“Kara, unless you guys got back together in the last hour, this conversation is over.”
The muscles in her jaw clench, her face turning red and blotchy. I’ve never thought of Kara as a bruiser, but other than Friday night at the concessions stand, we haven’t spoken in three years. What do I know about her anymore? That her best friend bailed on her and never explained or apologized? That a few months later she caught said best friend making out with her soon-to-be boyfriend in the closet at some stupid party? And that three nights ago a near-identical scenario played itself out in Luke’s living room?
Shared history and risk of suspension aside, I know what I’d want to do.
“I have to go.” I look down, unable to meet her eyes again.
“I can’t believe you!” She swipes the flyers from my arms. A snowbank of white papers slips across the hall, lost in the boot-slush undertow of the crowd. “Whatever you think you’re doing with the Wolves, you better forget—”
“I know you didn’t just threaten my best friend.” Dani appears at my side, calm and quiet, steady, her eyebrows raised in defiance as she takes another step toward Kara. “Because I don’t think you’re that kind of girl, so I probably misunderstood you. Right?”
Kara looks from Dani to me and back again, eyes glazed with the same tears gathering in mine. She shakes her head and slinks away, and when the crowd finally scatters, Dani scoops up the cupcake flyers, takes my hand, and leads me to the exit.
Dani passes me a cinnamon-smelling Mocha Morris from Sharon’s Café, the cat-themed coffeehouse near school, and leans against the bench at Bluebird Park. On this cheery, once-a-decade winter anomaly, the sky is the color of sapphires and the entire world is covered in diamond dust, snow sparkling under the rare, white sun. A yellow lab bounds toward us and I lean forward to scratch behind his ears; I have to hold my drink above his head to keep him from slobbering it all up.
“Feel better?” Dani asks.
“A little.” I sip the mocha and let the hot liquid coat my insides. “I don’t know why Kara still gets to me.”
“I don’t know why she’s being such a bitch. No offense, but was she always so … you know.” Dani swipes the air with a cat-claw motion. “Rawr! No wonder you ditched her.”
“It wasn’t like that. I … it was all my fault.” I take a deep, icy breath. There’s something about Bluebird that forces me to tell the truth. Maybe it’s the trees, stripped of their leafy coats, naked and gray as bone. Or the dogs, living only for right now, running when they feel like running, chasing one another when they’re in the mood for company, no thought wasted on drama and cover-ups. Maybe it’s just this place, made sacred by our regular picnic pilgrimages in the summer, a safe haven whose hills I wouldn’t dare pollute with lies and schemes.
I tell Dani the whole story about the Empire Games and the party with me and Will, how Kara liked him first, how I was more excited about finally getting my first kiss than I was about staying behind that unspoken line that best friends—even ex–best friends—are never supposed to cross.
Dani wasn’t the one I hurt, but it still feels like a confession. Guilt creeps over my skin as I speak of my past failures as a best friend, and for the first time in the history of our relationship, I can’t look her in the eye.
“I deserve it,” I say. “I was a total jerk.”
“Honestly?” Dani squeezes my knee. “I think you’ve beat yourself up for too long. I’m not saying it wasn’t messed up—if you pulled that stuff with me, I’d kick your ass. The point is, it happened. It’s over. You were both younger, and you had a lot of bad stuff going on. She got together with Will and then she dumped him anyway.” Dani sips her mocha, kicking at the snow beneath our bench. “Whatever happened to forgive and forget? All that happy holidays, give peace a chance, can’t we all just get along stuff?”
“I never told her how sorry I was. Never even tried to explain. I wanted to, but … I lost it. I couldn’t. And now it’s been so long …”
“You could try to talk to her, though. I mean, I’m not telling you what to do. Just that if it’s really bothering you, and you want to tell her you’re sorry—”
“No. Sometimes it’s, like, too little too late.” I think back to that day with the cheetah bra, the drive home from Luby Arena with Mom and Dad and all that unspoken tension, the endless shouting match that exploded as soon as they thought Bug and I were asleep. I think back to the days that followed, my father’s bags piled by the door like some cheesy brokenhearted country song. The phone call that attempted to explain why this was better for everyone. The news of his planned move out west, the fairy-tale promises that we’d see each other for holidays and vacations and all the important stuff in between. The e-mails and blogs, detailing his perfect new life. And never once did I hear an apology. Would “sorry” have made any difference? Does it ever? It’s just a word. One word against a thousand actions.
A springer spaniel nudges my knee, cocking his head as if he’s waiting to hear my rationalizations, too. I scratch his ears and swirl the hot liquid in my cup until a thin curl of steam rises from the hole in the lid.
“I have to nail that scholarship, Dani.” My voice breaks when I say it, but I realize now how crucial it is, here in this place of truth on a bench beneath the trees. “Do you get it now? Why I have to focus on stuff with Will and the team? I have to keep training. I have to win. It’s my way out. Everywhere I look in this town, everyone I see, it just reminds me of the biggest screwup of my life.”
“The Empire Games?” she asks. “Kara?”
“That stuff, yeah, but even what happened before. I’m the one that showed my mom the bra. She must’ve already known Dad was cheating, but that’s what made it real. I knew. And the second I dropped it on her dresser, she couldn’t deny it anymore. Why didn’t I keep pretending for her? Maybe they’d still be together …” I shake my head and look over the path that leads to the silver maples on the western edge of the park. Their pale branches bend toward one another in a delicate archway, narrow and knobby like finger bones encased in ice. A cold breeze rolls through and the trees shift soundlessly, hardly moving at all.
Dani follows my gaze across the bright white park, eyebrows furrowing into jagged, thoughtful lines. “It wasn’t the bra, Hud. Come on. Even if your mom never saw it, she had to know what was going on. You said it yourself. Your dad was cheating on her. Things were already messed up, maybe for a long time before that. It’s not your fault.”
“I know it’s not my fault that he cheated. Just that he left.”
“No, that doesn’t—”
“You know what I remember most about that day? It wasn’t the bra, or even how pathetic my parents looked in the stands. It was what my dad said on the drive home. He kept telling me not to worry, that there’d be another chance. But it was the way he said it. Like he wasn’t really talking about skating. It was like he was trying to convince himself that it wasn’t the end of our family, even though he obviously wanted out. And I kept thinking, all the way home while Mom wasn’t saying anything, and all night when I crawled into Bug’s bed and covered his ears so he wouldn’t hear them fighting … I kept thinking that if I’d stuck it out, if I’d just done my best and won that event, that maybe it would’ve given my father something to root for. A reason to stay.”
Dani and I sit in silence for a long time, watching a pair of dalmatians romp on the path, their tails flinging snow all around them.
“Hudson, no one can be your reason to stay. You have to want it. Your father wanted to leave, and you guys couldn’t be his reason not to. Harsh, but there it is.”
I down the last of my mocha. She’s right. And despite our friendship, despite my mother and my baby bird of a little brother, despite the town that’s all I’ve known my entire life, I want to leave, too. More than Will and hockey, more than the mistakes of my past, more than canceling ladies’ night, if anything can come between me and my best friend, it’s that.