11 Before 12 Read online

  Tyler doesn’t respond or even look up. He’s too busy throwing popcorn in the air and trying to catch it in his mouth.

  “Kaylan, get us some orange juice,” Ryan demands, even though I’m already past the kitchen.

  “No. Get your own orange juice.” I find yet another one of Ryan’s dirty socks on the floor and walk back into the den so I can drop it on the couch, right next to him. Maybe being forced to smell his own socks will keep him from leaving them all over the house. Probably not. But it’s worth a try.

  I go upstairs to shower and triple-check that the bathroom door is locked. I can’t risk Ryan doing something terrible like stealing my towel or pouring ice cubes into the shower.

  I spend forever in there, cleaning off the sunscreen and chlorine and shampooing my hair twice. There’s probably nothing better in this world than a shower after a day at the pool or the beach. It’s like the sun is amazing on its own, and then you get to come home and feel clean and smell like peach body wash.

  I look at myself in the bathroom mirror and admire my bathing suit tan line. I know some people try to avoid them, but not me. I’m the opposite. I try hard to get them. I like to see the difference in my skin, from how it was at the beginning of the summer to how it is at the end. It’s like visible proof of the passage of time, a marker of all the happy, wonderful summer days.

  I change into my most comfy sweatpants and hoodie, and put my wet hair up in a bun. I’m packing my overnight bag for Ari’s, appreciating this delightful, clean, sun-kissed feeling, when I hear clamoring downstairs. Pots and pans banging. Things dropping.

  My mom is home.

  She’s one of those people who gets right to work on dinner as soon as she walks through the door. She doesn’t take a break for a second. She says that if she stops she’ll never be able to start again.

  I walk down to the kitchen, a Brookside Road Elementary School gym bag that I always use for sleepovers over my arm.

  “Mom, I’m not gonna be home for dinner,” I tell her, instantly regretting that I didn’t choose to say it in a nicer way. “I’m sleeping at Ari’s tonight.”

  “Um, okay.” My mom forces a smile. “I wish you would’ve told me earlier. I bought salmon and I was going to make brussels sprouts the crispy way, your favorite.”

  “Sorry.” I shrug. “It’s really important.”

  Ryan barges in, ripping open a bag of chips. “What’s so important about sleeping at Ari’s?”

  I don’t look at him. “It just is. Okay?”

  “Mom, Kaylan has gone bonkers,” Ryan tells her. “Seriously. We may need to schedule an appointment with Dr. Noodleman.”

  Dr. Noodleman is our pediatrician. He has the best name ever. I think that’s why we still go to him. But he’s a good doctor, too.

  “Um, Mom, Ryan was born bonkers and it’s just gotten worse,” I explain. “Dr. Noodleman already knows he’s a lost cause.”

  My mom breathes in deeply and breathes out. “Okay, everyone, let’s just relax.” She sits down at the kitchen table and sips her water.

  “Ryan, are you interested in salmon?” she asks him.

  Tyler bursts into the room like someone’s giving away free Slurpees. “I’m definitely interested in salmon,” he says.

  She nods. “Great. We’ll be eating at six thirty.”

  “Ry-dog, wanna shoot hoops?” Tyler asks him. “I bet you five dollars I can make a shot from the edge of your driveway.”

  “Deal.” They shake hands, and Tyler leaves the kitchen. I hear the sound of potato chips crunching, and three seconds later the crumbs are mushed into my perfect, after-shower, clean hair.

  “Ryan!” I scream. “Are you kidding?”

  This is a war of dropping things on each other’s heads. Where can I find some molten lava?

  Ryan runs out the door, and I flip my head over to get the potato chip crumbs out. “I’ll Dustbust, I promise,” I tell my mom.

  She pulls out a kitchen chair for me and pats it to get me to sit down. “Everything okay, Kaylan?”

  “Um, no. Ryan is torturing me. Can’t you see that?” I shriek.

  “Yes, I do see that, and I’m working on it. But . . . this whole important sleepover with Ari . . .” She looks at me. “I worry about you.”

  Ever since the whole Lily-and-Brooke debacle, when I refused to go to school for a week, my mom is always on edge about me having friend catastrophes. I guess that’s what moms do. They stress.

