Well, That Was Awkward

by Rachel Vail

  But anyway, that’s the kind of friend and person she is.

  Everybody likes Sienna. And now AJ likes likes Sienna!

  Poor Riley is really the issue.

  I’ll have to break the news to her, which will be like puking into a fan.

  I should get that over with, though, maybe even before I tell Sienna the awesome news about her and AJ.

  This will be super-romantic and exciting. We will have so much planning and plotting to do about next moves! All that stuff the Loud Crowd does, all that excitement they’ve been buzzing about all this time while Sienna and I have been busy doing . . . what? Reading? Baking? Picking up trash in Riverside Park? Ugh. Grow up, us! But look, it’s happening for us now! It’ll be fun for me, too, obviously. Here we go! I won’t be left out. I’ll be fully in on it all, because I’m her best friend. She always confides in me. I’m so excited! And happy!

  But first I am going to not do anything. Maybe look up some sites online about the care and feeding of a pet Russian tortoise, even though I’ll never get to have one. Or maybe I will just kick the wall a few more times.

  People think I am nice, and a good friend.

  No. They are right. That’s the truest thing about me. I am a good friend.

  I totally am.

  Just sometimes I need a fricking minute, is all.

  9

  ANOTHER REASON, NOT GOOD, BUT

  It’s not her fault, but the thing is? Sometimes I get annoyed at Bret for being dead.

  If she were alive, I could text her anytime I wanted. I could text her right now to ask how to deal. She’d be the only one I would’ve told that I was thinking maybe AJ liked me. She would say something like, Oh, that sucks, but you know what? His loss. You’re the best one of all.

  And she’d mean it.

  Her opinion would matter most to me, so I’d feel better. She’d still be all wispy-pretty like she was when she was a little girl in the pictures in the red photo album next to the couch—but now, at twenty-three, she’d be maybe living down in the Village, doing fabulous things like going to jazz clubs and being an activist working for a cool nonprofit like Sierra Club. And even if Bret had a boyfriend (or girlfriend) who’s just as beautiful and awesome as she is, I would still be Bret’s number one on her favorites list in her phone.

  Because she’d grown up, Mom and Dad wouldn’t have sad eyes. They wouldn’t be relieved just to have me with them, safe. They’d be relaxed and happy, like Sienna’s parents. They wouldn’t think constantly about their kid dying like I know they do now.

  So that would be nice too.

  A smaller reason I wish she were alive: maybe Bret would buy me a tortoise from the weird pet store on Broadway and Ninety-Ninth for my birthday Saturday. They are getting a new shipment of Russian tortoises this Thursday. I really think she would.

  Another reason is: I would have her as number one on my favorites list in my phone, and she might text me in a second, just to say, So what happened? And I would text her back with the news, and she’d tell me what to do.

  In the alternate reality version of my life where Bret is alive that I think about so often that it feels almost true, Bret takes me out for mani-pedis every month. We don’t care about nails. It’s just our excuse to hang together. Maybe we don’t even do mani-pedis. I just think that’s what sisters do, because Riley said yesterday that she and her sister were going to get mani-pedis this afternoon at the nice place near her, down on Seventy-Second, not the cheap place near my apartment, and they go every month.

  Maybe Bret and I meet every Wednesday for tea and croissants at Hungarian. Yeah, that’s better. More us. And weekly. Suck it, Riley, and Riley’s even prettier sister, Amelia: every week.

  Plus, Bret texts me constantly. She tells me her secrets and I tell her mine. We complain to each other about how goofy Dad is, always searching for his glasses and his phone. We have inside jokes about Mom, like how she opens her big brown eyes so wide like a cartoon character when she disagrees, instead of arguing, and says, “Why read last week’s newspaper?” when we ask any question about the past. Bret would have been the one I told first when I got my period. Also the first person I told when I got into my first choice for high school, two weeks ago. And that Emmett got in there too, but Sienna didn’t. She just missed. She did get into Dalton, which is her first choice of private high school and where her mom went/wanted her to go, so really it was fine. We just won’t be together anymore. I didn’t apply to any private schools. They cost way too much for my family. It was a weird sorting moment, seeing who was applying to private and who wasn’t, this past fall.

