Best Friends Forever

by P. J. Night

“Yes,” she said. “And I decided it was a dream. Until they started chanting ‘Katie, get out.’ I almost peed my pants, I was so scared.”

  “Wow, honey,” her dad said slowly. She could tell he was trying to act all normal and nonjudgmental, but the concern on his face was evident. Suddenly Katie felt sort of silly … and more than sort of crazy.

  Her dad looked like he, too, was wondering if she’d gone bonkers. “Then what happened?” he asked evenly.

  “I tried to figure out if it was a dream,” Katie went on. She saw a flash of relief on her dad’s face. “I thought about what you and Mom might say about a dream like that and why I had it. Like you do at the breakfast table.”

  “And what did you think we might say?” her dad asked. Katie repeated the imaginary conversation almost line by line.

  Her dad was quiet when she had finished. Then he said, “That was very insightful, Katie.” He seemed proud.

  “Thanks,” Katie said. “It made perfect sense, and I was sure it was a dream. And I fell asleep and I didn’t dream anymore. But then this morning … I don’t know. I just got freaked out all over again when I saw Whitney sitting at the breakfast table. She was sitting all stiff like the dolls. And I just had to get out of there. I just had to.”

  “You got really spooked, huh?”

  “You think?” Katie said sarcastically, but she was smiling.

  “Maybe you were right, honey,” her dad said. “Maybe it was too soon to have a sleepover. Maybe you need more time to adjust to Amy being gone. I’m sorry we pushed you when you were just listening to your gut.”

  “Yeah.” Katie nodded. She felt so much better. “I think that’s it.”

  “Always trust your gut,” her dad added. “Don’t let anyone stop you.”

  When they got home, there was an e-mail from Amy.

  Hey K,

  Hope you had a good time at your sleepover. Did she have a trundle bed? Ha-ha. Guess what I did yesterday? There is a teen karaoke place here, and Kira, her twin brother, Kyle, and two of their friends (who are also in my classes) were going. On Friday at school, Kira invited me and so I went and it was SO MUCH FUN! You rent a little room and do karaoke, and they bring you soda and snacks. We were in the little room for almost three hours! I even sang, can you believe? And I did a duet with Kira’s brother, which was so embarrassing, but I did it on a dare.

  There was a frozen yogurt place next door to karaoke called Swirled World. You choose a combo of yogurt flavors, and they swirl them together. Then you add whatever toppings you want. Here’s what I had: blueberry and vanilla yogurt swirled together. Then my toppings were banana, strawberry, and blueberry. (Kira had chocolate-vanilla swirl with gummy bears and Fruity Pebbles topping. Can you believe that? She is really wacky!) I can’t believe I am saying this, but I think it might even be better than the candy apple booth at Harvest Fair. And much healthier, too!

  Hmmm, what else … I am running out of clothes because our stuff still hasn’t come, so Kira lent me some of her clothes. We are the exact same size.

  Love, A

  Karaoke and frozen yogurt, Katie thought. That kind of beats nightmares of an army of zombie dolls. Guess Amy had a better night than me. Okay. That’s okay. She has to make new friends. I wouldn’t want her to not make new friends. It doesn’t mean we won’t always be best friends.

  Though she had to keep repeating that to herself, the same way she had repeated, It’s only a dream last night.

  She wrote back right away.

  Hey A, The sleepover was fine until I had crazy dreams. Like, totally crazy. Glad you had so much fun. I wish we had karaoke here. The frozen yogurt sounds good, but how could you say it’s better than the caramel apple booth! That is just crrrrrazy! CRA-AY-ZEE! (But not as crazy as my dreams.)

  Love, BFF

  Amy wrote back a few minutes later.

  Oh no! Did you eat cheese before you went to bed? Remember how cheese gives you bad dreams? Cheese dreams! Well, gotta go.

  Wow, I did eat cheese on the tuna melt, Katie thought. It was a very cheesy tuna melt. Cheese dreams! That explains it. Also, Whitney had told her that Wisconsin, where she had just lived, was a major cheese state. It was actually kind of bizarre how Whitney knew all these details about cheese production in Wisconsin.

