have to worry about being followed. I think he taught me a minor lesson.

  During the basketball game not one girl saw a single point being made. They spent the entire game talking about how Jennie Quint has gotten Paul. Forget it. Paul doesn’t even know Jennie’s there. He’s just staying safe, with a pair of strangers: Brandon and Scott he’ll never see again in his life.

  Paper. I cannot believe that the only friend I have is a piece of paper. Nobody else to listen to me? Nobody else to tell things to?

  I don’t want to be sitting home writing my triumphs down in some lousy stenographer’s notebook!

  I want to be at McDonald’s having a strawberry shake with Emily and Hillary. I want to be at school throwing the whipped cream on top of the Jell-O at Ansley. I want to be telling Paul, or Keith, or Jonathan, or Brian, or Matthew.…

  I am telling my diary.

  Like a sixth grader who just moved to a new town.

  Dear Diary, you’ll have to he my friend because I don’t know anybody else. Oh, how pitiful.

  And it’s me.

  Brandon and Scott. Those girls who were so jealous of me should have been there. It wasn’t a date, just a row of three. Nobody held hands. Nobody kissed. Nobody uttered a single personal syllable. The boys talked about cars and engines and good buys in electronic equipment.

  Anyway, I wanted to be with Paul Classified, not Scott and Brandon. I know—I just know—that if I got to know Paul better he would be exciting. His little sister Candy—it could be anything. From illegal adoption to early childhood drug addiction, you know?

  Actually when I waved at Paul to come sit with us, I was rather hoping he would get jealous himself. He might think, I don’t want Jennie running around with these other guys from the Yuppie Yard. I want her for myself. And he’d ask me out!

  Well, he sat with us, but he sat next to Scott and they talked through the entire basketball game about snowmobiles, because Paul used to have one.

  I couldn’t even see Paul very well. I spent most of the game watching Hillary and Emily laughing. How long has it been since I laughed like that? I used to laugh all the time.

  Mother is having a big party Sunday night. Forty guests. It’s a Celebrate the Star Student party. I said, “But Mother, I haven�
�t even gone to Hartford to take the examinations yet.” She just laughed and kissed me and went on dialing the caterer. “You’ll win, dear,” she said confidently. “Daddy and I have absolute trust in your brains and ability.”

  We had a very unexpected dinner guest … Paul Classified.

  Ansley and I got home from working on our term papers at the library and Dad drove in the driveway and he had P.C. with him.

  It was the most awkward dinner of my entire life. Paul hates me because I follow him around. Ansley likes Paul more than I want her to. My father knows everything about Paul and won’t tell me any of it. And Mother, she never notices anything amiss, she just tells all these incredibly boring stories about contractors who didn’t show up to work on the addition, or how sweet the man at the dry cleaner’s was to her.

  Paul liked my mother, which made me think that I needed binoculars to see Paul better.

  When I drove Ansley home, she said, “Well, that was weird.”

  I said, “I have the impression my father is adopting another son.”

  Ansley said, “Or maybe your mother is. They were really interested in Paul.”

  “I didn’t pick up any clues, though, did you?”

  Ansley hadn’t learned anything more about P.C. either, but she told me about his middle name—Paul Revere and all that stuff. I was furious! She knew all these weeks and didn’t tell me? “It was private,” she said, as if she was surprised that it mattered to me.

  All the world has something private going on with Paul Classified.

  I went straight home, and Dad had taken Paul back to wherever Paul lives, and I demanded explanations.

  Zip.

  My father shrugged.

  I yelled, “Dad! You can’t shrug! I’m your son! Tell me what’s going on!”

  “Can’t.”

  My mother said, “Jared, darling, one of these days Paul will open up and talk about it, but until then, play along, all right?”

  Now I was really outraged. “You know all about Paul too?” I demanded. “The two of you are taking Paul on as a cause or something?”

  My mother put her hands on my cheeks and said, “Sweetie, this is a test. I’ll be proud of you for taking Paul on yourself, and asking no questions until he’s ready to talk.”

  Now what do you say when your mother comes on like that? Naturally you have to say, “Yes, Mother, I’ll ace the test, you’ll be proud of me.”

  When she left the room I said, “Come on, Dad, satisfy my curiosity,” and he said, “No.”

  That’s the trouble with having a lawyer in the family: all these one-syllable dead ends.

  The whole school is against Jennie.

  You can feel it, like the excitement before a big game: it’s the excitement of seeing Jennie lose.

  It’s sick.

  Reminds me of that day when the guys attacked Paul Classified in the cafeteria.

  I try to figure out what Jennie’s crime is. Not that she was born brilliant and beautiful and rich—Ansley’s all of that and nobody hates Ansley. It’s that Jennie works so hard. We don’t mind brains if you just let the brains sit around. But when you fling yourself into it, when you have ten times the energy of everybody around you, we get mad at you. You’re showing us up.

  If Jennie wins Star Student, she’s lost all of us.

  If Jennie loses Star Student, she’s still lost all of us.

  She’s going to be the greatest winner this school ever saw … and the biggest loser.

  It’s dark now, and quiet, and very, very late, although I can’t see my clock because I’m huddling under the covers. I’m trying to decide something. If I fail, will I get Emily and Hillary back? If I say, “You’re right, I’m not that good”—will they like me again? Or have I blown it forever? Suppose I become ordinary, like Em and Hill? Suppose I stopped composing Ye Season, It Was Winter? Suppose I skipped assignments, and didn’t pass in term papers, and got C’s and D’s, and maybe dropped my music classes, and stayed out of drama club? Would they take me back?

