by Denise Vega
Is it a crime to strangle your best friend when she won’t stop talking about a boy? I think there must be some exception when it comes to situations like this. She just wouldn’t stop. Ok, maybe I don’t want to strangle her but a nice muzzle would help…or a filter that would only let in conversation that had nothing to do with Mark…easy to set up…anything with Mark text in the subject or body of the conversation would be sent to the Trash. Then Jilly and I could have a normal friendship again…a quiet 1, though, if she couldn’t talk about Mark.
The worst part is that I never see her anymore, except after play practice when we go home together. And when I do see her she’s babbling on and on about Mark…it’s like I don’t even know her. She’s liked boys B4 but not like this…keeping track of how many times they’ve kissed and where and how long it lasted and whether they used tongues and I had to tell her to stop cuz I really didn’t want to know anymore. Geez. I’d seen enough on the bus. I cried all over my pillow last night, so I couldn’t even practice kissing, even if I’d wanted to. Which I didn’t. Not when Jilly was getting to actually kiss the real thing. It was 2 pathetic.
chapter 20
No Strings Attached
I never thought I’d say I was glad for A Harvest to Remember, but this week I was because Jilly was more obsessed with her part than she was with Mark. Since we had dress rehearsal and the performance next Tuesday night, she was rehearsing day and night, with and without me.
I, on the other hand, was trying to figure out how I could go to both the dress rehearsal and the computer lab, because my team was counting on me to help them get everything ready.
Wednesday afternoon I stood in the back row of the Vegetable Medley, waiting for our cue to sing the opening song. Once I sang that, I could sneak away before having to be back for my line in about forty minutes. This would be a test to see if I could make it back during the dress rehearsal next week.
I turned slightly so I could see Mr. Trubey through my eyeholes. Our costumes were amazing — they were made out of foam rubber and looked real. But the ear of corn costume was like being inside a toilet paper tube. I could only take small baby steps, though I did have my arms free, which helped.
When our song was over, I shuffled off the stage and down the hall. I had no peripheral vision so I kept knocking into lockers when I got too close to one side. I finally figured out that if I kept to the middle of the hall, I would be okay. I felt like Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird (probably the only black and white movie I liked), trying to get home after her school play where she was a ham. I hoped no one was lurking, waiting to jump me.
“Hey, look! Corny’s here!” Steve shouted as I shuffled into the lab a few minutes later.
“Erin the Corncob!” said Tyler. “Get your kernels over here and help me.”
I smiled inside my costume. I still couldn’t believe this semi-nerdy boy had written that beautiful poem about me. I had never said anything to him and of course he never brought it up. But sometimes I thought of the words, which I knew by heart now, and marveled at how a spiky gel head could have written it.
And I would never admit to anyone that I liked Tyler’s teasing, his easy way around me now. I wondered if he was more comfortable because he had stopped liking me.
I wondered why the thought made me a little sad.
“Wait, can I have her first?” Mark asked. I glanced over at him. “I need your opinion on this layout,” he said, pointing to his screen.
I frowned, wondering if he just wanted to gush about Jilly. I looked over at Tyler, who shrugged and nodded.
“So what’s up?” I asked Mark.
“Do you think it looks better with the photos vertical down the left side and the text next to it?”
“Are you kidding?” I said. “You should have had this done a week ago. Hello? We’re launching in one week.”
“This is one of the last things I have to do,” Mark said. “Chill out and check it out.” He clicked the mouse a few times and the images loaded. “Or horizontal.”
“Wait,” I said, grabbing his hand before he could click again. “I need to look at this one first.” My eyes jumped from the images to the text, taking in the whole effect. “Okay,” I said, lifting my hand from his, “You can click now.” I shifted so I could see him out of my eyeholes.
He had a weird expression on his face.
“What are you looking at?” I asked. “Are you going to make a corn joke?”
