Read an Excerpt

1  
Kassey    
Elowyn Eden and I became best friends.   We met the summer before were were going into seventh grade, when we were hospital roommates in the orthopedic wing, waiting for the same surgeon to fix broken bones. I'd busted up my arm playing volleyball (my favorite sport), and Elowyn had done a numberon her left leg skating. She asked me, "Are you scared?"   "About the operation? Not a bit," I said, then dropped my water pitcher because my hands were shaking so much I couldn't pour water into a cup. The pitcher splatted on the floor, and after we watched the water spread everywhere, Elowyn raised an imaginarymicrophone and said, "Cleanup on aisle four."   We started laughing and couldn't stop. Hours later, we'd talked ourselves hoarse, only stopping long enough to eat dinner. Elowyn and her parents had just moved from South Carolina to Alpharetta, a suburb of Atlanta and my hometown since Mom and Dad splitwhen I was three. Turned out Elowyn lived in a gated garden-home community five blocks over from our house. "So tell me what I'm facing at my new school," she demanded.   We were going to be in the same middle school, so I gave her an earful about who was who and what was what of the kids I knew would be our classmates. She took notes on a hospital napkin. That was so Elowyn--she made lists and took notes like nobody I'dever met. By the time we left the hospital, we were each wearing a cast signed with the other's name and phone number. She called first, and because I was more mobile than she was, Mom took me to her house a few days later.   Her room was awesome! Her mother--"Call me Terri, not Mrs. Eden," she insisted with a smile--was an artsy-craftsy type, and the whole house looked like something out of a decorating magazine, with lots of bright walls and piles of pretty pillows. Elowyn'sroom had hand-painted vines and fields of flowers growing up the walls. The room was blue and yellow, the flowers pale purple. My house was beige; my room seemed dreary. I'd hung posters, but the space was quite bland.   "It's supposed to be the French countryside," Elowyn said. "France is my favorite place in the world. So romantic. I'm going to Paris on my honeymoon."   "Are you getting married anytime soon?" I joked.   "Someday_._._._and he'll be so handsome. Maybe I'll meet a French exchange student and marry him."   I hadn't thought about getting married to anybody, much less someone from a particular country. I walked to the wall and touched the painted flowers. They looked so real. "What kind of flowers?"   "Lavender. Can't you just see whole fields of it? And I love the way it smells. It's my favorite perfume." She spritzed the air with a bottle from her dresser, and the scent was wonderful.   Elowyn seemed so grown-up to me. I didn't have a special fragrance except for the strawberry-scented shampoo I used. I kept looking around her perfect bedroom. "Your mom's talented."   "That's true. She's one of a kind, but it's my daddy who understands me best."   Elowyn's dad was a lawyer, a Southern man who said goofy things like "Don't get off the porch if you can't run with the big dogs" and "Wake up and smell the coffee." I didn't get the point of most of his sayings, but one thing I did get: Elowyn had himwrapped around her little finger. He called her Sugar Plum. I admit, the one thing I ever envied about Elowyn was her relationship with her dad, because I'd grown up with mine long gone.   My mom was a claims adjuster for a huge insurance company and worked long hours, so we were both happy when I fell in with Elowyn and had someplace to hang. I'd grown up with Mom working and me going to day care. No biggie. When I turned twelve, I gotto come straight home from school and stay by myself doing homework and watching TV. I liked being around Elowyn and her family--so much like the families I saw on old television shows. Terri always met us at the door, and was always working on some project--gourmetcooking, painting watercolor landscapes. Elowyn and I traded books we loved, and after our casts came off, we parked ourselves at the community pool, turning our bodies buttery tan and swimming to rebuild our shriveled limbs.   In seventh grade, I lured her into volleyball, and between us we played a wicked game. Elowyn was left-handed, so few people on opposing teams could return her hook ball. I was a power server. The coaches loved us.   We took up another habit the summer between seventh and eighth grades.   "How'd you like to come on our family vacation?" she asked me.   "Vacation?"   "A trip."   "I know what a vacation is." Mom and I rarely took vacations. If we traveled it was to see Grandma and Grandpa in Michigan. Talk about a long drive! Otherwise, we just stayed home, because Mom was tired and because vacations cost money we didn't have.   Elowyn sat with a bounce on her bed. "Do you know what it's like to be trapped for a week with my family doing tourist stuff somewhere I don't want to go to in the first place?"   "No idea," I said, but thinking, Lucky you!   "B-o-r-i-n-g. Anyway, I got this idea that if I took a friend with me, I'd have a lot more fun than just hanging with Mom and Dad."   "You have fun parents."   She rolled her eyes. "Oh sure. We run around, but we never go anyplace cool."   I didn't get it.   "So," she went on, "I asked Mom if I could bring you along."   "You want me to come?"   "You're my best friend."   "And you're mine."   "Then it makes sense, don't you think? We'll have a ball doing things together, and Mom and Dad will have each other and they won't feel like they have to keep me entertained. It'll be a blast!"   "I--I don't know if Mom will let me._._._."   She held up her hand. "My mom will handle it."   And Terri did handle it. In August, I went with Elowyn and her parents to Destin, Florida, to a beach house they rented overlooking the ocean on sugary white sand. Elowyn's parents played golf and we lounged on the beach flirting with cute guys. Betweeneighth and ninth grades, I went with them to a resort in Hilton Head, South Carolina, where Elowyn and I caught the interest of two guys who said they were in college. We sneaked out of our room adjoining her parents' and met the guys by the pool in the moonlight.My guy, Todd, kissed me until my head spun and my blood ran hot. It was all new to me. Then he decided to put his hand inside my top. I jerked away. "Don't!"   "Why not?" His voice was not nice.   Shivers of excitement shot through me, but I pulled away. "I--I said no, so it's no."   "What are you? Some lousy tease?" His face, so handsome and romantic in the light of the moon, turned snarly.   I shoved hard and he went backward into the pool. "Let's go!" I cried to Elowyn, and she broke free of an embrace from her guy and ran with me for the pool gate and the patio door to our room, which we'd left unlocked. The guys called us some names butthey didn't follow.   We locked the door and fell back on the bed, breathing hard. I was scared. Elowyn was laughing. "Wow!"   "Shhh!" I said. "Don't wake your folks."   "Never happen." She raised herself up on her elbows. "Why'd you run?"   I told her.   "You know guys want to do more if you start kissing them."   "Not without permission. Don't you agree?"   "Older guys especially expect stuff. You know that."   My face got hot.   "It's okay," she said. "We'll never see them again anyway."   "You think?"   "Positive. What guy wants to be with a girl who almost drowns him?"   We dissolved into a fit of giggles.     In ninth grade, we entered Alpha High School, a place so large we needed maps to find our way around the buildings. Fortunately we made the junior varsity volleyball team, which gave us a leg up in the dog-eat-dog world of incoming freshmen. Once the teamstarted winning, people began to know who we were. Not a bad place to be. And then, with little warning, my cozy little world shifted.   Elowyn got a boyfriend.        

2  
Kassey    
The boy was Wyatt Nolan, a ninth grader with curly brown hair and dark brown eyes. Elowyn pointed him out to me on the basketball court in February during a game where we were sitting in the bleachers cheering for our team. "What do you think of him?"she asked over the noise of the crowd.   He was a purple and gold blur running downcourt. "I can't see his face."   "It's gorgeous," she said. "Don't you think he looks French?"   "I don't know. What difference does it make?"   "He's in my French class."   "Okay. Does that make him more adorable?"   She tilted her chin at me and smiled. "It does."   She hooked him. By the end of basketball season, she was wearing his JV jacket and they were texting each other ten times a day. Not that cells are allowed at Alpha, but she managed to communicate with him. She and Wyatt were inseparable. Which meant Igot shoved aside. Okay, maybe not shoved, but I definitely took a backseat in her life priorities. Elowyn was immersed in this guy. At first, I moped around feeling sorry for myself. When your best friend gets all preoccupied with "love" and there's no roomfor anyone else, your feelings get hurt.   