Let's Pretend We Never Met

by Melissa Walker

  Mama claps her hands together. “That’s just what I was hoping, Agnes!”

  Shari’s looking kind of sideways at Agnes, but when I catch her eye and smile at her she grins back and it doesn’t feel like we’re making fun of Agnes, more like we’re appreciating her, as Maeve would say.

  I know Shari still thinks Agnes is weird—I can tell by the way she pauses after Agnes says something especially random—but she’s also definitely giving her a chance, and that’s all I can ask for. I have to believe that, at some point, Shari will see how much fun Agnes can be.

  A man with a big mustache walks out from the back and stops by our table. “Who do we have here?” he asks.

  “Bob, this is my daughter, Mattie, and her friends Agnes and Shari,” says Mama. “Girls, this is Mr. Brown. He owns the bakery.”

  We all smile, but it’s Agnes who speaks up. “Mr. Brown, Mrs. Markham makes the best cookies I’ve ever tasted,” she says.

  “Well, I—” Mr. Brown starts, but Agnes isn’t done talking.

  “She knows how to combine savory and sweet, and everything she makes is so pretty too!”

  Shari and I nod in agreement, and Mr. Brown laughs in one loud burst. “You’re not wrong, Agnes!” he says. “She’s a talented baker.”

  He gives us a wave and goes back to the kitchen. Mama follows. “Holler if you need anything, girls,” she calls over her shoulder. “I’ll just be a few minutes.”

  “What’s the matter, Mattie?” Agnes asks when they’re both gone.

  “Nothing,” I say.

  “You’re frowning,” says Shari, and I know I am.

  I poke at the silver napkin holder for a minute, making the napkins squish in and out with a clink-clink sound.

  “My mom only has part-time hours, but I think she needs to work more,” I whisper. “For money.”

  “But it seems like Bob Brown loves her,” Shari says, and Agnes nods up and down, up and down.

  “Yeah, but look around,” I say, turning my head to take in the entire bakery, which is almost half a block long, with lots of booths and four shiny silver display counters for sweets. “We’re the only people here.”

  My friends follow my gaze.

  “That’s true,” says Shari, her voice dropping. But then she brightens up. “I know! I’ll tell my mom about this place. She’s so into sugar that she made us go all the way to New York City for a cupcake once.”

  “Thanks,” I say. But I can’t help thinking that Shari bringing in her mom isn’t going to make much difference.

  “It’s so pretty here,” says Agnes, taking in the high arched ceiling covered in white tiles and the metal lights hanging down to spotlight the treats.

  “I know.” I sigh. “It’s like a party room.”

  I feel Agnes and Shari both look at me quickly. I meet their eyes, which are sparkling like mine all of a sudden. “You guys . . . ,” I say. And I know we’re thinking the same thing.

  Over the next few weekends, Agnes comes with me and Daddy to Maeve’s on Saturdays. She brings her flip-top notebook and her orange pen, and we add items to the Treasure List each time—the blue Danish Christmas plates, the Virgin Mary Lladró statue, the tiger’s-eye marble set in the purple velvet box. Agnes and I do an especially careful job packing up Maeve’s boxes, and today is our last Saturday here. But instead of feeling sad, I feel excited. Because Agnes’s special idea for Maeve’s treasures? She finally shared it with me—and it’s good.

  “Attention, attention!” I call to my grandmother and my dad as Agnes rings the brass bell hanging in the entryway. They come in from having coffee in the dining room and sit on the red couch, which is pretty much the last piece of furniture standing in this room—the movers arrive on Monday.

  “We have an announcement,” I say.

  “I should hope so, with that noise,” says Maeve, but her eyes are twinkling. “What is it, my doves?”

  I look at Agnes. It was her idea, so she gets to tell.

  “You may notice that four of these boxes have blue stars on them,” she says, pointing like a game show host to the special packing we did, complete with signature doodles. “That is because they won’t be going to Maeve’s new apartment this week.”

  “They won’t?” asks Daddy, but I put my finger to my lips to shush him. Agnes has the floor.

  “They won’t,” she says. “Instead, we’re taking Maeve’s treasures to Mr. Bennington at the Germantown Historical Society.”

