What Are Friends For?

by Rachel Vail

  “No offense intended,” Dex said. “Sorry.”

  “Can we go?” Dex’s friend Andrew asked him.

  “Yeah,” Dex said, but instead of leaving asked me, “How was the Sack project, Oblivia?”

  “Fine,” I said. That’s what he calls me, Oblivia. He thinks I’m oblivious to social situations, just because I’d rather read than hang out.

  “Did Shep like the soccer ball earrings?” Dex asked me. He’d helped me plan the Bring Yourself in a Sack project over the weekend and let me practice presenting it a few times to him. I’m his favorite person in the world, he always tells people. The soccer ball earrings were his idea.

  “I guess so,” I said. He’s the only one who calls Mrs. Shepard Shep. I noticed Morgan tilting her head when he said that. “Morgan’s was really good,” I told Dex.

  Morgan pulled her knees in to her chest and said, “Mine was stupid.”

  “No, it wasn’t,” I said.

  She glared at me, then ducked her head down to her knees and looked up at Dex through her bangs.

  “How stupid?” Dex asked her.

  “Totally embarrassing. I hate stuff like that, being on display.”

  “I know it,” Dex said, poking the crew-cut, muscular boy next to him. “Last year, Travis brought ten pictures of himself. Shep tore him apart for it.”

  “Don’t remind me,” groaned Travis.

  Morgan nodded. “That’s like Lou Hochstetter. Shep ate him for lunch.”

  “The kid whose mother is running for mayor?” asked the other boy with Dex, a skinny blond-haired guy named Andrew. “My mother is working on the campaign,” Andrew explained, kicking a stone.

  “Yeah,” Morgan mumbled. “His project was really boring. Ten World War Two toys.”

  Andrew smiled. “I remember him. Wasn’t he on TV or something?”

  “It wasn’t boring,” I said. My voice sounded a little screechy. I retied my sneaker, thinking maybe I should sign up to work on Lou’s mother’s campaign, too. When I looked up, Dex and his two friends were grinning at each other, raising their eyebrows. “What?”

  “Sounds like love!” Travis taunted. His mother died three years ago, so now he lives with his father and two older brothers and one younger sister, who wears about twenty barrettes all over her hair every day. Dex says you have to make allowances for Travis because with what he’s been through, anybody might get in fistfights. I feel bad for him but still he’s obnoxious. He was making kissy faces at me, saying “Lou and Olivia sittin’ in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g.”

  “Shut up, Travis,” I said, standing up and dusting myself off.

  “Don’t be ashamed,” Travis taunted.

  “I’m not,” I told him, my voice shaking just when I needed and expected it to sound strong and certain.

  Andrew pushed his glasses higher on his nose and said, “If you like him . . .”

  “If I liked him, I’d say so,” I interrupted. “I just said his project was good. What I meant by that was, his project was good.”

  “Mmm-hmm,” Travis said knowingly. “First comes love . . .”

  Dex caught Travis in a headlock and told him, “You don’t know my sister. If Oblivia liked a boy, she’d march right over and ask him out. Trust me, she would. Right, Oblivia?”

  They all looked at me. Dex smiled so proudly I had to say, “Absolutely.”

  Morgan stood up and jammed her fists into her hips. “Olivia would never like Lou Hochstetter. He’s a total geek.”

  I couldn’t look up at Dex or his buddies. I put my hands on my hips, too, hoping I’d look as sturdy as Morgan. I wanted to stand up to her and defend Lou, and point out that I knew she liked him, too—but I also didn’t feel like dealing with Travis’s teasing. That’s probably why Morgan had said that, not so much out of nastiness or dishonesty. It was none of anyone’s business who we liked, anyway.

  “But if you liked him,” Dex prodded. “You’d admit it, right? And ask him out?”

  “Obviously,” I said. My voice cracked, like Lou’s.

  “Sure you would,” mumbled Andrew. “No way, Dex. It’s what I was saying—girls have it so easy.”

  “Yeah, right,” Morgan grunted, blowing at her bangs.

  “No, boys do the asking out,” Andrew mumbled. “So nobody says no to you.”