  “Oh no, it’s nothing to worry about,” I assure her. “I promise.”

  “Okay.” She puts her hand on my hand and smiles all gentle, in a way that feels way too dramatic for this moment. Like the end of an episode on some sitcom where cheesy music is playing.

  I smile anyway. “Okay, gotta go get ready.”

  I run back upstairs to double-check that all the potato chip crumbs are out of my hair.

  This list is going to be awesome.

  The Ari and Kaylan BFF Prepare for Middle School and Completely Rule the World list. Okay, maybe that’s too long. The Ari and Kaylan Crush West Brookside Middle School list. But that sounds kind of violent. And why is Ari’s name first? Maybe mine should be. Or maybe it should be alphabetical order.

  So I don’t have the perfect name yet. But it’s the perfect idea.

  We are going to rock this and I can’t wait to get started.

  FIVE

  “HEY, MRS. ETISOF,” I CALL out as I pass her house. She’s been my next-door neighbor my whole life, but I’ve only been inside her house a few times. I think it’s because she’s always outside. She’s either gardening or sunbathing or getting ready to swim or kayak. She told me once that the world can be divided into two groups: indoor people and outdoor people.

  It’s clear which category she’s in.

  “Kaylan, my girl!” she calls back. She’s kind of old, but I think she talks like a teenager. “How are you? Going to Ari’s?”

  She meets me at the end of her driveway, all dressed in her wetsuit and her kayaking booties. Her kayak is strapped to the roof of her car. “Yup!”

  “Great. I’m going out for an evening paddle,” she says. “Come over soon, we’ll make s’mores on the fire pit.”

  “Sounds great!”

  I run around the corner to Ari’s because I’m so excited to start the list. I get there at six on the dot and find her drawing on her front steps with sidewalk chalk, like she’s deep in thought.

  I don’t have the heart to tell her that’s not a very middle school thing to do. But maybe it doesn’t matter. We’re not in middle school yet.

  “Hey,” she says, not sounding as excited as I expected her to be. “I found this in the cabinet in the garage.” She shows me the box of chalk. “Remember when we used to try to cover the whole path to my front door in chalk?”

  I nod. She makes it seem like it was something we did a really long time ago, but truthfully we did it just last summer. I remember because I was so proud of our work, and so excited to show my parents when they picked me up at Ari’s house. But as soon as they got there, I knew something was wrong. It was only my mom who was in the car. I could see bad news all over her face. That was the night she told Ryan and me that my dad had left and they were getting divorced.

  It felt like someone had poked a hole in a perfect, air-stuffed, foil birthday balloon.

  “Those girls at the pool were so rude,” Ari says, as we’re putting the chalk back in the garage. “I heard them, too; I just tried to convince myself they were talking about someone else.”

  We walk back inside. “I know; I mean, it’s Freeze Dance. Everyone loves Freeze Dance.”

  “Well, on a happier note, Mom said we can order pizza,” Ari tells me as we run up the stairs to her room.

  “Obviously pineapple on half, anchovies on half.”

  “Ha-ha.” Ari forces a laugh. “But seriously—mushrooms on half. Cool?”

  “Cool.”

  “Okay, I’ll go tell my mom. You wait here, and loo
k through my closet and see if anything you see screams first-day outfit, ’kay?” she asks.

  I nod. “On it.”

  “Pizza’s ordered,” Ari says when she gets back to her room. “So let’s get to work.” She hands me a lined notepad and a pen. We sit facing each other in Ari’s purple beanbag chairs.

  “Okay, we need to start with a declaration!” I stand up, like I’m at a podium, making a speech. “I declare that this list is the best list in the history of lists!”

  Ari stands up, too, and puts her hand on her heart. “I solemnly swear that this is the best project in the history of all best friendships ever to exist.”

  We double-high-five.

  “And so it shall be,” I say, because I think I heard that in a movie once. “But in all seriousness, I don’t think anyone’s ever thought of something like this before.”

  “Geniuses!” We grab hands and squee, our faces tight and our eyes squinty.

