A Tale of Two Besties Read online

  A division of Penguin Young Readers Group

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) LLC

  345 Hudson Street

  New York, New York 10014

  USA / Canada / UK / Ireland / Australia / New Zealand / India / South Africa / China

  Penguin.com

  A Penguin Random House Company

  Copyright © 2015 Hello Giggles, Inc.

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  ISBN: 978-0-698-17780-2

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Foreword

  Lily and Harper

  Lily

  Harper

  Lily and Harper

  Lily

  Harper

  Lily

  Harper

  Lily and Harper

  Lily

  Harper

  Lily

  Harper

  Lily

  Lily and Harper

  Harper

  Lily

  Harper

  Lily

  Harper

  Lily

  Harper

  Lily

  Harper

  Lily

  Harper

  Lily

  Harper

  Lily

  Harper

  Lily and Harper

  M+M: A Bestie Story

  To all the Gigglers

  I learned to read while I was living in the Seychelles, a group of islands off the east coast of Africa, when my father was making a movie based on Robinson Crusoe. I had left the familiarity of my Los Angeles home, my first grade class, and all of my friends for this tropical beach reminiscent of an explorer’s desert island. Although it was beautiful, it was so different from home—with a very small population and just one tiny general store, it was nothing like the big-city culture I was accustomed to. I had my sister there with me, and did manage to make one or two new friends. But I still missed life at home and the friends that went with it. This new feeling was what led me to discover that I could escape into the stories in the books I was learning to read. Instead of feeling homesick, I could picture the characters and the places I was reading about. My imagination was thriving, and I finally felt at home.

  When I returned to California, I got my first library card. I came to love the musty smell that accompanied the shelves upon shelves of undiscovered stories. From the fairy tales I knew from my early years to the page-turning young-adult novels I discovered as I grew older, books became my constant and consistent friends. From fiction to nonfiction, history to mystery, books of all kinds became my confidants, my teachers, and my entertainment, and they never, ever let me down. I took my books with me everywhere I went, and they silently soothed my bad days. I couldn’t wait to get into bed and read every night, sometimes so engrossed in a story that I would sneak a flashlight under my pillow so that I could keep turning pages well past lights-out.

  Books also become a way that I bonded with my friends. We exchanged our cherished and tattered paperbacks, and then wrote down our own stories when we were inspired. This was how I first became interested in going into the profession of storytelling, of playing other characters, of inhabiting other worlds. If you get tired of your own world, there’s always a story waiting to take you away to someplace interesting.

  Sophia’s book, A Tale of Two Besties, is an homage to the books of our youth—and to our real friends, the ones who are as consistent as our favorite novels. I hope this book can be something you can share with your friends, and that will remind you of how lucky you are to have them.

  Zooey Deschanel

  Lily (2:46 pm): PuppyGirl. What if, instead of going to the first day of school tomorrow, we just hid out under the pier forever and made a living selling friendship bracelets and seashells? That is totally doable, right? Please say it’s doable.

  Harper (2:47 pm): Hang on, Gawkward Fairy! Do you really want to spend the last night before freshman year freaking out? Let’s soak it in! Beverly Hills High won’t know what they’re missing when you go to Pathways!

  Lily (2:47 pm): Stop. You’re going to make me do one of those cry-face emojis.

  Harper (2:48 pm): Like this one

  Harper (2:48 pm): or like

  Harper (2:49 pm): Why are there so many face emojis? like do humans even have the capacity to make these faces?

  Harper (2:49 pm):

  Lily (2:50 pm): “I STILL CAN’T FIGURE OUT HOW TO MAKE MY PHONE DO THAT!”—Your mom.

  Harper (2:49 pm): I bet it’s the last one that is basically a picture of your face right now and also the rest of the time.

  Harper (2:50 pm): Oh my god, right? “HOW DO I GET THE RINGTONE TO PLAY DRAKE but not the singing part only the part where he ‘raps’?” Ughhh, okay mom.

  Lily (2:51 pm): I <3 her.

  Harper (2:51 pm): Not the way you <3 Tim Slater. Want me to say hi from the “Fairy” tomorrow when I see him in class?

  Lily (2:51 pm): Seriously: NOPE.

  Harper (2:52 pm): Playing hard to get, are we? Or have you accepted what a serial weirdo our male buddy is?

  Lily (2:53 pm): Man you seriously date someone for 2 months and they crush your heart by not being that into you and you never live it down?? I don’t like him anymore, I just like those comics he draws for us!

  Harper (2:54 pm): They are good comics, Gawkward Fairy. And that’s not just me as my superhero PUPPYGIRL with my SUPER EMPATHY talking.

  Lily (2:55 pm): Nice try, but the Gawkward Fairy has up her ultra gawkward shield. NOW I AM immune to all forms of kindess!! Let’s face it: the saddest day of my life starts tomorrow and will last FOREVER.

