“You can do this,” he says. “Remember, you’re doing it for yourself. And I guess also for Ms. Novak, so she doesn’t fail you.”
I laugh and roll my eyes.
“But seriously,” he says. “Don’t worry about anyone else.”
I swallow hard and nod. I head up to the front, and Sydney applauds and howls like I’ve already performed something.
“Hey again,” I say into the mic. There are so many people here, and I’m suddenly embarrassed and nervous. For a moment, I have more respect for the girls in chorus, and for Layla, than I ever have before.
“I just have a little story I want to tell you guys.”
I look at Novak, so she knows that this is my monologue, and my stomach feels like it’s in my throat. My eyes find Dom next, and he’s looking at me expectantly, just like everyone else in the diner. I worry that I’ve made a huge mistake.
Just then, Layla walks through the door. She’s alone. I didn’t think she would come. But here she is.
I take a deep breath. I step up to the mic.
“The same song was playing the second I met my ex–best friend and the moment I realized I’d lost her,” I hear myself say. I look at Dom and he nods encouragingly. I look at my dad, and I have his rapt attention too. I don’t look at Layla again.
“I met my best friend at a neighborhood cookout the year we would both turn twelve. It was one of those hot Brooklyn afternoons that always made me feel like I’d stepped out of my life and onto a movie set because the hydrants were open, splashing water all over the hot asphalt. There wasn’t a cloud in the flawless blue sky. And pretty black and brown people were everywhere.
“I was crying. ‘What a Wonderful World’ was playing through a speaker someone had brought with them to the park, and it reminded me too much of my Granny Georgina. I was cupping the last snow globe she’d ever given me in my small, sweaty hands and despite the heat, I couldn’t help imagining myself inside the tiny, perfect, snow-filled world. I was telling myself a story about what it might be like to live in London, a place that was unimaginably far away and sitting in the palm of my hand all at once. But it wasn’t working. When Gigi had told me stories, they’d felt like miracles. But she was gone and I didn’t know if I’d ever be okay again.
“I heard a small voice behind me, asking if I was okay. I had noticed a girl watching me, but it took her a long time to come over, and even longer to say anything. She asked the question quietly.”
I take a deep breath before I say the next thing, because I know this could give it all away. That lots of people will know that this story I’m telling isn’t some monologue I found online from an off-Broadway play, or a story I made up on my own. After I say the next thing, everyone will know I’m talking about the very real me. And Layla.
“I had never met anyone who…spoke the way that she did, and I thought that her speech might have been why she waited so long to speak to me. While I expected her to say ‘What’s wrong?’—a question I didn’t want to have to answer—she asked ‘What are you doing?’ instead, and I was glad.
“I was kind of a weird kid, so when I answered, I said ‘Spinning stories,’ calling it what Gigi had always called it when I got lost in my own head, but my voice cracked on the phrase and another tear slipped down my cheek. To this day I don’t know why I picked that moment to be so honest. Usually when kids I didn’t know came up to me, I clamped my mouth shut like the heavy cover of an old book falling closed. Because time had taught me that kids weren’t kind to girls like me: Girls who were dreamy and moony-eyed and a little too nice. Girls who wore rose-tinted glasses. And actual, really thick glasses.” A few people laugh. “Girls who…thought the world was beautiful, and who read too many books, and who never saw cruelty coming. But something about this girl felt safe. Something about the way she was smiling as she stuttered out the question helped me know I needn’t bother with being shy, because she was being so brave. I thought that maybe kids weren’t nice to girls like her either.”
I chance a glance at Layla then. She’s looking right at me for the first time in what feels like forever. I keep talking.
“The cookout was crowded, and none of the other kids were talking to me because, like I said, I was the neighborhood weirdo. I carried around snow globes because I was in love with every place I’d never been. I often recited Shakespeare from memory because of my dad, who is a librarian. I lost myself in books because they were friends who never let me down, and I didn’t hide enough of myself the way everyone else did, so people didn’t ‘get’ me. I was lonely a lot. Unless I was with my Gigi.
“The girl, she asked me if it was making me feel better, spinning the stories. And I shook my head. Before I could say what I was thinking—a line from Hamlet about sorrow coming in battalions that would have surely killed any potential I had of making friends with her”—the audience laughed again—“the girl tossed her wavy black hair over one shoulder and grinned. She closed her eyes and said, ‘Music helps me. And I love this song.’ ”
I know Layla’s remembering that day now too.
“When she started singing, her voice was so unexpected—so bright and clear—that I stopped crying and stared at her. She told me her name and hooked her arm through mine like we’d known each other forever, and when the next song started, she pulled me up and we spun in a slow circle together until we were both dizzy and giggling.
“Some people would say that this was a coincidence, that I met this girl so soon after I’d lost Gigi while our favorite song was playing, and that her voice made me feel like everything would be all right before I even knew her name. But I’m a believer in signs.”
I blink a few times, bringing myself back to the present. To this moment in Dolly’s Diner instead of that barbecue, years ago. This is my farewell to what we were to each other. I’m finally okay with saying goodbye to her, and this is the best way I know how.
“I was right. She and I, we were friends for a long time. But things happen, and people change, and everything is different now. Still, I hope that girl knows that I’ll cherish the friendship we had forever. Even after everything.”
Everyone applauds as I walk away from the mic and rejoin Sydney, Dom, and Willa standing along the wall.
“I didn’t know you were going to do that!” Sydney says, shaking me by the shoulders. “It was amazing.”
“That was kind of fucking beautiful,” Willa agrees. Her eyes are glassy, like she’s about to cry.
“Thanks,” I say, “and yeah. Sorry I didn’t tell you. I didn’t know if I’d lose my nerve or not, to be honest. But there’s clearly something you guys haven’t told me….” I look at them, pointing from Sydney to Willa and back again.