Anna, Banana, and the Friendship Split

by Anica Mrose Rissi

  I twirled and my skirt flared out around me. I felt pretty. I felt Sadie-proof. I felt ready.

  “Come down for breakfast, then,” Mom said. “There’s even time for pancakes.”

  Banana leaped out of her basket, wiggling with excitement from snout to tail. I followed her downstairs.

  I didn’t have to wish for things to get better. I was making it happen myself.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Color Wars

  I didn’t even look for Sadie on the playground before school, and I kept not looking for her when I got to our classroom. I had no idea if she was still ignoring my existence. I was ignoring hers first.

  Besides, I was busy. Wednesday mornings are the best mornings because that’s when we have art. It was easy to forget about Sadie when I had something fun to focus on.

  Today Ms. Burland showed us some famous paintings of animals, like a tiger crouching in the jungle and a flamingo with a long, silly neck. There was even one of a herd of buffalo that a caveman had drawn on the wall of his cave.

  Ms. Burland passed out oil pastels so we could draw our favorite animals in their natural habitats. I’d been going to do a portrait of Banana in her basket, but then I’d gotten a better idea. So far, it was turning out great.

  I looked down at the paper on my desk and reached for a copper stick. The unicorn I was drawing was about to get shiny hoofs.

  “There,” I said out loud as I finished coloring them in. I looked up to see if anyone had noticed how fancy my picture was. Isabel leaned over to see.

  “Ooh, nice,” she said. “I like all the colors in his mane.”

  “Thank you,” I said. I peeked at the project on her desk. She’d drawn a dolphin leaping out of the ocean waves. Above him, stars sparkled in a black sky. The stars were made from real glitter. “Wow,” I told her. “You’re super talented.”

  Isabel shrugged, but it was true. She was probably the best artist in our class, and maybe the best in the entire third grade.

  I glanced at the supplies scattered across her desk and suddenly I knew exactly what my picture needed. “Can I use some of that purple glitter?” I asked. “Please?”

  As Isabel handed me the glitter glue, Sadie whipped around in her seat. “Purple?” Sadie said, loud enough for the whole room to hear. “I hope you’re not using that with orange.”

  I lifted my chin. This was the moment I’d been waiting for. “What do you care?” I shot back.

  “I don’t,” Sadie said. “I don’t care what you do. I just don’t like looking at things that are ugly.”

  Hot anger prickled up my neck and spread all the way to the tips of my ears. “So don’t look,” I said. “Nobody asked you.”

  Sadie blinked with surprise, then shoved her hand into the air. “Ms. Burland?” she said, without waiting to be called on. “Don’t you think that purple and orange clash?”

  Ms. Burland looked up from the tests she was grading. “Not at all,” she said. “In fact, look.” She stuck out one leg and pulled back her pant cuff to show us the suede purple shoe and orange-with-purple-polka-dots sock she was wearing.

  I let out my breath.

  “Cool,” Isabel said.

  “Thanks,” Ms. Burland replied.

  Sadie hunched back over her drawing and didn’t say another word.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Skip, Hop, and a Jump

  At recess, I took my new jump rope out to the playground and grabbed another from the equipment bin. I found Isabel sitting cross-legged on a rock, reading a book. “Wanna play?” I asked.

  Isabel glanced up. “Definitely,” she said.

  I took a few practice skips while Isabel climbed down from the rock. My rope hit the ground with a satisfying smack, smack. I couldn’t help smiling as I jumped over it.

  “Do you know ‘One, Two, Buckle My Shoe’?” I asked.

  She picked up the other jump rope. “Yeah, but it’s more fun if we make up our own rhyme.”

  I stopped skipping. “About what?”

  “Anything! There aren’t any rules. We just make stuff up.”

  No rules? This was going to be very different from playing with Sadie.

  Isabel kept talking. “It could be about what’s for lunch or places we want to travel or animals or wizards or school or just nonsense words.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s do one about food. I’m hungry.”

  We swung our ropes and jumped in unison. Isabel chanted to the rhythm: “One, two, blueberry stew! Three, four, make us some more.”

