“Did you talk to him?”
“No.”
“Then why do you think he’s nice?”
“He just seemed nice, that’s all.”
“He doesn’t do anything wrong.”
“What do you mean?”
“The other boys drive everyone crazy. Like, Roger hits himself in the head, and sometimes the teachers have to take Ajay out of the room because he won’t listen.”
“Who do you like the best?” I ask. “Of those three? Ethan, Roger, or Ajay?”
“Ethan.”
Just what I was hoping she’d say. “Cool! I think you should text him and see if he wants to do something this weekend.”
“Do something?” she repeats. “Like what?”
“You guys could go to a movie or out for ice cream or to a bookstore . . . Whatever sounds like fun to you.”
“Could we get frozen yogurt?”
“Sure.”
“But you have to drive me,” she says. “Not Mom. He’ll think I’m a baby if she drives me.”
“No problem. So we’ll text him when we get home?”
“I guess, but it will be weird.”
“What will?”
“Going for frozen yogurt with him. We’re not really friends.”
“That’s how you become friends with someone. Doing stuff like that.”
“You and Sarah were already friends when you started going out for frozen yogurt.”
“But doing stuff like that made us better friends. You and Ethan are already friends too, right?”
“No, we’re not. That’s why it’s weird.”
“You’re in class together, and you like to talk to each other. That’s what being friends is.”
“I don’t think so. And we almost never talk to each other at school.”
“Well, you will when you go out for frozen yogurt.”
She doesn’t say anything to that, or at least nothing out loud. She turns her head away, but I can hear soft hissing as she whispers to herself.
Back home, we look up Ethan’s number on the online school directory and write a text together (actually, I write it, but I make her hit Send).
This is Ivy from school. Would you like to get some frozen yogurt with me this weekend?
Ethan’s answer comes back quickly: Yes, please
The please kills me. It’s so sweet.
“Ask him if Saturday afternoon works,” I say. “At, like, three or four?”
Ivy composes another text, her tongue caught between her teeth as she concentrates on punching out each word. She shows it to me for my approval before sending it.
We’re at the kitchen table, doing our homework. Mom and Ron are staying late at the office, which means it’s nice and peaceful right now.
Ethan texts back that three is fine and asks where they should meet.
“There’s a place at Bundy and Santa Monica that I like,” I say.
“What’s it called?”
“I can’t remember. Just tell him the intersection. He’ll find it.”
“No, no.” She jumps up out of her chair and starts pacing around the table, pounding at her hips with her fists. “What if there’s another frozen yogurt place near there?”
“I’m pretty sure there isn’t.” But she’s getting more agitated, bouncing her hands harder and faster against the sides of her thighs. So I say, “Fine. Let’s just go to Yogurt Palace on Montana.” It’s more expensive and smaller, but at least I remember the name.
“Okay.” She stops hitting herself, but her hands stay rigid in the air near her waist. “You sure that’s the right name?”
“Positive.”
She still does a Google search to double-check it before sending the text.
There’s a photo of me and Ivy stuck with a magnet on the refrigerator in our kitchen. I’m a toddler, and Ivy’s five or six. We’re holding hands tightly. I’m looking right at whoever is taking the photo, but my sister is looking past the photographer, her gaze elusive.
It’s been up there as long as I can remember, along with a bunch of other family photos, a torn-out gazpacho recipe from a magazine, a partial alphabet of letter magnets, and a drawing I did in second grade of my family, my mother looming larger than my father, and Ivy and me together to the side, drawn with identical long hair and eyelashes.
Nothing on there ever changes, so I’d stopped even seeing any of it, but then one day a few years ago, I suddenly stared at the photo of me and Ivy. For the first time, it seemed weird to me—?why were we holding hands? We’d never held hands that I remembered. Ivy has never liked being touched.
Mom was at the table doing some work, so I looked over my shoulder and said, “When was this photo of me and Ivy taken?”
She raised her head and squinted at it. “That one? I think we were at one of those indoor park things, with the slides and balls and stuff. They had an area that was for kids only. So we said you two could explore it, but only if Ivy held your hand and watched out for you. You were only three.”
“But she hates holding hands.”
“She knew she was responsible for you and wanted to be a good big sister. She guided you in and out very carefully and was so worried you might get hurt that she marched you quickly through and right back to us.”
“Huh,” I said. “I have no memory of this.”
Most of the time, when I’m opening the refrigerator, the photo is just part of the background—?I don’t even notice it. But every once in a while, I stop to look at the two little blond girls, holding hands, a tiny team facing the world together.
Ten
ON SATURDAY AFTERNOON, I’m curled up on my bed binge-watching a nineties TV show when Ivy comes into our room and says, “We should go.”
I check the time. “It’s too early. It only takes ten or fifteen minutes to get there.”
“There could be traffic.”
“On a Saturday? Unlikely. Is that what you’re planning to wear?”