“Why not?”
“I’m just not very hungry,” I say defensively. “And I’ve got to get up early to train.”
“Which is it?” asks Nicole.
“What do you mean?”
“You gave us two excuses,” she says as she stops sweeping. “Which one’s the real one?”
“First of all, they’re not ‘excuses.’ They’re answers. And both happen to be real.”
Nicole turns to look at Sophie; they share a brief psychic-twins moment. Then she turns back to me and says, “You’re shutting us out, Izzy. I don’t know why, but you are.”
“Just because I’m not in the mood for nachos? That means I’m shutting you out?”
“Now you’re ‘not in the mood.’ That’s excuse number three. Who are you trying to convince? Us or you?”
She walks over until she’s standing just across the rack from me. “You haven’t hung out with us once this week. We get that you’re busy when you’re with Ben. We’ll cut you that slack. But since he’s out of town, we thought the three of us would do some stuff together.”
“Yeah,” says Sophie. “We kind of figured we could cheer you up.”
“I don’t need cheering up,” I say curtly. “I’m fine.”
Nicole goes to reply, but instead she just shakes her head and resumes sweeping. “Whatever.”
“What is it?”
“I’ve known you forever,” she says. “Whatever this is, it’s not fine.”
“Well, you’re entitled to your opinion.”
She looks at me and nods. “And you disagree?”
“Very much so.”
“Then why don’t we take this to the register.”
I cannot stress how much I am not in the mood for having my love life taken to the register. “Let’s not. The last thing I need right now is the two of you ganging up on me.”
“Excuse me,” says Sophie. “You feel terrible. We understand that. But if you think we would ‘gang up’ on you, then we’ve got real problems, because that’s not who we are.”
I know she’s right and I regret saying it, but the truth is there’s nothing they can say that will make me feel better. Plus, I worry if I tell them everything that’s on my mind, it will only make things worse.
“It was a poor choice of words,” I offer. “I apologize.”
“It’s us,” says Nicole. “You don’t need to apologize. You just need to talk.”
I don’t respond. I just keep rehanging shirts that were left in the fitting rooms. I figure they’ll give up, blast some music, and let me get back to my mope-a-thon. But they wait me out. There’s no music or questions, just the sound of the hangers as I slide them on the rack. Finally, I give in.
“You really want to know what’s bothering me?” I say.
“We really do,” says Sophie.
“He’s only been gone for five days and I’m fully mental. What happens a month from now when he’s gone for good? And what happens a month after that when this shop closes? What am I going to do? Where am I going to go? I can’t just sit in my room and cry all the time.”
“Is that what you’ve been doing, sweetie?” asks Sophie. “Have you been crying in your room at night?”
“Maybe,” I grudgingly admit. “But I’m serious. What should I do? I can’t figure it out.”
I look at them and wait for answers. I can see that Nicole is carefully considering her words before responding, “I don’t know.”
I wait for more, but she doesn’t say anything else. “‘I don’t know’? That’s your answer?”
“That’s the truth,” she says. “I don’t know what you should do. But I do know that whatever it is, you’re going to do it with me. You’ll be with me at school and wherever it is that we decide to hang out once this place is gone, and we’ll figure it out together.”
“It’s awful,” Sophie adds. “Ben’s great and he’s totally into you. You’re such a cute couple, so we get that it’s not fair. But don’t forget that you were already awesome before he came into your life. And you’ll still be awesome after he goes back home. Maybe even more so because he’s opened up parts of you that we’ve never seen.”
I raise a skeptical eyebrow. “Like what?”
“Like the fact that pre-Ben Izzy would never have entered the King of the Beach,” says Nicole. “She should’ve, but she wouldn’t have. Ben gave you confidence. He made it so you believe in yourself.”
This is something that I had not thought of. “You might be right about that.”
“Of course we are,” says Sophie. “We’re your best friends. We know things about you that you don’t even know about you.”
“Is that so?” I ask, amused.
“Yes, it is,” she says. “Like for instance, right now I know that you’ve still only told us part of what’s bothering you. We already knew that you missed him and were unsure about the future. This is not that kind of moping. This goes deeper. What else is it?”
Somehow the vibe has gone from interrogation room to confessional. They really are great friends, and I know that I can tell them anything. Still, I have to take a couple of deep breaths before I can say it.
“I love him.”
They raise their eyebrows at this announcement, but neither says anything, so I continue.
“It’s not a crush. I don’t just like him. I am in love with him. And I know that I have no experience and don’t know what I’m talking about. But I also know what I know. I love him and I can’t even tell him.”
“Why not?” asks Nicole.
“He broke up with his last girlfriend because she was in love with him and he didn’t feel the same way in return. He said he didn’t think it was fair to her. I can’t take that chance. It’s bad enough that I’m going to lose him at the end of the month.”
It’s amazing how relieved I am to have that off my chest. I can’t tell Ben, but I can tell the two of them. Saying it out loud makes it seem real and not just something floating around in my mind.
“If you really feel that way, then I think you should tell him,” Sophie says. “You should at least give him the chance to say it back to you. But that’s for you to decide, not us. That’s well beyond the powers of whoever controls the register.”
“Does that mean you’re ruling in my favor?” I ask.
“You’re guilty of shutting out your best friends. There’s no doubt about that. But I’m going to let you off with a warning and a reminder that we’re your biggest fans. All we ever want to do is make things better.”
“Okay, I know that. I won’t forget.” I’m relieved to have shared my secret and relieved that she’s not going to make me do something stupid. “I also appreciate the fact that you resisted your recent trend of overstepping your bounds when you’re on the register.”
“I’m not done yet,” she says.
I shake my head and turn to Nicole. “I knew it was too good to be true.”
“This court also finds you guilty of another crime, and I’m afraid it’s one that cannot simply be ignored.”
“And what is that?” I ask.
“Failure to dance to ‘The Rockafeller Skank.’”
This makes me laugh for the first time all week. “Please tell me it’s another warning.”
“Oh, no, no, no,” she says. “We are going to stay here until we see . . . the Albatross. And don’t just go through the motions. We want to see it performed with the passion and pageantry it deserves.”
The Albatross is a goofy, over-the-top dance we came up with one night when we were doing inventory. It involves strutting around while holding your arms fully extended like wings. It’s exactly the type of thing that you do when you’re being silly with your friends, yet under no circumstance would you do anywhere else.
Sophie presses play and the music starts blaring again.
They just stand there with their arms crossed, looking at me expectantly.
“No way,” I say. “You can stare at me all you want,” I continue. “Because I am not going to do this.”