Best Friends...Forever? (15 page)

"Maybe it's something in the water."

"Or something in the mascara. I can't believe that Liv girl could blink with all that junk on her lashes," I said.

"I didn't say anything to her, but I think she was in my gymnastics class when I was in fourth grade," she said. "Anyway, don't you go and get all weird on me, too."

"Trust me, not a problem," I said. "Do you think everybody in high school dresses like that? I mean, are we going to be total outcasts if we don't?"

"I don't know, but my mom would kill me if I tried to leave the house like that. We should go to the mall sometime and pay attention to what people are wearing. Although I have no idea what stores we'd go to," she said.

The next morning Peyton's mom said she'd drop me off at home. I washed my hair in the bathroom that was her older sister Lacey's room. Lacey was away at school, but most of her stuff was there. There were pictures of her with the swim team and pictures of her with her boyfriend at some school dances. Lacey's hair was up and spiral-curled in all of the dance pictures. I wondered if hairstyles like those were required for dances or something. How did everybody seem to know all this? Was there a handbook and somebody forgot to give it to me? With my luck, they handed it out at the beginning of homeroom, and I missed out on it because I was late, as usual.

 

After school, it was pouring outside. There was nothing good on TV, so I went to read in my room. I was supposed to be reading
Lord of the Flies
but instead was looking at an article on room makeovers. Maybe it was time I did something with my room. It looked like a teenager
and
a little kid shared it. Part of the room had stuffed animals, and the other part was makeup, books, and magazines. I decided to take down the poster of the cartoon ballerina kitty, but I left the one of the kitty in the basketball uniform on the wall.

I packed away most of my stuffed animals — but not my blue mouse — and then took the boxes into the basement only to bring them back up an hour later. My room was just blah and empty without them. Besides, it wasn't as if I had people clamoring to come over, and Ashanti still had a lot of toys and cute stuff in her room. She had a deck of kitty cards that we played with in her room. I even bought a deck of the puppy cards so we could play war with both decks. Our longest game lasted until two in the morning. And we both had mini gumball machines. There was only one kind of gum that fit in the thing and I practically had to eat the whole container to get one decent-sized piece of gum, but it was cute.

I wished I had a room like the one in the magazine, though. Everything in the magazine room was orange-and-white, which was funny, since I had an orange-y-peach room for a few days a couple of months before. I didn't like it at the time, but seeing how amazing this room was, I almost wished I had kept it. Of course, the room in the magazine also had a matching orange laptop, a white-and-orange glass table, an orange love seat made up of little connecting circle pillows, an orange TV set, and a huge orange-and-white loft bed just for hanging out. I'd probably have to spend a lot to get that look. The only orange things I owned were the cap from an orange highlighter I lost, a stuffed tiger, and an orange-juice-flavored lip balm. Not exactly enough stuff to decorate with.

It would just be nice if my room had some kind of theme. Devon's room looked like her personality with all her books and music posters. Peyton's room was pink and girly, so it didn't look like her, but it was big and she had cool furniture. She even had a daybed/couch thing for sleepovers.

My furniture was from my mom's old bedroom set. The dresser and armoire were all mirrors, so I could always see my reflection whether I wanted to or not. It was kind of cool, but it wasn't like I got to pick it out myself. If I could pick out my own stuff then I'd want my room to look like the orange-and-white room in the magazine or the lavender-and-baby-blue room I saw in
Young and Fun
. That used to be my ideal bedroom, but I didn't have a built-in bookcase, a big walk-in closet, or a sitting room. What I had was a small square-shaped room with a closet I could technically walk into, but that was all it had going for it unless you were into the string lights I had around my nightstand.

I had painted my room the same color as the
Young and Fun
room, but it didn't look like that room at all. It was kind of like when I went to get my hair cut like Savannah on
As the Days Roll On.
It wasn't as if I expected to walk out of the salon looking like her twin, but I thought I'd look
something
like her. No, I didn't have her amazing cheekbones or her dark-brown cat eyes, but I thought I'd look a little bit like her.

I started reading compatibility horoscopes online and wondering what Vladi's sign was. Would it be weird to ask him? He might think I just wanted to know when his birthday was, or he might realize what a weirdo I was that I wanted to see if we were "meant to be" according to the stars. I noticed that I had a new message and clicked the mailbox.

 

To: [email protected]

From:
[email protected]

Re: Sweatshirt

Hey Kendall,

How are you? I
'
d be happy to meet with you. Just let me know where we should-

 

What was that? Was I from the Victorian era or something? It sounded like my great-great-grandmother wrote that. Okay, trying it again.

