Kellie

Lu

The sun rose and everything fell. I clapped a hand over my mouth and just managed to stifle my scream as my masterpiece fell over, Popsicle sticks smashing on my cold hardwood floor and scattering into a million devastating crevices in my room.
Oh, God, not now, of all times! My birdhouse!
Before anyone gets too weirded-out by birdhouse-building at 5 in the morning, let me explain a little. When I was a kid, I’d always hoped that if I sang to a bird, it would sing back to me, and I’d prove for all time that I was related to Snow White. I had wanted feeders, but my parents did not want to deal with the droppings, so I made birdhouses—slightly better. It hadn’t taken many packages of Popsicle sticks for my parents to grow sick of pretending to like the houses and just throw them out behind my back. Obviously, I got over the phase—well, for the most part—but I’d been hoping to make one for Alex.
The last time I’d seen Alexis Lee in person, she was emphatically, pointedly strange. One of the things she’d do was hide things in my birdhouses that were very much not birds at all, like fortune-cookie fortunes and single earrings she’d found and one time some random pink plastic thimble my dad ended up putting with the Monopoly pieces. I think she’d done it to annoy me.
The thing is, in seventh grade, I’d moved away to Illinois. I hadn’t seen her since—every time we’d visited she’d been out of town. Besides, I mean, we’d been close, but not best-best friends.
And then, last night, my parents suddenly told me that when they said they were visiting a family friend, they meant the Lees! And you can’t just visit your friend of five years without a present, so I’d been up all night trying to make it for her. And obviously, with my luck, it fell apart right at sunrise.
And so I found myself in Alex’s room, just me and her, with nothing on me but the bags under my eyes.
***

I had no idea—none at all—about whatever the hell was going on. Was this the real Bonnie or an imposter? Was this reality or my imagination? My mind literally did things like that—tricked me sometimes, but it was usually with hot, rich male celebrities, not ex-friends.
“I’m sorry about not having a present,” Bonnie said. “I made one, but it got ruined.”
That surprised me a little: it was a typical Bonnie line—straight talk with just a little bit of subconscious humblebrag. And of course she’d be obsessive enough to make a present, instead of just buying one, or—the Alex way—going no-present-at-all. It was weird, ‘cuz she’d changed a lot. I mean, I guess I really should’ve expected it, since it’d been, I don’t know, four years we’d last seen face-to-face? But when I say that she had changed, I mean she had really changed. Bonnie had always been pretty, but now she had really done it with the makeup and clothes and everything, and, I’ll have to admit, on top of all of this awkwardness I was more than a little scared of her now. She had these cute gold earrings and I think she’d gotten her eyebrows done, while here I was, sitting in my old jeans and wearing a t-shirt probably from fourth grade or something. So much for my mom’s “this is just a casual visit.”
“S-s-s-o,” I finally stuttered out after my long, pondering silence, “what do you want to do?” Our parents were downstairs; there were no distractions from each other.
“I’m really fine with anything.”
I flipped my head around frantically like the idiot I am. Bookshelves: Nope. Bed: What? Desk: Aha!
“Um-m … We could, uh, go on the Internet?” As I reached out, way over-eager, Bonnie’s eyes widened for some reason, and when I followed her gaze I saw my laptop—tumbling to the floor!
“Shit!” we both shouted. My hand shot out again, but I only ended up punching it and it flew right into Bonnie’s lap. Her arms flapped around like those birds she was always into and in the end she managed somehow to sandwich it between her forearms and lap. We looked at each other and grinned.
“You still say that?” Bonnie demanded. “‘Shitshitshit?’”
“Not really. Guess it just, like, fell out or something. Why? Is it annoying now?”
“No, but do you remember how Annie would always say…”
***

The truth is, I had been going to Alex ask about which celebrities she found cute. But I guess I wasn’t being honest. I’d known she wasn’t into that sort of stuff, and I’m glad I didn’t mess it up.
It was really strange sitting there. We were both pulling up anything we could remember, and that helped a little, but memories are easy to talk about, and I still wasn’t sure…Had she changed? She seemed a little less weird, but I wasn’t sure if that was just because we hadn’t been here for that long, or if I was noticing it because I was looking so hard. I knew what would come once we ran out of things to say: we’d start testing each other, like, where you poke at the other person, trying to see what’s different and what’s the same. And I didn’t know whether I wanted to try to be the same or to be different, if I even could choose in the first place—I didn’t know what I wanted from Alex, either. But for now, it was going kind of okay.
And then my phone rang. Oh, no: Ethan. Should I pick it up? On the one hand, a perfect distraction from this weird situation; on the other, I was with an old pal and it would just be rude. On both hands, awkwardness.
***

Yes, this was her; this was actually kind of sounding like the Bonnie I knew. I was feeling pretty solid, like I could probably make it through, until a pop song popped out of nowhere—
“Sorry,” Bonnie grimaced. “Boyfriend.”
I knew about Ethan. Facebook-stalking is my favorite intellectual pursuit, though I hadn’t looked Bonnie up until the day I found out she was coming. I mean, it wasn’t because I didn’t care about her. It more like it was just too much, I guess, seeing her going crazy with her new friends and stuff in Illinois.
I feel like a lot of people think I’m, like, this friendly, outgoing whatever, but I’m literally not. Truth is, I’m only kinda out there because I’m so afraid of not being out here. You know? Sometimes, really, I don’t want to jump around and throw things; I just wanna lie down on the couch and hug someone.
Bonnie, though, is such a one-girl powerhouse. That’s kinda why I stopped texting her … She had a new life and stuff, and I didn’t want to be too clingy, especially since every time I asked her about Illinois she said it wasn’t super interesting, and the conversations stopped like that.
The worst part was how weirdly lonely for her I was, this girl who hadn’t even been my best friend. I’d think of something I thought Bonnie would like to hear, and just go back and forth: typing it in, deleting it all, retyping, making myself press “send,” and then constantly regretting being annoying until she responded.
“I’ll hang up,” she said, tucking her phone back away.
It’s weird, how someone you’ve thought about and, truthfully, totally obsessed over for the longest time, can be such a stranger.
***

Now, because of that stupid phone call, we were quiet again. Just as it was about to get awful, we heard Alex’s mom from downstairs:
“Come down, girls; we’re going out to dinner now!”
Going out? Alex and I would probably be expected to sit next to each other—and talk. Oh, god, parents. Didn’t they realize it had been four whole years? Though I guess four years isn’t much to them, as they seem to be able to recall all those things from “when they were my age…” I didn’t want to go out. But at the same time, I was kind of excited, to see if we’d strike it up again, I guess.
And although Alex didn’t show it, I bet she felt the same way. We exchanged apologetic smiles. I guessed we’d just have to see. We got up, walked to the door, breaths quiet. Alex stared at the door handle and slowly turned the knob.