What Are Friends For? (2 page)

I noticed CJ watching me and realized she wouldn’t be able to go, because of dance. No wonder she seemed even more tense than usual. “So you can’t go on the trip, huh?” I asked her.

“What?” Zoe asked. “Why?”

Morgan, who was passing us on her way to Spanish, said, “Dance.”

“Hey, wait up,” CJ called to her, and chased her down the hall. She is often chasing after Morgan, apologizing or complimenting. Now Zoe chased after CJ, asking, “What is Olivia talking about, you can’t go apple picking?”

CJ shook her head, trying still to catch up to Morgan. I slowed down. I hate how desperate my friends seem lately, how nervous.

“Why can’t you go?” Zoe wasn’t getting much response from CJ, so she turned and asked me, “Why can’t CJ go apple picking?”

“We don’t get back until six-thirty,” I explained, since I had caught up.

“Yeah? So?”

“So,” said Morgan, stopping outside Spanish. CJ almost bumped into her. “CJ has dance at four on Mondays. Not that she even likes ballet anymore, but . . .”

That surprised me. “You don’t?” I asked CJ.

“It’s complicated,” CJ answered, nervously fingering her hair. She is so pale, you can see the veins on the side of her forehead.

“You like it or you don’t,” Morgan told her, with disgust in her voice. “How complicated is that?”

“You can’t miss one day?” Zoe asked CJ.

CJ shook her head. “Something could happen, some casting director could come to watch. You can’t. And especially, my mother?”

Morgan blew her long, dark bangs out of her eyes. “CJ’s mother says, ‘It’s important to devote yourself to something so you’ll stand out from the crowd.’” She mimicked CJ’s mother perfectly. I’ve heard her mother say those exact words, in fact.

“Really?” Zoe asked. “She says that?”

“All the time,” Morgan answered. “Makes me feel great.”

“She doesn’t mean anything against you,” CJ apologized. In fact, CJ’s mother thinks Morgan is a bad influence on CJ, coming from a messed-up family with an immature father who ran off to California with a young floozy and a nasty angry mother with no manners. CJ’s mother and mine talk every day. They both wish CJ would be best friends with me instead. CJ’s hands fluttered up to her hair again. “She just, it’s true that . . . I really wanted to go apple picking.”

Zoe’s smile tightened. “Or at least hay-stacking.”

“Yuck,” I said. It slipped out.

“I like apples,” CJ protested in her whispery voice.

“Yeah, apples.” Zoe turned the ring around on her finger. “An apple a day.” The bell rang. Zoe gasped. She’s the only one of us who takes French instead of Spanish. She ran back down the hall toward her class.

Morgan grabbed my elbow again and asked, “Don’t you think it’s pathetic when all some girls obsess about is boys, boys, boys?”

I glanced at CJ, who turned away. I didn’t want to insult her, but the truth is, I do think boy-craziness is pathetic and gross. I nodded at Morgan. She yanked me into Spanish class with her.

After Spanish, Morgan pulled my arm down the corridor. The rest of me followed. Morgan whispered, “CJ thinks she’s above everybody else. Doesn’t she?”

I asked what she meant. CJ is a family friend; we protect each other even if we don’t always enjoy each other’s company.

“CJ is even more impressed with herself than usual, don’t you think?”

“I hadn’t noticed,” I whispered back.

Morgan nodded. “Yeah, you’re right. It is hard to tell, since she’s always Miss Prima Ballerina. You’re absolutely right.”

That wasn’t exactly what I had meant. I held the cafeteria door open, and Morgan dragged me through it. She walks so fast it was a challenge for me to keep up with my elbow.

“But now that Tommy Levit asked her out . . .” Morgan sighed, shaking her head. I sat down and she squeezed in beside me, at the end of the table. Morgan cupped her hand over my ear and whispered, “And did you see her ugly ring?”

“The friendship ring?” I asked.

“Yeah, hard to miss, the way they’re waving their hands around, huh?” Morgan kicked off her sandals and folded her foot underneath her. “Guess CJ is pretty thrilled with herself, getting to be best friends with Zoe the Grand One.”

That was witty of Morgan to come up with, I thought; nobody had ever called Zoe Grandon
the Grand One
before. I opened my 7UP and repeated, “Zoe the Grand One.”

“Yeah.” Morgan took one of my pretzel sticks, waved it around in a small circle beside her head, and whispered, “Hooray for them and screw us.”