 

Hey Kendall,

What
'
s up? I
'
m free this week if you want to get together. Just let me know where you want to meet.

See ya,

Landry

 

I thought about giving her my phone number, but I didn't want to look desperate and clingy — even if I was. I waited online for half an hour to see if she wrote back, but my mom bumped me off when she had to use the computer.

"Can't you use your phone to send that e-mail?" I asked.

"I can't type well on that tiny screen," she said. "Did you finish your homework?"

I made a face. What was the point of homework anyway? To give me something to do so I didn't run off and join a gang? It wasn't like I learned that much from it. I did math homework every night, and I still didn't get anything we had done all year. Homework in high school was something I needed to ask Kendall about. We heard the classes there were harder, and there was a lot more public speaking where they had students memorize speeches. High school sounded overwhelming, yet everybody seemed to get through it. Maybe there was a secret handbook I missed with advice on how to deal with it all.

 

Kendall wrote back asking if I wanted to meet Tuesday at the mall. I never went out on Tuesday nights with friends. My mom didn't care if I went to Ashanti's or Peyton's on a school night, but would she let me meet somebody at the mall? I waited until mom was busy and then told her I needed to pick up my shirt from a girl who was going to give me some advice on high school. Then I threw in that she was friends with India and Devon and that I had hung out with her last weekend.

"She can come over here," Mom said, totally missing the point.

"Well, she's going to be at the mall anyway, so this way I could just meet her there. I won't be out late or anything."

Mom asked if she was going to help me pick out classes. I nodded. Well, I was sure school would come up at some point.

"Just out of curiosity…are we still going to be living here next year, or are you still thinking about taking another job?" I asked.

Mom shook her head. "No, I think staying where we are right now is what's best."

I sighed with happiness that I didn't have to start all over again in a new town. Finally, I could feel settled. Well, as settled as I could feel with the whole idea of high school breathing down my neck.

"I'm so glad we're staying, but it would help if I could meet with this Kendall girl to talk about next year."

Mom agreed to drive me, but I think it was partly just to get me out of the room and off the computer.

****

On Tuesday, all I could think about was what I was going to wear that night. I didn't want to look like I was trying too hard, so I decided jeans would be safe, but which ones? I made the decision to wear my Franciszka T ones — my good ones — after I saw Yasmin wearing the matching jacket while she was pretending to be "cold" again in class.

Mom dropped me off, and I was supposed to meet Kendall in front of the bookstore, but she wasn't there. Great. She wasn't coming. I wasn't worth her time and…

"Hey Landry! I stopped to get some gum. Want some?" Kendall came running up. She handed me a shopping bag that had my sweatshirt inside. "I double-washed it since it was, you know, covering my butt. Do you want to head up to the food court? I'm dying for some frozen yogurt."

I followed her up to the food court, hoping and wishing that somebody I knew would see me with a cool high school girl. The only person I saw was Mrs. Kharazzi, who was going down the escalator while we were going up.

"Landry!" she called. "See you in school tomorrow, dear."

I waved to her.

"Who's that?" Kendall asked. "A teacher or something?"

I realized it probably wasn't cool to acknowledge someone who worked at school while out at the mall, but Mrs. Kharazzi was the best. I told Kendall she had entered a story of mine in a writing contest the previous semester and that she was a great teacher.

"That's cool. Hey, I need some makeup. What brand do you wear?" she asked.

"Um, Little Rose, mostly," I said.

"I wear that sometimes. We gotta check out the April M counter, too. I love those glosses."

I followed her to the Little Rose section, and she started testing bronzers on her hand. Across the aisle I saw the new Little Rose ad with Talisa's big brown eyes made up in shades of lavender with dark liner and tons of mascara. Normally Talisa's makeup was pretty natural because she was so exotic-looking, but she was gorgeous with made-up eyes. I wanted that look — even though my coloring couldn't have been further from hers. There was another ad of her with nude brown lips and one with red. I pointed it out to Kendall.

"She's so gorgeous, she can wear taupe lip gloss and not look washed out," she said. "Here try this on."

She handed me an applicator with shimmery pink gloss on it. "Don't worry, it looks darker in the tube than on."

I put the gloss on, and it was stickier than most glosses I've worn, but the color was bright and pretty.

"You should get that. This bronze shadow would bring out your eyes, too," she said, picking up a brush to put some shadow on me.

A salesperson came over, and I asked how much everything was, and it added up to eighty bucks. Yeah, I wasn't making Talisa's money yet. "It might be too much for school," I said, shaking my head. "They're kinda strict about that."

