The Kind of Friends We Used to Be (5 page)

“My mom called the office yesterday and made them switch me from chorus to newspaper,” Ashley Greer moaned. “Which means that I don’t have B lunch anymore.”

Marylin stared at her. They had spent hours coordinating it so that all the middle-school cheerleaders would have B lunch. They already knew which table they were going to sit at, and
had discussed whether or not any noncheer-leaders would be allowed to sit with them. Ashley’s moving to another lunch period ruined the whole plan.

“Isn’t there anything you can do?” Marylin asked her. “Can’t you make your mom change her mind?”

“That’s what we’ve been talking about,” said Mazie. “But Ash here says that there’s no way. She’s too wimpy to stick up for herself.”

“That’s not true!” Ashley whined. “I begged her a million times. But she says the newspaper is a much better elective for me than chorus.”

Caitlin Moore leaned toward Marylin and whispered, “Her mom says why should she be in chorus when she can’t sing a note?”

“Don’t keep telling everyone that!” Ashley screeched. “Besides, how am I supposed to become a better singer if I’m not in chorus?”

“More importantly, how can you be a cheerleader and not have B lunch?” Mazie asked.

Ashley paled. “Can I get kicked off the squad for having a different lunch period from everyone else?”

Ruby Santiago stepped forward. “Of course not. It’s just a tradition, that’s all. But maybe you can change electives next quarter. You could practice your singing and show your mom that you really love music. She might change her mind.”

“Thanks, Ruby,” Ashley said, sounding grateful. “That’s an awesome idea.”

“Somebody else will have to drop out of chorus for Ashley to get back in,” Mazie pointed out. “That’s not very likely.”

Marylin felt an opportunity opening up before her. There were clearly two sides here. There was the supportive Ruby side and the completely nonsupportive and pretty mean Mazie side. All Marylin had to do was take a step forward and say something to Ashley like,
It will all work out, don’t worry,
and she would show the world which side she was on. The nice people’s side. The side that stood for friendliness and making everyone feel included. That was the side where Marylin felt she truly belonged.

She started to make her move. All she had to do was lean toward Ashley and give her a
nice pat on the shoulder, say a few words. She took a breath and looked at Ashley’s pale, worried face. She began to open her mouth.

But then Ashley glared at her. It was a look that clearly said,
Why don’t you shut up before you even start talking?

Marylin stepped backward, as though she’d been slapped. She tried to smile in what she hoped was a sympathetic way, even though what she really wanted to do was yank out Ashley’s hair.

Clearly she would have to find another time when she could show everyone what a kind, supportive person she was. Maybe she could sit next to Ruby Santiago at lunch. She could give Ruby her Baggie of Mint Milano cookies, which she knew were Ruby’s favorites. Maybe Ruby would invite her over to her house to spend the night on Saturday. It would just be the two of them, and they would discover how much they had in common. Maybe Ruby liked lying on the couch on snowy days, snuggling under a quilt her grandmother had made. Maybe she liked swimming in lakes better than
in swimming pools, just like Marylin did.

Mazie reached out and grabbed Marylin’s wrist, pulling her out of her daydream of friendship with Ruby Santiago. “Come on,” she said, dragging Marylin away from the group. “Let’s go down to the gym before the bell rings and see if any cute guys are hanging around.”

Marylin followed reluctantly behind her. Somehow Mazie had done it again, claimed Marylin for her own without bothering to ask if Marylin wanted to be claimed. That didn’t seem fair to Marylin, that other people could say,
You’re mine
and you couldn’t say,
But I don’t want to be yours.

She had a sudden, brief thought that she would like to be her own, but it disappeared in the commotion of the crowded hallway. She followed behind Mazie, halfway hoping there’d be some cute boys in the gym, halfway hoping nobody would be there at all.

“Tell me everything. I want all the gory details.”

