We Used to Be Friends

by Amy Spalding

  “You don’t have to do this just because of me and Elise,” he says. “Which, by the way, is completely over. It wasn’t anything.”

  “It’s not because of Elise,” I say. “It’s not because of you, either. It’s not because of anything except that Quinn is . . .” I smile and decide that Matty doesn’t deserve the end of the sentence.

  “I feel sorry for you, Kat,” he says. “It always felt like you needed someone to tell you who to be. You never even thought about the environment or animal rights before me.”

  I roll my eyes. “Matty, seriously, I thought about the environment before you.”

  “Now, some girl comes along, suddenly you’re a lesbian.”

  “I never said that I was a lesbian,” I say. “There are all sorts of ways to be into girls, you know.” (I looked up a lot of things on Tumblr last night.)

  “Sure. Good luck with this latest incarnation of yourself.” He says it like a biting insult, but shouldn’t we all be trying to be the latest incarnation of ourselves? I’ve never been happier to feel so little like the girl I was last year.

  Quinn comes over after school. She’s done this a lot since we met, but we both know it’s different today.

  Except that all she does is sit down on my bed and get out her calculus textbook.

  “Are you serious?” I nudge it out of her hands and lean in to kiss her. Yesterday I could barely handle even the concept of getting kissed by a girl, and now I’m not sure how I’ll ever stop kissing this particular girl.

  “Can we—uhhh—” Quinn doesn’t move as I try to push her back on the bed. “Sorry.”

  “No, I’m sorry,” I say. “You’re just really cute and I like your mouth a lot.”

  She laughs and blushes. “Thank you?”

  “You don’t actually want to do homework, do you?” I slide my hands up from her waist, but I drop them when I feel how tense she is. “OK, do you want to do homework?”

  “You went out with Matty Evans,” she says. “And Ryan King before that. And I’m sure someone else before him.”

  “Does it bother you that I went out with boys?” I ask. “I mean, I like boys, too. I think I like all kinds of people. Not now, I mean. Right now just you.”

  “No! I don’t care that you went out with boys. You have . . .” Quinn makes an adorable grimace. “Experience. All I have is a week-and-a-half-long relationship with a girl at camp this summer.”

  When Matty and I were first together, it wasn’t as if I hadn’t already kissed plenty of boys. But then we were alone for the first time, in his bedroom, which smelled like sandalwood and lavender and just a little like pot. I could remember hazy details of Ryan timidly approaching my bra, but then Matty’s assured hands were on me. And all I could think about then was the fact that Matty Evans had sex with girls, and I’d only had my boobs nervously touched a few times.

  I guess I never expected to be the Matty in this kind of situation.

  “I feel like I have no idea what I’m doing,” Quinn continues.

  “You don’t kiss like you don’t know what you’re doing,” I say, and it works because we lean in at the same time. I kiss her lightly, gently, but then her hands are in my hair and her lips are rougher against mine. We alternate, soft, hard, tender, hungry. My lips throb, which just makes me want her more. I had no idea how much I could want.

  I definitely had no idea who I could want.

  “Whoa,” Quinn murmurs, right into my ear. I like that there’s a toughness in Quinn, in her walk, in the way she holds her jaw. Her voice, though, is sweet and open. “I sort of can’t handle what a good kisser you are.”

  “I was thinking the same thing. You must have gone to, like, a really good camp.”

  She laughs and slides an arm around me. I lean into her and settle my head into the little crook of her neck and shoulder. I thought I lined up perfectly with Matty, but this is a good fit, too.

  Eventually we do get out our homework for real, even though we keep finding ways to still touch each other. We hold hands while reading and I hook my ankle over Quinn’s leg while I’m conjugating French verbs and she’s fighting calculus.

  “Hey, Kat,” Dad says, and leans into my room a little. “I was—oh, sorry.”

