My Best Friend Is a Goddess Read online

  DEDICATION

  For Sarada — sister, best friend and utter goddess!

  Love you always.

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Instant Messenger Conversation

  Emily’s Diary

  1. Emily

  Secret Thoughts of Adriana Andersson

  2. Adriana

  Emily’s Diary

  3. Emily

  Secret Thoughts of Adriana Andersson

  4. Adriana

  Emily’s Diary

  5. Emily

  Secret Thoughts of Adriana Andersson

  6. Adriana

  Emily’s Diary

  7. Emily

  Secret Thoughts of Adriana Andersson

  8. Adriana

  Emily’s Diary

  9. Emily

  Secret Thoughts of Adriana Andersson

  10. Adriana

  Emily’s Diary

  11. Emily

  Secret Thoughts of Adriana Andersson

  12. Adriana

  Emily’s Diary

  13. Emily

  Secret Thoughts of Adriana Andersson

  14. Adriana

  Emily’s Diary

  15. Emily

  Secret Thoughts of Adriana Andersson

  16. Adriana

  Emily’s Diary

  17. Emily

  Secret Thoughts of Adriana Andersson

  18. Adriana

  Emily’s Diary

  19. Emily

  Secret Thoughts of Adriana Andersson

  20. Adriana

  Emily’s Diary

  21. Emily

  Secret Thoughts of Adriana Andersson

  22. Adriana

  Emily’s Diary

  23. Emily

  Secret Thoughts of Adriana Andersson

  24. Adriana

  Emily’s Diary

  25. Emily

  Secret Thoughts of Adriana Andersson

  26. Adriana

  Emily’s Diary

  27. Emily

  Secret Thoughts of Adriana Andersson

  28. Adriana

  Secret Thoughts of Adriana Andersson

  29. Emily

  Secret Thoughts of Adriana Andersson

  Emily’s Diary

  Secret Thoughts of Adriana Andersson

  Emily’s Diary

  Secret Thoughts of Adriana Andersson

  Emily’s Diary

  Secret Thoughts of Adriana Andersson

  Emily’s Diary

  Secret Thoughts of Adriana Andersson

  Emily’s Diary

  Secret Thoughts of Adriana Andersson

  Emily’s Diary

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Also by Tara Eglington

  Copyright

  Instant Messenger Conversation

  Adriana: So, I have news.

  Emily: Good or bad? Don’t say bad — I know it’s a comfort to have simultaneously sucky lives, but beyond my selfishness of wanting a partner in misery, I want you to get happy over there. You’ve been miserable since day one. That said, I’m never going to get over you leaving me. You know how they talk about the one who got away — that one person who stands head and shoulders over everyone else, and they pretty much spoil you for being happy for the rest of your life cause you can’t help but compare everyone else to them? Well, you’re like the bestie I’m never going to move on from. I hate your dad. Who takes a job in Borneo anyways?

  Adriana: You do realise if I took a screenshot of each of our conversations for the past year, you hating my dad would probably be mentioned in every single one?

  Emily: Um, you do realise that if I screenshotted right back, you hating Dylan would be right there in every conversation?

  Adriana: I don’t hate him any more. I’ve decided to take the higher road, which is to never acknowledge he existed. Feel free to screenshot away in the future — Dylan is now He Who Shalt Never Be Named.

  Emily: Nope, not believing that for a second. You’ve constructed some voodoo doll of him, haven’t you? It’s always the quiet ones you have to watch out for.

  Adriana: I’m not responding to that.

  Emily: I know I pledged undying loyalty to you after the whole incident, but I’m starting to think the poor guy’s suffered enough. How many letters has he sent you?

  Adriana: I don’t know. I’ve been burning them so it’s not like I have them around to count.

  Emily: You burnt them? You never told me that!

  Adriana: That’s because you would have told me not to. You seem like you’re on his side sometimes.

  Emily: He knows how stupid he was. I was hoping you’d read the letters — there’s stuff he needs to say to you.

  Adriana: I burnt them because I don’t care about what he has to say. If I read the letters, I’ll end up making excuses for him.

