AS I WALKED to pick up Anna, all I could think of was how sad it was that my best friend was in first grade. Honestly, she was my best friend. Anna was the one who met up with me most frequently, who spent the most time with me outside of school, and who seemed to like me whether I wore makeup or not. (I ignored the small voice telling me that her mom forced her into tutoring.)
I knew I should have been happy that Beckett had asked me to homecoming and that he was sitting with me in front of all of his friends. Except I couldn’t help but think of all I had missed out on when the girls turned their backs on me.
As the minivan pulled up along the drop-off line, I pasted on a smile. Anna deserved to get the best of me, because she definitely always brought the best of her to our sessions. Her mom waved at me through the window, and when the sliding door popped open, Anna jumped out and came running to me to give me her usual hug.
I squeezed her just a second longer than normal. “How are you doing?”
She grinned at me, revealing another missing tooth beside the adult tooth growing in, right up front. “See something different?”
I pretended to think it over for a second. “You got new shoes?”
“No!” she cried, shaking her head back and forth quickly. “Look!” She bared her teeth even more.
“Oh,” I said, “you lost another tooth. What did the tooth fairy get you this time?”
“Fifty cents,” she answered, “and a karaoke machine.” I grinned. “What was the first song you sang on it?”
“I made it up,” she answered, like of course I should have known that already.
I pushed open the door to the school and let her walk through. “I’d love to hear it sometime.”
“Maybe you can come to my birthday party this summer and we can sing karaoke together!” she replied, practically bouncing up and down.
I steered her out of the way of a stand holding up a sign promoting the book fair. “That sounds like so much fun.”
She reached the library door and used all of her strength to yank it open. “So, I’m guessing you want to read books about dogs today, or maybe
singing?” I suggested.
She shrugged. “Maybe one about rock stars.” “Yeah, that sounds perfect,” I agreed.
“Or unicorns,” she said eagerly. “I want to learn about them.”
“We’ll see what we can find.” I kept it to myself that unicorns were mythical creatures—I wasn’t going to be the one to bust her bubble.
We searched the shelves together and spent the better part of our hour reading about rock stars and music. One of my favorites was Giraffes Can’t Dance (which technically was about dancing, but Anna seemed to like it all the same).
We read a few other books, and then my watch vibrated on my wrist. “It’s about time to go.”
Her eyes opened wide. “Oh no.”
“What?” I asked, hurriedly looking behind me for danger. “Is everything okay?”
“ I almost forgot!”
“What did you forget?” I asked. It seemed like it was urgent.
She quickly reached into her backpack and pulled out a wrapped present. “My mom framed this for you. And I was supposed to give it to you when I saw you this morning, but I got so excited telling you about my tooth that I forgot. So anyway, I’m gonna let you open it, and I’m not going to ruin the surprise, because Mom told me not to ruin the surprise.”
I laughed at how clearly excited she was. “Are you sure you don’t want to tell me what it is?”
“Well, um, it’s a picture”—she held up a finger at me—”but I’m not
going to tell you what the picture is.”
I couldn’t help but giggle. “Well alright then.”
She handed me the gift, wrapped in scrapbook paper covered with popsicles and ice cream, and I carefully peeled back the tape job she obviously did herself.
Inside was an eight-by-ten framed picture of a drawing and words. It was one of those pages that your teachers always made you do, where half of the page was blank and the other half had lines so you could write something to go along with your drawing.
Anna had drawn a picture of what basically looked like two blobs—one really big round one and another smaller round one. And then she wrote in lines. Roree is nis bcuz shee reeds wit me.
My eyes grew hot, and before I could scare her away with my tears, I pulled her into a big hug. “Thank you so much for this.”
She looked at me, smiling big. “You like it?”
I did my best not to blubber like a big fat baby. “I love it.”
Maybe having a first-grader as a best friend wasn’t so bad after all.
