My Last Best Friend (10 page)

I hurry to the bathroom and look in the cabinet under the sink. I dig behind shampoo bottles and aftershave lotion.

Then I find it.

Bingo.

Dental floss.

Tons of it. When your dad is an orthodontist there is always a ten-year supply of dental floss in your house.

I sift through the little plastic containers. There is green mint, white waxless, red cinnamon, pink bubble gum, purple grape, and yellow banana. Six colors in six refreshing flavors. Perfect.

I scoop them up and run to my bedroom.

Then I start yanking.

I yank and yank and yank.

I tie the strands together at one end and pull the Band-Aid off my finger. I use it to stick the floss to my bedpost.

Then I start making knots, just like Elizabeth taught me.

Well, sort of like Elizabeth taught me. It had been a long time since she showed me how to make a friendship bracelet, and dental floss was
never mentioned. The only thing I do remember her mentioning is to think good thoughts while you make one. She said the good thoughts will stay with the bracelet.

So each time I twist and turn and pull and tug I think of something good. Like Choco-chunks. And drawing a really great picture. Making up stories. And being able to say a proper good-bye to a real friend before it's too late.

When I'm all out of floss and good thoughts, I hold the bracelet up and turn it around and around.

Then I sigh. It looks like something you scrape off the bottom of your shoe. Not like something you give to your best friend.

But it smells good.

That's something.

The next morning I crunch behind the school. By the sound of things Mr. Benson will have to start raking leaves soon.

Crunch, crunch, crunch...

I reach into my pocket and touch the friendship bracelet. It feels warm and bumpy against my fingers. It feels good. Better than it looks. And I feel good, too. Better than I have felt in a long time.

Crunch,crunch,crunch...

I walk past the hedgehogs and past the hedge-asaurus. I hurry past the giraffe. It's the last hedge before Bessie. Before the secret stone. Before Stacey's answer.

Crunch, crunch ... crunch.

I stop and stare.

I can see the secret stone through Bessie's branches. I can see that it's empty.

My note is gone. Stacey didn't even leave a
no.
She didn't leave anything at all.

I feel the friendship bracelet slip back into my pocket.

I feel my heart slip into my socks.

I feel a sadness simmer somewhere in between.

Crunch, crunch, crunch...

Something is crunching, but it isn't me.

I look up.

Jenna Drews steps around the corner of the school.

"Hey, I-
duh
," she says with a smirk. "Looking for
this?
" She pulls a piece of paper from her pocket. It's my note to Stacey!

I wheeze.

Jenna lifts her chin. "I told you to leave her alone, but you just wouldn't listen."

She takes a few steps toward me, holding the note out on the palm of her hand. "I read it," she tells me. "Stacey says she wouldn't be your best friend if you were the last doofus on earth!" Then she crumples the note up in her tight fist.

I dive for the note. I dive so hard that I knock Jenna right off her feet. I land on top of her and the note flies into Bessie's branches. Jenna shoves me away and we both scramble for it.

But Jenna is quicker than me. She grabs the note out of the branches and shoves it into her pocket. Then she rolls onto her back, sneering. "Bye-bye, best friend," she says.

I jump up. I punch my fists into my hips and yell, "Jenna Drews, if you weren't so mean, you might actually have some
real
friends! The only reason Brooke, Meeka, and Jolene hang around is because they're afraid of you! Everyone knows it's true. Even your little sister has figured it out."

Jenna just glares at me. But I don't stick around long enough to glare back. I turn and run.

I run and I run, but I'm not running away.

I'm running
to.

To school.

To Mr. Crow's classroom. To Stacey Merriweather.

When I get to our classroom, Stacey is sitting at her desk.

I take a deep breath and walk over to her.

"This is for you," I say. I wipe tears off my cheeks and hold the friendship bracelet in her direction.

Stacey stares at me. "Ida ... what happened?"

"I'm okay," I say. "I just wanted to ... give this to you ... before you leave. It's just ... take it ... Stacey. Please ... take it?"

I hold the bracelet out again, and this time Stacey takes it from my hand.

"Thanks," she says softly, and slips the bracelet on her wrist. She turns it around and around. "I've never had a friendship bracelet like this before," she says, hesitantly.

Then she smells it.

And smiles.

"But I've never had a friend like you before either ...
Cordelia.
"

I'm quiet for a moment. Then I say, "So you did read my note."

