My Best Friend Is a Goddess Read online

  ‘I feel like there’s a lot you aren’t telling me about this party,’ Em says at recess. Her voice goes super-quiet. ‘Like telling Theo what happened with Dylan?’

  ‘Wait a minute — how do you know that?’

  Emily blushes, and her freckles seem to go a shade darker. ‘It came up when Theo and I were talking in art class. We were talking about the party and he had this silly idea that maybe you and Dylan weren’t over.’

  My skin feels like tiny little insects are trailing across my forearms. I told you everyone can see through you, my brain sings. You won’t have Dylan fooled either.

  I stare at her. ‘You guys were sitting there analysing my love life?’

  I want to say a whole bunch of things, but I can’t seem to unravel the jumble in my head. I know Emily’s impulsive and has no filter, but I would have thought she’d respect my privacy when it comes to this topic. It’s one thing for me to tell Theo about what happened with Dylan — and I spent the rest of the weekend regretting that — but for Emily to discuss it with him while I’m not around? I’m mortified.

  ‘No, of course not! I just wanted him to know you’re not hung up on Dylan any more — you know, so it doesn’t hold him back from asking you out.’

  She looks embarrassed and her words are coming out in a rush. She’s embarrassed? All I can picture is her and Theo wearing ‘poor Adriana’ looks as they reflect on how I’ve been done wrong. I don’t want Theo to see me that way — he’s meant to be my fresh start.

  I get up from the log. ‘You and Theo might talk in class, but that doesn’t mean it’s okay to talk about me.’

  ‘Ade, I know. I promise I won’t interfere again.’

  All I want to do is go splash water on my face, because I’m burning up inside. ‘Theo’s my crush, not yours, so let me handle it.’

  Emily’s face suddenly goes super-pale and she nods.

  I never get angry at her. Then again, I’ve always felt like Em respects me, but maybe some part of her doesn’t. So I don’t say sorry before I head up the path away from her. And when the Tens wave at me to join them, I do.

  ‘Hey, we were looking for you,’ Maddy says, smiling at me.

  ‘Sorry.’ I look back briefly at where Emily’s still sitting. She’s looking at the ground, her face miserable, and I want to go back and make up.

  Right, because heading back over there is going to show her that what she did is okay.

  I force myself to look back at the Tens.

  Lana raises an eyebrow. ‘So, you know that Dylan’s following you on Insta now, just like we told you he would?’

  ‘I bet you by the end of this week he’ll approach you in real life,’ Ally says. ‘Boys can’t handle rivalry.’

  ‘Boy talk, hey?’ Luke comes over, sweaty from the soccer game that’s just finished up. I’m praying he hasn’t overheard the conversation about Dylan. Luke scares me as much as Lana does.

  ‘So who are we talking about?’ He wipes his forehead with a hand towel that Lana’s pulled out of his bag. He turns to me. ‘Hey, epic party by the way.’ This is the first time he’s ever acknowledged my presence. ‘You know how many dudes are checking you out on Instagram?’

  I shake my head. ‘I haven’t looked at it since the party.’

  ‘I posted some of the shots from the party when I borrowed your phone to take those photos up in your room,’ Lana says. ‘Hope you don’t mind.’ Her expression says, Be cool with it or else.

  Chanel pulls my mobile out of the side pocket of my bag and hands it to me. ‘Get back on there, loser. I tagged you in a bunch of things. Plus, you have five hundred followers waiting on your next post.’

  I take the phone from her and tap on the last few photos, which were not posted by me. There’s a shot of all of the Tens, including me, lined up in our bodycon dresses. There’s another of the twins and me in my walk-in wardrobe. I’m in the middle, and Maddy is licking my left cheek, and Ally is pulling the strap of my dress off my right shoulder. We’re all duck-facing. The last is a shot of me on the swan. I’m leaning forward, and I swear it’s a miracle you can’t see my nipples, because half of my chest is showing. I have no idea who took it. I feel sick.

  ‘That’s the crowd favourite by the way,’ Luke says, looking over my shoulder.

  ‘Is that all you guys do at recess?’ Ally asks him. ‘Rate our pics?’