  Harper (2:56 pm): FOREVER? So dramatic. No wonder they are sending you to the Pathways School of Creative Angst.

  Lily (2:56 pm): Now I’m actually crying face.

  Harper (2:56 pm): Okay, that’s it. Emergency BFF meeting. Same secret time, same secret place?

  Lily (2:56 pm): Only if you bring a sacrificial goat and/or Pinkberry.

  Harper (2:57 pm): duh.

  I, Lily Annelisa Farson, thirteen years of age and of sound mind and body, do hereby declare that the following is the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me Zeus.

  Here is a list of things I love:

  1. Really loud thunderstorms (but in a safe “I’m indoors!” kind of way)

  2. Music mixes for and from friends and collages of friends and me

  3. My red chucks and sometimes my blue ones when my mom washes my red ones without asking

  4. Crazy animals that shouldn’t exist but do.

&nb
sp; 5. Comic books (and not just the ones people think girls will like. ALL OF THEM. Even DC)

  6. BASICALLY anything in a thrift store.

  7. Sneezing. (It makes me feel powerful.)

  8/9. (Tied) Horses/Vanilla ChapStick

  10. My friend Harper!

  And here is a list of things I really, really don’t like:

  Peppers (sometimes I pretend I’m allergic for dramatic purposes only, promise)

  Aggro-angry music, where someone just yells into a microphone like... Aggressive sounds are so aggressive.

  Volleyball

  My hair (too wavy)

  The smell of airplane bathrooms. I’ve only been on one plane but it SURE WAS MEMORABLE

  The Mansons—the cult and Marilyn

  The lady at the mall who works at Day of Knights. It used to be my favorite shop until I accidentally broke a ceramic dragon figurine when I was 11 and she told my dad when he came to pick me up, even though I offered to pay for it. I was planning on being a loyal customer. So really HER LOSS.

  PATHWAYS!!!

  Hashtags (Remember when it was just the “number” symbol and nobody used it, ever, because it was super ugly?)

  Traumas

  I scrawled my signature at the bottom of my note. Mom and I were keeping a scrapbook of my lists and journals, and she told me that she was even thinking of doing some capital-A Art based on them. There wasn’t a lot of room left on the fridge, but I made an executive decision and replaced a postcard Dad had sent from his last trip to Brazil with my note, using our “Got Milk?” magnet to keep it in place right where Mom would definitely notice it.

  “Are you ready, Lily-Jolie?” My mom has a way of sing-talking my name like she was an old black-and-white movie starlet. It immediately evokes nostalgia for a time and place that doesn’t even belong to me. She was standing shadowed in the doorframe with the light behind her, looking like a classic beauty in her wide sun-brim hat and paint-splattered denim dress. On anyone else it would have looked frumpy, but on her it looked like couture. “We’re going to be late meeting Harper at the Pier.”

  I stepped back to view the note within the larger context of the fridge. Did it draw the audience’s eye? Yes, it did. But would the audience (my mom) understand that the last item—the dreaded Pathways Academy—was the most important? I hoped so. It was only eighteen hours, thirty minutes, and nineteen seconds until I descended into the darkness otherwise known as freshman year at a totally new school where I would know exactly zero people.

  “Okay, coming!” I turned and grabbed my shimmery blue fairy wings off the back of one of our red, mismatched kitchen chairs and stuffed them in my backpack. Within minutes, Mom and I were in the car zooming toward the ocean, on our way to the Santa Monica Pier to say goodbye to summer. I closed my eyes and tried to smell the salt in the air.

  Besides Harper, my mom is my best friend. She’s always understood me, and even when she hasn’t agreed with my decisions, she’s supported me. Just one example: In third grade, when we were living back in Maryland, I had the brilliant idea of cutting off all my hair—really short, like Felicity in Felicity, which is this old show I found on Netflix and watched because they said it was made by the same guy who did Lost, which I was psyched about until I realized it didn’t feature any smoke monsters. Anyway, I needed short hair to pull off a rattail, which I desperately wanted. Most kids’ parents would have laughed in their faces and told them to get real, but my mom took me to her friend’s salon in Baltimore the next day. She said my new look was au courant.

  Now, speeding down the highway, I wiggled my toes and told Mom that I had heard something interesting the other day.

  “What was it Lily-Jolie?” My mom’s family is from France, where “jolie” means “pretty.” It’s not even my middle name, which is Annalisa, but it might as well be.

  “It’s just about how students who go to public high schools usually have an easier time of it, you know, academically, than kids who transfer to private schools. Same with getting into college. Because they have better extracurriculars, you know, with public funding? And I also read an article about how private school students are more likely to join a gang or do drugs than regular kids, because they are more susceptible to peer pressure. Like in Lord of the Flies, but with heroin.”

  My mom sighed. “Lily, we’ve been over this. You are going to Pathways.”

