Flip.
Flop.
Twist.
Turn.
UGH!
This is why Mom and Dad always told me not to talk to strangers when they sent me to the bodega on the corner in Brooklyn to pick up milk or pickles, because I might have ended up talking to a supremely weird teenager who would make me rethink the entire nature of childhood.
By the time I give up on sleep, it’s eleven thirty p.m. and I’ve kicked off my covers and am lying crosswise on my bed, the bare soles of my feet resting against the cool of the wall, my head hanging off the side, dangerously close to whatever monsters might be hiding in the darkness under my bed.
I reach over to my lamp.
It’s still weird to turn on my light in the middle of the night and find myself in my bedroom in Trepan’s Grove. I mean, any actual bedroom would feel big to me, since my bedroom in our Brooklyn apartment was technically a closet with a window.
Our place in Trepan’s Grove is a whole house, just for us. Well, sort of. It’s a town house. A town house is like a regular house that’s been smooshed in on either side, making it tall and skinny. It’s connected paper-doll-style to a line of six other identical town houses, each with woodsy-looking brown shingles and forest-green shutters that hang neat and pretty but don’t actually shut. There is a sort of elbow in the very middle of the row of town houses, forming a triangular front parking area hemmed with boxwood and holly bushes. Mom says they’ll have bright red berries when winter comes. Our complex is up a narrow wooded road on what people call the far side of town, which means far from the common and the center of town and all of the rich people.
In my old technically-a-closet room, almost the whole space was taken up by the queen-size futon cushion on the floor, colorful pillows propped up along the wall, Rae’s old Frozen sleeping bag rolled in its place of honor in the corner. My things were all neatly stacked on shelves or hung on hooks that we raised a couple times a year as I grew, to keep me from shish-kebabbing an eyeball.
Childhood is a wound. Maude’s words keep echoing in my head, seeming more ominous in these dimly lit, small hours of the night. I give a little shiver and pull Champ into my lap. He forgives me for waking him, shuts his one good eye and purrs blissfully. Dad says Champ is the most pampered cat in the world, but I think he deserves it. The lady at the animal shelter said that he was found outside a coffee shop called Champion one rainy winter morning. He was totally soaked and shaking, mewing pitifully, his right eye so wounded that the vet at the animal shelter wasn’t able to save it. I squeeze Champ closer and kiss his head, the same way I always do when I think of him out there, cold and soaking wet and totally alone.
For some reason, the look on Zooey’s face today, when the Ts defriended her, flashes before my eyes. She wasn’t cold and wet, but she was most definitely alone. If that can happen to people who have been friends since they were in diapers, what hope is there for a friendship that’s only a few months old?
What guarantee is there that the same thing can’t happen to me? That I won’t be the one dodging verbal daggers flung by my friends?
The horrible thing is, there isn’t a guarantee.
I mean, not really. Just like the No Bully Pact we all signed on the first day of school, friendship isn’t really a binding contract.
I reach over, nudging Champ off my lap, and jiggle the drawer in my bedside table until it squeaks open. I pull out a notebook and pen. I slip out of bed and onto the soft carpet, open the notebook to the first page, and tap my pen at the top, thinking. Finally, I write THE FRIENDSHIP PACT.
It takes me a moment to figure out where to start, but finally I begin:
We, the undersigned, promise …
I write until my hand hurts, until it’s past midnight. I write the last part with my heavy head resting on my arm, at eye level with my notebook, drawing four lines at the bottom. I read back over what I wrote and then sign my name on the top line. I fall asleep there, on the floor, feeling like I’ve done something important. If my friends will agree, it’s a guarantee.