My Worst Best Friend (11 page)

Because I was standing behind Leroy and Pete, I could see the expression on Savanna’s face change from the blank one you have when you’re watching pudding plop into a bowl to the blank one of complete disbelief. I half-expected her to shriek in horror, “You mean with
you
?”

Instead, she shrugged. “I don’t know… high-school dances are kind of childish, aren’t they?”

This was news to Archie.

“They are?” He looked like a little kid who’s just been laughed at because his Superman outfit is nothing but a dishtowel and a pair of his mother’s old tights. “I thought you liked them.”

“I guess I used to…” Savanna shrugged again. “But now I feel that I’ve, like, outgrown them.”

Archie, however, was dogged. Or maybe just dog-like. “But this is really mega, Sav. Suits and ties and formals. You know how you love to dress up.” His smile was making my jaw hurt. “It’s going to be a Winter Wonderland.”

He might as well have said it was going to be a Winter Wonderbread for all the enthusiasm that got him.

“All right, all right… I’ll think about it, OK?” She pushed back her chair and stood up. “I’ll let you know.”

“Now where are you going?” asked Archie.

She leaned her head towards his. “Kisskiss. I’ve got to go to the toilet. Girl things.”

“Oh, right…” Archie nodded. “See you later.”

Savanna looked over at me. “You coming, Gracie?”

I know how horrible and disloyal this sounds, but my heart dropped like a white rhino shot at close range. Girl things didn’t mean what Archie thought it meant. Girl things meant Morgan Scheck. She might be quiet when we were with the boys, but when we were alone she didn’t shut up. At first it was all about how awesome Morgan was. Savanna might have trouble remembering to let me know when I was supposed to be lying for her, but she had total recall when it came to every single thing Morgan Scheck said or did – from the way he laughed to the way he tied his shoes. About the only things she hadn’t told me about him was whether he preferred Pepsi to Coke and if he’d ever been inoculated against malaria. I almost felt as if I actually knew Morgan. Personally. That if he suddenly came walking down the street I’d know who he was – because of the way his laces wrapped around his ankles, or because of the scar over his left eyebrow (caused by his brother harpooning him with a knitting needle when he was six), or because of those little gold flecks in his eyes. But over the last couple of days her conversation had pretty much narrowed down to how depressed she was that he hadn’t called her since Sunday. I was starting to feel a little compassion fatigue. I didn’t want to be a bad friend, but how many times can you say.
Gee, I don’t know,
or,
Gee, that’s awful?

I nodded. “Yeah, sure.”

Which was when Cooper suddenly looked up from his book. “Hey, Gracie. I almost forgot…” He’d run into Mrs Hendricks the night before and he’d mentioned my idea to her. “She said it sounded terrific,” said Cooper.

Now everybody was looking at me.

I could feel myself blush. “What idea?”

Cooper said the one about using books about things I was interested in like the environment and disappearing reptiles for the class. I said I thought it was his idea, not mine. He said we’d had it together. “Anyway, I figured we could go to the library after school today. See what we can find.”

Savanna was standing beside me, holding my jacket and lunchbox.

I knew I should say I was busy. Which I should be. I should be listening to Savanna wondering why Morgan hadn’t called her. “Yeah,” I said, quick as the flick of a chameleon’s tongue. “That’d be cool.” It would also be a Morgan-Scheck-free zone.

As an example of how depressed she really was, Savanna didn’t say anything about me going with Cooper after school when I knew she was expecting me to hang out with her – or at least be on the phone. As soon as we were away from the boys, she started talking about Morgan and going through all the reasons why he hadn’t called her and deciding in the end that he was definitely going to call her today. Probably as soon as she got home.

Not that I needed Savanna to say anything for me to feel guilty. I felt like a creep. A friend’s supposed to be there for you when you’re feeling bad – not run away the first chance she gets. All through my afternoon classes, I debated changing my mind. It’s not too late, I told myself.
You can still say no. Tell him you forgot you had something to do at home. He won’t care.
The minute English was over, I pulled my phone out of my bag so as soon as I got outside I could call him and tell him I couldn’t go.

Cooper was waiting by the door as I stepped through it. I’d never had a boy wait outside a class for me before. Even though it was Zebediah Cooper and not someone normal – and even though it wasn’t a date or anything – I couldn’t help feeling kind of pleased. You know, like I was the kind of girl boys waited for in corridors.