  He shrugs. ‘Don’t pretend you don’t know how many likes certain pics of you get. A bit of skin never does any harm in Insta world.’

  Maddy and Ally start giggling. I can’t join in. All I want to do is remove the pics, but I feel like that’s going to make people talk more.

  ‘Anyway,’ Lana snaps her fingers in front of Luke’s face like she’s forcing him out of a trance, ‘we’re talking about a guy that didn’t go for Adriana. You remember — the Dylan thing.’

  Luke tosses his towel back in his bag. ‘If you want a male opinion, the guy’s got to be gay if he rejected you.’

  He obviously thinks we’re talking about now, not back when I was still Adriana Puke-a-rama. Dylan rejected me because back then, I was ugly.

  The girls all nearly fall off the bench laughing at Luke’s comment.

  ‘You know, Dylan did do a project on famous musicals for film class,’ Maddy says. She’s giggling the hardest.

  ‘Um, that should have been a sign.’ Lana makes a face. ‘I reckon that’s why he went for Tatiana — it was a cover. You know, if you’re dating the hottest girl in school then no one’s going to suspect your secret, are they? And now he’s trying the same game with Ade.’

  Ally shakes her head. ‘I can’t believe we never figured that he’s gay!’

  He’s not gay, I think, but I don’t say it, because Dylan never stood up for me when Tatiana did what she did. So why would I bother defending him now?

  Because I’m not speaking to Emily, I spend the whole of lunchtime at Mum’s grave.

  There are new flowers against her headstone again. This time they’re apricot garden roses. Mum and I always loved their big blowsy cups way better than the perfectly shaped commercial roses she worked with at the shop. You know if you bury your nose in the heart of a garden rose, you’ll always find an amazing scent.

  The apricot roses smell as sweet as Dad’s favourite dessert wine, now that the sunshine has sunk into their petals. I close my eyes and focus on inhaling their scent, pretending it’s something magical that will fill every capillary, and the ache that now seems a part of my DNA will lift off me.

  It doesn’t work, of course. Whoever said that time heals all wounds was a total liar.

  I open my eyes and look at the flowers again. I wonder if Emily left them. I’ll never ask her about it, or whether she visited the grave while I was overseas. I don’t want to think about the six seasons that passed while I was in Borneo, and how for most of that time no-one would have visited this spot.

  Mum never liked being alone.

  Suddenly the army of rage that’s been operating in my mind the last few months charges forward. I’m angry about the future I should have had, that Dad should have had, that Mum should have had. Angry that I’m sitting here alone in a graveyard, when I used to have a whole family. I’m angry at Dylan for every possible reason, and at Emily for what happened this morning.

  The thumping of all these thoughts through my mind becomes deafening, and suddenly I’m scared that if I don’t go back to school and surround myself with people right now, I’m going to go into a full-blown panic attack.

  I’m panting and sweaty once I reach the gym for our dance class, but right now that’s the least of my worries. Everything is slightly blurry, but I find my way to Theo. It’s only halfway through the class that I let myself look over Theo’s shoulder. Not at Dylan, of course — I don’t dare attempt that — but at Emily.

  She’s looking at Theo and me and the expression on her face is similar to when she fell at the party. Her features are all pinched, like she’s struggling not to cry. I’m s
orry, her eyes say.

  I think of the flowers on the grave, of Emily throwing the mobile phone at Tatiana, of her keeping me upright at the funeral, of the hundreds upon hundreds of moments that she’s made me burst into laughter instead of bursting into tears, and I look back at her, my eyes telling her, It’s okay.

  And it is. I’m still mad that she thought it was okay to discuss my private stuff with Theo, but I get that in her usual spontaneous, open-her-mouth-before-she-thinks, Emily way, she was trying to help me, trying to convince him I’m emotionally available.

  Everything alright? Her eyes flick ever so subtly from me to Theo and back again.

  Nothing’s alright, I want to tell her, because that’s how I feel. Instead I make my eyes say yes, trying not to feel bad about the fact that I’m continuing to lie to her.

