I try my hardest to live my life through facts; everything is easier that way. Here are some facts I know about Emily Andrews. Her favorite color is pink. She loves going to the aquarium but cries when she sees the fish swimming behind glass. She has a new baby brother, Bradley, whom she loves very much. Her favorite subject is math because she likes how all of the numbers can become friends no matter what. And I am her best friend.
It’s the first time she says this, and I am immediately caught off guard. I knew that things would change from kindergarten, where making friends came as easy as breathing and everyone stuck together like glue, to first grade. It’s starting already; kids making fast friends and then never leaving each other’s sides, talks of playdates and birthday parties in whispers so no one else ruins their plans. Jealousy curls around me when I see them all together, in their little perfect pairs. I don’t tell anyone but my parents that I really didn’t imagine it happening to me. Now I don’t have any more reason to be worrying and wanting this bad, because Emily Andrews tells me that I’m her best friend. And she’s mine.
“Really?”
“Duh,” she says, like I should know this already, like it’s one of my pure facts.
I just didn’t want to get my hopes up too high. I don’t tell her this though. I don’t know how to express it fully, words popping up in my head that haven’t fully collided into actual thoughts, into feelings, just yet. Pinky-promise. Don’t Leave. Princesses. Home. Each word appears and disappears like the clouds I watch when I get home from school, their wisps vanishing the longer I stare. They contort into new shapes when my focus truly sharpens; a four leaf clover one minute, Mickey Mouse the next, a sewing needle that pokes sharp out of the tip of his round nose if I squint. Emily doesn’t get to know these thoughts yet because I don’t want to tell her anything I don’t fully understand myself, don’t know is completely true first. Unlike the clouds, I want her to stay in one shape: my best friend forever.
“Okay,” I raise one eyebrow, a trick she taught me in the back of English class. “And that’s a fact?”
“Of course it is.” She smiles big at me, her tongue poking between the gap of her top two teeth. The Tooth Fairy will come for one of them soon, she excitedly tells me later. I don’t believe her because the Tooth Fairy isn’t real; I don’t tell her this because I can’t crush her dreams. I believe her now though, because she tells me this is a fact, and facts are never false.
I smile back at her and we continue to swing, legs pumping as we try our hardest to reach the sky with sparkling toes; nothing feels impossible now that I have a best friend. We laugh at the world around us and I feel lighter than ever before, finally like I belong.
…
I tell Mom in the car on the way back home. I can only see her eyes in the rearview mirror, the forehead I love to smooth out with my thumb whenever the funny lines appear, the ones I love to count and make wishes on; the lines reach her hairline when I tell her Emily Andrews is my best friend. I hope she’s happy about it, because it means I don’t have to waste her time wishing for a best friend whenever I stop to blow out the dandelions on our daily walks around the neighborhood. She sighs a little whenever I stop to do it.
“Really, honey? That’s amazing! I’m so proud of you!”
Mom likes to say things like this to me all the time. Sometimes I think she lies. I think she only says them because she wants me to like her more than Dad, because they’re fighting a lot right now. Nothing major, and they stop whenever I walk into a room, but still fights. It makes me feel weird, makes me want to go and hide until Mom and Dad go back to cooking breakfast in the morning together, singing loudly and off-key to the radio, and watching Jeopardy as I beg to stay up for five more minutes, five more minutes please. I want my normal back.
She chatters on about all the playdates she can set up for me, how nice Mrs. Andrews is, how she still talks to her elementary school best friend; she gets excited about a lot of the small things in life, and it’s nice I can give her something big to finally make a fuss over. Something that she doesn’t have to worry about. She pretends not to worry, laughs my millions of questions off whenever I feel that something is wrong, but I see the lines of her forehead crease deep and hear the sighs she tries her best to hide from me. I don’t like it. I try not to think of the fighting that may greet me once we get home, so I look up at the clouds through the window and try to find all my favorite shapes.
I really focus on the cumulus clouds — the “cotton ball clouds” they tell us about in science class— and shapes start to appear, slowly but surely. They blur together in the sky as we move down the road, but I follow one specific cloud, my eyes trained to its large mass and begin to wonder. Are those the eyes of an owl peering into mine or just a deformed piece of Swiss cheese that a mouse in the sky likes to nibble on? Does the mouse have friends up there that it runs through clouds with, making new designs for people to gaze up in wonder at? The cloud changes just a fraction and now I see a heart within a heart. It soothes me, thinking of love in the sky beaming down at the little people on the Earth below, unaware of the power that comes from above. Today in social studies class, my teacher taught us about in-di-vid-u-a-lism; she made us sound it all out, laughing and telling us it was a mini English lesson in disguise.
“Individualism is the idea that being independent holds the most importance, because it is one of the few things in life we can control. Humans are very individualistic creatures, even when we think we’re not. We care for ourselves first and foremost, and then for everyone else. Just because we exist in a society like this doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t care our most for others around us. Remember that.”
I think humans would be less in-di-vid-u-a-lis-tic if they knew how much love pours down from the sky every time a cloud turns into a heart. People need to start spending more time looking up at the clouds; it makes me happy all of the time. If people were happier, then they would have more love in their hearts, and if they all had more love in their hearts, then everything would hopefully be okay.
“Mom, can we watch the clouds outside with Dad when we get home?” I ask, wanting more than usual to spend time with both of them today. “Then I can tell you both all about Emily Andrews!”
I watch her eyebrows crease together, the deep lines that worry me appearing unexpected. She swallows hard before she responds, her voice almost getting stuck in her throat as she seemingly forces the words out, too cheery for my liking.
“Of course we can. He’s going to be just as excited as I am to hear all about Emily!”
Even though it may be hard for her, she accepts, because that’s the kind of mom she is. So we’ll look at the clouds that move above us, all three of us lying on the lawn with long blades of grass pricking into our backs, while Dad tells me facts about the universe around us and Mom peppers me with questions about Emily and how I feel about having a best friend. I’ll listen and talk and learn between them, and maybe, just maybe, everything works out.