“You all set?” asked Cooper.

I said I was all set.

I don’t know if it was because I didn’t want to hear myself thinking about how I’d abandoned Savanna, or what, but I did most of the talking on the way to the library. About how I felt about all the other earthlings on the planet and how badly we treated them, and the fragility of the ecosystem, and how we were destroying our land base, and why I loved iguanas and stuff like that. The only time Cooper laughed at me was when I made a joke. By the time we got to library, I was feeling really glad I hadn’t changed my mind after all.

“Look at this, Gracie!” Cooper handed me a book he’d just pulled from the shelf. “Iguanas! A whole picture book about iguanas!”

“Oh, wow.” I flicked through the pages. Iguanas on rocks. Iguanas on trees. Iguanas all piled up on one another like acrobats showing off. Who could not love them? “This is really excellent.” I held it up. “Aren’t they beautiful?”

“In a prehistoric kind of way,” agreed Cooper. “But I have to confess that I’m more a dog man myself. They’re cuddlier.” He sat down on the chair next to mine. Which, since we were in the children’s section of the library, meant that his knees were more or less level with his chin. “What do you think?” Cooper nodded at the pile of books on the table. “Got enough to get you started?’

I had a book about whales, a book about elephants, a book about coral reefs, a book about what the future could be like if we didn’t start taking care of the planet (and what it could be like if we did) and a story about a moose.

“Are you kidding? I probably have enough to get me through the year.”

“Right.” Cooper was drumming on the tabletop with his fingers. “Then how about we check these out and then go over to the café at the Meeting House for a drink?” He started drumming faster. “I’d like to hear some more about the devastating effects of global warming.”

“Really?” It didn’t seem possible. The only other
person who didn’t start groaning and stop me after the first five minutes when I launched into one of my monologues about the environment was my dad. “You don’t consider yourself an expert yet?”

“Don’t worry, there’s a price to pay.” He rubbed his hands together. Gleefully. “When it’s my turn, you have to listen to me go on and on about the global economy. You won’t believe how many fun-filled hours of gloom and doom there is in that.”

I laughed. “You haven’t met my father,” I said, “or you wouldn’t think that’s a threat.”

“I’d like to meet him,” said Cooper. “He sounds like an interesting dude.”

I said he was. I said my dad thought Cooper looked like a nice boy.

“Well, I am.” Cooper laughed. “Didn’t you know that?”

You might think it’d be kind of demoralizing talking to someone who was as worried about the future as I was, but, in a weird way, it was almost comforting. I guess it made me feel less alone.

But Cooper and I weren’t talking about doom and gloom as we stepped out of the library. We were talking about the peanut butter cookies at the Meeting House café.

“Wait till you taste them,” Cooper was saying. “I always thought the best thing about the Quakers was the pacifism, but this is definitely a close second.”

I didn’t laugh. I was distracted. Savanna Zindle was maybe five yards away from us, waving so hard it looked like some giant, invisible hand was shaking her. Something awful had happened. I caught my breath. I’d been a total, self-centred creep. There I’d been having a good time without her, while Savanna really needed me. Maybe she was locked out of the house again, or her mother had finally followed through on all her threats and thrown all of her stuff out of her bedroom window. I could feel guilt start seeping up from my toes.

“Gracie!” screamed Savanna. She zoomed towards us. “What perfect timing. I was just coming to look for you.”

“What happened?” At least it couldn’t be that Morgan had finally called to tell her he didn’t want to see her again because she wasn’t in tears. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” She gave me a hug, hitting Cooper in the knees with her bag. “I just, like, suddenly remembered I still have to get Marilouise a birthday present. So I thought you could come with me and help me pick it out. I don’t have, like, a single idea…” She slipped her arm through mine, leaning her head close to my ear. “I mean, ohmigod, Gray, what do you get for the girl who is nothing?”

I didn’t laugh at that, either.

I was relieved that she was all right and everything, but at the same time I really wished that she could’ve waited till tomorrow to get Marilouise’s present. You know, when I didn’t have something else to do.