  “What century do you live in?” I asked him.

  “Go easy,” Dex told me, putting his arm around Andrew “Andrew got rejected today.”

  “Did not!” Andrew punched Dex in the stomach. “She likes me too much as a friend, that’s all!”

  Dex danced backward, laughing. “OK! OK! Down, boy!”

  The three boys scuffled away. Dex waved to me and yelled that he’d see me when he got home from Andrew’s later. I waved back. Morgan was looking down at her toes.

  “Your presentation today really was good,” I told her.

  “Right,” she said. “Mrs. Shepard was really impressed when I dumped that box of red-hots all over the floor.” She picked up her black backpack and shimmied into it.

  “No, I think she really liked the way you did it,” I insisted.

  “Not that I care what Mrs. Shepard thinks,” Morgan grunted. “But thanks. At least it wasn’t as bad as Lou Hochstetter’s, huh?”

  I looked her straight in the eyes and forced myself to ask, “You like him, don’t you?”

  “Lou Hochstetter?” Morgan asked.

  “You can tell me.” I picked up my backpack by the middle loop and watched it hanging from my fingers. “I wasn’t really flirting,” I lied.

  I hate lies. I think lying is cowardly and a bad habit, an easy way out. I felt angry at myself for doing it. “Actually . . .” I corrected myself. “OK, maybe there was flirting, but I’m not in love with him.”

  Morgan started laughing. Soon she had to lean on her bike, she was laughing so hard, and it tipped over into the other five bikes still locked to the rack. They all crashed over, which had Morgan down laughing on the pavement again. I stood there holding my backpack, looking around at nothing, waiting.

  “I thought you were serious,” she finally gasped.

  I didn’t know what to say.

  She laughed again and said, “I never knew you were so funny, Olivia.”

  “I’m not,” I said.

  “Like that,” Morgan said. “You act so straight, everybody thinks you’re just boring and smart, but you’re really way more sarcastic than I am, aren’t you?”

  I shrugged. “I’m actually just boring and smart, I think.”

  “Right,” she said, nodding. “Subtle. Lou Hochstetter. I’m so stupid.”

  I raised one eyebrow. I learned to do it this past summer. It’s a useful response, sometimes, when you can’t think of what to say.

  “You kill me,” Morgan said. “You’re way funnier than CJ.”

  “CJ?” CJ is about as serious as a person can be. I never thought of myself as particularly funny, but funnier than CJ Hurley is not a colossal achievement.

  Morgan blew from the corner of her mouth up at her long bangs. “I used to be best friends with CJ.”

  “I know,” I said. “I sort of thought you still were.”

  “Yeah, but over the summer we really grew apart.” Morgan stood up again and adjusted her black polo shirt.

  I twisted the strap of my backpack around my finger. “How come?”

  “I don’t know. I guess she, I just can’t stand it when people are so obsessed with boys they can’t think of anything else,” Morgan insisted. “That’s how you are, too, I know.”

  “Obsessed with boys?” I started picking up all the bicycles so I wouldn’t have to face her. I’d been rational and nonobsessed until fifth period.

  “Right.” Morgan chuckled. “You and I are so alike,” she said. “We both hate all the boys and all conceit
ed people, and we’re both sarcastic.”

  “Hmmm,” I said, noncommittal.

  “And we both hate flirty girls. Right? That’s what I like about you—you aren’t embarrassed to be an egghead. Don’t tell anybody, but I like math, too, like you said today it was your favorite subject? I used to pretend I didn’t get it, but I do. I could learn a lot from you. You’re so confident. And sarcastic.”

  A Good Humor truck bell rang, out on Oakbrook Road. I was relieved, ready to change the subject. I pointed toward the truck and yelled, “Hey! Ice cream!” I love ice cream. Whenever Dex and I see the Good Humor truck, we always yell, “Hey! Ice cream!”

  “You don’t still like Good Humor, do you?” Morgan asked.

  I watched the truck roll past. “It’s my favorite food,” I said.

  She cocked her head toward me. “You! Just like the Lou Hochstetter thing! You got me again! I’m used to CJ, how straight she is. I have to get used to your jokes. Lou Hochstetter. Can you believe your brother’s friend thought you’d like Lou? The biggest geek in our class?”