Marylin’s mom sat at the kitchen table, a
plate of freshly bought chocolate chip cookies in front of her. It was her first-day-of-school tradition to leave work early so she could be there when Marylin and Petey got home. Then, at the dinner table, she’d prompt them as they told their dad about the first day of school, saying, “Now, don’t forget to tell him about your class pet,” or “Does Daddy know who sits two seats behind you who also goes to our church?”

Only tonight Marylin’s dad would not be at the dinner table to hear all their back-to-school stories. Marylin and Petey would have to call him after dinner at his apartment, which was twenty miles and a whole universe away. She knew it would feel fakey to talk to him about school on the phone. In person, her dad was a good conversationalist, but when you talked to him on the phone you could hear the little pings his computer made as he checked his e-mail or surfed the Internet. His voice was enthusiastic—“Really!” he’d exclaim when he thought he was supposed to be excited about something you’d said, “That’s
great, honey!”—but you could tell he was only halfway listening.

Marylin sat down across the table from her mom and took a cookie from the plate. She wished she were better at being able to talk about stuff right away. She knew that when Petey had gotten home from school, he’d probably talked nonstop, repeated every word that had come out of Gretchen Humboldt’s mouth, given a five-point presentation on the fourth-grade curriculum, and ended up with a top ten list of his fourth-grade goals. Petey was great at on-the-spot talking.

But Marylin needed time to think the day through. What surprised her was that she didn’t really want to think about who sat at the middle-school cheerleading table during B lunch or the cute boy in the desk behind her in pre-algebra who kept leaning forward to crack jokes in Marylin’s ear, his cool breath on her earlobe making her shiver.

No, what stayed in her mind on the first afternoon after the first day of seventh grade was a new girl named Rhetta Mayes, who sat in
front of Marylin in four of her classes, including art and State History. Rhetta Mayes had dyed jet-black hair and four earrings in each ear. She wore a black blouse that was at least three sizes too big, so it looked like a very fancy super sized garbage bag, and black jeans and clunky black shoes with big silver buckles. Her skin was so white, Marylin was sure it couldn’t be real. It was maybe two shades up from clown-makeup white. Rhetta Mayes was, in fact, the scariest-looking person Marylin had ever seen in her life.

As far as Marylin was concerned, seventh grade was not supposed to include people like Rhetta Mayes, people who made you feel nervous in four classes out of seven. In fact, by the time seventh period rolled around and there was Rhetta Mayes again—the same humongous fake leather black bag stuffed with who knew what (a witch hat and raggedy black dress probably) hooked over the back of her desk where it would bump into Marylin’s knees the whole period, the same black eyeliner-lined eyes peering spookily out from her pale face—
Marylin was ready to head to the guidance counselor’s office and request a complete schedule change.
Just keep me in B lunch,
was all she’d ask.
But get me away from Rhetta Mayes.

Seventh period was language arts, and their teacher, Mr. Holm, made them work in pairs. They would interview each other, and for homework they would write up their interviews into reports, which they would give in front of the class the next day. “I want at least three interesting facts or stories about your partner,” Mr. Holm had insisted. “No boring stuff!”

Mazie, who sat on the other side of the room, waved at Marylin to move her chair over so they could work together. But Mr. Holm made them count off like kindergartners, one-two, one-two, and Rhetta was one and Marylin was two, and that made them a pair.

Rhetta had turned around and looked Marylin straight in the eye. “I’ve got twenty-three interesting facts about me right off the top of my head. You ready to write?”

Marylin had nodded mutely. She pulled her
notebook and a pen out of her back pouch. She noticed that Rhetta’s fingernails were alternately painted sparkly black and silver. It was actually sort of cool-looking, although not really Marylin’s style.

“Fact number one: I am a Gemini,” Rhetta reported. “Sign of the twins. Which is important, because I have a twin, only I don’t know where.”

