Friend or Fiction Read online

  I paused and peeked at Dad again. Maybe I was imagining it, but his face looked a lot less ghost-y. It was even starting to look sort of normal.

  I kept going.

  The girl, Zoe, had olive skin, long dark hair, bright green eyes, and a heart-shaped birthmark above her left eyebrow. The second she came into Jade’s classroom, Jade could tell that Zoe would be super popular. She walked and smiled like someone who would do anything for the people she cared about, like she was awesome, and she knew it. It was like she’d strolled right out of one of those pop songs where the singers encourage people to be strong and powerful. Wherever she went, invisible glitter and confetti followed.

  But even in a whole classroom full of people staring at her with please-be-my-friend looks on their faces, it was as if Jade was the only one Zoe could see. She gave Jade this look that said we are going to be best friends forever and ever and ever no matter what. And when the teacher let Zoe choose where she wanted to sit, she went straight to the desk next to Jade’s, even though there were way better open seats, like the one close to the window and the one with the little bar under it for your feet.

  Jade watched as Zoe took out two sparkly blue pencils and set them on her desk. Zoe liked to have a spare, just like Jade did. In fact Jade had two of the same pencils on her desk. When Zoe looked over and noticed this, they giggled so hard that their teacher asked them to please go out into the hallway until they could calm themselves down.

  Jade grinned through her laughter. She’d never been in trouble before, but today it didn’t seem so bad. Nothing did.

  “I’m Zoe, by the way,” Zoe said to Jade once they caught their breath in the hall.

  “I know, the teacher just introduced you. I’m Jade.”

  “I know,” said Zoe.

  “How?” asked Jade.

  “Because you just told me!”

  They got the giggles all over again. Jade had the feeling it might be a while before they calmed themselves down enough to go back into the room. And that feeling was the best one she’d ever had.

  I stopped reading and looked at Dad again. His eyes were closed but he seemed calm, almost happy. His stomach rose and fell with every steady in-and-out breath. For a minute it felt like maybe we could still get that dog after all.

  “Do you feel better?” I asked.

  Dad opened his eyes. “Sure do,” he said.

  Maybe I felt better too.

  I knew my story wasn’t the cure for whatever was wrong with Dad or anything. It wasn’t medicine. It couldn’t actually have made him better. But what if it did, somehow?

  What if Zoe did?

  I’d written a ton of stories in my life, but none like this. There was something different about Zoe. And I knew, right there in the hospital room, this character was here to stay.

  Still, that Monday at school, I tried to talk to Nessa.

  “I didn’t want to leave,” I reminded her. “My dad is sick,” I said. “You’re still important to me.”

  But Nessa made that same sour face and walked away. Again.

  A couple weeks later, she moved to Ohio.

  It would have been nice to make up. To somehow stay friends. But that wasn’t how things worked for me. Even if we had made up, we probably wouldn’t have kept in touch. Maybe we’d promise to write or call, but it would never actually happen. It was fine, though. I didn’t need her anyway.

  Because I had created Zoe.

  3

  More Than Zero

  The lunch-is-over bell rang. Still clutching my notebook, I tossed my brown bag in the trash and headed toward health class. All the sixth graders at Tiveda Middle had to take health. So far it was pretty ugh, but at least I’d had a great lunch, minus the weird part at the end when Clue was looking at me. It was so unfair. Clue didn’t deserve to know that I wrote about Zoe. Especially not after what he’d done back in December. I tried to ignore him and focus on getting to my next class, where I could plan more stories.

  Maybe tomorrow I’d write one where Zoe and I put on a show with our origami birds. It’d be the funny kind of show, where we’re total dorks but know it. Maybe after school or over the weekend, I’d write a story where we make a video of it and put it online, and it goes viral and we get famous and go on a world tour with private helicopters and limos and everything. Or maybe I’d just write about us hanging out with Dad. Now that it was finally spring, maybe we’d all sit on the steps outside and enjoy some nice March air. We didn’t always have to do something exciting to have fun and be best friends. Some of my favorite times with Zoe were the ones where we didn’t really do anything at all.

  “Word count?” Mrs. Yang stood outside her door, like she did every day after lunch. Her dark, shiny hair swished around her as she smiled, first at me, then at my notebook.

  “More than zero,” I said. If you could have a secret handshake that was made out of words instead of movements, that would be ours. Mrs. Yang knew I wrote at lunch, and she always checked in about it. There wasn’t a certain number of words I was supposed to get or anything. As long as my answer was more than zero, that was all that mattered to her. It was funny how people could be interested in my words in different ways. Dad wanted to know what they said. Mrs. Yang just wanted to know that they existed. Never stop, she’d say. When the writing gets hard, remember why you’re doing it, and keep going.

  “Any new Oppservations?” she asked next.

  “Lunch,” I said. “I love it, but sometimes I don’t like it. At least not until I start writing. Why is that?”

  She smiled and said exactly what I knew she would: “Interesting.”

  I knew by now that Mrs. Yang was never going to answer all of my questions, but I still kept visiting her between classes and after lunch.

