In the morning I pack my bookbag, making sure that I have the sketch (the one I took when Peter wasn’t looking) in a folder. I believe the sketch will create a miracle and make things all better again. Shakira once said that having someone sketch her is magical, as if she’s being worshipped, and when Peter showed me my sketch I felt loved. A sketch is powerful. No wonder the world is full of art. Mona Lisa would be a nobody if no one ever painted her.

I walk to school and the first person I see is Peter. He’s with his art friends, all with portfolios in their arms, and I try to walk by without saying anything, but he stops me by placing a hand on my arm and steering me to a secluded tree. The tree is old and gnarled, and sunlight shoots rays between the leaves. This would feel so romantic if Lisa’s pain wasn’t on replay in my head. What am I thinking? This is romantic. My heart flutters as we look into each other’s eyes.

Peter holds my hand, and I don’t pull away. He must sense my hesitation, because he’s not being pushy.

“How are you?” he asks.

“I’m okay,” I lie.

“Did you straighten things out with Lisa, about, you know?”

“No, not yet.”

“If you need help or time to figure things out, I’m here for you.”

“Sure.”

He’s being sweet and patient—how many guys really have those qualities ?—and I’m trying to ward him off. I wonder when he’ll change the subject, and he finally does.

“My friend’s in college and he’s having his work shown in a gallery. It’s really exciting. I’m going tonight. The press will be there. Maybe a photo of me will sneak into the paper.”

“That sounds really exciting … ” It sounds like he wants me to attend with him, but I don’t take the bait. This is so uncomfortable. He should be with Lisa to make our friendship all right again, and here he is squeezing my hand and talking about his life. One of his friends calls his name, and we separate.

“So, I’ll see you around,” he says.

“Sure.” I say a quick goodbye and look for my own friends. My heart is breaking into fragments since I can’t have him. I swallow the lump in my throat and straighten out my spine as I walk away. Taking a 360 turn on my heel, I’m relieved that Lisa isn’t in sight. I hope she didn’t catch a glimpse of my little tryst with Peter. The trees must have hidden us pretty well anyway, but I can’t afford for her to think that I’ve betrayed her on the same morning I unleash my plan to gain back her friendship.

Shakira and I hang out on the same bench that Lisa and I usually sat on. I’m not trying to replace Lisa with Shakira, but Shakira now seems to be clinging to me, as I to her. She swishes her long, sleek hair from side to side, hitting my shoulder with her tresses. I no longer feel that she’s showing off and trying to make me jealous. She’s pretty, not evil, and she’s curbing her tongue after we had our little talk. The other day I took off my glasses to rest my eyes and accidentally smashed my elbow into a lens, breaking it off, and I could tell that Shakira was biting her tongue. Her lips twitched. She was probably going to blurt a comment about my clumsiness, that I shouldn’t have put my expensive glasses right underneath my elbow, but she was quiet. She said she felt bad about my glasses, that was all. I put the broken glasses away and took out a spare pair from my bookbag. No hurt feelings.

There’s a bit of awkwardness with my friends now that Lisa and I aren’t on speaking terms. Maria talks to me for a few minutes, and then she goes to wherever Lisa is to hang out with her. Our mutual friends are like that, dividing time between the two of us. And then there’s some awkwardness about Shakira. At first people gave me dirty looks—why are you hanging out with that girl?—but the longer Shakira hangs out with me, the more my friends talk to her and see that she isn’t as monstrous as everyone used to think. Maria and my other friends are polite to Shakira now that they see her associating with me. She’s in good standing by being friendly with me. Just because she’s pretty doesn’t make her better than anyone else, and she certainly seems nicer after being humbled by her recent bad experiences with me and my friends.