  “Mr. Bennington?” Daddy always takes a minute to catch on, but Maeve is already smiling.

  Agnes opens the box we left unsealed for dramatic purposes. She pulls out a tiny travel clock that Maeve bought on a trip to Spain and Morocco when she was nineteen. Its face is yellowed, but it still works, and the numbers are shaped with swirly edges. It has a quiet tick.

  “For this one, we might tell the story of an evening in Morocco . . . ,” Agnes says. Then she looks to me.

  “Picture it: the nineteen fifties. Northern Africa. A young girl sleeps too late. . . .”

  Maeve claps her hands together in delight. “She stops by a market in Tangier, where she finds a clock that looks like it belongs in a genie bottle. She doesn’t know to bargain, but the young man who’s selling it offers her half off if she’ll come to a dance with him that evening. . . .”

  “Mother!” My dad interrupts, but he’s grinning.

  Agnes and I giggle into our hands. Maeve gets it. She can tell the story of each object to Mr. Bennington, and he can use a few for his exhibit on the lives and travels of longtime Philadelphians.

  “Mr. Bennington wants to meet with you this week,” I tell her. “Agnes set it up.” According to Mrs. Davis, that means she took Agnes by the museum to “talk Mr. Bennington’s ear off until he said yes.”

  Agnes doesn’t say anything, but her smile is like a giant half-moon.

  And so is Maeve’s.

  Chapter 29

  By the last week of the competition, Agnes’s team is way ahead in trivia, probably because since we’ve fixed things between us, she hasn’t missed a single day. Maybe her extra therapy is helping, but I like to think it’s also me. Agnes taught Shari and me a trick to buzz in more quickly—it involved a wrist motion that you wouldn’t believe—and even Bryce gave her an approving nod after that. But she was still faster.

  When Mr. Perl announces that Team One gets to decide where the end-of-school party will be next week, Agnes’s hand shoots up.

  “Agnes?”

  “Yes, Mr. Perl,” she says, standing up to address everyone. “We already know where we want to have the party.” She’s looking right at me, and my palms get sweaty.

  My leg starts bouncing up and down, but Finn touches my knee under the desk to still it, and that makes my face get red. He pulls his hand away, and when I look at him, his face is getting red too. He knows about our plan.

  “This year, we’ve decided to hold the end-of-school party at Blue Sky Bakery in downtown Philadelphia,” says Agnes.

  I look around to see the class reaction; everyone is still and quiet.

  “The theme is Sweet Victory, and there will be lots of treats!” she continues.

  Mr. Perl laughs. “What a tasty thought, Agnes.”

  Then I see it—people are smiling and nodding. They like our idea!

  At the bakery, Agnes, Shari, and I had hatched a plan to convince Team One that Blue Sky was the perfect spot for the party. The plan had three phases. Here’s how it went down:

  Phase One: I told my mom I had to bring in snacks for a school thing (not a lie), so she baked a bunch of her classic chocolate chip oatmeal cookies and Agnes and I wrapped them up into four little bags. She gave them to her team members the next day “to celebrate our soon-to-be win” and casually mentioned that she got them at Blue Sky Bakery downtown.

  Phase Two: We knew that one of Agnes’s team members, Ari Dwyer, had been talking about wanting to have the party at Rick’s Minigolf if they won the trivia contest. So one day
at lunch, Shari announced very loudly that she’d been minigolfing that weekend and she saw a mouse pop its head out of one of the holes. Another Team One member, Isabella Blau, shrieked in disgust. That crossed Rick’s off the list.

  Phase Three: In the cafeteria line the next day, Robin and I got right behind Ari Dwyer. He was annoyed that his minigolf idea was nixed, so when Robin started talking excitedly about how she had to have her birthday at Blue Sky Bakery next year because it was so huge and fancy and obviously the best place ever for a party, we could practically see the lightbulb go on over Ari’s head.

  By the time we were done with the members of Team One, they thought the bakery was their idea! All Agnes had to do when Ari proposed it was nod along with everyone else on her team.

  A bonus of this plan? Shari and Agnes and I got to brainstorm a caper together, and that was good for my goal of them becoming something like friends.

