Read The Friendship Song for Free Online Page B

part Greek, and part Korean or something. I didn’t care what he was. His face wasn’t like anybody else’s, and it was so perfect it made me want to cry. There was something secret looking out of his eyes, like he had been hurt bad once and hadn’t forgotten. He hardly ever smiled. Ty Shaney had a big, sweet smile, and sky blue eyes, and hair like a lion’s blond mane. He was sort of warm and golden all over. I guess he was mostly Irish, but who cared. When he and Nico stood next to each other and sang, they would put their heads together, and their hair would mix, black and blond.
    Rawnie reached out and turned the song on again. Then she stared up at the ceiling. When she finally said something, it was quiet, like in church. “I think they’re all the way friends, yeah.”
    â€œThat’s what I think too. Like in the song, like they’ve been together since they were little kids and played games that they were cops and cowboys and stuff.” There were kids I’d known since I was little, but none of them were real real friends. I felt like I’d missed out on something already, because once I grew up I could never say I had a best friend I had known since I was in kindergarten.
    Rawnie swiveled her head to look at me. “Is that what you think they’re talking about? That they grew up together?”
    â€œWell, uh, yeah.” Wasn’t it?
    â€œI always thought it was more for real. Like they really were desperadoes together once, maybe a hundred years ago.”
    I just lay there and gawked at her, and Ty and Nico sang, “What we always been is what we’re always gonna be.…”
    â€œWow,” I whispered. What Rawnie had said hit me almost as deep as the song did.
    She sat up. There was something shy about the way she held her head, but something proud too, as if she’d always see things through. Rawnie was never going to be cute like a lot of the girls I knew. She was too beautiful to be cute.
    Looking at Ty and Nico instead of at me, she said, “I think it’s like the song says, they’ve always been together. I think they were cops together and really got killed together, like they said. And the lifetime before that they were desperadoes. And before that, maybe soldiers. And before that—”
    â€œExplorers,” I said. “Sword fighters.”
    â€œMaybe. Or Indian warriors.”
    â€œYeah,” I whispered. I could imagine them almost as far back as there were people on earth. They would have been knights who rode to the Crusades together. Musicians helping each other out of tavern brawls. Outlaws rebelling against an evil king. Gladiators who wouldn’t fight each other. Charioteers, both of them behind the same team of horses, one driving and one handling the spear. Hunters going out to face a ten-foot bear.
    Rawnie said, “When they were Indian warriors, I think it would have been, like, Nico got captured and tortured by the enemy Indians, but Ty rescued him.”
    I knew just what she meant. Nico had that look about him, as if there were scars on his back. But he wasn’t like a victim, more like a survivor. I said, “Don’t you think probably Nico rescued Ty sometimes too?”
    â€œYeah. Probably a lot.”
    â€œProbably they saved each other hundreds of times.”
    â€œNot just each other.”
    â€œNo. Other people too. They would have always been, you know, heroes.”
    The tape went on to the next song, which was about true love, and I sighed and said, “I wish I was a boy.”
    Just knowing Rawnie loved Neon Shadow too, and talking about Ty and Nico with her the way we had been doing, had turned the whole rotten day around. But now she looked surprised, and she said, “You’d want to be a boy? What for? Boys are jerks.”
    â€œNot—I don’t mean like the creeps in school.” Not like Brent Pimpleface and the other buttheads. There