I even see Shakira and Maria talking to one another in hushed tones before the bell rings. Shakira looks upset and Maria hugs her. Maria! Chonga Maria, who talks tough and acts at times like she has a black heart, is being super nice! It seems like everyone is apologizing and making up to each other. I decide that I have to be proactive to make things all right with Lisa. The moments of conciliation with Grandpa and Shakira have put me in a forgiving mood. I hope that Lisa can forgive me for loving Peter. It’s really exhausting to try to win her back. I made another long, convoluted e-card that I sent earlier this morning. It seems like I spend hours a day writing drafts of notes, handwriting letters, making PowerPoints, and using Adobe to make e-cards. If this continues, I’ll become a computer programmer and professional writer in no time. My eyes feel strained sitting at the computer for hours and my hands feel funny—maybe I’m getting carpal tunnel syndrome—but this situation calls for sacrifices.

I see Lisa before English class and I stop her in her tracks. I walk in front of her and won’t let her get by the front door. There are ten minutes left before class starts and I want her to hear me out. Her whole face is contorted with anger. She used to look happy to see me, but now she views me as a traitor. She’s wearing blush, but her cheeks become pinker as she tries to stare me down. It’s like looking at a stranger. The thought that I’ll never be her friend again flashes through my mind. Maybe I should let things be and let her go, but I can’t. She isn’t like other friends I’ve lost touch with since kindergarten. There were many classmates who came and went for different reasons: I was mad at them, they were mad at me, we were nothing more than study buddies, we were partnered up in a project, or they moved away. Lisa doesn’t fit into any of these categories, because she’s the only best friend that I’ve ever had. As long as there is a chance to make things right, I’ll do what I have to do.

“Lisa, please listen to me,” I say.

She looks at me with stony eyes heavily made up with spidery mascara. She crosses her arms defensively, warding me off. I stick my hands in my pockets and my pants start to slide off my hips, even though I’m wearing a belt.

“You’ve gotten really skinny,” she says.

“Thanks,” I say.

“Well, I have to go to the restroom.”

“Wait. I want to tell you that I don’t want Peter and you can have him.”

Her eyes soften with tears. “But he doesn’t want me, does he?” she whispers, her tears about to fall.

“He says he wants me, but I don’t care,” I say. “I want us to be friends.”

“No, no, no!” she says, shaking her head and crying.

I find tissue in my bookbag and hand it to her. She pats her eyes, careful not to remove her makeup, but her mascara is already coming off with the tissue. “You’re ruining my makeup,” she says.

“But look!” I say. I take the stolen sketch out of my bookbag and wave it into her face.

“What’s this?” she asks.

“Peter sketched you.”

Lisa stares at the picture, becoming transfixed on the image of loveliness. Peter gave her passionate eyes, gorgeous hair, and lush lips. He’s an awesome artist. “See, he really likes you,” I say, trying to make myself believe in my own words.

She grabs the picture. “Peter did this?” she asks.

“Yes. Don’t you see that he really likes you?”

“Where did you get this?”

“Straight from his sketchpad.”

“What a beautiful picture!”

“I know!”

“This means nothing!” Lisa screeches.

“Of course it means something,” I say. “He wouldn’t do this for no reason.”

“He draws many people. He drew Shakira. He drew Michael from math class. Does that mean he’s in love with him? And he even drew Ms. Odige, and what boy in his right mind would fall in love with a teacher? This means nothing.”

“Of course it does,” I say, trying to convince her, trying to convince myself.

“No, it doesn’t,” she says.

“Lisa, Peter isn’t as important to me as you are, and he will not come between us.”

“No, that’s not fair to you,” Lisa says, hiccupping. “I know how badly you want a boyfriend. At least I’ve had a boyfriend before, when I dated Mannie last spring. You deserve to have Peter, you really do.”

“But every time you look at the two of us, you might get sad or angry,” I say.

“Almira, I know what I’m saying,” she insists, tears streaming from her eyes. “You two belong together. You look cute together. And, Almira, think about your family. They don’t want you to have a boyfriend or to date. Chances are slim that you’ll have a boyfriend, even if you keep him a secret from them. This is your chance. You deserve that chance. You found what you wanted and I can’t take that away from you.”

