My Worst Best Friend (7 page)

I’d had to leave my phone in my backpack because they weren’t allowed in the classrooms. Had she made it to Java? Was she trying to call me? Was she mad at me for deserting my post? Or was she striding up Main Street, punching ONMYWAY into her phone? Every time I heard someone in the hall I looked up, half expecting to see Savanna peering through the window in the door, rolling her eyes and sighing. I kept trying to read Mrs Hendricks’ watch upside down.

When we finally took a break, I went into the hall to check my phone (there weren’t any messages) and Mrs Hendricks came after me. She wanted to know if I’d mind if next week we split the class into two groups. “That’s only five each,” said Mrs Hendricks. “They’d get so much more out of it.” I hemmed and hawed.
Well … you know … I’m not really sure…
“Oh, but you have to come back,” said Mrs Hendricks. “They really like you. You have so much charisma.” I did? That didn’t sound like me. “Of course you do,” said Mrs Hendricks. “You’re terrific with them. You’re a natural teacher.” She gave me a big smile. “You must take after your dad.”

So that would be the point where I finally stopped thinking about Savanna Zindle, what she was doing and what kind of mood she was in. I had charisma … I was a natural teacher … I took after my dad … I got into the rest of the afternoon with a vengeance. And I didn’t remember Savanna when the class was over, either. I was too excited. So instead of remembering Savanna, I hung out in the café in the basement with Cooper and a couple of the other volunteers for nearly an hour. They called him Zebediah and acted like he wasn’t even a little bit weird. I had such a great time that I was still buzzing when I got back home. I couldn’t wait to tell my dad all about it.

It was starting to get dark, but he was still out in the yard, raking up the leaves. He was wearing his old plaid jacket and singing “I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night” while he worked, but he broke off when he saw me turn up the front path.

“You’re so quiet, I didn’t hear you coming,” said Dad. “Where’s your early-warning system?”

That would be Savanna Zindle.

So this would be the point where I finally remembered her again. I stopped like a polar bear who’s just noticed that the ice has melted all around her. How could I have totally forgotten about Savanna? OK, I’d had a busy afternoon, but it wasn’t
that
busy. It wasn’t as if I’d been fighting off The Forces of Darkness by myself armed only with my Swiss Army knife or anything like that. Which is the kind of thing that would pretty much put everything else out of your mind. I was doing words-that-sound-alike exercises with six-year-olds. Which isn’t. It was pretty much beyond belief. From practically the moment we met, I’d thought about Savanna all the time.

“Gracie?” My dad was giving me a puzzled kind of smile. “Where’s Savanna? I thought you two were going shopping.”

Now was not the time for in-depth explanations. I had to get to the phone.

“She has a date with Archie tonight.” As answers go, this one was evasive, but it was also true. “You know, so she decided not to come back with me after all – she has things to do.”

He leaned on his rake. He was still looking puzzled. “What happened? You look a little tense. Black day at the mall?” He chuckled the way he does when he thinks he’s about to say something really funny. “Don’t tell me they ran out of clothes.”

“We didn’t go.” I didn’t want to tell him that she never showed. “She couldn’t make it after all. Something came up.” My dad never said he didn’t like Savanna or anything like that, but he teased her and joked about her a lot – about how she took up more space than the Philharmonic Orchestra and talked more than the UN General Assembly and spent so much time on the phone with me it’d be cheaper if she moved in, that kind of thing. And sometimes I’d catch him eyeing Savanna the way you’d eye a komodo dragon that suddenly appeared in your kitchen. Very suspiciously. Which was pretty much the way he was looking at me.

“Really?” He and the rake swayed back and forth. “What did you do instead?”

A minute ago, I’d been ready to tell him all about Neighbours – but that minute was
before
I remembered that my best friend was still missing in action. The only thing making me buzz now was the swarm of guilt in my stomach. All I wanted to do was get into the house and phone her. “Oh, you know… Nothing much… I’ll tell you later. There’s something I have to do first.”

My dad nodded as I turned away. “So who was that boy you were with?”

That would be Cooper.

I blinked in surprise. “I thought you didn’t hear me coming.”

“I didn’t.” He laughed. “But you couldn’t miss that hat.”

