Sloppy Firsts_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [2]
By the way, this is the type of thing that Hope and I talk about. But I won’t rehash our convos here. I’ll show and tell on a need-to-know basis. The rest is off-limits. Private.
I know it’s bizarre that I don’t gush on and on about someone who means so much to me. But that’s exactly why I won’t. When you say too much about anything important, it always ends up sounding more trivial than it is. Words trash it. Plus, my conversations with Hope are like Farsi or some other foreign language. It sounds like blah-diddy-blah-blah to everyone except those who speak it. If you read a word-for-word transcript of our last conversation, you’d come to the conclusion that Hope and I were total morons.
I wanted to talk about Charlie’s Angels with Hope in person today, which I obviously couldn’t do. Even though my dad used his network administrator clout to hook Hope and me up with the most state-of-the-art Web cams, it doesn’t help much when Hope’s computer isn’t as jacked-to-the-max as mine. We spend the artificial face time griping about how we can’t see or hear each other. I might as well use an abacus.
Truth be told, this is fine by me. My dad would love it if I were a computer wonk—it would give us something to talk about besides running—but I’m not. Firewalls be damned. I just don’t trust technology, especially since a PHS hacker E-mailed the contents of a freshman’s E-journal to every student in school. (He transferred out, so harsh was his humiliation.) Hope has no problem spilling her guts all over the information superhighway, but she’s a far less suspicious person than I am. The point is, if I can’t talk to her or see her, I prefer handwriting a letter instead of venting over E-mail, or scribbling in this journal instead of cyberchatting with total strangers with screen names like 2kewlchick or buffyrulz04. I’m all too aware of the fact that I’m not Y2K compliant. It’s nothing short of a miracle that my brain didn’t blow up on January first.
In lieu of Hope, I settled for asking Bridget if she remembered playing with the Charlie’s Angels dolls when we were kids. Bridget is my age and lives across the street. For the first twelve years of my life, these qualifications were all I needed in a best friend. But that was before Bridget’s braces came off and her boyfriend, Burke, got on, before Hope and I met in our seventh-grade honors classes.
"Hey. Do you remember when we used to play with the Charlie’s Angels dolls?"
Bridget shook her golden ponytail and stared like I’d just grown horns out of my forehead.
Bridget is pretty. Very. Actually, she’s beautiful. She’s usually compared to Grace Kelly or Gwyneth—depending on the age of the eye of the beholder.
Her looks are directly responsible for the demise of our friendship.
One afternoon in August, before we entered seventh grade, Bridget and I went shopping for back-to-school clothes with my mom and my sister. More than one salesperson commented on the trio’s classically beautiful, high-quality genes. They all had straight, flaxen hair. (Me, a frizzy brunette.) Their eyes were as large and blue as swimming pools. (Mine were as small and brown as mud puddles.) Their skin, lightly tanned and unblemished. (Mine, sunburnt and zitty.) They were petite, yet curvy in all the right places. (I was long-limbed and skinny with orangutan arms.) Who wouldn’t have assumed that I was the neighbor’s daughter? They thought it was hilarious. I laughed along, hiding my humiliation.
Our friendship was never quite the same after that. But it was okay. A month later, I met Hope and Bridget met Burke Roy (an eighth-grader, no less) and we didn’t need each other anymore anyway. My mom still clings to the idea that Bridget is my bestest bud, an assumption based on the fact that I