He smiled. “No. I just —” He seemed flustered and I had no idea why. I realized that I’d briefly held his hand and no electricity had shot up my arm. But I didn’t have time to think about it because he had clicked the mouse. “Okay, here’s the horizontal.”
After I’d made my recommendation — vertical — I headed over to Tyler. I watched as he moved the mouse around. He had nice hands. His nails were short but not too short, and trimmed, which kind of surprised me.
Shrugging off the feeling I had about Mark, I leaned over Tyler’s shoulder. “I only have ten minutes,” I said through the mouth hole. “Show me what you’ve got.”
“I think Mark is losing interest.” It was the Sunday before the performance, the Sunday before we launched the Intranet, and Jilly and I were in my room, doing our nails. Well, Jilly was doing her nails. I was sprawled across my bed, below my Denver University Pioneers women’s basketball team poster, using my mom’s laptop to make more changes to the MBMS Intranet pages. Launch was in three days and I still had a lot to do. I was also performing a manicure the Erin way — biting the tips off.
Her comment made me stop in mid-nip.
“What?” I said, not sure how I felt about this. “It’s been, like, what? Two weeks?”
“And three days, and about” — she looked at her watch — “ten hours and forty minutes.” She turned from my desk, which stood beneath my window because I liked to look out and see what was going on in the real world while I was doing my homework.
“Not that you’re counting.” I sat up, pushing the laptop aside. “It’s not funny, Erin. I like him. I think.” She stood up and walked around the room. “Why don’t you have a mirror in this room?”
I shrugged, glancing at the tall dresser in the corner. Even if you put a mirror over it, you would barely be able to see your face. And I refused to have one of those full-length mirrors behind my door because looking at myself all at once like that was just too overwhelming.
“So you still like him?” Two weeks was pretty average for her. It occurred to me that I hadn’t really noticed the signs this time. Too busy with I-Club. Maybe she had started to lose interest and I just hadn’t made the connection. And Mark had been talking to me more, joking around. And that look when I’d lifted my hand off of his …
“Why are you asking that question?” Jilly furrowed her brow at me. “I just said I did.”
“You were kind of flirting with Bus Boy on Friday,” I said.
“His name is Jon and I was not flirting.” Jilly blew on her nails and held them out. “He asked me a question and I answered it.” She glared at me. “It was not flirting.”
“Okay, okay.” I held my hands up like in surrender.
Jilly sighed and moved back to my desk, dipping the brush into the polish. “So I think Mark’s going to break up with me, which means I need to break up with him first.”
“Why can’t you break up together?”
“You can’t do that. Someone always has to go first.” She shook her head at me. “You don’t know anything about this, Erin.”
I frowned. Just because I’d never had a boyfriend didn’t mean I couldn’t have an opinion on the right way to break up. “Maybe not, but I don’t see why you have to make a big production out of it.”
“I’m not making a big production out of it. I just need to plan what I’m going to say.” She licked her lips and turned back to the desk. “And once we break up, you know you can’t be friends with him anymore, right?”
I wasn’t sure I had heard
her right. I crawled to the edge of the bed and sat up, flipping my legs over the side. “What?”
“Look, you’ve never been friends with one of my boyfriends before, so this is kind of a weird situation. But how would it look if you were still friends with him after he dumps me or I dump him?”
“It would look fine,” I said. “Because we were friends long before you went out.”
Jilly swiveled around in the chair. “But it’ll look like you’re loyal to him and not me.”
“That’s crazy, Jilly. You’re my best friend. Everyone knows that.”
“I don’t like the idea that you’ll still be talking to him after I won’t be.”
Ah. The truth comes out.
“But you won’t like him anymore, so why should it matter?” I thought this was perfectly logical. But apparently my inexperience had led me down the wrong path. In love, everything was illogical.
Jilly sighed, then spoke as if to a child. “Because you might be talking about me, and that would be very weird.”
