“What?” Connie’s mouth hangs open. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You . . . your attitude is so . . .” There’s nowhere for my sentence to go, exactly. “My friends won’t even come in the house because of—ugh!” I turn to the staircase and take the first three steps in one frustrated leap.
“Ellen!”
I stop and look down at Connie, blood pounding in my head and in the tips of my fingers. If this is going to be the blowout fight that drives Connie out of the house again or gets me permanently disowned, I can think of worse hills to die on. “What?”
“Being upset doesn’t give you the right to act like a brat.”
She doesn’t scream. She doesn’t even frown. Maybe it’s the angle I have from a few feet up, but she just looks small. Almost apologetic.
Her calm extinguishes all my fight.
“Yeah, fine. I guess I’m still really uncomfortable about the whole thing earlier.”
Connie clears her throat. “I wouldn’t say anything rude to your friend.”
The annoying thing is that I know she means it, and she thinks it’s enough. Like the only thing wrong with homophobia is that it happens in front of gay people. I want her to see the deeply ingrained patterns of power at work in the world, and she’s stuck on personal manners.
“I don’t like to hear rude comments, either,” I say, because it’s true and it’s the easiest way I can think of to make her change her behavior.
“Okay,” Connie says, but her face is so deeply confused. “I didn’t know it was so important to you.”
“Everything is important to me.” I feel silly saying it; it seems like the kind of thing that Connie will blame on being seventeen and dramatic. But I don’t get why it’s radical to feel this way. “I’m not over here being a vegan because I love peanut butter!”
Connie frowns at me. “Well, that’s very . . . noble. But . . . you don’t have to be vegan. You don’t have to get so worked up about every person—and animal—who has a hard life. You’ll make yourself crazy.”
Ableist language, but I let it pass. Funny that Connie thinks I’m swinging wildly at every problem in existence when eighty percent of the time I’m letting myself down by saying nothing. “I know I don’t have to. I want to.” Why don’t you want to?
“You can’t save the whole world.”
Not if you don’t bother to try.
“Well, I’m sorry you and your friends were uncomfortable.”
“Thanks.” I guess. It’s not quite a real apology.
Connie sucks in her breath. “You’re not . . .” She runs her hand up and down the banister. “You’re not spending too much time with . . . people like her on the quidditch team, are you?”
Nearly nice moment demolished.
“I’m going upstairs now,” I say, the words coming out breathless. “I’m not talking to you.”
“I just worry!” Connie calls after me. “You’re at an impressionable age, and—”
I retreat to my room, slam the door. I blast Rent with no headphones and scroll through Tumblr. I’m furious at Connie, but I’m also still reeling from Melissa’s weird brush-off.
It’s hard to identify what makes someone a best friend. It’s things like who you spend the weekend with and who you eat lunch with and who will always like your Instagram posts even though they’re just food and selfies. It’s who you talk to directly when you have a problem with them.
Your best friend doesn’t ditch you for friends who are cooler and more convenient.
It’s pretty clear that Melissa is no longer my best friend.
I seem to be losing those left and right this summer.
I spend the rest of the evening wallowing, but in the end, I don’t act as melodramatic as I feel. I don’t send Melissa any long angry messages or ignore her texts. I accept her offer to drive me to the mini tournament on Saturday. Because what else am I going to do? Throw a fit? Act like a jerk? If I did that, Melissa might never bother to speak to me again. I’d rather have a non-best friend than no friend at all.
15
I don’t know how to prepare for Saturday and a full day of quidditch matches. Karey reminds us to bring plenty of water. John sends a long team email about how the bracket will work, which I mostly skim. The internet tells me to chug liquids and eat carbohydrates on Friday night, which works out, since a plain baked potato is the only part of dinner I can eat.
Melissa picks me up in the morning. I’m too tired to decide how to address the smoothie incident (or really the Connie incident), so I don’t.
The University of Houston sits squarely in the part of the city I never go, where the houses slouch and the gas station cashiers work inside bulletproof cages. It makes me very aware of being from the suburbs, and I feel like I should probably spend more of my time researching issues of socioeconomic privilege because it’s definitely not my strong suit. Between the unfamiliar setting, the snaking roads that dead-end at the bayou, and the construction, we get lost about eight times heading over (which is at least three more times than normal).
“This would be much easier with Karey here to navigate,” Melissa mentions for the hundredth time.
“Or Chris,” I say just to be mean.
We finally spot hoops set up in an area we thought was undeveloped land. The teams clump, distinguishable by T-shirt color. I spot League City first, wearing the same green shirts they wore at our game. Alex waves and I wave back, watching his team lace up their cleats and stretch. I count three knee braces, one funky wrist/thumb Velcro contraption, and one pair of chasers helping a third wrap her right shoulder with athletic tape. I never see this much protective gear at practice. Seeing all the damage control makes me wonder how the original injuries were sustained.
“There you are!” Karey bounds over to us, beaming.
“Late forever,” Melissa says. She doesn’t blame me this time, which is worse than the usual teasing.
“Much better late than never.” Karey shrugs and claps us both on the shoulder. “You can drop your stuff there.” She points to the area behind the farthest set of hoops, where our teammates huddle around John, looking almost uniform in black shirts. “Everyone will watch it.”
League City has started warming up on one of the two pitches, sharing the field with the University of Houston group in red school jerseys and T-shirts. A pink-tank-top-wearing team shares a box of doughnuts over a picnic blanket and looks entirely unconcerned with warming up, while a group in light blue shirts high-kicks their way around the sidelines.