  “Okay, I’m going first,” Ari insists as we sit back down.

  “Wait!” I tap my pen against her knee. “First order of biz, we need to know how many things should be on it!”

  She shakes her head. “No! We’ll know when we finish it how many things should be on it. We can’t decide the number in advance. Can we?”

  We stare at each other, thinking for a second. “Okay, we’ll come back to that,” I tell her.

  Ari folds her hands in her lap like she’s about to meditate. “Here’s my first thing. Ready?”

  I nod.

  “We need some guy friends. The groups of girls at the pool who all seemed older than us, it was because they had guy friends with them, too. Elementary school was for all-girl birthday parties and stuff like that. When I think middle school, I think girls and guys hanging out, like it’s totally normal.”

  I nod. “Yeah, definitely. But that doesn’t seem like such an easy thing to do. We can’t just walk up to guys and be like, ‘We need guy friends. Interested?’ Ya know?”

  Ari laughs. “That would be really funny if we did that. Maybe it would work? Guys do like confidence. I mean, that’s what my cousin Sally says. But who knows if she’s right. She thinks she knows everything.”

  I shrug, and lean back in the beanbag chair. My agita is bubbling up, like it was just resting under the surface and now it’s going to overflow. Ari’s idea to make a game plan was a good one, and lists always help me, but now I can’t think of anything to add, and Ari’s plan will be really hard to accomplish.

  “I’m just gonna write down make a guy friend, and we’ll figure out how to do it later,” Ari says, writing in her perfect handwriting.

  I hate my handwriting. I should probably add that to the list. Handwriting makeover. And that’s when it comes to me: the second thing we need to do.

  “Here’s one,” I say. “Makeover.”

  “You mean go to the mall and go to one of those makeup counters and pretend we’re going to buy all the expensive makeup and get a makeover?” Ari asks. Clearly she’s been thinking about this, too.

  “Well, no,” I reply. “I mean, sort of.”

  “Huh?”

  “Okay, so I realized that one thing I’d like to make over about myself is my handwriting.” I look at Ari and see her cracking up. “Don’t laugh. Seriously. You know how much I hate my terrible handwriting.”

  “I know,” she says. “It is bad.”

  “Thanks. So, I want a makeover, but, like, a Whole Me Makeover. Not just a new haircut or some new lip gloss or a plan to only snack on carrots. Though obviously those are good things. I’m talking complete makeover. From handwriting to jogging three times a week to drinking more water to volunteering in the community and really making a difference.”

  Ari nods and starts writing stuff down. “Okay, so far we have find a guy friend and get a Whole Me Makeover.” She chews on the end of her pen. I’m mentally adding that to the list for Ari’s makeover. She can’t keep doing that.

  I close my eyes for a second, thinking about the fact that a million things can make up a Whole Me Makeover. “I’m tired. Let’s go get a snack and see if the pizza’s here.”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  We get down to Ari’s kitchen and her mom has the pizza cutter out, about to start slicing.

  “What are you doing?” Ari asks her.

  “What?” She looks at her hand and at the pizza and then back at us. “Oh my goodness. I was thinking this was for Gemma. She still likes her pizza in half slices. What am I doing? Sorry, girls!”

  Ari rolls her eyes and mouths she’s crazy to me.

  “Can I get you girls anything to drink?” Ari’s mom asks us. “I have pink lemonade, yellow lemonade, fruit punch, water . . .”

  “Mom! We can take care of it.”

  Ari’s mom’s lips curve up into an excited smile. She says, “Okay, well, enjoy, girls. I’ll be in the basement doing laundry if you need anything.”

  “We’re fine, Mom.”

  Ari always gets annoyed at her mom because she can be over the top in trying to be perfect and making everything wonderful for Ari and Gemma. I can see how it gets annoying. But sometimes I’m jealous. Not that my mom doesn’t try. She does. She tries really hard. But she’s on her own now and she works full-time and she’s tired. I can tell she’s tired. She doesn’t complain or anything. I can just tell.

  So I sort of think Ari should be more appreciative of her mom, more grateful. But I don’t tell her that. Maybe I’ll sneak it in to Ari’s Whole Me Makeover, though. That seems like a good place for it.

