Best Friend Next Door

by Carolyn Mackler

  Finally, the waiter brings out the dessert menus. Mom J and Mom C can never decide what to get for dessert so they always order two and share them. I’m getting chocolate ice cream. Leesa tells me she’s going to order a platter of cheese.

  “Cheese?” I ask.

  “That’s what they do in France,” she says.

  She pronounces it the French way, Frawnce. I want to tell her we’re not in Frawnce, but I don’t say anything.

  “So where are you staying?” Leesa asks, touching a ribbon woven into one of her braids.

  Mom J tells her the name of the hotel. It’s a few miles from the boarding school.

  “Coolio,” Leesa says, turning to me. “Do you still sleep with that gnarly old rabbit?”

  I stare at my cousin. “Bun-Bun?” I’ve slept with Bun-Bun since I was a baby. No big deal. Mom C says she brought her stuffed harp seal to college with her.

  “That’s sooo cute,” Leesa says. “Probably time for good-bye to Bun-Bun, though. Time for the big-girl bed.”

  I’m not sure if my moms heard that because they’re still debating fruit tart versus custard versus mousse. I ask Leesa if she has a boyfriend but she rolls her eyes and says people don’t do that at her school. Leesa turns one of her many earrings. I’m starting to wonder if looking like you have good vibes and having good vibes are two separate things.

  “By the way, Aunt Julia,” Leesa says to Mom J after we’ve ordered our dessert, “congrats on the article. My dad sent me a link.”

  “Oh,” Mom J says, her eyes widening. “Thank you.”

  “What article?” I ask.

  Mom J looks over at Mom C, who nods encouragingly. And just like that, I know what Mom J is going to say. She wrote another “Potty-Training Emme and Other Disasters,” fifth-grade edition.

  “Did you write about me?” I ask quickly.

  Mom J winces. “I tried to tell you a few days ago, but—”

  “What was the article about?” I twist my napkin in my hands.

  “The three-o’clock miracle,” Mom J says in a false attempt at brightness. “I wrote about it for a parenting website, about what to do if your child comes home sick but then feels better at—”

  “You wrote about that?” I hiss. “You wrote about what happened to me at school? Did you use my name?”

  “Of course not,” Mom J says, shaking her head. “I just said my daughter.”

  “But we have the same last name,” I say.

  “The Hoffman part, yes.”

  “I actually think it’s cute. When I was—” Leesa starts to say, but now it’s my turn to cut her off.

  “It’s NOT cute,” I say to Leesa. Then I turn to Mom J. “Please don’t write about me anymore without my permission.”

  The waiter delivers the desserts. He must sense a chill around the table because he sets everything down and scurries off.

  “Be respectful to your mom,” Mom C says in her serious lawyer voice.

  Well, I’m not going to let that intimidate me, either. Because this is another Mookey Line. Except I’m realizing that sometimes I should keep my head high and let it all wash over me. And sometimes I have to face it. That’s what I’m going to say the next time Tiny comes in for a workshop. There’s more than one way to walk the Mookey Line.

  I sit up as tall as possible (not saying much, but at least I’m taller than a baby chicken) and say, “Mom J needs to respect my life, too. It’s mine. I’m not material for articles. Also”—I turn to Leesa—“I’m almost eleven. I’m not cute. And I’m not teeny.”

  As everyone stares at me, I pick up my spoon and start eating my chocolate ice cream.

  The good news is that today is the Friday before winter break. Twelve days off from school. My eleventh birthday. A trip to New York City with my best friend.

  The bad news is, well, everything else.

  For one, we have a swim meet tomorrow—the all-county semifinals—that’ll take up the entire day. I’m so sick of the competition and timed trials and endless practices. And meets like these go on FOREVER.

  For two, my dad cleared out the guest room and painted it blue. He and Margo are calling it pajama blue, but the truth is that it’s totally baby blue. Now they’re arranging it with all the baby gear that had been piling up in the living room. The fact that there’s baby furniture in a baby-blue room is making the alien baby a lot harder to deny.