I rolled my eyes. “You may find this hard to believe, Jilly, but not every conversation I have with Mark is about you. In fact, none of the conversations I have with Mark are about you.” Okay, I was lying a little, but lately that was true. “Do you know why? Because we have a lot in common that has nothing to do with you, which is why we were friends before you started going out and which is why we’ll keep being friends when you stop going out.”
Jilly’s eyes flashed and she pushed away from my desk. I noticed her left hand had only two fingernails painted. “I can’t believe you just said that.” She stood up, waving her half-painted fingers at me. “A real friend would never be friends with her best friend’s ex-boyfriend, even if they were friends before the ex-boyfriend was even a boyfriend to become an ex.”
I stood up, facing her head-on. “A real friend would never ask her best friend to stop being friends with her ex-boyfriend when that friend was friends with the ex-boyfriend before he became a boyfriend and is about to become an ex.”
We faced off like two boxers in the ring. Jilly put on her stone face. “It’s either him or me, Erin.”
“Why should I have to pick?” I protested. “Why can’t I be friends with both of you?”
“Because you can’t be friends with my ex-boyfriend and still be friends with me. That’s just the way it is. It’s part of the friends-boyfriends-ex-boyfriends code.” She put her hands on her hips. “So, who will it be?”
I stared at her. How could she put me in this position? It was crazy. My thoughts churned around until they settled into one very perfect, very crystal-clear thought. “I choose not to choose,” I said.
Jilly frowned. “You can’t.”
This crystal-clear thought gave me courage. “Yes, I can, Jilly. It’s part of the Erin-is-no-longer-a-puppet code. Because you know what? Serena was right. You’ve kind of always been in charge, and I was always doing what you asked, hardly ever speaking up, letting you sign us up for things, pick our seats in class, decide what we’d do on the weekends. But not anymore.” I took a breath, then hurried on before I lost all my courage. “I choose not to choose between you and Mark. That’s my choice. It’s your choice whether you want to keep being my friend or not.” I crossed my arms over my chest. I hoped I looked tough and defiant, because I had crossed my arms to keep her from seeing how much I was shaking.
Jilly stared at me for a full ten seconds. I know because I counted in my head — one Mississippi, two Mississippi, all the way up to ten Mississippi.
“Fine,” she said quietly. I’d never heard her speak that quietly before. It scared me. I watched her pick up the nail polish and slowly twist the cap back on. My throat closed up as she slipped on her coat. My eyes stung and I opened my mouth to take it all back, to tell her I was joking, that I was still me, Erin Penelope Swift, her friend since kindergarten. But then that would mean I was still Erin the Corncob, Erin the Puppet, Erin the Go-Along. Erin who everyone else saw. Not me.
I pressed my lips together and watched her walk out of my room. I stayed in the same place, my arms wrapped around myself in a crazy self-hug, holding myself up as I listened to her footsteps on the stairs. One, two, three, four, five, six … muffled good-byes from my parents … seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven … the front door opened, then closed.
My legs gave out beneath me. Dropping onto my bed, I let the sobs escape at last.
Sunday, November 24
Jilly is not my friend anymore. I can’t believe it. She just walked out. Just like that. Out the front door and out of my life…my insides are going to explode…I can’t breathe. I’m going to drown in not breathing.
I can’t believe she asked me to pick between her and Mark. I can’t believe she left when I wouldn’t pick. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it.
I can’t write anymore.
11:00 p.m.
I can’t sleep. I keep playing the scene over and over in my head…Jilly’s face, her hands on her hips, waiting for my answer. I’m not sad anymore…I’m mad…furious.
She EXPECTED me to pick her. She expected me to do the thing she wanted me to do. And when I didn’t, she stomped out like a little baby who didn’t get her way. Well, for all I care, she can stomp all the way to Timbuktu.
She totally thinks she’s in charge of our friendship and I have to do whatever she says. I AM NOT A PUPPET. And she’s not my master puppeteer. Doesn’t she get that? She has got to be the most selfish, stuck-up, my-way-or-the-highway person in the entire world.