Our friendship caught a break the summer between our freshman and sophomore years because Wyatt went to basketball camp, then to Indiana to visit his grandparents. I didn't miss him. Elowyn did. Her family's "vacation" was to Clearwater, Florida, and Iwas invited--just like old times. I was ready to have fun, but Elowyn dragged around halfheartedly. I couldn't even lure her into the ice cream parlor for her favorite comfort food, Chunky Monkey. The girl had a bodacious sweet tooth. "I'm buying," I said."Waffle cones and toppings!" All she talked about was how much she missed Wyatt.   When I mentioned it, she went off on me. "You don't know what it's like to be in love."   I kept my thoughts to myself.   "You should get a boyfriend."   "No one I like," I said. It was true. Guys our age at Alpha seemed immature to me. Deep down, I felt shy about guys. I never had a dad around to talk to. Men were not really part of my life.   Elowyn and Wyatt talked on their cells for an hour every night while I watched TV or lay on the bed tossing a volleyball into the air endlessly. If they were still attached to each other next summer, I told myself I was staying home instead of going onher vacation.   Once we got home, Elowyn and I went back-to-school shopping and that was fun. She had a calendar on her bedroom wall with the days marked off until Wyatt returned. "What's this?" I asked the first time I saw it. "I used to mark the days before Christmasoff when I was a kid, but I outgrew it."   She stuck out her tongue. "Don't be mean."   When school started, Elowyn and Wyatt were again joined at the hip and I was left to figure out my life on my own. They never really included me and I didn't want to be a tagalong anyway. But a few months into the new school year, cracks started to formin their "love."     "I hate him!" Elowyn said, coming into the gym to dress for volleyball practice. Our season started after football season and Coach had us practicing every day after school.   "Who?"   "Wyatt." She slammed open her locker next to mine.   "I thought you loved him."   "I'm mad at him."   "For what?"   "He wants to hang with his friends Friday night instead of going out with me."   That didn't seem like a "hate-able" offense to me. "You can't go out Saturday night instead?"   "He has to work."   I sat down to tie my sneakers. "You two go out all the time. Maybe he needs some guy time."   "So you're on his side?"   "Stop it. You're my friend."   She pouted. "I don't like being blown off."   "Tell me about it." My comment, meant to express how she often made me feel, went over her head.   Coach's whistle blew, signaling that we were all expected on the court.   "Go on," Elowyn said, looking dejected.   "I'll hate Wyatt too," I said, turning backward and moving toward the door. This wasn't hard since he'd never made any effort to even talk to me.   I never got the chance to hate him, though, because they'd made up by suppertime. The trouble was, problems kept surfacing. If Wyatt broke a date, they'd stop speaking for two days. If Elowyn shunned him in the halls, he'd sit with his buds during lunchinstead of her. She'd ignore his calls and texts. I couldn't keep track of who was mad at whom and why. Then one December day, Wyatt came up to me while I was fiddling with my hall locker. He slammed the palm of his hand so hard against the metal locker besidemine that I jumped a foot. "What?" I screeched. "Are you trying to give me a heart attack?"   "Elowyn is psycho!"   "Don't talk about my friend like that." She was usually the one who beat a path to me with a list of gripes about him. I hesitated, then asked, "Now what?"   "I walked Jan Frickie to class and El saw us and had a meltdown. I mean it was nothing. We're in the same class and we were just walking."   "The blowup--public or private?"   "Private."   "That's good."   "She won't even speak to me. Ignores my texts and calls."   I sighed. "Anything going on with you and Jan?"   "No way! El's the one. She's crazy jealous. Sometimes I feel like she's swallowing me whole."   He looked so dejected, I felt kind of sorry for him. "Any ideas how I can fix this?" he asked. "She's really wacked-out and you can help. Please?"   The bell rang and I knew I was going to be late. Inspiration hit me. "Text her in French," I said, tossing books into my locker and shutting the door.   "Are you kidding?"   "Try it. Make it romantic," I said, jogging away.   My advice worked, and before I knew it, I became the most-to-be-pitied of human life-forms: the go-between.     Elowyn turned sixteen on December twentieth. She got her license the same day, and, her dad gave her the keys to her own car. "Birthday and Christmas," he told her. She was jumping up and down and screaming; I was staring, awestruck. I wouldn't be sixteenuntil March and I was certain there was no car in my future. I'd have to share Mom's old Honda.