  At least she thought my Oppservations were cool. She always says that the best writers are the best observers. They see everything, study everything, and wonder about everything. They come up with answers to impossible questions. If I wanted to be an author someday, I had to do all that. And write the words. And make the words good enough for Dad—and the rest of the world—to love. No pressure or anything.

  I glanced at my notebook.

  You can do it, Zoe seemed to say. I’m here for you.

  I smiled.

  “Have a good afternoon.” Mrs. Yang waved.

  I gave my notebook a little squeeze, and I knew that I would.

  4

  Out of Sorts

  After school I picked Bo up from the elementary school across the street. All three Tiveda schools were on Main Street, which sounded great when I first heard about it. Like I’d be right in the middle of all the exciting town action. It got a lot less awesome when I realized that the only other things on Main Street were the Tiveda Family Restaurant, the three-store “mall,” a teeny tiny coffee shop, a gas station, a bus stop, and a whole bunch of struggling flowers.

  As we walked behind the gas station toward endless rows of boxy little houses, Bo updated me about all the things happening in kindergarten. It was hard to concentrate on his stories when I had so many more of my own I needed to write. The ideas spun around in my mind like clothes in the laundry.

  At home Dad sat in his big brown armchair in front of the TV, as usual. His whole face lit up when he saw us, and it got even brighter when he noticed the massive yellow notebook tucked under my arm.

  “There are my three favorite kids,” he said. I smiled. It was cool how Dad treated Zoe like she was real, like she was such a good friend she was practically part of the family. For a second I almost forgot anything was wrong. But then I saw his hat.

  Today Dad was wearing a fake-gold plastic Viking hat with small silver horns poking out the top and long, fake brown hair braided down the sides. Dad caught me noticing and made a face like you can laugh now. But the laugh got caught in my throat somewhere and refused to come
out.

  “You don’t like my braids? It took me all day to make them look this good.” He scrunched his face up like he was deeply offended, and then he winked.

  Bo grinned. “I think you look beautiful,” he said, “and I’m not even kidding!”

  A thin smile crossed my lips. I didn’t know why I wasn’t laughing; today’s hat was funny. But there was nothing funny about the fact that Dad was bald underneath. Even though he finished chemo last week—he got an official certificate and everything—it could take a while for his hair to grow back.

  It didn’t seem like Dad was used to being a baldy, either, which was why he always covered his head with different hats. Sometimes he’d do a regular old baseball hat or one of those big floppy things people wore when it was really sunny, but he usually liked to get creative with it. He must’ve been feeling extra creative today, because he looked totally ridiculous. And, okay, maybe he looked kind of hilarious too. Finally I let out a little chuckle. Eventually it turned into a full-on laugh.

  OPPSERVATION: Some things that are really un-funny can actually be super funny in their un-funniness.

  Questions for further research: Why do those things always seem to involve Dad?

  He waited for me to finish writing—sometimes I kept my Oppservations in my head, but if I could write them down, I did—then he asked, “So what’s new with Zoe?” He wrapped a firm Dad hand around my waist and pulled me closer to his chair.

  Bo made a silly face like he did every time Dad brought up Zoe. “You’re too big for an imaginary friend,” he told me, same as always.

  “She’s not imaginary,” I said. Bo was too young to understand, but Dad did.

  “Lunch was so funny,” I told him. “We had the best time. In my story we took milk-mustache selfies and made napkin birds.”

  “Napkin birds!” Dad repeated. “Can they fly like real ones?”

  I rolled my eyes, but in a joking way. “Sure,” I said. “They can also play fetch, juggle, and do your homework for you.”

  Bo’s blue eyes lit up. “I want to play with those birds!”

  Dad nodded. “Me too. They sound pretty talented.”

  “Right? I might write about using them for my homework tonight.” I hoisted my backpack higher and tapped my notebook against my knee.

  “I see that twinkle in your eyes.” Dad pointed at my face, and I beamed. It wasn’t like I could actually see my own eyes or anything, but whenever he pointed out my twinkle, somehow I just knew it was there.

  He tickled my arm. “Go ahead,” he said. “Go write. I’ll be here when you get back.”

  I knew he would be, since he never really left that chair. And that made me happy and sad at the same time.

  * * *

  A week after Dad went to the hospital for the first time (the day of Nessa’s party), Mom sat Bo and me down on the couch and looked at us with a very serious face. Dad sat in the armchair and closed his eyes, and that was when I got the sinking feeling that he might not be getting up anytime soon.

  “I know we were just going to make a pit stop here in Tiveda,” Mom started, and I waited for her to be like, Well, it’s over! Pack your bags. We’re heading somewhere fun where dads don’t get sick and best friends don’t disappear.

  But that wasn’t what she said next.

  “We’re going to stay a bit longer than we planned. It would just be too hard to move right now.”

  I squirmed around on the couch. How long were we going to have to stay? No one stayed here that long. We’d probably already set a record.