  “Approximately thirteen thousand dairy farms produce an average of twenty thousand pounds of milk each year, which means a lot of quality cheese for Wisconsin!” Whitney had announced proudly.

  “How do you memorize these facts?” Katie marveled.

  “I’m a cheese head!” Whitney said.

  Katie laughed. “I love cheese.”

  “Me too. Actually, I know a fun game to play about cheese. Wanna?”

  “Sure,” Katie said. A game about cheese sounded quite wonderful!

  “Its called Forever Cheese. You say the three cheeses you would eat if you could eat only three cheeses for the rest of your life.”

  “That’s easy,” Katie said confidently. “My favorites are cheddar, American, and swiss.”

  “Okay, it’s your decision, but I’d think more carefully,” Whitney advised. “Remember, they’re the only cheeses you can eat for the rest of your life. So, what would you have on your pizza and other Italian food?”

  “Ohhh.” Katie sighed. “I’d really need mozzarella and Parmesan.”

  “Right!” Whitney nodded vigorously. “You need to cut a cheese from your original list to make room for one or both of those.”

  “Cut the cheese!” Katie said, and they both cracked up.

  “Wanna know mine?” Whitney said. “I figured them out a long time ago. First, Parmesan, because it’s a very versatile cheese. You can use it on so many different things and get a lot of flavor. Second, cheddar, because it’s also quite versatile and it’s from Wisconsin, so I really fell in love with cheddar there. And third, Gouda, because wherever I’ve lived in Europe there’s been amazing Dutch Gouda cheese, and it’s a taste like no other. It comes in a big round wheel, and I like to eat it just plain.”

  “Wow, you’ve really got your cheese all figured out,” Katie said with a laugh. “Okay. I’ve edited my list. Cheddar, Parmesan, and swiss. I think that covers all my cheese bases. And I hope I never have to really choose. I love cheese too much to limit myself.”

  “Nice,” Whitney said. “I hope you never have to choose either. But I think those three would serve you very well forever.”

  “Thank you very much. Hey, I just remembered something totally random,” Katie said. “My parents told me we should look at the moon tonight. It’s going to be a full moon, and a harvest moon. It’s supposed to be big and, like, kind of a yellow-orangey color.”

  “Cool,” Whitney said. They went to the window, and there it was as promised: big, low, and yellow-orange. It was an amazing full moon.

  Whitney looked at Katie, her eyes wide. “GOUDA MOON!” she exclaimed, and they both cracked up.

  So maybe between the eating of the cheese, the talking about cheese, the playing of Whitney’s cheese game, and staring at the crazy Gouda moon, the cheese dreams had kicked in.

  Katie sat staring at Amy’s e-mail on the screen for a few minutes. She knew it was just a fast e-mail, but she couldn’t help thinking, Why didn’t Amy sign it BFF? We always sign everything BFF.

  Sunday afternoon quickly turned gray and rainy, and Katie was relieved to have no plans except build-your-own taco bar for dinner with her parents and movie night at home. After lunch, she crawled into bed with Zappers for a nap, which she hardly ever did. But she’d slept pretty badly last night and was happy to be in her own bed in her own room—a room that didn’t totally creep her out. She actually slept for a few hours, until her mom came in and sat down on her bed and started massaging her feet, which was the only way to wake her up without her getting cranky.

  “You don’t want to sleep through the tacos, do you?” her mom asked.

  “Definitely not.” Katie smiled sleepily. She felt near normal again.


  “Good call,” her mom said. She was petting Zappers as she looked at Katie. “Hey, Dad told me about what happened at Whitney’s. How are you feeling now?”

  Katie groaned. “Um, a combination of creeped out and mortified,” she said. “I guess about ten percent creeped out and ninety percent mortified.”

  “What do you think your experience was all about?” her mom asked. It was exactly the kind of question she tended to ask, and it required more than a few words of response. Katie supposed this was how she dealt with her patients.

  “I think it was just too soon for a sleepover,” Katie said, hoping this would be the end of the conversation. “That’s what Dad said.”

  “Is that what you think?” her mom asked. “That may have been Dad’s idea, but did it ring true for you?” Again, a totally typical thing for her mom to say.