  “Everyone, a round of applause for Team One, the clear winner of this year’s trivia extravaganza!” says Mr. Perl.

  When the claps start, I join in and my face is in a full-on beam.

  The second-to-last day of school is a half day, and our class party is in the afternoon. A field-trip bus takes us downtown, and Blue Sky Bakery is gleaming when we walk in. The silver counters are lined with small bites of Mama’s lemon sugar cookies, magic bars, French-style macarons, and swirly rainbow cupcakes with fairy frosting. A bunch of parents are here—even Daddy, who took part of the afternoon off work.

  “Step right up, step right up!” Agnes is acting like a circus ringmaster, directing people to different counters and describing the samples Mama made. Every time she talks about a treat, she adds, “Baked by the famous Liz Markham!” and she’s shouting so loudly that I know Bob Brown hears her. He’s walking around the bakery with a giant grin plastered on his face, and he keeps turning to look back at the register when it dings to ring up a parent’s purchase. The samples are free, but people are buying lots to take home.

  I slide into a booth across from Shari, and I see her grin over my shoulder.

  “They’re coming,” she whispers, and a second later, Finn scoots in next to me and Bryce is jostling Shari to get her to make room.

  “Don’t be a booth hog,” he says, and she rolls her eyes and clicks her tongue at him, but I know what’s underneath.

  It’s the same feeling I have now that Finn’s so close to me, and when he reaches below the table and moves to position his hand over mine, I feel like my heart might stop. So I stare out the window for a second until I can make my breathing normal again.

  Then I look back at him to smile, but I see Marisa heading toward us, and I tense up, expecting her to drop some sort of mean-bomb like she always does.

  When she gets to the end of our booth she says, “Your mom’s cookies are really good.” She’s looking down at the table and not at anyone in particular, but obviously that comment was meant for me.

  “Thanks,” I say, and when she raises her gaze, her blue eyes don’t look at all like ice.

  Before I can second-guess myself, I say, “Do you want to sit down?”

  She smiles a little and pulls up a chair to sit at the end, and it reminds me of the sore-thumb fifth desk in our classroom setup, which didn’t turn out to be such a bad arrangement for me after all.

  Then Bryce and Shari start arguing about which dessert sample is the best, and Finn shows us how to make a paper straw wrapper into a wiggling worm with drops of water. Marisa stays pretty quiet, which is the right move. I see her smile a few times and nod along with us while we talk. I think she’s practicing her soft eyes.

  By the time the party’s over, I don’t know if it’s all the sugar that has me feeling shaky or the fact that Finn stays near me all day and holds my hand under the table at the booth for a really long time. I don’t want to let go, but eventually I have to use the bathroom. I think we’ll hold hands again, though. Soon. Preferably somewhere farther away from my parents.

  As people file out of the bakery to go home, there’s a low rumble of everyone making summer plans. Even though we’ll see one another for the last day of school tomorrow, today feels like the end of the year. Then Agnes runs up to our booth and tells us that Mr. Perl ate four minicupcakes. “I counted!” she says.

  I see Mama behind the counter with Bob Brown, and they’re both smiling and nodding. Daddy is across the room talking to someone’s mom, but I watch him look over at Mama a few times, and every time he does it’s like his face has this inside glow. He’s proud of her.

  I think if all the parents follow up with coming to the bakery over the summer and telling their friends how great it is, it’s possible that Mama will get her full-time hours back. But even if she doesn’t—and she has to look for a new job or whatever—I can tell by how Daddy’s smiling at her, like she’s the only person in this whole big space, that our family will be okay.

  After everyone clears out and Daddy goes back to the office, I wait with Mama to clean up. Finn, Shari, and Agnes stay too. Agnes was already planning to ride home with us, but Finn and Shari just offer to help us clear out the sample trays and sweep, so Bob Brown puts them to work and Mama tells them to call their parents—she’ll drive them home. She knows things.

  As we walk out to our car, it’s still bright outside, and Agnes says, “I love long summer days,” which is just what I was thinking, and Mama says, “Should we bring some of these extra cookies over to Maeve’s?”

