Let's Pretend We Never Met

by Melissa Walker

  Mama smiles. “Chat with your friend,” she says. “I’ll prep.”

  She starts to walk away, but then I shout-whisper, “Mama!” and I wave her back over to me, so she leans in close.

  “Can I go to the mall with Shari and Finn and Bryce tomorrow after school?”

  “Of course, baby,” she says. “Do you need me to drive you?”

  “No, we can take a bus from school that lets us off near there, but can you pick me up after?”

  “Sure,” she says. Then Mama looks toward the kitchen. “Is Agnes going?”

  I shake my head no, and I can tell that Mama understands that not only is Agnes not going but she doesn’t know about this.

  Mama nods and heads into the kitchen.

  Maybe I should worry about how Agnes will feel, but maybe she won’t even care. She doesn’t seem to mind that we’re not friends at school, and this is with school friends, so it’s not part of our thing.

  Besides, I want to keep hold of the warm, bright feeling that’s been buzzing in my skin since Finn smiled at me this afternoon.

  So I open up the laptop and find Shari again. I type, i think I like f.

  Chapter 19

  “Those would look so cute on you,” I say to Shari when she holds up a pair of dangly gemstone earrings at Leila’s Finery, a stand in the middle of the mall that has sparkling jewelry and shiny headbands and silver picture frames.

  “You should get your ears pierced,” Shari says.

  I nod. I know I should. Maybe I will.

  “Here.” Bryce appears from around the corner and thrusts a smoothie from Juice Jungle into Shari’s hands.

  “Is it mango?”

  “No way, it’s blueberry—my favorite.”

  “Why would you get me your favorite smoothie?”

  “Blueberry is way better than mango,” says Bryce with a cocky grin. “You’ll see.”

  “Bryce Colter!” Shari stomps her foot.

  “Hey,” he says, smirking at her. “You’re lucky I even got you a smoothie. These things are four bucks!”

  Shari rolls her eyes and turns her back, but I see her smile when she takes a sip and I can tell she kind of likes Bryce even though he acts like a minijerk sometimes.

  “Hey.” Finn bumps me gently from behind and hands me my smoothie. I try it. Strawberry banana, just like I wanted.

  “Thanks.” I smile up at him, and when I meet his eyes his face breaks into a grin too. It’s like we’re cartoon characters who can’t stop smiling at each other.

  If I didn’t think it’d get stinky, I’d probably save this smoothie cup for my treasure collection.

  We sit down on the edge of the fountain in the middle of the mall, and Finn opens up the front pocket of his backpack. “Ugh, not again!” He winces as he pulls out a crazy-looking food item wrapped in foil.

  “Is that a . . . cookie?” I ask. It’s a bluish-purple lump, but it has sugar crystals on it, so maybe . . .

  “Looks more like Play-Doh,” says Bryce. “Is your brother baking again?”

  “Yup.” Finn walks to a nearby trash can and throws away the purple blob. Then he comes back and sits down. “My older brother thinks he’s going to be the next . . . uh, famous baker person.”

  I laugh. “My mom bakes a lot,” I say. “Actually, she does it for work.”

  “That’s cool. All my brother does is find recipes on the internet and experiment,” says Finn. “Usually, the results are kind of awful, but he tries to make me eat them anyway.”

  “You’ve gotta start somewhere,” I say. And I realize that’s something I’ve heard Maeve say, and it sounds old-fashioned out loud.

  But then Finn says, “I like the way you talk, Mattie.” I don’t know if he means my accent or what I say, but it doesn’t matter. My face tingles with warmth.

  We walk around the mall some more, and Finn mostly talks to Bryce and I mostly talk to Shari, but it still feels like Finn and I are there together, and when Mama picks us up at six I don’t want any of it to end.

  “You girls look happy,” Mama says as I get in the backseat with Shari.

  “Mama!” I say, but I don’t think Shari heard the tease in my mom’s voice. She lives near the mall, so we’re taking her home, and I’m glad because it seems like another step in our friendship for us to ride in my mom’s car together.

  Shari is all excitement and laughter, her braids swinging around her shoulders as she rolls her eyes and talks about how conceited Bryce is.

