Read Online What Are Friends For? by Rachel Vail - Free Book Online

Hochstetter.”
    “I had a feeling that might be it.” Mom smiled at me. She tossed the toilet paper into the cart. “He sounds like a nice boy.”
    “He is,” I whispered. I could feel my face heating up. “I’m allowed to go out with somebody, right? We’re not, I’m not. He, well, I’m just wondering, for the future.”
    “I trust you implicitly, Olivia,” Mom said as we turned the corner at the head of the aisle. “You’re smart and responsible, and when you feel ready to go out with somebody, I know you’ll handle it wisely and with self-respect.”
    “That’s what I thought,” I said. “I will, don’t worry.”
    “I don’t.” Mom leaned against the grocery cart. “I’m happy for you. That’s exciting.”
    I smiled.
    She chose three cans of tuna, then said, “Tell me about Morgan.”
    “Why? What did Dex say?”
    “Just that he’s concerned. He says you two have become inseparable.”
    “Really?” I surprised myself by smiling at that. “I know what you think about her, Mom, from what you heard through CJ’s mother. And me.”
    Mom pulled a store coupon out of the dispenser and held it without reading it. “I know what you’ve always thought of her.”
    “Morgan says I’m her best friend.”
    “Are you?”
    “I don’t know,” I answered. “I don’t even know what that means.”
    “Well?” Mom crumpled the coupon and threw it in the cart. “Do you like her? Do you have things in common? Do you . . .”
    “She’s the prettiest, nastiest, angriest, most powerful, and most vulnerable girl in seventh grade. I’m none of those things. Well, except girl and seventh grader.”
    “And pretty.” Mom smiled. “She seems very different from you.”
    “That’s true, but you don’t know her, Mom. She’s been having a hard time, this past week. You know how her father left and moved to California? He’s not sending the family any money, again. She tries to act tough but she’s really scared, I think. And . . .”
    “And?”
    “And she’s fun.” I shrugged. “When she talks to me, it’s like I’m the only person in the world. I don’t know. I can’t explain.”
    “I had a friend like that,” Mom said, closing her eyes slowly.
    “Really?”
    Mom nodded. “Colleen Lusardi. She went to the parochial school down the road, and she looked so wholesome, the long blond hair and clear blue eyes, white socks and crisp linen uniform, I was afraid she’d be too boring for me. I was listening to jazz and writing self-indulgent poetry at the time. I thought I was a rebel. But Colleen. I was deceived by her appearance, to say the least. Colleen was wild, impulsive—she’d do anything and laugh. She was so unlike me, but at the same time, she was also like me—like the hidden, inside part of me nobody ever knew about. Nana hated her.”
    “I bet,” I said, throwing a box of Cheerios into the cart. “Nana thinks I’m impulsive.”
    Mom laughed. “I know.”
    “What did she do?” I asked. “Colleen, I mean. What did you do with her?”
    “Oh, I don’t know.” Mom placed a box of All-Bran beside the Cheerios.
    “Come on,” I prodded.
    “Colleen. She used to, OK. She wanted to smoke cigarettes in my car, and I wouldn’t let her—I hated cigarettes even then, and my father would’ve taken that car away in a second if he ever smelled smoke in it—so Colleen, one night she wouldn’t wait till we got to the party we were going to, maybe ten minutes away. She stood up on my car seat and hung out the window from the waist up. Smoking and singing. An Allman Brothers song, I think.”
    “That sounds really dangerous.”
    “Oh, it was ridiculous.” Mom picked up the box of All-Bran and looked at it again. “I actually hate this stuff.”
    I smiled. “Put it back.”
    She put it back on the shelf and grinned at me.
    “You let her hang out the window?” I asked. “You won’t even let me sit in the front seat with a seat belt on.”
    “I know. Can you believe