Best Friends (Until Someone Better Comes Along) (7 page)

“We should probably get inside,” I said. I especially hate the kind of storms that creep up and surprise me. The ones that came out of nowhere seemed meaner and uglier, somehow.

Suddenly, another crack of thunder, closer this time, shook the sky above us. Then the clouds opened, and rain poured down. Even though we were already wet, everyone shrieked. I chased Bailey and Ava up the hill toward the cluster of cabins. Brennan and Zach took off one way at the end of the path, while we all went the other way. Madeline split off from us to run to the cabin she shared with Ava and their dad, but Bailey grabbed me and Ava and yelled, “Come with me! Thunderstorms scare me, and Mom's working all afternoon. Please?”

I didn't have time to react. I just let Bailey tug me down an unfamiliar wooded path as another thunderclap popped above us. The wind whipped through the forested area that surrounded our cabins, and as lightning blazed in the sky above us, I wondered about the safety of our ramshackle cabins. Could a huge storm blow them over, or rip them out of the ground, à la
Wizard of Oz
?

I suddenly realized I had to get Coco. My puppy had never been in a thunderstorm before, and I didn't want her stuck in the cabin, scared and alone. My mom had made it very clear that Coco was
my
dog, and any dog care and maintenance was
my
responsibility. “Can I bring my dog to your cabin?” I had to yell so Bailey could hear me through the pounding rain.

“Of course!” Bailey yelled back. Her eyes were wide and scared, and I could tell she was more freaked out by thunderstorms than I was. But even though it was obvious she wanted to get inside, Bailey said, “We'll come with you to get her!”

Ava and Bailey followed as I ran to my cabin. For a moment, I thought about suggesting that we could all go to my cabin, since we were almost there and the rain was really slamming into us. But I knew my mom would freak out if we all tromped in, wet and dripping. Besides, I was still mad at my mom, and I was pretty relieved I had an excuse to stay away.

I ran up the steps to the Cardinal cabin and popped open the screen door. Coco was shivering, curled into a tight ball right by the doormat, so I just leaned down and scooped her up into my arms. I wrapped her in a dry towel, then ran back
down the stairs and into the rain again. Coco shook inside the towel, so I held her tighter, pulling her against my chest to shield her from the rain. I chased after Bailey as she and Ava ran past several cabins and then down a small hill. The next crack of thunder made the ground shake, and I was almost sure the earth was going to open up in front of me.

Coco wriggled in my arms. She poked her wet little nose out of the towel just as the next blast of lightning lit up the sky. Panicked, she jumped out of my arms, shaking the towel off her body. In the moment before she ran, I saw that her usually floppy ears were pressed tight against her head. “Coco!” I screamed. The rain was coming down in sheets, hitting me at an angle. I could hardly see the cabins on either side of me. The lake was just a swirling mass of waves and rain at the bottom of the hill. And Coco was a dark blur, zigging and zagging between trees. In less than an instant, I couldn't see her anymore at all. “Coco! Come back!”

Bailey and Ava both stopped running and turned back to see what I was screaming about. “My dog is gone!” I told them. Fear crippled my reflexes, turning me slow and useless. I bent down to pick up the towel on the ground, the one that my puppy had been wrapped safely in just moments before. It was warm and soaking wet. “I have to find her.”

Without a moment of hesitation, both Bailey and Ava ran off in different directions, jumping into action. Seeing them react helped shake me out of my stupor. We all shouted for Coco, our voices muffled by the rain. I could feel the raindrops hitting my back, stinging the bare skin my swimsuit didn't cover, and bouncing off my head.

Thunder rocked the sky again. In the silence that followed, I thought I could hear Coco whining from somewhere nearby, but I couldn't see anything except rain and trees. The way everything hung heavy and wet around me made me feel claustrophobic, and my breath became shallow. It felt like the world was closing in on me as I realized I'd lost my dog in a forest full of terrible creatures and beasts. I turned in circles, searching the dark woods around me for any sign of her. In the weeks Coco had been mine, she had hardly left my side. She wasn't the sort of dog who wandered off—she was a cuddler, a snuggly puppy who would rather squeeze into the only open space in my twin bed than stretch out in her own fluffy, spacious dog bed on the floor.

