The Friendship Riddle (9 page)

I jammed my bag into the narrow metal space and took out my lunch in its insulated bag from L.L.Bean. I had to beg Mom not to get it monogrammed with my name. Lena had her lunch in a hand-sewn fabric bag. I went to my usual table and she sat down next to me. I guessed it was my turn in the rotation of where she sat.

Coco glanced over at us from his table with the boys.

“Who do you think the cutest boy in sixth grade is?” Lena asked me.

Well, that was an abrupt disappointment.

“What?” she asked.

“All this boy-girl stuff.”

“I think it's Coco. Don't you?”

I glanced at Coco. He had warm brown eyes, and I thought his hair would be soft to touch.

“I don't know,” I said.

“And I think Charlotte is the cutest girl. She must be like a million times cute, because she's next to Melinda all the time and that makes anyone look ugly.”

“She's not that cute,” I said.

“You guys used to be friends, right?” Lena asked.

“Sure,” I said. “I guess. My moms and her dads are friends.”

She nods. “I shouldn't have asked that. About the cute boys. I don't have a lot of girlfriends. I have three older sisters. Twins and one in between them and me. They talk about boys all the time. I guess I thought that's what we're supposed to talk about.”

This raised a million questions in my head: Who are your friends? Where are they? Are we friends? “What do you want to talk about?” I asked her.

“What are you eating?” she asked.

“Peanut butter and Fluff,” I said, wishing this had been another chutney and cheddar day. Lena's was in a little tin bowl and I couldn't quite tell what it was. It looked lumpy and not at all appetizing. “You?”

“Chicken garam masala. I got the recipe from Dev's mom, but I don't think I made it right. I didn't have all the spices she put down, so I had to improvise, like on those cooking shows.”

“You made it yourself?”

“My sister Vera helped. I like to cook, but she actually
wants to be a chef. Well, actually, she wants to be a restaurateur. I don't think restaurateurs actually cook. She says when she gets older she's going to turn the Salt and Sea Shack into a real nice sit-down restaurant.”

“I love the Salt and Sea Shack!” I exclaimed. It was out by the piers and you could get the best fried clams and milk shakes.

Lena rolled her eyes. “You and every yokel who makes his way up the coast.”

I reddened.

She didn't seem to notice. “You'd feel differently if your whole house smelled like oil and sour clams.”

“Your family owns the Salt and Sea Shack?”

“Third generation,” she said. She twisted her hair and the streak of red flashed for a moment.

“I like the red in your hair,” I told her.

“It's a compromise,” she replied, letting her hair fall back down. “It's all my mom would let me do. I wanted to dye the ends red all around, red and orange so it would look like coal on fire.”

“That's what I thought when I saw it!” I said. “Like it was a log in a fire, only you can't see that it's still hot until you turn it over.”

“A secret fire? I kind of like that.” She smiled to herself. “Coco's watching you.”

“What?”

“Don't look. He stopped watching.”

“He's helping me with the spelling bee. He probably just wants to know if we're going to practice today.”

“Are you?”

I shook my head. “I want to get that science homework done before the weekend.”

“Wanna do it together during study hall?” She paused. “Are you in study hall?”

“I usually go to Ms. Lawson's room. I'm her student aide.”

“What does that mean?”

“I help her out.” I poked at my half-eaten sandwich. “Though really most of the time I just read.”

“Cool. So, do you?”

“Do I what?”

“Want to work on the science together?”

I hesitated. I don't like working with other kids on schoolwork, because, frankly, they are usually just too slow. And, anyway, this entire conversation had been utterly perplexing. Half the time she was being nice, and the other half she seemed to be insulting me. “Maybe.”

“Hey, it's no great shakes or anything. I was just asking.”

“No, we can. I just need to tell Coco.”

“So go tell him.”

“Right now?”

“Yes, right now. But first wipe the peanut butter off your face.”

Coco, Adam, and Dev were huddled around something in the center of their table. When I got closer, it just seemed to be a plain plastic cup of water, about half-empty. Coco lifted his head and looked up at me through his brown hair. A grin spread on his face, and I was afraid I was about to be asked to settle another bet. “Ruth!” he said. “Hi!”

“Hi,” I said. He kept staring up at me and I realized that it was still my turn to talk. “I, um, I came to say I can't study for the spelling bee today.”

“Oh,” he said. The smile faltered.

“Tomorrow I can.”

“Tomorrow is Saturday,” Adam said.

“Right. Monday, then.”

Coco stared at the cup of water.

“Yeah, Lena wants me to help her—I mean, Lena and I are going to do the science homework together.”

Coco picked up a packet of salt, ripped open the top, and dumped it on the table. “Well, that makes sense.”

“If you're looking for someone to study words with—” Dev began.

“What are you doing?” I interrupted.

“I'm going to balance this cup on its edge.” Coco's eyes were focused on the cup, and his hands hovered just beside it.

“We're each going to give him a dollar if he can,” Adam said. “And if he can't, he has to give each of us a dollar. You want in?”

I shook my head. Looking back over my shoulder, I saw
Lena. She leaned her elbows on the table with her chin in her hand and was watching the whole thing like it was a silent movie.