I said he wasn’t anybody. I didn’t have time to explain about Cooper, either. I really needed to call Savanna. What if she really was mad at me for leaving Java like that? That would be why she’d never come after me. She’d expected me to be waiting for her and I wasn’t. I’d let her down. I was a bad friend. If she found out that I’d actually forgotten about her she might never speak to me again. And I wouldn’t blame her.

“Not anybody?” I could tell that he was hoping that Cooper was somebody. You know, somebody who was interested in me. My father is pretty optimistic for an historian. Unlike some of us, he didn’t think my only hope was a boyfriend on Death Row. He was always telling me how much I had going for me. You know, like I was smart, and loyal, and loved iguanas and could stand on my head. “You looked like you were enjoying yourselves.”

“He’s Archie’s friend, Dad.” I started sidling towards the house. “He hangs out with us at school. I— You know, I bumped into him in town and he walked me home, that’s all.”

My father nodded. “He looks like a nice kid.”

He was a nice kid, but that wasn’t what he looked like. What he looked like was an advance scout from Planet Bizarro.

“I’m kind of in a hurry, Dad.” I took the front steps two at a time. “I have to call Savanna.”

My father shifted his rake. “Of course you do.”

By the time I got into the house I was in mega-anxiety mode, all damp palms and thudding heart. I raced up the stairs. What had I been thinking? Or, more accurately, why
hadn’t
I been thinking? No wonder Savanna hadn’t come by the Meeting House. She must be devastated that I’d just go off and leave her like that. Maybe she’d been so upset when she saw that I wasn’t waiting at Java that she hadn’t even gone inside. So of course she never got my note. Why didn’t I leave another message on her phone instead? Like a good friend would do. I slammed the door of my bedroom behind me. My hands were shaking so much I had trouble turning my phone on. Thank God for speed dial, that’s all I can say. If I’d had to hit every digit of her number I’d have been there half the night.

Savanna answered on the first ring. I collapsed on my bed with relief. At least she was still on the Earth in the twenty-first century and probably not in traction. And she was taking my calls. I knew what Savanna was like. If she were really mad at me she wouldn’t answer the phone.

“Gracie!” shrieked Savanna. Music was blaring behind her. “I Will Always Love You.” Radio Romance, 98.6 on your dial. “Gracie, where were you? I’ve been calling you for, like, hours on both your phones… I must’ve left, like, a hundred messages – I was sooo worried. I couldn’t imagine what happened to you.”

“I’m really, really sorry, Savanna. I— I just got home.” Turning my phone back on after I left Neighbours was another thing I’d forgotten. “Didn’t you get my note?”

“What note?”

“The one I left at Java.” I should have known the girl would forget to give it to her. It wasn’t as if she had nothing else to do. “You know, to tell you where I was so you could come after me. Because you weren’t answering your phone.”

“Ohmigod, Gracie…” Savanna’s laugh didn’t always sound like a honking goose. “You left me a note?” Sometimes it sounded like beads bouncing on the floor. “But I never made it to Java.”

“Really? You didn’t show up at all?” That would be one scenario I hadn’t actually thought of.

“Well, I didn’t see any point.” Savanna’s voice kind of shrugged. “I mean, it got pretty late so I figured you’d have given up and gone home.”

Maybe I didn’t give Savanna enough credit for being practical.

“You did?” It was just as well Cooper turned up or I might still be there, on my hundredth cup of tea.

“Well, it’s not like it matters, is it?” asked Savanna. Another handful of beads clattered to the floor. “I mean, Gracie,
you weren’t there
. It really would’ve been, like, a total waste of my time if I’d gone to Java. And I called you as soon as I got home. I mean, I didn’t think you were going to go all incognito on me.”

“
Incommunicado
.”

“I’ve been calling you for hours, Gracie. Hours and hours. Why didn’t you answer your phone? You knew I’d be trying to get you.”

“I’m sorry, Sav. I had to turn it off. And anyway, what about you? I tried to get you for hours and hours, too. Why didn’t you answer
your
phone?”

“Because I couldn’t.” Savanna opened something that crackled.

“What’s that?” I asked. “Mesquite potato chips?” Those were her favourites.

“I know, I know… Too much salt and fat. But I’m, like, starving, Gray. I didn’t have any lunch.” She bit into a chip. “Anyway, I couldn’t answer my phone because I didn’t have it with me. The Crow’s Point Cuckoo hid it again.” The Crow’s Point Cuckoo was Savanna’s little sister, Sofia. Sofia was always finding new and imaginative places to hide Savanna’s phone. When I’d longed for a sister, it wasn’t one like her.

