Frenemies

by Sheryl Berk

  “What do you call those?” she asked her teacher. “The big, funny ones?”

  “Those are orangutans,” Ms. Bhatia told her.

  “How do you spell that?”

  Emma was always writing things down and taking notes, even in kindergarten. Somehow, it made things stick in her brain when she did, and curiosity—as her dad liked to say—should have been her middle name, not Elizabeth.

  Emma pulled her composition notebook out of her Dora the Explorer backpack and scribbled the letters Ms. Bhatia dictated.

  One of the orangutans got closer to the cage bars as if to see what Emma was busy doing.

  “Chester likes you,” the tour guide said.

  “Chester,” Emma repeated. “Can you spell that, please?”

  Izzy rolled her eyes. This was taking way too much time in her opinion, and she wanted to see the sea lions. She thought they were way cuter than the big hairy orangutans.

  “Okay, buh-bye, Chester,” she said, tugging on Emma’s arm.

  “Let go.” Emma pulled back. “I need to write down his name.”

  “You’re always writing stuff down,” Izzy complained. She tugged again, and this time the pencil went flying out of Emma’s hand and rolled inside the cage where Chester dutifully picked it up. He examined the tip and the eraser; he used it to scratch behind his ears; he waved it in the air like a magic wand. The entire class laughed and applauded, except Emma, who was now pencil-less.

  “Can he write?” Emma asked the tour guide.

  “Not like you can,” the guide explained. “He wouldn’t know what the letters meant. But he could probably mimic the motions. Orangutans have very strong hands and can manipulate lots of different tools.”

  “But he couldn’t write me a note, like, telling me what he was thinking?” Emma continued.

  “He’s thinking, can you please go away and leave me alone?” Izzy muttered under her breath.

  “No, he doesn’t speak our language,” the guide explained, “although some orangutans are very smart and have been known to repeat human words.”

  Emma looked deep into Chester’s eyes. “He can’t write what he’s thinking,” she repeated. “That’s sad.”

  Izzy had just about had it. She was afraid they would have to head back to the school bus without seeing the sea lions! “Can we go, Ms. Bhatia?” she begged. “This is soooo boring! Right, Harriet?” She elbowed her friend for backup.

  “The monkeys are funny,” Harriet said. Izzy gave her a dirty look and she added, “But the sea lions are funny too.”

  Emma had to leave Chester and her favorite pencil behind. The sea lions were fine, but all they could do was clap their flippers and dive under the water for fish. She glanced back over her shoulder at the monkey house where Chester was probably wondering where she had gone. Maybe she could teach him how to write his ABCs . . . it wasn’t that hard, after all. If only she could go back and see him . . .

  “All right, class, time to get in line and head back to school,” Ms. Bhatia announced.

  The kindergartners dutifully lined up in pairs—except Izzy. Her buddy was missing.

  “Emma’s not here,” she reported to Ms. Bhatia.

  “What? Are you sure?” Their teacher counted the students over and over, and one was definitely missing.

  “Did you see where she went? Did she go to the bathroom? To get a balloon?” Ms. Bhatia asked, practically shaking Izzy by the shoulders.

  “Nope,” Izzy replied. “I didn’t see. I was waving to the sea lions.”

  Elton raised his hand. “I saw where she went, Ms. Bhatia,” he volunteered. He pointed to the monkey house. “She went that way.”

  With that, the students linked hands and raced toward the monkey exhibit with Ms. Bhatia leading the way. There, seated cross-legged on the floor outside the cage, was Emma. She was carefully writing the letters the guide had told her, C-H-E-S-T-E-R, in her notebook.

  “Emma!” Ms. Bhatia shouted. “You scared us! We thought we’d lost you!”

  “I was right here; I wasn’t lost,” Emma insisted. “And look! Chester gave me back my pencil.”

  “Gave it back?” Ms. Bhatia gasped. “How?”

  “He rolled it right under the bars. He must have known it was my very favorite pencil with the purple eraser on it.”

  Ms. Bhatia couldn’t believe what she was hearing, but the pencil was back in Emma’s possession.

