My Worst Best Friend (5 page)

Savanna grinned. “Yeah, old Genghis did think it was pretty funny. But let’s not forget that I did get the flu right after that. I mean, obviously I was already coming down with it, so no wonder I didn’t know what I was doing. And then I got, like, really way be—”

“So what did Pérez say?” Cooper had put down his book. “Why’d he give you a D?”

Señor Pérez had had a lot to say. That my translation lacked life and personality. That the syntax was awkward and the vocabulary was stilted. That if he didn’t know better, he’d have thought it had been translated by a badly programmed robot and not one of his best students.

“He said I might as well have been translating a recipe for
empanadas
and not some of the finest Spanish prose of the twentieth century.”

“Ouch,” said Archie.

Pete made a dopey face. “I don’t suppose that was a joke, right?”

“He expects you to know what
syntax
is?” asked Leroy.

“That’s why I have so much trouble with Shakespeare,” said Savanna. “I mean, not only is it, like, impossible to understand what he’s—”

“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” asked Cooper. He was smirking. Which would be another thing people didn’t like about him. He smirked a lot. “You short-cutted?”

That’s correct, ladies and gentlemen. I took the shortcut straight from A to D.

I nodded. “I just – you know – I had a lot of stuff to do that night.” I didn’t get home till nearly six because I’d gone shopping with Savanna. And my bike wouldn’t fit in Archie’s car so I had to ride home in the rain, which meant that I had to change and take a hot shower as soon as I got in to bring feeling back to my fingers and toes. And then it was time to fix supper. And then I had to do my other homework. “By the time I got to the translation, it was so late I could hardly keep my eyes open.” So I decided to give myself a break, and instead of sitting up half the night I used the resources available to a moron in the twenty-first century.

“Did you explain?” asked Savanna. “I mean, he’s got to realize that you do have other classes – and other obligations. Your world isn’t just about
adiós
and
mañana
, you know. This is a very stressful time in your life.”

I snapped a carrot stick in half. “Señor Pérez isn’t really interested in teenage angst and woe.”

Cooper wasn’t smirking any more. He was shaking his head. In disbelief. “I can’t believe you short-cutted, Gracie. You of all people. You’ve got to be one of the smartest kids in our class.”

Only sometimes.

“I told you, I was really tired.” I shrugged. “At midnight it seemed like a really good idea.”

Cooper picked up his plastic cutlery box, and read what was written on the lid. “
Feel of ease
…
enjoy a quiet lunchtime while feeling a season
…
nature put a person at his ease
…” He winked. “
That
could’ve been translated by one of those websites. They’re only for the terminally lazy.”

“I think they’re pretty cool,” said Leroy.

“They sure beat doing it yourself,” Pete laughed.

Archie threw a balled-up napkin at Cooper. “Hey! Just who are you calling lazy?”

“Oh, come on, Mr Holier-than-thou…” drawled Savanna. Mr Holier-than-thou was only one of her names for Cooper. The others weren’t so flattering. “Laziness has nothing to do with it. Everybody uses those sites. I’ve done it a couple of times myself – like when I was even more desperate than Gracie was – and Madame Bower has never said a word about it. She always gives me at least a B.”

“Yeah, but Señor Pérez isn’t Madame Bower. Pérez would spot it before he finished reading the first sentence.” Cooper was still looking at me. “Especially from
you
. Really, Gracie. It’s like Ry Cooder picking up a guitar and only playing one chord. Badly.”

You could tell from the sneers and rolling eyes that I was the only one who’d ever heard of Ry Cooder. Ry Cooder was my dad’s all-time favourite guitarist.

“You leave Gracie alone,” ordered Savanna. “Archie’s right. It’s not like it’s this mega-big deal. It’s like getting this teensy tiny drop of nail polish on a patchwork quilt. Like, who’s ever going to notice?”

I said, Zelda Zindle. It had been her nail polish and her patchwork quilt.

Savanna honked. “OK, Gray. So maybe that wasn’t the best example. But you know what I mean. You’ve got an A average. What’s one little D in a solid A average?” She helped herself to one of the pickles I’d packed with my lunch. “And anyway, you’ve had enough trauma for one day. I think we should talk about something else.”