  “He thinks he’s so smart,” she says.

  “But you like him, right?” I ask.

  “Yeah!” She’s smiling big and then covering her face with her hands before she explodes into giggles. It’s contagious, and soon I’m laughing too, and Mom is eyeing us in the rearview mirror like we’re crazy girls.

  We drop off Shari, and I move into the front seat. For the rest of the ride home I grin and look out the window. I don’t even want to talk about Finn right now, I just want to think about him in my head.

  But when we get back to Butler Towers and the elevator doors open on our floor, I see a solitary figure in the hallway.

  Agnes P. Davis.

  She’s standing straight up, her head centered in one of the lacy paper hearts on her door. It’s like she’s keeping watch over our entrance, and Mama squeezes my shoulder as we walk toward her.

  “Mattie, where were you today? You weren’t on the bus and you weren’t in the lobby and you weren’t anywhere at four twelve p.m.”

  Mama opens our door and says, “Do you girls want to come inside?”

  “No,” I say, annoyed. I don’t want Agnes to come over. I stay in the hallway and face her as Mama waves at Agnes and then steps in and softly closes the door.

  Agnes didn’t look at Mama. Her eyes are on me, and she doesn’t flinch. “Where were you at four twelve p.m.?” she repeats.

  “What is four twelve p.m.?”

  “That’s when we’re home. It’s the time the bus drops us off and we walk into the lobby and then we’re friends again.”

  “It doesn’t work that way, Agnes,” I tell her.

  “It was working! It was!” she says, and I can’t argue really. So I just say, “You’re so weird.”

  “I’m just me. And me is okay!”

  “But you act weird all the time,” I tell her. “Why do you do that?”

  She stares at me. I decide examples might help.

  “Like this week when Mr. Perl was talking about Asia and you just raised your hand and then started naming every single country in this robotic voice . . . what was that?”

  “I was adding to the lesson,” she says.

  “You were being crazy,” I tell her. “And then you started making loud noises when we talked about indigenous animals.”

  “Lee does that all the time,” she says. “Why is it funny when he does it but not when I do it?”

  I pause. She’s right. Lee does like to make strange sounds and everyone usually laughs. But it’s something about the way Agnes does things. It’s just . . . weird. That’s the only word I can think of over and over, but I don’t know how to explain it to her.

  “You make no sense, Agnes,” I say.

  “I always make sense,” she says, and it actually seems like I’ve offended her. But then she smiles.

  “I’m going inside,” I tell her. I cannot handle the weirdness.

  “Great,” she says. “My mom got me this new set of invisible ink pens, so we can write mystery notes to each other and—”

  “See, that’s what I mean,” I say. “You think I want you to come over? I don’t. I’m going into my apartment. You’re not coming with me.”

  Her face is blank.

  Then she asks, “Were you at the mall with Finn?” She isn’t looking at me; she’s looking at the wall behind me. But she knows more than I thought she did—maybe she does pay attention at school.

  “Yes,” I say.

  “And you like him.”

  “Yes.” But i
t doesn’t feel like I’m doing the fun confiding-in-a-friend thing. I’m just trading facts with Agnes. She doesn’t want more than that.

  “Why?” Her eyes move to my face then. Not my eyes, but more like my left cheek. It annoys me, and I sigh out loud.

  “Because!” I shout.

  “‘Because’ isn’t a reason for something,” she tells me. “You have to have real reasons for things, you know. You’re the one who makes no sense.”

  Her voice is calm and even, and I wonder if she ever reacts normally to anything. Or maybe she’s just a low-talking arguer like Daddy, and it makes me want to scream!

  “Maybe I don’t make sense!” My voice is really loud now, so loud it scares me, but I keep yelling. “Maybe I shouldn’t have let it be this way, but you shouldn’t have either! Sometimes I wish you weren’t here at all!”

  I turn away from her so I won’t have to know if she feels anything about me closing the door in her face.

  Chapter 20

  I don’t see Agnes all weekend, and she isn’t at school on Monday. When Mr. Perl asks me in front of everyone if I know where she is, Shari tilts her head at me funny and Bryce raises his eyebrows. I’m afraid they’ll think I’m weird like Agnes just because I hang out with her sometimes.

