Free My Worst Best Friend by Dyan Sheldon

been written in Urdu. I leaned back in my chair and stared at the photograph of a Jackson’s chameleon that I’d taped to the wall. He was hanging upside down on a piece of string.
    It was definitely my day for not being able to concentrate. I guess meeting someone is a lot more glamorous than discovering a talent for teaching, because all I could think about was Savanna. Who was this guy? What was his name? What did he look like? How did they meet? Where? Did she bump into him because she wasn’t looking where she was going? Did he drop something and she picked it up? Did he stop her to ask for directions? Did she stop him to pet his dog? The more I thought about Savanna’s day, the more my own seemed to pale into insignificance.
    I doodled in one corner of my pad. When I was younger and we still had a car, my dad and I used to go on camping trips in the summer. This one time we got to the campsite really late in a storm, and we pitched our tent in the dark without really knowing where we were. When I woke up in the morning, my dad was outside, calling me. “Gracie, come here!” he was shouting. “Hurry up!” I thought the car had been stolen. I hurried up. We were camped beside a swamp. Mist was wrapped around it like a veil. Cranes and herons skimmed over the green water. An otter swam past as though we weren’t there. It was the most perfect thing I’d ever seen. That was the moment when I knew that I wanted to be a wildlife biologist. It was so beautiful it practically broke my heart. I burst into tears. But aside from that and stuff like getting choked up over sunrises and sunsets, I didn’t really have what you’d call a romantic nature. I preferred documentaries to love stories. Savanna liked love stories.
    I was still gazing at the wall behind my desk, but I wasn’t seeing the dangling chameleon with his three tiny horns, I was seeing Savanna. She was pulling her phone out of her bag as she left the dentist’s. With her dark hair and her red jacket and her nails decorated with tiny gold stars she looked like a gypsy princess – one who happened to be standing by a sign that said TL. Moreau, DDS. She flipped open her phone. She was about to call and tell me she was out of the chair and on her way. But just as she was about to hit
Contacts,
she looked up. This fantastic, incredible guy was coming towards her. She caught his eye. He stopped. He smiled. And then…
    And then what? Was it like that scene in
The Godfather
where Michael Corleone first sees Apollonia and is hit by the thunderbolt? Did he shout out loud? Did he run after her? Or maybe it was more like
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
. He slung her over his shoulder and ran out
of town.
    I was so lost in my thoughts that when my dad called me for supper I nearly jumped out of my chair.
    “Sanctuary!” cried Savanna. “A safe harbour in the storm-tossed seas of life!” She pushed open my bedroom door and strode through.
    I followed her into the room with the tray and shut the door with my foot.
    “Ohmigod, Gracie… Ohmigod…” Savanna dropped her bag on the floor and flung herself on my bed as though instead of getting a ride from her mother she’d run all the way and couldn’t stand up any more. “What would I have done if you weren’t home? I am, like, sooo glad you’re here.”
    And I was surprised that she was. I thought she had a date.
    “I did.” Savanna’s shoes dropped to the floor. “And I know I’m, like, truly terrible, ditching Arch at the last minute like that… But I just couldn’t deal with the Planet Archibald Snell tonight, Gray. Really and truly. I’d rather be plucking chickens. I mean, he
eats
through the whole movie, and then afterwards he spends, like, hours explaining the plot to me. The plot! Of a thriller! I mean, what’s to explain? They’re all the same.” She plumped a pillow and stuck it behind her. “Anyway, all I wanted to do tonight was talk to you.”
    I put the snacks down on the table