Coco took the cup and tilted it on its side so the water nearly touched the lip, then placed it down in the pile of salt. Slowly, like how we approached our old cat, Webster, when it was time to take him to the vet, he removed his hand from the cup. It held still on its edge. He leaned forward, pursed his lips, and blew the salt away. The cup didn't move at all.

He held his hands above his head. “That's a dollar from each of you!” he exclaimed. Then he looked up at me. “Smart move not betting against me!” His smile stretched from ear to ear.

“How'd you do that?” I asked.

“A magician never reveals his tricks.”

“It's not magic; it's science,” Dev mumbled.

“Either way, it's my trick,” Coco said, then turned to me. “But I'll tell you if you win the spelling bee.”

“Okay.”

Lena was still watching us. It was a good thing she couldn't hear me and my dopey reactions.

“We could all do science together,” Coco said.

“Well, I—”

“I thought we were going to work on that together,” Adam said.

“We are,” Coco said. “With Ruth and Lena. Right, Ruth?”

“Right,” I agreed.

“Great!” he said. “See you in study hall, then.”

He looked back at the cup, which was still balanced on its edge like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. I guessed that meant we were done, so I started backing away. When I was a few steps back, I said “Bye” in a soft voice, then spun and strode back toward Lena, who seemed as pleased with the whole interaction as Coco was with his cup.

Mum was supposed to be home for twenty-four hours that weekend, but they were forecasting more snow, so she flew from Texas to Seattle for her next appointment. Once Charlotte asked me, “What exactly does your mum do, anyway?”

I didn't really have an answer. As far as I could tell, she went to conferences and trade shows and taught people how to use software in order to sell it to them, and then went to their business or wherever and taught them how to use it some more. Sales and training is what she called it.

Evidently, whatever it was she sold was not needed on the coast of Maine.

Mom tried to overcompensate. I woke up Saturday morning and smelled pancakes. Not just pancakes, but blueberry pancakes made with blueberries we'd picked over the summer and frozen. There was bacon, too, from pigs raised on Swift Island, and orange juice and hot chocolate with whipped cream. “Wow,” I said when I shuffled downstairs.

“I was just feeling a little festive this morning,” she said.

She dropped three pancakes onto a plate and made a frame of bacon around it. She put it in front of me with a flourish. I doused it with maple syrup and started eating.

I was about a third of the way through the second pancake, my mouth full, when she cleared her throat. “There's something I need to talk to you about,” she said, then took a drink from her coffee cup.

“What?” I said through the pancakes.

“Ruth,” she said. “It's a little bit awkward. Really it's my fault. I should have been more open about all this.”

I swallowed. “What is it, Mom?”

“I think you're getting old enough for a bra.”

I couldn't help but look down at my chest. It was a straight line down from where my neck hit my body to my waist, as if I'd been cut from one smooth piece of paper. “Not necessary,” I said.

“Well, sure, maybe not completely necessary, not yet. But you'll grow. I was a late bloomer, too.”

I raised my eyebrows. It was Mom who carried me in her belly, but they never told me whose egg it was.

“I'm not sure about Mum. We can ask her when we videoconference tonight.”

“That's okay.”

“Oh, she won't be embarrassed at all. She's much better about this sort of thing than I am. Which is funny, I suppose, since I'm the doctor.”

“No, I mean, that's okay. I don't want a bra.”

She fingered a piece of bacon. “Are you sure?”

“I'm sure.”

I thought of Lena and how it was like our thing now: two bra-less girls. I didn't know if I wanted to have a thing with Lena or not, but I wasn't ready to cut off that option.

“Do other girls wear bras?”

I sighed. Mom could not be more obvious. Charlotte. She was talking about Charlotte. I could just see her running into Eliot and Alan and them telling her how they went shopping for a bra for Charlotte. It would be a great, uproarious fish-out-of-water tale, and Mom would be laughing, but the whole time she'd be thinking,
I haven't gotten a bra for Ruth! I must get a bra for Ruth!

I took another bite of my pancakes. It nearly lodged in my throat when I realized a much worse scenario: Charlotte told her dads I was one of the only girls in the sixth grade who wasn't wearing a bra.

“Some do,” I said. “But not all.”

“Okay.” She still held the bacon, flipping it from side to side on her plate.

“Okay,” I agreed. Conversation over.

“Maybe we should go and buy one or two just in case.”

Conversation not over.

“We could get training bras. They're like undershirts, but they cut off right below your breasts.”

“I know what training bras are.”

“It's just that with this weather and my schedule, I don't know when we're going to have another chance.”

Oh, my God, it's a bra emergency!

Mom caught me smiling. “So we'll go?” she asked.

I had wanted to go to the library to see if I could find another note, or maybe even cajole Charlotte into giving up the one she had. But Mom's face looked about as excited as it did when I came down the stairs on Christmas morning. “Sure,” I said. “We'll go.”

When we got on the highway going down toward Topsham, I figured we were going to go to Old Navy, or, preferably, Target, where we would go to the underwear section lodged between women's clothes and the baby food, and I'd grab a couple of training bras and we'd go to the checkout, where I'd make sure to pick the line with the middle-aged woman and not the teenaged boy and then we would be on our way. Maybe I would be able to convince her to take us to the movies or one of those big chain restaurants with limitless bread.