The Friendship Matchmaker (7 page)

I was throwing my books into my bag when Tanya asked me if she could pair up with me.
I agreed. I was secretly hoping I’d find her a best friend and beat Emily before then, but I was willing to help her out in the meantime.

As we were walking out of the classroom I noticed Emily and Bethany approach Ms. Pria. I bent down and pretended to tie my shoelace. Emily and Bethany were whispering excitedly, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. Then Ms. Pria clapped her hands and said, “What a wonderful idea, girls!”

I was desperate to know what was going on.

Forming a trio must always be avoided. BUT if you are in a situation where you have NO CHOICE (it must be a serious case of no choice, equivalent to, say, “I was stuck on a desert island and had no choice but to eat a scorpion”) then here are some survival tactics.

1. Always try and sit in the middle of the trio so you can control the conversation. If you’re on the side then the others could ignore you.

2. Remember that the friendship is never equally divided. There is a pair in every trio. One person will always feel left out of the special magic between the other two.

3. Try and give equal attention to both other friends.

4. Be on the lookout for a new friend just in case you’re the one in danger of falling off.

I spotted Lucy in the lunch line. I grabbed Tanya’s hand and practically dragged her along behind me.

“I’m scared, Lara,” she said, her voice all wobbly.

“There’s nothing to be scared of, Tanya. Bungee Jump Friend is the ultimate rush. It will come so naturally, you’ll see. I really can’t understand why you insist on acting so shy with everybody else.
We
can talk for ages. So have confidence in yourself. You actually
do
have something to say to people.”

I was proud of myself. My pep talks were getting better each day.

Just then we were stopped by Juanita and
Nora from the sixth grade. I’d helped them out before the summer.

“Lara!” Juanita cried. “We need your help!”

“Can’t it wait?” I asked, nervously watching the lunch line getting shorter.

“No, it can’t,” Nora wailed. “We ditched Sarah, and now she’s sending us notes about how we’ve broken her heart and ruined her life. What do we do?”

I remembered the situation. It had been tricky, and I’d been reluctant to provide my services. I’d guessed from the moment they came to me that Sarah was the third wheel. But
nooooo
, they had insisted they were friends for life. It was a typically messy trio problem.

“I’m busy now,” I said impatiently.

“But she isn’t taking the hint. We don’t want to be friends with her anymore.”

“
Then she’s better off without you!
” I shrieked.

It was as though I’d slapped them in the face. Even Tanya flinched.

I grabbed Tanya’s hand and took off, trying to control my breathing as we rushed to the line.

I couldn’t let myself think about the
consequences of my hysterical outburst. If Nora and Juanita blabbed to the rest of the school, my reputation as the Friendship Matchmaker who
never
takes sides, who listens to
all
parties involved, would be flushed down the toilet.

My head hurt. It had been an emotionally exhausting start to the year.

By the time we arrived at the lunch line Lucy was paying for her food. We hovered off to the side and, when she turned around with her tray in her hand, I pounced, pushing Tanya ahead of me.

Except I pushed a little too hard.

Tanya collided with Lucy, sending Lucy’s chicken potpie flying down Lucy’s shirt to land in a splattered, messy heap on the ground.

Lucy, with sauce and meat dripping down her top, looked slightly dazed and confused.

Tanya looked like she was going to burst into tears. “I’m … so sorry, Lucy,” she whispered.

“It’s not your fault, Tanya,” I said. “
I
pushed you.
I’m
the clumsy one. How about you go with Lucy to the bathroom and help
her clean up? Lucy, I’ll get you another chicken potpie.”

“Um … okay …”

“You’re going …?” Tanya whispered, her eyes wide with panic.

She was frozen to the spot. How was I going to have a chance at finding her a best friend if she couldn’t even handle a situation where
I
was the one who looked like the idiot?

But I wasn’t giving up.

“You’ll be fine,” I said through gritted teeth. “You are a
great person
. Keep telling yourself that.”

Lucy was too busy flicking bits of meat off her top with a napkin to notice our whispering.

I pushed them away in the direction of the bathroom and joined the lunch line.

I wondered if Emily was having as much trouble as I was. Maybe it had been a mistake to choose one of my top five Total Loners for the challenge. There was so much at stake, and here was Tanya practically hyperventilating at the thought of talking to Lucy without me as a buffer.

To be honest I just wanted to lie down in the nurse’s office until the bell rang for us to go home.

But you don’t earn Potts County Middle School’s official Friendship Matchmaker title by being a quitter.

I waited outside the girls’ bathroom with a new chicken potpie for Lucy. I also got some red licorice, as it turns out Tanya and I both love it.

I was hoping to hear Lucy and Tanya in a flurry of conversation. If Tanya was really thinking, she could have started it all off by talking about how clumsy I was. They could have had a laugh at my expense; I wouldn’t have minded at all. They could have used me as a point of unity. Lots of friendships start out that way. They were lucky I had such an understanding, compassionate heart and that I wouldn’t have been upset by it. These are the sacrifices I am willing to make in my quest to help others.

But all I heard was a deafening silence.

I didn’t want to go inside with food, so I called out, “Tanya? Lucy? Are you there?”

Nothing.

I tried again.

“They’re not here,” said a voice. And out stepped Emily.

I almost dropped the potpie.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, which I admit was a stupid question because you don’t have to be a genius to figure out why somebody would need the bathroom.

The same thought must have crossed Emily’s mind because she ignored my question. “Lucy’s gone to the basketball courts, and I saw Tanya walk off alone toward the playground.”

I couldn’t be sure, but it seemed to me that she emphasized the word “alone.”

“Tanya seemed pretty upset. Almost crying. Is everything okay?”

