As Simple as It Seems Read Free Page B

Mike had pushed a man so hard it broke his neck.
    â€œI know what you’re doing, Verbie. You’re telling me all this stuff now to make me feel guilty about not coming to your birthday party this year,” Annie said.
    â€œNo I’m not,” I told her. “I’m scared, Annie. Scared I’m going to end up being like Mike Colter.”
    It was starting to snow. Annie patted her pockets, looking for her mittens. When she didn’t find them, she began blowing on her fingers to warm them up.
    â€œThat’s just crazy talk,” she said. “We both know you wouldn’t hurt a fly, Verbie.”
    â€œI’m not the same person I used to be.”
    â€œYou look the same,” she said.
    She didn’t understand. Nobody understood. My parents said that the reason they hadn’t told me the truth was because they didn’t want me to worry, but I’d been worrying all year that there was something wrong with me. And now I knew what it was.
    The bell rang and Annie and I started walking back toward the school building. Lacy snowflakes, like little white doilies, caught in Annie’s dark hair and eyelashes.
    â€œListen,” she said to me, “I’m sorry about your party,Verbie, really I am, but Heather invited me to go skiing with her family at Holiday Mountain for the whole week. I have to go—I already bought ski pants and everything.”
    Heather Merwin was a stuck-up girl Annie had never shown any interest in before.
    â€œIt’s okay,” I told her, even though it wasn’t.
    Best friends were supposed to be there on your birthday, and they were supposed to know when you needed them to give you a hug and tell you that everything was going to be all right. I’d thought that Annie Bingham and I would be best friends forever, but for the first time I found myself wondering if maybe that wasn’t true.
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    Annie and I had met on the morning of our first day in kindergarten, and by the time we went home that afternoon, we were friends. We did everything together—rode our bikes, went ice-skating, baked a million chocolate chip cookies, and had sleepovers almost every weekend at each other’s houses. One of our favorite activities was collecting things—pinecones, pretty rocks, bottle caps, it didn’t matter. We’d come back to my room with our pockets stuffed full, sit on the floor, and spread our treasures out in front of us.Then we’d choose a winner and two runners-up, like in a beauty pageant. Being best friends with Annie was like breathing; it was part of who I was.
    In the beginning of fifth grade, when some of the girls in our class started coming to school wearing makeup and shoes with chunky heels, Annie and I made fun of them for trying to act older than they were. While we swung on the rings or jumped rope at recess, those girls would cluster in tight knots out on the playground whispering and giggling whenever a boy walked by. I remember telling Annie: “If I ever start acting like that, please shoot me.” And she laughed and said, “Don’t worry, I will.”
    Then one day Annie bought some lip gloss. “It’s just clear, Verbie,” she said when she showed it to me, “Like Chapstick only shinier. It’s no big deal.”
    But the lip gloss was only the beginning. Pretty soon, Annie didn’t want to have sleepovers anymore. She said that kind of thing was “babyish.” Not long after that, she started hanging around with Heather.
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    My mother always made a big fuss over my birthday, but that day after my conversation with Annie on the playground, I came home from school and told my mother to cancel my birthday party. She tried to talkme out of it; she’d been planning the party for weeks. She was going to make a red velvet cake from scratch and decorate the house with streamers and balloons. She’d already bought candy for the goodie bags and prizes