  “Yeah, it really did,” Katie said, rolling onto her back and realizing that it was pretty much the truth. “And you know what else rings true to me?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Build-your-own taco bar.”

  Her mom laughed. “Get up, then, girl!”

  Katie sat up. “But you know what? I’m going to skip the cheese on my taco tonight.”

  Her mom pretended to be totally stunned. Her mouth hung open. “Skip the cheese? You love cheese!”

  “I know. But have you ever heard of cheese dreams? Amy says if you eat cheese before bed, you get weird dreams. Cheese dreams. And I think that was part of my problem last night.”

  Her mom nodded slowly. “Ahhh, I see. Cheese dreams,” she said. “I’ve never heard of them, but hey, remember the Scrooge character in the Charles Dickens story? He blamed his nighttime visitations on ‘a crumb of cheese.’ Hmm, I wonder if there’s anything to that. I suppose anything’s possible when it comes to dreaming.”

  “Totally,” Katie agreed.

  “So I suppose this means you’ll be having extra olives,” her mom said with a wink.

  Monday morning came faster than Katie would have liked. She was nervous about facing Whitney, and still embarrassed about how she’d run away. It was too bad Whitney didn’t have the kind of phone that Katie could send her a text message on, or an e-mail address. That would’ve helped smooth things over before they saw each other in school. She was the only person Katie knew who didn’t have either. It felt impossible to get in touch, although she knew there was always the good old-fashioned phone.

  But there was Whitney in homeroom, smiling brightly when she saw Katie. Her whole face was lit up, and it was if nothing strange had happened and the sleepover had gone as planned, without Katie bolting out of the house like a lunatic, hours earlier than she was supposed to leave, without saying good-bye. Should Katie say something—apologize or something? What on earth could she say? It was all too weird.

  Katie wound up avoiding Whitney until lunch, when she could avoid her no more. Whitney sat down and opened her lunch. It was the same as it had been the three days last week: an apple cut into fours, a peanut-butter sandwich cut into fours, four crackers, and four slices of Gouda cheese, each in a separate plastic bag.

  “Oh, you forgot your toothbrush! Here,” Whitney said, handing it over.

  “Thanks,” Katie said. “I had another one at home. Hey, what’s with the number four?” She pointed to Whitney’s food.

  Whitney laughed. “Oh. It’s my favorite number. Weird, right?” And somehow everything seemed completely normal again. Katie thought it was good that Whitney was acknowledging some of her weirdness. It made her seem not so weird, but who really cared if she was weird? Weird could be fine if a person was nice and interesting enough, and Whitney was both.

  It was like Katie’s dad always declared when Katie called something weird: “Normalcy is overrated.”

  Katie kept checking for text messages between classes. The last e-mail she’d sent Amy, last night before bed, was about plans for Harvest Fair. Katie had drawn up an hour-by-hour schedule for her birthday weekend.

  Friday: What time do you arrive? We will pick you up at the airport!

  Friday night: Pizza at Sal’s, the new pizza place, which you will love!

  Saturday morning: Westbrook Diner, just the two of us, for my birthday brunch!

  Saturday afternoon: Manicures/pedicures! Then a walk on the beach if it’s not too cold. We can pick shells for you to bring back to California with you.

  Saturday night: Birthday cake and Harvest Fair. Or Harvest Fair and birthday cake. Which do you think is better?

  Sunday morning: Sleep late—what time do you have to leave? Or can you stay till Monday? I think it’s okay to come to school to visit. I bet everyone would love to see you.

  Finally, between science and math class, there was a text message.

  YO, K—I HAVE TO CHECK WITH MY PARENTS ABOUT THAT WEEKEND.

  Katie’s stomach lurched. What did that even mean? She thought Amy’s parents had already promised her she could come. Shouldn’t she be buying plane tickets soon?

  She wrote back right away, typing as she walked:

  OH NO, WHAT DO YOU MEAN, IT’S NOT FOR SURE?

  She hit send as she was about to enter the math classroom, not even noticing Whitney walk right by.

  “What’s the matter? You look terrible,” Whitney said.

  “Thanks.” Katie looked up and smiled sheepishly.

  “Sorry, no, I mean … you look sad,” Whitney explained.