  Mom paced back and forth across the room. “You know Dad hasn’t been feeling so great lately,” she said. “We need to stay here so the doctors can help him get better.” Her voice cracked, but a smile stayed glued to her face. As I looked closer I noticed that Dad wasn’t the only one who seemed different. Mom’s hair was falling out of her ponytail, and there were weird dark circles under her eyes, like something had gone wrong with her makeup—or maybe with her sleep.

  “Dad loves you both very much,” she said. “But he might start being out of it a little more. That’s part of the process of getting better.” As if to prove it, she motioned toward Dad. He had fallen asleep on the chair.

  “Being out of what a little more?” Bo asked. I looked up, surprised he was even paying attention. He’d been doodling on his Etch A Sketch the whole time.

  “Out of…sorts,” Mom said.

  “Oh,” said Bo. “I hope he gets his sorts back on.”

  Mom’s feet came to a sudden stop. She and I looked at each other, and we couldn’t help but laugh, even with all the weirdness that hung in the air like a storm cloud waiting to burst.

  When we were done, Mom’s face turned serious.

  “He’s going to be out of it,” she repeated, and I couldn’t help but wonder if she was also saying, I’m going to be out of it too.

  I shifted around on the couch some more. It had always been one of the comfiest places in the whole house, but now I couldn’t find a single spot that felt good.

  “You two need to be tough, okay?”

  I felt Mom’s eyes on me, and only me. Why didn’t Bo have to be tough?

  “You can always come to us for anything, but if you have any problems that you think you might be able to work out on your own, well, it’d be really helpful if you tried.”

  A lump the size of a notebook formed in my throat. I wrung my hands together, stared at the floor, and thought of about a zillion things I’d been meaning to ask Mom and Dad for help with. I didn’t understand my math homework. There was a weird smell coming from my room and I didn’t know why. And I’d just lost my best friend, Nessa. I’d been feeling big, confusing feelings about a lot of things, but I didn’t know what the feelings were or where they came from. But I guess I’d never know, because now it was too late to ask.

  “Don’t worry,” Mom said. “It’s going to be okay.”

  She lowered herself onto the fat armrest of the chair and put her arm around Sleeping Dad. Bo stopped doodling. He looked my way, but I couldn’t quite get my eyes to meet his. Not that the floor was super interesting, but it felt like the only thing I could look at that wouldn’t make me burst into tears. Soon enough Bo looked away, grabbed his favorite stuffed animal, Giraffe, and gave him a gigantic hug.

  After a few minutes I slowly raised my head. I looked from Mom and Dad to Bo and Giraffe. My arms felt empty. Everybody else’s had something to hold. I was with my family, but it felt like I was all by myself.

  So I did the only thing I could think of. I picked up my notebook from the floor, wrapped my arms around it, and squished it to my chest. It was probably my imagination, but it kind of felt like it was hugging me back.

  Then I started writing a story. It was about Zoe, and how she was just what I needed. With her as a best friend, I’d be way too busy to worry about any of the thoughts and fears buzzing around in my brain like a big swarm of bees.

  “I’m scared,” I admitted to Zoe once in the story. “I’m really scared.”

  “It’s okay,” she told me. “I get it. It’s scary. We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. I’m here no matter what.”

  “Thanks,” I said back.

  With Zoe, and with everyone, actually, I decided it was best to not really talk about it.

  When I finished my story, I took my notebook and hugged it even tighter.

  It had been two years, but I hadn’t really let go since.

  5

  Evaporation

  After a busy night of writing and a long morning of school, I got to third-period science on Friday and opened my notebook. Mrs. Yang always said that if I was serious about being an author, I should practice writing every chance I got. After all, she said everything I wrote helped me become a better writer, even if it never got published or shared or anything. Every
word mattered.

  She probably didn’t mean I should practice every chance I got in school, but oh, well. Practice was practice. And I’d paid good attention in my first two classes, for the most part. Besides, Zoe and I were in the middle of something important in my story, and I couldn’t just abandon her. She’d never do that to me.

  So, I opened to where I left off and kept going. I made sure to write in my tiniest handwriting, the same way I had since last year when I realized I was writing too much too fast and getting too close to the end of the notebook. I wanted all my Zoe stories in one place. They belonged together, just like Zoe and me.

  Jade went up to the room she shared with Bo, where Zoe was waiting for her. They took out their homework and their favorite pencils. They were pretty good at getting ready to do homework. They just weren’t always that good at actually doing it.

  “Wouldn’t that be cool?” Jade asked. “That thing I said to my dad, about birds that could do our homework for us? I wish they were real.”

  Zoe hadn’t been there for that conversation with Jade’s dad, but she still knew exactly what Jade was talking about. She always did. She also knew when Jade wanted to talk about something more, and when she didn’t. Like now, Jade didn’t want to talk about the fact that her dad still had to wear hats to cover up his bald head. She just wanted to talk about birds. And Zoe knew it.

  “I wish birds that could do your homework were real too,” Zoe said. “I wish they fluttered around and sang happy little bird songs during homework time.”

  “That sounds like something right out of a homework fairy tale,” Jade said.

  “And they all lived homework-ly ever after,” said Zoe.

  They grinned at each other.