The chains on the porch swing creaked as I pushed it back and forth with my bare toes. Cass sat limp beside me. To cheer her up I’d brought her a big bowl of ice cream, but it sat in her lap, the fudge ripple getting soupy.
After a while I moved the bowl to my own lap and picked up the spoon.
“How could Lou Anne do that?” she asked.
“She thought it would help.” Lou Anne wasn’t the brightest bulb, but she wasn’t mean. “The real question is, why didn’t Ben tell you the truth in the first place?”
“He knew it would upset me.”
I held up the drippy spoon and looked at her. “And?”
“And…I might have told someone and we wouldn’t have been able to go there anymore.”
While I ate her ice cream she stared up at the porch ceiling my grandmother had painted heavenly blue—Nana Grace believes in blue skies even if you have to make them for yourself.
“I don’t get Ben anymore,” Cass said. “He’s changing.”
“We all are.”
“Not me.” She pulled her feet up and sat cross-legged on the swing.
“Sure you are.” I thought about the Cass I met a couple of years ago. “You’re taller.” I poked her with an elbow. “And even skinnier.”
“I don’t feel different.”
She did, even if she didn’t know it. Used to be, running and our friendship were the most important things. “Could you just forget about Ben for a while? You have plenty to look forward to, with or without Ben Floyd. High school. A real track team.” I pushed the swing hard, making the chains squeak louder.
“But I like him. I always have, probably from about the time I was five. Six or seven, anyway.” She gazed down the street. “I wish he’d apologize.”
“Just forget it! This boyfriend-girlfriend thing is more trouble than it’s worth.”
“Not most of the time. You’ll get a boyfriend; then you’ll see.”
I set the empty ice cream bowl down on the porch floor with a clatter. “Maybe I will and maybe I won’t.”
“Jemmie? Is there any guy you actually like? I mean…that way?”
I slid down and rested my neck against the hard edge of the seat back and stared at Nana’s blue sky. In a few seconds it was replaced by Cass’s blue eyes looking down at me. “Jemmie, is there?”
I shrugged.
The blue eyes got all wide. “Who?”
I shrugged again. If we were the Jemmie and Cass we used to be, I would’ve told her in a heartbeat.
“Okay, don’t tell me.” She sounded disappointed but didn’t push.
We didn’t use to have secrets, and we were way too good friends to be polite. Ben wasn’t the only one who was changing, no matter what Cass said.
Suddenly, she laughed and pointed. My big old orange tomcat, General Lee, who never changed except to get fatter, was licking the ice cream bowl—and I remembered what Big had said about comic relief.
Nana came out and asked us if we planned to moon around all day, because if we did she had some windows that needed washing. We got off the porch and started walking, but we couldn’t go to Nowhere since the guys were probably there. Instead we found ourselves back at the place we’d walked to together most days for two years. Monroe Middle.
Leroy was somewhere inside, trying to multiply fractions, but the windows that faced the track were empty. Even though we’d walked over slowly, we were way too hot. Cass’s freckled cheeks were bright pink.
There was a little shade right next to the school. We stood with the toes of our sneakers jammed against the brick wall and rested our foreheads on the cool window glass. “Third period algebra,” I said, peering into a classroom.
“The desks sure look small,” Cass puffed.
“The room too.”
“We were in that class just last week,” she added. “There’s my desk.” Our desks were together at the start of the year, but we talked too much and I got moved. I stared at the desk that had been mine—and then the one right behind it. Big’s.
Cass cupped her hands above her eyes and peered through the glass. “We’ll never be inside this box again.”
“Not unless they have class reunions for middle school.” Still, for a second I imagined Big twenty years from now, sitting in that small desk at a reunion. Would everyone know his name because of his music, or would he be just a guy working in some fast-food place wearing a paper hat?
Cass turned and slid her back down the wall until she was sitting on the ground. “Maybe I could talk to Justin.”
I slid down too. “About what?”
“Ben.” She glanced at me like she was hoping I’d say it was a great idea. When I didn’t, she let out a sigh. “Maybe you’re better off without a boyfriend.”
I sang out, “Amen, sister!” and lifted my palms the way Nana Grace does when she really agrees with someone.
Cass stared at our legs stretched out in front of us; from the knees down they were in the sun. She bumped my ankle with hers. “We need to shave our legs.”
“Big-time.”
She bumped my ankle again. “It used to be easier when it was just you and me, wasn’t it? Jemmie and Cass, the girls who liked to run.”
“Chocolate Milk.” It sounded silly saying it now, but that’s what we called our running team of two when we became best friends the summer before seventh. I wiggled my toes; since we weren’t going to Nowhere, we both wore flip-flops. “After we shave we should paint our toenails.”
She wiggled her toes too. “What color?”
Lou Anne had every color in the universe and she didn’t mind sharing. “I’m thinking purple.” Purple was our favorite.
“Not everything has to change, does it?”
“Like what?”
“Like purple nail polish and us being best friends.”
“No, we’ll always be best friends with purple toenails. Except on the track, where we’ll still have purple toenails, but I’ll beat you if it’s a sprint.”
“And I’ll beat you if it isn’t,” she said. “Wonder what the competition will be like at Leon.”
“Tougher.”
“That’s okay, we’re tough.”
“Super tough.”
She stared across the raggedy grass at the dusty track we’d run so many times, a plaque with our names on it should be wired to the fence. I stared too. It felt the same as looking into our old classroom. Monroe Middle was a place we didn’t belong anymore.
Suddenly she smiled. “Hey, running for Leon? Maybe we’ll win gold at State.”