“Holly, what’s going on?” she said, acting innocent.
“You’re ruining my life.”
“What’s happened to you? You’ve changed so much. Honestly, I thought you’d be happy for me…for us.” She was pouring it on like honey, though her words were anything but sweet.
“You want me to congratulate you for stealing away Jared’s affections?” I yanked at my shoestrings.
“But you weren’t really—”
“This is truly the end of our friendship,” I said, kicking my tennis shoes down the hall.
“You’ll change your mind if you want to be on choir tour.”
“Meaning what?”
“The director told us—Jared and me—about the theme for the tour. It’s unity. ‘Our hearts in one accord,’ Mr. Keller said. You know—getting along. Which doesn’t allow for fighting over boys or anything else.”
I’d had it with her preaching. “If you don’t make it into the choir, getting along will be the easiest thing in the world,” I said, a bit surprised at how sarcastic my words sounded. And how easy it was to say them.
“I’m in—the choir, that is,” she announced with way too much pride.
“How do you know? Auditions aren’t till Tuesday.”
“Mr. Keller wants me no matter what. If there are too many sopranos, he’ll use me as an accompanist at the piano.” Downright haughty, that’s how she sounded. “Uh, excuse me, Holly. Jared’s calling. They’re bringing a tray up from the cafeteria for me. I’ve got a dinner date with You-Know-Who. Bye.”
Andie’s words stung. Hanging up the phone, I stumbled back to my room. I fell into bed and stared at the underside of my canopy, feeling terribly cheated. My best friend had trespassed—on my heart.
BEST FRIEND, WORST ENEMY
Chapter 10
I don’t know how long I stared at the canopy, but soon I had the urge to grab Bearie-O and throw him across the room. I didn’t need him reminding me of Andie. Not anymore. So I tossed him off my bed.
Mom called me downstairs to play caroms with her and Carrie. I played even though I didn’t feel like it. “Please, will you take me to see Jared?” I begged Mom when Carrie’s turn came around.
Then, when it was Mom’s turn, she placed the white shooter on the board, aimed, and shot. “I don’t know the family very well,” she said.
“Why couldn’t you get to know Mrs. Wilkins?” I pleaded as two of my green caroms slid into a side pocket. “Please, Mom?”
It took three more turns and saying “please” at least five more times before Mom even considered taking me. Finally, after I talked about how the Wilkins family attended our church and Jared was in the youth group, she agreed to drive to the hospital on the way to evening church.
“We’ll stop there briefly,” Mom said.
Briefly, momentarily…whatever. I was beyond thrilled.
Dressel Hills Hospital was small but well decorated. Cozy couches and chairs were scattered around the waiting area. Potted palms and spider plants gave it a comfortable feeling. Oil paintings of local spots—mountains, waterfalls, and meadows—were spotlighted on the wall.
Mom asked for Jared’s room number at the receptionist’s desk. As we walked down a long, narrow hall, I became more nervous with every step. What would I say to Jared? Would Andie still be hanging around?
We rounded a corner, and I spotted Mrs. Wilkins chatting with Andie’s mother in the waiting area near room 204—Jared’s. So Andie was here. Mom shot me a glance. I nodded and pointed back at her. I wanted her to make the necessary introductions.
Somehow, I don’t know how, I managed to smile and shake hands with Mrs. Wilkins, a small woman with blue eyes and a smile just like Jared’s. “Why don’t you go on in and see Jared?” she said. “Andie’s with him.”
“Are you sure it’s all right?” I asked.
“Well, to tell the truth, he might already be sleeping,” Mrs. Wilkins said. “He just had some medication for pain.”
Jared in pain? My heart jumped. I wandered over to his room.
Pausing at the doorway, I spied Andie. She sat curled up in a chair, close to Jared’s hospital bed, like she was monitoring his every breath. He was propped up with a zillion pillows, his right leg supported by a pulley system above the bed.
Andie looked up at that moment. “Holly!” she said in her most charming voice. “Come right in.”
I approached the bed just as Jared let out a tiny, high-pitched snort. He was snoring.
Andie began to explain. “He just had some pain medication.”
“I know. His mom already told me.” I found another chair and pulled it over next to Andie’s and sat down. A long silence settled over the room. I was boiling inside.
At last, I blurted out what I was thinking. I just couldn’t hold in my thoughts any longer. “Look, Andie,” I said, leaning toward her. “Jared likes me, I know he does.”
She crossed her chubby little legs. “Maybe he did once, but this is now,” she said. “Whatever you had, or thought you had, well, it’s over. You’re history.”
This was beyond my worst nightmare! Jared interested in Andie?
He had said he liked tall, skinny girls. Andie was anything but that.
“I know you’re wrong,” I argued. “You must’ve been dreaming—wishing it were true—when you thought he touched your hand.”
“Do you want a written statement?” She leaned closer to Jared, her eyes scanning the rings and pulleys that held his fractured leg in place. “He wants me to watch over him while he sleeps.”
“Oh, puh-lease.” I rolled my eyes. “He doesn’t need mothering, Andie. He’s got a real mother for that.” Then I lit into her. “You’re the poorest excuse I know for a best friend.”