  My turn. “Five, six, please no fish sticks. Seven, eight, ’cause those we hate.”

  Isabel grinned. “Nine, ten, tacos again? Eleven, twelve, eat those yourself!”

  “Thirteen, fourteen . . .” I paused and missed a beat. “Uh, what food rhymes with fourteen?”

  We broke into giggles. “Hmm. S’more-teen?” Isabel said, making a silly face. “Start another one!”

  I couldn’t believe I’d been sitting next to Isabel for almost a month and had no idea she was so much fun.

  We jumped and I started a new rhyme. “One, two, doggies make poo. Three, four, ponies make more!”

  Isabel laughed so hard she almost fell over.

  “That’s not how it goes,” a familiar voice sneered behind me.

  I whirled around and saw Sadie standing with her hands on her hips. “What?” I said stupidly.

  “That’s not how the rhyme goes,” Sadie repeated. “You’re doing it wrong.”

  The happiness whooshed out of me like air from a popped balloon.

  “We’re making up our own words,” Isabel explained. “It’s fun.”

  I straightened my spine to remind myself I had one. “What are you now, the playground police?” I said.

  Sadie huffed. “No. I just thought you’d want to know you got the words wrong. Everyone can hear you and you’re saying it wrong and it sounds dumb. I’m trying to do you a favor.”

  Some favor. I ignored her and turned to Isabel. I could be just as mean as Sadie was. I’d give her a taste of her own medicine. “Did you hear something?” I said.

  Isabel looked at Sadie then at me. She blinked. “Um, yes?”

  “Well, I didn’t,” I said. “I didn’t hear anything that matters. Just the wind whistling across the playground.”

  Sadie opened her mouth to snap at me, but I cut her off. “Hey, Sadie, do you know this one?” I swung my jump rope and jumped hard. “One, two, no one likes you. Three, four, not anymore.”

  Sadie’s eyes popped. She looked as shocked as if I’d spit in her face. I kept going. “Five, six, this you can’t fix. Seven, eight, you’re full of hate.”

  Two fat tears rolled down Sadie’s cheeks. I couldn’t believe it. I was making her cry.

  I stopped jumping.

  This felt terrible. I wanted to throw up, or to hug Sadie and apologize, to say I didn’t mean it, but I forced my face into a smile instead and tried to remind myself that Sadie deserved it. She’d stolen my necklace and stopped being my friend. She’d acted super mean and even threatened to take Banana. I was only fighting back, like Chuck said I should.

  “Anna,” Isabel said softly. “What’s going on?”

  I crossed my arms over the hurt in my chest. “Ask the necklace thief,” I said.

  Sadie didn’t look sad any longer. Now she looked furious. She looked so mad, I thought fire might come out her nostrils. “Whatever,” she said. “It’s a stupid baby necklace anyway. I don’t even want it.” Sadie grabbed my necklace, ripped it off her neck with one sharp yank, and threw it on the ground.

  I gasped and reached for it, but before I could rescue it, Sadie stomped it into the dirt. She turned and marched off, curls bouncing.

  I was too stunned to breathe.

  Isabel picked up my necklace and rubbed off the dirt until the pendant was shining again. “Pretty,” she said. She dropped it into my hand. I couldn’t even look at the ruined chain. I couldn’t believe Sadie had done that. And
I couldn’t believe what I’d done to Sadie. The things I’d said had been awful. “Maybe it can be fixed,” Isabel said.

  I shoved the necklace into the pocket of my skirt. I didn’t want to think about everything that was broken. “Who cares,” I said. “C’mon, let’s do one about places.” I skipped over my rope. “One, two, Kalamazoo!”

  I kept jumping and jumping and jumping and didn’t once look behind me for Sadie or wish she’d come back.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Lots to Chew On

  “How was school?” my dad asked that night as he heaped spaghetti onto everyone’s dinner plates. It smelled delicious.

  “Fine,” Chuck mumbled around a hunk of garlic bread.

  “Charles, no talking with your mouth full, please,” Mom said. “And would you care to share a few more details?”

