Best Friend Next Door

by Carolyn Mackler

  “No,” I say. “But she has to see it.”

  “What did they do to the collage?” Mom C asks.

  I shake my head. I don’t want to say it out loud. “It’s over. I already threw it away.”

  Mom J clears her throat and then sits up straight. “First of all,” she says in her no-nonsense lawyer voice, “thank you, Hannah, for looping us in. There’s a lot we can do. You’re talking to a journalist and a litigator, as well as two moms who would do anything to fight for their kid.”

  I bite the insides of my cheeks. “But I don’t want to fight,” I say. “It’ll just make it worse.”

  “When Mom C says fight,” Mom J explains, “she doesn’t mean we’re going to actually fight. She means we’ll stand up for you. It can be a quiet kind of fighting. There’s more than one way to skin a cat.”

  We all look over at Butterball, scratching his claws against a wooden fence at the edge of the yard.

  “Don’t say that!” Hannah shouts. “What if Butterball understands people language?”

  “He’ll be traumatized for life,” I say, attempting to smile.

  By Sunday night, everything is different.

  I can’t believe it. I really can’t.

  After dinner, Mom J and Mom C invite Hannah over for homemade crumble-top apple pie. As Mom J passes out forks and Mom C scoops vanilla ice cream onto our plates, Hannah hands me a blue ribbon that she’s made from construction paper. It says First Place in silver marker.

  “For your wall,” Hannah says. “It’s the most artistic thing I’ve done all year.”

  “First-place what?” I ask.

  Hannah tugs her hair into a ponytail. This time she gets most of it into the rubber band. “Whatever kind of winner you want,” she says.

  I grin at Hannah. Because right now I do feel like a winner.

  After our talk yesterday, Mom C emailed the principal and the guidance counselor at Greeley Elementary and arranged an emergency phone meeting. They even had Ms. Linhart on the call at some point. When I heard that, it made me so nervous my hands were shaking. At first, the guidance counselor said she could have a talk with Gina and the others on Monday, which my moms said definitely needed to happen. Even so, my moms didn’t want me in a classroom with them anymore.

  This morning, the principal called to say I’m being switched to Ms. Chung’s fifth-grade class. Effective tomorrow! Mr. Bryce’s class doesn’t have room but there’s a girl from swim team, Jillian, who has Ms. Chung and says she’s really nice.

  “This pie is so good,” Hannah says, balancing an enormous bite on her fork. “I can’t believe we picked these apples ourselves.”

  Mom J smiles at Hannah. “Thank you again for watching out for Emme. I’m so glad you both came to us.”

  “Of course,” Hannah says, her mouth full of pie. “The thing is, Emme is …”

  As Hannah chews and swallows, I know she’s going to say it.

  “Too hot to hoot?” I ask, grinning.

  Hannah laughs so hard she starts coughing and has to chug her entire glass of milk. “That’s exactly what I was going to say!”

  Mom C shakes her head. “Sometimes I feel like you girls speak your own language.”

  Hannah and I look at each other and shrug. I guess we sort of do.

  Later, as I’m walking Hannah across the yard, we make a plan for tomorrow morning. Mom J is coming along to meet with the principal, and Hannah says she’ll go into Ms. Chung’s class with me. I’m nervous about starting in a new class in November, but anything is better than facing Ms. Linhart’s room again.

  We reach Hannah’s side porch. “Remember what you told me?” I ask, hugging my arms around my chest. It’s getting wintery cold out, and I’m just wearing a sweatshirt and jeans. “About how Margo is adopting you?

  Hannah nods. She’s got a jacket on, but she squeezes her arms around her chest, too.

  “I realized something,” I say. “We’re both going to have one birth parent and one adoptive parent.”

  It’s dark out, but I can see by the porch light that Hannah is staring at me.

  “My mom Julia had me and my mom Claire adopted me,” I explain.

  When Hannah breathes, a puff of cold air comes out of her mouth. “Og Twins,” she says quietly.

  “Forever,” I say.

  Then we both dash into our houses.

  I aim, leap, and shoot the basketball from the end of the driveway. Of course I miss.

  “R!” Uncle Peter shouts, scooping up the ball and dribbling it around in triumphant circles.