  For three, I can’t stand how everyone gets obsessed with ice-skating in the winter. Even Emme, who’s from Florida, keeps talking about ice-skating. I tried it once a few years ago, fell straight backward, and nearly cracked my cranium. Who ever thought of racing across ice with knives attached to boots? The thing is, I’m worried if I tell people that I’m scared of skating they’ll think I’m lame.

  Oh, and for four, the weather forecast is bad. No, not bad. Terrible.

  The weather people are predicting massive amounts of snow in the next week or two. They’re warning that holiday travel could be majorly messed up.

  We’re at morning meeting and I’m going to share about my trip to New York City. But first Mr. Bryce tells us he has an exciting announcement.

  “We received a letter from the mayor of Deer Park thanking us for our contribution to the flood recovery effort,” Mr. Bruce says, holding up a piece of paper. “They earmarked our funds for elementary school kids whose families lost their homes, and everyone is incredibly grateful. I’ve made copies for the class.” Mr. Bryce picks up a stack of letters off his desk. “Denny? Marley? Can you help me pass these out?”

  I reach out and take my letter from Denny. Ever since the fight at the apple-cider stand, things have settled down between the boys and the girls. Mr. Bryce was upset about our warfare in the park, but he also said that he made a mistake by pitting us against each other. I was impressed that he admitted to messing up. Teachers don’t usually do that.

  “Okay, Hannah,” Mr. Bryce says, nodding to me. He’s wearing a snowman tie today. “I know you had something to share with the class.”

  I fold the Deer Park letter in half and tuck it in my notebook. “I’m going on a trip to New York City over break,” I say. “For my eleventh birthday. I’m going with my friend Emme, and we’re going to see the tree at Rockefeller Center and the store windows and the Empire State Building. Over the holidays, they light it up green and red.”

  “That’s awesome!” Max says.

  “I know,” I say, grinning. “I can’t believe it.”

  But I will believe it. Even with all the forecasts about a blizzard coming.

  Layla leans in and whispers to me, “Can you get me a snow globe with a New York City scene? I collect them. I’ll pay you back.”

  “Sure,” I say, nodding. “Definitely.”

  The next day, my dad and Margo go to a seven-hour childbirth class—not thinking about it, not thinking about it—so Emme’s mom Julia takes us to the swim meet. Once Emme and I have changed into our racing suits, we sit next to each other on the pool deck and uncap our Sharpies. I write Go Emme Og down one leg and Eat My Bubbles on the other leg. As I record my heats and lanes on my arm, my stomach scrambles nervously. I wish it was hours from now and the semifinals were over.

  When Emme goes to fill up her water bottle, I find Coach Missy sitting on the bleachers, studying her clipboard. She has on her mismatched white and blue flip-flops, and she’s wearing a Santa Claus hat that says Coach in glitter on the front.

  “What’s up, Og Twin?” Coach Missy asks me.

  “I brought you this,” I say, sitting next to her and handing her the letter from the mayor of Deer Park. “We got it from school yesterday.”

  Coach Missy reads the letter. “That’s so sweet,” she says. “I’ll tell my sister about it. She’s already back in her home, just some minor repairs from the flood damage.”

  I move my straps around on my shoulders. My racing suit is so tight it leaves red grooves on my skin. I really don’t want to be up on the blocks, diving into the water, when they s
ound the buzzer. Whenever I imagine myself up there, I feel like hiding in the locker room and never coming out.

  “You’re not feeling it today, are you?” Coach Missy asks.

  I shrug. “Not really.”

  “Are you sick?”

  I shake my head.

  “Hannah,” Coach Missy says, “I know you’ve been iffy about swimming recently. I’m sure you and your parents are talking about it, and I trust you’ll make the right choice. From my perspective, you’re a tall, strong, athletic girl, and you’re on your way to being a very talented swimmer. You already are.”

  “But what if I took a break?” I say to Coach Missy. It feels weird to say it out loud. I actually haven’t talked about it with my parents yet. Sometimes it feels like they’re too consumed by the alien baby to think about anything else.

  “Of course that’s an option,” she says, “but it’s always harder to come back to swimming once you’re out.”

  Just then, Emme skips over. “What’s up?” she asks, sipping from her water bottle.

