Free A Little Friendly Advice by Siobhan Vivian Page A

breath makes me wince.
    “Morning, sleeeeepyhead,” Beth singsongs though a sea of static — a by-product of her crappy cell phone and our even crappier cordless.
    “Hey!” I perk up at the sound of her voice. “I was just thinking about you.”
    “Creepy,” she says and laughs.
    I am so glad to hear that laugh. It means that the tension of last night is forgotten and things between us are okay. “Have you eaten?” I wedge the receiver between the side of my head and my shoulder and flip through the photos. Mom, Beth, Katherine, Maria. I tentatively flip to the next one. Jim looks ghostly, framed in our front doorway, with sallow skin against the night sky, an expressionless face, mouth slightly agape. There’s a blur over the collar of his flannel coat. I tilt the photo underneath a ray of sunlight. The mark is a slender almond-shaped fingerprint. My mother’s. I don’t want to think about her lingering over his face. So I shuffle him quickly to the bottom.
    “Nope. Have you?”
    “No. And I’m totally starving. Let’s go to Dodie’s. My treat.” My stomach growls at the thought of a mountain of extra-crispy home fries drizzled with ketchup.
    “Rain check on that. Maria’s picking us up to go Halloween-costume shopping in a half hour. I’ll be over in about five minutes. With breakfast.” She rings her bike bell three times for me.
    “Awesome.” My throat tightens, pleading for me to stop there, but I force myself to keep talking. After all, Beth is my best friend. Even if it frustrated her, she’d want to know if I wasn’t okay. “Ride like the wind, all right? Because I’d like to talk to you before everyone gets here.”
    “Why? Did something happen?” Her words drip out cautiously.
    “Nah. Just wanted your opinion on this thing,” I say casually, as if debating over two flavors of ice cream. “Listen, I’m gonna jump in the shower, so go ahead and let yourself in.”
    “I’m on my way.” Wind whips against her phone as she pedals faster.
    I hang up and reach around to my back pocket. Charlie’s portrait is bent and crinkled from a night’s worth of sleep in my jeans. The tragedy of us makes him even cuter, if that’s possible. I thread his HELLO button through the white frame border, put him at the very top, and slide the whole stack underneath my pillow.
    The leg hair I avoided yesterday prickles up when I strip. Our bathroom is always chilly, because my mom mandates the window be open a crack to keep mildew from spotting the ceiling. I crank the hot water and pull the razor though the thick cream in long, confident ankle-to-thigh avenues. I brush my teeth, comb all the knots out of my long dark hair, pair some clean clothes Mom left folded in the laundry basket with my forever dirty Levi’s, and bound downstairs. I don’t know why, but just thinking about talking to Beth is making me feel better than I have in days.
    I greet her before I walk into the kitchen, but she’s not waiting for me like she should be. The clock over the sink reads 10:45 A.M . — it’s been about twenty minutes since we hung up the phone and Maria would be arriving in another ten. Our tiny kitchen feels cavernous.
    I fetch the cordless and dial Beth’s cell, planning to tease her with some defective Akron-made-bike-tire joke in case she got a flat on her way over. A muffled rendition of the “Peanuts” theme song trickles in from the living room. Beth’s ring tone. I follow it past the couch and over to the window, where I peek out the blinds.
    Beth’s rusty ten-speed is up on its kickstand next to our holly bush. She’s sitting hunched over on my front stoop with her head down, curls dribbling over her striped sweater and into her face. Between her curtain of hair and the angle I’m at, I can’t tell if she’s sleeping or crying or fraying the thin spots on her jeans with her fingernails. The twinkling lights from her cell phone glow out of her back pocket until my unanswered call goes to