Bad Best Friend
Page 18
“But haven’t you lived here for . . .”
“Yeah, they bought it before we were born,” he said. “But they only planned to live in it for two years, tops. So they keep looking.”
“Do you think they’ll do it, someday, or do they just like looking?” I asked.
“As a hobby?”
“Lots of people do that, just enjoy looking at houses,” I said. “Trust me.”
“I do,” he said, and smiled.
I clutched the counter with my bruised hand just as something fell upstairs. We both looked up, as if we could see what, through the ceiling. We couldn’t.
“I always think they will,” Milo said quietly.
“Will what?”
“I always think, anytime I’m going home alone, without Robby: I wonder if we still live there. What if I get home and they’ve already moved?”
“Always?”
“Every single time I ever go home alone.”
“That’s intense.”
“Yah,” he said. “Welcome to my life.”
“It takes time,” I said. “There’s a whole process with the bank.”
“I have a dream sometimes that I get home and they’re gone and they forgot to take me. Or tell me.”
“Yikes.”
He shrugged. “They like to travel light.”
I started to laugh, because Milo said it like that was funny, and with a smile, but he also looked sad at the same time. In his eyes.
“Plus they have another one just like me.”
“Not just like.”
“Pretty close,” he said. “Not that many people can tell us apart.”
“I can,” I said, even though I sometimes can’t.
“Yeah,” Milo said. “Because you’ve lived next door all this time, I guess.”
“Not just that,” I said. “You’re not the same.”
“I appreciate that.”
“Families,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said. “So much.”
After a second, we turned toward the window. His parents were standing in front of it, their arms around each other, both looking out at the churning sea.
38
MOM WAS HAPPY with the way the day went, and appreciated my help. On the drive home, with all our throw pillows stacked neatly in the back seat, her phone buzzed. I picked it up. “Samantha,” I said.
Mom frowned. “Shut it off,” she said. “I can’t deal with her today.”
“What’s going on?” I asked.
Mom did a loud inhale. “I just have enough—she has a lot of opinions, and, hey, here’s a new rule for our family: You’re not allowed to let anyone hurt you. Including yourself. Okay?”
I slumped down in my seat. “Okay,” I said, then mumbled, “I’ll try.”
“She thinks I should put Danny in private school, a special school for kids on the spectrum.”
I let that sink in. A special school? Is there even one of those on Snug Island? “What do you think?”
“I think . . .” She paused. “I don’t know what I think. I’m angry. And confused. I don’t trust my instincts anymore because, honestly, what I want is everything to just be okay.”
“Mmmm-hmm,” I said.
“And it’s my job to make everything okay if it’s not, so . . .”
“No, it’s not,” I said. “Sometimes it’s not a tie. Maybe that’s okay, though.”
She didn’t answer, just drove.
“Or not,” I said.
“No, you’re right,” Mom said. “We don’t have a full diagnosis for Danny yet, but it looks like he’s just wired a little differently. It’s not a thing that needs fixing, or curing, and it’s nothing to be ashamed of—he is who he is and he’s just right. Maybe we can make some things easier for him, better for him, with insights from the testing, right?”
“Like how?”
“Maybe he’ll get some extra help, or need some medication. He probably could benefit from therapy and coaching, to help him be his best self. Maybe a different kind of school, down the road. We’ll see. There are probably things we can modify at home, too, for him. Like having schedules written down, preparing him for changes, being more organized.”
“You’re very organized, Mom,” I said. “Seriously, you’re scary good at—”
“Well.” Her lower jaw jutted out over her front teeth. “Apparently there are people who think I’m not good enough.” Deep breath. “It might just take me a little time to not feel like punching everybody, to protect him.”
“Including me?”
“No, not you,” she said, turning left into our driveway and putting the car in park. “You’re the finest kind, Niki.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Trust me on this, you deeply are.”
“Mom! Why do you always . . . You think we’re perfect, and you think that helps us or something—but you don’t get how invisible and failed that makes me feel, when you keep saying I’m the finest kind, because then I can’t even tell you what is actually happening with me!”
“Why can’t you—”
“Because you’ll be disappointed in me,” I said. “I want to stay the finest kind in your imagination, which is the one place I am, because in reality I’m getting kissed in cellar corners by a boy I don’t like and I have nobody to talk about it with!”
“Niki, what—”
“I don’t want to talk about it!”
“Okay,” Mom said, touching my hand, which I yanked away.
“I will someday but not right now. Okay?”
“Okay,” Mom said. “I’m here whenever you want to t—”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. I just want you to talk to me, tell me whatever—”
“I will. I will. I promise. I’m sorry. But . . . I’m sorry, Mom. I don’t want to hurt your feelings. But you just have to stop staging our family. We have crappy curb appeal? Fine! That’s us, then! Maybe nobody will want us. Too bad, you got a clunker of a family. I just can’t care about that right now.”
“Niki, I never for one second feel—”
“Sorry.” I got out of the car and went into the house.
