WHAT 
I could feel the force of Rose’s enthusiasm through her texts. For once, my energy level matched hers, my fingers flying on my phone as I texted back: RIGHT?????????!!!!!
I need to process this. Are you home? Can I come over?
It was Monday afternoon and both of us were off KoBra duty.
Yeah, come over
An hour later, we were sitting in my room, Flo in my lap while the fan rattled inches away from us.
“Nothing? You said nothing,” she said, her voice flat.
I fiddled with Flo’s collar, irritating her. One paw pushed my hand away. “Well, I was shocked. And then his grandparents came in the room!”
She groaned. “Hamlet, what the heck? Why would he say that with his grandparents around?”
“I don’t think he was planning it. It just seemed to slip out.”
“Either way, terrible timing.”
“Agreed.” I let go of Flo, plopping down backward onto the bed.
Rose propped her chin on the edge of my bed. “Do you feel the same way?” she asked.
I stared at the ceiling. “I don’t know. I mean, yes, I like him. But … love?”
“I know. So serious.”
“SO serious!”
The breeze from the fan lifted my tank top off my belly, making the fabric flutter for a second. “I feel like that guy in a rom-com who freaks out over the obviously perfect-catch girl having feelings for him. Like, why am I obsessing over a love declaration from a nice guy?”
“Rom-com main characters are old. You’re sixteen. Love declarations are weird.”
This was stressing me out, and my room started to feel oppressive. Rose seemed to pick up on this and said, “Let’s do something fun today.”
“Yes and yes.”
Her eyes narrowed in concentration. “You know, there’s a list of all the trucks entering the competition on the website.”
I sat up. “And?”
“Maybe we can check them out. See what we’re up against.”
My mind took that suggestion and spun through other ways to make it more interesting, like prank roulette. By the time it landed on an idea, I was brainstorming.
* * *
“Is a wig completely necessary?” Rose asked, her voice low and skeptical.
I browsed through the wig bin at my favorite thrift store. “Is anything ever necessary?”
“Hi, Clara!” The woman behind the counter waved at me, her eyebrows drawn high and dramatically, her fake mole shifting on her upper lip as she smiled widely at me.
I waved back. “Hey, Erin!” I glanced at Rose next to me. “I’ve purchased many a disguise here.”
“I am very much not surprised,” she said, wrinkling her nose as she picked up a neon orange bob with her fingertips.
“We’re spies today. We need to be fully covert,” I said, eyeing an electric blue pixie wig.
She lifted an eyebrow. “Aren’t we going for inconspicuous here?”
“No way. Just unrecognizable.” I pulled the blue wig on and looked at her. She grinned and gave me two thumbs up.
Rose picked a long, wavy, blond-streaked wig with bangs. She looked amazing in it and I made her take a billion photos. As we sorted through the racks for clothes, she got more and more into it. Clothes were definitely her forte.
When we left the store, I was wearing a short polyester shift dress with geometric patterns. Very 1960s go-go girl. Rose was decked out in a long white caftan with little laced-up booties straight out of Little House on the Prairie. We both wore large sunglasses that obscured our faces.
Rose couldn’t stop giggling, self-conscious as she drove us to the first stop: No Pain No Grain, a grain-bowl truck in Hollywood. Rose parked her car at a metered spot, and the sun beat down relentlessly on the tops of our wigged heads when we stepped out.
I tugged at my dress. “Ugh, should have considered the weather before choosing this piece o’ crap unbreathable fabric!”
Rose was scrolling through an iPad. She had, of course, mapped out all the trucks and made a very thorough checklist. “Okay, so their specialty is making healthy, ‘clean’ bowls full of obscure veggies and various free-range or grass-fed meats.”
“Sounds like the worst.” I peered at the truck through my sunglasses. Their line was minuscule, and it was full of Hollywood’s finest clean-eaters—mostly thin and most likely wealthy as well, judging from the menu pricing. Before Rose could protest, I jumped into line and targeted a young white woman with wavy red hair who was wearing a crop top and loose linen pants. “What’s your favorite thing here?” I asked with a heavy vocal fry.
