No Longer Friends, and Friendships Brand New

The house is glossy midnight blue, fresh-painted, and perfectly framed through my speckled bedroom window. I'm mildly surprised by the sudden curb appeal that the house has gained from its new paint job. The place hasn't looked so clean and new in the six years my family's lived across the street from it, and I always thought of it as a lost cause. If every street has a slightly haunted, probably abandoned old wreck of a house, this one was ours, but it's really cleaned up.

"Watcha think?" Khloe holds out a hand for my inspection.

I glance over the sparkly blue and purple nails, each boasting a heavy layer of polish, and nod in a vaguely enthusiastic way. "Looks great."

My friend pouts, resembling a baby horse more than anything. "Quinn, did you even look at them?"

"Uh-huh." I feint engrossment in my own still-wet nails, which are painted alternately in red and Khloe's new gold polish. Normally, I'd be excited about a chance to paint our nails together- not so long ago, I'd have said that Khloe was my best friend. We have been since third grade, which might as well be the age of dinosaurs for how long ago it seems. But we've grown apart, not for any reason I can list, but it's happened. Sometimes a tree splits into two trunks for no good reason, even if it's grown as one for its whole life until then. Maybe one of the trunks wanted to be an individual by now, after spending its whole life lumped together with the other one. Only theoretical, of course. "Listen, did someone buy that house across the street? I don't see the sign any more."

"You don't know? You're the one who lives, like, right here." Khloe rolls over on my bed to see out the window. "They moved in last Monday, while you were at that cooking club or whatever."

"Baking," I correct her, wondering for the hundredth time why my best friend can't remember something simple like that, how much I love to bake. It's another one of the fake moments that've been slipping between us more often, like 'Why are we friends?'. It's a surprise that someone's moved in; I haven't seen any sign of life since that 'For Sale' sign first went up. "Anyone our age?" I ask with sudden interest.

"Not that I saw," Khloe replies flippantly, brushing hot pink onto her toenails. "I only noticed one lady, but she had a ton of boxes with her. She didn't use a moving company. It took her, like, thirty trips to get all of of that stuff in the house. Maybe there's a dead body in one of them." She laughs, but doesn't look up from her nails. She doesn't seem nearly as intrigued by the neighbors as I am, though she only lives a few houses down from them and has just as much reason to care as I do.

"Oh."

"Oh? What does that mean?"

"It means okay," I sigh, turning away from the window to roll my eyes. She's been reading into everything I say or do lately; maybe she can tell how distant we're becoming.

"You seem awfully disappointed, Q," Khloe points out, her voice level.

"I'm not! I just asked, sheesh."

"Okay. Okay, fine. Sorry." She screws the tall cap back onto the pink polish bottle, and gives me an injured look that I pretend not to notice. I can't deal with guilt right now, since I can't deny that I was hoping for a new best friend across the street.

We hold out our wet digits, waiting for them to dry, and Khloe fishes out her phone. I watch enviously as she scrolls Instagram. My parents won't give me a phone until I turn fifteen, which no one has time for.

Noting my gaze, Khloe offers the tantalizing device to me, saying, "Wanna play Candy Crush?"

I shake my head. "That's all right," I tell her, aware of the words' hollow sound, but I won't accept it. What kind of person takes favors from someone they're trying to cut ties with? I pick up a magazine from the stack on my dresser and try to interest myself in  the top summer hairstyles for teens, but I eventually toss it down and stare out the window instead. I notice a shadow in one of the windows of the midnight-blue house. Leaning forward, I try to decipher what it's doing, but all I can tell is that they're bustling around, passing the window again and again, as they work at something. Huh.

"Quinn? We're still friends, right?" Khloe's cautious tone shatters my focus, and I turn to face her, meeting her eyes for an awkward pause while I consider my answer.

"Yeah. Yeah, we're still friends." Since third grade, I remind myself, we've been friends since third grade, right after my family moved here. We held a funeral for my cat when we were nine, we played soccer in her tiny backyard every day the summer before sixth grade, we broke my parents' favorite piece of wedding china and never told anyone. I can't lose a friendship like that.

Khloe smiles, that unnatural, enormous grin that she always does to show off her teeth, now that her braces are off. I smile back, though stiffly, and for a heartbeat, it feels like we can work out our differences and keep what we have. Then the moment stretches thin, our smiles wither and fade, and I wonder if she can feel the unaddressed tension hanging in the air.

Nobody speaks, and the thunder never comes, but the looming clouds don't dissipate. The threat of a storm is still there. "I'm glad we could do this still," I begin, to break the shivery silence. "We haven't seen each other much."

Khloe shrugs, either unaffected by the hollow sentiment or good at masking her hurt. "Vacation's almost over. We'll see each other every day in school, and I can come by after. Does your mom still make the best sandwiches ever?"

"Aren't we too old for after-school snacks?" She doesn't answer, so I try again. "Anyway, it was nice to see you, Khloe."

Seeming determined not to take the hint, she smiles, this one looking strained even for her. "Definitely. Love your nails, by the way. The red and gold, really cool."

