What Are Friends For?

by Rachel Vail

  “Oh.”

  “Obviously.”

  “How should I know?” Lou mumbled. “You have a really good vocabulary. Lots of times you say words I don’t know.”

  “Thank you,” I said. I started walking toward home again.

  “No, wait,” Lou said. I heard the chain clink as he got up off the swing. “Did you really say that? Ask that?”

  “Forget it,” I said again, walking faster. I heard his footsteps behind me.

  “What?” he asked. “I didn’t hear what you said.”

  I turned around and found myself looking right at his armpit. “I said, ‘Forget it!’”

  “Oh,” he said. “I don’t have such great hearing. Sorry.”

  “That’s OK,” I said.

  “It’s been a, sort of a rough day for me. Everybody’s been yelling at me, all day.”

  “Sorry,” I told him again.

  “I can’t.”

  “Can’t what?”

  His face turned red and he looked down at his sneakers. “Can’t, you know, garoudabee.”

  “That’s OK. Never mind.” It’s been a rough day for me, too, I thought.

  “Not that I don’t want to. I do. I would. I mean, that would be, phew, um, fine, great. But I’m not allowed to date until I’m sixteen.”

  “Oh,” I said. “OK.” I turned to leave again. I’ve never wanted to get home so bad in my life.

  He walked next to me. The waist of his jeans was about up to my chest, so to talk he hunched over and ducked his head. “At least I think. That’s the rule for my sister, so I gotta figure. My mother is a feminist, so, I gotta figure.”

  I walked faster, but his legs are twice the length of mine, so he kept up.

  “But I, if I could, then, I mean, when I’m sixteen, I’ll, well, I guess that’s a long time away, but, you’re allowed?”

  I closed my eyes and kept walking. “Forget it.”

  “This was a terrible, terrible day for me until now.”

  We’d reached Hazelnut Road. “’Bye,” I said, sprinting across it.

  “Your project was really good, too!” he yelled after me. “Sorry about . . . you know.”

  “Don’t mention it.” Please.

  I ran the rest of the way home.

  seven

  At night, after dinner, we take our things to the dining room table and all get our work done. Mom turns on some music, always classical, usually Vivaldi or Mozart, then gives herself half an hour to read a novel before she starts grading her students’ philosophy essays or working on her own. Dad opens up his laptop and begins sorting through his stack of medical journals. Dex takes the longest getting settled, usually going to the bathroom or to get a drink of water as soon as he sits down, then opening and closing textbooks for a few minutes, trying to choose which homework to think about first. I like to do my homework in the order of my day—first Spanish, then math, science, English, and social studies—it keeps things neat.

  When our grandparents are over, which happens more often now that Papa retired and Nana gets sick of having to deal with him alone, they sit at the dining room table, too. Nana does the crossword puzzle. Papa just sits, his pale bluish-gray eyes roving over each of us. It makes Dex crazy.

  “Why can’t he sit still?” Papa asked Mom. Papa never talks directly to anybody.

  “Leave him alone, Dad,” Mom answered without looking up from her book.

  “You shouldn’t let him chew his pencil,” Papa commented, and then burped. Loud. “Pardon me,” he said.

  I knew better than to look up at my brother, whom I could hear snickering. I told myself I was being disrespectful, and curled my foot under me.

  “Doesn’t she have slippers?” Papa asked about me.

  Mom didn’t answer, so I didn’t say anything, either. After a minute, Mom asked, “Olivia—what are you working on?”

  “Spanish vocab.”

  “Need help?”

  “No, it’s easy.”

  “Dex? How about you?”

  “Actually,” Dex said mischievously. Oh, no, I thought. “Actually, I’m filling out this application for all-county chorus?”

  “Yes,” Mom said. We all looked cautiously at Dex. It didn’t sound like something he’d be having trouble with.

  “And I have to say what race I am. So what am I?”

  Papa burped again and said, “Pardon me.”

  “Black,” Nana said without looking up from her crossword puzzle.

  “But that leaves out three quarters of my heritage,” Dex said. “That leaves out you and Papa, completely. And Grandma Beth, too. I never even really knew Grandpa Joe.”

