Husky (12 page)

Sophie comes over the next morning, but I don't feel good or happy about it. I sort of get angry again. Did she just assume I would be home? Did she think of course I'd have nothing else better to do today, so why not just pop over and see if we can ruin the rest of his lonely day? I know it sounds crazy, but I feel like she's judging me by coming over to hang out with me, which doesn't make any sense, but that's how I feel. Usually, when Sophie comes to my house, I get ready super fast and run down the stairs like I'm in a Hot Pockets commercial or something, just anything to get to her. But today, I wait a minute before I even get out of bed. I just lie there being annoyed and thinking about not going down at all. At all. I think about yelling down the stairs that I'm tired and don't want to go
out. I don't answer Nanny when she yells up the first time. Maybe I'll just lie here. Lie here so still and so angry that she'll go away. How would she like that? The worst part is I don't know. Honest. I don't know what she'd think anymore.

“Ducks, are you awake?” Nanny yells again.

“Yes!” I yell down with my annoyed voice again, which I really hate but is the only voice I'm using today or at least now. “I'll be right down.” But there's nothing right about it. I wait another minute in bed. Then another. I get out slowly. I think about taking a shower, which would add at least another ten minutes to the whole thing. That would be so totally rude, I figure, yes, I have to shower. I don't care. Let Sophie sit. Let her wait.

I go in through Mom's room and walk around like no one is waiting for me anywhere in the world. I sit on Mom's bed for a minute too, acting like I'm just taking a minute for myself to figure out exactly what I need, or figuring out how showers work before I can use one. There are handles, yes, and I turn them, yes. And then water? Yes. What temperature should the water be? Well,
that's a whole other conversation. Jeez, I could be here all day. Poor Sophie.

I take a shower. Hot, like I like it. I need a minute to figure things out, and the shower is helping. But in the shower after I wash, I start to think I've gone too far. What if she does leave? And forgets me altogether? Does being a brat like this ever pay off for anyone? I dry off a little and rush back into my room. I get dressed fast, throwing on something simple and not thinking about who I want to be or anything. Just clothes. I look all right. I look like myself, and I head down the stairs, quick but not stomping. I know I'm in a hurry, but Sophie doesn't need to.

When I get down to the kitchen, Nanny is sitting at the table with Sophie and talking, talking loudly of course, only made louder by the fact that Jock's TV is blasting at full volume from the top of the fridge with some morning show. It sounds a lot more like Sophie's house than mine at the moment. When Nanny sees me, she roars.

“Well, look who decided to join us? I hope you feel primped and pressed, Ducks, for how rude you've been to
the little miss. Must be nice, the life of leisure you're after, Ducks. But the rest of us got places to be.” Nanny turns to Sophie on this part. “This one, doesn't ever end up where he's supposed to, why, just the other night . . .”

“Can we go?” I say loudly, wanting to stop her from talking any more about things she really doesn't know.

“Look at the hurry he's in now, will you? Isn't that just the way. Go on with the two of you, then, but, Ducks, you come back in this house by six on the dot, you understand me? We all three of us are going to have a little talk together,” Nanny says, wagging her finger at me.

“All right,” I say back, still looking at the floor.

“And you see that he does, miss.” Nanny wags to Sophie.

“I will, I promise,” Sophie says back.

“There's a good girl. Now run off, the pair of you. Well, go on, you're in such a hurry.”

The minute she says this, I run out into the hall with Sophie trailing after me. I start to think my new mad thing is walking fast. I'm so fast now, I get to the door and out it so quick that the door shuts behind me and traps Sophie
inside. I have to go back and let her out again.

“Sorry,” I say to her, not looking at her.

“It's okay. Where do you want to go?” Sophie asks, really looking at me.

“I don't care,” I say back.

“Okay, the park?”

“No, I'm there every day with Ellen.”