  “No fair!” I shriek, but I’m totally smiling.

  It’s Thursday after school and Uncle Peter and I are playing H-O-R-S-E in the driveway. It’s not that cold for early December, maybe high forties, and we’re running around so much that I’m getting warm in my hoodie.

  Uncle Peter shoots again, but he misses.

  “Your turn, Hannah Banana,” he says, grinning as he passes the ball to me. I love spending time with my uncle. He’s my dad’s younger brother. He’s a blonder, goofier version of my dad. He doesn’t have kids of his own, so I’m the closest he’s got. Usually he watches me on Mondays, but Margo has an appointment with her obstetrician, which is a doctor that takes care of pregnant women, so she switched him to Thursday.

  I dribble the ball over to my sweet spot. It’s right under the hoop, a little to the left. When I shoot from here I get a basket almost every time. Because of this, my uncle already has an H. The way H-O-R-S-E works is that you shoot from a certain location. If you get a basket, your opponent has to shoot and make it from that exact same spot. If they don’t make it, they get a letter from the word horse. Whoever gets H-O-R-S-E first loses. The problem is, Uncle Peter is over six feet tall and he shows no mercy. Whenever it’s his turn, he’ll shoot from way far away. That’s how I have my H and O and now this latest R. This time, though, I’m determined to beat him.

  I aim, shoot, and … sink it right through the hoop.

  “Score!” I shout, tossing the ball to my uncle. “Bet you can’t do that!”

  “Hannah?” Emme calls from her driveway. “Ready for swim practice?”

  “Hey, Emme!” Uncle Peter says as he dribbles the ball back and forth under his knees. Show-off.

  Emme waves at Uncle Peter. She’s wearing her brand-new puffy blue parka and blue hat and blue gloves. Emme and her moms are so excited about their first winter in Greeley that they all bought new coats and they hung stockings from their mantel even before Thanksgiving. I was teasing Emme about it until she pointed out that I’ve been talking nonstop about how I want to go to New York City at Christmas and see the tree at Rockefeller Center. Oh, and maybe stop by that peanut-butter restaurant.

  “You should probably get your swim stuff,” Emme says. “My mom is coming out to the car in a second.”

  “I … uhhh.” I fiddle with the zipper on my sweatshirt. “I don’t think I’m going to practice today.”

  I glance at Uncle Peter, but he just shrugs. “Your decision. Or do you want me to text your parents and ask?”

  I quickly shake my head. We shouldn’t bother them when they’re at the obstetrician. Ugh. They’re talking about the baby more and more now, and they’ve started making lists of names. They told me I can pick his middle name, but I’m not sure I want to. It’s not that I have anything against babies. I like them as much as the next person. But they scream and puke and poop and then their parents whisk them away from you and take them home. They don’t live in your house, where you’ve been an only child for almost eleven years.

  “You’re not coming?” Emme asks. She pulls off a glove, tears open the wrapper of a cereal bar, and takes a bite.

  I pinch a rubber band out of my jeans pocket and twist my hair into a ponytail. I’ve decided I’m going to grow my hair out this year. I’ve always kept it short because of swimming, so it’ll dry quickly and won’t be bulky under my cap. But I’m sick of it. I want to have long hair for once in my life.
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br />   “I’m going to skip practice,” I say.

  “Won’t Coach Missy be upset?” Emme asks.

  “It’s one day,” I say. “She won’t even notice.”

  “Okay.” Emme shifts her weight from one foot to the other. “Well … see you later.”

  As soon as she’s gone, Uncle Peter tries to get a basket from my sweet spot. Not even close.

  “Oh!” I shout to him. “I got you so bad!”

  He tries another shot from the end of the driveway. This time he misses.

  “Yes!” I shriek, diving for the ball. “Yesssss!”

  When my parents pull into the driveway a half hour later, we’re still playing basketball.

  “What happened to swim practice?” Margo asks me.

  “I wasn’t in the mood,” I say.

  Uncle Peter flashes a lopsided grin. “How can I say no to my niece?”

  “How’s the alien baby?” I ask them both. That’ll change the subject.

