“Those would look so cute on you,” I say to Shari when she holds up a pair of dangly gemstone earrings at Leila’s Finery, a stand in the middle of the mall that has sparkling jewelry and shiny headbands and silver picture frames.
“You should get your ears pierced,” Shari says.
I nod. I know I should. Maybe I will.
“Here.” Bryce appears from around the corner and thrusts a smoothie from Juice Jungle into Shari’s hands.
“Is it mango?”
“No way, it’s blueberry—my favorite.”
“Why would you get me your favorite smoothie?”
“Blueberry is way better than mango,” says Bryce with a cocky grin. “You’ll see.”
“Bryce Colter!” Shari stomps her foot.
“Hey,” he says, smirking at her. “You’re lucky I even got you a smoothie. These things are four bucks!”
Shari rolls her eyes and turns her back, but I see her smile when she takes a sip and I can tell she kind of likes Bryce even though he acts like a minijerk sometimes.
“Hey.” Finn bumps me gently from behind and hands me my smoothie. I try it. Strawberry banana, just like I wanted.
“Thanks.” I smile up at him, and when I meet his eyes his face breaks into a grin too. It’s like we’re cartoon characters who can’t stop smiling at each other.
If I didn’t think it’d get stinky, I’d probably save this smoothie cup for my treasure collection.
We sit down on the edge of the fountain in the middle of the mall, and Finn opens up the front pocket of his backpack. “Ugh, not again!” He winces as he pulls out a crazy-looking food item wrapped in foil.
“Is that a . . . cookie?” I ask. It’s a bluish-purple lump, but it has sugar crystals on it, so maybe . . .
“Looks more like Play-Doh,” says Bryce. “Is your brother baking again?”
“Yup.” Finn walks to a nearby trash can and throws away the purple blob. Then he comes back and sits down. “My older brother thinks he’s going to be the next . . . uh, famous baker person.”
I laugh. “My mom bakes a lot,” I say. “Actually, she does it for work.”
“That’s cool. All my brother does is find recipes on the internet and experiment,” says Finn. “Usually, the results are kind of awful, but he tries to make me eat them anyway.”
“You’ve gotta start somewhere,” I say. And I realize that’s something I’ve heard Maeve say, and it sounds old-fashioned out loud.
But then Finn says, “I like the way you talk, Mattie.” I don’t know if he means my accent or what I say, but it doesn’t matter. My face tingles with warmth.
We walk around the mall some more, and Finn mostly talks to Bryce and I mostly talk to Shari, but it still feels like Finn and I are there together, and when Mama picks us up at six I don’t want any of it to end.
“You girls look happy,” Mama says as I get in the backseat with Shari.
“Mama!” I say, but I don’t think Shari heard the tease in my mom’s voice. She lives near the mall, so we’re taking her home, and I’m glad because it seems like another step in our friendship for us to ride in my mom’s car together.
Shari is all excitement and laughter, her braids swinging around her shoulders as she rolls her eyes and talks about how conceited Bryce is.
“He thinks he’s so smart,” she says.
“But you like him, right?” I ask.
“Yeah!” She’s smiling big and then covering her face with her hands before she explodes into giggles. It’s contagious, and soon I’m laughing too, and Mom is eyeing us in the rearview mirror like we’re crazy girls.
We drop off Shari, and I move into the front seat. For the rest of the ride home I grin and look out the window. I don’t even want to talk about Finn right now, I just want to think about him in my head.
But when we get back to Butler Towers and the elevator doors open on our floor, I see a solitary figure in the hallway.
Agnes P. Davis.
She’s standing straight up, her head centered in one of the lacy paper hearts on her door. It’s like she’s keeping watch over our entrance, and Mama squeezes my shoulder as we walk toward her.
“Mattie, where were you today? You weren’t on the bus and you weren’t in the lobby and you weren’t anywhere at four twelve p.m.”
Mama opens our door and says, “Do you girls want to come inside?”
“No,” I say, annoyed. I don’t want Agnes to come over. I stay in the hallway and face her as Mama waves at Agnes and then steps in and softly closes the door.
Agnes didn’t look at Mama. Her eyes are on me, and she doesn’t flinch. “Where were you at four twelve p.m.?” she repeats.
“What is four twelve p.m.?”
“That’s when we’re home. It’s the time the bus drops us off and we walk into the lobby and then we’re friends again.”
“It doesn’t work that way, Agnes,” I tell her.
“It was working! It was!” she says, and I can’t argue really. So I just say, “You’re so weird.”
“I’m just me. And me is okay!”
“But you act weird all the time,” I tell her. “Why do you do that?”
She stares at me. I decide examples might help.
“Like this week when Mr. Perl was talking about Asia and you just raised your hand and then started naming every single country in this robotic voice . . . what was that?”
“I was adding to the lesson,” she says.
“You were being crazy,” I tell her. “And then you started making loud noises when we talked about indigenous animals.”
“Lee does that all the time,” she says. “Why is it funny when he does it but not when I do it?”
I pause. She’s right. Lee does like to make strange sounds and everyone usually laughs. But it’s something about the way Agnes does things. It’s just . . . weird. That’s the only word I can think of over and over, but I don’t know how to explain it to her.
“You make no sense, Agnes,” I say.
“I always make sense,” she says, and it actually seems like I’ve offended her. But then she smiles.
“I’m going inside,” I tell her. I cannot handle the weirdness.
“Great,” she says. “My mom got me this new set of invisible ink pens, so we can write mystery notes to each other and—”
“See, that’s what I mean,” I say. “You think I want you to come over? I don’t. I’m going into my apartment. You’re not coming with me.”
Her face is blank.
Then she asks, “Were you at the mall with Finn?” She isn’t looking at me; she’s looking at the wall behind me. But she knows more than I thought she did—maybe she does pay attention at school.
“Yes,” I say.
“And you like him.”
“Yes.” But it doesn’t feel like I’m doing the fun confiding-in-a-friend thing. I’m just trading facts with Agnes. She doesn’t want more than that.
“Why?” Her eyes move to my face then. Not my eyes, but more like my left cheek. It annoys me, and I sigh out loud.
“Because!” I shout.
“‘Because’ isn’t a reason for something,” she tells me. “You have to have real reasons for things, you know. You’re the one who makes no sense.”
Her voice is calm and even, and I wonder if she ever reacts normally to anything. Or maybe she’s just a low-talking arguer like Daddy, and it makes me want to scream!
“Maybe I don’t make sense!” My voice is really loud now, so loud it scares me, but I keep yelling. “Maybe I shouldn’t have let it be this way, but you shouldn’t have either! Sometimes I wish you weren’t here at all!”
I turn away from her so I won’t have to know if she feels anything about me closing the door in her face.