Best Friend Next Door

  I stare at Hannah. “Sophie?”

  “Sophie,” Hannah says, gesturing to the smiley face on my wall, “who used to live here. Her parents agreed to fly her down from Canada so she could join us for camp.”

  “Your best friend,” I say quietly.

  “My other best friend,” Hannah says.

  Suddenly, I start worrying all over again. What if we get to Deepwoods and Hannah and Sophie are so happy to see each other that they leave me out and—

  “Emme,” Hannah says, tapping my arm, “you’re doing it.”

  “Doing what?” I ask. I have no idea what she’s talking about.

  “You’re worrying. You’ve been worrying like crazy recently.”

  “How did you know?”

  Hannah laughs. “I’m the queen of worrying. It takes one to know one. Listen. You will love Sophie. She will love you. I promise. Three is better than two.”

  “Are you sure?” I ask.

  “Sure I’m sure.”

  “So what about your toenails? Have you stopped multicolor painting them?”

  Hannah rolls off her socks. “Orange and yellow,” she says, grinning. “I did it this morning.”

  I have to admit that makes me feel better.

  Hannah grabs my glitter wand off my desk. She’s always playing with it when she’s in my room. “Let me be the worrier, okay? I worry enough for both of us.”

  “You’d do that for me?”

  Hannah taps the wand in the center of my forehead. “Your wish is my command.”

  A few minutes later, I’m sketching on the floor and Hannah is flipping through some of my books. “You know how I’m supposed to pick the baby’s middle name?” she asks. “I’m thinking Levi because you can rearrange the letters and spell evil.”

  I have to laugh. “Maybe keep that brilliant idea to yourself. By the way, those letters can also spell live.”

  Hannah snorts. “I like evil more.”

  Sophie and I have been talking on the phone a lot recently, planning for our long weekend at Deepwoods Winter Camp. She’s flying in on Friday evening and my parents are driving us to the camp on Saturday. I can’t believe she’s taking an airplane by herself. She said that a flight attendant will be chaperoning her, but it still seems so grown up. Sophie’s extra excited because she gets to miss school on Monday and Tuesday. I hadn’t thought about that before, but they don’t have the same Presidents’ Day vacation in Canada. They also don’t have Fourth of July or our Thanksgiving, either.

  Two days before Sophie arrives, she tells me, “Oh, I have a pink streak in my hair now. Lots of girls in Ottawa do.”

  It’s hard to picture Sophie with a streak in her hair. And pink, of all colors! She’s Korean and has incredibly long black hair that she’s only trimmed four times in her life.

  “And it’s short,” she says. “I got my hair cut to my shoulders with a slope from back to front.”

  “Really?” I ask. I pictured Sophie exactly the same as the day we said good-bye last August. “Mine is long now.”

  “No! I totally can’t picture you with long hair.”

  “Yeah. I can even wear it in a ponytail.”

  The day before the trip, Sophie says on the phone, “I’ve been reading about the camp and I can’t wait to try ice fishing. And everyone in Ottawa ice-skates. It sounds like you can skate to the fishing site at the camp. I might even bring my own skates.”

  Ugh.

  For one, I wouldn’t consider fishing even in the summer. It freaks me out to see a fish’s mouth punctured with a hook, its glassy eyes staring out from either side of its head. For two, fishing AND ice-skating? No, thanks. Put me on a sled and push me down a steep hill, please. Oh, and for three, Sophie is not the outdoorsy type. I was surprised she said yes to Deepwoods. My dad’s friend’s son went and it sounds like a lot of clomping around in boots, building campfires. Sophie’s more of a stay-inside-and-do-makeovers kind of girl.

  I swallow hard and then ask, “You like skating now?”

  I’m lying on the floor of the former guest room. When my parents aren’t home I come in here and turn on the giraffe mobile and watch it wobble in circles. Usually I find it soothing. But other times I think about the baby actually arriving. Then my throat gets tight like I can’t breathe and I have to leave the nursery immediately.

  “Yeah, I love ice-skating now,” Sophie says, laughing. “I know! I’ve become more adventuresome, if that’s what you’re wondering. Everyone in—”

  “Everyone in Ottawa is adventuresome?” I ask.