  So I shrug and say, “How would I know where she is?”

  And Mr. Perl frowns.

  Finn is extra nice to me, and he drops off a Hershey’s Kiss at my lunch table, which makes Shari and Robin and Emily go “Oooooh.”

  When I get home, I close my front door really quietly, because maybe if Agnes doesn’t hear it, she won’t come over and act all crazy.

  “Hang that up, please,” Mama says when I walk into the living room and throw my coat on the couch.

  I roll my eyes, but I do it.

  “I talked to Mrs. Davis today,” says Mama. “She told me that Agnes’s dad is coming to visit later this week, and Agnes had an extra therapy session today.”

  I feel a nervous tingle inside. But outside, I shrug. “Why are you telling me?”

  “I thought you might have wondered why she wasn’t at school,” Mama says, frowning just like Mr. Perl did. But I just say, “Nope,” and I go into my room and close the door because I don’t want to talk about Agnes.

  Then I sit on the bed and let out a big breath that it feels like I’ve been holding in all day.

  On Tuesday, Agnes still isn’t at school and that means our team is getting ahead in the trivia competition. We’re just a few points behind Team One.

  When Shari answers a question about the Civil War right, Bryce gives her a high five and says, “We’re unstoppable without the freak around!”

  I know he means Agnes, and my chest wobbles inside. I look up at Mr. Perl, but he’s busy writing something on the board. He didn’t hear. And no one else says anything, but my silence sounds the loudest, at least to me.

  Finn comes over to my table at lunch. He doesn’t sit down, but he hovers near Emily and me—we’re on the edge. He’s swaying from side to side at first, but then he stops and says to Robin and Emily, “Did you guys hear our team is totally gonna win the trivia competition this year?”

  “That’s awesome,” says Robin.

  “If you win, what will you pick for the party?” asks Emily.

  “Last year it was a pizza skating party at Wheelways,” Finn says. “But we shouldn’t do that this year because I cannot roller-skate.”

  I look up at him, and we share a smile. Then I’m picturing us holding hands and roller-skating badly together, and I have to look down at the table so no one sees me blushing.

  “It’s all thanks to Mattie and Shari,” says Finn, and I don’t correct him. We are the two best responders on Team Four.

  “I don’t know . . . it doesn’t feel like a true win with Agnes out,” Shari says.

  I lift up my head.

  “She’s the real competition,” she continues. “She’s amazing at trivia, so when she’s not around it seems like we’re cheating or something.”

  Finn nods. “That’s true.”

  “Agnes is the girl with the short hair who seems kind of . . . off?” asks Emily.

  “Yeah,” says Shari. “She’s new this year. She’s weird, but she’s crazy smart.”

  Part of me wants to add that she’s also interesting. And fun. And creative.

  But I don’t say any of that. Because I’m here at this table with new friends and a boy who maybe likes me and what if it all goes away?

  On Friday, Mr. Perl asks me to stay after the last bell, and he gives me a folder full of papers.

  “Please bring this work home to Miss Agnes, and tell her that we all hope to see her next week,” he says. Then he raises his eyebrows so I’ll know he’s telling me to be nice to her and get her to come back to school. It’s not very subtle, but I say okay.

  I don’t knock on Agnes’s door, now decorated with traced drawings of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln for Presidents’ Day; I leave the folder on her welcome mat, which is shaped like a rainbow with clouds at either end. She’ll find it, and it’s not like anyone’s going to steal a pile of paper.

  Then I go home, into my room, and open up my closet. I’m invited to Robin’s birthday party this weekend—it’s all we’ve talked about at lunch lately, and it sounds like she always has amazing birthdays. Last year she had it at her parents’ Chinese restaurant and everyone got personalized fortune cookies, which sounds so cool. This year, it’s at a bowling alley, and I have to think about what I’m going to wear because it’s a boy-girl party and she invited almost the entire sixth grade, so Finn will definitely be there. He sees me every day, but a boy-girl party is a chance to look pretty.