  My dad smiles. “He’s still orbiting.”

  I guess it’s a slight improvement that we can joke about the baby now. Sometimes, when I’m alone, I take the ultrasound picture out of my drawer and wonder what he will actually look like. Maybe his middle name can be Alien.

  Later that afternoon, once Uncle Peter has left, we’re all in the kitchen. I’m multiplying fractions at the table. Margo and my dad are making burgers. Other than avoiding onions, Margo’s all-day sickness seems to be better. At least peanut butter is allowed in the house again.

  Margo sets some carrot sticks on the table next to me. “Honey,” she says, pouring a puddle of ranch dressing on my plate to use as dip, “we heard from the lawyer today. Remember Ryan? We got the court date.”

  I was just transporting a carrot stick from the plate into my mouth. I drop it onto my homework page and stare up at them.

  My dad nods and says, “It’s going to be two weeks from yesterday. We’ll take you out of school for the day.”

  Two weeks from yesterday, I will be in a courtroom with a judge and a lawyer and who knows how many other people. Two weeks from yesterday, Margo will be adopting me.

  I reach over to pick up my carrot stick but accidentally grab my pencil and swipe the eraser through the ranch dressing. At least I caught myself before taking a bite.

  On Saturday morning, I try to get out of swim practice again. I just don’t feel like going back and forth in the pool fifty thousand times. But despite my protests, Margo is firm.

  “You missed on Thursday,” she says as she hands me my wet bag and a banana. “And you have a meet next weekend, so you need the practice. No skipping today.”

  I groan as I shove everything into my backpack and follow her out to the car to meet Emme.

  It actually turns out to be fun. We start with the usual warm-ups and freestyle kicks, but then Emme and Jillian convince Coach Missy to let us play sharks and minnows before the descends.

  Once we’re back to sprints, Coach Missy picks me to lead my lane. Sometimes when I’m swimming I totally space out. Other times I do math equations or just keep glancing at the clock and counting the minutes until practice is over. But today I start thinking about my mom. My birth mom, as Emme would say. I know she was tall, like me, and also had honey-colored hair. She and my dad lived together in Boulder, Colorado. My dad hasn’t told me a lot about her, except that she struggled. I’m not sure what that means. He also said she didn’t have parenting instincts, which I think means she didn’t want kids. My dad did want kids, though, so he took me and we moved back to Greeley—where he grew up—when I was a baby. He met Margo soon after, and then they got married.

  Sometimes I wonder if my birth mom likes sports. Or if she’s a worrier like me. I know her name is Christine Tenny. The lawyer told us that the judge might say her name at the adoption hearing. That’s the part I’m most nervous about, if the judge says Christine Tenny out loud like she’s an actual person. Because most of the time it doesn’t feel like she is.

  After practice, Emme’s mom Claire meets us in the lobby. She gives Emme a hug and then hands us both peanut-butter-and-honey sandwiches and milk boxes.

  “Eat up,” she says. “We have a surprise for you.”

  “Me?” Emme asks.

  “Both of you,” Claire says.

  I raise my eyebrows at Emme, but she shrugs like she’s as confused as I am. Ever since Emme switched to Ms. Chung’s class last month, she seems much happier. She’s said that Gina and the others still give her snotty looks when she passes them in the hall, but at least she doesn’t have to be in the same room as them for seven and a half hours every day.

  “Can you at least tell us something about the surprise?” Emme asks as we’re sliding into the back of the car.

  “The thing is,” Claire says, “you both have a birthday coming up on New Year’s Day. The big eleven.”

  Emme grins as she buckles her seat belt. “Did you realize it’s going to be our first palindrome year?”

  “That’s so cool!” I say, poking the straw into the milk box. “After that we’ll have twenty-two and thirty-three and—”

  “Slow down!” Claire says, smiling. “Let’s stick with eleven for now.”

  When we get to Emme’s house, we hurry inside and hang our coats on the rack. Julia is washing grapes in the sink. Margo and my dad are sitting on stools at the counter. Margo’s belly is getting so big it looks like she has a balloon stuffed under her shirt. I’m almost, sort of, kind of getting used to it. The balloon belly, that is. Not the alien baby.

