looked exactly the same.
121
“It’s too bad, you know?” Caro said. “What happened to him, I mean. He was totally someone once. He did stuff. But now he doesn’t do anything. I couldn’t believe he was at the movies, actually. Mel must have dragged him there.”
“Maybe,” I said, even though I was sure he had.
“I’ve seen Patrick at two parties, maybe, in the past couple of years, and he always leaves after, like, ten minutes and goes and waits for Mel to drive him home. It’s just so sad how some people totally get messed up when someone . . .” She trailed off. “Not that you’re . . . I mean, everyone’s messed up, aren’t they?”
I made an agreeing noise and tried to remember if there was a crosstown bus stop nearby. Corn Syrup attempting to do deep? I definitely didn’t need that.
“I mean, look at me,” she continued. “I’m afraid to talk to a guy I really like because my best friend, who I hate to the point where I imagine her getting hit by a car at least twice at day, has decided she might want him.”
“Well, you could—never mind.” I got up. Bus stop or no bus stop, I was out of there. The last thing I needed to do was hang around and point out the obvious.
“What?”
I sighed, because really, for a supposedly smart person, she sure was dumb. “Beth treats you like crap, right?”
122
Caro shrugged.
“So stop hanging out with her.”
“Oh, right. Great idea, because high school is totally the best place to do something that will make sure I have absolutely no friends.”
I hadn’t known Caro could do sarcasm. I sat back down.
“You know, it was easy for you to ditch Beth, but then you had Julia. I’ve never had someone like that, who would stand up for me no matter what. You were so lucky, Amy.”
Were. Past tense. I stood back up. “Look, I gotta—”
“I hated her, you know. Ever since that party when we were in sixth grade—”
“Yeah, so sorry you got called on your shit.”
“Like I was the only one doing stuff to you,” Caro said quietly. “But that’s not even it. You basically stopped talking to me after you met her. You just—you acted like we’d never been friends.”
“We were never friends. You and Beth and Anne Alice were friends.”
“Beth and Anne Alice were friends. Do you know how awful my life would be if Anne Alice hadn’t moved to Los Angeles two years ago? They treated me just like you, Amy, only I had to deal with it for a hell of a lot longer.
123
Don’t you remember what they did to me at my tenth birthday party? Or how about the time in fourth grade when you, Anne Alice, and Beth formed a secret club when I was out with chicken pox?”
“Nope.” I hadn’t remembered, anyway, until she said it. And then I did. I remembered Beth and Anne Alice showing up in matching sweaters at Caro’s birthday party and talking about what a great sleepover they’d had while Caro unwrapped her gifts.
I remembered that stupid club and how excited I was to be in it. I totally ignored all the notes Caro sent when she got back asking for a hint about the club name and begging me to talk to Beth and Anne Alice for her.
Instead, I laughed with them about how badly she wanted to get in.
“Of course you don’t remember. I mean, why should you care that the last conversation I had with a real friend was about Chester, and how he was really sick and I was afraid he was going to die? Your coat’s over on that chair, by the way, and the bus stop is two blocks over.”
I stopped walking across the room. “What do you want me to say, Caro? I’m sorry I wasn’t more help when we discussed your sick dog. I was eleven. I didn’t have a degree in grief counseling.”
124
“God, you are so stupid. It’s not what you said, Amy.
It’s the fact that the last time I talked to someone I could really call a friend was when I was eleven years old.”
“Oh.”
Caro rolled her eyes at me and got up, grabbed my jacket, and shoved it at me. “Here.”
“Look, I’m—I just—” I looked at Caro, who was staring back at me, her mouth a thin angry line. “You never said anything to me.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I guess after you and Julia told me off I should have come up to you and said, ‘Hey, Amy, I totally miss hanging out with you.’ Please. You and Julia would have made me cry again and loved it.”
“We wouldn’t have . . .” I trailed off. We totally would have. “You just—you always seemed happy. You still do, mostly.”
Caro twirled a piece of hair around one finger and smiled a huge, happy smile. Even her eyes shone bright. Her voice, however, was a different story. It was flat. Drained.