A tangle of lightning lit up the sky again, but I still couldn't see where my dog might have run off. I thought again about the raccoons I knew came out at night—the ones that ate the barbecue remains—and about the other things that
might be hiding in the woods that surrounded us. I choked on my own voice as I yelled again, and my cry was carried away by the wind.

Bailey rounded the corner of a cabin, and as lightning flashed, I could see that she looked terror-stricken. “You can go inside,” I yelled. Bailey had told us she was scared of storms, and here she was, stuck out in the whipping wind and pounding rain. I understood how horrible she must feel, being stuck out here. “I'll keep looking for her.”

“No way,” Bailey said, her chin thrust forward. She ran off again, yelling, “Coco!”

Suddenly, Ava cried out to us from near one of the cabins. “I found her! She's at Bailey's cabin!”

I ran, with Bailey close behind. When I got near, I saw that Coco had found shelter under the crumbling bottom step leading up to Bailey's cabin. I reached down and held out my arms. “We're going inside,” I cooed, trying to coax my puppy out of her hiding spot. “Come here, girl.” Whimpering, Coco reluctantly squirmed out from under the step, and I swept her up in my arms.

Bailey, Ava, and I ran up the steps to Bailey's cabin, and pushed open the screen door. Water dripped off our bodies and pooled on the floor, but Bailey didn't seem to care. She
flopped down in one of the wooden chairs and closed her eyes.

“Thank you,” I said, hugging Coco tight against my chest. Relief flooded my body, and I buried my face in Coco's neck.

“No problem,” Ava said quietly. She pulled a couple of dry towels off the kitchen counter. She offered one to me, then handed one to Bailey. “I'm glad we found her.”

Once we'd all dried off, Bailey pulled the blankets off her bed and threw them in a cushy pile on the hard wooden couch in the living room. As the storm raged outside, we all tucked in together under heaps of fleece blankets with Coco stretched out, fast asleep across our laps.

A
fter five minutes inside Bailey's
cabin, I was uncomfortable. I was squished in between Ava, whose personality seemed to have washed away completely in the rain, and Bailey, who wouldn't stop talking. Bailey was going on and on about her brother, who was five years older than us and apparently starting college in a few weeks. I literally couldn't have cared less about Bailey's brother, who sounded boring, and I wished Bailey would remember to stop to take a breath between stories.

I let my mind wander, wondering what Heidi and Sylvie were doing, and wishing I was there doing it with them. I didn't want to be stuck inside a steamy cabin, trapped by the rain. At times, while Bailey was talking, I felt like I was volunteering
for some sort of charity. It almost seemed like I should get a whole load of good karma points for spending time with these girls and listening to their inconsequential stories.

But every time I convinced myself that I was doing Ava and Bailey some sort of favor by hanging out with them, I thought about the look on Bailey's face as she'd searched for Coco in the rain. And I thought of the way Ava had tried to make me feel less like a useless lump when I was trying to help them get the canoe out of the lake. If Heidi had been there, she would have freaked about her hair in the rain and run to her cabin without even looking back. And Sylvie would have relentlessly teased me for even getting
in
a canoe. If she'd been there when I fell out of it—twice—Sylvie would have howled with laughter and made sure everyone else did too.

From what I could tell, Bailey and Ava were
nice
. Too nice. But, I wondered, were they nice because they were naive and simple, or nice because they wanted something? I had another few weeks to figure it out, and I was sort of looking forward to the opportunity to study these two strange girls. No one was just nice. The world didn't work that way.

“What about you, Izzy?” Bailey said, opening her big eyes wide. “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

Oh, man, was she still talking about her brother? Oy.
“No, it's just me,” I said aloud. “My parents always say I'm more work than they ever signed up for, so it's a good thing I'm an only child.”

Bailey pulled her eyebrows together. “They say that?”

“Sometimes,” I said with a shrug. “But it's sort of true.”

“Still,” Ava added quietly, “your parents are supposed to love you unconditionally.”