  I don’t think so.

  I think they would say, “You’re doing it on purpose, Jennie, and so it doesn’t count.”

  I think they would say, “You’re doing it just to get more attention, Jennie, and so we don’t care.”

  I think there’s no way I can ever have a friend again.

  My success killed them.

  My success will kill me, too.

  Why aren’t you proud of me? I’m doing my best! Why isn’t that good? Why is that bad?

  I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t mean to be good. I’m not this way in order to ruin your chances. I was born this way, you guys!

  I wonder what the other winners of Star Student have been like. Did they have friends? Were they able to pull off success without people hating them?

  But what if I’ve spent all this year blaming this on being too good for my own good … and what if it really is me? What if I really am a bad person?

  I couldn’t go to school.

  I went to the hospital to see her.

  She was asleep.

  I didn’t know what to do, so I just sat in the lobby. I sat there for a long time, holding an old Time magazine in my lap and staring at the window of the gift shop. If I had money I could buy my mother a pretty gown. Or a paperback book.

  A long time passed, and I didn’t move. There was no place to move to.

  Jared Lowe’s father sat down next to me. He said hello. I didn’t say anything. He said, “Paul, I have a good life, a soft life. You have a bad life, a hard life, a life of rocks and sharp edges. But one way to have an easier life is to let other people help you. Nobody can go it alone. When your father abandoned you, because the going got too rough for him, you and your stepmother tried to go it alone. And it didn’t work. You both completely fell apart.”

  “I did not fall apart,” I said.

  “Yes, you did. It just doesn’t show as much on you as it does on your mother.” He put his arm around my shoulder. For a minute it was just there, and then he tightened it around me in a little hug.

  This is it, I thought, the moment I’ve been afraid of for a year now: I’m going to collapse, the dam is breaking.

  Mr. Lowe said, “You don’t have to talk. All you have to do is let me buy you a hamburger.”

  I kind of laughed. I said, “I am pretty hungry.”

  Mr. Lowe said, “Maybe two hamburgers.”

  And I said, “The thing is, I don’t even like Jared.”

  “You grew up years ahead of him, Paul. He’ll get there eventually. I kind of enjoy him myself.”

  I said, “You’re his father. You ought to.”

  Mr. Lowe said, “I’d like to be your temporary father, if you’d allow that.”

  Temporary father.

  But that’s suitable, I suppose.

  All my parents have been temporary.

  I cannot believe I am living with the Lowes. But what choice was there? And I admit to a diary only, I was too tired to argue.

  Nobody wished me luck.

  Nobody asked me if I felt okay, or was nervous, or had studied for it. They all just looked at me, with mocking cruel looks, hoping I would fail. Well, I won’t fail! I don’t care what anybody thinks, I don’t care how lonely I am, I will succeed, just as I always succeed, and Mother and Daddy will be proud.

  They hired a bus to take the seniors and me to the state capital. Not your usual uncomfortable yellow school bus, but a plush travel bus with a bathroom. “It’s because we’re special,” said one of the seniors happily. “It’s because Jennie’s along,” said Amanda cynically.

  I was not surprised to be sitting alone, but nothing is so lonely as sitting by yourself in a double seat. Having me along had a curious effect on the seniors. They lost their nervousness. After all, they had already lost to me, so there was no test anxiety. They would actually do better on the examination, because they weren’t frightened.

  “Maybe she won’t win,” said somebody.

 
“Jennie not win?” cried Amanda. “Unthinkable! Of course Jennie will win. Has Westerly ever had a star to compare with Jennie Quint?”

  The bus turned off the exit and entered Hartford. It stopped at the edge of a small grubby park near an abandoned building. A stray cat stood in high brown winter weeds, frozen as if it had died standing up. I gasped in horror, and then realized the cat was perfectly alive, it was stalking some little creature I hadn’t seen. The cat pounced, and swung a tiny rodent in the air.

  I was inside that little mouse. I was being swung around, cruel teeth caught in my skin.

  We drove on to the Sheraton. I had no roommate. There was an uneven number going, and nobody wanted to room with me. I had plenty of money, in case I wanted to go shopping, but nobody to shop with. We checked in our bags but we didn’t get to see our rooms because we had to head straight for the government building where we’d take the exam. Dozens of teenagers were arriving at the same time. They didn’t look like a particularly successful crowd. They just looked like kids.

  I had to beat all but nineteen of them.

  Most of them weren’t looking at anybody. Maybe it’s hard to stare in the eye the very people you plan to whip. Or maybe I was the only one who planned to do that. Maybe only my parents at breakfast that morning had said, “We’re counting on you, Jennie. You can do it. You always have, you always will. This is what we brought you up to do. Succeed.”

  It was the “always” that kept ringing in my ears.

  You ALWAYS have, you ALWAYS will.

  ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS.

  And then I saw it in two words: all ways, Jennie Quint, you will succeed in all ways.

  I could see my whole life out there—decades of it, millions of minutes of it—and always, always, in all ways, all ways, I had to succeed.

  It made me dizzy.

  Once you decide to do your best, you know where you’ll be every minute: practicing, studying, working, struggling, or performing.