Okay, Red Alert: Operation Restore BFFness.
It’s after lunch and I can’t wait any longer to call Mackenzie. This morning would’ve been too early, and maybe would’ve made me seem a little desperate. And it’s all I could think about during Mass, then over lunch at KFC, and then throughout a lovely family trip to the grocery store. I would have called on the way home from church, but I’m the last teenager on the planet without a cell phone.
I don’t know what spontaneous acts of sleepover vomit do to new friendships, but it can’t be good. I press the living room phone tightly to my ear and nervously wind the cord around and around my finger while it rings.
“Hello?”
It’s Mackenzie.
“I’m so embarrassed!” I cry.
“Ericka, don’t be!” she says. “I hate that you got sick, but don’t be embarrassed.”
Relief washes over me and I realize that the circulation in my first finger is being cut off. I unwind the cord and flop down on the couch.
“I don’t know,” I respond, still depressed over the whole thing. “I was so excited to spend your birthday with you, and we were having so much fun….”
“Yeah, it was a good birthday.” She sighs contentedly.
Too contentedly? In the pause of looking for something to say, curiosity gets the best of me.
“So, what’d you guys do after I left, anyway?” I ask in a casual tone, but dying to know what I missed.
“Oh my gosh, it was so crazy,” she gushes. “Kimi brought a Ouija board and we turned down all the lights and lit candles and spoke to Sarah’s dead grandfather, which was really sad, but totally incredible. She started crying and we all felt awful. I’ve never talked to a dead person or spirit or whatever. It was so wild. Like, really wild. We kind of got spooked, so we changed gears and asked it all sorts of questions, like who’s going to be the first to have sex and who’s going to ask us to homecoming. But then we realized it was just yes or no questions, so we had to get really specific.” She giggles. “Let’s just say, it’s looking good for me!”
I gasp.
“Not about the sex!” she assures me. “About homecoming.” Which actually makes me feel worse, knowing exactly who is on her top five—in all five spots.
“What else did you do?” I ask, sitting up straight and abandoning my casual facade.
“Um, we stayed up all night and gave each other mani/pedis and watched movies. It was really fun.” And then, as an afterthought, she says, “But we all really missed you!”
“Yeah, I missed you guys, too,” I say, meaning it more than I’ve ever meant anything. One mushroom allergy and the next thing I know, the guy I like is spiritually conjured into going to homecoming with my new bestie.
“See you in twenty,” I say into the phone and hang up. I grab a tote bag and stuff it with my journal, a pen, a bottle of water, and my iPod. “I’ll be at the creek!” I holler down the hall to whoever cares and head outside.
Feeling sorry for myself after talking to Mackenzie, I called Luke and asked him to meet me at our spot by the creek. It’s not like he’ll know what to think about it all, but he’s a guy and he’ll make me stop overanalyzing everything. He’ll say either, “Yeah, it’s pretty bad. You suck,” or “Ricki Jo, it’s no big deal. Just a little puke.” I’m hoping for the latter.
I whistle for Bandit and he comes flying around the side of the house as if it were on fire. He’s the kind of dog whose ears flop when he runs and whose mouth is in a sort of constant smile. I don’t really feel like feeling better just yet, but I grin involuntarily at the sight of him and bend down to rub his belly. We get to the creek in about five minutes and I figure I’ve got a little while to pour my aching heart out onto the blank page. If I were the editor of Seventeen, I’d write an article called “How Bad Is Too Bad?” and put real-life stories like mine in it and have friendship experts weigh in. For example, I didn’t steal anything or kiss anyone else’s boyfriend, so it can’t be that bad, right? I start a loose outline for the article in my journal, just for kicks, drawing a sort of chart with pizza vomit being really low and killing a cheerleader being really high.
“Beat it, Bandit,” I say for the millionth time. He’s fixated on my journal and keeps trying to bite it. He’s already drooled all over the pages and I can tell he’s not going to let me get very far. I sigh and finally just put it back in my bag. “Someone’s needy today,” I say, rubbing his head so that his ears flop wildly.
I grab a stick and lie down, pacifying Bandit with a halfhearted game of fetch. I throw and he runs, retrieves, and races back, dropping the stick on my chest.