  “Nothing,” I say quickly. I’m worried Emme will be mad if I drop out of swimming, like she’ll think I don’t want to be friends anymore. Which is so not true.

  “Just some nerves,” Coach Missy says, touching my arm.

  I push myself off the bleachers and Emme and I join the rest of our team on the deck.

  The first part of Christmas break goes by fast. We exchange presents. We have Uncle Peter over for Christmas dinner. We watch movies. Emme and I bake peanut butter cookies, both of our first times using the oven without an adult. The next day, Emme invites me to go ice-skating at an indoor rink near the mall. I didn’t want to tell her I was scared of skating so I was glad I had a built-in excuse. I already had plans to go to Layla’s house. Layla has a ping-pong table, unlimited screen time, and a stash of candy in her pantry.

  Some evenings, Emme and I take Butterball galloping up and down her stairs, chasing catnip mice and laser beams. Emme says he’s losing weight, but he’s so lumpy it’s hard to tell. One time, when Margo and my dad are at work, I peek into the baby’s room. It’s actually sweet, with a yellow rocking chair and a giraffe mobile over the crib and the faintest whiff of baby powder. Of course, it’s currently empty. Ask me how I feel about the room when the alien is living here.

  My birthday is now two days away. It hasn’t snowed yet, not one little flake, but the weather people are still predicting that a major blizzard is coming.

  “I can’t wait to see real snow,” Emme says on the phone. “I’ve never seen snow in my entire life.”

  I sit on a chair in the kitchen and twirl a pen in my fingers. “I find that hard to believe. How can someone have never seen snow?”

  “I’m from Florida, remember?” Emme says. “We’ve been up north in the spring before, and in the fall, too. Like, to Boston and a few other places. But most people from Florida don’t go where it’s cold in the winter.”

  “Just so you know,” I say, clicking and unclicking the pen, “blizzards shut down airports. Blizzards ruin entire trips.”

  Emme groans. “So I’ll hope for snow once we get back from New York City, and then for every single day after that.”

  Later that day, I plan my New York City outfits. We’re flying on January 1 and sleeping over for two nights. One of those evenings we’ll be going to a fancy restaurant. I’m packing the purple dress that I wore to my adoption hearing, and I’ve been working hard to break in my brown boots. For the other dinner out in New York City, I’ll wear leggings and a sweater.

  The morning before the trip, I grab my dad’s phone and check out the forecast.

  “Fifty percent chance of a major snowstorm,” I say, looking up from the screen. It’s New Year’s Eve day, the day before our birthday. Emme and I are in the kitchen, eating the last of our homemade cookies.

  Emme’s an optimist, so of course she says, “That’s fifty percent we’re going.”

  “Or fifty percent we’re not.”

  “Let’s hope we’re going,” Emme says. “Glass half full.”

  Margo’s being an optimist, too. She and Julia keep texting each other, and they both check in for our flight, which is at ten tomorrow morning. That afternoon, Margo pulls the suitcases out of the hall closet and helps me pack my clothes. For Christmas she gave me a polka-dot toiletries bag with travel-size shampoo and toothpaste and a toothbrush that folds into a little lid.

  “Do you really think the trip is going to happen?” I ask, tucking an extra pair of wool socks into my suitcase. Supposedly we have to be ready to walk everywhere in New York City, even when it’s cold.

  Margo and I glance out the window. It’s snowing lightly, little swirls of powder on our front lawn.

  “The forecast isn’t great,” Margo says, sighing heavily, “but you never know. The storm could pass right over us.”

  Margo sighs again. She sighs all the time now. She said it’s because the baby is getting so big there’s not much room for her lungs in there. Nice kid.

  I go to bed around ten, but then wake up at midnight because everyone on Centennial Avenue is shouting “Happy New Year!” and honking their horns. I sit up and look out my window.

  It’s snowing so hard I can barely see anything. So much for glass half full.

  I wake up early on my birthday—like, before six.

  I don’t think: I’m eleven!

  I don’t think: It’s a new year!

  All I think is: Are we going to New York City?

