Only one helping Dana with what?Just getting off work. Help Dana with what?I shook my head, rereading her message. Dana hadn’t mentioned anything to me. We were supposed to hang out on Saturday, not Friday.
“What’s up? Why are you being weird?” she said when I called her outside of work. My mom hadn’t arrived yet.
“Kayla. What are you talking about? Dana and I planned to hang out tomorrow,” I said.
“Étienne, what areyoutalking about? Didn’t you get invited to the Myspace group? Dana made it like a week ago,” she said.
“What group? I wasn’t invited to anything online.” I pulled the phone away from my ear, brows raised.
“Stop being weird. Of course you were. She’s throwing a party tonight. Her parents are up north again. Even James is here to meet everyone. You know, her new boyfriend. Like, literally everybody we know was invited.”
The air escaped my lungs as if the twins were sitting on my chest, leaving me speechless for a moment. Did I miss the invitation? I didn’t remember getting any notifications the last time I logged into my account, which I checked at least once a day. The last notification I got was the weekend prior when Thad requested to be my friend.
Just before I responded to this news, I heard Dana’s voice asking Kayla who was on the phone. Kayla responded that it was me, then the line was disconnected.
I wanted to think it was nothing. It could have been a dropped call, which was common in the 2000s. I called back, and there was no answer. I then called Dana.This is weird. Maybe she missed my name on her friends’ list.But she didn’t answer either. Was I not invited? Was I not supposed to find out that she was having a party? The strain in our friendship hadn’t stretched far enough for her to blatantly shut me out like that. There had been parties in the past that I had been left out of, but this was different.
This time I was left out on purpose. If this had been any other time before my meeting Thad and before her knowing about him, she would have invited me to meet her new boyfriend, even if I wasn’t considered the house party type of person.
Am I that much of a killjoy?I thought to myself in the car on the way home with my mom. I began to panic on the inside as a sea of doubtful thoughts washed over me. Did my friends actually like me? Or did they remain my friends out of habit? We’d known each other for so long, they probably only thought of me as an accessory. You know? Like when a person is getting dolled up for a night out, then takes one thing off and leaves it behind before leaving. Had I unknowingly become that one unnecessary item left behind?
“You okay?” my mom asked, seeing through my pensive expression as I stared out the passenger window.
“When was the first time you realized you might be losing a friend?” I asked, knowing the question was more revealing than I wanted. But what did I have to lose?
“What do you mean? Who?” She straightened her back and looked at me before returning her gaze to the road.
“Ma! Nobody. Never mind.” I exhaled. I should have known better than to ask my mom that question. She was going to make a thing of it like she would with everything else.
Although I’d had an amazing time Thursday night, and a great morning on Friday before work. I felt more alone that night than ever before. My closest friends were all together at my best friend’s house. Without me. And the one person who I finally felt I could talk to wasn’t in town. Thad was with his family across the state to check out a university his sister had finally chosen to attend.
I ended Friday night stretched out on the pavement of the back porch, listening to the playlist on my iPod. Frankie was by my side, belly up, his front paws folded against his chest, hind legs stretched out. And that was all I needed. The world could fall apart around me. I could lose everything. As long as I had Frankie with me, everything would be okay.
I felt a nudge in my side. It was Laura, my mom’s childhood friend. She poked me with her big, tattooed toe, which always hung out over the flip flops she wore year-round. I looked up at her and she winked, lightly biting on her cigarette.
“Hey boo. Come on, get up,” she demanded, taking a large puff of the cigarette.
“Would you put that cancer stick out.” I waved my arm and pretended to cough. I hated the smell of cigarettes and always hassled her about quitting. I would say to her,“Do you want to turn out like my dad?”
We sat on the porch facing the back fence that divided our yard and the football field of my school. Laura took turns sipping on her drink, then sipping on that damn cigarette before eventually putting them both down to ask why I was hanging out alone in the backyard. My mom obviously mentioned what I had asked her in the car after work. Laura was a kind and selfless woman who became friends with my mom when they were in high school. She never had kids, but always treated us as her own.
“So, are you talking about Dana?” She turned her head.
I closed my eyes and didn’t respond.
“Étienne. I know you even better than your mom does,” she said as I raised my brow. How did she guess who I was talking about? My mom didn’t even know and probably thought my question was referencing this new guy.
“My mom told you, huh? Yeah. It’s Dana.” I made eye contact with her, then looked out past the fence at the dark figures jogging on the track behind my house.
“What happened? You guys are supposed to be thick as thieves.” She tapped her cigarette on the edge of the armrest.
I exhaled, then summarized the last week and a half with Thad, leaving out the intimate details and my true feelings for him. I explained how Dana had warned me about him but was also acting kind of jealous, and being hypocritical, that I made a friend.
“It happens,” she said before I finished, blowing out a cloud of smoke that latched to her ear-length hair. “Sometimes a friend feels like they’re losing you. It sucks. Ya know?”
“But the thing is, she isn’t losing me. I want to be friends with her. She doesn’t like my new friend and doesn’t even know him.”
“It’ll blow over.” She waved her cigarette-holding hand.