“WHAT—WHAT ARE YOU DOING here?” Zelda asks. She looks frightened and sad and like maybe I caught her doing something that she shouldn’t be doing, which is okay, because I am doing the same thing.
“How did you get up here?” I ask her.
“I told Selena that I needed a breath of fresh air. The cleaning lady. She told me that you come up here sometimes.”
“That’s . . . true. But—listen, the testing is about to start.”
“I know.” Zelda looks out, over the buildings. Then she peers down at the street below. “We’re so far up.” Then she looks up at the sky. “And we’re so far down.”
I look toward the sky, following her glance to where a white cloud curls overhead, like a dragon tail. “Yes.”
“Do you even know what I mean?” The way she asks this is like she doesn’t think I possibly could.
“I do know what you mean,” I say. “Like, we’re totally small. And we’re totally insignificant—”
“Doesn’t it make you feel like nothing you do will ever matter?” The wind lifts her long, blond hair away from her face and it is ridiculous because Zelda seriously looks like she is in a movie right now, but like a way different movie from the one I’m in, in which I have to climb down a fire escape and rescue a friend stuck in the subway. “Doesn’t it make you feel minuscule?”
“Yeah, but I kind of like that. Like, no matter how much I screw up, it’s just—whatever, who cares? We’re so small.”
“You never screw up, Callie. Your life is perfect.”
“WHAT? Ohmygod, WHAT? That is ONE THOUSAND BILLION PERCENT FALSE. How can you even SAY that when you’re standing there with your hair streaming out like you’re in a Selena Gomez video? YOUR life is perfect. You’re beautiful and smart and—”
“Not smart.” Zelda swallows and shakes her head. She looks up at the sky. “Not smart enough.”
“Enough for what?” Now my hair is whipping around, and of course it gets stuck in my lip gloss, and I try to spit it out, like bbbbfffffft, so I can add, “You’re one of the top girls in our class!”
“Not the top girl.” Zelda looks me in the eye. “Two of my brothers went to Harvard. Even Jimmy went to Dartmouth.” Everyone in Zelda’s family calls her youngest older brother “Poor Jimmy” because he’s not the brightest. “But I’m not even on track to be as good as Jimmy. My scores are—” She shakes her head. “I can’t take tests!”
“So what? You can play the cello and take ballet and you’re such a good writer, Zelda—”
“Tests, though. That’s how you get into good colleges.”
“That’s, like, FIVE YEARS from now!” My hair is whipping around like crazy, and a piece even gets stuck to my eyeball, but I just wipe it away. Why does it have to be so WINDY? God, I wish I had a KITE right now, but that would be rude considering that my good friend seems to be having a minor nervous breakdown, or whatever.
“No. It’s today. If I don’t do well on the placements, I won’t get into the advanced classes. Janice says that if I’m not in advanced classes in eighth, I won’t be in advanced classes for ninth, or tenth—or ever. And then I’ll end up going to some third-tier school—”
“Are you crying? Are you crying over a dumb test?!” I just can’t even deal with this.
“You don’t know what my mother is like!” Zelda’s face is twisted and red, and I never thought someone as beautiful as she is could look so hideous. This is a big, fat, messy ugly cry like I must have been doing yesterday (was it just yesterday?) in the Frick with Cassius. And when I think about that, I realize that yesterday, I probably would have thought that Zelda’s problem was a big deal, too. And even if it isn’t a big deal to me—it’s a big deal to her. And I want to help her, but I just can’t right now.
I take a deep breath.
“Zelda, we’re friends,” I tell her. “I want you to know that my life is not perfect. In fact, there’s a lot of stuff you don’t know about me, okay? Like that my dad lost his job. And we’re broke. And I have never met Taylor Swift or been on Beyoncé’s yacht. The CW is not making a show based on my cousin’s life. I’m not related to the Kardashians. Just—none of it.”
“But you look like Khloe!”
“I do not look like Khloe; my nose is huge.”
Zelda blinks, clearly shocked. “You . . . lied?”
“I lied! About SO. MUCH. STUFF! Taylor Swift never gave me her family’s secret recipe for chicken soup! That wasn’t even my cousin you met the other day! He’s my friend and I have to go and get him because he is going blind and is stuck in the subway and doesn’t know where he is.”
“Wait—” Zelda twists her fingers through her hair. “Is . . . is that true?”
“Yes. That part is true. Now I have to go. But we can talk about your stuff later, okay?”
“You’ll miss placement tests!”
“Who cares? I’ve skipped an entire week of school. I’ll probably get kicked out of here, anyway.” I stalk over to the edge of the building. The fire escape doesn’t come all the way to the roof—just up to the highest window on the floor below—so I carefully lower myself onto it.
“Ohmygod, be careful!” Zelda cries.
I look up at her worried face. It’s a strange thing to realize that you totally don’t know someone, that underneath the skin you see every day is a whole world that you can’t even imagine. And that they can’t imagine you, the real you. Not unless you show them. They have no idea.
Thoughts like that really make you think.
“Zelda, I’ve got to go help Cassius.” I look up into her worried face. “Would you please tell anyone you see that I was hideously sick, and you put me in a cab home?”
“Yes,” she says breathlessly.
I check my phone. “One minute,” I tell her, meaning that the test is about to start.
She nods, and turns to go, but a moment later, her head reappears. “Callie,” she tells me. “Good luck.”
“Same to you,” I say. And then I remember what Anna used to always tell me before a test. “Go murder it.”
“Okay,” she says.
“It’s going to be all right. Everything is always changing!” And, as I begin to clatter down the black iron steps of the fire escape, I add, “Live without regrets!”
“Okay . . .” Zelda calls after me.
I really hope she can.