  I should’ve said, I actually do like him. But I wasn’t sure—it was a new feeling and maybe it really was static electricity. And here was Morgan Miller, the most powerful girl in the whole grade, acting like I’m in on secrets with her. Not that she was acting like Lou being a loser was a secret—actually, she made it sound like an accepted fact. I closed my mouth over my crooked teeth and didn’t argue, as weak as that is. Don’t let her intimidate you, I coached myself.

  “Not that we like any of them, but, please . . .” Morgan sighed, then picked up my book bag and latched it into the rattrap of her bicycle. “OK. You sit on the seat, and I’ll ride you. Just keep your feet out of the spokes.”

  Morgan’s helmet was dangling from her handlebar, and mine was back in my garage. It’s very dangerous to go two on a bike. My mother trusts me not to do stupid things like that. I stood beside Morgan’s black-and-orange bicycle, not saying or doing anything as she unlocked it from the rack.

  “What’s wrong?” Morgan asked, tightening her own backpack straps.

  “Boy’s frame,” I remarked casually. “My bike is a boy’s frame, too.” Stay true to yourself, Olivia! Be strong!

  “I’d never ride a girl’s,” she agreed, tilting the bicycle toward me. “Here, I’ll hold it steady for you.”

  “I can just walk,” I offered.

  “You scared?”

  “It’s not safe,” I said. There, I’d said it. It’s important to be true to yourself, my parents always say, and they’re proud of me that I don’t follow the crowd. Dex leads the crowd. I do my own thing, and if the crowd is doing it, too, fine; if not, fine, too. Morgan had just said she could learn about being confident from me, in fact. I rested my hands on my hips. Confidently. I hoped.

  Morgan stood with her legs wide apart, holding her bike balanced in her two hands. She looked at me so blankly, I wasn’t sure if she was angry or hadn’t heard me or was weighing her options or just thinking about something else.

  “Morgan?” I asked.

  “Fine. You can have the helmet,” she offered, unbuckling it from the handlebar.

  “No,” I said. “That’s not the point.”

  “Or we can skip it.”

  “Why don’t we just take turns walking it?” I asked her.

  Her lower jaw slid forward.

  “What?” I asked.

  She turned away from me and rebuckled her helmet onto the handlebar. “Forget it,” she said, and tore my backpack out of her rattrap. “If you don’t want . . . Forget it.”

  She lifted her right leg over the back of the bike as it was already moving and rode fast away from me, without her helmet on. I stood there next to my backpack and watched her ride off, wondering what in the world had happened.

  six

  I walked home alone. I like being alone. I walk home alone most days; it’s my time for myself, when I can imagine things like, What if I could fly. Sometimes I sing show tunes in my head or even out loud, if I want. I love show tunes; I memorize entire shows off the CDs, then sing all the parts. Sometimes I imagine being a Broadway actress, performing on opening night with the lights reflecting in my eyes, but usually when I’m singing the songs, I just imagine that the heartbreaking or exciting thing the character is experiencing is actually happening to me.

  As I got to Oakbrook Playground, where I used to play, I was being John Adams in the play 1776, frustrated and fed up with the dillydallying of the Continental Congress. I was practically marching, I was feeling so zealous and patriotic and angry; having to do all the work of creating this country practically single-handedly. “Does anybody see what I see?” I sang louder than I meant to.

  “What do you see?” a meek voice asked me.

  Without thinking, and since the question was right in rhythm with the song, I sang, “I see fireworks!”

  Then I stopped myself, which is good because it is a very dramatic part of the song (if I’d continued I would’ve been belting “I see the pageant and pomp and parades!”), and poor Lou Hochstetter was sitting on a swing in Oakbrook Playground, looking at me like I’d lost my mind.

  “You see fireworks?” he asked. “Really?”

  “It’s a song,” I said.

  “I know. 1776.” Lou stared down at his feet, which I noticed for the first time were very long and so narrow that the shoelaces were pulled tight enough to make the two sides meet, no tongue showing. The bows ended up huge loops.