I’m shocked by her words. She’s giving him up so that I can be happy. This reminds me of the story about King Solomon. Two women claim that a baby is theirs and he says that he’ll split the child in half with his sword. The real mother says no, please don’t harm the child, the other woman can have him. That woman is the real mother, because she doesn’t want any harm to come to the child, whereas the false mother can’t care less if the child is cut up or not. There are differences between that story and mine. There is no baby, sword, or king, but I had been willing to relinquish Peter for our friendship. Lisa then realized that I’m Peter’s true love, and I can have him. She no longer minds. We don’t have to cut Peter in half.

Besides the biblical tie-in, Lisa seems to understand my plight. She’s right. With the way I keep things from my parents, Peter might be my one and only boyfriend, my one and only chance to have a high school love interest. I like him and he likes me back. We’ve briefly talked about my parents and Grandpa, and Peter seems to understand my situation. He’s handsome, smart, artistic, and sensitive. We’re perfect together.

Lisa hugs me. “I had to make up with you,” she says into my hair. “I’m planning your sixteenth birthday party. It’s supposed to be a surprise.”

“Well, it’s no longer a surprise,” I say.

“I guess it isn’t, now that I opened my big mouth,” she says, laughing.

We go to class arm in arm. Lisa puts her sketch away. She says that she’ll frame it later, because it’s the nicest representation of her there is. I write in my journal about how wonderful it is to have a best friend again:

My best friend was mad at me for a while. I did something that she didn’t like. It was an accident and I hurt her without meaning to. But now we’re ok again. She’s back to being my bestest friend. So many things have happened this month. I lost a lot of weight. I fasted. I finished learning how to drive. I have braces, which suck, but my teeth will look great in a year. I’ll be turning sixteen soon. The boy I like likes me back. This period of time is the highlight of my life, I’m sure of it. This has been the bestest month and the bestest Ramadan ever.

Ms. Odige reads a poem to us; then she grades our journals while we answer questions from the textbook. She writes her comments at the bottom. Bestest is not a word. Use “best” to indicate something that is ultimate.

I shake my head in disagreement when I read this. She doesn’t get it. There’s what you think is the best, but then you find something that supersedes your preconception of that, and that’s what makes something the bestest. My bestest friend. The bestest time of my life. The bestest Ramadan ever. The bestest boyfriend, if Peter and I ever go out together on a real date. Sometimes adults don’t get it, but that’s okay. I’m sure Ms. Odige was my age at one time and referred to things as being the bestest, before she went to college and had the English police drill grammar rules into her head.

Lisa passes notes to me whenever we can’t talk in class. Just like old times. In middle school we folded our letters into triangles, but now we’re older and fold them in simple rectangles and squares.

I think Gabriel likes me and he asked me out today, she writes during math class.

He’s cute, I write back.

He has the longest lashes I ever saw on a boy.

And he wouldn’t stop staring at you yesterday.

I know!

She’s moving on. From the time she caught Peter kissing me to the time we made up, she’s been checking out other guys. I’m relieved. I no longer feel like a backstabbing piece of garbage that’s lower than snail slime. I even tell Peter that Lisa’s forgiven me, and a large I-told-you-so grin breaks across his face. He was far more confident in our relationship than I was, but only because I had more to lose with Lisa in the picture.

Peter hugs me before science class, and Lisa doesn’t wince or turn away. She’s handling things with the utmost maturity. I don’t know if I’d be as graceful if I was in her shoes. I hope I would be. I’m turning sixteen and leaving childhood behind to become more of an adult, which means being able to turn the other cheek, move on, act less childish, and think more optimistically. Lisa is onto her next conquest with Gabriel, and I’m looking at having a real boyfriend in my life.

I’m having trouble with my homework, Lisa writes to me toward the end of class.

Why are you doing it now? I write back.

Gabriel wants to meet me at his friend’s house for a barbecue tonight, she scribbles.

What’s the problem?

What does Shakespearean mean?

What do you think?!

What?

You’re kidding.

No, I’m not!

I sigh and write down the answer.