  “How did you know?”

  “Lucky guess.”

  The next afternoon, my dad and I meet Sophie at the airport. Margo is tired from being a million months pregnant, so she stays home to nap. As Sophie walks through the gate, holding a pillow in one hand and a patchwork duffel bag in the other, I break into a huge smile.

  “Soph!” I shout, waving and running toward her.

  “Han!” she calls back to me.

  We hug and then we pull back and check each other out. Something feels different about her. Her hair is short, just like she said, with a pink streak in the front. When she said pink she was playing it down. It’s more like electric fuchsia. She’s wearing eye shadow and lip gloss, which isn’t new for Sophie. She’s always experimented with makeup. So it’s not her hair or makeup that surprises me. It’s something else, something I can’t put my finger on.

  “I love your long hair,” Sophie says. “You’d look awesome with a streak in it like mine. Maybe lime green? We could even do it tonight before—”

  “Not so fast,” my dad says, laughing. “I can’t have you and Hannah both looking like teenagers on me.”

  Sophie and I roll our eyes. Okay, so maybe things will feel normal between us after all.

  On the car ride back to my house, Sophie keeps pointing out the window—at the mall, the bookstore, the YMCA, Greeley Elementary.

  “They’re all still here!” she says over and over.

  “Yep, still here,” I keep answering.

  My dad slows at a light and turns the radio to a music station.

  “It’s weird being back,” Sophie says.

  “Like how?”

  “Like it’s all familiar, but then it’s not. Almost like I’ve never been here before. I know that sounds strange.”

  Of course that sounds strange! Sophie lived next door to me in Greeley for almost ten years. How can she feel like she’s never been here?

  Finally I ask, “How was the flight?” Boring question. But it’s the best I could come up with.

  “Fine,” Sophie says. “You know.”

  “What did they give you for snacks?”

  Sophie shrugs. “I think pretzels. Or maybe snack mix. I wasn’t hungry.”

  We’re quiet for a while. There’s a commercial on the radio and then a song comes on. It’s a pop song and, of course, Sophie knows all the words. At least that’s one thing that hasn’t changed.

  On the drive up to Deepwoods the next day, I get carsick. That hasn’t happened since I was five or six. But we’re in the mountains and the roads are curvy and Sophie and I were flipping through a magazine. Suddenly my stomach lurches like I’m going to puke.

  “Can you pull over?” I whimper to my dad. He’s driving because Margo’s belly is so giant she can’t fit behind the steering wheel. “I’m going to be sick.”

  My dad steers onto the shoulder and Margo jumps out with me, holding my hair back while I hunch over the snowdrift. It’s bitter cold out here. I dry heave a little, but don’t actually throw up.

  Once I’m back in the car, I can’t stop shivering. I rest my head against the door and sip water from my bottle. Sophie offers me a piece of gum, but I don’t want anything in my mouth. For a while everyone is quiet, but then Margo lets out a yelp.

  “What is it?” my dad asks.

  “The baby kicked, Drew,” she says. “A big one.”

  “Are you sure it’s just one baby in there, Mrs. Stra
fel?” Sophie asks. “Are you sure it’s not twins?”

  “No!” I say, lifting my head up.

  “Or triplets?” Sophie asks. She grins devilishly and touches the pink streak in her hair. “Or maybe even quadruplets!”

  I whimper and flop back in my seat.

  “Did you forget to call me Margo?” Margo says to Sophie. “Not Mrs. Strafel. And yes, he’s definitely just one. They do ultrasounds to figure that out.”

  Ultrasounds. Alien baby. Not my favorite topic.

  “Speaking of twins,” my dad says, “people call Hannah and Emme the Og Twins. Sophie, you’re going to love Emme.”

  “Og Twins?” Sophie asks, wrinkling her nose. “What does that even mean?”

  “Nothing,” I say, shaking my head. I don’t feel like getting into the whole story about how we used to write on our legs at swim meets. I’m worried if I talk too much I’ll have to puke. “It’s hard to explain.”

  “Am I going to like Emme?” Sophie asks me. “I feel jealous that she lives in my house.”