  Emily: For someone so sweet and shy, you can be incredibly stubborn. I don’t get why you can’t give him a little long-distance leeway. It’s not like you have to see him every day.

  Adriana: Yet.

  Emily: Are you guys coming back for a visit? My fingers are trembling with excitement so you’d better spill before my sentences are all taken over by typos. Tsfstdydydy!&@@()@))! It’s already happening. Breathe, Emily, breathe.

  Adriana: Well …

  Emily: Don’t drag this out, you don’t know what you’re doing to me!

  Adriana: Whatever hate you’ve been feeling towards my dad must have been strong enough to radiate over here. He’s so miserable …

  Emily: Please say his misery is strong enough to visit more than a couple of days? I can’t cope if you love me and leave me so soon — it’s cruel.

  Adriana: He wants to come home.

  Emily: OMG, he’s booked like a month, hasn’t he? I’m already compiling an Emily and Adriana must-do list. Adriana: For good.

  Emily: I think I’m having some kind of hallucination. You do mean home as in Jefferson, right?

  Adriana: Yes! He found a furnished rental online last night, and he’s enrolled me to start school two weeks from today.

  Adriana: Emily? You still there?

  Emily: I may have let out a slightly piercing scream and Mum’s now standing in my room. A long epoch of suffering has drawn to a close. Sure, I existed while you were gone, but that was it. There was no true joy. Okay, Mum’s saying I have like two minutes before I have to log off. Now I totally understand why you were flipping over Dylan before.

  Adriana: I told you, he’s He Who Shalt Not Be Named. The one reason I don’t want to leave this humid monkey-ridden region.

  Emily: It’s a travesty to think you want to stay there. Stop. Right. Now.

  Adriana: I don’t suppose you could convince Dylan to move schools in the next fortnight?

  Emily: You guys were friends, I’m sure you can resurrect the old dynamic.

  Adriana: You do realise the word ‘resurrect’ is usually reserved for vampire movies, right? As in ‘sure it’s a good idea to resurrect the hot-looking blood drainer’. Dylan totally slayed our friendship. Any resurrection of it would be an unnatural creature that would harm everyone around it.

  Emily: You didn’t work through your anger over there, did you?

  Adriana: Some things are meant to stay dead, Emily.

  Emily: It’s weird to hear you like this. I guess love does strange —

  Adriana: Don’t say that word.

  Emily: Okay, GUYS do strange things to our emotions. Logging off now! You’re coming home, home, home!

  Emily’s Diary

  I’ve always hated the expression ‘be careful what you wish for’. I get the premise — don’t go wishing all spontaneously before you consid
er what your life would be like if the wish was granted, because the stuff you’re lusting after may not be all it seems and could make your life worse, not better. I hate the way it sounds so ominous, like bad stuff could be waiting round the corner if you dare to hope or daydream about something.

  We learned about Pandora’s Box a few years ago in English class, when we were studying the Greek myths. Pandora, the world’s first woman (and a ridiculously pretty one), was created by Zeus and the other gods of Olympus as a way to get back at the Titan Prometheus, who had peeved Zeus off by stealing fire from heaven to give to mankind. Zeus had already chained Prometheus to a rock for eternity, but apparently that wasn’t punishment enough. He knew that although Prometheus had the ability to consider the future, Prometheus’s brother, Epimetheus, only had afterthought. And so Zeus gave Pandora to Epimetheus as a gift, knowing he’d accept her the moment he laid eyes on her beauty, despite having been warned by Prometheus not to take anything from Zeus. At their wedding, Zeus presented Pandora and Epimetheus with a gift from the gods — a carved box, which they were warned never to open. Pandora, specially designed by the gods to be curious, assumed the box contained something special — and what could go wrong if she opened it just a crack to take a peep at this pressie from the gods? But the box contained hatred, disease, suffering — all the evils you could ever imagine — and by opening it, poor Pandora let all these awful things into the human world for the first time.