"Yep. Thanks." She must've forgotten that red is my favorite color- it was purple when I was younger, but I changed it a couple years ago. Not hard to remember, is it? My birthday cake last year, which I made myself, was red, and so is the bedspread we're sitting on right now. I recall that blue is her own favorite, and wonder if the blue and purple fingernails are for me and her. "Sorry I got worked up just then." Maybe an apology will lessen the guilty quiver in my stomach.

"No prob. Sorry I acted like that." Khloe wraps an arm around me, minding the half-dried nail polish on her fingers, in a sort of half-hug. I don't return the hug, but I don't refuse it, either. She smiles another huge smile, but the crinkles around her eyes tell me it's real. I wish mine could be. "Besties?"

I shrink down, my mouth open in the hope words will arrive to fill it. They don't, and I'm still gaping at her like a fish when my mom's voice calls up, saving me. "Khloe? Your dad's here. He says you have a soccer practice."

"Oh- that's right!" Khloe stands up, wriggling into her socks. I wonder if her nails are dry enough to take it, shuffling over so as not to smear my own as I escort her to the door. I never go out and say that we aren't best friends any more; we descend the stairs in unfriendly silence; but I can tell she knows my answer. If only she knew- if only I could tell her- that I wish we could be.

Khloe tugs on her shoes on the welcome mat and hurries down the steps, exchanging a stiff nod with me. Her dad and my mom pretend not to see the tension; they must think we've had a fight. Nothing that dramatic, we've just slipped away from each other, like shoelaces in a bow that used to be tight, but then loosened gradually until there was nothing holding them together. Her dad shuts the door behind him, and I don't watch their Toyota pull away. Instead, I ask Mom, "Can I take something to the new neighbor?"

Her eyebrows shoot up, but she tells me, "I was planning on taking them some of the cookies you brought home from your bake club, but if you want to..."

*          *          *

My rapping fist echoes in the almost-empty house across the street, and after several seconds, the storm-gray door swings open. I wince at the creaking, and then I look up at the tall woman in the doorway's shadow. Behind her, the house is silent and unoccupied- Khloe was right. No kids.

My first impression: hawk. She has a long and pointed nose, a gaunt pale face, and a graying hairstyle like a bunch of ragged feathers, with winglike swoops of hair on either side. She frowns down at me, and I extend my boxed-up offering with shaky arms.

"My family lives across the street- there." I point. "Nice to meet you."

The frowning woman accepts the box, and when she opens it, her face changes. Now she's smiling, a small, kind smile. "These look homemade. How nice."

"That's right. I made them." Encouraged by her less intimidating expression, I add, "I'm Quinn."

"Minerva Radof, but that's a silly name. Call me Minnie." She gives me a sharp, inquisitive look, very birdlike, and asks, "Would you like to come in? I have lemon squares."

"Sure." Why not, I think. It's not like I'm going to be murdered by this strange hawk lady, within a hundred feet of my own home.

Her kitchen is a cozy place, painted the color of a cream puff with robin's-egg cupboards. Minnie opens the refrigerator, her face looking rounder and friendlier in the watery gold light of the fridge bulb, and produces a glass pan of lemon squares: tart lemon curd on a shortbread crust. She sets them on the table, peels off the plastic wrap, but orders, "Not yet." I watch her dig around in a cupboard, muttering, "I need to finish unpacking- it's hard with these old joints-" and reappearing with a bag of powdered sugar and a sieve. She dusts the fluffy sugar over the top of the dessert.

"Yum," I say appreciatively, eyes glued on her skillful hands, dividing the pan into nine pieces with a knife. "It's hard to find good lemon squares around here."

"I pride myself on my lemon squares," Minnie replies with a laugh. "I was in a pastry competition on TV, quite a long time ago, and my lemon curd cupcakes took second."

"Wow, really?" My eyes surf the kitchen, noting the cookbook perched on her counter and the collection of figurine saltshakers. There are boxes of cake pans and piping bags stacked at the edges of the neat kitchen, like the storm clouds around the hurricane's eye, and it's clear that this is the only room she's begun unpacking yet. "If you need help straightening out your house, with all these boxes and things..."

"A much appreciated offer." Minnie sips from the coffee thermos that hasn't yet left her hand. "I'd like that very much, Quinn."

We keep chatting long past the disappearance of our lemon squares, pushing away our plates and setting down our forks. I tell her about my bake club, and she tells me about her time on TV. I don't ask about the cookbook, which appears to depict a younger Minnie on the cover, but maybe it'll come up next time. Nor do I mention Khloe, and how I'd hoped for someone my age to move into this house. I think Minnie is better.

The day burns itself out, and the sun is turning amber at the bottom of the sky before Minnie and I simultaneously notice the time. "I should go. Mom will be wondering," I tell her, pushing myself from my chair and stretching.

"Come back soon." Minnie grins, a thin but mischievous smile that I thoroughly like. "We can go through those boxes, but you have to do the heavy lifting, okay?"

"Sounds perfect." At the door by now, I wave to her as I lace my shoes. "Thanks for the lemon squares- and everything." She's not the type of person I'd ever seen myself liking so much, and she's Khloe's opposite in just about every way. But I think this will start a good friendship across the street. Not what I was looking for, but it'll do just fine.