  Emme and her moms were visiting friends in Boston for the past few days, so she and Sophie haven’t met each other yet. Emme’s moms are dropping her off at Deepwoods on their way back to Greeley. She might even be at the camp already.

  “Emme is wonderful,” my dad says.

  “And don’t start the jealousy thing,” Margo says. “You girls will all get along great.”

  Sophie shrugs like she’s not so sure. I close my eyes. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all.

  Our cabin is called Icicles. That’s what our counselor, Meredith, tells us as Sophie and I trek across a path packed with snow. Deepwoods is in a valley, so it’s not as freezing cold as up on the main road. Meredith is probably twenty and has glasses and a hat with earflaps. Sophie and I are wearing our backpacks. Our suitcases will be delivered on a pickup truck later. Even though we’ll only be here for three days, we had to bring a ton of winter gear, like boots and snow pants and long underwear.

  “In the summer camp season, we call the cabin Sunflower,” Meredith says as she points to the lodge and the camp store and the sledding hill. “But we change the names in the winter. Icicles is for fifth-grade girls. We also have Snowball and Blizzard. That’s a boys’ cabin.”

  Sophie grins at me and raises her eyebrows. Huh? Does she like boys now? It’s strange how I can’t read her expressions anymore.

  When we get into Icicles, Meredith pulls off her hat and shakes out her long curly hair. She shows us where we hang our coats and snow pants, and the rack near the heater where we’ll dry our boots at night.

  “But don’t take off your boots now,” she says. “We’re going to head up to the main lodge in a few minutes for hot chocolate in front of the fireplace. That’s where we’ll have the welcome ceremony.”

  “Is Emme Hoffman-Shields here yet?” I ask.

  “She has a hyphenated name?” Sophie asks. She’s holding her pillow under one arm. For some reason, she insisted on bringing it all the way from Canada even though the camp said they’d be providing pillows.

  “She hasn’t arrived yet,” Meredith says, checking her list. “But speaking of Emme”—she turns to Sophie—“you two have been assigned to share a bunk bed. You can decide now whether you want the top or bottom bunk, or you can wait until she arrives.”

  My stomach flips. Oh, no. Please not the pukey feeling again.

  “What about me?” I ask. I thought I’d be in a bunk bed with one of them. After all, they’re my best friends.

  “The number of campers wasn’t even this year,” Meredith says, “so you’ll actually have a bed to yourself.” She smiles brightly in the way people do when they’re delivering bad news that they’re trying to package as good news. “That means you don’t have to battle it out for top or bottom bunk.”

  Meredith gestures to a lumpy-looking single bed off to one side of the cabin, way far away from the bunk beds, next to the doorway leading to the bathroom.

  “Single bed,” Sophie says. “Lucky.”

  But she says it in this way that she’s really thinking I didn’t get so lucky.

  A few minutes later, Emme walks into the door of Icicles with a pillow under her arm. She brought a pillow, too? The next thing I notice is that Emme has a streak of blue in her hair, just in front of her left ear. She got a streak in her hair, too? We haven’t talked in a few days since she’s been in Boston. I hadn’t even told her about Sophie’s pink streak.

  “Surprise!” Emme says to me. “I had my streak done at a salon yesterday. What do you think?”

  “Nice,” I say, shrugging. I glance over at Sophie. “This is Emme,” I say. Then I turn to Emme and say, “This is Sophie.”

  Emme notices the pink streak in Sophie’s hair and Sophie notices the blue streak in Emme’s hair and they both start laughing.

  “I love your hair!” Emme says to Sophie. “Hannah didn’t say you had pink in it.”

  I thought Emme hated pink.

  “We hadn’t talked,” I say.

  “I love your hair, too! You have such a cute bob and I love the blue,” Sophie says to Emme. “You went to a salon for it? Lucky! I had to do mine at home. And I love that you’re living in my old bedroom.”

  I thought Sophie was jealous of Emme taking over her house.

  “I’ve heard everything about you,” Emme says to Sophie. “Did you hear I kept your smiley face on my bedroom wall?”

  Sophie squeals. “Really? That’s so cool! Why didn’t you tell me, Hannah?”

  “You didn’t ask,” I say.

  “Did you know we’re sharing a bunk bed?” Sophie asks Emme.