  He disappears down the hallway, while I survey the scene to determine just how high the Dad Alarm has been set off. Our kissing didn’t progress to the point where any clothes were removed or even askew, but some of my berry lip gloss is stained onto Quinn’s lips, and while my hair is often a mess, hers normally isn’t. (It is right now.) My ankle’s still resting on her legs, and her hand is holding it. None of it is even PG-13 rated, but I don’t think dads like seeing their daughters in even chaste romantic scenarios.

  “We’re just studying,” I call down the hallway as I untangle myself from Quinn and our stacks of books. Dad is in the kitchen, scanning the pantry—which I’m pretty sure is still just as unable to provide a full meal as it was the day before and therefore not in need of a serious inspection.

  “Hi, Mr. Rydell.” Quinn walks into the kitchen with her backpack slung over her shoulder. “I was just heading home.”

  “Call me later,” I tell her, and she nods before letting herself out.

  “Think we’re gonna have to call in for something,” Dad says. “Maybe this weekend we can go to Von’s, though.”

  “I feel like if we don’t? We’ll die of malnutrition,” I say. “Sooo, um, I know that it’s maybe weird for you that I’m dating a girl.”

  “Kat, no, geez.” Dad holds up his arms. “That’s fine. Good, sure. Quinn’s a nice kid. Glad I don’t have to worry about you getting pregnant.”

  “Dad.” My voice comes out as shocked as I feel. “Oh my god.”

  “Make sure she makes us lasagna again,” he says while digging around in our drawer of delivery and takeout menus.

  “I think I can make that happen. Dad, you know you can just do this on your phone now, right?” I open up an app and hand it to him while figuratively crossing my fingers Quinn doesn’t pick this exact moment to send me any adorable texts. “You can stop living in the twentieth century.”

  “Hmmm.” I can tell that Dad wants to hate it, but before long we’ve got an order for Chicago-style pizza submitted without the help of any paper menus.

  “You’re probably doing some party or whatever already,” Dad says, “but, just so you know, I’m gonna . . . go out on Saturday night.”

  I nod and try to look like I’m distracted with moving around all our refrigerator magnets. A bunch are still from Mom’s job and say things like, Watch her as she gets her groove back! and other super embarrassing go-get-’em-at-a-later-age slogans.

  “That’s totally great,” I say in my very happiest voice.

  “It’s not a big deal,” Dad says, and I just nod because the truer that is, the easier it’ll all be.

  There’s no response from James.

  And there’s no response yet again.

  Well, it’s brief, but it’s way better than silence. And I know James isn’t someone who can fake excitement, even when super necessary, but I guess sometimes I wish she was.

  It doesn’t seem nice to tell someone she maybe doesn’t actually seem fine, so I just send my usual emoji to her, the blue heart and the girl running. My phone buzzes just a moment later with the pink heart and the cheeseburger James has been sending ever since the Matty breakup and my foray back into the world of omnivorous eating. I know this doesn’t mean she’s instantly not heartbroken or super comfortable with me dating Quinn, but little rituals exist for a reason. My world might actually be changing in almost every way I can imagine, but because of James and four dopey emoji, everything feels safe and right.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  April of Senior Year

  JAMES

  It’s going to be a rejection.

  “It’s going to be a rejection,” I whisper to myself, for extra comfort once it happens.

  But then I click to see my status, and,
amazingly, it now says ACCEPTED.

  “Yes!” I exclaim with a fist pump, which makes me laugh at myself. It’s my standard move for any victory, small or large, in track.

  “Is everything all right, James?” Mom asks me from the hallway.

  I want to get up and close my door, but I can feel how bratty that would be. The last thing I want is to be seen as the immature one in the household, after everything that’s happened to my family.

  “I got into Berkeley,” I say.

  “James! I’m so proud of you.”

  “I’m sure that it’s just because of my track stats,” I say. “And it doesn’t change UCLA.”

  “Well, I’m proud of your track stats.” She steps nearer my doorway. “And UCLA was wrong. We were going to order Thai for dinner, which isn’t particularly celebratory. Still, should I order your usuals or do you want to mix things up?”