  “I know.” My feet were fidgeting so much that the sole of my sandal was almost entirely detached from the actual shoe at this point. “But maybe if I transferred after first semester? If I really, really hated it, maybe . . .”

  We pulled into the parking lot for the Pier, the Santa Monica amusement park only a quick trip down the boardwalk, which was made even faster when I wore my chunky purple rollerblades with the vintage stripes. The Pier is where Harper and I had our secret spot.

  Mom turned off the car and took my head in her hands, wiping away my tears. I didn’t even know I had been crying.

  “Oh Jolie,” she murmured. “I know you think you won’t be able to make friends, but you’ll see . . . everyone will love you!”

  Easy for you to say, is what I wanted to tell her, but didn’t.

  I’d told my parents from the beginning that I didn’t want to go to a private high school. “But Pathways will help nurture your individuality!” Mom would keep telling me, as if individuality is something I have a problem with. If anything, I’m too much of an individual.

  “You’ll find your passion there,” my dad would insist. “You’re so creative; you just need a nurturing environment.”

  My parents think Pathways is better than Palisades or Beverly High, because it’s exclusive and a lot of “artists” have come out of there. “Plus,” they kept saying, “you get to call your teachers by their first names!” I told them that I’d much rather hang out with Harper than call my teacher “James” instead of “Mr. Franco.” (Yes, that James Franco. But he was only a visiting teacher so it doesn’t really count.)

  While I was still sniffling in the parking lot, Mom reached over the seat and handed me my rollerblades. “Mrs. Carina or Rachel will pick you up at four and drive you guys back. You’ll have dinner over at Harper’s, and I’ll pick you up at eight.” She kissed me on top of my head and gave me my knapsack. “Now, you go have fun, jeune fille!”

  I breezed down the boardwalk in my scuffed-up rollerblades, which were covered in sparkly stickers and flaky scribbles from an old Puffy Pen. I took in the life around me: peddlers of all kinds of wares, artisans of chintz and bongs and bongos. Harper and I have our special place outside Pacific Park, not quite underneath the boardwalk, but almost. We found it two summers ago, an empty stretch of beach where you can look to your left and see the Ferris wheel; look to your right and see the ocean. It’s where we listened to Lana Del Rey’s “Video Games” for the first time, sharing an iPod, dancing around like witches attached at the ears. It’s the place where, last summer, those two skateboarding boys followed us, trailing drips of the ice cream they’d bought for us, the sugar sizzling on the boardwalk. Our stomachs stretched tight as drums, we lovingly set down the oversized teddy bears, useless things that Josh and Ben had won for us at the Playland Arcade, and all four of us had run into the water with our clothes on, shrieking. Harper Snapchatted them a picture of us making goofy faces that August, but they never messaged her back. Harper said that was really rude, because you shouldn’t buy two pretty girls ice cream and then never reach out again, especially if those two pretty girls didn’t even ask for extra toppings and were very chill. I don’t know much about this but I believe her. We would have burned the bears in effigy in her yard to cleanse ourselves of their memory, had we not been worried about toxins.

  I came to a quick stop at our spot, where I found Harper already waiting for me. She was wearing her go-to beach gear: a blue and white striped Topshop bathing s
uit underneath a sheer, oversized white cotton shirt that came down to her knees. Her hair was pulled back in a messy bun, highlighting her big brown eyes and the freckles dotting her high cheekbones. Harper’s only accessories were her friendship bracelets that both of us wore all the time—we didn’t even need to remind each other to put them on, though they sometimes fell off my bony wrists (the only parts of me that are still bony).

  Harper is my muse: One time I had her dress up in a big, white gown and this pink wig I found at a thrift store on Melrose, and we shot an entire movie on my cell phone. I wrote and directed and provided the soundtrack, and she was the star. It was about a ghost who doesn’t know she’s dead, waiting at the shore for her lover to arrive. It had a lot of shots of Harper looking intensely at the sea, and doing romantic stuff like running down the steps of the boardwalk crying “Where are you, Walter? My darling!”

  I would say my inspiration for that film was sixty percent Godard and forty percent these cool Vines I saw where everyone looked like they were in Girls. Harper posted it online and we got a bunch of comments, including one from one of our favorite TV actors, from that show about the moody cop who always solves impossible crimes. He wrote, “Will be looking for you two next pilot season!” We almost died.

  “What took you so long?” asked Harper when I finally took off my skates and skittered onto the sand. She was standing up on her blanket, a vintage copy of Lemony Snicket with a cracked spine lying face down next to her coconut water and bag of carrot sticks. “I’ve been waiting forever!”

  “I couldn’t leave Mom without one last plea for mercy,” I said, slinging my backpack off my arms and unzipping it. “And I had to bring this, too, of course.” I smiled. Harper looked inside the bag and pulled out a mangled corpse of wire and fabric.