  “I’m black,” said Dad.

  “You’re half black,” I told him.

  “I’m working,” he muttered, going back to typing.

  “When people look at me, they see an Oriental,” Nana said.

  In unison, Mom, Dex, and I said, “Asian American.”

  “You can say all you want, all of you, that you’re mixed race,” Nana said. “You can list your ethnicities and percentages, but when people look at you they see a black. And if you call yourself anything else, people will think you’re ashamed.”

  “I’m not ashamed,” I told her pretty calmly, considering. “Why does everybody keep accusing me of that? I’m just uninterested.”

  “What do you mean?” Mom asked, laying her novel on the table.

  “I mean, it doesn’t matter anymore, race. Not today, at least not to me or my friends or any intelligent, moral person.” I slammed my Spanish book shut, for emphasis.

  Nana said, “You’ll learn.”

  “I don’t want to learn that,” I told her.

  Nana said, “You’ll learn anyway.”

  Without looking up, Dad said, “They won’t learn anything if they don’t do their homework.”

  “Do you think Nana is right?” I asked Dad.

  “Factually?” he asked. “Or morally?”

  “Well, I think she’s wrong on both counts,” I said, controlling my anger. “I don’t think everybody sees two black kids when they look at me and Dex. I know not everybody does, because I don’t, for one. That’s not what I see when I look at us, or anybody. I don’t see black or white.”

  Mom asked, “What do you see?”

  I see fireworks! I thought, but I managed to say instead, “I see a person. A whole, a particular person, not part of a group.”

  “Good,” said Mom, glaring at her mother. “I’m proud of you.”

  “So what should I check off?” Dex asked.

  “Leave it blank,” I suggested.

  Dex chewed on his pencil. “Other?”

  “Yes,” Dad answered. “Now, shh.”

  “Other,” Dex mumbled. “That’s us, Obliv. Our group. Other.”

  “Well, that’s not how I think of myself.” I opened my textbook again and had gotten about halfway through my Spanish vocab words when Dex flung a rubber band at me. I looked up. He was grinning. “We should have a secret handshake,” he whispered.

  Mom was engrossed in her novel again, her knees bent against the edge of the table and her back curled deep in the chair, with Papa staring at her. Nana was erasing an answer, and Dad’s fingers were flicking at the keys. I signaled Dex to be quiet and went back to vocab.

  Dad stood up abruptly and went to the kitchen to get the phone. He paced back into the dining room, waiting for an answer, and muttered, “I’m just really worried about this guy—young guy, fifty-four, no history, came in with a massive right hemisphere stroke and we gave him TPA and he didn’t bleed, at least right away, but— Hello? Yes, it’s Dr. Pogostin calling.” He walked into the hallway, still talking. Mom shrugged at me and Dex. None of us really understands what Dad is talking about when he talks neurology to us.

 
“Olivia likes Lou Hochstetter,” Dex announced.

  Mom, Nana, and I lifted our heads and stared at Dex, then at each other.

  “Irma Hochstetter’s son?” Mom asked.

  “He’s white,” Dex stage-whispered to Nana, who shrugged elaborately, picked up her crossword puzzle, and headed for the family room, grumbling about the uncomfortable dining room chairs and lack of peace.

  “I don’t like him.” I told Mom. Not anymore.

  “Travis thinks she does,” Dex insisted. “But that she just won’t admit it.”

  “I like him as a friend.”

  “Travis says she’s ashamed.”

  “Travis is an idiot,” Papa said. I smiled at him. He stood up, straightened his slacks, and ambled toward the family room after Nana. He can’t stand being away from her for more than a minute. I think it’s very romantic. Nana thinks it’s very annoying.

  “Why would you be ashamed?” Mom asked me, leaning forward across the table, her shiny braid plunking from her shoulder down onto her folders.

  “I wouldn’t be,” I said, and bent over my Spanish textbook.

  “Because he’s a geek,” Dex whispered loudly.

  “Why is he a geek?” Mom asked. Nobody answered. “Why?” she asked again.

