Best Friend Emma (10 page)

     
11
     

Like I told my mom, I hate having to say I’m sorry. And it’s especially hard in person. But it looks like that’s what I’ll have to do, because it is Sunday afternoon, and we are on our way over to Annie Pat Masterson’s house so I can give her my apology letter. Also, we are bringing the Mastersons one of our pumpkin pies. Also, my mom has a small present that she has been meaning to take over to Murphy, the Mastersons’ new red-haired baby.

The pumpkin pie looks a little burned on top, and a chunk of the crust broke off when we got in the car, but Mom says they’ll still appreciate it. She says that when you have a new baby, you’re
desperate for food someone else has made.

Annie Pat, on the other hand, is not desperate. In fact, she will probably slam her bedroom door in my face. And I’ll deserve it, too—not because I forgot about going to Marine Universe yesterday, but because I forgot about
her
, my best friend, Annie Pat. At least for a little while.

And that was a wrong thing to do.

“Did Mrs. Masterson say that Annie Pat and her father had a good time at Marine Universe?” I ask gloomily, staring out the car window at the trees whizzing by.

“They didn’t go,” Mom says, eyes on the road. “Annie Pat was too upset.”

“Oh.”

That’s not good
. I start rehearsing my apology all over again.

“What’s their house number?” Mom asks, peering out the window at Sycamore Lane, where the Mastersons live.

I’ve only been to Annie Pat’s house once, because
of the baby, but I remember. “Three-fifteen,” I mumble, and then we are there.

Way
too soon.

Knock, knock
. “Can I come in?” I whisper at Annie Pat’s bedroom door, which I happen to know is decorated on the inside with pictures of beautiful jellyfish.

“Nuh-uh,” Annie Pat’s muffled voice says from behind the door.

“Please?”
I say.

No answer. Then, “I’m busy reading about leopard sharks.”

I slump down onto the floor outside Annie Pat’s room and listen to the grown-ups in the living room cooing over the baby. “Look at those little hands!” Mom marvels, as if she’s never seen hands before.
I
have hands, and all she ever notices is whether or not my fingernails are dirty.

Annie Pat’s house smells different from ours. Not bad, but different. I knock again, but Annie Pat still doesn’t answer. So I slide my apology
letter under her door—and listen hard to hear if she tiptoes over to get it.

It is a very good letter, in my opinion, and here is what it says:

Even if I end up with no friends at all—let alone a cool best friend like Annie Pat Masterson, who wants to be a scientist, too—at least I’m doing the right thing.

Annie Pat’s door opens a crack, just wide enough for me to see one pigtail and one navy-blue eye. “Say it out loud,” she tells me, sounding stern.

“The whole thing? But—but I don’t have it memorized,” I stammer.

“Just the last part,” Annie Pat says.

I wrinkle up my forehead.
Boy
, I think,
she’s not making this very easy for me
. “I was wrong,” I force myself to say.

“Not that,” Annie Pat says from behind the door. “The part after that.”

The part after that
. I try to remember. “Uh, ‘your friend’?” I say, guessing.

Annie Pat’s door opens a little more. Now I can see her angry nose. “You were mean to me just the way Cynthia was mean to you, once
upon a time,” she tells me. “You’re exactly like Cynthia, Emma. You dummy.”

“I’m
not
like Cynthia,” I object—but nicely, and smiling, in spite of her rude remark, so that she won’t shut the door again.

I may be a lot of things, but “dummy” isn’t one of them. I hope.

“Yes, you are too,” Annie Pat insists. “You were trying to decide who would be friends with who, weren’t you? And I just knew that pretty soon you were gonna tell everyone,
‘Kry Rodriguez is my first-best friend, and Annie Pat
Masterson is my second-best friend.’
Just like Cynthia!”

“I would never say such a dumb thing,” I tell Annie Pat. “And like I wrote in the letter, I promise I won’t try to make friends with Kry Rodriguez anymore. I’ll forget she’s even in our class.”

“I don’t care about that, Emma,” Annie Pat says, opening her bedroom door even more. Tears make her eyes look even bigger than usual, and that’s saying something. “I mean, I like Kry Rodriguez, too,” she says. “Who wouldn’t? I just don’t want you to forget about being friends with me, that’s all.”

“Never,” I say, crossing my heart and hoping to die.

(Not really, but you know what I mean.)

“Then you may enter,” Annie Pat says, sounding like a queen.

“Thank you for forgiving me,” I tell her humbly.

And I really, really mean it.

     
12
     

“Hey, Kry, what is your family going to do tomorrow?” Cynthia asks Kry Rodriguez at lunch on Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving. Most of the girls in our class have gathered at the picnic table because it’s so pretty outside. The sun is shining, and orange and gold leaves are blowing all around the nearby playground like little holiday decorations, and two scrub jays squawk like crazy in the branches above our heads.