  “Do you care whether you’re on the bottom or top bunk?” Emme asks.

  “Not really,” Sophie says.

  “Me neither!” Emme says.

  They both giggle and then they hug. They HUG. My two best friends have known each other for thirty-seven seconds and they’re hugging.

  As Emme and Sophie arrange their pillows on their beds, I sit on the edge of my misshapen mattress. It turns out my bed is also right under the sloped roof. If I’m not careful when I sit up, I’ll bonk my head.

  “Five minutes until the welcome ceremony,” Meredith says. A bunch of other girls have trickled into the bunk and she’s showing them around.

  I glance over at Emme and Sophie’s bunk bed area and I’m shocked to see them both taping up pictures of pandas on the wall. They both brought pictures of pandas?

  I push myself off the bed and walk over to them. “You like pandas now?” I ask Sophie.

  “Who doesn’t?” she says.

  Maybe me, I think darkly. Maybe I’ll be the only person in the world who hates the panda bear.

  On the way to the welcome ceremony, I pause to cinch the elastic on the top of my boot. When I catch up, Emme and Sophie have linked elbows. They’re singing a song about being made out of glue and sticking together.

  “What are you singing?” I ask.

  “Just something I heard on the drive from Boston,” Emme says. “Want me to teach you?”

  I shake my head. I consider reminding her of the song “Make New Friends (But Keep the Old).” Instead I stoop over and cinch my other boot tighter.

  At dinner, I sit across from Emme and Sophie. They don’t stop talking the entire time. It’s like they’re long-lost best friends. When the director stands up to make a speech, they both whistle instead of clap. At the evening sing-along after dinner, they get the other kids going in a round of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.” Forget about long-lost friends. They’re the exact same person!

  “What’s with the killer stare?” Sophie says as we’re walking over to the tables to sign up for tomorrow’s activities. For once, she and Emme aren’t stuck together like glue.

  “What killer stare?” I ask innocently. So maybe I was glaring a little, but I thought she was too busy bonding with Emme to notice.

  Sophie rolls her eyes like whatever and then grabs a pen and starts reading the
sign-up sheets.

  “Oooh, look,” Sophie says. “They have ice-skating tomorrow morning!”

  I’ve had enough. I squeeze through the crowd, zip up my coat, and walk to the camp store. Meredith told us that’s where they sell things like spare toothpaste and Deepwoods key chains and sweatshirts. They also have a computer you can use to email your parents. I sit on the hard wooden bench, log onto my email, and write to my dad and Margo.

  Hey,

  I don’t think I like it here. I’m sorry, but it’s true.

  Hannah

  I send the email and then head slowly back to the lodge. On the way, I hit my forehead on a low pine branch. An avalanche of snow pours down the back of my coat.

  I might actually hate this place.

  At seven thirty the next morning, a bugle plays “Reveille” over the camp loudspeaker. I sit up too quickly and whack the top of my head on the ceiling. Two head injuries in less than twelve hours. Nice.

  I glance across the cabin. Most girls are rubbing their eyes and pushing their hair out of their faces. But Emme and Sophie’s bunk bed is empty.

  The toilet flushes, rattling the water bottle on the shelf next to my bed.

  “Where are Emme and Sophie?” I ask Meredith as she steps out of the bathroom.

  “Polar bear ice-skating,” she says, twisting her curls into a loose bun. “They signed up for it last night after dinner. They’re having a picnic breakfast on the lake.”

  They’ve ice-skated onto the lake to eat breakfast? I can’t believe this winter camp was my parents’ idea. I should have said no right away!

  Meredith must see the look on my face because she says, “Don’t worry. I noticed that you didn’t sign up for a morning activity yet. After breakfast, we can get you fitted in skates and you can join them for ice fishing. What happened to your forehead? You have a red mark.”

  “Nothing.” I touch my head with my fingers. “I’m fine.”

  Meredith leans in closer and peers at my forehead. I try to keep my mouth from quivering. I suddenly feel like I’m going to cry.

  At breakfast, I sit with the other girls from my bunk, but I barely say anything. My toast is dry and the eggs taste like rubber. I wonder what Sophie and Emme are eating out there with the other polar bears.