  I decide on my lavender sweater with pearl buttons on the sleeves and a pair of gray jeans with my black boots. I think I’ll look slightly nicer than usual without being too dressy. Shari approves of this outfit when I text her a photo of it on Mama’s phone, and she says it will still look good when I have to trade the boots for bowling shoes. I’m glad I ran it by her because I didn’t even think of that.

  When I go to bed and turn out my light, I see the glowing stars in perfect constellations above my head, and I feel a twinge in my chest. I’ve been remembering what Mrs. Davis said about me being more important for Agnes than even her therapist, and it’s making me feel extra terrible. So I peek out the window, just in case, hoping Agnes knows that if she really, truly needed me—like for something serious—she could use our signal. But all I see is a dark brick wall.

  Chapter 21

  On the Saturday of Robin’s party, Mama comes home from baking in the late morning—way earlier than usual. I’m in my room reading, still in pajamas. I’m about to go out and ask her what she made today—sometimes she has fun stories about swirly wedding cupcakes or rainbow meringues for birthday parties—but then I hear Daddy’s tense voice and I stop just inside my door.

  I can only make out every few words, but he’s saying something about Mama’s job, and I don’t hear her reply, and then Daddy’s voice gets louder and I hear him very clearly. “Maybe you should get a real job, then.”

  “What?!” Mama’s voice isn’t quiet anymore either and Daddy says, “Regular, I meant a regular job—the food industry is so unstable.”

  I hear Mama’s loud sigh. Then her footsteps come toward my door and I sit back onto my bed with my book.

  “Hey, Mattie,” she says, all smiles.

  “Is everything okay?” I ask. Because I want her to know she can’t just hide things from me. I’m old enough to know.

  She waves her hand dismissively toward the living room. “Oh yeah,” she says. “It’s fine.”

  I almost call her out on her nonanswer, but then she does it herself. “Sorry, that’s not an answer, right?”

  I nod, and she sits down on my bed as I scooch my legs over to make room for her.

  “My manager at the bakery said he thinks he may not need me full-time,” says Mama. “Business is down, he’s
saying, and he’s going to reduce my hours.”

  “But you’re the best baker ever,” I tell her.

  “I’m the newest person there, so I’m the first to lose hours when things get slow.”

  That doesn’t seem fair—nothing seems fair anymore. I wonder whether this means we won’t have money for things if Mama loses her job. She’s been so much happier, and Daddy has too, since she started at Blue Sky. I don’t know what to say, so I just pat her hand.

  She smiles. “Thanks, my love,” she says. “It’ll be okay.” And then she asks if I want to go makeup shopping.

  “Like real makeup?”

  “Yeah. I could use a little lift, and I thought maybe you’d like to pick out some lip gloss or mascara for your party,” she says, giving me a sly smile. Sometimes Mama just gets it.

  “Okay,” I say.

  At the drugstore, I choose lavender eye shadow and a soft pink gloss. In the end we don’t buy mascara because I remember it being hard to take off after I went to Shari’s, and Mama says when you wear mascara you have to keep checking it to make sure you don’t have raccoon eyes. I don’t want to do that—too stressful.

  I’m skipping through the lobby and Mama is carrying our bag when we get back to the building. Then the elevator door opens and—ding—there’s Agnes P. Davis.

  “Hi,” I say. I realize that I haven’t seen her in eight whole days. She looks different, like maybe her hair is longer.

  “Hello.” Her voice is pleasant, but it doesn’t really sound like her.

  “Hi, Agnes!” says Mama, all upbeat. “Your father’s here now, right?”

  Agnes nods a very small nod and then steps forward off the elevator.

  “I hope you all have a wonderful visit,” says Mama.

  I want to say something too, but I’m not sure what, so I just move aside. Then Mama and I get in and let the doors close between us and Agnes as she walks toward the lobby.

  Mama sighs and leans against the wall. The elevator suddenly feels tight and small, and when I go back to my room to get ready for the party, I keep looking at my closed blinds. I tell myself that if I peek out the window and see a star signal from Agnes, I’ll go find her and tell her I’m still her friend.