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

it?”
    “I would never do that,” I promised. “Anything like that. I’m careful.”
    “I know you are. Good.”
    “I can’t even imagine you . . .”
    “It was crazy.” Mom shook her head. “She was fun. I was fun, with her. For a little while we were best friends.”
    “Where is she now?” I asked. My mother doesn’t talk about herself as a teenager much. She mostly talks about books. It felt weird and exciting, as if she were a new girl moving into town. She seemed new.
    “I don’t know,” Mom said. “Should we get bananas? Let’s get some bananas.”
    I followed her out to the fruit area. “You lost touch? Did you have a fight? Did Nana forbid you to see her?”
    “No.” Mom placed a bunch of greenish bananas carefully into the front section of our cart. “Nothing so dramatic. We were different. I went on to Yale. Colleen, I don’t know. She had other interests. I didn’t agree with some of her choices, so I guess I pulled away. We weren’t very much alike.” Mom picked up a string bean, snapped it in half, took a bite, and nodded.
    I ripped a plastic bag off the roll, massaged it open, and held it up for Mom to fill. When the bag was loaded, I asked, “Do you miss her? Colleen?”
    “Miss her?” Mom looked up into the ceiling light and smiled. “Sometimes, maybe. I wouldn’t be friends with her now. It’s not who I am, but . . .”
    “What?” I asked.
    “There’s a part of me that she discovered, or that I discovered with her, and I guess I’m grateful for the discovery.”
    I nodded. “I know what you mean.”
    “Just be careful,” Mom said. “And make sure you keep thinking for yourself, OK?”
    “I will,” I promised. “I always do.”
    “That’s what I like to hear.” She took the handle of the cart and pushed it to the check-out area. I followed her.

twelve
    T he next day, Friday, Lou told me in math that he’d had a breakthrough on our code project. He asked if I’d come up with something, and I had to admit I hadn’t done any work on it at all. Usually I do most of the work in a group project, so as he began to explain his concept, I didn’t pay much attention—I was too busy insulting myself over what a distracted, lazy ditz I was becoming. When he said, “It’s elegant, don’t you think?” I had to ask him to repeat his idea. It was to take the symbols above the numbers on the computer keyboard and use them in the numbers’ place. “Easy to remember, and I don’t think Ms. Cress will crack it that quick, especially if she’s not at her keyboard.”
    I had to admit it was very clever. He had written down the numbers and their symbols. We played around with it, and it worked very well. We were both psyched, and started discussing making up a letter code, too. When the bell rang and Morgan grabbed me, I was startled.
    Lou watched me go backward out of the classroom.
    “We’ll work on it more later,” I yelled to him.
    “I can’t believe you got stuck with him,” Morgan said as she slammed her locker shut.
    “He’s really smart,” I said.
    She made a gagging face and jiggled my lock while she waited for me to organize my books and take out my lunch. “I’m on a diet,” she whispered. “I tossed mine in the garbage on the way this morning.”
    I asked her why. She looked very skinny to me.
    She pinched skin on her waist—there was barely enough to grip. “You wouldn’t understand,” she told me.
    “You’re right, I don’t,” I told her, pulling my lunch down from the shelf of my locker. “You’re the prettiest girl in seventh grade. I don’t understand why you wouldn’t eat lunch. That just seems self-destructive to me.”
    Morgan let out a burst of air and smiled.
    “What?”
    She shook her head. “Sometimes I don’t know whether to say thank you or screw you to you.”
    I closed my locker and locked it. She’d have to figure out what she wants to say to me herself.
    She grumbled, “Come on. Hurry.”
    “What’s the