  Sienna was happy for me, getting into Stuyvesant. Sienna made it completely not weird between us right away, because she’s not a jealous or petty person. She said she knew I’d get in there because I’m such a genius (hahahaha) and she promised I’d kill it there, completely, and we’d stay best friends no matter what.

  Bret would know what a good friend Sienna is. She’d think we were the coolest kids in eighth grade, Sienna and I. No contest, she’d say.

  Bret would have thought I was awesome even if I hadn’t gotten into Stuyvesant. Not like Mom, like anything I am—as long as it includes alive—is fine, perfect, enough. Bret would (since I am the one who is, as always, making this up, I know this is true) think I am specifically awesome, exactly because of the fact that I love tortoises and can’t do a cartwheel and think about stuff like how similar the words coma and comma are. And got into Stuy or didn’t get into Stuy, and was liked liked by AJ, or not. Specifically.

  But no. She’s dead.

  In reality.

  Which is bad for many more important reasons than that, if she were alive, she’d help me figure out the text I need to send soon, now, to Riley, and after that the one I need to send to Sienna. But still, I am petty and shallow, and so that is the big selfish reason I am annoyed with my would-be-fabulous but instead-is-dead sister today.

  10

  SO THAT WENT SUPER WELL

  I decided to just wait and tell them in person.

  Mom says you should never text or write anything online that you wouldn’t be comfortable with the entire world reading, including Grandma, so, yeah. AJ doesn’t like you—he likes Sienna is not a thing I would want Grandma reading. Or, honestly, Riley.

  I told Mom and Dad I had to get to school early to work on a project with Riley Valvert. Not a complete lie, if you squint. Unfortunately, Dad is a morning person. He was down to get an early start, so we went together, even stopped off in the café downstairs in school for a lemon poppy muffin for each of us and a milk for me, coffee for him.

  He checked stuff on his phone and I watched the entrance for friends. Dad doesn’t talk much, unless you ask him a direct question or you get him going on the outer planets. Still, #togetherness.

  Sometimes Sienna gets dropped off early with her brothers but not today. None of my friends had showed up by the first bell, when we go upstairs. Mostly it was kindergartners and first graders with their parents, plus me and Dad. I kissed him good-bye in the café and went upstairs solo while he gathered his papers to go to his office on the Columbia campus, a few blocks away.

  I sat alone up in the eighth-grade hallway until Riley came and dashed over to me, even though her friends were all in the far corner where they always gather before school.

  “Hey, so . . .” I started.

  She leaned close to me. Our shoulders touched. How does she always smell like powder? “You found out?” she whispered, her skinny fingers balled up tight.

  I nodded, sadly, as a hint.

  “And? Does he?” she asked. “Tell me what he said. Wait, did you talk to AJ? Or find out from Emmett?”

  “From Emmett,” I whispered, still frowning so she would please get it without my having to say, AJ doesn’t like you.

  “And?” Riley grabbed my hand. Her fingers are
so silky and slim and cold. “Gracie! Tell me! Why didn’t you text me right away? Does he?”

  I shook my head slowly, like the Tin Woodman of Oz, in need of WD-40.

  “No, like, he’s not sure if he likes me? Or who he likes? Or no, like, Emmett doesn’t know?” Her pale face was going paler, which made her lips look even pinker. She was turning into Snow White right in front of me. When I get stressed, I do not transform into a Disney princess. My hair expands, my skin develops hideous splotches, and I sweat even more than usual. All of which was probably happening right then as we sat there, side by side.

  At least we were keeping our average prettiness steady.

  Cool, okay, so that’s horrible.

  “Um,” I said. “He . . . just . . .”

  “He . . . just what? What exactly did Emmett say?”