  Chuck swallowed. “Nope,” he said, and stuffed in another bite.

  “I’ll share,” I said. “This morning in art I drew a really pretty unicorn. Even Isabel said it was good, and she’s the best artist in our whole class. We played jump rope at recess and made up our own rhymes, and at lunch she taught me how to say ‘My name is Anna’ in Spanish. Me llamo Anna.”

  Dad looked impressed. “Cool,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “Isabel is great. She let me use her sparkly pen all through social studies, and she has a cat that’s as big as Banana, and her sister plays cello in the middle-school orchestra.”

  My mom reached for the salad dressing. “Wow,” she said. “And do Isabel and Sadie get along well too?”

  I shrugged and twirled a few strands of spaghetti around my fork. Suddenly it didn’t look so tasty. “Who cares? Sadie’s not my friend.”

  “She isn’t?” Dad said. “Since when?”

  Uh-oh. I shouldn’t have said that. I did not want to talk about it. I shoved the pasta into my mouth and pointed to show I couldn’t answer while chewing.

  “Since she stole Anna’s birthday necklace,” Chuck answered for me.

  “Chuck!” I shouted, spraying little bits of tomato sauce onto my lap. Banana looked up at them hopefully. She always spends dinnertime under the table, waiting for food to drop.

  Dad put down his utensils. His face looked serious. “What’s that? Sadie took something from you?”

  I stared at my plate. “No. Sort of. Maybe. It doesn’t matter. Anyway, I got it back.” Please don’t ask to see it, please don’t ask to see it, I begged silently. I didn’t want my parents to know the necklace was broken. Then I’d be in even bigger trouble than I was in now.

  Mom put a hand on my shoulder. “Anna, what’s this about? Do we need to call Sadie’s mom or Ms. Burland to help you two work it out?”

  “No!” I said, horrified. “Then she’ll think I’m a tattletale!”

  “It’s not tattling to talk to your parents about something that’s upsetting you,” my dad said, as if he had never been a kid himself.

  I hunched over my dinner and wished I could disappear, or at least slide off my chair to hide under the table with Banana. Even being down near Chuck’s stinky feet and eating crumbs off the floor would be better than this. “Nothing’s upsetting me,” I said. “I already told you, my day was great. I don’t need Sadie and I don’t even miss her and everything is totally fine.”

  I didn’t look at my parents or Chuck or even Banana, because I didn’t want to know if they could tell I was lying.

  I did miss Sadie. I missed her a lot.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Tucking in, Tuckered Out

  I tucked myself into bed early and stared up at the ceiling, listening to Banana’s piglet-like snores and thinking about my ex–best friend. I couldn’t believe she was really ditching me. I couldn’t believe we would never spend another Saturday spying on her neighbor Mrs. Greene through the fence between their backyards, making up the other sides of the phone calls Mrs. Greene had while she sunbathed. Sadie was really good at that. And she was great at inventing funny rules we had to follow, like the day when we were only allowed to walk on our tiptoes, or the time we spoke in rhymes for an entire sleepover. I didn’t mind that Sadie could be bossy sometimes. Usually the things she said we had to do turned out to be really fun.

  But now Sadie didn’t want to be my friend anymore. It made me sad and it made me angry, but also, it made me confused. I knew Sadie wasn’t really a meanie inside, so I didn’t understand why she’d acted like one.

  Even becoming friends with Isabel couldn’t fix this. I still had a Sadie-size hole in my heart.

  Banana woke up and thumped her tail against her basket as Mom pushed open my bedroom door and light from the hallway flooded in. Mom sat on the edge of my bed and the mattress sank a little under her weight. I let it roll me toward her so we could cuddle.

  Mom patted my back. Her silver bracelets clinked together. I felt myself melt a little under her touch. “Do you want to talk about what happened with Sadie?” she asked.

  I shut my eyes and realized the answer was yes. “I was just trying to stand up for myself,” I said. “She’s been hating me all week and I don’t even know why. But now she has a good reason, because today I was mean and horrible right back.”