  “What’s the surprise?” Emme and I ask at the same time.

  Butterball weaves around my legs. I bend over and give him a quick scratch between his ears.

  “We’ve been talking,” Julia says as she pours the grapes into a serving bowl.

  Margo sips some tea and then says, “And we’ve decided that you two shouldn’t have a birthday party this year.”

  “Or presents,” my dad says, grinning.

  “What?” I ask. Behind my dad, I can see through the sliding-glass doors. The wind is swirling rusty-brown leaves in circles around the swing set. It’s really turning into winter.

  “No fair!” Emme says.

  “Hang on.” My dad points to two envelopes on the counter. “Why don’t you check these out first?”

  Emme and I dive for the envelopes and tear them open. Inside there are pieces of paper that say:

  Emme and Hannah are cordially invited to New York City with Julia and Margo for a moms-and-daughters 11th birthday extravaganza. Fly on an airplane to the Big Apple. Stay in a hotel for two nights. See the Christmas decorations. Visit the Rockefeller Center tree and the Empire State Building. Eat lunch at Peanut Butter & Co.!

  Love,

  Mom J and Mom C

  Dad and Margo

  Emme and I stare at each other in shock.

  “This is for real?” Emme asks.

  Julia nods.

  “For really real?” I ask.

  Margo wipes at her eyes. “Manhattan isn’t a tropical island like we’d talked about, but at least it’s an island. And my doctor says I can go.”

  I set down the paper and hug Margo. And then my dad. And then Emme. And then, just because I’m crazily excited, I hug Julia and Claire. I even scoop up Butterball and nuzzle my nose into his fur. In a way, this is all thanks to Butterball for running away from Emme’s house and appearing, wet and shivering, on our side porch. Yes, Sophie moving to Canada felt like the worst thing ever. But it turns out something really amazing came out of it, too.

  On a freezing cold morning in the middle of December, my dad, Margo, and I climb the steps of the Greeley courthouse. I was too nervous to eat breakfast, but now my stomach is rumbling and my toes are pinched in the new brown boots that Margo bought me for the adoption hearing. I’m also wearing a new dark purple dress with a black cardigan. I never wear dresses, but it actually feels right for today.

  As soon as we walk into the courtroom, the judge stands
up and shakes my parents’ hands.

  “Hannah?” she asks, holding out her hand to me. “I’m Judge O’Toole. It’s so nice to meet you. What a special, important day for you and your family.”

  I reach out and shake her hand. The lawyer had said that the judge would be a woman, but I pictured her old and wrinkly and scary. Judge O’Toole is wearing a long black robe, but other than that she looks like a regular mom at my school. She’s got shiny blond hair, diamond earrings, and a kind smile.

  Ryan, our lawyer, is in the courtroom, too. When I met him back in September, he was in jeans, but now he’s dressed up in a suit and tie.

  “Good morning, Drew and Margo,” he says, shaking my parents’ hands. He gives me a high five, and then leads us to a long table.

  As soon as we sit down, the judge puts on her glasses and clears her throat. That’s when everything starts feeling official. I glance around. There’s another woman here—she’s talking quietly to the judge—and a bald guy and there are even two security guards over by the door.

  I’m trying not to think about how they’re all here for me.

  “The first case on the adoption calendar today,” the bald guy says, “is for the matter of Hannah Eileen Strafel.”

  Okay, it’s hard to deny. They are all here because of me. My stomach is growling. I wiggle my toes in my boots. I think I’m getting a blister. Margo squeezes my hand.

  Judge O’Toole instructs us to go around the table and state our names. As it gets closer to me, my mouth feels dry. What if I can’t talk? Or what if I can’t remember my name? I wish I could just kick my boots off.

  “Hannah?” the judge says. “Can you say your name please?”

  I take a deep breath. “Hannah Eileen Strafel.”

  My dad reaches over and takes my other hand.

  “How old are you, Hannah?” asks the woman who was talking to the judge.

  “Ten,” I say. “I’ll be eleven in a couple weeks.”

  Thinking about that reminds me of how Emme and her mom Julia and Margo and I are going to New York City for our joint birthday. I still can’t believe that’s happening.