“Oh, Savanna… I’m…” I looked over at Cooper. His eyes were on Savanna. He was smiling his private-joke smile. “We were just going for a coffee.” I nodded across the street to the Meeting House. It wasn’t the kind of place Savanna would go to unless you paid her. A lot. “They’ve got this really cute café. And these peanut—”

“But you don’t
have
to go there, do you?” Savanna was beaming back at Cooper like a high-powered flashlight. “I’m, like, just going to get her something in the gift shop. It’s on the same block as Java. You can have your coffee there.” The flashlight swept from him to me and back. “We can all go.”

OK, I know how bad this sounds – you know, like I was a really rotten friend – but I didn’t want us all to go. To tell you the truth, now that I knew Savanna wasn’t in some kind of trouble, the only place I wanted her to go was away.

“I don’t know…” I looked over at Cooper again.

“Don’t worry about me.” Cooper was still looking at Savanna but he wasn’t smiling any more. “You two go do your shopping. I’ve got a lot of homework tonight. I should get moving anyway.”

And what about the doom and gloom and peanut-butter cookies?

“But—”

“Well, that’s perfect.” Savanna squeezed my arm. “Thank God I caught you before you, like, totally left the library and I didn’t know where to find you.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Thank God for that.”

Savanna’s big smile disappeared at about the same time that Cooper did, replaced by the anguished look of a heart in torment.

“I don’t know what to do, Gracie!” Her hair shivered with suffering. Her face contorted in pain. “I mean, I really don’t know how much more I can take. I, like, literally found myself staring into the medicine chest this afternoon, wondering if Zelda’s got enough sleeping pills to put me out of this torture and misery.”

“Oh, Savanna.” Fresh guilt kicked me in the stomach. Hard. I gave her a hug with the arm that wasn’t involved with holding my bike up. “I thought you said nothing happened.”

She gave a hedgehog-in-distress kind of cry. “Nothing has happened, Gracie! That’s the trouble. Nothing. Nada. Zero. Absolute zilch. I might as well be on top of some mountain with no phone and a couple of goats for company.”

I made a wild guess that we were talking about Morgan Scheck again. That would be why she’d come after me. He still hadn’t called.

“I can’t believe it! I really can’t believe it. I mean, can you believe it? It’s, like, Wednesday, Gracie. Wednesday. Which is, like, three days after Sunday. Seventy-two hours. People have been born and died in that time. They’ve got married and got divorced. But I haven’t heard a word from Morgan. Not one infinitesimally tiny word. I was really positive I’d hear from him this afternoon.”

And I’d been pretty positive I wasn’t going to be hearing about him this afternoon. I ignored the feeling of annoyance this change of my plans had caused and tried to be comforting. As a best friend should.

“Well, you did say he’s really busy.” She had said this more than once. Morgan had classes. Morgan had to study. Morgan had a part-time job. Morgan had a lot of extracurricular activities. Morgan had a ton of friends. If Morgan got any busier he’d have to have himself cloned.

“Busy was yesterday, Gracie.” We turned onto the main road. Savanna wasn’t walking, she was stomping. “And Monday. Monday could be busy, too. Two days is understandable. I mean, it’s not like I’m one of those clingy girls. And I do have other things to do myself. But this isn’t busy any more. Three days is not understandable. Three days is way past busy.” She stopped so suddenly I rolled my bike over my foot. “Why hasn’t he called, Gracie?”

Why was she asking me? I wasn’t the expert on men.

“I mean, I do know he’s got a really crazy schedule,” Savanna went on. “I got that part. But he could just, like, text me and say that he’s got a trillion things to do and he’ll call when he gets the chance, couldn’t he?”

That seemed pretty reasonable to me. You know, unless he’d broken both his arms and all his fingers and was in a coma. I said maybe she should call him.

Savanna made one of her um, duh faces. “I did that Monday, Gracie, remember? I left a message that I thought I’d lost an earring in his car.”

“You lost an earring?”

“No, of course not. But I don’t want him to think I’m after him, do I? Men like to do the pursuing.”

Yet more wisdom from the pages of the glossy magazines.

“Well, maybe you should call him
again
.”

She waved one hand in the air. Dismissively. Been there … done that… “I left another message yesterday – you know, in case he didn’t get the first one. But I can’t call again. It’s like three strikes and you’re out. I mean, I don’t want him to think I’m all desperate and needy.”