  “Okay, everyone. We’ve had enough excitement for the day. Time to go back to school.” She counted over and over to make sure everyone was with their buddy and made Izzy promise not to let go of Emma’s hand until they were safely seated back on the bus.

  “You made friends with a monkey,” Izzy teased as they walked toward the exit.

  “An orangutan,” Emma repeated. “O-R-A-N-G-U-T-A-N. Orangutans make very good friends.”

  “But I’m your friend,” Izzy said. “Your best friend.”

  “You made me lose my pencil, and Chester gave it back. Maybe he’s a better friend than you are.”

  Tears welled up in Izzy’s eyes, and she stopped walking. “You don’t want to be my friend anymore?”

  “Oh, I do!” Emma exclaimed. She hugged Izzy tight—she hadn’t meant to hurt her feelings and make her cry. “I know you didn’t mean it. We’re friends forever. And ever. And happily ever after, to the moon and back.” That was the longest amount of time Emma could imagine.

  “Okay,” Izzy said, sniffling.

  They walked silently back to the bus holding hands tightly and didn’t say another word about the zoo trip. But for years, Izzy loved to tease Emma about her “orangutan encounter” and how Emma had allowed her curiosity to get her lost in the monkey house. “Classic Emma, classic Emma!” Izzy taunted her.

  Emma took the photo out of the scrapbook and scanned it into her computer. She began a new post:

  Sometimes, pictures speak louder than words. I could talk and talk and write and write and I can’t seem to get my point across. So here’s a picture that I hope explains everything I’m feeling and will always feel.

  When Emma walked into school on Monday, she refused to get her hopes up. The last post she’d written for Izzy and Harriet hadn’t worked, and she wasn’t sure this one would. But at lunchtime, she noticed her friends making their way toward her table with their trays.

  “Where’d you find that picture?” Izzy asked her tentatively.

  Emma gulped. Did this mean her friend was talking to her again?

  “In one of my mom’s old scrapbooks,” Emma replied.

  “I was missing my front tooth in that picture,” Harriet chimed in.

  Emma braced herself. Was Harriet about to scold her for posting a horrible photo of her on her blog?

  Instead, Harriet laughed. “OMG, it was the first tooth I lost. I swallowed it eating one of your mom’s walnut brownies the day before. Remember? She felt so bad she gave me twenty dollars and said the tooth fairy gave it to her to pass along?”

  “Really?” Emma replied nervously. “The tooth fairy only gave me one dollar for my first tooth.”

  “You didn’t swallow yours,” Harriet pointed out. “It fell out when you bit into that candy apple on Halloween.”

  “Oh.” Emma nodded. She could feel the tension between them floating there, heavy, in the air. “So, did you like the post?” She looked at Izzy, trying to get a read on her.

  “Here,” Izzy said, shoving a folded piece of paper across the table toward her. Emma opened it. It was a sheet of composition notebook paper, and on it, written in childish handwriting, were the words: “HAPILE EVA AFTA TO THE MOON AND BACK.”

  “You never could spell,” Izzy said with a chuckle. “But you always could write. You gave this to me on our bus ride home from the zoo.”

  “You kept it all this time?” Emma asked.

  “In my jewelry box with the lock and key,” Izzy said, shrugging. “The one where I keep the stuff that matters to me the most.”

  Harriet nodded.
“She has the love letter that Ben wrote to her in it.”

  Izzy shot her a look. “Yeah, well, I should probably go through it and toss some stuff out.” She paused. “But not this. This means a lot to me.”

  “It does?” Emma asked hopefully.

  “Maybe we were a little harsh . . . ,” Izzy continued. “Maybe we overreacted a tad.”

  A tad? The past several days had felt like torture! Emma took a deep breath and remembered that she was guilty of overreacting sometimes as well. “I shouldn’t have turned my back on you guys. Even if I made that promise to Ms. Bates, your friendship means more to me than any Student Congress.”

  “Elton said you’re going,” Harriet piped up. “And you and Jax are working together.”

  Emma blushed. “We are. And I wanted so badly to tell you both all about it! I had no one to talk to!”

  “Well, we’re listening,” Izzy said. “Spill.”