I laughed and the 7UP I’d just sipped went right up my nose. “Ouch,” I said, which made Morgan laugh so much she had tears in her eyes. I offered her more pretzels. She was sitting so close to me I could feel the warmth from her arm on mine. I usually like more personal space than that, so I finished up lunch quickly and suggested we go outside for the rest of the period.

She said, “Absolutely”

That’s another thing about Morgan—she’s very emphatic. When the bell rang, she got hold of my elbow again, and we walked that way to our lockers and then to English/social studies. People watched us pass.

three

I
felt something.

It’s hard to tell if it was what you’re supposed to feel, because of course I’ve never felt anything before, anything like
it
. I’ve had strep throat about twenty times, so as soon as it starts to come, even before the throat culture can be positive, I know if I have it or if it’s just swollen glands; on the other hand, when I got chicken pox last year, I had no idea what was happening to me. I thought maybe it was adolescence or the flu, until I got itchy. So, since I’ve never had a crush before, there is no way of telling if that’s what just happened to me. Maybe it’s a virus, for all I know. Or mumps. Although I think I got inoculated against that.

But I definitely felt something.

Lou Hochstetter was giving his oral report to the class, and I was trying to pay attention even though I already know about as much as I care to know about World War Two armaments from Lou Hochstetter’s last fifteen oral reports on the subject. I’ve been in Lou’s class since kindergarten; I could probably do a report on World War Two weapons myself, with very little time in the library.

Today was the first time a teacher didn’t seem terrifically impressed with Lou. He really is very impressive. He was on PBS when he was eight, his tanks and guns all lined up as he explained them and the host smiling the way beautiful but nonintellectual adults grin at kids who are smart. Like,
Isn’t he cute?
but also, at the same time, like,
We’re all in on the joke that this kid is way too bright ever to be cool and beautiful like me
. Lou’s overenthusiastic mother, who is running for mayor now, brought a video of the PBS show into school the next week. We had an assembly. The whole school sat in the dark, elbow-wrestling one another over the armrests, half watching the video of Lou with all his little World War Two scale models and the host with all her big teeth. When the lights came on, the principal called Lou up onto the stage of the auditorium, and Lou took a bow, one hand on his belly and the other behind his back, his elbow sticking up behind him as if he had a terrible backache. Most people clapped for him, especially the teachers and his mother.

But today, although his armaments were all on display again across Mrs. Shepard’s desk, there was no bowing. He finished his presentation and looked up, smiling and expectant, at Mrs. Shepard, but she just stood there. Lou smiled bigger, his braces showing way back to the ones on his molars.

I looked over at Mrs. Shepard, to see what was going on. Mrs. Shepard is known as the best teacher in Boggs Middle School, tough but brilliant. At first glance, you might think she looks like a kindly old grandmother from a fairy tale, little and white-haired, slightly hunched forward, but once you see her eyes, you stop thinking that. They are bloodshot and squinty, with big black pupils and pale blue irises. I can’t look at her and talk at the same time, and I am not at all shy. Somebody like CJ, who has trouble talking anyway, shrivels up any time Mrs. Shepard comes near.

But Lou Hochstetter is the biggest boy in seventh grade. Of course, size does not determine courage; I consider myself relatively brave and I’m the shortest girl in the grade, four foot nine inches unless you believe my mother, in which case, four foot nine-and-a-half. Still, Lou has been on TV.

Mrs. Shepard pointed her tongue at her upper lip. After a full minute, she said, “And?”

“And?” Lou asked back, still smiling. I noticed his gums were red and swollen, all puffed up. His neck was breaking out in purple blotches, and a bead of sweat was rolling down his forehead. It paused on his eyebrow.

“And what does this panoply of World War Two armaments reveal about Louis Hochstetter?” Mrs. Shepard asked him.

The sweat ball dove from Lou’s eyebrow into his left eye. “What do you mean?” he asked her, blinking furiously. I sit right up front, so I had a perfect view of the battle between the sweat ball and Lou’s eye.

Mrs. Shepard, unaware, said, “The assignment, Mr. Hochstetter.”

I reached into my desk to find him a tissue. Lou, still half smiling, placed his hand carefully beside the Lee Enfield gun on Mrs. Shepard’s desk.