  Finally I said, “He just is, Mom.”

  “Well, what’s geeky about him?”

  “Everything,” Dex said. “The way he walks—de-doe, de-doe. He’s still obsessed with World War Two guns. He comes to school with bed-head. He plays trombone.”

  “I happen to like trombone music,” I said, then shook my head and tried to concentrate on my homework.

  “Hmmm.” Dex leaned back in his chair. “Maybe Travis is right.”

  I slammed my hand down on my notebook and said, “We’re friends!”

  “Geeky guys are the ones to go for,” Mom said.

  “To go for?” Dex asked her. “To go for? How cool are you?”

  “Hey,” Mom said. “Pretty cool.”

  “You think so?” I asked her hopefully. “I mean, about geeky guys?”

  She lowered her glasses and focused on me. “Something going on with you and Lou Hochstetter?”

  “No,” I said quickly, feeling myself blush. “Nothing.”

  “Touchy, touchy,” Dex said.

  “You know I don’t like anybody, Mom. I mean, that way. I just meant . . . Forget it.”

  Mom raised one eyebrow, the way she’d taught me to do. I doodled in my notebook. She always knows my thoughts.

  “Geeks are smarter,” Mom said slowly. “More interesting.”

  “Blech,” I said.

  “Oh, Olivia, don’t be like that.” Mom curled herself back into place, deep in her chair. “I went through a cool dude phase, myself. Thank goodness I grew out of it.”

  Dad paced by, still on the phone, saying, “Intracranial hemorrhage.”

  “Way out of it,” Dex told Mom.

  Mom opened her mouth wide. “What is that supposed to mean?

  “Dad is not exactly cool dude material.”

  Dex and I grinned at each other. My father wears his pants too high and keeps pens in his shirt pocket, and wears thick glasses and white socks. He’s very smart, scientifically, and very kind, but he’s nobody’s idea of cool.

  “Well, thank goodness he’s not,” Mom said as Dad wandered silently back into the room, distractedly holding the phone by its thick antenna.

  “Why?” I asked.

  Mom smiled. “Sometimes the charmers are the real jerks. Right?”

  “Hmm?” asked Dad. “I’m sorry. He’s crashing. They might have to do a hemicraniectomy. I’m just, sorry, what did you need?”

  “Nothing,” Mom told him.

  “I’m sorry,” Dad said, kissing Mom on the top of her head. “I’m just thinking if we . . . No, because the risks . . . I just wish there were a right answer. You do nothing, he’s gonna die, or maybe not, maybe he just gets better. Or you give him the TPA, and maybe he bleeds into the stroke and instead of healing him, I’m making him worse. Or, it might save his life. I just . . . There’s no way to know which.”

  Dad stood there leaning on my mother’s chair, shaking his head and staring into the middle distance.

  The phone rang. It was still in Dad’s hand so he was startled. He fumbled with the buttons, found POWER, and barked, “Dr. Pogostin.”

  Then he squinted at me, as if trying to place where he’d seen me before.

  “Yes, she’s here. May I tell her who’s calling? Hold, please.” He held out the phone to me and said, “Lou Hochstetter?”

  I grabbed the phone from his hand. “Hello?” The mouthpiece smelled like Dad, spicy and warm.

  “Olivia?” I heard Lou’s creaky voice in my ear.

  “Yes.” Dex and Mom were staring at me. I stood up and walked out into the hall.

  “Do you have a partner for the math project yet?” Lou asked. “I was thinking, for the, remember today, what Ms. Cress said? Choose a partner, for doing the Maya number system? In math today. We have to make up our own number code? I was wondering if you’d want to be partners. With me, I mean.”

  “Sure.” The only thing a boy would ask me is to do math. Morgan was right in the first place, I’m boring and smart. That’s good though, I told myself. I wouldn’t want to be any other way. I wandered into the front hall bathroom and stared at myself in the mirror.

  “Great,” Lou was saying. “We’ll make up a really complicated code. Nobody will crack it. This’ll be great.”

