Best Friend Emma (11 page)

Cynthia plays with a tiny plastic turkey that is pinned to her pure white sweatshirt as she waits for Kry to answer. I wonder where she got it? I wouldn’t mind having one.

Kry swallows a bite of her pita-bread sandwich and takes a sip of milk. “We have relatives staying,” she finally says above the uproar—as loud as a garbage truck—the boys are making at a nearby table, and then she smiles at me, because I already know about the relatives.

Cynthia does not like that smile, but I don’t even care enough to think,
Score
! Whoever Kry wants to be friends with is just fine.

(Of course, if she wants to hang out with Annie Pat and me, that would be really, really, very, very fine. And Annie Pat agrees with me!)

“
We’re
going to my grandma’s house in San Diego,” Heather reports, unasked. The long skinny braid that usually falls across her face has a little plastic turkey on its elastic band that matches Cynthia’s, I notice.

“And my family is flying to Seattle,” Fiona says, looking important.

And there’s a third little turkey, pinned to the sleeve of Fiona’s shirt.

Matching turkeys! I change my mind about wanting one of those pins.

“Lucky you, Fiona,” Annie Pat says, looking jealous. She has never been on an airplane. Neither have I, for that matter, but I’m supposed to fly to England next summer to visit my dad, and that ought to count for about a hundred trips.

“We
love
Thanksgiving,” one of the church-friends says happily.

“Us, too,” one of the neighbor-friends says. “Pumpkin pie with whipped cream on top!”

Annie Pat and I exchange green and groany looks at the very mention of pumpkin pie, because last Sunday, we ate more than our share—for this year
and
for next year. When we are hungry for pumpkin pie again, we’ll be ten years old.

Double digits!

“And Thanksgiving is fun ‘cause there are always lots of little cousins to play with,” Kry
chimes in. It’s more like she’s a normal part of our class, now, and no one is trying too hard to impress her anymore.

(Well, except for some of the boys, but that’s another story.)

“What are you and your mom doing for Thanksgiving, Emma?” Kry asks.

I grin and slide a happy look in Annie Pat’s direction. “We got invited to eat over at Annie Pat’s house,” I tell her—and everyone. “We’re bringing the stuffing!”

Because the right stuffing is nearly as important as pumpkin pie. And other people’s stuffing is just plain weird.

“We’re gonna have fu-u-u-un,” Annie Pat says. “I like to put black olives on all my fingers and then eat ’em!”

Poor Annie Pat had been thinking that she and Murphy would be the only kids at their holiday meal. And you can’t really count on babies for a good time.

“What about you, Cynthia?” one of the neighbor-friends asks. “What are you gonna do tomorrow?”

“Same old, same old,” Cynthia says, smoothing back her already-smooth hair while she pretends to be grown-up and bored—about a
major holiday
.

And that’s just rude! Also, it’s probably unpatriotic.

“But me and my mom always go clothes shopping the day
after
Thanksgiving,” Cynthia adds, “and that’s fun. We get up real early, when it’s still dark outside.”

“Oooh, shopping,” Fiona and Heather echo, as if that’s really the best part about Thanksgiving. Talk about missing the point!

Annie Pat and I barely look at each other before we start to giggle, and then to laugh, because we just can’t help it. And then Kry Rodriguez starts laughing, too.
“Turkeys drool, best friends rule!”
I whisper to the two of them, which just gets all
three of us laughing more.

Where did
that
goofy saying come from? Maybe I made it up! But, speaking as a future nature scientist, I do not think turkeys really can drool.

And it would be kind of yucky if they could.

“
What
did you say?” Cynthia asks, springing to her feet. “Were you guys whispering bad things about me?”

“Course not,” Kry says, soothing Cynthia’s ruffled feathers. And she’s not lying, either, because Kry didn’t necessarily know who I was talking about when I said “turkeys.”

“Well okay, then,” Cynthia says with a sniff.

“Sit down, Cynthia,” Heather coos, patting the picnic bench next to her.

“Have some raisins,” Fiona says, rattling her little red cardboard box in a tempting way.

Things are quiet again at our lunch table—in comparison to the boys’ table, anyway.

And I think how happy I am, even though I’m divorced. I’m happy to have a best friend like Annie Pat Masterson, who I will be visiting Marine Universe with the Saturday after Thanksgiving, and a maybe-new-friend like Kry Rodriguez, and even to have an ex-friend like Cynthia Harbison, who I’m not even mad at anymore, for some reason.

I have that … that
full
feeling you get when things with you and your friends are just right.

I guess you could say I’m feeling thankful.

A whole day early, too!