“How come you guys never get me?” Sophie asks. And that, so far, is the weirdest thing today. The Weirdest. Why don't we get her? Why? Because who is she even to get? That's mean. Because . . . I don't know. I honestly don't, I just never think of it. Or never think that she would want to come or that she will even be home or anything. I've been to the park so much with Ellen and it is stupid to not bring Sophie, since I do walk by her house to get to the park, but I never, not even once, thought of knocking on her door and asking her to come with us. Not even once. And it's such a weird thing to think that I stop thinking about how I can't look at her, or that I don't want to, and I look her right in the face, and she just has this look, asking me why are we being this silly, or stupid,
or mean, or whatever we're being, when all we want to be is friends.

That's Sophie's face right at this moment, with all those things in it, and I know it because I know her.

“I don't know,” I answer.

Sophie's face sort of frowns a little because she knows I'm lying, but she also knows that I don't know how to say the truth yet. So she turns the frown into a smile so that I know it's okay, and I know that we'll figure it out, and she says, “Let's get sodas and walk.”

And that's what we do.

We go to the corner store and both get cherry sodas, and the whole time we talk like nothing is different. And in a really bizarre way, it isn't. We laugh a lot and talk even more. Sophie has this thing that whenever she gets a soda, for some reason it explodes. Today when she opens her cherry soda, like always, it fizzes to the top and she jumps back like she always does, but it still gets on her, and I still laugh. Mine never fizzes like that. And after we cheers like we always do, which is silly but makes us laugh, we walk the streets real slow, looking at everything
and nothing and talking about it all and nothing at the same time. Almost like always.

Sophie's mom wrote an article for
Vogue
, which is super huge for her, and they've been waiting for the big issue to come to the house for a week. It's the big September issue, so everyone will get it and read it, and they're both really excited. Sophie more wants to see all the dresses and the models. She always counts the black girls, which always makes her sad. But she loves to see what everyone is going to be wearing and how they're going to be wearing it. Anytime she tells me about this she makes the Fashion face we used to make alone in her bedroom, and I laugh. I laugh my first full laugh I've had with her today, but also maybe in a while. Both of us know it.

It's still a good thing.

It's nice to be reminded of the things we have together out here on the street. Sophie laughs too. She starts telling me about what she's going to wear for the first day of school. Every detail. Describing to me the colors and pointing to things on the street as we walk by shops and
people. The green is like the awning of the bookstore, and the skirt looks like the one that girl over there is wearing, but it's a lot longer, with more gold in it but less flowers.

“So nothing like it?” I ask her.

“Well, like the feel of it though?” Sophie says, sort of laughing.

“The material?” I ask.

“No, just the way it hangs and fits in with the rest of her outfit. It's like a big part of the whole look.” Sophie always has to have “a look.” It's her thing.

“Sure,” I say, even though I have no idea what she is talking about, at all.

“No, I mean, it makes the whole thing. The sweater with the T-shirt underneath, if she were in jeans or something, she would look so different,” Sophie says, trying to make her point.

“Yeah, she'd be in pants,” I say, trying to make her laugh, but Sophie is still too busy trying to get me to understand with her.

“Maybe if you saw the skirt by itself, you could see that it could go with a whole bunch of stuff, lots of other
outfits, but, with this, with all of this, it just makes the most sense.”

“It doesn't really match though,” I say.

“Matching is, like, so 2003,” Sophie says in her funny Fashion voice, where everything is “so” something. And together this time, we both laugh at it. This is so good, because I know that she wants to talk about something else, because she's making her Something Else face. When we were kids, this was the face that meant she had to go to the bathroom, now it's the face where she wants to say something, wants to get something out, usually something important, but doesn't know how.

“Ellen says you're still mad about the makeover,” Sophie says.

“Party. The makeover birthday party,” I say back. I know it's ruining her moment to say what she needs to, but I need to say the actual thing. I need to say the truth so that Sophie will understand me.

“It's not
on
my birthday. It's not my birthday thing,” Sophie answers back.

“So what is your birthday thing?” I ask.

“I wasn't really having one this year. I don't know,” Sophie says, looking at the street.

