My Worst Best Friend (8 page)

It was definitely my day for not being able to concentrate. I guess meeting someone is a lot more glamorous than discovering a talent for teaching, because all I could think about was Savanna. Who was this guy? What was his name? What did he look like? How did they meet? Where? Did she bump into him because she wasn’t looking where she was going? Did he drop something and she picked it up? Did he stop her to ask for directions? Did she stop him to pet his dog? The more I thought about Savanna’s day, the more my own seemed to pale into insignificance.

I doodled in one corner of my pad. When I was younger and we still had a car, my dad and I used to go on camping trips in the summer. This one time we got to the campsite really late in a storm, and we pitched our tent in the dark without really knowing where we were. When I woke up in the morning, my dad was outside, calling me. “Gracie, come here!” he was shouting. “Hurry up!” I thought the car had been stolen. I hurried up. We were camped beside a swamp. Mist was wrapped around it like a veil. Cranes and herons skimmed over the green water. An otter swam past as though we weren’t there. It was the most perfect thing I’d ever seen. That was the moment when I knew that I wanted to be a wildlife biologist. It was so beautiful it practically broke my heart. I burst into tears. But aside from that and stuff like getting choked up over sunrises and sunsets, I didn’t really have what you’d call a romantic nature. I preferred documentaries to love stories. Savanna liked love stories.

I was still gazing at the wall behind my desk, but I wasn’t seeing the dangling chameleon with his three tiny horns, I was seeing Savanna. She was pulling her phone out of her bag as she left the dentist’s. With her dark hair and her red jacket and her nails decorated with tiny gold stars she looked like a gypsy princess – one who happened to be standing by a sign that said TL. Moreau, DDS. She flipped open her phone. She was about to call and tell me she was out of the chair and on her way. But just as she was about to hit
Contacts,
she looked up. This fantastic, incredible guy was coming towards her. She caught his eye. He stopped. He smiled. And then…

And then what? Was it like that scene in
The Godfather
where Michael Corleone first sees Apollonia and is hit by the thunderbolt? Did he shout out loud? Did he run after her? Or maybe it was more like
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
. He slung her over his shoulder and ran out
of town.

I was so lost in my thoughts that when my dad called me for supper I nearly jumped out of my chair.

“Sanctuary!” cried Savanna. “A safe harbour in the storm-tossed seas of life!” She pushed open my bedroom door and strode through.

I followed her into the room with the tray and shut the door with my foot.

“Ohmigod, Gracie… Ohmigod…” Savanna dropped her bag on the floor and flung herself on my bed as though instead of getting a ride from her mother she’d run all the way and couldn’t stand up any more. “What would I have done if you weren’t home? I am, like, sooo glad you’re here.”

And I was surprised that she was. I thought she had a date.

“I did.” Savanna’s shoes dropped to the floor. “And I know I’m, like, truly terrible, ditching Arch at the last minute like that… But I just couldn’t deal with the Planet Archibald Snell tonight, Gray. Really and truly. I’d rather be plucking chickens. I mean, he
eats
through the whole movie, and then afterwards he spends, like, hours explaining the plot to me. The plot! Of a thriller! I mean, what’s to explain? They’re all the same.” She plumped a pillow and stuck it behind her. “Anyway, all I wanted to do tonight was talk to you.”

I put the snacks down on the table next to the bed. “Are you sure you don’t want something else? I could heat up some soup.” Savanna hadn’t had any supper.

“No, this is great.” She reached for a pickle. “I mean, frankly, I’m amazed I can eat
anything
. My stomach has more knots in it than a noose.”

I sat down across from her. “Tell me everything,” I ordered. “Every single detail. I can’t stand the suspense any longer.” I couldn’t. When the bell rang, and my dad said it was either the police or Savanna Zindle, I was at the door before he finished his sentence.

“Ohmigod…” Savanna leaned back with a sigh. “It’s been such an awesome day… I don’t think I know where to start.”

“Start at the beginning.”

“Well…” She looked as if there was a really high probability that she would never stop smiling. “His name’s Morgan – Morgan Scheck – and he’s, like, six-foot-two, and he’s got blond hair and the most awesome eyes, and he’s really well built, but not all muscles like he’s diseased or something, and when he smiles it’s like someone just turned on the lights, and—”

“Savanna, that’s not what I meant.” I nudged her foot with mine. “I meant, how did you meet him? Were you strolling down the street and he just came up to you and said, ‘Hi, my name’s Morgan Scheck and I’d like to change your life’?”