I cracked up. “Are you
serious
?” I continued to laugh, as Bailey and Ava both looked at me with vacant expressions. “No, seriously . . . you really think that? That your parents are supposed to love you unconditionally? Do you live in some sort of TV movie or something?”

“No,” Bailey said, blushing.

“Does your family have dinner together every night?” I asked, still laughing.

“Yeah,” Ava said simply. “Don't you?”

I actually snorted at the thought of my family sitting down to eat together every night. We would have nothing to say to each other. Every once in a while, my dad would make it home before seven, and we'd all sit at the table together, all three of us quickly shoveling in our food while my dad talked about work. But that happened so rarely that I couldn't even remember the last time we'd done it. That's why it had
seemed so ridiculous that my dad had insisted Mom and I come on this trip with him at all.

It's not like we're a family that
does
things together. When I was little, my dad and I used to take bike rides together on the weekends or go swimming—just the two of us—after dinner in the summer. But now neither of us has time for that. The only regular communication I've had with either of my parents involves them nagging and me being forced to listen mutely or fight back.

“I bet you both have the kind of families that get each other stuff like hand-knit sweaters and candles for Christmas, don't you?” I blurted out, feeling defensive. The whole idea repulsed me, the thought that someone's family would gather around the Christmas tree, opening gifts made with love—everyone oohing and aahing over stupid homemade trinkets. But even though I wanted to believe it was a stupid concept, a huge waste of time and wool, I had sort of always wished for a family like that. Like the families on TV, or in books. “Do you get excited when Santa leaves a fresh toothbrush for you under the tree?” I couldn't resist picking a little more, making fun of them for something I didn't have, just because it seemed so crazy.

I felt myself growing bitter, as I conjured up images of Madeline and Ava in matching sweaters, singing songs
around the campfire, holding hands with their mommy. And then I pictured Bailey and Big Boss Erica, hugging and going out to dinner to celebrate Bailey's super-duper report card. I despised them for what they had, but I also envied them. Not that I wanted to hold hands with my crab of a mother, but I did sometimes wish that we could talk without ragging on each other all the time. And I wished my dad would look at me the way he used to, before he got too busy to even like me anymore. When we used to do things together just for fun and not just for show.

Neither Bailey nor Ava said anything, but I could sense that I'd crossed a line. I was picking just for the sake of picking . . . and I suddenly felt like my mom. I'd sensed weakness and pounced, even though no one was pushing back. “I'm sorry,” I said, realizing as I said it that it was true. “I don't know why I'm making fun of your families. I guess I'm just annoyed by mine.”

“That's not my family,” Bailey blurted out. “I don't know what kind of world you think I live in, but it's certainly not a hand-knit-sweater and craft family. My mom's the president of an incredibly busy advertising agency. I actually have to get her
assistant
to put my swim meets on her BlackBerry calendar. You think she has time to knit?”

I shrugged. “I guess not.”

“And my parents are divorced. I live with just my dad,” Ava muttered. “Madeline and I are lucky if Dad remembers to buy new toothbrushes at all—ever. He's so spacey that last year he bought Madeline a shirt that was size 5T. Like he forgot that she was nine already and had outgrown the toddler section five years ago. She practically needs a bra, and Dad's buying her baby clothes.” Ava grinned, then we all started laughing.

In that moment, as we all laughed together about our parents' craziness, I realized Bailey and Ava were real people. Not just wannabes, flitting around somewhere outside my circle, looking for a way in. The image of these nice (albeit boring) girls in polished, plain, pitiful lives was momentarily washed away—and they became Ava and Bailey, who were maybe, kind of . . . not awful. For the first time, I realized, I was actually interested in getting to know them. It was possible that they might actually be decent enough to make the end of the summer not totally stink.

“You know what we should do?” Bailey said, hopping off the couch in a sudden burst of energy. Coco looked up, her eyes only half-open as she shifted into Bailey's open spot on the couch. “Let's dance.”

“Yes!” Ava squealed. I had never heard her get that loud.
I thought Ava only spoke in whispers, apologetic little bits of conversation that no one was supposed to hear. “Can we work on my routine?”