  I remember thinking the Greeks were twisted in general when it came to the concept of gifts — hello, Trojan horse anyone? — but I felt sorry for Pandora, because I knew if I’d been in her position I would have done exactly the same thing. Maybe she was lonely. Maybe she was having a bad day, or a bad year, after marrying some guy she barely knew, and hoped the box was a gift that could turn her life around. The whole premise of the myth — don’t let yourself daydream or hope for more because it might unleash evil upon you and your world — seemed so depressing.

  I mean, my whole life is pretty much only endurable because I spend half of it in a ‘what if’ world. I’m a fully qualified dream architect. My castles in the air are magnificent structures — I know the colours of the clouds that drift by the turrets and what shade the bricks become at sunset. I know the ins and outs of all my wishes, and have considered every consequence of them. So I find the suggestion offensive that I might wish for something foolish, or not think it all through, so my castles are doomed to come crashing down.

  Plus, I can’t imagine my life would be any worse if my wishes did backfire. I’m a flat-chested heffalump with a nose that could double for any Disney witch’s, I’m unlikely to get a date within this decade, and my one saving grace, aka my best friend, was taken from me in Year Nine, right in the midst of the joke that is high school. A fair amount of cruel has been thrown my way already. Even if a wish went pear-shaped, at least I’d experience the temporary high of the whole ‘No way! Is this ACTUALLY happening to me?’ thing. I think I’d rather have those scant moments than the relentless sameness that is my reality.

  I wish my best friend would come home is the wish that’s been firing through my brain ad nauseam since the day Adriana left. It seems obvious. I miss her, and I want her home so my life can go back to what it was before. So associating Pandora’s Box and its evils and ominousness with Adriana makes me feel sick. She’s always been the opposite of a Pandora’s Box for me. All she’s ever unleashed into my world is awesomeness. It’s a betrayal even letting that thought come into my head, let alone committing it to paper.

  But of course, Adriana coming home is where all the ‘be careful what you wish for’ stuff begins.

  1

  EMILY

  ‘I can’t endure another second!’

  We’re at the airport, and Adriana and her dad are stuck somewhere on the tarmac while Mum and I languish in the arrivals lounge.

  Mum gives me a look. ‘You’ll kick a hole in those boots you begged me to buy you and there’s no way I’m replacing them. I thought I’d raised you to see beyond branding.’

  I stop kicking the seat in front of me. I don’t bother replying to Mum’s spiel about the boots. She’s an artist who spends all day locked in her studio, covered in paint stains. She should be grateful I don’t slavishly copy everything the fashion bloggers do, unlike most of the girls at school. These boots represent a subtle negotiation between fashionably on point and slightly left of field — i.e. I’m not a Ten wannabe. Not that I’d admit that to Mum. She’d say, ‘Make a real stand against the system!’ and I’d say, ‘Yeah, total social suicide is my goal!’

  ‘I’ve already been patient,’ I protest. ‘A year and a half without Ade, plus the whole holidays as Daniel decided not to return until the second-last day before school starts. And now most of today wasted on flight delays. Knowing she’s so close while we’re still waiting is getting to me.’

  Mum smiles. ‘I’m happy for you and Adriana. I just hope Daniel is making the right decision about coming back.’

  I give her a look. ‘Don’t even say that.’ I’m not going to lose Adriana again. Her return not only means we’ll spend the rest of Year Ten together, but I’ll also have her to get me through the rest of high school. Plus, we’ve always planned to go to the same uni, even flat together.

  Mum gazes out the window, watching a small jet climb into the air. ‘Emily, remember that every street of this town is steeped in memory for them —’

  The rest of her sentence is drowned out by the noisy flood of passengers through arrival gate 36. I leap from my seat and stand on tiptoes, desperately trying to see Daniel and Adriana and cursing my mediocre height. Minutes drag by as passenger after passenger exits, none of them Adriana or her dad.

  ‘There they are.’ Mum waves her arm in the air. ‘Daniel!’

  I go from standing on my tiptoes to jumping off the ground to try and catch a glimpse. I see Daniel, who is tall and always stands out, but I can’t spot Adriana. The only person near Daniel is a gorgeous girl nearly his height, who’s laughing in response to something he must have said.

  ‘Where’s Ade?’ I ask Mum.