“So if it isn't your birthday thing, but it's the only birthday thing you are doing, then it's your birthday thing, isn't it?” I ask. I'm trying not to, but I'm getting madder and a little louder as I talk. I just want to go back to talking about the skirt or something, anything else. But I guess now we can't.

“You're not understanding me at all,” Sophie says, and stops in the middle of the sidewalk.

“So tell me, then,” I say, trying to make my voice as quiet as I can, but inside my head I'm screaming. I'm so angry at her right now and at Ellen for telling her and for even having to get out of bed to do this on the street with all these people watching.

“Ducks, seriously. You have this thing, like I'm trying to choose Allegra over you.”

“You are! It's not my ‘thing' at all. It's yours!”

I want to say more but I can't. I want to spit out so many mean things, but I don't. The cold soda drips in my hand reminding me that just a minute ago we were
friends. But now. I couldn't be her best friend at all. If I was, she wouldn't do this to me on the street. She doesn't care about me. She wouldn't even be doing any of this if Ellen hadn't told her. She's too selfish and awful to notice. My best friend would know—

“Ducks, you don't get it. Allegra thought it would be a fun idea to have a girls' day. And her mom, like, put it all together. It's going to cost a hundred and sixty dollars, which is crazy anyway. And it was just a girl thing, I don't know. I didn't think you would care, and I don't know why you do,” Sophie says, looking up at me, but I don't look back at her. She doesn't deserve it.

“I don't, I don't,” I say. Totally lying. And so angry, I can't walk away fast enough. I want to walk, no, I want to stomp off and leave her here with all my hurt feelings and upset, but I know that all of that, all of it and more, including all the screaming horrible things in my head about her and Allegra and Allegra's mom and Ellen and Everyone in the World will just follow me. I can't stomp away from that. So I stay really still, not knowing what to do. At all. Honest.

“I wouldn't ever celebrate my birthday without you. I wouldn't and this isn't that, it totally isn't,” Sophie says, trying to get everything out that she needs to, but I've sort of stopped listening, because for the first time ever, ever, and that is our whole lives together, which is I guess our whole lives, I don't trust her.

“Then what is it?” I yell back.

“We're different. We are. And I don't see that as a bad thing. I like it. I have to,” Sophie says. I hear something change in her voice, so I look up. “I like that you are interesting and funny and that you have known me forever. And I like that Ellen is mean and hilarious and stands up to anyone for no reason. But I like that Allegra is none of those things. And doesn't even know what they are. We're all a mix, and instead of trying to separate that, I'm trying to make it work.”

It's hard to hear Sophie over all the angry thoughts I have in my head. It's like hearing Nanny's muffled shouting when I'm in the shower, and the steam is coming up at me. It is her birthday thing. It is what she wants to do. She's trying to bring us together by leaving me out.
I'm not as cool as Allegra, and she knows it. I mean, her mom just had an article in
Vogue
. You can't be cool when you live in your grandmother's house with your mom who has to work every single day in a small bakery just to pay the bills and you never get to see her. You can't be cool enough to just order up a makeover like that, you can't when the things that are wrong can't be fixed in an hour. You're fat and you don't listen to the right music and whatever you are is just not as good as someone else. Or you're just not a girl and it's a girl thing. You don't get anything, then, except a walk down the street with a cherry soda and a bunch of lies to keep you shut up and happy. And alone.

But happy is nowhere near me now. Nowhere.

“I like being different. Being the mix of things I am, and I like when people I like like that too. I thought you did,” Sophie says, looking me straight in the eyes. “I couldn't have a birthday thing this year, because of all the school stuff and getting everything ready for that, and my mom was really stressed out with the
Vogue
thing happening. I figured I would just have you and Ellen and
Allegra over for cake or something.”

I look in her eyes and I want to believe her, but all I hear is,
It's a consolation prize
. It's like the stupid trophy I have sitting in my room for the two weeks I went to soccer camp and hated every single minute. It's something to say thank you for just showing up, but we really don't mean it. That's what that is, just something nice to remind you that you're a loser, all the while pretending that you're not. Well, I'd rather know the truth. And I do.