  I felt myself blushing. “I can’t believe you know 1776.”

  Lou’s head snapped up, and he glared at me angrily. “I actually do know about more than just World War Two.”

  “I know,” I said. “Sorry.”

  Lou pulled at his lower lip.

  “I thought your project was very good.”

  “Shut up,” he mumbled. “You don’t have to mock me. Everybody else already did.”

  “I wasn’t,” I said. “I really thought it was good. I wouldn’t say so if I didn’t. Honestly.”

  “Give it a break.” His voice cracked again so the “break” came out soprano. He kicked the sand under the swing.

  “Who mocked you?”

  He shrugged one shoulder.

  “All the boys?”

  He wrapped his arms around the swing chains, hung his head, and nodded a little.

  “Do you care?”

  “Everybody teased me. ‘All there is to you is World War Two.’ Gideon, Tommy, even Jonas, everybody. Of course I care.”

  “But they’re wrong,” I told him.

  “They’re my friends.”

  “Some friends.” I sat down on the last swing, so there was one between us. We just sat there on the swings for a while, not talking, not really swinging, either, just sitting. Together. I almost said, Well, boys are nasty, but my mother says you shouldn’t generalize like that or it’s prejudice and besides, Lou is a boy, so how would that make him feel? Not better. I thought about telling him that I’d be getting braces at the end of the week and asking him how it felt, or if he had any advice, but I didn’t really need any advice. I considered bringing up the apple-picking trip, but Lou had been one of the boys who spent months pretending to be coughing but actually saying hay-stacking, and meaning kissing. I wouldn’t want him to think I was hinting that I wanted to kiss him or something.

  I cleared my throat. Lou glanced over at me, but when I didn’t come up with any words, he went back to studying his long, skinny feet. I traced circles with my toes in the sand. I could volunteer to campaign for his mother, but that seemed really pushy. I could mention that Morgan had signed a note to me Your best friend, but I wasn’t sure where to go with that. I wasn’t even sure what to think of it. I didn’t even know Morgan’s middle name, and though of course I knew her birthday, since we’ve been in each other’s class since pre-k, I
don’t know her favorite color or her thoughts about God. And she doesn’t know mine either, so how could she call me her best friend?

  Well, that didn’t seem exactly right as a topic to bring up with Lou either, so I started to swing. I pumped my legs and pumped some more, higher and higher, up to the level where there was a pause on the top ends of the front and back trajectories. When I peeked out of the corner of my eye, I saw Lou swinging high next to me. I smiled at him and he smiled back.

  I started dragging my feet to slow down, and realized I was thinking, I shouldn’t be swinging here with him—we’re too old for this and besides, he’s a total geek. I planted the toe of my sneaker hard into the dirt, angry at myself. I should never let myself be swayed by someone else’s shallow judgments of a person. I was surprised and angry with myself. I gripped the swing chain and asked Lou, “Do you want to go out with me?”

  Lou dragged his shoes to slow down. “What did you say?”

  I closed my eyes. “You heard me.” Did he honestly expect me to repeat it? I’m strong, but there are limits.

  “Did you say, ‘a garoudabee’?” Lou asked.

  “What? Why would I say garoudabee?”

  “I don’t know,” Lou answered.

  I was furious. “Garoudabee?” I hate being mocked. At least the girl Dex’s friend Andrew asked out had the tact to make an excuse if she didn’t want to go out with him. I hate boys, I decided. Forget adolescence, forget strength in resisting peer pressure; I wanted to go home. “Why don’t you just . . .”

  “Just what?” Lou asked.

  I got off my swing and picked up my backpack. Without turning back to him, I said, “If you don’t want to, why don’t you just say no?” I started walking away, muttering.

  “I don’t even know what a garoudabee is!” Lou yelled. “I never had a garoudabee. OK? Satisfied?”

  “Garoudabee? That’s not even a word.”

  “So why did you say it to me? You said, ‘Do you want a garoudabee!’”

  “No!” I yelled back, stomping over to yell right in his face. “I said, ‘Do you want to GO OUT WITH ME.’ You big . . . stupid.”