  Mum doesn’t reply. She’s staring at the girl, who’s all tanned legs and sun-streaked hair and looks like she should be striding down a fashion runway. Heads around us turn to take her in. I feel a pang of jealousy. She’s probably a few years older than me, but light years beyond what I’ll look like at twenty, even if my face slims down and the cheekbones Mum keeps promising me finally show up.

  ‘Can you see her?’ I ask.

  She has to be on that flight, but I can’t see anyone behind Daniel. My palms are sweaty from panic. I just want proof that Adriana is actually back in the country. In the weeks since she messaged me, I’ve wondered several times if I dreamed the whole thing.

  Mum’s face looks shocked. ‘I think …’

  ‘You think what? What?’

  Before Mum can reply, Daniel is waving at us. The Victoria’s Secret doppelganger seems to light up as she turns her head away from Daniel and takes us in. The next minute she’s running in our direction. Running towards me.

  I turn to look over my shoulder, expecting to see a family of long-legged bronzed creatures holding out their arms for her. But there’s no-one behind us.

  Two seconds before the mystery girl throws her arms around me, I see her eyes. A flash of green — the same eyes I’ve seen smiling at me thousands of times. Her full lips let out a shriek as I’m bear-hugged like never before. Holy crap. Victoria’s Secret doppelganger IS Adriana.

  I hear her voice muffled against my neck. ‘You’re going to kill me — I’m crying. I thought I’d got way better since we’ve been away, but the other day I cried at a coffee ad on TV. Instant coffee too, which isn’t worthy of any emotion. The feels have gone to the extreme since I told you we were coming back. I need an Emily intervention.’

  When we were seven, Adriana went through a stage where every animated movie made her cry. Finally I hosted an ‘in
tervention’ (I think I watched too much Dr Phil at too young an age) and threatened to bury her DVDs in the backyard unless she learned to ‘toughen up’. It sounds harsh, but Ade had to learn how to hold a poker face so she could cope with nightmare Tatiana at primary school, who rejoiced in regularly making Ade’s eyes turn glassy. I thought if we denied Tatiana the tears, maybe she’d back off a bit — but unfortunately she wasn’t deterred at all.

  I pull away from the hug briefly to take another look at Ade. I nicknamed her Bambi way back due to her extreme sensitivity, but now she literally makes me think of a baby deer. She’s always been skinny, but it’s like all her limbs have been stretched. Her legs are epically lengthy. Every inch of skin is tanned, from the long slim feet in her scrappy brown sandals to her lean wrists and collarbones, just like you’d see at Paris fashion week. Her face is tanned too, with the tiniest smattering of freckles on her cheeks.

  Adriana gives me a funny look. She’s realised I’m staring.

  ‘Sorry!’ I say. ‘I noticed you have freckles now.’

  I want to say ‘I noticed you’re a freakin babe now’ but is that a weird thing to say?

  Adriana rolls her eyes. ‘The freckles are seriously just from the sun damage I got during the first few days before I realised I needed a hat twenty-four-seven. I hate them by the way.’

  She hates them? I hate my freckles, but that’s because they’re giant smudges all over my face. Ade’s are the cutesy version, the type that makes boys at school go crazy over the adorable/approachable factor they think it apparently lends hot girls.

  As Adriana launches into a rant about Borneo, I stare at her face again. Besides the body and the tan, what was it that made me completely not recognise my own best friend? The eyes are the same, that unique shade of green that always reminds me of a character from Harry Potter. But her lashes are dark and long — again, Bambi-like — and her glasses are gone. The eyebrows that Tatiana always laughed at (they were pretty prominent for a little girl, I admit) are now the glorious arches that Tatiana and the other Tens painstakingly pencil in every day. The cheekbones are the same, the nose identical. Her mouth looks different though. Her lips are like Rosie Huntington-Whiteley’s. Pillowy-perfect. How have I never noticed that before? As I watch Ade talk, I realise her mouth is different because her teeth are different. I always found her prominent teeth endearing, like a bunny rabbit’s. Now they’re braces-free, straight and perfectly unobtrusive.