Read The Kind of Friends We Used to Be for Free Online

couldn’t say, But I don’t want to be yours.
    She had a sudden, brief thought that she would like to be her own, but it disappeared in the commotion of the crowded hallway. She followed behind Mazie, halfway hoping there’d be some cute boys in the gym, halfway hoping nobody would be there at all.

    “Tell me everything. I want all the gory details.”
    Marylin’s mom sat at the kitchen table, aplate of freshly bought chocolate chip cookies in front of her. It was her first-day-of-school tradition to leave work early so she could be there when Marylin and Petey got home. Then, at the dinner table, she’d prompt them as they told their dad about the first day of school, saying, “Now, don’t forget to tell him about your class pet,” or “Does Daddy know who sits two seats behind you who also goes to our church?”
    Only tonight Marylin’s dad would not be at the dinner table to hear all their back-to-school stories. Marylin and Petey would have to call him after dinner at his apartment, which was twenty miles and a whole universe away. She knew it would feel fakey to talk to him about school on the phone. In person, her dad was a good conversationalist, but when you talked to him on the phone you could hear the little pings his computer made as he checked his e-mail or surfed the Internet. His voice was enthusiastic—“Really!” he’d exclaim when he thought he was supposed to be excited about something you’d said, “That’sgreat, honey!”—but you could tell he was only halfway listening.
    Marylin sat down across the table from her mom and took a cookie from the plate. She wished she were better at being able to talk about stuff right away. She knew that when Petey had gotten home from school, he’d probably talked nonstop, repeated every word that had come out of Gretchen Humboldt’s mouth, given a five-point presentation on the fourth-grade curriculum, and ended up with a top ten list of his fourth-grade goals. Petey was great at on-the-spot talking.
    But Marylin needed time to think the day through. What surprised her was that she didn’t really want to think about who sat at the middle-school cheerleading table during B lunch or the cute boy in the desk behind her in pre-algebra who kept leaning forward to crack jokes in Marylin’s ear, his cool breath on her earlobe making her shiver.
    No, what stayed in her mind on the first afternoon after the first day of seventh grade was a new girl named Rhetta Mayes, who sat infront of Marylin in four of her classes, including art and State History. Rhetta Mayes had dyed jet-black hair and four earrings in each ear. She wore a black blouse that was at least three sizes too big, so it looked like a very fancy super sized garbage bag, and black jeans and clunky black shoes with big silver buckles. Her skin was so white, Marylin was sure it couldn’t be real. It was maybe two shades up from clown-makeup white. Rhetta Mayes was, in fact, the scariest-looking person Marylin had ever seen in her life.
    As far as Marylin was concerned, seventh grade was not supposed to include people like Rhetta Mayes, people who made you feel nervous in four classes out of seven. In fact, by the time seventh period rolled around and there was Rhetta Mayes again—the same humongous fake leather black bag stuffed with who knew what (a witch hat and raggedy black dress probably) hooked over the back of her desk where it would bump into Marylin’s knees the whole period, the same black eyeliner-lined eyes peering spookily out from her pale face—Marylin was ready to head to the guidance counselor’s office and request a complete schedule change. Just keep me in B lunch, was all she’d ask. But get me away from Rhetta Mayes.
    Seventh period was language arts, and their teacher, Mr. Holm, made them work in pairs. They would interview each other, and for homework they would write up their interviews into reports, which they would give in front of the class the next day. “I want