Cooper smirked again. “You mean like
you
?”

Savanna didn’t like to scowl in case it made her look like her mother when she got older, but she always made an exception for Cooper. “No, oh Great One, I don’t mean like me. I mean like thinking of something to do at the weekend to cheer poor Gracie up.”

“Well, why doesn’t she come to the game with us tomorrow?” Archie was pretty easy to make happy. “We could all go for burgers afterwards.”

“I can’t go to the game when Gracie needs me.” Savanna jabbed him in the ribs. “You know she doesn’t like football.” I wasn’t the only one. “And anyway, Gracie doesn’t eat burgers.” She put her arm around my shoulders. “We’re going to do something that
she
thinks is fun.”

Cooper looked like he was trying not to laugh. “I thought you didn’t like hiking, Savanna.” Which would have been my first choice.

Savanna ignored him. “I know!” She squeezed my arm. “We’ll go to the mall! I have to get a birthday present for Marilouise anyway. We can spend the whole afternoon there.” She took my last pickle. “It’ll be more fun than monkeys in a barrel.”

“I don’t know, Savanna.” I’d already got Marilouise something in the little craft store in town. It was a pair of turquoise earrings almost the same colour as her eyes. “I don’t really need any—”

“Gracie, how many times do I have to tell you? Going to the mall isn’t about
need
—”

Cooper sniggered. “It’s about taking away our manufacturing jobs for bigger profits and then selling us all the useless junk that’s been made in China, that’s what it’s about.”

“No, it isn’t,” said Savanna. It was just as well that looks can’t kill. “It’s about having a good time.”

I went to the mall with Savanna – you know, because she was my soul sister and cosmic twin – but I didn’t really consider malling a recreational activity. To tell you the
truth, I found it kind of depressing. Ignoring the fact that most of the clothes for sale were made by women and children who might as well be slaves, it all looked pretty much the same, too. Except for the different labels. Besides, I always got a headache when I went to the mall.

“I’m supposed to clear up the yard. And I really should—”

“Oh, come on. You’re not going to stay home and do
chores
when you could be enjoying some retail therapy,” Savanna pleaded. “I guarantee it’ll make you forget all about Pérez and his unreasonable standards.”

Cooper sniggered again. “Yeah, because you’ll be brain-dead within an hour.”

Savanna’s mouth scrunched together. I figured he’d hurt her feelings.

“All right,” I said to Savanna. “But you’re buying lunch.”

Savanna
and I arranged to meet in Java, the new coffee bar in town, to take the bus to the mall on Saturday afternoon. I was ten minutes early. I got myself a drink and sat down by the window so she would see me right away.

It was a perfect autumn day – all crisp and blue-skied. If I had been going for a hike, I would have followed the river out of town to the waterfall deep in the woods. Hardly anybody ever went there. Which meant it had a timeless quality that I loved. I liked to just sit by the falls, watching for deer or wild turkeys and listening to the leaves drift to the ground, and after a while I wouldn’t know what century – or even what millennium – I was in. All I’d know was that I was alive, and on this amazing and beautiful planet. But since I wasn’t at the waterfall, I watched the street outside instead, trying to imagine what Crow’s Point looked like before the town was built, way before any white people decided this was a good place to settle – when there was a village by the river and it was just trees and mountains and hunters and gatherers and the stuff they hunted and gathered.

When I finished my tea I checked the time. I’d been sitting there imagining bears lumbering through the
traffic and mountain lions sunning themselves on the roof of the bank for half an hour.
She’ll be here any minute
, I told myself. I picked up the sugar wrapper and folded it into a teeny tiny rectangle. I took out my phone to check that I hadn’t turned it off by accident. I called Savanna and left a message. “Hi!” I said. “It’s me. Just so you know, I’m at Java. See you soon.” I slurped the last couple of drops from my cup, and then I made an origami duck from my napkin. After that, I got myself another tea. When I finished drinking that, I texted Savanna: WH R U? The next time I called I said, “Hi, it’s me again. Are you OK? Phone me when you get this.” The time after that I texted again: STL @ J. & U?