I am so mad my fingers are shaking as I type this. I’m glad you and Mark aren’t going out anymore, Jilly. When he starts to like me I will flaunt it in your face. I’ll kiss him right in front of you and you won’t be able to pretend it doesn’t bother you, even if you don’t really like him anymore. I’ll tell Bus Boy how you make me sniff your shoulder to check for BO and how sometimes you’re still afraid there are monsters under your bed so you leap from the edge of your rug to your mattress, usually hitting your shin on the sideboard. That’s why you wear pants so much…so no 1 will see the bruises from trying to get away from monsters that aren’t there. You’re such a baby.
Do you hear me, JILLY????????
I will never do anything you say as long as I live. You are not my friend. You never were my friend.
I hate you.
chapter 21
Creamed Corn
Jilly and I avoided each other as if we had mono. We both waited until the last possible minute on Monday to get to the bus stop so we wouldn’t have to be near each other. I sat with Rosie, and Jilly sat with Bus Boy (I couldn’t think of him as Jon).
“You’ll kiss and make up,” Rosie said when I told her about the BFB (Best Friend Blowout).
“I’m not going to be the first,” I said. My monster sob session the night before had cleaned out all the sad stuff. Now I was just mad. “I was right and she was wrong and there’s no way I’m going to apologize.”
Rosie nodded. “And she’s sitting up there thinking the same thing.” “There’s no way she could ever think she was right if she really thought about it.” I was already planning a JILL-O-RAMA page for my personal website. I would list all of the times she had made me do things I didn’t want to do, and include a “Click here” to see who agreed with me or with her.
“Don’t make yourself crazy,” Rosie said. “It’ll work out.” Rosie crossed one leg over her knee. “My mom always says that no one can make a fool out of you without your permission.”
I thought about this. “Exactly. Jilly made a decision to be foolish and stop being my friend. I didn’t make her.”
“No, you didn’t. Just like she never made you try out for the play, or walk to her house first, even though your house is closer to the bus stop.”
I sighed deeply. “I know.” I hated thinking about that. After my big speech to Jilly, the last several years rolled through my mind and I saw all the things I’d done for Jilly that I didn
’t want to do, all the times I’d been too afraid to say something for fear she’d stop being my friend.
But I also remembered the fun times. Like when we hid under the covers with flashlights and looked at How to Talk to Your Child About Sex, laughing at the pictures. Or when she surprised me on my birthday with a new WNBA basketball. Or when she sprained her ankle and I did her fingernails without her asking me, even though normally I can’t sit still long enough to do stuff like that.
“People always say to stand up for yourself,” I said. “But when I finally did, I lost my best friend.”
“She’ll come back,” Rosie said.
“And if she doesn’t?”
Rosie looked at me, then out the window. I didn’t want to think about what that meant.
When we got to school, Rosie stood up and gave me a friendly punch in the arm. “Remember, you’ve got to be a corncob tomorrow night. And you’ve got an Intranet to launch.”
“I know.” That was the only thing keeping me from running screaming from the house and back to Jilly’s doorstep, where I wanted to scream and shout and yell at her for being so stupid. But there was still a ton to do before we could actually click PUBLISH on Wednesday, so the Scream Fest would have to wait. I was spending every extra hour I could after school in the computer lab.
“I’ve still got three sections to create,” Tyler said to me when I got to the lab that afternoon. His voice cracked with anxiety. “How can I get them done in time?”
“My interviews still aren’t ready,” I said. “And Rosie’s group keeps having their images disappear. It’s a nightmare.” I looked around the room, where kids were clicking frantically, running to other computers, pulling Mr. Arnett or Ms. Moreno over for a consultation. We all felt the pressure. People had been talking about it for the last two weeks, waiting excitedly for the Intranet to go live. Terminals were being installed at different locations throughout the school so kids could access it without having to go into a classroom or to the lab. It was a BIG deal and we all knew we needed to deliver.