  I shrug and keep my eyes on my computer. A new message has popped up, and I pray that it’s not Logan. He’s harder to ignore than I’d like him to be. “I’ll just eat something in my room. You don’t have to order me anything special.”

  “James, you know, this is your home, too.”

  I try my best not to react, even though I want to shake my head emphatically until I’m dizzy. “I know that you think that, or want it to be true, but it isn’t. You’ve only been here a few months—”

  “We moved in six months ago.” An edge creeps into Mom’s tone.

  “You moved into the other house sixteen years ago,” I say. “The house where I lived since I was two is my home. This is just . . . where you live now and where I have to sometimes stay.”

  Mom sighs loudly enough that I glance up at her. “I hate that you feel that way, James.”

  Like I don’t?

  She stops hovering in my doorway, and I give full attention to whatever new message awaits me. It’s only a group text organized by Gretchen and Raina about some kind of prom committee, which I am not interested in enough to even browse the details. Even after spending nearly a full year at their lunch table, I haven’t gotten used to how organized and take-charge they are. I miss the days of lunch just being forty-five minutes off from worrying about everything.

  Prom doesn’t matter anyway. Without Logan, I’m not going. I’m sure that’s fine; there are probably many successful, fulfilled people who didn’t attend their senior proms. Also, buying a dress when you’re tall can be a huge pain.

  I text Dad about Berkeley, and he sends back five thumbs-up emoji. Even though, somehow, Kat and I have fallen away from texting at least every hour we’re awake or even every day—I know she’ll want to see this. So I crop out the Berkeley part and send along with a message.

  I realize as I see the three dots on her end how relieved I am that her impending response is almost immediate.

  Next year we’ll be at completely different schools in completely different states. It may be normal that our communication has already dipped. Just this hypothesis lifts a weight from my chest I hadn’t realized had been parked there.

  I want to say yes, even though I know I’ll probably have to hear a thousand stories built more dramatic than is ultimately necessary or even true. It’s possible I hadn’t noticed that Kat was always like that until now—when life gave us some actual drama. After all, Mom had noticed, long ago. She hadn’t liked Kat even back when I had zero complaints about our friendship. Maybe nothing has really changed, but things just feel more heightened these days.

  It’s stupid, I realize, but if I could say yes to Kat, maybe something broken could get fixed. But I can’t, because I’m not in my home on Fairview. And as far as Kat knows, that’s the only home I have. I didn’t mean to go this long without telling her, but now it’s almost as if it’s too long. How do you casually bring up the fact that your world ended six whole months ago?

  Mom is back in my doorway as I update my college pro/con list now that Berkeley is a reality and not just the far-off possibility it seemed to be when UCLA didn’t work out. Now it’s just between Berkeley and Michigan. “I know you said not to, but, here.” She walks in and sets down a few takeout cartons on my desk. “Panang curry, brown rice, and spring rolls.”

  “Thanks.” I watch as Kat texts back a crying emoji, then three more, then that famous GIF of some actor crying. It’s a bit much. “God, this whole year is screwed up.”

  “Honey, I know you feel that way,” Mom says. It’s her understanding voice. “I promise, when you’re older, you’ll—”

  “Please don’t finish that sentence.” I search her face, because even though the tone and the expression are familiar, she still feels like a stranger to me. A stranger who showed up in October. “I hope I never understand.”

  I should have read the prom committee group text more closely, because I was absolutely not prepared to walk into school the next morning.

  “Ohhh my god.” Kat giggles and hides her face against Quinn’s side. “This is a lot.”

  There are giant posters flanking the main corridor right inside the main entrance. I remember that last year a couple of Logan’s friends had put up a poster campaigning to choose him as prom king. Jace and Nadia had mainly done it as a joke, but Logan wasn’t embarrassed, and even though I was a junior and not eligible—and the school loves selecting a couple—he won. Jenn Chou, whose boyfriend Joe was a junior like me, was prom queen. It hadn’t been a big deal. Logan wore his crown for a while after but then gave it to Joe, and that was that. Logan hadn’t actively campaigned ahead of time for such a non-honor. People just liked him, and that was enough.