In my room with the door closed, I felt guilty and dumb. She was just trying to compliment me. She was sitting outside in the car with her eyes closed.
* * *
• • •
I sat on the floor against my door and checked the weather on all the different weather apps on my phone. The storm was churning up the coast, picking up steam, wrecking beaches in New Jersey. I went down a rabbit hole of nerdy weather science, to keep from thinking about my storm-tossed life, and read again that story I liked about how if the winds way high up in the atmosphere are too strong, they can shear apart a developing storm, keep it from turning into a hurricane.
Strong winds would tamp down the storm.
You need calm winds to brew a hurricane.
BE CLAM? You’ll just bring on the storm.
I closed the weather apps. Went to texts. Nothing new from Ava.
Screw clam winds, then.
I texted her:
Hey. I’m sorry I ended up kissing the boy you like. I should have been stronger and clearer with him, to make him stop.
Sent that, but there was more. I wasn’t done. So I added:
You were really the opposite of helpful to me, after. I was hurt and confused and literally puking. And you
Send. Oops. Not done.
And you weren’t there for me. At all, Ava. You just left me all alone and you haven’t even checked to see if I got home okay last night.
Send.
I did, btw. I’m not fragile. But I am hurt.
I deleted that last one, turned off my phone, and got into bed.
I don’t know when I fell asleep, but I woke up in the pitch dark from a nightmare, the one I used to have when I was little:
We’re in the car. Me, Danny, Mom. Me and Danny both in the back seat, because it’s not fair if one of us gets the front, our old rule. Mom stops the car, in the parking lot of the grocery store. She has to run in and grab a few things; we should wait in the car. She closes the door and disappears into the store, and the car starts moving. We’ll crash if I can’t stop the car. I jump into the front seat but can’t reach the pedals, so I just steer. We’re picking up speed; I’m narrowly avoiding hitting trees, other cars, a kid on a tricycle. We’re on Victory Boulevard now. Zooming down the hill. I yell to Danny to help me, come into the front, get down in the well under my feet and try to find the brake. He has a million questions, he’s slow unbuckling his seat belt, says he shouldn’t unbuckle his seat belt when the car is moving, therefore he can’t come up front, stop yelling at him, he hates being yelled at.
Puts his fingers in his sensitive ears and grunts.
I’m up on my knees, then, leaning forward, knowing it’s up to me to save us.
The car is out of control and nobody can stop it, including me. I just have to keep trying to steer.
When I woke up, I was sweating, shaking.
It was just a dream, I told myself.
But my pounding heart didn’t believe me.
39
EARLY IN THE morning, before everyone else was even downstairs, I got my bike out and started riding. I rode so fast, all my tears streamed back from my eyes instead of ever reaching my jawline. Just streaked back behind me like an invisible banner of salty drops. Whatever. I had cried enough from my soul already.
I wanted to leave before Mom could try to have a talk with me, or Milo and Robby were out their door. I needed to get to school before anyone so I could be ready instead of sweaty.
I was sitting in front of Holly’s locker when she showed up.
“Fisherman’s Friend?” she offered.
“Holly,” I said.
She held out her pack of lozenges to me. I didn’t take one.
“I’m not a fisherman, or anybody’s friend.”
She just waited while I stood up.
“I want to tell you the truth, okay?”
“Sure.”
I’d been practicing it in my head since I woke up from the bad dream, saying this to her, but the rehearsal didn’t make it easier. It felt like doing trust falls, like falling backward into the void, even though I was facing her this time, and the last thing I deserved was to be caught.
“I didn’t get sick, and nothing bad was happening with Danny. I was happy to let you blame him, or think I was a shallow jerk for being embarrassed that maybe he’d be freaking out or whatever, but that’s not why I canceled on you. It’s because I got invited to a party at Isabel’s.”
Her hand, holding the Fisherman’s Friends, slowly lowered. She didn’t say anything.
“Ava invited me.”
“Ayuh,” Holly said.
“That’s why I disinvited you. It was horrible. Which I deserved. But anyway, I thought you should know and not keep trying with me, because I actually do suck. I’m a bad friend.”
I slammed my locker shut and went to first period alone.
When I got there, I put my glasses in their case in my backpack’s front pocket. Nothing to see, folks. I heard Ava talking next to me, to Britney and Isabel and Madeleine, but I ignored them. This is what it means to be alone, off the ark? So be it. Come on, storm, hit me.
I avoided Holly until art class. I collected my empty elephant bowl. The crack had spread. When I put the thing down, a triangular section of it broke off, basically the whole face and trunk. Awesome. Though, tbfair, not so much worse.
I just sat in my seat, looking at it.
Ms. Hirsch walked over. “Oh, I was afraid of that. I saw the crack when I took it out of the kiln.”
I held in my apology and nodded instead.
“Holly, do you remember Kintsugi method, from last year’s after-school class?”
“I do,” Holly said.
“Would you help Niki put her pinch pot together with that?”
“Sure,” Holly said.
Ms. Hirsch bustled off to gather some supplies.