“Oh, Gracie, you are, like, sooo funny…” crowed Savanna. “Of course it wasn’t like that!” She bit into a chunk of cheese. “I met him at Dentist Tim’s.”

I hadn’t thought of that possibility. “What?”

“I know… I know… It is like so totally incredible.” She took another bite. “Usually the only people in the waiting room are either under twelve or over thirty. But there he was, just sitting there, suffering in manful silence and checking his emails.”

“Are you saying you met a boy at the dentist’s?” The only thing that ever happened to me at the dentist’s was a shot of Novocain and a filling. And, sometimes, I had my teeth cleaned.

“Not just a
boy
, Gray.” Savanna hugged herself. “This one’s really, really special. I just know he is. I mean, like how incredible
is
that? What are the chances? Like
twenty trillion to one? There has to be, like, more chance of a blizzard in July. And get this – he was only there because he had a toothache and his regular dentist
doesn’t work on Saturday so he was seeing Mrs Dentist Tim as an emergency. Isn’t that, like, too awesome? I mean, what if he’d gone to someone else? Or his tooth didn’t start throbbing till Sunday?”

“If” may be a small word, but it takes up a lot of space.

“Then you wouldn’t’ve met him.” I told you I wasn’t naturally romantic.

“Exactly! We would’ve been like sheep that pass in the night.”

“
Ships
.”

“And you know what else is incredible?” She picked up another chunk of cheese. “He’s a Cancerian. Isn’t that amazing, Gracie? A Cancerian. I mean, that’s like my romantic ideal.” She paused to let her breath catch up with her. “It’s destiny, Gray, that’s what it is. It’s like Fate brought us together.” This time she wrapped a piece of bread around the cheese. “It can’t be anything else.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t the Tooth Fairy?”

Savanna laughed. “Scoff all you want, Gracie Mooney, but it has to be Fate. I mean, what else could it be?”

Dumb luck?

Savanna made one of her Oh-Gracie faces. “I know you’re not into astrology and stuff like that,” Savanna went on, “but my horoscope
did
say something totally overwhelming and unexpected was going to happen today!” She waved her mini-sandwich at me. “And it did! Just like the stars predicted! I mean, how glad am I that I wore red?” Red was Savanna’s colour – the brighter the better. Mine was brown. “And I almost didn’t! I almost wore my blue turtleneck because it was already ironed and I was running really late. I mean, ohmigod, Gracie, I would’ve like blended right into the wall and he wouldn’t’ve known I was there and my life would’ve been ruined for ever.”

It was a miracle the entire human species didn’t just stay in bed, paralyzed by the fear of wearing the wrong colour and nuking their lives.

“Oh, don’t be unkind, Gracie. I know you’re an unbeliever, but I thought you’d be happy for me.”

“I’m just teasing you, Sav. Of course I’m happy for you.” I was. But though I don’t have a romantic nature, I do have a cautious one. “I just don’t understand how you can be so stoked about someone you only talked to for a couple of minutes.”

She bit into her bread and cheese. “But I didn’t. We talked for, like, hours. I don’t think I’ve ever talked so much in my life. The words just flowed from me like water down a drain.”

In Dentist Tim’s waiting room? How was that possible? He didn’t open till nine, and he closed at noon on Saturdays. They’d have had to get there the night before.

“Oh, Gracie…” honked Savanna. “Obviously we didn’t
stay
in the waiting room. I mean, it looks like an airport lounge – except for the old magazines and not being able to get a snack and stuff like that. You can’t have a real conversation in that kind of atmosphere. He was still hanging around when I came out and he asked if I wanted to get a coffee. So of course I said sure.”

“You said
sure
?” People besides my dad thought I was pretty smart, but sometimes I was so slow to get things I might as well have been in another country. If I hadn’t figured out that she’d spent the afternoon with him, what had I thought happened? That he really had hypnotized her or carried her off? “You mean
that’s
why you never made it to Java? Because you went for coffee with
him
?”

“Morgan. And I know … I know…” She took another pickle. “You’re right. I’m, like, totally impossible. But you know me. I just don’t seem to be able to stop myself. I’m very impetuous. You’re really balanced – you always think things through – but I just kind of jump into the pool with my shoes on. I mean, I, like, had to say yes, Gray. You do understand, don’t you? My heart wouldn’t let me say no.”