And then, halfway to the stick, he stops, perks up, and howls like crazy. I lean up on my elbows and see Luke and Bessie, who trump both the stick and me as Bandit races toward them, Bessie already running in the opposite direction. She’s got a good game of hard to get going on, and Mr. Needy Dog is suddenly all “Ricki Jo who?” (He can call me that—we have history.)
“So you had fun at Mackenzie’s?” Luke asks, staring down at me.
“Yeah, but I got sick and had to go home early,” I tell him.
“You okay?” he asks, concerned.
I look up at him and nod. “Yeah, nothing to worry about. Just a little mushroom incident.”
“Ah,” he says, knowing all too well what that entails.
Luke holds out his hand and hefts me up. We walk, me swatting at the tall grass with a long, skinny stick and pouting. It’s late afternoon and the air is crisp. I smell fall on the breeze, sweeping away the last days of summer. Depressing.
“So did the Fabulous Four initiate you?” he teases. “Are you the Fab Five now?”
I stare up at him with narrowed eyes, hand on cocked hip.
“As a matter of fact,” I say, “I think we are. Mackenzie called me her best friend, so, yeah. Things are good in that department.”
“So you’re fitting in,” Luke states simply.
“I think so,” I reply.
“I mean, I can tell a difference,” he says, looking away.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“Well, I don’t know,” he starts, looking down and then up again, anywhere but at me. “Like, for example, your new clothes. It’s like a whole new you. You dress more like those girls now.”
“I just want to look nice!” I defend myself.
“No, not that that’s a bad thing, Ricki Jo!” he says, glancing down at me and then back over his shoulder. “You look great. Really pretty, actually. Just, you didn’t care before and you were still”—he stammers on—“y-you know… pretty.”
I smile. Honestly, hearing that makes me feel like every part of my body has lungs and just got a deep breath of fresh air. My folks call me pretty sometimes, but it sounds totally different coming from a boy—even if that boy is just Luke. Looking up at him, I see the back of his neck redden a little and think it’s really cute the way his hair curls back there when it’s time for a haircut. He’s still looking in the opposite direction, but he’s fidgety.
“Are you okay?” I ask, tapping his leg with the stick in my hands.
“Yeah,” he says looking back at me for a quick second. “Yeah, fine, just, you know. I don’t want you to get mad or anything.”
“Why would I get mad?” I ask.
“You know,” he says quietly. “ ’Cause you’re turning into those girls on the outside, and I’m afraid you’re gonna start changing on the inside, too. That’s all.”
I think about what he says. Of course I want to look like those girls—they’re beautiful and popular guy magnets. I mean, I don’t want to be as bossy as Kimi or let a guy rule me like Sarah does, but it wouldn’t be bad to be more like Mackenzie or Laura. They’re really nice and they have that something. Seventeen calls it the “It Factor”: the inner quality stars have that makes them shine. I could use some shine, and I feel like the more I rub elbows with those girls, the better chance I have of some of that It Factor rubbing off on me.
Speaking of Laura, she did ask me a little favor before I disgracefully bowed out of the sleepover….
“Did you have fun with Laura at the party?” I ask, fishing.
Luke looks me directly in the eye. “I had fun at the party, and Laura is nice, but we’re just friends.”
“Well, I think she’s pretty and I think she likes you and—”
“I think it’s none of your business, Ricki Jo,” he interrupts.
“Ericka,” I correct.
“Ericka at school,” he says, “but you’re still Ricki Jo out here. My normal, fun, best friend Ricki Jo.”
He goes in for a noogie, but I maneuver my way out of it and jump on his back. He spins around a few times and I swing out from his body, my arms gripped tightly around his neck, shrieking. As we go round and round, I start to laugh. I laugh so hard that I let go and collapse in the grass. He picks up my stick and pokes me.
“Stop!” I shriek, crab-walking back to the edge of the creek. He follows, poking my sides. “Stop it!”
I wrench the stick away and throw it in the water, ruining his little game. I stick out my tongue and roll over on my stomach, resting my chin on my hands and searching the water for minnows and crawdads. Luke grunts and falls down next to me, poking a long finger in the water.
“Why do you think they always walk backward?” I ask, peering at a huge crawdad that’s moving toward a big rock.
“I don’t know.” He shrugs. “Crawdaddies are probably all teenagers. Teenage girls.”
I chuckle and flick cool creek water at him. He gives me a warning look and I put my arms up in surrender. The last thing I need is a water fight.
