I’ve never fainted ever in my life, but I damn near do so right then. It feels as though all the strength has poured out of me, sucked out by Lisa’s message. It becomes clear to me that Lisa and Jenna talk to each other privately, behind my back. As I stare blankly at the screen, the message suddenly disappears. Lisa must have realized she’d posted it in the wrong channel. How long have Lisa and Jenna been chatting without me? What else do they talk about? Why did they feel the need to talk privately? I thought our chat group was the only private group we needed. Do they secretly hate me?
“No, no, no,” I moan to myself. Don’t go there, Fern. That way lies madness. How long did it take for me to crawl out of that darkness the last time I found myself buried in it? Doing nothing but staying in bed and hiding from reality by binge-watching TV shows while feeling increasingly worse about my life. Come on, use your healthy coping methods. But my healthy coping methods are (1) baking, which Haven has ruined, and (2) running, which the pandemic has ruined.
What the hell am I going to do?
Chapter 14
Age Twelve
“Guess what?” I say to Dani as we walk out of the school building. Our friends stream out alongside us, and we call out goodbyes to all of them.
“What?” Dani says. She passes me her can of Coke. She’s allowed one soda every three days, and because she’s my best friend, she shares them with me.
I take a sip and savor the way the bubbles pop in the back of my mouth. “There’s going to be a new kid at school. A girl.”
“How’d you know?”
“I overheard Mrs. Rawlins talking about it. Apparently she’s going to be in our homeroom.”
Dani shrugs as I pass the Coke can back to her. “Cool,” she says, in a meh tone of voice. I can’t believe she’s not more excited about it.
“I can’t wait to meet the new girl,” I say. “I bet she’s going to be really awesome.”
Dani doesn’t reply, and for a second, I wonder if she didn’t hear me. Then she says, “Why are you so excited about it?”
“I don’t know, I guess because it’s a new thing and it would be fun to have a new friend?”
“I guess,” Dani says. “Oh hey, check out the new earrings my aunt gave me. They’re from Japan!”
All thoughts of the new kid flee my mind, and the rest of the way to Dani’s, we chat about everything from the latest lip gloss to which boy has the strongest body odor. I love these afternoons when I walk home with Dani and spend the rest of the day at hers, doing homework and eating cookies. I usually stay there until half past five, then Dani’s mom drives me home in time for dinner.
But that day, in the middle of writing our compositions for English, Dani suddenly looks up and pokes me in the arm. “Fern,” she says, and there’s something in her voice that makes my instincts prick up.
“Yeah?”
She looks at me with wide eyes, as though she is almost scared. “Um, about that new kid ...” She chews on her bottom lip for a bit, then says, “I know you’re super excited about her, but do you promise you and I will be best friends no matter what?”
Warmth spreads across my body, and I laugh. “Oh my god, Dani! Duh, obviously! I can’t believe you were worried about that!”
Dani giggles. “Well, I mean, you were just so excited about her! And you know what they say, life happens—”
“In mysterious ways,” I say at the same time as she does. Dani says that so often that it’s become an inside joke between us. “You know no one’s ever going to replace you. We’re Dani and Fern. We’re besties forever.”
We grin at each other, our smiles equally wide.
“Besties forever,” Dani agrees.
Chapter 15
I manage to hold on to my apartment for exactly two more weeks before it becomes clear that I will not be able to make the coming month’s rent. I emailed my landlord, asking if an extension was possible (There’s a pandemic,I whined in my message), and his answer was a flat no (I realize that, sweetheart,he replied,but rent’s still due). I then emailed Sarah, begging for my deposit back (There’s a pandemic,I whined in my message), and she reminded me that deposits are, on the whole, nonrefundable (It’s the entire purpose of a deposit,she said,it’s a down payment to ensure that the vendor’s time isn’t wasted. Stay safe!). With that, I was shit out of luck.
There are more humiliating things than moving back into your parents’ home more than a decade after moving out, but not much more. Especially since my parents aren’t the kind who’d welcome me home with bright smiles and open arms. In fact, when I finally pull up in my car, the first thing that Mom says when she opens the front door is “You’re home” in the same tone of voice one might use to say “We need more milk.” A toneless, emotionless statement. Is it strange to say that I would’ve preferred her to show some disappointment? At least it would be an emotion of some kind, something I could’ve bounced off. Unbidden, a flash of Haven’s parents dart through my mind—her mom and dad happily puttering around her as she cooks, her dad telling her that the noodle soup she made for dinner reminded him of how it felt when he was a little boy coming home to his mom’s cooking.
My dad turns up at the doorway and says, “Oh, Fern,” like he hasn’t been expecting me all along, like I haven’t called in advance to tell them that I need to come back here. And again, there isn’t so much an inflection of emotion in his voice as there is an uninterested pointing out of fact. Not “Oh, Fern!” but “Oh, it’s just Fern.”
It’s because you were home for Christmas, I tell myself, trying my best to cement over the hurt. And it’s only April now, so obviously they’re not going to make a big deal of seeing you after only four months apart.
But Haven’s parents make such a fuss over her when she visits them twice a week. She posts her homecoming all the time. Both her mom and her dad and their two dogs will be waiting at the door, and as she slides into the driveway, they wave at her excitedly, their eyes aglow with joy at the sight of her. The dogs wag their tails. While her mom embraces her, her dad insists on taking her bags so she doesn’t have to carry them to the house. The dogs dance on their hind legs, begging Haven for a cuddle.
