I wait for Sarah to answer. She doesn’t.
I pivot my head to face her. “Go on, Sarah. Tell her.”
“God,” Sarah says in her eye-rolling voice. “The bitchiness I have no problems with… but the smugness… ugh…”
I grin.
“Fine,” she says. “One of the unexpected side effects of Parker going blind was how she got… less and less sensitive about what she said to people because she couldn’t see them flinch. Then freshman year a few people came back and thanked her for being so blunt, saying they later realized she was right and it really helped them. And here we are, two years later.”
“See, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” I turn back to face Molly. “She even sold herself short. We’re a team because those things I say to people, most of them I wouldn’t even know if Sarah didn’t tell me. It’s like I said, she’s the eyes and the brains, I’m just the loudmouth.”
“Wow, you’re like Good Cop, Bad Cop Psychologists,” Molly says. “You should charge people five cents a session.”
“Yes!” I say. “We used to put out a coffee mug with Lucy on it saying The Doctor is IN, but it broke a while ago.”
“Maybe it’s time for a confession,” Sarah says without sounding at all remorseful. “I broke that mug on purpose.”
“You did?” I’m genuinely shocked. “Why?”
“She’s right about what she says to Charlie Brown but she’s totally heartless about it. That’s not us. Lucy’s a bitch.”
“But that’s perfect for you guys,” Molly says. “Each of you are half of Lucy. You’re the insightful psychologist half, and Parker, you’re…”
I laugh. Can’t deny it. Don’t even want to.
My locker combination is easy: zero-zero-zero, and there’s a bump on the dial by the zero. I have a separate padlock that takes a key since I can’t tell if someone’s looking over my shoulder. I asked them to disable the combination lock but they said they couldn’t without damaging it—which I don’t believe—so I asked if they could at least make it the easiest combination. Now I get the joy of unlocking two locks every time I want in my locker.
“Hi, Parker.”
It’s Faith. She doesn’t normally just say hi out of nowhere anymore so I wonder what else she wants. I’m not worried, though; school’s out and Molly has plenty to do in the library till I get there.
“Hey, Fay-Fay, how are you today?” It’s an old rhyme from when we were kids. She probably doesn’t like that nickname anymore but I’m in a good mood and she’s never told me to stop using it.
“You want to go to the mall this weekend?”
There were ninety-nine things I thought she might say—that wasn’t one of them.
Faith and I don’t hang out, mainly because we have almost nothing in common anymore. We act like we don’t get along but we’re the opposite of frenemies; we’re friends who pretend to be enemies. I guess that makes us enemends. We share a lot of serious history without any bumps in the road and were there for each other through the worst of it, just not so much day to day.
“It’s only Monday,” I say, buying time. “You really plan ahead.”
“I go to Ridgeway every weekend. I just thought maybe you’d like someone else to pick out clothes with besides Sarah ‘Sweatpants’ Gunderson for a change.”
“I guess she’s not invited.”
“She can come.”
“We don’t shop together,” I say. It’s never really occurred to me to wonder what Sarah wears all the time. “Does Sarah wear sweatpants a lot?”
“Only on days ending in y. Do you want to go?”
I don’t. And, well… I kind of do. I don’t want all the hassle, or pressure to get clothes that are too showy or aren’t my style, but… since Dad died I haven’t done any shopping besides the shoes yesterday. Shoes are about the only things I don’t need some amount of help with.
“Don’t you usually go with Lila and Kennedy?”
“Not always. It’s okay if you don’t want to.”
I wonder if this is one of those times I should just go with it without overanalyzing everything.
Nope.
“Why are you asking now?”
“What do you mean?”
“We’ve never been shopping together and suddenly, on a random Monday afternoon, you want to go, but not till next weekend. What made you think of it?”
“Like I said, if you don’t want to…” she says.
“I didn’t say I didn’t want to.”
Silence.
“Nothing’s easy with you, Peegee. Not one thing.”
She sounds resigned, not angry. I feel a twinge because I know she’s right. Then a thought occurs to me. “Is this because I’m an orphan now?”
Sigh. The kind that tells me how burdensome my friendship is to her.
“Yes, Parker, it’s because you’re a hopeless charity case.” She closes her locker. “You just have to dissect everything around you like dead frogs.”