  “Our topic is whether schools should have physical education programs. At first, I wasn’t excited about it, but Jax and I have been doing all this research together. He’s so good at finding the facts, and then I write down the points and how we’ll argue them.”

  Harriet looked confused. “So you’re arguing? Isn’t that not a good thing when you’re trying to get someone to be your boyfriend? I know I hate whenever Marty and I don’t see eye to eye. Just last week he said he thought Black Panther was the best superhero movie ever made and I said, ‘No way! Wonder Woman is way better.’”

  “And then you kissed and made up?” Izzy teased.

  Harriet blushed. “No, but he invited me over to his house to watch Guardians of the Galaxy and I forgave him.”

  “Jax and I aren’t arguing,” Emma assured her friends. “We’re building an argument to present to the Congress together. Jax said we’re ‘the Dream Team.’”

  Izzy raised an eyebrow. “Well, that sounds promising!” For the rest of the lunch period, they gossiped and giggled just like old times, as if nothing had ever come between them. Emma felt like a huge weight had been lifted. The three amigos were back!

  “I missed this. I missed you,” she blurted out suddenly.

  “Me too!” Harriet said, throwing her arms around her friend. “It’s not the same without Emma in our lives.”

  Izzy nodded. “You definitely make things more interesting,” she admitted. “For the record, I missed you too. And you would not believe what happened at the gymnastics meet! Classic Harriet.”

  “Harriet, you didn’t distract Izzy . . . did you?” Emma asked gently.

  “No! She won!” Harriet said, sounding a bit defensive.

  “And then . . . ,” Izzy prodded her.

  “And then I got so excited I jumped up and down and fell off the bleachers.” She held out her leg under the table to reveal a bandage wrapped around her ankle. “I sprained it,” Harriet said.

  Izzy couldn’t stop herself from laughing. “She went splat right on the gymnasium floor. Luckily, there were mats down.”

  “Oh, Harriet,” Emma said, patting her friend on the back.

  “I know. I probably need to be a little less enthusiastic. But I couldn’t help it. Izzy took home the gold medal and she’s going to states!”

  “You are? That’s so amazing! Congratulations!” Emma said. “When are they?”

  “Two weeks,” Izzy said, beaming. “You’ll both come, right?”

  “Absolutely!” Emma exclaimed. Then she remembered what was happening in two weeks. “Wait, is it the weekend of the fifteenth?”

  “Yup!” Izzy said. “Put it on your calendar with a big red circle around the date.”

  Emma didn’t know how to tell her: A big red circle was already around that date on her calendar. It was the weekend of Student Congress in DC.

  “Why don’t you look happy?” Harriet asked.

  “I-I can’t make it. It’s the weekend of Student Congress.”

  “Oh,” Harriet said softly.

  Emma looked at Izzy, trying to gauge her disappointment. Just when they were back to getting along great . . .

  “I understand,” Izzy said.

  “You do?” Harriet asked. “Did you hear her? She can’t come?”

  “I would never tell you to miss the Congress,” Izzy replied. “That would be selfish. Like pulling you away from the monkey house to see the sea lions.” She smiled. “It’s okay, Em. Really. But I want details when you get back. Especially Jax details.”

  Emma breathed a sigh of relief. “I’ll tell you everything, I promise. If we get past the first rounds Saturday, we go to the finals Sunday. But there’s so many teams of students competing from around the country, who knows.”

  Izzy reached across the table to squeeze her hand. “You’re going to win. You’re Emma.”

  Emma smiled. “You too. You’re Izzy. And I’m going to count on Harriet to video every second of your routine—and you winning that gold medal.”

  “Just try not to sprain the other ankle when you do,” Izzy warned Harriet.

  The three of them laughed till their cheeks hurt. Emma wished she could have snapped a photo of this moment to keep in a scrapbook too—but Ms. Bates forbid anyone from using their cell phones at lunch.

  “Take this,” Izzy offered, handing Emma the note she had kept safe all these years. “For luck at the Student Congress, and to remind you we’re there with you in spirit.” She held it in the air for a second. “Keep it safe because it’s really special to me.”

