A Tale of Two Besties Read Free Page A

checking their stats and info online like she was creating a personal fantasy draft of cute boys. She felt the need to virtually stalk every boy we’d ever meet for weeks, obsessing over his social media history—who he tagged, who he’s faved, who he retweeted and whose stuff he “liked”—and determining his crushability entirely on the results of her Internet detective-ing.
    I’ve only liked one boy ever: Tim Slater, who was actually more like our third sidekick and has known Harper since they were both in diapers.
    Tim is the perfect kind of guy: sort of geeky in a Wes Anderson-y kind of way, knows the origin story of every super villain from Marvel, and can make any type of nautical knot in under sixty seconds. He’s really funny but totally hates the idea of improv groups, can whistle the theme song from every TV show ever made, and—most importantly—has no idea of how attractive he is. He’s like a girl in one of those high school movies where you take off her glasses and oversized “Save the Direwolves” T-shirt and brush the hair out of her eyes and
voila!
He’s like Clark Kent—dweeby and doesn’t look like much—that is, until he turns into Superman. He’s even got a really square chin, like a superhero, and very straight, white teeth which, combined with his crooked smile, are totally devastating. His fingernails are never, ever dirty and he has very soft hands, which he used to gently break my heart into a million pieces.
Ugh.
    I shook my head to clear away the spider webs. I had liked Tim and we dated and it didn’t work out for a number of reasons, and it was time to stop thinking about him.
    â€œI don’t want a boyfriend,” I explained for the billionth time. “No boyfriend is going to know that ‘Cups’ song is from summer camp and not an oversampled Anna Kendrick single. No boyfriend will help me on an intelligence mission to the teachers’ lounge to find out if Ms. Bulgari is actually a witch. No boyfriend,” I added slyly, “is going to spend a day walking around with me with Skittles in our bras to see if Tim Slater notices that we’re candy-padding.”
    Harper broke out into a big grin. “You don’t know that. Pathways is supposed to be full of guys in candy push-up bras who
love
anything campy.” We both erupted into giggles that felt relief personified. Laughing with Harper feels like catching my breath after I didn’t even know I was holding it in.
    Harper scooched over and gave me a big hug. “Lily, you are going to make TONS of friends!” she whispered, stroking my hair as I began to morph into a cry-baby yet again. “You are the most magical person I know!”
    That was such a Harper thing to say. She’d always been super popular. People just wanted her in their circle, and not just because she looks the part of a Californian Dream Girl. Harper’s style is pretty understated—her signature look is something like a dove gray tank top paired with jeans and her beach-ready mermaid hair, which sounds super minimalist but she pulls it off, especially thanks to her beautiful dark eyes and her yoga-perfected posture. She’s like a Disney Princess in Rag & Bone. She never tried to “express herself” with fashion, always letting herself bring personality to her clothes rather than the other way around, which was such a rarity in LA. People were always stopping her on Melrose, assuming she was an actress. Not in a “Oh, weren’t you on that ABC Family tween comedy?” way, either. It was more that you got a sense from Harper, could feel something that radiated off of her telling you that she was someone Special. You could tell just by the way she looked at you, no matter what she was doing, that she was having the best time and wanted to make sure you were, too.
    But even if Harper wore a bag over her head, she’d still be