They were, but Yasmin and Arianna got away with wearing smoky eye shadow all the time.

"Let's hit the April M counter," she said.

She found some shadows that were like holograms. They shimmered if the light hit them right, but they were super subtle so Ms. Ashcroft wouldn't be on my case about it. Kendall picked out a copper shimmer one for me to bring out my blue eyes. Then she picked out a lip gloss for me. Kendall also told me I should get a light bronzer for days when I was tired, so I bought it even though I was spending most of my Christmas money. My mom would say I didn't need any new makeup because of all the Little Rose samples I had gotten, but most of those shades were too dark for me.

"I'm glad you could hang out today," Kendall said. "Liv's been super weird lately. She was supposed to come over after school one day, but my grandma's in a hospice and was ill, so I had to go there with my parents and when I called her to tell her she couldn't come over, she got all weird on me. Like it's my fault that my grandma's sick."

I wasn't sure what to say, so I just nodded.

"And what makes me mad is that instead of spending time with my grandma, I was all worried about Liv. I feel like…" She sighed. "That if anything happens to my grandma, then I'm going to feel guilty about worrying about something so dumb like a friend being weird."

Her eyes started to water.

I grabbed a tissue off one of the makeup counters and handed it to her.

"It's so hard when someone starts acting funny around you or ignores you," I said.

She nodded. "Why do I care so much? My grandma's sick, and I hate having all this extra anxiety right now because my friends might be talking behind my back."

I told Kendall what happened when Tori and Ericka started to freeze me out after the
American Ingénue
competition and how I had been upset for months over it.

"They were my best friends, and without them to talk to…" I shrugged. "I felt so lost. But lucky for me, I started getting closer with this girl, Ashanti, and she's one of my best friends now. And then I started to hang around Devon and her friends. That's how Peyton and I got close."

"Did you and your other friends ever make up?" she asked.

I nodded. "Yeah, it's not the same, though. It's like we're not as close. We still talk and stuff, though."

"Yeah, sometimes that happens when one friend changes a lot, and the others feel left behind."

I felt like I had gotten a jolt of electricity through my body. "Wait, you think that's what happened?"

"Well, yeah. I mean, they were probably jealous, too, but a lot of times it's because they feel they're going to be left out or left behind while you go on to do something without them. I had it happen when I got my first boyfriend a couple months ago. They were okay with it when they all had guys, but once I was the only one with a boyfriend? It was a totally different story."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"We were all supposed to go to this winter dance together. Our parents were going to rent us a limo and some of my friends were going with guy friends they liked and hoping it would turn out to be more, and two were going with their boyfriends. Well, right before the dance two of the couples broke up. And one of the other guys told Liv he only saw her as a friend, and she was hoping they'd end up dating. So suddenly I was the only one with a boyfriend."

"Poor Liv."

"Yeah, but then she started making all these comments about how it was better to be single. Then she…." She paused. "You promise not to say a word of this?"

"Promise. I would never tell."

"Lukas and I never formally said we were going to the dance — it was just assumed. So one day he was talking to her in the hall about how a bunch of the guys had come up with cute ways to ask the girls to winter formal. So he said he was going to write, 'Will you go to the dance with me?' on balloons and tape them to my locker."

"What a cute idea," I said.

"Yeah, but Liv told him that it was too late, because that only gave me a week to get a dress and that I'd be super insulted to be asked so last minute. So he didn't ask me at all."

"You're kidding!"

"And I had gotten a dress 'cause I thought we were going to go. I bought tickets, too. But when I mentioned the dance at lunch one day, Lukas told me Liv had pretty much implied I wouldn't want to go so last minute."

"What did you
say
?"

"I didn't know what to say or do. I was mad at him for not asking me anyway or at least talking to me about it, but I didn't want to break up…" She bit her lip. "And I was super mad at Liv, but I can't…I don't know if this will make sense to you or not, but it was like I couldn't afford to have her get mad at me."

"I totally understand," I said.

"So I pretended I was fine with not going. Meanwhile, I was out forty bucks for the tickets, and I don't even want to tell you how much babysitting money I spent on that dress."

She sighed and asked if I had a boyfriend. I shook my head. I wanted to tell her I had gone out with Vladi but was afraid that maybe it didn't count. Other than school movies and basketball games, where did we go? And once we said we were boyfriend and girlfriend, we never went anywhere, so did it count as a real relationship? It did to me, but what about him?

"What about you and Vladi? He seems to like you," she said.

