“Mmm,” I said noncommittally, glancing back to where Mrs.Barbour’s juicer should’ve been. The house went silent; we were locked in a stalemate. And in the quiet, I knew both of us were replaying the same story.
The friendship of Grace Barbour, Everett Adler, and me. How we used to be three. James was there too, but he had more friends than fingers and toes, while Grace, Everett, and I shared thatfeeling.That unspoken feeling where we knew we only needed one another to be happy. All through elementary school, they were my heart and soul.
Middle school was when things shifted, when crushes replaced cooties. One day in eighth grade, I’d pulled Grace into the bathroom between classes and took her hands in mine. “Everett,” I whispered, andIknewsheknew what I meant. “I like him,” I whispered. “I like Everett, G.”
You can guess what happened next, because I was wired to take immediate action. On the last day of school, I marched straight up to Everett and kissed him. He went red in the face—I mean, that’s Everett—but then he took my hand and didn’t let go. Isa-and-Everett. My heart wouldn’t stop pounding, so happy to be “Isa-and-Everett.”
Everyone thought we were perfect together. Our friends, our parents, and especially Grace.He totally loves you!!!she sometimes texted me during our late-night exchanges.
Or so we thought. Our end-of-year freshman formal had also been our first anniversary, and all I wanted was for himto dance with me. But he kept shaking his head, kept stalling, then told meno.Everett hadneversaid no to me. Beyond confused, I’d yanked James onto the floor for a slow song so I wouldn’t cry. Even then, all he did was make me laugh.
At the end of the night, Everett broke up with me in the school parking lot. “You’re so special, Isa,” he’d said, not having the guts to make eye contact. The pavement had his full and undivided attention. “But I don’t, uh, love you…”
I stared daggers into him as he spoke, but I could barely look at him after that night.
I cut ties with him almost entirely, and Grace, who’d volunteered to egg his house, had snipped hers as well. “Team Isa, forever and always,” she’d said, and while I wished there weren’t sides, deep down I was so grateful that she’d chosen mine.
Although I suspected the choice hadn’t been so simple for her. “It’s part of the charade,” she assured me whenever I noticed her talking or laughing with Everett for a moment too long. “I’m pretending, like we agreed.”
In school it was easy to be lost to each other in a sea of students, but family gatherings were the true challenge. We had to put on a show.
“Please,” she said now, the first one to speak. Her voice plucked a chord in my chest. “Please, let’s go get him. For old times’ sake, remember?”
Old times’ sake.
I sighed. Our “old times” included Everett, so wasn’t it fairthat he join us? Yes, the breakup had been ugly, but we’d been friends long before we dated. Couldn’t we find our way back there?
Honestly, I didn’t know.
But for Grace, I would try.
“Okay,” I said, feeling some warmth return to my face. “Let’s do it.”
There was one gaping hole in the plan to abscond with Everett Adler, which, no offense to Grace, she probably hadn’t thought of in the first place.We’ll get Everettwas where her idea had most likely started and ended.Everett will come withus.
(Grace usually spearheaded the fantastical ideas while I grounded them in reality. Teamwork made the dream work.)
“You do know a parent needs to go inside, right?” I asked while washing our breakfast dishes. The dishwasher was full, and I hated leaving dirty dishes in the sink. “Unless Mrs.Adler is in on this, one of us needs to go into the office and sign him out before he can leave the building. He’s not James.”
James, who was the reason our school had instituted this rule in the first place. According to Grace, he used to leave campus all the time of his own accord, sweet-talking the secretary and claiming Mrs.Barbour was in the parking lot. “See that Mercedes out there?” Grace had once imitated. “That’s my mother. She’s stuck on a conference call, but she’s here to take me to the doctor’s…. I have a note….”
It was embarrassing how many times he’d managed it before Principal Unger and the administration caught on and created an old-school parental sign-out log. James had also since lost the spare Subaru key fob—which had been his third replacement—so he was no longer going anywhere.
“Or are we going to sneak him out the choir room’s back door?” I asked, drying the final dish. “Because if he’s marked present in homeroom but then doesn’t show up for several classes, they’ll call his mom.”
Grace grinned. “Believe it or not, Isa, I do have an aboveboard plan.”
I gave her a look. “Nothing about today is aboveboard, G.”
She shook her head and gestured for me to follow her; we left the back-to-pristine kitchen and climbed the stairs—I noticed not a single one of their framed family photos hung on the wall anymore, only a fresh coat of off-white paint—and walked down the hall to her bedroom. I averted my eyes from the forensics scene on the carpet, instead moving to make her bed while she changed out of her bathrobe and into some actual clothes. “How do I look?” she asked once I’d arranged the final throw pillow, and I turned to see her strike a pose in a signature Grace Barbour ensemble: casual white V-neck T-shirt with a tangle of gold necklaces and a pair of shorts she’d “upcycled” using other clothing. One leg was forest green while the other was navy-and-white vertical stripes. The insides of the pockets were denim, and the waist and belt loops were faded Nantucket red from an old J.Crew skirt of mine. The shorts weren’t my style, but wow, were they spectacular.
After Grace did her best runway walk across her room, I said, “If you don’t apply toProject Runway,Grace, I’m filling out the application myself.”
Grace shook her head, her golden-brown curls piled high in a messy bun. “I’m clueless about styling!”
“I will enlighten you!” I told her, exasperated but mostly amused. We had this argument every time Grace showed off one of her new designs.
“Nina Garcia scares me!”