  I hear Margo down in the kitchen. Supposedly the baby kicks so much that she can hardly sleep. As I said, nice kid.

  On my way down the stairs, I try not to look out the front window, but I can’t help it. The snowdrifts are so high I can’t see our driveway. And even though I hear the scraping of snowplows in the distance, they haven’t made it to Centennial Avenue yet. In fact, where is our street? All I can see in the early-morning light is snow.

  “Hey, honey,” Margo says as I walk into the kitchen. She’s sitting in a bathrobe at the table, eating a ham sandwich and drinking a glass of milk. Being pregnant makes her have weird cravings. “Happy birthday and happy New Year.”

  “The airport’s closed, isn’t it?” I ask.

  “Yep,” Margo says, nodding. “They don’t think flights will be going out until tomorrow or even the day after.”

  “So the trip is canceled? Definitely?”

  Margo rests one hand on her belly. “Unfortunately yes. I’m so sorry, Hannah. We knew this was a possibility, but—”

  “Can we do it another weekend? Like, can we reschedule?”

  “The problem is, I’m thirty-three weeks pregnant. I was pushing it to take this trip. By next week, my doctor doesn’t want me flying.”

  I stare at my stepmom. I mean, my mom. “So that’s it? It’s just over?”

  “We’ll figure something out,” Margo says.

  I turn on my slipper and walk back up to my room. I’m not trying to be a brat, but when adults say they’ll figure something out, it generally means things are getting downgraded in a major way.

  I’ve been looking forward to my first palindrome year since forever. And now it’s turning into one big zero.

  My parents had said that New York City was my birthday gift, but it turns out they got me some other presents, too. They give me four headbands, three books, a gift certificate to Sports Authority, and a new volleyball. Also, Sophie sent me a card with cats singing “Happy Birthday” and a bracelet that says Ottawa. That’s the city she moved to in Canada. My dad makes hash browns for breakfast and Margo blends my chocolate milk so it’s frothy. I’m trying to be grateful, but I’m still feeling lousy. After breakfast, I go back up to my room.

  Around nine, Emme knocks on my bedroom door.

  “Happy birthday, Og Twin!” she sings. She’s taken off her boots but she’s still wearing her parka and hat. “I’m seriously freaking out about the snow! It’s just so white. I know it stinks that our trip is postponed, but i
t’s snowing! Want to go sledding?”

  “Happy birthday, too,” I say, flopping onto my bed. “You sound so happy. Don’t you care about the trip? And it’s not postponed, at least for me. It’s canceled.”

  “I was thinking we could make the best of it though,” Emme says. “My moms don’t want to take me to the ice rink because the roads are bad and they’re worried about driving in so much snow, but we could walk to a sledding hill. I’ve never been sledding. Well, duh, of course I haven’t! You know a good hill, right?”

  “I don’t want to go sledding,” I say gruffly. I mean, come on! She’s acting like it’s any old fun snow day. “And the truth is, I can’t stand ice-skating, so I don’t feel like doing that, either.”

  “Okay.” Emme bites her bottom lip. “Well … happy birthday.”

  As Emme walks down the stairs, I roll over on my bed.

  My zero birthday just dipped into the negative numbers. Exactly like the temperature outside.

  I spend the morning in my room. I read a few chapters of a new book. I arrange the photos on my dresser—Sophie and me, Emme and me, and one of my dad, Margo, and me in the white frame that the judge gave me. I try on my headbands. I get the iPad and look up images of New York City at Christmastime.

  I can hear Emme and Claire and Julia in their backyard. I think my dad’s out there with them. I feel bad I was so grumpy with Emme. She was just excited about seeing snow for the first time. And it’s her birthday, too, after all. Her trip was canceled just like mine.

  I click on a picture of the ice-skating rink at Rockefeller Center and suddenly I get a crazy idea.

  “Margo?” I ask, running down to the kitchen. “Can I do something?”

  She’s got a few jars of peanut butter on the counter, several flavors of jam, and a loaf of bread. She spins around quickly and tosses a dish towel over the peanut butter.

  “Hey, birthday girl,” she says. “Are you feeling better? And can you be more specific about what you want to do?”