I told her what happened, and she rolled her eyes. "Some of those guys are so dumb that way, and they hate the idea of any of their friends being tied down."

"Can I ask you something? You said Vladi talked about me a lot. I'm wondering if that was before the whole I-can't-see-you-anymore thing or after."

"A couple weeks ago, when he was at the house," she said. "The guys were talking about the Spring Fling dance and who they might ask, and I asked him if he was going, and he said he was going with this Carey girl."

I felt like I had been kicked in the stomach.

"Carey?" I asked.

"Yeah, I asked him if he liked her and he said he liked this girl from Hillcrest and her name was Landry. Carey was just a friend."

"Why would he say he likes me when he called me and ruined everything?" I asked.

"Because he's a boy and they make no sense and they go along with whatever their stupid friends do."

I nodded. "Actually, a lot of my friends do the same sort of go-along-with-everybody-else thing."

She laughed. "Yeah, I guess we're all kinda dumb from time to time and go along with the crowd. Do you want me to say something to him next time he's around?"

"Nah, just say you met me. That's all. I'd like to hear his reaction."

"You sure you don't want me to put in a good word for you or tell him how you have all these guys falling at your feet to make him jealous?" she asked.

I shook my head. "No, if he wants to talk to me again, then I want it to be because he likes me, not just because he thinks someone else likes me, too. Otherwise, what's the point?"

"Good for you. I'm still in game-playing mode," she said, smiling. "Old habits are hard to break. So are you looking forward to high school next year?"

I shrugged because I knew I was supposed to say how excited I was about it, but I didn't want to lie. Kendall seemed easy to talk to, though, and she had confided in me. Maybe it would be okay to tell her how I felt and ask her for some advice.

"Actually, I'm a little worried about next year. You know, fitting in and stuff."

"I was terrified my first day. Everyone said you get labeled within the first week, and that's the group you're in for the next four years," she said. "I was so scared that I'd end up with some losers that I spent all my babysitting money on clothes so I'd fit in. So there I am with my amazing Franciska T outfit, thinking I'm all cute, and this idiot trips and spills tomato soup all over my pink sweater. I almost cried…in front of everyone in the cafeteria, and that place is huge. Seriously, there was so much soup on me it was like a bloodbath."

"What happened?"

"Well, the girls I was trying to fit in with laughed at me, but this one girl came over and walked me to the bathroom. She told me she had an extra sweatshirt from gym class and offered it to me so I could change. We ended up becoming super good friends. So in a weird way, if that soup thing didn't happen, I wouldn't have met my friend."

"Was it Liv?"

"Ah, no. Liv was one of the ones who laughed," she said, not looking at me. "Whatever."

"Well, what would you suggest I wear on the first day?"

"Something you're comfortable in so it doesn't look like you're trying too hard. And don't spend all your money on clothes — that was
sooo
dumb of me. Sometimes I wish I didn't care so much…I just…"

"Is high school any better than middle school?"

"Some of that drama stops. Not much, but some. It's a little better. I mean, there's more people, so if your friends get mad at you, then you have enough groups to turn to so you're not alone," she said.

Oh wow,
that
was the selling point? Didn't all that mean girl stuff
ever
stop? My phone got a text, and it was Mom saying she was coming to pick me up and where to meet her.

"What about classes? Are there any teachers I should avoid or anything?"

"I'll e-mail you a list of which teachers and classes to avoid and which ones are good."

"Thanks. It's one thing to give a speech in front of a class, but to have to memorize it too? I'm just so anxious about next year and trying to fit in and make new friends in such a big school."

"I'm surprised you're worried about fitting in, Landry. I assumed a model wouldn't have any anxiety about that stuff."

"Why?" I asked, shocked.

"I dunno. You're pretty, blonde, and tiny. I just assumed you had it made."

"I thought the same thing about you."

She gave me a hug. "E-mail me any time you have questions about next year."

"Seriously? Because I might drive you nuts. I am a nervous wreck over the whole thing."

She laughed. "It's so nice to hear, because I was my first year, and I thought I was the only one."

"It seems like everyone else has like, an in at the school or knows someone."

"Yes! Like they have a high school fairy godmother that takes them by the hand and teaches them how to be cool or at least not make a fool of themselves," she said.

"That's exactly how I feel."

"No worries, I will be your guide or whatever. And I will find out what's going on with Vladi and Carey, who I already do not like without even knowing her," she said.

My mom pulled up, and I offered Kendall a ride home, but she said her uncle was picking her up. Waving good-bye, I got in the car, and suddenly I felt a little less anxious because I wasn't the only one who went into high school terrified.