  We eat our pizza and keep discussing things we can do.

  When I get to the crust part, I bend it over my mouth and hold it there with my top lip. “Should this be my new back-to-school look?” I ask Ari.

  She cracks up. “Pizza-crust mustaches! That is part of your makeover. For sure.”

  I try to hold it in place with my lip while saying, “I need more crust for my goatee.”

  I take another piece of pizza, and try to think of ideas.

  Ari adds, “Ya know, we can probably meet guy friends at the pool. There’s that group of boys who are always playing Ping-Pong. . . .”

  I nod and keep chewing. “Well, if they ever take a break from Ping-Pong. I think that’s all they do.”

  “Oh! And my new neighbor.” Ari jumps up from the chair and looks out the kitchen window.

  “What are you doing?” I ask her, after I swallow a bite of pizza.

  “Spying on him, duh.” She smiles all sneaky. “I thought he’d maybe be outside.”

  I sip my lemonade. “Ari! What if he sees you? On the first day he moves in, you’re already the creepy neighbor?”

  “He won’t see me!” she screeches, still staring. “Plus, so what, I should take initiative, welcome him to the neighborhood.”

  “Come on, Ar. I’ve had Mrs. E. next door my whole life, and she’s great, but this is an actual kid our age, and a boy, too! We can’t mess this up.”

  “Okay . . .” She comes back to the table and finishes her slice. “So maybe we can try to chat it up with him, too? Maybe he’ll show up at the pool?”

  “Maybe.” I shrug. “I don’t know how to just go and chat it up, though.”

  “You know how to talk,” Ari reminds me. “So you’ll just, like, pretend you’re talking to me.”

  “Um . . . it’s not that easy for me to talk to other people, besides you. I mean, it was awkward with that Jules girl, before.”

  “Yeah, but I think it’s because you were hungry.” Ari nods. “Here’s the thing about Neighbor Boy: he’s cute, but not like freak out he is soo cute, so it’s not like we’re going to have crushes on him.”

  “You saw him for three seconds. How do you know he’s not that cute?” I laugh out loud, almost spitting my lemonade all over the pizza.

  “I’m just saying he’s a good candidate for guy friend,” she explains.

  “You make it sound like he’s running in some kind of election. Imagine if all the g
uys in our class last year were competing for our friendship? They’d have to make campaign posters and speeches and stuff? That would be hilarious. It could be some kind of reality show.”

  Now Ari’s the one laughing out loud. “I can email my Uncle David about it, he’s some big producer in LA. . . .”

  We spend a good few minutes discussing how funny this would be when Ari brings up another thing.

  “Okay, on the subject of campaigns. I have another idea.”

  “I don’t think we can run for president before middle school,” I joke. “I mean, the limited amount of time will be an issue, and also I’m pretty sure you need to be thirty-five to be president of the United States.”

  “Duh.” She glares. “Not that. But close. We need to get on TV!”

  “What? Okay, Ari. Now you’re the one going crazy,” I say. “What does getting on TV have to do with us being ready for middle school?”

  “Just think about it. We’re on TV for something good. Not for something terrible, like we’ve been hit by a bus or something . . .” Her voice trails off and I can practically see the thoughts spinning around in her brain. “And then, like, everyone at school knows about us! We’re kind of famous. Everyone wants to talk to us about it and find out all the details.”

  “That would be incredible,” I say. “People just coming up to us and talking, and we’re just, like, sitting back all cool, like it’s no big deal.”

  “Totally!” She taps her nails against the table. “And everyone’s like, ‘Did you hear about Ari and Kaylan?’”

  Ari’s coming up with a plan.

  And it’s a good one.

  SIX

  AFTER PIZZA, WE KEEP WORKING at the kitchen table, trying to think of more things to put on our list.

  Ari’s mom appears at the doorway to the kitchen. “Girls,” she says, all cheerful, the way she always talks. “I put s’mores ingredients on the outside table. I can help you make them on the Chiminea.”

  We both hop up from our seats.

  “Mom, we know what we’re doing,” Ari groans. “We’re not gonna burn the house down.”