“What about you? You didn’t back away when you knew how much I liked him, did you?”
“That’s different,” I managed to say. “He was the first boy to accept me as I am.”
“You mean skin and bones?”
A low blow! Something snapped inside me. “That’s it,” I shouted.
“You’ll never see our Loyalty Papers again.”
“Whatever!” She fluffed her dark locks. “You don’t know what you’re saying. Your life’s a big, fat zero without me.”
“That’s what you think,” I growled. “Why don’t you go home and leave me alone with Jared?”
“If I’m not here when he wakes up—well, I just don’t know what he’d do. We have a very special bond,” she said in her sickening-sweet voice.
“Well, he must be desperate, then. Just pack up your precious keyboard and get out of here.”
Mom and Mrs. Wilkins poked their heads in the doorway. Mom looked puzzled. “Is everything all right?”
“Not really,” I said. “Andie was just leaving.”
Mom caught on quickly. “Girls, can you solve your problems elsewhere?” Then she motioned to me. I got up reluctantly and started toward her.
Jared woke up. “I…I heard voices,” he said.
Andie jumped up to reassure him. “It was nothing. Nothing at all.”
Jared’s father came in, carrying a white paper cup brimming with hot coffee. He was good-looking, too, with blond hair and a mustache. He pulled a chair over next to the bed. “Thanks, girls, for dropping by to visit our son,” he said.
“Girls?” Jared said sleepily. “Where?”
Mom’s firm touch on my arm signaled the end of my visit. “It was nice to meet you,” she said to Jared’s parents. “We’ll be sure to mention Jared during the prayer requests at the service tonight.”
We smiled and shook hands all around. Then I headed down the hall with my family. Carrie held Mom’s hand, and I moped behind. I felt like picking a fight. With Andie, with Mom—with anyone in sight.
“What’s come over you?” Mom asked as we drove to church in the snowy stillness.
I shrugged. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Holly?” she said in her warning voice, w
hich meant, You’d better shape up—or else.
“Don’t you remember?” I said. “It’s all part of becoming a young woman. Isn’t that what you said?”
“I’ve never seen you so rude.”
“For as long as I live, I never want to see Andrea Martinez again,” I announced as we pulled into the parking lot of the church. “Never!”
Later, when we arrived at home after the short service, a strange sense of delight swept over me as I slammed the car door and stomped into the house. Like an arrow, I darted straight to my room. There, I pulled the Loyalty Papers from the special folder. I looked at them—fondly for a moment—then I began to rip each page in two. I scattered the pieces all over the floor. Finally I slam-dunked Bearie-O into the trash can, head first.
This was it. My friendship with Andrea Martinez was over!
BEST FRIEND, WORST ENEMY
Chapter 11
Tuesday afternoon—choir auditions! To sing with a traveling group had always been one of my dreams. But as I sat waiting in the hallway leading to the choir room at church, I wasn’t so sure my dream was going to come true. The place was crammed with guys and girls. They lined the hallway, leaning against the plaque-covered wall. They sat cross-legged on the floor, each reviewing last-minute dynamics and phrasing.
Mom and I were together. She sat calmly waiting for my audition while she read a novel. Me? I pulled and twisted my long hair.
“We’ve practiced over twenty times,” I told Alissa Morgan, the girl ahead of me, when she asked.
“That’s probably a good idea by the looks of things.” She stood on her tiptoes, searching for someone.
“Are all these kids in the church youth group?” I asked.
“Yep.” She spotted her friend and called, “Hey, Danny, over here.”
A tan-faced boy with reddish hair bounded over to us.
“How’s it going in there?” Alissa’s head bobbed toward the auditioning room.
“Fierce competition,” Danny Myers said. “How are you doing?
Nervous?” He touched her shoulder.
“I’ll be glad when this day’s over,” she admitted.
“Hey, relax, you’ll make it.” Then, spying me, he said, “I remember you. Holly Meredith, right?”
I nodded.
“Your mom makes the best cookies ever. Snickersomething.”
I smiled. “That’s close. They’re snickerdoodles, and they’re my favorite, too.”
He nodded. “She brought some to our Christmas bake sale. That’s when I first met you and your sister. You two look so much alike.”
“The tall and the short of it,” I replied.
“How tall are you, anyway?” Alissa asked.
“Almost five eight.” I beamed down at her.
Danny grinned. “One more inch, and you’ll catch me.” He had a comfortable way about him.
“Wanna get some water before you try out?” he asked Alissa.
“Good idea. My throat’s so dry,” she said. Danny walked with her down the hall to the water fountain.
I sighed. Some day, a boy will treat me like that.
Thirty minutes dragged by. A heaviness hung in the air. One girl came out of the choir room in tears. Next came a boy, smiling. He jumped up and down all the way to the end of the hallway, exclaiming, “Yes…so cool!”
“He’s confident,” Mom said, looking up from her book.
An older girl poked her head out the choir room. “Holly Meredith, you’re next.”
With as much courage as possible, I entered the choir room. I did fine on the sightsinging and my prepared piece…but the arpeggios. Gulp!
