Free Rose Sees Red by Cecil Castellucci Page B

sounded funny when we referred to the next-door neighbors as “commies” when Daisy and I were in eighth grade, but out loud, now, it made me feel embarrassed.
    “I didn’t know you guys had become friends,” Daisy went on. “I guess desperate times…”
    No matter how much I kept the smile on my face and no matter how much I tried to just pretend that I didn’t feel anything, I still felt wounded.
    How is it, I wondered, that you can be best friends with someone for such a long time and then, when you break it off, you still know so much about them, and so little at the same time? And how, despite all that distance, can she still get to me in a way that no one else can?
    Yrena was standing next to me with her arms crossed, totally at ease. Any intimidation that Daisy and her posse were trying to force on me completely passed over Yrena’s head.
    I realized I had something I’d never had when confronted by Daisy before.
    I had backup.
    Since I felt like I was performing, I moved forward with a new plan. The plan was that I was fabulous and that I had a friend in Yrena and that I was excited about being out, which was true, and that I wasn’t going to let Daisy bother me.
    All of that gave me a tiny push to be a little bit different than I normally was. Daisy was staring at me. It was my line, my solo, my turn.
    “We’re looking for a bottle,” I said.
    “It’s BYOB,” Daisy said. “Tough luck.”
    “There’s twenty bucks in it for you if you can find some,” I said. “I bet you could get some for us.”
    “I thought you didn’t drink,” Daisy said. “I thought you were, like, a Goody Two-ballet-shoes.”
    “We don’t care what it is,” I pushed on. I’d never said that I didn’t drink.
    “I think now maybe you can go help us get something to drink, yes?” Yrena said.
    “I can get you some beer, or maybe a little bottle of hard alcohol,” Daisy said, giving in not to me, but to Yrena.
    “We don’t care what it is,” I said.
    I slid Daisy the twenty and she went up the steps a bit, over to a guy who looked like he was a senior.
    I watched as she flirted with the senior-looking guy till he opened up his trench coat and handed her something. She gave him a big hug and then came back over to us, brandishing two bottles like trophies in her hands.
    “Rum and Coke,” she said.
    I didn’t really want to keep hanging out with Daisy and her Science friends, so I thanked her politely and led Yrena a few steps away. I opened the rum, then pretended to take a sip and chase it down with a big gulp of Coke. After I wasthrough, I passed the bottles over to Yrena, who made a face at the taste of the rum.
    I thought we’d go back and forth like this. But instead Yrena walked over and passed the rum to Daisy next.
    “Uh, no,” Daisy said.
    “We must share,” Yrena insisted. “It is the friendly thing to do.”
    Daisy shocked me again by reaching out for the rum and taking a swig. The bottle of Coke exploded a bit on her shirt when she opened it.
    Yrena smiled, but didn’t laugh.
    “Good,” she said. “Now we are all friends.”
    I didn’t want to say that Daisy and I would never be friends again. And neither did Daisy. We let our disagreement hang between us like a wall. It had nothing to do with Yrena.
    “Oh my God, here he comes,” Daisy suddenly turned and squealed to one of her friends.
    I looked over my shoulder, curious to see who she was looking at. It was a hippie-looking guy in a Guatemalan shirt. He was approaching us with a kind of I’m-on-a-tropical-island gait. He had longish, wavy blond hair and a beard. He was wearing an old-style hat that made him look cool, even though it shouldn’t have.
    “Hey there,” he said.
    Daisy moved over a little bit so that now she was kind of standing with us again. All the Science girls flipped their hair a little.
    “Hi, Free,” Daisy said.
    But Free was looking straight at Yrena.
    “Hello—I don’t know you, do I?” he said.
    “Free,