  “I . . . He just . . . I didn’t tell him I was asking for you,” I reassured her.

  “Wait, you did? Or you didn’t? Gracie, what the—”

  “I just asked Emmett to find out who AJ likes—without saying why—and . . .”

  “Oh.” Riley let go of my hand. “And?”

  “And . . .” I shook my head.

  “And Emmett said AJ doesn’t . . .”

  I kept shaking my head. “Sorry.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Riley whispered. “If he doesn’t like anybody, then . . .”

  We let her unfinished thought hang between us. I was trying to figure out how to correct that idea, praying for an earthquake to knock down the building and save me from having to tell her. No such luck. When no tremors came, I whispered quickly, “Oh, well, speaking of that, it gets worse, because actually he does like somebody. Guess who—”

  Riley narrowed her eyes, her mouth, her whole face at me. “Who? You?”

  “What? No! Me? Switzerland? The neuter?” And then I laughed, trying to lighten the mood, but unfortunately it sounded more like the hee-haw of a super annoyed donkey. Though, to be fair, did Riley have to make a face like she’d just eaten a pie full of bees at the thought that maybe AJ liked me?

  “Then who?”

  Before I could answer, Sienna turned the corner into the eighth-grade area.

  Riley’s eyes flicked up at her then back at me. I micro-shrugged, then micro-nodded, acknowledging the fact.

  Sienna smiled all happy as soon as she spotted me. Oblivious, she strolled toward us. Like it was any day. Like it was yesterday, and there wasn’t a crisis. Sienna had no idea. And there was no way to warn her. I could feel Riley stiffening beside me.

  Watch out, Sienna! I wanted to yell, maybe throw myself in front of her for protection.

  Just then Dorin Baker shuffled into the eighth-grade area. She said a loud general hi to nobody in particular, which is what made me and Riley look past Sienna to her. Dorin had gotten her hair cut, and it was, well, drastic. Where before it was this huge cascading mass of frizz, now it was chin-length and triangular.

  “Ew!” Riley yelled at poor Dorin. “What happened to your hair?”

  “I, it . . . I got it . . . It got . . . cut?” Dorin sounded unsure about whether this had in fact happened. Her fingers waggled up, up, up and finally tangled themselves into the short hair, near her right ear. Yup, there it was. Cut.

  Riley stood up, planting her fists on her narrow hips. Everybody’s eyes flicked back and forth between her and Dorin, as if they were playing invisible tennis.

  “Ugh,” Riley groaned, stalking toward Dorin through the space people cleared for her. We all know one another pretty well by now, and nobody wants to be in Riley’s path when she’s in this mood. “Everybody thought your hair was disgusting before,” Riley said. “But now?” and then she pretended to puke, miming with her fingers toward her open mouth, and gagging.

  A bunch of kids started giggling—Michaela and Beth, David, Ben, maybe Harrison, definitely the strivey hangers-on Fern and Fara—which only encouraged Riley to keep going, keep pretend-puking all over the floor near Dorin’s feet.

  I knew it was me Riley was mad at—or my news anyway. Not Dorin. Not Dorin’s hair. Poor Dorin just had bad timing, walking in at exactly the wrong second. She started gulping air. Tears chased each other down past the islands of hot pink on her cheeks while Riley continued to fake-puke and the Loud Crowd continued to giggle.

  And then, horribly, Dorin meekly asked Riley, “You don’t like it?”

  That just reinvigorated Riley’s fake-puking performance, much to the amusement of the entire Loud Crowd plus a growing chorus of wannabes, all enthusiastically cracking up and trying to make eye contact with Michaela or Beth, like, Yeah, we are all laughing; count us in.

  The thing is, you really don’t want to get on the wrong side of Riley, or you’ll face the wrath of Riley yourself. The smart thing is just to wait it out. She always stops being nasty within a few seconds and goes back to being cluelessly self-involved.

