A Little Friendly Advice. Siobhan Vivian

happy that I came home in one piece. The power of pity is an amazing thing. I should remember that.

      Maria slams the trunk closed and cozies up to me against the side door. “Did she get any dirt on your dad? I mean, Jim?” She whispers the last part, almost as if she doesn’t want Beth to hear. But she does hear. Her head spins toward us really fast.

      I rub the sole of my left sneaker back and forth over the gravel. When I look up, Beth is walking over to us. “It’s nothing, trust me,” I say.

      “Ruby. Spill it.” Beth rubs her hands together and blows on them to keep warm.

      It’s not that I don’t want to tell her. More than anything, I’m embarrassed by the whole situation and for what Maria might think about everything. But I ignore the redness burning up my cheeks, unbutton my lips, and recite the two new facts I’ve learned this morning.

      “A forest ranger? You’ve got to be kidding me,” Beth snarls. “Hopefully, karma will strike and a big pine tree will fall on him.”

      Maria digs in her purse for her favorite lip gloss. She squeezes a dollop on her bottom lip and smoothes it out with her pinky. “Yeah. Tiiiiimber.”

      Over Beth’s shoulder, I spot Katherine trucking across the parking lot with huge athletic strides. Palming an orange basketball, she bobs and weaves around milling students like she’s driving for the hoop. The oversized, yellow-mesh uniform hangs comically off her slender frame. Her hair is pulled back into a long, sleek blond ponytail, so tight it yanks up her eyebrows.

      She skids to a stop a few feet away from us and shuffles the last few steps. “I waited for you guys at Maria’s locker, but you never showed.” Her voice is barbed with annoyance. Then she locks eyes with me. “Ruby. I thought you were out sick today.”

      “I was out sick today.”

      “And we told you to meet us at the car,” Beth barks. As sweet as Beth is, she can get pretty snippy when you don’t follow the plan. And I can’t say that I don’t love it when she’s snippy with Katherine.

      “Oh. Sorry.” This time, Katherine’s voice is softer. She divides her attention among the three of us and starts over. “Did any of you guys want to come to my basketball game? It should be a good one. There’s this girl on the other team that I know from camp and she’s got incredible moves underneath the basket. But she can’t score on me and it drives her nuts.”

      “My dad’s leaving town tomorrow, so I’ve got a mandatory dinner,” Maria says. I’m secretly jealous that Maria’s family has this tradition before his business trips. I imagine the three of them sitting around their dining room, her mom doling out scoops of stuffing and slices of roasted turkey like Thanksgiving. That’s just the way it is in my mind, though. Really, her family dinners mean shoes-off sushi on the mini bamboo tables at Little Tokyo. Still. She’s lucky. The couples who stay happily married should get some kind of special prize, maybe from the government. Maybe a trophy.

      Katherine focuses on me and Beth. “What are you guys up to?” Her nose crinkles up, like she’s already sniffing out our crappy excuses.

      The truth is that watching a basketball game is about the last thing any of us would want to do, Beth especially. She despises organized athletic activity more than anyone else I know. Last year, she used the asthma excuse so often, Mr. Parisi made her write a ten-page paper on crab soccer to pass gym.

      “My mom promised to take me out for another driving lesson.” Because Beth’s sixteenth birthday is almost a week away, on Halloween, she’s as obsessed with getting her license as she is with planning her yearly costume party. I didn’t even bother getting mine, because it’s not like I’ll have a car to drive or anything. Mom can barely make ends meet as it is. “But . . . I guess I could get her to take me out after dinner.” Then she shoots me a pleading look, like I’m supposed to suffer with her.

      It’s hard to say no to a friend who has done so much for you. So I quickly run through the positives. I only come up with one — we’ll get to hang out alone for a few hours. But that’s more than good enough for me, especially with how weird and sentimental I’m feeling. “Yeah, okay. I’ll go.”

      Katherine’s face lights up. Even though she can be pretty nasty sometimes, I still feel a flicker of happiness at cracking her surly exterior. She is having a pretty tough time lately. I guess I’m a sucker that way.

      Before parting ways, we discuss plans for the evening. Maria is our social director because of all the boys she knows, and she rambles off a list of uninteresting Friday night options, including meeting up with Davey and some of his friends at Pinz. Which I’m kind of over. We’ve done that for the last three weekends. It’s supposed to be really cold out tonight, and I think some of those guys suspect I’m a lesbian because I’ve never walked hand in hand with them to the dark corners of the park. Not that I have guys throwing themselves at me or anything. I’ve never even talked to most of them, like one-on-one. I just kind of lurk around other people’s conversations and smile or laugh when it’s appropriate.

      Then Maria says, “Oh, well, I got a random e-mail from Teddy Baker about a party tonight at his house. You guys know him, right?”

      Teddy went to grade school with Beth and me, but transferred to Fisher Prep for high school — the sprawling all-boys school next to Akron’s golf course. I haven’t seen much of him since I was twelve, the year I moved off his block.

      “Wait. How do you know Teddy?” I ask.

      Maria shrugs. “I hooked up with his friend at a party once, and then he found me online. But a party at Teddy’s means lots of boys,” she says, waggling her eyebrows. “Lots of richy-rich rubber boys.” She sprays the air with machine-gun-style kisses.

      “Won’t Davey be mad that you’re not hanging out with him?” Beth asks.

      “Davey’s not my boyfriend,” Maria says. “We haven’t even kissed yet.”

      “Yeah, right,” Katherine says.

      Maria laughs. “Seriously! Not even one smooch.”

      “I thought you guys were together,” I say.

      “Well, we are. Kind of.” Maria shakes her head. “We’ve been hanging out a bunch but it’s always more friendly than flirty.”

      “Seriously?” Beth shakes her head, flabbergasted. “I think it’s time for you to move on. You don’t want to look desperate, throwing yourself at him if he’s not into you.”

      “Yeah,” Maria says, brushing her bangs out of her eyes. “I guess maybe.”

      We decide to meet at my house to get ready, since my mom will be at work. Maria drives off, sputtering gravel at the backs of our heels as Katherine, Beth, and I make our way toward the gym.

      Katherine dribbles her basketball effortlessly through her legs as we walk. “Listen, Ruby,” she says, but pauses to clear her throat, spitting a huge yellow ball of smoker’s phlegm a few feet ahead of us. “I’m sorry if I came off harsh last night. I’m just going through my own drama. And seeing you freak out on your dad and, like, understanding that all this divorce stuff is going to mess me up for, like, years to come, really made me lose it.”

      Decoding Katherine’s babble is a skill I’ve yet to master. But I know there’s an apology in there somewhere, which is pretty surprising. Until I glance over at Beth, who kicks a bottle cap. The faint smile she wears tells me everything.

      “That’s okay,” I say, opening the double doors for her. And it is. While she might hang out with us, Katherine isn’t really my friend. I’m not the easiest person to get to get close to, but I keep people like her at a distance for a reason.

      Predictably, there are not many people in the gym. Though every inch of wall space is covered by navy-and-yellow felt banners, proclaiming countless championships in every sport imaginable, most are titles won long before I was born. Akron’s athletic program has been on the