He’s right, though. A lot of the time, I feel totally backward. Like everything I do is inside out. I dress wrong and have to go back to square one to catch up with the style. I’ve never been kissed, so I read articles about other girls’ stories. Everybody I know is growing, while I seem to be stuck in the body of a ten-year-old boy. And my new friends all have crushes on the boy I’m in love with.
Luke and I fall into one of our comfortable silences. My mind races as I watch life move below the water’s surface. Luke’s forehead is all crinkled up as he swirls his finger around in circles. The grass swishes in the wind, a constant, soothing, brushing sound.
Twenty minutes sneak by, and then I yawn and stretch and roll over onto my back. Big, fluffy clouds blow across the sky in a hurried fashion. It’s going to storm.
“Yeah,” I finally say, looking over at Luke. “Being fourteen kind of sucks.”
He nods, hypnotized by the water. “Old enough to know better, but too young to do anything about it.”
There’s definitely a storm on the way.
“It’s golden blond, Ricki Jo,” my momma laments. “You can’t even see it.”
I have used my momma’s Nair on my legs a few times before, and the hair just floated away in the shower; but my first JV game is after school tomorrow and I want to shave my legs. For real.
“It’s just gonna grow back thicker, and black,” she warns.
“Momma, you don’t have to stay in here,” I complain. “I can do it on my own.”
She snorts and crosses her arms. “You’ll cut yourself to pieces.”
After supper, I sneaked into my parents’ bathroom and stole her Venus razor and shaving cream. Back in the privacy of the bathroom I share with Ben, I foamed up my left leg and propped it on the sink. But after the first stroke I felt a terrible stinging and saw blood pouring out of a gash by my ankle. That’s when I freaked out and hollered like hell for my momma.
“Okay, first of all, you have to use a new blade,” she says now, showing me how to click off the old one and replace it with a new one. She hands me the razor and I prop my leg back up on the sink. Then she tries to guide my hand up my leg. She actually tries to shave my legs for me!
“Momma,” I whine. “I can do it myself!”
She lets go and backs away, her hands in the air in surrender, and sits down on the edge of the tub. As I start again at the bottom of my shin, she leans forward. “Now, you don’t need to bear down so hard. And make sure you stay in a straight line.”
I sigh heavily. She cleaned up the blood, I’ve calmed down, and now I wish she’d just leave me alone. She’s probably afraid I’ll bleed all over the white bath mat or something. I try to ignore her as I swipe, rinse the razor, and swipe again. She’s right about my leg hair—it’s totally blond—but it’s there. And it’s long. And every other girl I know shaves her legs already.
“Ricki Jo!” my dad yells from outside the bathroom door. “Telephone call.”
“Who is it?” I yell back, almost finished with my left leg.
“It’s your friend Mackenzie,” he replies.
“Oh! Okay, hold on!” I call, sliding the razor around in my excitement and nicking my knee. “Ow!” These Venus razors are nice, but three blades is a little excessive.
“Take a message, Clark,” Momma yells, leaping forward to blot the new cut with an old washrag.
“No! Pass the phone in, Daddy!” I shout, swatting at my momma to give me the rag and go get the phone.
She shakes her head, a total basket case over nothing, and unlocks the door. My dad passes her the phone and she hands it to me, clearly annoyed.
“Hello?” I say nonchalantly, as if I don’t have one leg cocked up and bleeding or an overbearing mother sucking all the air out of the room.
“Hey, Ericka!” Mackenzie starts, excited. “I’m calling up the girls to go down to the movie theater for the seven o’clock.”
“It’s always the seven o’clock,” I tell her. “And only the seven o’clock.”
“Oh.” She pauses, clearly thinking she’s back in Minnesota, where there are movie theaters that show more than one movie, more than once a day. “Well, whatever, that’s the one. You want to go?”
I look at my momma and know there’s nothing doing. For one thing, I have school tomorrow. Two, my right leg is still in Sasquatch mode. Three, she would have to drop me off and then wait around town ’til it’s over to pick me up. And anyway, I already saw this week’s feature. Dad took us Friday, for the family Friday five-dollar special.
“Um, I don’t think I can make it,” I say sadly, “but thanks for inviting me!”
“Totally,” Mackenzie says. “We’ll miss you.”
Worried that I might be replaced in my absence, I say, “New Girls BFFs, right?”
She giggles. “Totally. New Girls BFFs for-eva!”