“Were you adopted?” Marylin asked. She hadn’t meant to get involved in an actual conversation with Rhetta, but she’d heard stories about twins separated at birth, how one twin would break his arm and the other would feel the pain all the way on the other side of the country. She’d always secretly wished for a twin, although one who lived with her, with whom she could communicate telepathically and also trade clothes.

Rhetta shook her head. “No, I mean like a soul twin.”

“A soul twin?”

“Yeah, someone who’s just like me, who really gets me, you know? I haven’t met my soul
twin yet, but I will one day. They’re for sure an artist like I am. Do you like graphic novels?”

Marylin wasn’t sure what a graphic novel was, so she shrugged. “I don’t know.”

And then Rhetta did something that surprised Marylin. She put her hand on Marylin’s wrist, her silver and black fingernails sparkling like a handful of diamonds. “I think you’ll like them if you give them a try. You’re not like those other cheerleaders, I can tell.”

“How do you even know I’m a cheerleader?”

Rhetta grinned. What was surprising was that she had a very friendly grin, and two dimples that Marylin was automatically envious of. When she smiled you could see how Rhetta Mayes must have looked when she was a little girl, before a veil of black hair and clothing had descended over her life. She had been cute, Marylin could tell.

“I saw you sitting with those girls at lunch, and I knew you were the cheerleaders. You can always tell. So’s she”—Rhetta nodded toward Mazie—“but she’s got a really cruddy aura, if you want to know the truth.”

Then she reached her hand into her big black bag and pulled out a sketchbook. “This is the second amazing fact about me,” she said, handing the book to Marylin. “I’m doing a graphic novel. I plan on publishing it when I’m finished.”

Marylin opened the sketchbook. Inside, she discovered, was a world of fairies, some of them beautiful, others with squinched-up, mean faces, all of them looking so alive, Marylin was surprised they didn’t fly off the pages. There were airborne fairies and fairies perched in trees, fairies having conversations with each other, and fairies dancing in circles around flowering bushes. The pages were laid out like a comic book, and the fairies spoke in balloons, except that there weren’t any words yet.

“I’m not great at writing,” Rhetta admitted. “I’ve got an idea for a story, but when I try writing it down in a script, it sounds dumb. Not like people—or fairies, really—would talk at all.”

Then she leaned toward Marylin again. “You want to do it? I bet you can write, can’t
you? I can tell by looking at you that you have a way with words.”

Marylin sat back in her seat. How did Rhetta Mayes know this about her? She couldn’t, of course. They’d never seen each other in their lives before today. Rhetta couldn’t know that Marylin had a journal she wrote in every night, or that she wrote poems that she never showed anyone, and at night she told stories to herself while she was waiting to fall asleep. Sometimes they were simple stories about having a nice boyfriend and going to dances. Other times her stories were more dramatic. Over the summer she had spent weeks working out a story where she saved a little girl who had been kidnapped by a wicked stepmother. In her story, there’d been a trail of clues she’d followed to where the little girl was hidden, and after she’d rescued the girl, she’d been invited to the White House to meet the president.

And some nights Marylin liked to imagine magical things as she drifted off to sleep. Kings and queens and dragons, good witches and
bad witches, fairies and monsters. Paging through Rhetta’s book, she saw pictures that could have been in the stories in her head, and a sudden constellation of ideas burst over her. What if the young fairy at the beginning of Rhetta’s book got lost in the woods and the evil queen fairy, who ruled over all the others, refused to let them search for her because the evil queen fairy knew that the lost fairy was destined to take her throne upon being found? Marylin’s fingertips tingled, and she grabbed her pen, ready to write.

But she made the mistake of looking at Rhetta. The spell was broken. She couldn’t write a book with this strange girl and her jet-black hair and sparkly black and silver fingernails. How would she explain it to everyone? The very idea of writing a book with Rhetta Mayes didn’t fit in with the ideas Marylin had about seventh grade and being a middle-school cheerleader and becoming best friends with Ruby Santiago, who, nice as she was, would definitely think Rhetta was weird and someone Marylin shouldn’t be friends with.