When this summer started, it seemed as though all I needed was to get Rachel back. Everything would be fine with Rachel sharing my little room in our little house. But the summer happened anyway. I became an intern and I fell in love and I made a new friend, all with Rachel about three thousand miles away.
“When are you going back?” I ask. “Not that it’s not good to have you here, and it’s exciting that the tote bags are in a box now and not all laid out on a bedspread. I just figure you can’t take off too much time from your internship.”
She shrugs. “I don’t know. I actually … well, the company I had the internship with closed down. The danger of throwing all of your efforts into a startup.”
“You should have said something! I’ve been whining about Jordi while you were dealing with this, and—”
“And I’m your big sister, and I was here for you,” she says. “It’s your first breakup. It’s my job.”
I sit down on my bed. “You haven’t even had your first breakup yet.”
Rachel makes a muffled sound, somewhere between a laugh and a sigh. “Well, it’s not going great, Abby. He doesn’t seem that supportive about me losing the internship, and—”
“You should talk to him,” I say, even though I’ve been secretly hoping for the day this particular news came. I imagine Paul twirling his mustache one last time and then disappearing into the sunset. “Maybe he doesn’t know you even need support. I mean, you didn’t tell me. I could have been being supportive instead of making you pack up those tote bags yourself.”
“I was saving you from extra drama,” Rachel says.
“I don’t need to be saved. And Mustache Paul probably doesn’t either.”
“Oh my god.” She throws a tote bag at me. We both learn very quickly that empty tote bags are not built for flight. “Do not call him Mustache Paul.”
We laugh until we cry just like we used to years ago when, in a lot of ways, Rachel was my whole world. It’s weird to realize it’s okay that she isn’t anymore.
“Come on,” Rachel says, and I can tell from the look in her eyes that she has An Idea. It feels good to be the little sister ready to follow her again, no matter where that leads.
I sit in the passenger seat of her Honda and watch out the window as she drives down our street and to the edges of our neighborhood. My mind’s awash with possibility: music, art, snacks?
But, no. We’re in an empty parking lot.
“Switch with me,” Rachel says once the car’s in park. I can’t even process what she’s saying before she’s outside and opening the passenger side door.
“Did Mom put you up to this?” I ask. “Did Maliah?”
“No one put me up to it,” she says. “I know you’re scared, and that’s fine. But fear doesn’t always mean that something’s wrong, you know.”
I give her a look. “You’re the one hiding out here.”
“Touché.”
We continue our staring contest.
“I know you want to move to New York,” Rachel says, “and hopefully you will. But sometimes life goes in other directions. Also, you have a whole year until then. Don’t you want some freedom?”
Who doesn’t want freedom? But why does it have to be tied so closely to this one freaking activity?
“Come on,” Rachel continues. “Obviously it would be horrible getting your first driving lesson from Mom or Dad. But it’s me. I’d never lead you astray.”
“Oh, really? You just drove me to an abandoned parking lot in industrial wherever in the middle of the night.”
“It’s seven-thirty, Abby.”
We both laugh. It’s crazy how you could go months without seeing a person and have everything fall right back together this easily.
“Just around the parking lot,” Rachel says. “One loop. If you hate it, we’ll go home and never speak of it again.”
“I find that really hard to believe,” I say, but I unbuckle my seatbelt and get out of the car. It’s jarring to sit down in the driver’s seat, like a mirror image of how things are supposed to look from the front seat. And there’s stuff in the way of everything—my feet and my boobs and my arms. Rachel so calmly explains everything, though, that I can’t deny that nothing feels quite as scary. And before long, I carefully shift the car out of park, take my foot off the brake, and watch the world slowly roll by us.
“You’re doing it!” my sister says, and it hits me that I am.
I make the entire loop around the parking lot, and it sort of happens so quickly that I decide to do it again. We keep going until we’re almost dizzy and then switch spots again for our drive back home.
“I think I’m going back in a few days,” Rachel says as we pull into the driveway.
“You can’t! I have to learn driving on real streets!”
“I promise we’ll do that before I go,” she says. “But you’re already becoming a pro. Now a few lessons with Mom or Dad won’t kill you.”
“But I need you here,” I say, though as the words leave my lips, they don’t exactly ring with truth and urgency. A lot happened without Rachel here, and I survived. It’s funny how having someone back can prove what’s true without them. I hope Rachel’s always sort of my actual bestest best friend, but I also hope that it’s because she wants to be and not that she has to be.
“You’ll be fine,” she says, and then I’m sort of annoyed that she’s older and wiser and has figured all of this out already on her own.
Dad looks up as we walk into the house. “Is this an okay time? Not secret girl stuff going on?”
“If there was, would we tell you?” I