  Two posters at the most prime student-poster-allowed location in the school on the very first day posters were allowed up feels . . . I don’t know. The first is a very large photo of Kat and Quinn posed in front of the bright blue sky. For some reason, they remind me of realtors on the signs staked into yards of homes for sale. The other poster is a bright glittery purple background with rainbow letters that say LOVE IS LOVE IS LOVE!! ELECT KAT & QUINN AS PROM COUPLE!! Between the glitter, the striped letters, and the exclamation points, it’s a lot.

  Kat is still playing embarrassed and giggling into Quinn’s shoulder. I wonder about the rainbow letters’ message, considering Kat’s motivations. Does Kat actually care about equality, or is this just a great story so that she still gets to be prom queen?

  It made sense when it was Matty, because Matty loved an audience. Why else would he go to such great lengths to make sure that seemingly the entire school knew about his veganism, and his hybrid that he didn’t even drive to school, and his eschewing of athletics despite his fitness ability because he found them barbarian? But Matty’s so far behind Kat now; this must be all her. Quinn seems nothing like this.

  “I feel like they went overboard,” Quinn says with a sigh.

  “You have to go overboard for prom,” Kat says with a wave of her hand. “It’s, like, required!”

  “I mean, it’s cool we’re eligible but . . .” Quinn sighs and rakes her hand through her hair. “We’re not running for Congress.”

  “You could never run for Congress,” Kat says. “You’d cause too much trouble. Someone like James could, though. She’s so solid and firm, like an old oak tree.”

  “. . . Thank you?”

  Kat laughs. “I love old oak trees! They’re beautiful and cast, like, really nice shade. Like you! You’re tall!”

  Quinn tries to share a look with me, but I don’t want to bond with her over how adorable her girlfriend is.

  “I appreciate you,” Quinn says to Kat in a sincere tone. “You know that, right? Congress or not.”

  “Duh,” Kat says, even though I think Quinn’s trying to have more of a moment than a duh creates.

  “It’s awesome you’re so comfortable with this,” Quinn continues. “I kind of hate that we have to be so . . . big just to ask for the same rights everyone else has. So it’s good you don’t.”

  I still want Kat to proclaim these posters over-the-top and ridi
culous, though. I want to get rid of this horrible feeling that Kat doesn’t care about anything as much as she cares about being prom queen, no matter what Quinn says. Why couldn’t Kat feel that conflict the way Quinn does? Does Kat feel conflict in anything?

  It doesn’t matter, though, because now the crowd is upon them, and Raina starts snapping photos of the two of them in front of the posters. I’m able to fight my way through the approaching swarm to get to my locker. The photo strip from Kat’s and my visit to Eagle Rock Plaza is still hung inside, and it’s now officially too much. I pull at the edge, but I guess the tape has fused to the metal locker door because the picture tears right in half, straight through our faces.

  “Fuck,” I mutter, and then wince because Hannah walks up. “Sorry. That was dramatic.”

  “You know what’s dramatic—the light from the sun reflecting off of purple glitter right when I walk into school.”

  I laugh but feel bad, especially while literally holding a ripped photo of my best friend in my hand. “I actually think it’s great the school changed the policy but—”

  “Oh, me too! This is probably the first thing to happen in this school that makes us a part of the twenty-first century. That part’s exciting and historical, blah blah blah. Anyway, I’m not here to make fun of your friend. Did you hear from Berkeley?”

  I nod and try to look neutral. “Did you?”

  “Yes,” she says. “This is awkward. Say it at the count of three?”

  I laugh. “I got in. Did you?”

  “I did too! This is great. If you decide to go.”

  “Yeah, I’m . . . I’m really not sure.”

  “Well, put me as an item in your pro/con list,” Hannah says. “Whichever column you want! See you at practice.”

  Kat stops by as I close my locker door, and unfortunately I’m still holding the ripped picture.

  “Oh my god, what happened?”

  “I was trying to move it and the tape was too old or something. Anyway.”