  Emily’s Diary

  It’s not like Adriana and I have never fought. Any best friends do — it’s par for the course when you’re super-close and spend that much time together. But the fight we have after Theo’s and my conversation in art class changes something. This is the point when she starts walling me out.

  There’s something in her expression during this time that worries me. It makes me think of those first few months after Sofia died, when I guarded Ade like crazy, terrified that if I left her alone I’d come back and find she’d lost her mind. Looking at her and Daniel then, you understood how easily it could happen.

  It’s hard to explain, but I feel like there’s some kind of darkness hovering around her now, and it’s weird as heck not to be acknowledging it. Like we’re letting a demon stand there, and I can see it as clearly as she can, but I can’t say Let’s take it on together.

  I don’t want to admit it, but I’ve known things aren’t the same with us ever since the first day she came back. We’re growing up. It’s not always going to be the same dynamic we had at fourteen. Of course things are different. Ade is more confident now, and that’s a good thing.

  I try not to think of the Tens. Just because they hang around now and again doesn’t mean I’m losing her to them. That’s like thinking our friendship is built on sand, when what we have is grounded in layers of rock, solid through and through, no matter what.

  21

  EMILY

  The Tens start joining us for lunch that week. Everyone stares as they make their way over to the spot where Ade and I always sit, but they keep returning all that week and the next. Most of the time they’re talking to Ade about the party, and laughing over stuff that happened that night, things Ade hasn’t shared with me yet.

  She hasn’t told me what happened with Dylan, or talked about the slow dance with Theo, when normally we’d have gone over and over those things, picking away till we got down to the very bones. Every time I’m tempted to press her for details, I think of our fight on Monday, of her flushed face and how I’d crossed a suddenly very sharp line.

  It hurts that the Tens know this stuff and I don’t, but I don’t want them to know that so I make my face expressionless. Half the stuff they go on about is so boring, I’m amazed Ade wants them around. I don’t understand. Is she too scared to blow them off?

  ‘So,’ Lana says one Monday, ‘apparently the formal tickets are going to be released any moment. I hope you girls know who you want to say yes to, because you’re going to have to practise your sorrys on a lot of losers. This is obvious, but choose guys that are going to look good in the group shots.’

  ‘So, A, that means Theo, okay?’ Chanel nudges Ade, who looks embarrassed.

  ‘No, I’m not doing the date thing,’ she says.

  ‘Sorry, whaat?’

  All the Tens are staring at her. Ugh, I want the bell to ring already.

  Ade shrugs. ‘Em and I are going together. We’ve always promised each other we would.’

  ‘Oh, that’s so … cute.’ Lana raises an eyebrow, her tone saying that’s so lame. All the Tens exchange glances. Maddy and Ally look at me and smother a giggle.

  I know what they’re thinking: Ade’s friend can’t land a date, so she’s going with her to save the embarrassment.

  I feel like saying, One day when high school is some distant memory, I’d rather remember hanging out with my best friend than some guy I couldn’t care less about, but I’m not going to bother justifying something that matters to girls who don’t.

  I can still hear their giggles at the end of the day as I head to the bus stop. Even though I don’t want to be anything like those girls, it’s the way they look at me that bothers me. Like they’re confused about why I’m hanging around. Why Ade, looking like she does, wants to hang out with me.

  All I want is to go home and stare at a canvas and forget about all the stuff I normally don’t give a crap about.

  ‘Emily.’

  I’m so lost in my thoughts that Dylan’s voice makes me jump. I sigh. Being the middle-man between him and Ade is beyond awkward. I think back to the conversation we had following the party.

  ‘That’s why you didn’t want me at the party,’ he’d said. ‘She likes him, doesn’t she?’

  ‘Dylan, I told you not to come to the party because it would upset her —’

  ‘She had her arms around him right in front of me! What did she tell you? Is it a real thing?’

  ‘She hasn’t told me anything,’ I’d said. I’d felt the prickle of hurt that she still hadn’t filled me in.

  ‘Has he asked her yet?’ Dylan says now.

  ‘Has he asked her what?’

