Saturday I take a nap to make up for not sleeping at the sleepover, and practice flute, and do a ton of homework for pre-algebra and French. I got the only A in the class on the last test, too, but I didn’t tell anyone in my family, to save Hunter the trouble of making more “Whoop-de-doo” comments.
I don’t feel like calling anybody to try to do anything tonight, so I lie on my bed and watch a movie on my laptop. I’ve seen it before: one of my favorite black-and-white movies, Roman Holiday with Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck.
Audrey Hepburn is a princess who has no freedom to do any fun things ever; she has to do all these stiff, stodgy royal etiquette things instead. But then, on a goodwill tour of European capitals, she runs away for one night, in Rome, and meets Gregory Peck, who is a reporter for this foreign newspaper. He knows she’s a runaway princess, but she doesn’t know he knows. They fall in love, but they can’t be together because she needs to return to her royal duties. It’s more romantic having it end with their not being able to be together than if they had lived happily ever after. The tragic doomedness is what makes it so wonderful.
Hunter likes—well, used to like—black-and-white movies, too. His favorite is Casablanca, with Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. The first time we watched it together, a couple of years ago, he pointed out all the most famous lines to me: “Round up the usual suspects.” “I’m shocked, shocked, to find that gambling is going on here.” “We’ll always have Paris.” “Here’s looking at you, kid.” It used to be that whenever we came across it on TV, we’d both have to stop whatever we were doing to finish watching it, even though we own it on DVD. But when it was on one night last week, and I plopped down on the couch next to him to watch it, he clicked off the TV and walked away.
So I picked Roman Holiday to watch tonight instead. I love Casablanca more, but it would make me too sad to watch it now.
* * *
It’s cold and windy on Sunday after church, so I lie on the couch by the gas fireplace in the family room. I should be working on my novel, because the big day with the two agents at the public library is this coming Saturday, now less than a week away. Instead I’m writing a new batch of poems about Cameron. But I don’t write flowery rhyming poems with “thee” and “thou” this time. Hunter’s mockery, not to mention the New Yorker rejection, has cured me of floweriness. Now I’m striving for the simple style of Cameron’s song lyrics.
Maybe my poems could be made into songs, too?
I’ll need music to go along with the words. Even though I love playing the flute, I’ve never tried writing music. Maybe Cameron can collaborate with me: I’d write the lyrics, and he’d come up with the melodies.
Here’s the one I wrote that I like best:
Maybe I care because you don’t.
Maybe I will because you won’t.
And yet I think that if you smiled,
I’d smile, too.
And I think that if you left,
I’d go with you.
I imagine Olivia critiquing my song: “Autumn, what do you think the reader will learn from this poem? We get that you like Cameron, but we don’t know why. What is it about Cameron that justifies your feelings for him?”
But Olivia is still the one who knew that Kylee’s knitting triumph would make a fabulous article.
And I’m the one who didn’t.
Guess who I wrote my feature about? I couldn’t think of anyone else, so I wrote about, yes, my father, and how he was named Best Orthodontist in Broomville seven years in a row. What seventh grader writes a “fascinating person” feature about her dad? Only a seventh grader who already blew a major chance to write one about her best friend.
* * *
The Peaks Post is published on Thursday. Olivia’s article about Kylee is right there smack in the middle of the front page, complete with a smiling photo of Kylee and pictures of two dogs wearing Kylee’s sweaters that Olivia must have gone down to the Broomville Humane Society to take. I don’t read it. I can’t bear to read it. I don’t even let myself collect a copy from the huge piles I see on tables at various points throughout the school hallways. Yet I can’t help but see them.
Even as we’re standing by our lockers before the first bell, a bunch of girls come up to Kylee to squeal over the article.
“Those sweaters are soooo cute!”
“You should sell them! I want one for my dog for Christmas!”
“Do you think my cat would wear a sweater?”
“Can you make these in people sizes?”
“Can you teach me to knit?”
“We should start a knitting club at Southern Peaks!”
“I never knew so many dogs needed homes!”
Ms. Archer begins journalism class by holding up the hot-off-the-press Peaks Post for everyone to see. She does this whenever anyone in the class has an article in it.
“Good morning, intrepid reporters!” she greets us. “I hope you all grabbed your copy of the Peaks Post this morning and checked out your classmates’ work. We have a terrific feature by our own Olivia Fernandez profiling our own Kylee Willis. Good work, Olivia!”
Olivia flashes Kylee a big grin.
Kylee grins back.
My heart twists.
“And,” Ms. Archer continues, “we have an insightful review of Broomville’s new knitting store, Knit Wits, by that same Kylee Willis. Nice job, Kylee.”
What?
I totally did not see that coming.
How could I have seen that coming when my own best friend didn’t even tell me that Ms. Archer picked her review—not Olivia’s and not mine—for publication?
I wonder if Kylee will turn around and look at me with pleading eyes.
She doesn’t.
As the day began, so it continues. Kylee is mobbed in the halls even by kids who don’t know her.
“Are you the girl who was in the paper today?”
“Are you the knitting person?”
“That is so cool, what you did.”
“Do you need a dog model? I have a dog who would look so great in your sweaters.”
I don’t say anything to Kylee about the Knit Wits review. If I were a truly good friend, I’d congratulate her on her first publication. But if she were a truly good friend, she would have told me about it ahead of time.
I feel almost as terrible as I did when Hunter showed my poem to the band.
I feel almost as terrible as I did when The New Yorker rejected my poems.
Maybe even worse.
* * *
After school, my mom is driving us to ballet. Neither of us is talking in the car.
I’m looking hard out of the window—the animal shelter sign says ENROLL FOR PUPPY PREP SCHOOL NOW!—when I feel Kylee’s hand reach out for mine.
“I’m sorry,” Kylee says.
“For what?” I don’t even try to keep the bitterness out of my voice.
“That Ms. Archer picked my review, not yours.”
Even as publication-crazed as I am, I know that’s not something Kylee should have to feel sorry about. Who knows more about knitting stores than Kylee? Of course, her review would be wonderful. Ms. Archer told us to pick a subject that would draw on our special areas of expertise; she never told us to pick a subject that would allow us to get revenge against somebody who broke our heart. Besides, Kylee’s review makes the perfect companion to Olivia’s feature.
Kylee totally does not need to apologize to me for getting published first.
“I’m glad she picked your review!” I say. It’s even (sort of) true. But then the bitterness creeps back into my voice. “But why didn’t you tell me?”
“I just felt so bad. Because I knew you wanted it more. And I wanted it more for you than I wanted it for me.”
How can I stay bitter with a friend like this?
“But you’re going to get published, too, Autumn,” she promises me, as if she has the power to make the promise come true. “You’ll get published in a bigger, better place than our school paper. Maybe this is the week you’ll hear from The New Yorker!”
Now tears blur my vision, not tears of disappointment for my rejection, but disappointment in me for not sharing it with Kylee. Who am I to be mad at her for keeping a secret?
I shake my head.
She reads the truth from my forced smile and welling eyes.
“Oh, Autumn,” she says, squeezing my hand and snuggling up against my shoulder.
Whatever dreams don’t come true for me, I have the best friend anybody on earth ever had.
I squeeze her hand back and rest my head against hers, without speaking.