I kicked off my shoes and leaned back against my pillows. “Where was it this time?” Everything was back to normal.

“The mother found it in the hamper.”

“But couldn’t you have called on—

“Gracie,” interrupted Savanna. “Gracie, stop nudging me. There were really seriously extended circumstances working here.”

“
Extenuating
.”

“I mean, I have, like, the most awesome reason for not showing up today.”

“Duh… I know that, Savanna.” Maybe it wasn’t alien abduction, but it had to be something bigger than getting a run in her tights. “What is it?”

“I mean, like, really, Gray, you are
not
going to believe it! I almost can’t believe it myself.” Savanna’s voice rose with excitement.

“Don’t keep me in suspense!” I laughed. “What happened?”

“Oh, for God’s sake. Wait a second, will you? The Queen of the Nags is bellowing for me. I really don’t know why I couldn’t have been born to a normal family.” I heard her thump across her room and open the door. “Now what?” she bawled. “Can’t I even just talk on the phone in my own room without you getting on my case?” I moved my phone away from my ear. “All right … all right … I’ll turn it down. And then I’ll sit in the closet and whisper, shall I? Will that make you happy?” The door banged shut again. “Really, I’d be better off if I was being raised by wolves. She doesn’t let up on me for one teensy tiny fraction of a nanosecond. I swear she was on me as soon as I walked through the door.”

“Savanna!” I begged. “Just tell me what happened!”

“Are you sitting down? You have to be sitting down.”

“I’m sitting down. Are you all right?”

“All right? I’m like ten zillion times better than all right. I’m, like, excellently fabulous. I’ve never been so happy to be me in my whole life.”

Since, unlike some of us, Savanna was always really happy to be herself, this was definitely something way more awesome, fantastic and phenomenal than mere time warps or alien abductions.

“What, Savanna? What happened?”

“It was incredible, Gray. It was, like, the last thing I expected. I mean, you wouldn’t. You couldn’t. It was like a boat from the blue.”

I was so caught up in her excitement by then that I didn’t even correct her.

“Savanna, for Pete’s sake! What happened? What was on the boat?”

“You’re really sitting down, right?”

“Savanna!”

“And you understand that this is, like, totally and completely top secret, right? I mean, you have to promise and solemnly swear not to tell anyone, Gracie. Not even if they bribe you with a billion dollars or threaten to harm every iguana on the planet. Understood? It’s so top secret you can’t even tell yourself.”

“Of course I promise.”

“Reallyreallyreally?”

“Savanna!”

She took a big breath. “Gracie…” She paused. Dramatically. “Gracie, hold on to your socks!”

“Savanna, I’m really begging you, just tell me what happened.”

“I met someone!”

That was so not what I was expecting to hear that I didn’t understand what she meant.

“You what?”

“I met someone! I met someone!” Now her voice was hitting heights usually only reached by panicked rabbits.

“What do you mean, you ‘met someone’?” What kind of someone? An elephant herder? A camel driver? The President? Or did she mean like a hypnotist who made her forget she was going to the mall?

“Oh, Gracie…” She laughed. “I mean
I met someone.
You know. I met a guy! This fantastic, incredible guy. I mean like really, Gray, he’s totally awesome.”

“You met a guy?” I knew I sounded like an echo, but I couldn’t help myself. How could meeting a guy take half the day?

“You can’t believe it either, can you? I mean, it is, like, so awesomely amazing how your whole life can change in just a few minutes.”

I could have walked into town for the next hundred years and the only way my whole life would change was if a car hit me.

“So you—”

Savanna cut me off. “Ohmigod, he’s calling me! He’s calling me now! This is like so not typical guy behaviour. I mean, like, he only— Gracie, I have to go. I’ll talk to you later. Kisskissbyebye.”

I shut my phone with a sigh.

It was only then that I realized I never told Savanna what had happened to me.

After
Savanna hung up I sat down at my desk to do some homework while I waited for her to call back. I opened my math book. I got out a pad of paper. I sharpened a pencil. I turned to the first question. It might as well have been written in Urdu. I leaned back in my chair and stared at the photograph of a Jackson’s chameleon that I’d taped to the wall. He was hanging upside down on a piece of string.