  ‘The formal.’ Dylan looks exasperated with me. ‘Has he asked Adriana? The tickets have been released.’

  ‘When?’ We only just got out of class.

  ‘Five minutes ago.’ Dylan’s acting like I’ve missed a worldwide memo.

  ‘If Theo rushed up to her in the first two minutes after the tickets were released and delivered history’s quickest formal invite, how would I know the news this quickly?’

  ‘She might have texted you.’

  ‘She hasn’t texted me.’ I hold my phone out to prove it. ‘Dylan, if it makes you feel any better, she’s going with me. We’re not taking dates.’

  ‘Are you sure? Because all the guys are talking and they think it’s a sure thing he’ll be taking her.’

  It annoys me that he thinks I’m lying to him after all I’ve done to help him out. The Tens’ giggles float into my mind again. Does everyone see me as Ade’s charity case?

  ‘If you think you know the situation, why are you asking me?’ I say.

  ‘Because I want you to talk her out of going with him.’

  ‘She’s not going with him.’ I keep my voice calm. ‘But if Theo asks her on a non-formal date, I’m not going to make her say no to him. The reality is, she likes him and he likes her. This whole thing is inevitable.’

  ‘Well, I don’t want it to be.’

  I make my voice kinder. ‘Just let her be happy, Dylan.’

  ‘I know her, and I know she’s not happy,’ he says emphatically. He walks away without saying goodbye.

  Old Emily would have told Adriana everything about this conversation. New Emily knows it’s better left unmentioned.

  On the bus home, I get three other enquiries about whether Ade has a date yet for the formal. By lunchtime the next day, it’s risen to twelve. It’s like an out-of-control auction, with boys making increasingly higher offers to try and secure my best friend. Some give virtual sales presentations about why they’d make a great date.

  It’s hard not to find it amusing, most of the time. Except when one or two guys — nice ones that I share classes with — come up to me, stumbling over their words, and for a split second I wonder if they might be asking me instead. But of course the word ‘Ade’ bumbles out and the natural order is restored.

  It helps me learn my lesson early on, so there’s no danger of fooling myself into believing that any of these guys are going to make the mistake of opting for the goddess’s best friend instead of the goddess herself.

  In art clas
s, Theo and I agree that we want to start work on our Dante project as soon as possible. Mr Morrison suggests that Jefferson University library is likely to have way better resources than our school library — ‘In terms of art inspired by Dante, I’d look into Botticelli, specifically his Chart of Hell, but there’s a lot more out there. I’ll let you have the fun of discovery’ — which is how I find myself on a couch in the university library on Thursday evening, next to Theo as he flips through art books.

  Every few minutes he leans over to show me a sketch and I find it impossible to concentrate. His eyes and his scent, which I’ve figured out is a mix of amber and something woody, distract me. We’re firm friends now, so why am I still feeling that knock-me-down effect like when we first met? Will I always feel it? Is it somehow inevitable that however hard I fight against my feelings, something about him will always have a powerful impact on me?

  Adriana’s crush. He’s Adriana’s crush, not mine, I repeat to myself.

  ‘Found it!’ Theo’s voice is so excited I can’t help but smile. It’s such a novelty to have met someone who loves art as much as I do; moments like this are still a revelation. He leans right over and puts the book between us. ‘Check out Botticelli’s Chart of Hell.’

  I stare at the drawing, which is a massive funnel, more intricate and detailed than you could ever imagine. There are levels spiralling down, and thousands of tiny figures dotted across it. Some are being chased by demons. Some are buried upside down, only their legs visible. There are rivers of blood, and what looks like snow and lightning. There’s so much going on in this tiny drawing that it’s dizzying.

  I lean closer, trying to see more of the detail. ‘I never in a million years would have guessed this painting was by Botticelli. It’s an amazing piece, but I feel like I need to read The Inferno to be able to interpret all of what’s going on in it.’

  ‘I’m committing us to that challenge right now,’ Theo says. He grabs his laptop and orders two copies of The Inferno from an online bookstore. ‘It’ll be fun — we can text each other our thoughts as we’re reading. That reminds me, I don’t have your number. Let me grab it now.’