Free I'm Not Your Other Half by Caroline B. Cooney

understand. But she seemed so blank to me—so removed. As if Price counted, but her best friend, Fraser, that girl she used to play with on the back steps, was someone she only vaguely remembered.
    â€œWhat about you? Your teeth are straight. Your figure is a model’s dream. Your hair is satin honey.”
    â€œNot my body, Annie. Not Michael’s body either. I just sometimes feel overpowered.”
    Annie laughed. “I love it. The cover of adult romances. Where the masterful man stands behind the delicate shoulder of the helpless girl and you can’t decide if he’s going to lead her astray or guide her into happiness ever after.”
    There is nothing worse than trying to express a profound thought and having the other person not catch on. You feel stupid, and you feel angry, and what’s worse, you really do feel helpless. Words aren’t going to get you anywhere. “I’m not helpless, Annie. You don’t understand. It just doesn’t feel one hundred per cent right to me. I have all these doubts about it—about me, about Michael and me.”
    â€œOh, Fraser,” said Annie, and the irritation surfaced in her voice instead of mine. “There’s no such thing as one hundred per cent right. The finest musical performance in the world could still be improved. The best paper ever written could still include more information. Michael is as close to perfection as boys come. You should be thrilled. It’s so annoying to have you get so picky every time we turn around. What in the world is there for you to be discontented about?”
    I got off the bed. Annie has two full-length mirrors, so she can see herself from any angle. I caught my expression in them. I looked fretful. Whining. Like the little kids at Toybrary when their mothers won’t let them take out toys with 498 pieces.
    â€œYour complexion is perfect,” said Annie. “Stop worrying.”
    â€œIt’s not my complexion, Annie. It’s life.”
    â€œBelieve me, Fraser, this life beats the one where we hung around a gazebo exchanging watermelons and pretended that life was splendid without boys.”
    She began talking about Price, about their plans for the future, about college and marriage.
    I felt like a child Kit Lipton’s age. Still bogged down in roller skates, ballerina costumes, Barbie Dolls and bubble bath. It was Annie who had crossed the line into adulthood: into that pairing-off that everybody, from my mother to Lynn to Judith, strived for. I was still a child.
    I looked around Annie’s room and saw that many of the watermelons had made way for photographs of Price, for dinner menus where she had eaten with Price, for a faded corsage Price had given her.
    We really are just watermelon friends now, I thought. Friends left over from grade school. Friends who skinned their knees together and learned jumprope rhymes together and practiced putting on mascara together back when they still weren’t allowed to wear makeup out of the house.
    I’m the one who’s immature, I thought. All this time I prided myself on being mature. I was the organizer. The one who gave speeches and mustered group efforts and rallied people to work with me. Annie was the simple-minded violinist who tagged along.
    I had it backward. Annie’s the adult. Look at her with Price. I can’t share that much. My whole life? Are they kidding? They really want me to take my entire life and fold it into Michael’s like one strand of a braid?
    I’m like a spill, I thought. Michael is like a paper towel.
    If I lie down next to him, I’ll be absorbed, until I’m nothing but Michael. Except that Michael is perfect. I’ve never known a boy as wonderful.
    â€œOh, that reminds me,” said Annie, but I had not been listening, and I did not know what reminded her of something. “I stumbled on a Christmas present I made for you and forgot to give you. Oh, well. You can