Of course I understood. I was her best friend. That was what Savanna was like. Passionate. Spontaneous. Swimming around in a pool with her shoes on. While I stood on the side, wondering how much chlorine was in the water.

“It’s kind of too bad your heart didn’t tell you to borrow his phone so you could call me,” I joked.

Savanna laughed. “I would have, Gray, I really would have. But you know what it’s like. I was swept away. I lost all sense of time.”

I didn’t want to sound a sour note here or anything, but it did strike me that that wasn’t the only sense she’d lost.

“I just have one question, Savanna.”

“What?” She picked up a drink from the tray. “You want to know when I’m going to see him again?”

That wasn’t it.

“What about Archie?”

She looked at me over her glass. “Archie?”

“Yeah, you know, tall guy … dark hair … strong jaw … heavy earlobes – you know, the guy you already have.”

She shrugged. “I think Archie’s great, Gracie, you know that.” She took a sip. “But it isn’t all beds and roses, is it? I mean, I was thinking just the other day that maybe Archie was just one of those summer things.”

“You mean like sunburn or poison ivy?”

“More like lemonade. You don’t want lemonade in the fall, do you?” She raised her glass. “You want cider.”

“But don’t you have to put the lemonade back in the fridge, first?”

“Meaning?”

“You know… Meaning, you can’t date two boys at the same time, Savanna.”

“But I’m not dating two boys. I haven’t exactly had a date with Morgan yet, have I? We, like, only just met.”

“Yeah, but you said he’s really special and—”

“You’re worrying about nothing as usual, Gray. The point is that until I do have a date with Morgan, I’m not dating two boys, am I?”

“Well, no – not technically.”

Savanna patted my foot. “You’re, like, hitching up the cart before I even have a horse.”

“I just—”

“So what happened to you this afternoon?” asked Savanna. “You never told me why you left a note for me at Java. Where’d you go?”

“Me?” By then I’d almost forgotten that I’d gone anywhere. “Oh, I kind of ran into—”

“Ohmigod!” Savanna put her glass back on the tray. “Don’t tell me you got snared by Marilouise.” Hair swished and eyes rolled. “I mean, is she like Crow’s Point’s answer to death squads or what? I forgot how she wanders around town on the weekends because she has nothing to do. Oh, poor you, Gracie. I am, like, sooo sorry. No wonder you weren’t answering your phone. You were probably too numb with boredom to even pick it up.”

I shook my head. “No, I didn’t see Marilouise. I went with Cooper—”

“Cooper?” Savanna laughed. “You don’t mean Zebediah Cooper, geek extraordinaire, do you?”

“He saw me in Java and—”

“But why would you go somewhere with
him
? What did he do? Threaten to kill the last chinchilla?”

“No, he just asked me if—”

“Cooper asked
you
to go somewhere with him?” She was still laughing, but she was looking at me now in a serious, what’s-in-that-suitcase-that’s-been-left-behind-on-the-train kind of way. “Why? He saw you sitting all by yourself waiting for stupid Savanna and he felt sorry for you?”

“Of course not.” I hadn’t thought of that before – that the real reason he came in was because he thought I was some short, loser dweeble who had nothing to do on a Saturday afternoon but sit by herself in a busy café and pretend to read a newspaper. “And, Cooper doesn’t think you’re stupid, Sav.” He just liked to tease her.

She bit into another piece of bread and cheese. Dubiously. “Really? He acts like he does. I can’t buy a new blouse without him telling me how it’s seeping toxins and made by blind orphans in some sweatshop somewhere.”

“That doesn’t mean he thinks you’re stupid. You know Cooper – he thinks it’s his job to educate everyone.”

Savanna smiled. Sourly. “So where did he take you? I bet it was someplace really fun like a convention of fruit pickers.”

“To tell you the truth, it was fun. He was on his way to the Meeting House, so he suggested I went with him. You know, since I was starting to get worried about you. He figured it would give me something to do besides wonder which hospital you were in.”

“Meeting house?” Savanna brushed some crumbs onto the spread. “What meeting house?”

“You know, the Quaker Meeting House? Up by the library? You know, where they run that literacy programme.”

“Ohmigod! He took you
there
? To that good-neighbour thing he belongs to?” Savanna was looking at me with concern. “What for? To have you brainwashed?”