  I pause, but before I can worry about Maeve meeting Shari and Finn in her new place, Agnes says, “That’s a great idea—you guys will love Maeve!” And, amazingly, Agnes gives me confidence.

  When we get to her door, Maeve seems happy to see all of us. After Finn walks inside, my grandmother gives me wiggle-eyebrows behind his back, and I rush in to hug her for two reasons: 1) I love hugging Maeve, and 2) I need to be sure Finn doesn’t turn around and see her being goofy.

  “I’m living a life of leisure now!” Maeve tells us, as if her days have changed so much in this new place. She demonstrates how her recliner has seven different positions, and she lets us sit in the big porch swing on her patio. I’m still getting used to her apartment—it’s really different, but it has a white fluffy rug and it already smells like Shalimar.

  Shari and Finn and I stay outside on the patio and kick our feet to make the swing rock while we talk about summer plans. Finn’s neighborhood has a pool and he says Bryce comes a lot and we can also use his guest passes anytime, which makes me think about him in a bathing suit and maybe splashing around in the water and possibly even hanging out all day, and I get this happy feeling in my chest like there’s a bright sun spot hitting me and warming up my insides.

  When I turn back and look through the sliding glass doors, I see Mama straightening up Maeve’s kitchen and Agnes sitting with Maeve on the red couch. They’re flipping through a photo album.

  “Excuse me for a sec,” I say to Shari and Finn, and I step into the living room. Maeve is showing Agnes a photo of herself as an eight-year-old in a flowing butterfly costume with long brown ringlets. I know this one—it’s from a church play she did back in West Virginia.

  Maeve is speaking softly, remembering, and Agnes is paying careful attention to my grandmother’s voice, and for a moment it feels like everything is going to be fine. Even better than fine.

  A few minutes later, after a few more photos and memories shared, Shari and Finn come inside and the room gets louder and Agnes says she wants to look for the tissue paper we used to wrap the marble eggs.

  She finds it in a box in the corner and then she asks Maeve for scissors. And when my grandmother looks confused, Agnes says, “Oh, you just unpacked! How could you know where they are?” and she goes on a hunt on her own and finds them in a kitchen drawer.

  Then Agnes shows Shari and Finn and me how to make big puffy flowers and tiny little butterflies out of the tissue paper.

  When we leave, Maeve’s door is the prettiest in the hall, if not
in the whole building—it looks like a butterfly garden.

  Mama snapped a photo of Shari, Agnes, Finn, and me sitting across Maeve’s porch swing that day, and later she ordered two prints of it. Agnes and I crafted frames with stick-on jewels and painted butterflies. One was for Maeve, who had a little trouble remembering who Shari and Finn were but knew “Lightning Bug” right away.

  The other framed photo went right up on my windowsill, the first treasure from my new home.

  And you know what? It looks like it’s been there forever.

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks are in order because even though writing a book can be a solitary venture—and this one in particular was written very quietly—there are always lots of people around who keep me going, even when they don’t know it.

  To my dear departed grandmother Carol, who may have had a soft, southern whisper and a row house in Philadelphia and marble eggs and the ability to make magic real.

  To my parents, who gave me the experience of moving and changing schools and therefore made me very upset, but also made me a more adaptable human. Or at least gave me access to the tangled emotions that make good writing fodder.

  To Sophia Sonny, who takes care of my children with such affection and know-how that I can spend time writing in cafes all over Brooklyn.

  To Micol Ostow, Morgan Baden, Sarah MacLean, and Lauren Mechling for reading early drafts of this “I think maybe it’s a middle grade?” draft and telling me I should keep going, along with some sharp feedback.

  To my agent, Doug Stewart, who is extremely deft at identifying tiny tweaks that don’t take much work on my part but make the books I write infinitely better. This is a quality I love!

  To Jen Klonsky, whom I’ve admired from afar for years—I’m so thrilled to be working with such a smart, insightful editor. And to Catherine Wallace, who made the finishing touches process easy and breezy.

  To production editor Alexandra Rakaczki and designer Alison Klapthor, who made everything go smoothly while keeping the process exciting (a good combo). And to Lucy Truman, who captured the characters so well in her cover illustration that I keep finding new, small details to adore (look again!).