I pulled a tissue out of the small traveler’s size box I keep in my desk in case of emergencies, but it didn’t seem like quite the appropriate time to get out of my seat, barge up to the front of the classroom, and say,
Here, you have sweat in your eye—want a tissue?

Lou leaned more and more of his weight onto his hand, until he was diagonal. The rest of us sat perfectly still and waited.

“The purpose of the assignment was to reveal yourself in all your various aspects,” Mrs. Shepard said finally. “Have you done that, Mr. Hochstetter?”

“I, sort of . . .” Lou’s voice squeaked, so the “sort” was a very high note, and the “of” was rumbling low. I crumpled the tissue by accident.

“Oh?” asked Mrs. Shepard.

Lou’s bare hand wiped his forehead, where a battalion of sweat balls had mustered. “I’m interested in,” he started, then swallowed. His lips didn’t quite meet, over the braces. He swallowed again, and then, turning pale, said, “Interested in World War Two. Armaments.”

Mrs. Shepard’s voice came over my shoulder at Lou as she asked, “And is that interest all there is to Louis Hochstetter?”

Lou swallowed hard and answered, “Pretty much.”

Mrs. Shepard said, “Hmm.”

Lou blinked his eyes twice and then surveyed his ten choices of World War Two scale models. They looked like toys, as if he had brought out ten Matchbox cars or ten Beanie Babies. As he’d been pulling them out, one by one, I had felt outdone. My presentation, which I had worked on all weekend, seemed so trivial in comparison to his that I’d been insulting myself for being too superficial and flighty a person, watching him pull these bronze-cast pieces so confidently from his Sack. He had mastery over some bit of world history while I had soccer ball earrings and a charcoal pencil. I felt like a trivial person as I watched him.

But his field of expertise ended up being just a set of toys. I have to admit I felt a little bit better about myself. At least I did the assignment right, I thought; at least there’s more to me than one narrow interest. I’m not proud of having thoughts like that but sometimes I do, it’s awful but I do.

Lou stood at Mrs. Shepard’s desk for a few seconds, looking at his things, and then instead of just dumping them into the brown paper bag, or sweeping them in as I would’ve done at that point—anything to get away faster—he gently picked up the 2.3 mortar, turned it over in his palm to inspect it, and wrapped it carefully in its bubble wrap before lowering it softly into the bag.

That’s when I felt it, this thing I am wondering if maybe it is how the first pang of a crush feels.

My insides got hot and my skin felt chilled. My first thought was,
Fever
. Then I thought,
Wait a sec, maybe not
. My hands rubbed the tissue as I watched Lou rewrap his scale models and painstakingly place them, one by one, back into his bag—not dropping them, but lowering them all the way in, taking all the time necessary to do it right—while everybody in the class waited and watched. It seemed extraordinary to me, after what Mrs. Shepard had just said—like he was oblivious to the fact that she had just stripped his artillery pieces of their value. Or like he disagreed. It seemed so radical, what he was doing. I wanted to see Mrs. Shepard’s reaction, but I couldn’t stop watching Lou take care of his things.

Then, as Lou walked past me going back to his seat, I felt what I can only describe as some kind of force field, or magnetic energy, or maybe static electricity. The whole thing may just be a matter of an overheated classroom in September causing some static electricity exchanges, when oppositely charged people pass too near each other. The whole thing is very likely to be scientifically explainable, a matter of laundry products not used.

Or else, I’d just entered adolescence. Emotionally, anyway. My body remains concave.

four

T
ommy Levit began his report
and CJ sat up straighter. Like me, Tommy had ten reasonable, varied, appropriate objects in his bag—a plastic dinosaur, a Red Sox ticket, a photograph of his family at the beach. Not like Lou’s. When Tommy finished, Morgan, who sits behind me and in front of Lou, passed me a note:

Sorry I’m such a moody mess. Tommy thinks he’s so great. Ha! I have to tell you something URGENT. Your best friend, Morgan.

It surprised me enough to distract me from my new possible situation with Lou.
Your best friend, Morgan?
If I had to choose who was closest of my friends, Morgan would not have made the shortlist. Until today, in fact, Morgan barely tolerated me. If I’d thought about it at all, which I didn’t really, I would’ve said we were distant friends or acquaintances at most. I missed whatever happened between her and CJ, I guess—a fight or something, maybe over Tommy, and it must’ve happened over the weekend. Sometimes I feel out of sync with what’s going on.