“I know. And what are you going to do about Skyler? Should I fly to Ohio and break into his house as well? Find the secrets to breaking down the wall he’s put up?”
“Will you?” I sighed. “No, nothing. I’m going to do nothing.” He was my past. Sure, a huge part of my past. But sometimes that’s where the past belonged. “He’s leaving in two and half weeks. It’s not like we were going to suddenly be long-distance best friends.”
“See, not a man hater. You are an independent woman. Like you’ve told me before, those things aren’t synonyms.”
“If I’m so independent, then why was I complaining about the fact that I don’t have a boyfriend today?”
“Are you telling me that love and independence can’t coexist?”
“Yes,” I said.
“You really feel that way?”
“No, they can coexist. But not for us. We are loveless independent women. Together in our aloneness forever!”
“Forever?”
I laughed. “For now.”
I could almost hear her eye-roll. “I’ll text you if I find anything during my break-in.”
“Love you,” I said.
“You better.”
We hung up and I rolled onto my stomach and looked out the window. The day was bright and my mom had declared free time for the remainder of it. I slid my arms under my pillowto push myself to sitting when my hands hit something hard. I pulled out what I thought was going to be my sketchbook but what ended up being mine and Skyler’s notebook. I turned back the cover.
In the handwriting of two ten-year-olds, the names Norah Simons and Skyler Hutton were written across the top of the first page. I remembered when we decided to start this book. Our parents had denied our petitions for cell phones, a request made after Ezra and Austin had gotten their first phones. Sure they were two years older, but we needed them just as much, we’d told our parents. They hadn’t agreed. So we started passing this notebook back and forth every time we saw each other.
I ran my hand over our names and flipped the page. Mine was the first entry:
I hate homework. Don’t we do enough work at school? If teachers can’t teach us everything they need to at school, maybe they should try harder. Also, do you have the voice recorder? I need it.
The voice recorder. My mind drifted back to the day Skyler had first shown it to me. We were in the orange orchard behind our neighborhood.
“These sticks are all too small. They’re not going to make a good fort,” I’d said.
“This one’s okay.” He picked up the biggest in the pile we’d made. “We need to find ten more just like this.”
I drew shapes in the sand by my feet. “If you had to be a stick or a rock, which would you want to be?”
“Those are my choices? A stick or a rock?”
“Yes.”
Like always, he didn’t just dismiss my odd question, like other people did, or laugh at it; he really thought about it. “A rock.”
“Why?”
He broke the stick he’d been holding over his knee and held up the two parts as his answer.
I raised my eyebrows at him. “Oh really? You think you’re Superman now or something?”
“Shut up. My point was to show how weak it is, not how strong I am.” Then he smirked. “But I am strong.”
“Keep telling yourself that.”
He took one of the stick halves and pretended it was too hard to break again. “What about you? Rock or stick?”