Stacey nods. Then she reaches into her pocket and pulls out a grayish rock, knobby on one side and flat on the other. "This is for you," she says, swimming the rock through the air to my hand.

I look at that rock. It has a tail, fin, and smiling face painted on it. Then I turn it over and read
Cordelia
on the back.

Stacey gives me half a smile. "I hope you don't mind I kept it. I didn't think you wanted it, so I took it home with me. I guess it really is magical because it found you again."

I look at Stacey. "You knew it was me writing those notes all along?"

Stacey nods. "I saw
Cordelia
written on the back of the rock when I got home from the sleep-over. When I got your first note, I figured that you were her."

"Why didn't you tell me you knew?"

Stacey is quiet for a moment. Then she says, "Because I knew I'd be moving away soon. And I was afraid you wouldn't want to be my friend if I told you the truth about everything."

I think about this for a moment. Then I hold the whale rock out to Stacey.

"Here," I say. "You keep the whale. Maybe it will help you find friends at your new school."

"Thanks," Stacey says. "But I won't be needing new friends."

I give Stacey a puzzled look. "Why not?" I ask.

"When my mom called last night, I told her how much I like it here. Then she and my grandma talked for a long time. They decided I could keep living here until my mom finds a place close by. In the meantime, she'll come see me on the weekends."

I can hardly believe it's true. "This isn't one of your emergency lies, is it?" I ask.

"Of course not," Stacey says, crossing her heart. "Secret friends never lie."

Then I take a deep breath, squeeze my whale rock for luck, and say, "Stacey? I wish we could be more than just secret friends. I wish we could be real friends ... maybe even best friends?"

I bite my lip and think about my little magic cup. I hope it's jumping around like crazy.

Stacey raises one eyebrow. "Didn't you get my answer to your last note?" she asks.

"Not... exactly...," I say, thinking about what Jenna told me it said.

"Oh," Stacey says. "Well, my answer is
yes!
In fact, I thought we already were best friends."

I smile. A big smile.

And that's when I know, in fourth grade, wishes do come true. Maybe not all of them, but the really important ones do.

Even though I hate to admit it, fourth grade is actually turning out to be a lot of fun. Oh sure, it's turning out to be a lot of other things, too. It's a lot of erasing and a lot of stomachaches and a lot of feeling like you'd rather just stay in bed for the rest of your life. But now that I've lived through a couple months of it, I'd have to say that fourth grade is mostly okay.

Fourth grade means coming in second place in the Potato Pageant window-painting contest. Joey, Jolene, and the Dylans came in first. They painted their window to look like a house, and when you peeked inside one of the house's windows you saw a toy television and a toy couch with two potatoes sitting on it. Couch potatoes. Get it?

But I was feeling so happy about Stacey not
moving away that I didn't care if another cluster won the contest. Besides, me, Randi, Rusty, and Tom had lots of fun painting our window. And the second-place prize was a jumbo box of Choco-chunks for each of us. I'll take chocolate over potatoes any day.

Fourth grade means learning how to make a three-point shot. Randi Peterson is teaching me at recess. Most of the time I miss the basket. But when I do make a shot, Randi does a little victory dance, which makes it hard not to feel like a winner.

Fourth grade also means getting a new best friend. Because even though Stacey Merriweather would rather write stories than draw pictures, and even though she prefers Swiss cheese to mild cheddar, she still is. My best friend. Best friends don't have to be exactly alike or even be together every day. They just need to be there for each other when it really matters.

Plus, fourth grade means learning to expect the unexpected. I know because even though I never thought I would be brave enough to make a new best friend, I am. And even though I never expected to find what I did on my desk a few days after I told Stacey my real name, I did.

When I got to school that day, there was a wrinkly piece of paper on my desk. Actually, it was a wrinkly note. The same note I had left in the secret stone for Stacey. The note Jenna stole.

Besides the part that I had written, there was a big purple
X
from Stacey in the
yes
box. That made me smile. I guess she really wasn't lying when she said she wants to be my best friend, even before I gave her the friendship bracelet.

But there was something else on that note.

At the very bottom, in teeny-tiny print, I saw it:

Sorry

Stacey hadn't written it because it wasn't purple. But I knew who had. Jenna Drews.

And right away there was something else I knew, too. If Jenna can start small, with a
sorry,
maybe she can have a real friend some day.

There's still a lot of fourth grade left, but I think I'll probably make it through okay, even
though I haven't gotten any smarter since it started.

But I do have a loose tooth.

That's something.