She glanced at my hair and then my outfit, visibly startled. Probably not the usual clientele she found at her ol’ reliable grain truck. “Well, I usually go for farro topped with okra, black beans, and a sprinkling of gomasio.”
“Interesting. Are you a vegetarian?” I asked.
Glancing around quickly, she leaned in a bit and whispered, “No. Between you and me, I don’t actually think their chicken is free-range.” Her eyebrows lifted.
I raised my own. Quelle horreur. “Are you for real?”
“For real.” A firm, knowing nod. “But their veggies are grown in their own garden, and they’re heavenly.” I stored that fact away. Strengths: veggies. Weaknesses: chicken. We bailed before it was our turn to order, already moving on to our next destination, the Frank ’n’ Frank truck, which served, you guessed it, fancy hot dogs. My dad and I both loved this truck, so I braced myself for some stiff competition. We surveyed the long line before us. It was peak lunch hour, so that wasn’t surprising.
“Hm … this truck doesn’t even give you options,” Rose pondered as she glanced at the menu scrawled on the side of the shiny white truck in neon green. “There’s, like, one hot dog, and you get grilled onions on it with various condiments.”
I nodded. “Their hot dogs are freaking delicious, that’s why. Why dilute the product?”
Rose stood there looking like a serious cult leader in her caftan. “Not too different from the KoBra, we keep it minimal, too.”
“My dad knows his strengths,” I said. Because we were both hungry, we grabbed a couple of hot dogs (Rose discovered she could actually get a vegan one, bleh) and sat down at a nearby bus stop bench shaded by a large magnolia tree.
“This is fun,” Rose said between bites.
“You sound surprised.”
She shrugged. “I never know what I’m getting into with you. And … I still don’t get why we need to wear costumes, but whatever.”
I pointed my hot dog at her. “Aha! You say ‘whatever’ because you know the costumes are purely for fun. And could it be that you’re embracing hijinks right now?”
“Calm down, Clara,” she said. “You’re so annoying.”
“I know,” I said with a laugh. A bus pulled up, and we watched some people unload before it drove off, the exhaust fumes spewing some debris up into the air. I waved it away from my face. “Thanks for hanging out with me today.” It was getting easier and easier to say things like that to Rose without having to crack a joke, too.
“Of course.” She wiped the corner of her mouth with a napkin. “I know what it’s like to need a distraction when you’re worried about stuff.”
I was hesitant before I asked, “So, is that how you cope with your anxiety?”
And to my surprise, Rose didn’t shut it down. She fiddled with her straw. “Kind of. Sometimes I think it’s just me being a worrywart? I’ve always been this way. I worry about everything. And sometimes the dumbest stuff keeps worrying me, days and weeks after.” A breeze hit us then, and it felt so good. She lifted her face up to it. “It’s like this pitch-black field where I’m forced to walk, and I know there’s a giant hole somewhere waiting for me. So I’m constantly thinking about it, when I’m going to drop into this pit.”
That sounded like a literal nightmare, and it hit me then how seemingly perfect people were just as messed up as everyone else. I stayed quiet so she would keep talking.
“Sometimes, I can’t … live in the moment. I’m always thinking of what-ifs and the terrible things people could be thinking about me.” She looked up at me. “I always think everyone’s mad at me. All the time. And it’s like, I don’t really care? But I do. It’s hard to explain.”
“You mean, like your parents?” I asked.
She shook her head. “No. I mean, yeah, of course I worry about what they think. But literally everyone. Like a stranger on the street. If I say something dumb to a barista, it bothers me for weeks. If someone doesn’t respond to a text or e-mail right away, I’m convinced I did something wrong. I feel as if my brain’s trolling me.”
“Your brain is a jerk.”
She laughed, the sound filled with relief. “It is.”
“Do you want me to give your brain a talking-to?” I joked, but inside I felt a flare of sympathy and frustration for her. Rose’s shallow breathing—it was a way for her to calm that troll brain down. I knew that dealing with something like this wasn’t as simple as hanging out with friends to forget your worries, but I was glad to be that friend for her these days.
We finished up our hot dogs and headed to our next destination, a lobster-roll truck in Glendale. As far from the ocean as you could get in LA, but I guess things didn’t always make sense.