by Ariel Kaplan
“I can’t believe I have to go back to work on Monday,” she said. “I told Doug I’d work the lunch rush. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
I laid my head on Bethany’s shoulder, and she rested her head against mine. “You’re amazing,” I said. “You know that, right?”
She shrugged.
“No, really. You just…you deserve to be happy more than anybody else I know. And you’re a hell of a lot braver than I am.”
“Ha ha,” she said.
“No, that’s the truth. You do the things you’re scared of. You put yourself in front of the guy you like. You get the hardest job you can think of. Me, I…I couldn’t even admit that I had a conversation with someone.”
“That was kind of cowardly.”
“You don’t have to rub it in.”
“You know what, though?”
“Hm?”
“I am happy. I’m happy about pretty much everything in my life right now.”
“Well, yeah, except for me getting you dumped.”
“No, I’m over that. I mean, yeah, I got dumped, but you know, it’s okay. I liked him. But I don’t think he was the one or anything. I just think there’s someone out there who’s really going to get me, you know? Like you do. And that was never going to be him.” She laughed. “He doesn’t even get the difference between chain and positional isometry.”
“To be fair,” I said, “I don’t exactly get that, either.”
On the lawn, some cardinals were hopping around, making eyes at each other, two flashy red males and one plain brown female, because that’s how birds work—the men have to do all the sexual labor, and the women just kind of show up and pick somebody.
“Hey,” she said. “I have something for you.”
We went inside to her bedroom, and Bethany opened the box she keeps on her desk with all her little sentimental treasures: a necklace from her great-grandmother, a few blue ribbons from summer swim team in middle school, a handful of bracelets with charms of ponies and cupcakes and mathematical symbols. Her dangling radish earrings, which she’d gotten special for our joint Halloween costumes—we’d been Hermione Granger and Luna Lovegood, and it had gone over so well that we’d worn them for three years until our cloaks had gotten too short, and by then we’d been too old to go out anymore anyway.
In the bottom was a folded piece of paper, and she took it out, saying, “I made this the first day I met you,” and she handed it to me.
I unfolded it; it was a drawing, in crayon, of two ponies with human faces with a rainbow stretching between them. One was blue and the other was pink, and underneath she’d written, Me and Aphra. We were standing on little clouds, and we were both smiling.
I looked for some clue in the picture that she was pretty and I was not, but there was nothing. We both had two eyes, a watermelon slice of a mouth, and no nose at all.
I said, “What do you see? When you look at me?”
She tucked a stray piece of hair behind my ear. “I see my friend.”
“No,” I said. “No, come on. Just say it.”
“What do you want me to say? That I think you’re ugly? I don’t think that. I don’t see that.”
I sighed a breath of unhappiness from the bottom of my lungs. I tried to believe what Dr. Pascal kept saying—that I was afflicted not with ugliness but with a broken mirror. But it was hard. It was very hard. And the mirror that was broken, I didn’t think it was only mine. I whispered, “Please,” but whether it was a sarcastic please or a genuine plea—Please, make me stop feeling this way—I couldn’t say.
I imagined a different kind of fairy tale from the ones I’d read, no ugly duckling or beauty and the beast, a story where the princess gets a choice: to be beautiful or to feel beautiful. I think if I could choose, I would rather feel it.
Bethany said, “I love the way you look. Because you look just like my friend.” She kissed the crown of my head.
I put my arms around her and mashed my face into her shoulder. “I love you,” I said, and in that moment, I felt it—it was so much more than just words. If it weren’t for eight-year-old Bethany, with her silly sense of humor and her giant soul, loving me exactly the way I was, I would have turned into someone else. I wondered who I would even be now, if I’d still have my big mouth and my panache, or if I would have shrunk down into some smaller, lesser version of myself.
I didn’t know what kind of love that was. I didn’t deserve it. I hadn’t earned it. It was so big and so much and so many things, like it was too big for just one word. I couldn’t define it or label it or draw a circle around it; it just was, this big, beautiful feeling. All I knew for sure was that I was so, so lucky that the universe had created Bethany Newman and put us in the same place at the same time.
“You philia me,” she corrected.
“No,” I said. “I love you.”
There are always many people to thank for all the assistance authors receive in the writing of books, and there are even more than usual when the characters in that book speak languages you do not speak and participate in a sport you have not yourself participated in. I send an abundance of thanks (and philia!) to:
Professional polymath and agent Hannah Bowman, who said, “I would love to see a modern-day Cyrano!” even when I wasn’t quite sure what this one would be about.
Steadfast editor Katherine Harrison, who signed up to work on this story when it was still just a few sample chapters, and with whom I have now collaborated on three books, which seems like a major accomplishment that should be noted.
All the good people of KBFYR: Jake Eldred, Melanie Nolan, Artie Bennett, Angela Carlino, Diane Joao, Alison Kolani, and Colleen Fellingham, thank you for bringing this project to the world. I think you are all pretty perfect.
Hilary Wilkenfeld and Spencer Kolssak, whom I inundated with questions about crew while writing my earliest draft, and to Sarah Prineas, who patiently pointed out all of the mistakes I’d made anyway (and then went above and beyond by helping me to fix them). Any mistakes made or liberties taken are entirely my own doing.
Kate Hattemer, who once again offered her Latin expertise, to Susan Brown for double-checking my Spanish, and to Dr. Farhad Safi and Julia Kodysh for making sure Greg spoke actual Russian.
My father, for allowing me to give his dissertation to Gordon Brown, and who really did have a very good lecture on the Battle of Hastings, and to my mother, who called this book her favorite, and who gave me the gift of a spit take while reading it.
And finally, to my husband and kids—I hope you will always be surrounded by people who love you because of who you are. I certainly do.
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