  Katie looked at the time on her phone. She had a couple of minutes before class started, so she leaned against the wall and sighed. “I’m okay,” she told Whitney. “It’s just … I was sure Amy was coming back for Harvest Fair and my birthday, and now it doesn’t seem so certain. I just got a text from her.”

  “Oh,” said Whitney. She spoke gently. “That’s hard. I guess it’s a long trip for just a weekend, right? That must be the problem. Because I’m sure she really wants to come.”

  “Whatever,” Katie said. Hearing her own anger in her voice, she realized she was equally sad and mad. But Whitney was trying to be nice, saying that it was a long trip for a short period of time. And though Whitney had never met her, she seemed to see only the good in Amy, the way Katie used to, before all the doubt and loneliness started creeping in. “I mean, I know. Thanks,” she added.

  “How’s she doing, anyway?” Whitney asked. “Is she doing okay in her new school?”

  Katie felt tears spring to her eyes and was slightly horrified. I’ve embarrassed myself in front of Whitney enough for one forty-eight-hour period, haven’t I? she thought. But Whitney was looking at her so intently, so kindly.

  “She’s doing just great,” Katie said, her voice breaking on the word “great.” And then Whitney reached over and did something she hadn’t done before. She gave Katie a hug. Whitney was kind of thin and tall, and moved slightly awkwardly, as if she hadn’t yet grown into her own height. Katie wouldn’t have thought a hug from her would feel so warm and cozy. She’d thought it would feel a little stiff. But it didn’t.

  It actually helped. A little. And as Katie’s dad sometimes said, A little is more than nothing.

  Then the bell rang, and Whitney rushed down the hall. Katie watched her back as she walked quickly away and hoped she hadn’t made Whitney late. She blinked back her tears, took a deep breath, and walked into math class. She was strangely relieved to have decimals and fractions to contend with. Sometimes numbers were so easy to deal with, compared to real life.

  The next day at lunch, Katie was relieved to see Whitney sitting at their table as usual. It had been a long morning. Rachel and Emma must be officially boy crazy, she had decided. They were nice enough to her, but something had shifted, and they felt very far away. The two seemed closer than ever, which made Katie miss Amy more than she already did.

  As soon as they sat down to eat, Whitney said, “So have you heard from Amy?” She seemed to know how important it was to Katie and said it like it was the first item on the agenda.

  “No, I ha
ve not,” Katie said. “Which is weird. Usually she writes back right away.”

  “Maybe the time difference is messing things up,” Whitney said. “That happens to me all the time with my faraway friends in different time zones.”

  “It’s only three hours,” Katie said. “And with text and e-mail, it doesn’t really matter.”

  Whitney nodded as if the idea of texting and e-mailing were totally new to her. “You’re really upset, aren’t you,” she said. “I can tell. I don’t know you very well, but I can tell.”

  Katie nodded and looked at her sandwich. She had to admit Whitney had a really nice way about her. She was sympathetic without being too nosy, and, in these moments, spoke with a gentleness that was comforting.

  “What’s the very worst thing that could happen?” Whitney continued. She sounded a little like Katie’s mom or dad. But that was okay. Katie knew she had pretty wonderful parents.

  “That she’s not my best friend anymore.” Katie sighed. “That she has a new best friend. This Kira girl. That I won’t have a best friend.”

  Whitney nodded. “Amy’s still your best friend. Moving is just really hard,” she said. The way she said it, Katie knew she spoke from experience.

  “I know,” Katie said, nodding slowly. But the truth was, moving didn’t seem that hard on Amy. It seemed like she was having a great time with her great new friends at her great healthy yogurt place in great California.

  “I know this firsthand, better than anyone,” Whitney continued. “Amy needs to make some new friends in her new school. She’s probably relieved that she met this girl Kira. It doesn’t mean that you are being replaced in her heart.”

  “I know.” Katie took a deep breath. The conversation was really making her lose her appetite.

  “Plus, a person can have more than one best friend,” Whitney continued. “For instance, I think that you’re going to be my best friend here. But I have other best friends from all the places I’ve lived.”

  That’s really sweet, Katie thought to herself. It had never occurred to her that a person could have more than one best friend, but Whitney sounded like she knew what she was talking about.