“You don’t have to,” I whispered. “I can just throw this whole mess out.”
“It’s okay,” Holly said. “It’s fixable.” She picked up the broken triangle with her delicate fingers and fit it into the space where it had been. “In Kintsugi,” she said, without looking into my eyes the way she usually did, “the artist holds the broken pieces in her hands, and really looks at the break, the crack, and sees it. Notices it. Doesn’t judge it.”
She handed me my wrecked pieces of garbage.
“See it gently,” Holly whispered.
“I don’t . . .” I felt as broken as the ruined bowl in my hands.
“See gently the beauty in the brokenness. Honor the art in what’s broken.”
I looked at her. If Ava had heard her say that, say, See gently the beauty in the brokenness, she’d mock her for the rest of the year. I arched an eyebrow at Holly, but Holly wasn’t joking.
“Okay. And then I can throw it away?” I asked. “Now that I honored it? Is that the, like, thing of it? Kashonee?”
“Kintsugi,” Holly said. “No. Then the artist puts the cup or the bowl or the vase back together. She doesn’t try to hide the cracks. Instead she fills them with bright gold or platinum glue, or resin, I think? Sticky stuff that binds the pieces together. That’s what the art is, what makes her an artist. Well, the seeing, too. But . . .”
Ms. Hirsch brought over supplies, including blue latex gloves like the ones Rhys wore in the ice cream store. We put them on, and Holly helped me glue my bowl back together, stirring gold goo into the stuff called epoxy, layering it into the cracks with the flat wooden stirrers. We worked there in silence, side by side, on my broken bowl, until the bell rang. Around us everybody else hustled out. We took off our gloves and tossed them after we cleaned up. Ms. Hirsch turned my bowl around and around in her hands, admiring it and complimenting us.
“Yeah. My scar-faced, misshapen elephant,” I said. “Aren’t you pretty?”
“No,” Holly said. “Not pretty. But beautiful. Can’t you see that?”
I looked at it, empty and lumpy and scarred. The gold was cool, I’ll say that.
We went back to our table and got our stuff.
“Thanks,” I said. “For helping me with that. It would be humiliating to fail eighth-grade art.”
“I knew you were going to Isabel’s party,” Holly said, walking away. “I’m not stupid.”
I watched her until she reached the door, then turned around to put my alone-in-the-world, kicked-off-the-ark elephant on a low shelf.
“Niki.”
I turned around, surprised she was still there, surprised to hear my name in her voice again. “Yeah?”
“Are you coming to the library? You can tell me why the party sucked, and I’ll let you tell me everything before I even gloat and tell you how much more fun you would’ve had if we’d done the sleepover instead.”
“Holly, I so wish . . .”
“Damn straight,” Holly said. “Now you’ll always be one fun night down in your life because you chose to chase the nasties instead of hanging with awesome me. Hurry up.”
I thought my face had permanently forgotten how to smile but apparently not.
I walked in silence with her to the library, where I told her the whole story.
She listened to every bit.
“You can gloat now,” I said, when I finished.
“Chase Croft is a horse’s patoot,” she said.
I cracked up. “A what?”
“That’s what my nana says about peop
le like him,” Holly whispered.
“So, here’s the thing, though,” I said. “What should I have done differently? I keep thinking about Danny, what got him in trouble? It was, well, he threw a book. At Ms. Broderick.”
“Oh no!” Holly laughed. “I love Ms. Broderick. But she probably deserved it, if Danny . . .”
“No, she fully didn’t,” I said. “Danny was just mad because he got paired up with Margot Hu, and he didn’t want her.”
“Really?” Holly said. “She seems sweet. No?”
“To me, too. But Danny screamed I DON’T WANT YOU right in her face.”
“Why?”
I shrugged. “He didn’t want her? Anyway, the point is, when Chase, you know, grabbed me? I said sorry.”
“And you should’ve said, I DON’T WANT YOU!”
“I mean, obviously not, but . . .”
Holly nodded. “You could learn some stuff from Danny.”
“So true,” I said.
“I’m gonna gloat now, or not gloat but just say one thing.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Only this: Don’t dump me for Ava again. I know you love her, but she’s actually very crappy to you. No offense, but there it is.”
I smiled. “There it is.”
The bell rang.
“I kind of deserve it, though,” I said. “How crappy she is to me. I’m a bad fr—”
“NO!” Holly said. “No, you aren’t perfect, obviously, but you’re not bad except to yourself. Which you are stopping as of this minute. Don’t be a stupid idiot. Come on.”
We went to fifth period, where we had a sub who showed us videos of hurricanes to prepare us for what was about to hit us.
But the weather was the least of it, for me.
40
“DO YOU LIKE Chase?” Britney asked me on our way to English. She smelled like bubble gum as she steered me with her hand on my arm.
“No,” I answered. “Not at all.”
“He says you guys made out at the party,” Britney said. “Why would you make out with him if you don’t even like him? Ava says you like both him and Milo, and you’re trying to seem cool, to us, or something, by acting slutty?”