  Which is maybe what Dorin was doing. She’s a smart girl. Smarter than I am, turns out. Oh well, whatever; I couldn’t be smart one second longer. I knew poor Dorin was getting mugged for a reason that had nothing to do with her or her hair but everything to do with me and what I had just told Riley about AJ liking Sienna instead of her.

  I had prayed for this earthquake; it was me who’d brought it on.

  To be fair, maybe it was the first time Riley had admitted to wanting something and then didn’t immediately get it. Maybe that situation felt so weird to her that she really felt like puking. And she’d just found a convenient excuse in poor Dorin’s haircut.

  Anyway, once I couldn’t deny to myself that it was me Riley really wanted to be barfing all over, and why, there wasn’t even much of a choice. Unfortunately.

  So I said, “Hey, Riley. Quit it.”

  Her ice-blue eyes latched on to mine, mildly surprised, but dead calm.

  “Seriously,” I said. “Leave Dorin alone.”

  Riley’s perfect eyebrows went up a millimeter. “What.” More of a statement than a question. Or possibly a suggestion: I needed to shut the heck up.

  I needed to say something nice, to ease us all over this. Or funny. Funny would be good. Maybe ask Riley if she needed help getting to the nurse. I never mind playing dumb, in service of a joke or for tension-defusing.

  Instead I didn’t.

  “Really, Riley,” I said. “What’s that whole weird fake-puking thing even supposed to be? A joke? An audition?”

  Michaela and Beth laughed in a burst at that. An audition, I heard other kids whispering. An audition! Yikes! Called her out! An audition, like Riley always says! People were giggling, but not me, and not Riley.

  “Or do you have gas?” Ben asked, grinning.

  A few people gasped.

  “No,” he said quickly. “That’s what Gracie said the other day about Riley—maybe she just has gas!”

  Riley didn’t acknowledge him or anybody else. Like a fighter pilot or a sniper, she had locked on to her target, and she narrowed her eyes slightly at me.

  11

  STRANGELY NOTHING

  I fully expected Riley to let me have it then, all the crap she thought about me deep down or even just any nasty stuff that she could dredge up in front of everybody. I told myself to clench for it, get ready, at least for goodness’ sake to stand up so I could square off with her fairly and not get literally kicked in the face by her fashionable boot with the cute little slanted heel. But I don’t know. I was tired.

  So I just stayed there on the floor like gum, with everybody now staring at me. Awesome.

  Riley tightened her mouth into a fake smile. Here it comes, I told myself.

  She sighed and then shrugged. Broadened her little smile to show her perfect if slightly pointy teeth to the crowd of tense eighth graders all awaiting the fireworks of a Riley takedown, and flounced into math as the bell rang.

  “W
ell,” Emmett said to me as I heaved myself off the floor.

  “Yeah, seriously,” I said. “Don’t know how that turned into nothing.”

  “So far,” he said.

  “Hey,” I called after him. “What do you mean, ‘so far’?” But Sienna was yanking my sleeve, holding me back.

  “What the heck was that?” she asked. “She is really getting beyond—”

  “Eh. Just Riley being Riley, I guess,” I said. “But, in bigger news . . .”

  “Bigger news?”

  “Girls?” Mr. Phillips said warningly, snapping toward the classroom door.

  We hurried into class as I whispered to Sienna, “Do you like AJ?”

  “AJ?”

  “Yeah!”

  “Like him like him?” she asked.

  We sat down at our desks, next to each other, and I nodded.

  She shrugged, and wrote a big Y on her notebook paper.

  Y for why or Y for yes? Either way. I raised my eyebrows twice, in response.

  Sienna buried her face in her hands and breathed there for a few seconds. I didn’t know if she was upset or embarrassed or excited or what. When she lifted her head, she just stared straight ahead like she was so interested in polynomials.

  On our way up the stairs to chorus, Sienna whispered, “Does he like me?”

  “Yeah,” I whispered back. “Emmett told me.” I looked behind us to see if Riley was right there, because, ouch. She wasn’t. I didn’t see her anywhere. “Do you like him?”