On the way home, Mom chattered with excitement. “You sang like an angel, Holly-Heart.”
Maybe she thought so, but I knew better.
When I wrote the heading in my journal for the day it was:
Tuesday—An Alto’s Nightmare. But I survived it. It was the only mention I made of my pitiful audition. The rest of the diary entry was taken up with how sweetly Danny Myers treated Alissa Morgan.
I couldn’t remember seeing them together before. But it wasn’t any surprise, because I hadn’t started attending youth group yet.
To be honest, it felt weird going this long without talking to Andie. I pulled Bearie-O out of the trash and told him all about my audition. He was a good listener. Never talked back. Never threw junk out of his locker, making piles in the hall. Never moved in on a friend’s crush, or called me stupid nicknames, like Heartless.
Even though he really belonged to Andie, after six years I thought of him as mine. I had a right to.
Wednesday morning arrived. Eighteen days to thrilling thirteen!
I wrote the number on my bulletin board. The days were crawling by like snails.
Before Mom left for work, I asked her about my party. “Can we plan it tonight?”
“After school.”
“Perfect,” I said, chewing on the ends of my hair.
“You’ll split your ends,” Mom said.
I wanted to say who cares? but bit my tongue.
That afternoon following gym class, Andie bragged about Jared’s musical genius to the girls in the locker room. The only good thing about gym today was Miss Neff didn’t call me Holly-Bones.
A first.
Maybe she noticed some development that I missed, I thought, standing sideways at the mirror.
My hair was still damp from a quick shower when I reached for my history book and slammed my locker. Racing toward history class, I accidentally bumped into Danny Myers in the hallway.
“Oh, excuse me,” I said as he bent down and helped me pick up my books.
“Holly Meredith, right? Five eight? Look-alike little sis? Bookworm mother, right? Favorite cookie—snickerdoodles?”
“You’re a walking, breathing computer chip, aren’t you?”
He stopped, took a long look at me, and smiled. “That’s my specialty—memory. I work at it.”
I straightened my books. “It shows.”
“See you at youth group next Tuesday?”
“When I’m thirteen I’ll start going. A few weeks to go.”
“Really?” There was that smile. “They should change those rules.” And he was off in the opposite direction.
For a nanosecond I actually forgot about Jared Wilkins.
In history class, I doodled on my notebook. How long before my letter to Daddy arrived at his home in California? I had mailed it on the way to school this morning. Mom was still in the dark about what I’d decided, of course. Best that way.
The teacher droned on about the decisive battle in the Norman conquest of England. I daydreamed through class. I figured I could catch up by reading the account of the skirmish tonight.
After history, I caught up with Billy Hill heading for his locker. “Wait up,” I called.
“Hey,” he said, smiling.
“Any news about Jared?” I asked.
“He had his surgery Monday night. They put a rod in his tibia bone.”
“Which one’s that?”
He pointed to his own leg. “Shinbone.”
“Is he in a cast yet?”
He nodded.
“For how long?”
“About six weeks. Bummer, huh?”
“So he’ll get the cast off by spring break?”
He scratched his head. “Yeah, it should be off by then.” He looked serious. “The worst thing about this whole mess is it should never have happened.”
“What do you mean?”
He glanced up the hallway, like he had to check out the turf.
“Several guys were spotting Jared on the tramp before he fell. One of them was Tom Sly. When Jared began to lose balance, Tom backed away. On purpose.”
This was rotten. I could hardly believe it.
But there was more. “Jared and Tom had been hassling each other a lot during practice games after school lately.”
“So…do you think Tom wanted Jared to get hurt?”
/> “Who knows.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “Thing is, there was major hostility between them. You heard about the smoking thing Tom tried to pull on Jared and me, didn’t you?”
I nodded. “Too weird.”
I stopped with Billy at his locker. There was a note taped to the outside. “Looks like a note from the coach,” he said.
I peered over his shoulder as he read it. “Late practice?”
“Yeah. Things are real tough without Jared around. The team needs him.”
“Looks like Tom’s revenge is messing things up for all of you.”
“No kidding.” He closed his locker. “You like Jared, don’t you?”
He looked me square in the face.
I felt my cheeks starting to warm up.
“You’re blushing,” he said with a smile.
“Gotta run,” I said, heading for my next class.
In English, I jotted down seven names on a note pad. These kids were going to receive invitations to my thirteenth birthday bash. Andie was not on the list.
Jared was.
BEST FRIEND, WORST ENEMY
Chapter 12
The back door slammed behind me as I came into the house. Dropping my book bag on the bar in the kitchen, I heard Carrie calling to me from the family room. “Jared called.”
My hand froze as I unzipped my jacket. Jared! My heart pounded. I went to the top of the stairs and tried to sound casual. “When did he call?”
She came skipping up the stairway and watched as I hung my jacket in the hall closet. “He called right after school was out,” she said. “He wants you to call him back.”
“Thanks for the message.” I picked up my book bag. Slowly, I headed toward the steps leading to my bedroom, then raced to the phone in Mom’s room so Carrie wouldn’t see or hear me.
“Room 204, please,” I told the hospital operator when she answered.
Butterflies flittered in my stomach as I waited.
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