  I waited for a lecture about being nice, and how you don’t have to bully back to defend yourself. Mom stayed quiet and her hand kept moving in slow circles on my back. Maybe she didn’t understand how bad things were.

  “I made Sadie cry,” I confessed. “It felt terrible.”

  “Hmm,” Mom said.

  I sniffed. “Everything’s ruined.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not,” she said. “I think Sadie loves you a lot, but I’d guess that sometimes she also feels a little jealous of you.”

  I opened my eyes fast. “Jealous of me? No way. Sadie has everything. Her parents both buy her whatever she wants, and she’s allowed to drink soda and watch TV all the time. She doesn’t even have a bedtime. She definitely doesn’t have a chore wheel.”

  “True,” Mom said. “But just as you sometimes wish your life could be more like Sadie’s, maybe sometimes Sadie wishes she had some of the things you have, like a big brother and parents who are still together.”

  “Well, she can have Chuck,” I mumbled.

  Mom ignored that. “Anyway, it’s great that you made a new friend,” she said. “Isabel sounds terrific and your dad and I can’t wait to meet her. And maybe what you and Sadie need is a little break from each other right now. But it’s possible to have more than one friend, you know.”

  “But not more than one best friend,” I said.

  “Sure it is,” Mom said. “Like how I have two favorite children. You’re both the best, but in different ways.”

  “Really?” I asked.

  “Really,” she said.

  I sat up. “But what if you had to choose between us? Like, if Chuck and I fell off a dock, who would you jump in and save from drowning?”

  “I’d save you both, silly,” Mom said.

  I rolled my eyes. “But if you could only grab one of us.”

  Mom squeezed my hand. “Then I’d rescue Banana, because Banana hates the water and I know I raised both of my children to swim.”

  “Hmph.” I flopped back against my pillow and pretended to pout, but I was secretly glad that Mom thinks I’m strong enough to rescue myself. It’s true, I am a really good swimmer.

  Mom pulled the blankets up tight under my chin how I like them. “I wish I could save you from feeling sad about Sadie,” she said. “But I bet you’ll figure out how to swim through this, too.” She kissed my forehead. “Good night, Annabear.”

  “Good night, Mamabear,” I said back.

  I was asleep before she even shut the door.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Giddyup

  Sunlight streamed through the kitchen window the next morning as I gave Banana her breakfast and poured myself a big bowl of Gorilla Grams with milk.

  Chuck leaned over. “Hey, Anna,” he said. “What’s brown and smells
like bananas?”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Gorilla poop!” Chuck said. He laughed at his own joke.

  I nodded. That was funny, but I could do better. “Hey, Chuck,” I said. “What’s invisible and smells like Banana?”

  Chuck looked at me sideways. “What?” he said.

  “Doggy farts,” I answered.

  Chuck snorted. “Nice one.” We smirked at each other.

  Dad was whistling as he walked into the kitchen. He picked up his TOP DOG coffee mug. “Good morning, kiddos,” he said. “Ready to face the day?”

  “I’m ready to butt the day,” Chuck said.

  I groaned. That didn’t even make sense.

  “Hey, Dad?” I said, feeling brave. “Do you think maybe you could help me with something?”

  “I could certainly try,” Dad said. “What is it?”

  Banana’s ears perked up in surprise as I pulled the broken birthday necklace out of my pocket. “This,” I said.

  Dad took the necklace from my hand and examined it. He held it so close to his eye that if the pony had come alive in that moment, it could have swished at his cheek with its tail.

  I held my breath.

  “Hmm,” Dad said. “Looks like some of the little links in the chain snapped apart somehow, and this other one is twisted. But I bet if we just . . .” He was already taking his pliers out of a drawer. Hope raced up my spine.

  A few minutes later, Dad fastened the necklace around my neck. “There,” he said. “See what you think.”

  I jumped off the breakfast stool and ran to a mirror. The pony pendant shimmered and pranced in the reflection, beneath my huge grin.

  It looked brand-new again—just like magic.

  I hugged Dad and hugged Banana. Problem fixed.