them vertically across her palm. “Codi?” she said. “Just so you know, I think you’re one of the best people I’ve ever met. And I think being friends with someone should be like the concept of infinity—like you truly believe that person has no limits, and you just want to keep counting upward with them to see where they go.” She paused. “I’m sorry I haven’t made you feel like that lately.”
My throat was too tight to speak; all I could do was nod in gratitude.
“It still stings that you lied to me,” Maritza went on, “but the selfless part of me is happy for you. If you’ve grown closer to Ricky and your other new friends, that’s okay. I don’t have to be your best friend in the entire world. I just want to be in your life.”
I picked myself up and went to sit next to her on the curb. She let me.
“You are my best friend, Maritza. There’s no replacing you.”
I reached for her hand, squeezing it tight. She swallowed and blinked very fast.
“Do you think Ricky’s becoming a best friend, too?” she asked thickly.
I hesitated, but there was no trace of jealousy or insecurity in her expression. She was asking me the way she asked about my paintings: like it mattered to her because it mattered to me.
“I think he’s becoming one,” I said, and I told her about that moment Ricky and I had looked at each other in the trees, how it felt like we understood each other intuitively.
“I love that feeling. It’s how I felt when I met you and JaKory.”
I paused; the expansive feeling in my chest deflated a little. “Yeah. The recess crate.”
“No, the next day,” Maritza said.
“Wait—what?”
“Don’t you remember the next day? That teacher, Ms. Hillgrove, asked us to carry the recess crate to the gym, and on the way we found that flower garden on the side of the school?”
“I don’t—”
“We were reading ‘Rikki-Tikki-Tavi’ in English class, so you and I got down in the bushes and pretended to be the cobras, and JaKory started yelling at us in a British accent? It was so weird, so random, but all three of us just went with it. I still remember going home and telling my parents I’d made friends.”
I had no recollection of the moment, but a grin was spreading across my face. Maritza laughed and wrapped an arm around my shoulders.
“We were weirdos, Codi.”
“We’re still weirdos.”
“Even you?”
“God, more than ever.”
She laughed again, and there was a trace of relief in it. “Well, as long as Ricky and Lydia and these other people didn’t take that from you, I guess I can live with them.”
“Thanks,” I laughed, squeezing her arm. The air between us had changed; it felt light, spacious, like I could truly breathe in it. “Now tell me what happened with dance.”
“Oh, lord,” she sighed. “It’s dramatic.”
“Tell me anyway.”
It was a long story, starting with the tension between Maritza and Rona after the night they’d made out on Maritza’s couch. The animosity between them had escalated in the last three weeks, but the other dance girls hadn’t known why.
“Then we had a team sleepover last night,” Maritza said. “My parents temporarily ungrounded me so I could go, because I lied and told them it was mandatory. We were playing Truth or Dare, and it was stupid stuff, you know, like Maggie had to answer which dance team dad she’d have sex with, and Brenna had to text this guy a picture of her bra. Then Rona was dared to kiss one of us, and the team picked me.”
I gasped. “Oh god. Did you do it?”
“Of course not, that’s the problem. Everyone was chanting Kiss her, kiss her, and I freaked and started yelling that I wasn’t gonna do it. All the girls got really quiet, and they were looking at me funny, and Mary Glenn was like, ‘It’s not a big deal, Maritza, we’re all a little on the spectrum.’ They thought I was some kind of conservative, homophobic freak.”
She paused; her expression was wounded.
“What’d you do?” I asked.
“Tried to tell them they had gotten it all wrong, that I just didn’t like making a joke out of something that wasn’t actually a joke, but no one would listen. They just kinda migrated away from me and started talking about what movie we should watch. So I grabbed my bag and got the hell out of that stupid-ass basement, and I ran out the front door so