Free Nature Girl by Jane Kelley

ideas at all.
    Then it got worse, because Lucy said, “Now you’re getting upset.”
    Well, wouldn’t you get upset if your best friend said horrible things about you?
    But Lucy wasn’t sympathetic. Lucy, who was usually the nicest, most caring best friend in the whole world, said, “You see? You are just as whiny as the King of France. Only I can’t worry about saving you. I can’t save everybody!”
    “I didn’t ASK you to save me. I didn’t WANT you to save me. That was my whole point. But you weren’t listening to me. You’re just being SELFISH!”
    She looked at me like I hit her. Then she grabbed her books and went home.
    The next morning, I was still mad. By lunch, I was readyto forgive her. But she sat next to Patricia Palombo instead of me. So I got mad at her again and didn’t even wait for her after school. And so it went. For a hundred years.
    Two days later, Mom finally noticed how upset I was. She tried to make me feel better. But obviously she hadn’t noticed that I wasn’t five years old anymore. Having a snuggle and tickling me with the tail of my orange tiger did NOT help at all. I didn’t even feel like drawing one of The Best of All Possible Worlds. Those were pictures we made of places we wanted to be. But I didn’t want to pretend anything with her. I wanted my best friend. So Mom suggested I call Lucy.
    Only that was the problem. “I CAN’T call Lucy!” I yelled at Mom.
    Then Mom started her speech about HORMONES and EMOTIONS and how easy it is for girls my age to get overwhelmed by their feelings. As if being my age was a crime or something.
    I went in my room and slammed the door.
    I heard Mom call Lucy’s mom. They had a long conversation. Then Mom hung up and I didn’t hear anything for a while.
    Finally Mom knocked on my door and came in. She sat down on my bed like we were going to have one of those talks. I was really worried that Mom was going to yell at me for calling Lucy selfish. But she didn’t. She gave me a big hug. And then she said Alison had cancer.Lucy didn’t want to talk about it, but Alison wanted me to know so I would understand what was going on.
    I guess I nodded like I understood because I didn’t want to look stupid. Only I should have asked Mom questions, because I didn’t understand.
    I still don’t. To tell you the truth, cancer totally confuses me. After all, Ginia’s birth sign is Cancer the crab (which is totally appropriate). Back before all this happened, Lucy and I laughed about that every time we read Ginia’s horoscope in the
Daily News
. What’s going to happen to the Crab today? we would say. Obviously Alison didn’t have that astrology kind of cancer. But even the cancer sickness was different for whoever had it. When Grandpa had cancer, everybody made jokes like, Don’t sit on Grandpa’s lap because it’s radioactive. No one ever explained where the cancer was. They said I was too young to know about stuff like that. For a change, I was actually glad to be too young, because I didn’t want to know about it. It seemed so totally gross. After a while Grandpa got better and I could sit on his lap again. So I figured that would happen to Alison. Still, I knew Lucy had to be worried.
    The next day, I tried to give Lucy a hug. But she said, “Don’t feel sorry for me.”
    Then I didn’t know how to feel. Because I did feel sorry for her. It must be awful to have your mom have cancer. Even if her lap wasn’t radioactive, there wereprobably lots of reasons you couldn’t sit on it. Like once you’re in middle school, you’re not supposed to need to do that anymore.
    Then Lucy said, “Did you do the math?”
    And I nodded.
    After that, we both pretended like nothing had happened. Like we had never argued. Which seemed like the right thing to do at the time.
    Only while I’m lying here on the anti-bed, I remember that I never really told Lucy I was sorry for calling her selfish.
    So that means that maybe Lucy never forgave me for