Free Best Friends Forever by Jennifer Weiner Page A

asked. He carried two cups back to the table, then handed Valerie a five-dol ar bil . “Why don’t you girls get some ice cream?” We bought cones from a window on the other side of the restaurant—vanil a for me, something cal ed Moose Tracks for Val—and we ate them leaning against the sun-warmed curve of the Bug’s hood while Mrs. Adler and the shel fish constable drank their coffee. She’d moved so that she was sitting next to him instead of across from him. Her hands fluttered in the air, lighting on his forearms, then his shoulders. I watched her rest her head on his chest as he slung his arm around her and pul ed her close.
    “We should leave soon,” said Valerie.
    “Poppy goes to bed early.”
    “Who’s Poppy?” I asked.
    “My grandfather. My father’s father. We used to come here every summer and stay with him.” She licked her ice cream, catching a brown dribble as it slid down the side of the cone.
    “We haven’t talked to him for a real y long time. Probably he doesn’t even know we’re coming.” I worried about that while Val nibbled her cone and stared out at the sky. “I wish I stil lived in California,” she said. “I wish I could live with my dad.”
    An icy finger prodded my heart. “You can’t leave,” I told her. “School’s starting next week.”
    Val licked at her arm again. “Maybe we can both go there,” she said. “It’s way better than Chicago. It’s warm al the time. We could go to the beach.”
    I nodded, enchanted and unsettled. I could never leave my parents, but I was, I secretly admitted, thril ed with the idea that Val would want me to, that she liked me enough to want me with her.
    At the picnic table, Mrs. Adler bent down to murmur into Chris Jeffries’s ear, then rose to her feet, peering through the twilight.
    “Come on, girls,” she cal ed. “Time to go.”
    Val and I got into the car, our hands and faces butter slick and ice-cream sticky. Valerie ignored her seat belt, curled up like a kitten in the backseat, and shut her eyes. I leaned forward, eyes on the road as we drove, first east, then south, as the Cape curved in on itself and headlights—the constable’s, I thought—flashed and bobbed in the rearview mirror. The wheels hummed over the pavement, and when I opened my eyes it was dark, and Mrs. Adler was shaking my shoulders, whispering, “Addie, wake up.”
    I stumbled out of the car. We were parked on the lawn in front of a big, dark house that seemed to start at the top of a hil and spread out in every direction: up, and out, and sideways. I could hear the suck and rumble of water nearby. Mrs. Adler pul ed Valerie out of the car and propped her up beside me. “Wait here,” she said. I squinted through the darkness, watching as she slipped off her shoes and trotted to the front door, then opened it and beckoned us both inside.
    I saw the darkened house in snatches as Mrs. Adler padded over the wide-planked floors, leading us to the staircase: the fancy, patterned rugs, a long, oval table in what must have been a dining room, a fireplace big enough for a kid to stand in. She led us up two flights to a smal white-painted room under the eaves, where there were two twin beds draped in white chenil e bedspreads.
    “Go to sleep,” she whispered. Her hair had come loose from its bun and curled in tendrils around her face. I set my backpack down, suddenly so tired that it was al I could do to wriggle out of my sneakers and crawl into bed.
    “I need to go to the bathroom,” Val said in a draggy, babyish voice.
    “Fine,” her mother snapped, “just don’t flush.”
    I lay down, trying to make sense of that
    —in my house, we always flushed. My eyes slipped shut. A few minutes later, or so it seemed, Mrs. Adler was shaking my shoulders again. “Addie,” she whispered.
    “Wake up. The tide’s going out.”
    I sat up, yawning. Lovely rosy light, a color I’d never seen, never even imagined, filtered through the window, and yel