  “I will,” Emma said, smiling. “And you guys are really special to me.”

  Over the next two weeks, Jackson and Emma spent every spare moment they had going over their research and rehearsing their arguments. Before they knew it, they were on the train to Washington.

  There would be three rounds: Emma would take the first, Jackson the second, then she would close with the third. For each point they made, the opposing team would have the opportunity to argue their points: why PE wasn’t needed in schools. This was the con, or against, argument, while theirs was pro, or for. Each round lasted a mere three minutes—so the participants had to speak concisely, clearly, and get the most important and convincing facts across.

  “Don’t forget to say the part about how physical exercise relieves tension and anxiety—that’s key,” Jackson reminded her on the train ride to DC. “Students have a lot of stress.”

  “You’re giving me a lot of stress,” Emma said. “I know, Jax. We’ve been over this ten times.”

  “I want to make sure we stick to the points,” he said, waving an index card in her face. Representatives were only allowed to jot notes on small cards. “We have a lot of statistics to incorporate and sometimes you wander off topic.”

  “Me?” Emma exclaimed. “I do not!”

  “You do. You get really excited about something and you burn through those three minutes without mentioning all the statistics.”

  “Try me. Three minutes on the clock. Now.”

  “You’re on!” Jackson hit the stopwatch on his phone and Emma began to recite: “According to the American Psychological Association, fifty-three percent of teens say they feel good about themselves after exercising, forty percent say exercise puts them in a good mood, and thirty-two percent say they feel less stressed after exercising.” She made sure she mentioned all the points on her index card labeled Stress and finished just as Jackson called time.

  “See? I’ve got this,” Emma declared. “And I have my cards color-coded for each argument. Red for Stress, yellow for Long-Term Health Benefits, purple for Learning to Socialize and Work Together.” She started to place the notecards neatly back in their box.

  “She’s got this,” said a voice. Mr. Carter was seated behind them. “You both do. As long as you focus and stick to the points on the cards, you stand a very good chance of winning.”

  “Really? You think so?” Emma asked him.

  “I do,” Mr. Carter replied. “You’re a good team.”

  Emma looked over at Jackson t
o see if he was blushing like she was. Instead, he was staring out the train window and nervously chewing on his thumbnail.

  She elbowed him. “I didn’t know this meant so much to you,” she said softly.

  “I thought it didn’t, but it kind of does,” Jackson replied. “I want to win.”

  “Well, so do I,” Emma answered.

  “Yeah, but you have so much else going for you, Emma. As my dad would say, this will be just another feather in your cap. My dad’s a prosecuting attorney. He has a lot of feathers in his cap. Unlike me—”

  “You’ve got a lot going for you too! Like . . .” Emma hesitated. Jackson wasn’t really involved in any clubs or teams at Austen Middle. He had friends—Elton and Marty always had lunch with him. But he kept to himself a lot. She suspected his previous school in New York City had a lot to do with it. It had taken him a long time to trust her enough to tell her he had been bullied at his old school, and she suspected there was a lot more he wasn’t saying. She had thought he liked to be a man of mystery, but now something occurred to her: Maybe he felt insecure. Maybe he was afraid people would reject him or laugh at him.

  “Exactly,” Jackson said. “Like what?”

  “Jax, you’re so smart,” Emma said. “You’re a whiz at so many subjects it makes my head spin. You can do anything you set your mind to. You could be president one day!”

  “President Jackson Knight. That has a nice ring to it.” He chuckled to himself.

  “I mean it,” Emma said, touching his hand. “You’re amazing. You’re caring and kind and you have a great sense of humor.” She left out the part about having blue eyes that turned her legs into Jell-O. She held up an index card. “You have so many great things about you, they wouldn’t fit on this card!”

  Jackson turned to look at her. There was that Jell-O feeling! “How do you do that?” he asked her.

  “Do what?” Emma asked dreamily. He also had the cutest dimples.

  “Say the right thing every time to make someone feel better?”

  Emma shrugged. “It’s a talent, I guess.”

  “It’s your talent, Emma,” he said. “There’s really no one like you.”