“Everything is perfectly fine, thank you very much! I don’t need you snooping around just so you can find out how I’m doing with Tanya. I don’t see Bethany paired up with anybody yet. She’s still a To—”

I stopped myself just in time. Nobody, least of all Emily, needed to know about my Total Loner list.

“I don’t know why you’re acting so crazy,” Emily said. “I’m just worried about Tanya. She seemed really upset.”

“Oh, please. You’re probably happy to see her like that. Well, this competition isn’t over yet!”

I spun on my heel and stormed off before Emily had a chance to respond. What nerve she had! Gloating like that while Tanya was upset somewhere and Lucy was walking around smelling like meat and gravy.

I raced to the basketball courts and found Lucy. “Here’s a new chicken potpie,” I said. “Sorry again. Remember, it was all
my
fault, not Tanya’s. I’m sure you can both still be good friends.”

“She’s weird,” Lucy said, taking a bite out of the pie. With her mouth full, she continued, “I joked that you must have two left feet, but she got all defensive and said
she
was the one who’d lost her balance. Then she just left. Said she wanted to see her little brother. Thanks for the pie!”

How could I work my magic when Tanya was sabotaging my efforts to help her? She was her own worst enemy! I couldn’t understand what the problem was. Lucy was now definitely off the list as potential BF material. That left only Stephanie, the talkaholic.

I walked over to the elementary school playground and saw Tanya in the sandbox with her brother. The bell rang and they hugged forever and then blew each other kisses.

Chris could have a field day with this display of affection! It’s not like they weren’t going to see each other right after school. I sighed. Tanya was a more troublesome case than I’d first thought.

When I asked Tanya what happened, she shrugged and said she didn’t want to talk about it. Then she was silent again until the bell rang to go home.

One of the biggest sacrifices I have had to make as the official Friendship Matchmaker is not having my own friends. Like I said, with my busy schedule at school helping others, I am a Loner by Choice.

But that doesn’t make weekends very much fun.

It was a really hot Saturday. In an ideal world—not that I was dreaming, not that I was giving much thought to this—my best friend would be over and we’d be swimming in my pool, tossing the beach ball. Mom would yell at us to come and eat lunch, and we’d wrap ourselves in our towels and sit on the trampoline eating our hot dogs with extra
ketchup and sharing a greasy plate of homemade french fries with heaps of salt. Then we’d jump back in the pool, ignoring Mom’s twenty-minute rule, and swim until our skin was all crinkly and we’d had enough.

Not that I was dreaming.

Instead, I was swimming alone.

My sister, Tara, thought she was too cool to hang out with me and was at the local pool swimming with her friends. Mom and Dad had yelled at her for being selfish, but she’d just yelled right back. “You’re the ones who came up with the bright idea of a five-and-a-half-year age difference.
I’m
not the selfish one.”

That had gotten Mom started about work commitments and late nights up dealing with colic and how hard it had all been. So I ended up hanging out in the pool wondering whether I was an accident and what I could steal from Tara’s room as punishment for leaving me behind while she had fun with her friends.

Then the phone rang and Dad yelled out that it was for me.

“Who is it?” I yelled back, because I was
sure it must have been a prank. Loners by Choice generally don’t get phone calls.

“A girl named Tanya. From school.”

I raced up the pool stairs, quickly dried off, and took the cordless phone from my dad.

“Hi, Tanya! How are you?”

I realized I was gushing and quickly adjusted my tone. As Friendship Matchmaker I had to maintain a certain level of composure.

Tanya said, “I just wanted to say sorry for yesterday. I made a mess of the whole thing.”

I leaned back in a banana chair, wriggling my toes in the hot sun. “That’s okay. It was my fault, launching you at Lucy like that. I got a little carried away and pushed you too hard. If things had gone according to plan you would have done beautifully, I just know it.”

She obviously wanted to avoid the topic because she said, “So what are you doing today? It’s really hot, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, it’s boiling! I’m just hanging out at home. We have a pool.”

“I’m sitting in front of a fan eating ice. Our
AC’s broken. Guess what my dad got me?
The Curse of Shark Island
on DVD!”

“No way!” It was the film version of one of our favorite books.

“Do you … I mean, I understand you have a Rule against mixing with people outside of school …”

“How do you know?”

“I heard you explaining your Rules when you made your announcement a while ago about being the school’s Friendship Matchmaker.”

“Oh … yeah.”

“I totally understand why you’d have to set that Rule … obviously you need to keep, like, a professional gap between the rest of us and yourself or things could get all messed up.”

“Do you want to come over and watch
The Curse of Shark Island
at my place?” I offered.

“
Really?
”

“Our air conditioner works fine and we can go swimming afterward. I can break the Rule this one time. Anyway, it’s still a professional meeting. We can go through a Bungee Jump Friend practice run. We can role play. I’ll be
Stephanie. So, really, I’m not even breaking my Rules. If anybody finds out I’ll just say I give weekend sessions to special people.”

“Oh, thanks, Lara! I’ll ask my dad. I’m sure he won’t mind dropping me off.”

Tanya arrived within half an hour. I was impressed that she’d abandoned her homemade animal tops and weird track pants. She was wearing denim shorts and a T-shirt and her frizzy hair was pulled back in a braid. She was definitely improving and had obviously been paying attention to my Fashion Rules. (I’d laminated a copy and ordered her to stick it on her bedroom closet door to study each night.)

Mom made us microwave popcorn. She also made us smoothies with crushed ice and put little umbrellas in our glasses. We sat in the living room, drew all the blinds, and watched the movie in the dark, turning the volume up really loud so we felt like we were in a movie theater.