  “Great,” I echoed. I looked boring and smart to myself, with my same braids and big eyes I’ve always had. I’d been thinking lately I had nice eyelashes, sexy even, because they’re thick and curled, but maybe not. Which is fine. All that is just surfaces, which I am not interested in. Not at all.

  “Let’s each start working on it tonight,” Lou was saying. “And we can show each other our ideas tomorrow. OK?”

  “OK,” I said. I turned away from the mirror and went back into the hall. Better get back to homework, I was thinking. That’s what’s important.

  “That’s not why I called,” Lou said.

  “It isn’t?” I stopped walking.

  “No,” he said softly. “It was, I was, I wanted to say, thank you. About what you asked me earlier. In the playground. If you remember. If you don’t, that’s OK. You might’ve, um, forgotten, or, but I. . . .”

  “No,” I whispered. “I remember.”

  “So, um, about that, um, issue, I just wanted to say that even though I can’t, you know, officially, I, just wanted to say that, I’ve noticed you.”

  “You what?” I sunk down on the floor, hugging my knees.

  “What I mean is, I, if I could, if I were allowed, you would be the girl I would most want, to, um, could we just, um, what I wanted to ask you is . . .”

  I waited, smiling.

  “Could we just, you know, like each other? That’s probably stupid. You probably think that’s stupid.”

  “No,” I said.

  “OK,” he said quickly. “That’s what I thought. OK. Forget it.”

  “No,” I told him. “I meant, yes. Sure. That’s fine.”

  “Yes?” Lou asked. “That’s great. Wow. That’s so great. OK. Wow. Really?”

  I smiled. “Yeah. Sure.”

  “So, great,” he said. “Wow. Phew. I took a shower before I called you. To be, um, clean. Anyway, oh, I didn’t mean to tell you that. Forget I said that. Anyway, you can hang up because you’re probably, like, getting ready for bed, or, I mean, you don’t have to tell me what you’re doing.”

  “Homework,” I said.

  “Right,” said Lou. “Figures. You’re so smart, too. Wow. But, so, go ahead, see you tomorrow, thank you, I’m hanging up now, ’bye.” He hung up.

  I lau
ghed and hung up, too. I just sat there in the hall a minute.

  When I finally ventured back into the dining room, Mom and Dex both looked up at me expectantly. I stood the phone beside Dad and sat down resolutely in front of my homework.

  “So, how’s Lou?” Dex asked.

  “We’re friends!” I said. “Doesn’t anybody but me and Dad have any work to do?”

  Dad tore his eyes away from his laptop screen and asked me, “Who’s Lou?”

  “A friend,” I said, trying to stop smiling. “Just a friend.”

  eight

  The next morning, Morgan grabbed me when I was halfway out of the backseat of Mom’s car and dragged me by the elbow past Zoe and CJ into school, whispering as if nothing had happened between us at the bike rack the day before. “Did you bring in your permission slip?” she asked me. “What should we get for the bus ride?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said, stopping myself from asking if we were sitting together next Monday on the bus to apple picking. I’d been half expecting her to give me the Silent Treatment.

  “We’ll figure it out,” she whispered, toying with the lock dangling from my locker. “Right?”

  “Right.” Last week we were just acquaintances. I wasn’t at all sure how to act toward her. I closed my locker and she fastened the lock for me.

  “I’ll pick you up after homeroom,” she whispered.

  “I, OK,” I agreed. I really could just meet you at Spanish, like usual, I almost said, but she’s free to take an extra long walk if she feels like it, I told myself. I don’t know how she managed it, but by the time Zoe and I emerged from our homeroom, Morgan was already there, waiting for me. She dragged me by the elbow toward Spanish. Zoe was left standing there alone. During class she passed me a note that said, Hola, amiga. I didn’t pass one back, but I did smile at her. She waited by my desk after the bell rang.

  On the way to math, Lou walked with us and said, “Wait till you see what I thought of.”

  Morgan turned her back to him and whispered to me, “What does he want?”

  I cupped my hand over her ear and whispered through her silky hair, “He’s my partner for the math project.”

  “I sort of thought . . .” she mumbled. “Never mind.”