I did that for over an hour, but since she never answered or phoned or texted back, eventually I gave up and got one of the newspapers from the rack by the door. You know, so everyone would think I was there to catch up on current events and wasn’t just some short, loser dweeble who had nothing to do on a Saturday afternoon but sit by herself in a busy café, checking her phone.

I wasn’t really worried. To be honest, Savanna was late on a pretty regular basis. The sun rose, the clouds drifted by, cows mooed, and Savanna Zindle was late. As Marilouise said, Savanna was easily distracted. She might be an expert on her inner girl, but she didn’t really have what you’d call a highly developed sense of time. So, because Savanna was always late, if I wanted to meet her at five I’d usually tell her to meet me at four – and I usually brought a book with me. But today I hadn’t done either of those things because she had an appointment with her dentist at ten and I figured I was safe. If she’d been coming from home she might have been delayed because she had to spend a couple of extra hours looking for something to wear that matched her mood or her horoscope or something like that, but since she was coming from Dentist Tim that stuff would all have happened before nine-thirty.

I turned one page of the paper after another, slowly, reading the words without taking them in, and looking at the pictures.

She’s on her way…
I told myself.
The dentist is on the other side of town… Maybe it took longer than she thought… Maybe she was confused because she was coming from his office and got lost… Maybe she has a blister on her foot from her new shoes so she’s walking really slowly… Maybe she left her bag at Dentist Tim’s and had to go back for it… Maybe she left her bag at home and had to go all the way back there… Maybe she had to run an errand for her mom before she met me… Maybe there was an accident or a fire or something like that and the road was closed off…
I looked at my phone, sitting on the table like a dead mouse.
Maybe she ran into someone she knows… Maybe she ran into someone she doesn’t know…

As the clock on my phone crawled past hour two I started worrying that maybe I was wrong not to worry about Savanna. Something could have happened to her. It could have been something bad – she could have been hit by a car or her appendix could have burst – but I didn’t want to get started on that. I figure that fear is like a bag of potato chips. Experience suggested that once you open the bag and eat that first chip, you don’t stop until you’ve eaten them all. If I started thinking about all the really awful things that could have happened to make Savanna so late, I’d wind up calling Mrs Zindle and maybe upsetting her. So I decided that if something had happened to her it was probably something extraordinary. That was more likely anyway. Extraordinary things never happened to me, of course, but they happened to Savanna a lot. Like the time she had to run out of the store practically in her underwear because there was a bomb scare. And the time she set the dryer on fire with her synthetic bra. And the time she was putting money in her Christmas Club and someone robbed the bank. And the time she found the ferret in the garage. And who could forget the runaway sheep? It was like she was some kind of magnet for chaos, excitement and weird events. Which was one more thing I loved about her. Being so predictable and dull myself.

I stared down at a photograph of some celebrity getting out of rehab again.

Maybe drug addicts broke into the office and took Dentist Tim and his patients prisoner… Maybe there were unexpected complications… Dentist Tim had to knock Savanna out to do some major emergency surgery… Or she passed out from the pain…

Any of those options would explain why she wasn’t answering. The thieves would have taken everyone’s phones and now Savanna would be locked in the bathroom with Dentist Tim and the others while they made their escape. Or she would have turned off her ringtone when she got to the office – you couldn’t have this bored voice inside your bag saying
Your phone is so ringing… Yo, like answer the phone, girl…
in the middle of the waiting room – and now Savanna would be unconscious in the chair and couldn’t put it back on. Maybe I should have gone with her or met her at Dentist Tim’s. So I’d know she was all right.

I started playing a game with myself to occupy my mind and pass the time. After five girls with dark hair had gone by the window, Savanna would be the sixth. After seven women with screaming children had passed, Savanna would appear from the dark blob of shoppers like the sun coming out from the clouds. After ten boys wearing baseball caps had slouched past, Savanna would suddenly burst through the door and everybody would turn to look at her the way they did – but I’d be the only one who waved.

I was watching the fifteenth baseball-cap-wearing boy shamble past Java when someone shouted, “Hey, Gracie!” I didn’t know anyone else with that name. So I looked over.